We reprint the press release from Okrašlovacího spoleku Za krásnou Ostravu
At yesterday's Ostrava City Council meeting, representatives of two highly regarded Ostrava communities gathered unexpectedly on the balcony reserved for citizens – people from the Bedřiška settlement and citizens who support preserving space for communities in Bauhaus at least until the building is demolished. Both community projects, Bedřiška and Bauhaus, have become acclaimed Ostrava phenomena, yet both are set to disappear. Bauhaus will close on June 30, 2024, and the first tenants from Bedřiška are to move out next year, according to a decision by the Mariánské Hory and Hulváky district council. The meeting became a place of shared helplessness and witnessing how politicians insensitively treat valuable civic activities.
Several citizens took turns speaking on the balcony of the council chamber, most of them calling for dialogue with the city, which they feel is lacking.
The people of Bedřiška, for example, demanded that the working group for Bedřiška, established under the former city leadership, be reinstated and that they be invited to the negotiations, because the leadership of the Mariánské Hory and Hulváky district and the city do not communicate with them sufficiently.
Citizens and representatives of the Bauhaus Doesn't Have to End (Bauhaus skončit nemusí) initiative made similar statements, pointing out that there had not been sufficient dialogue with the communities around Bauhaus.
For example, the public still does not have detailed arguments from the city to justify why it wants to demolish Bauhaus so quickly. The initiative also lacks a detailed response to the arguments presented in letters to councilors, as well as the city's timetable, which was also communicated at the round table on Bauhaus organized by the Fiducia association on June 19 directly at Bauhaus. At the round table, the city, represented by the head of the strategic development department, presented facts that were refuted on the spot (costs per square meter, date of the structural assessment, etc.). Based on this, the city was repeatedly asked by representatives of the initiative to communicate sufficiently and present relevant arguments before the Bauhaus is closed.
An important contribution to the discussion on the necessity of communities and the uniqueness of Bauhaus was made by clinical psychologist Kateřina Ožanová, who repeatedly emphasized the currently irreplaceable role of community life in Bauhaus during her speech at the round table. She then also spoke at the Ostrava City Council (as not a single politician from the current city coalition attended the round table), where she read a text in which she again emphasized the fundamental role of both Bauhaus and Bedřiška as unique community spaces.
The citizens of Bedřiška and supporters of Bauhaus expressed the opinion that the city does not communicate sufficiently and that false or misleading information is being spread in the public sphere.
They also appealed to the city to use multiple sources of funding for the repairs to Bedřiška. Although politicians from the current coalition repeatedly stated at the council meeting that the city did not have the money for the repairs to Bedřiška, this was contradicted by opposition councilor and former deputy mayor for strategy Zuzana Bajgarová, who pointed out that the city still has Bedřiška in its draft budget as one of the items and that, thanks to this, the project for its overall revitalization presented by the former city leadership in 2020 can continue.
The residents of Bedřiška and representatives of the Bauhaus initiative have repeatedly called on the city to negotiate with them, either in working groups or at round tables.
Mayor Jan Dohnal subsequently publicly promised the residents of Bedřiška that the working group would soon resume its activities and that representatives of Bedřiška would be part of it, as they had been in previous years. Opposition councilor Zuzana Bajgarová then proposed a vote on a resolution to convene a working group on Bedřiška and to present the outcomes of the meeting to the Ostrava city councilors and the public. This proposal was accepted by a majority vote.
Unfortunately, her other proposal was not successful. It was a recommendation to the Mariánské Hory and Hulváky districts that, until the results of the working group's meeting were known, the district should not take any steps that could lead to the eviction of tenants or changes to rental agreements that would be disadvantageous to tenants. Most representatives were against it or abstained, so the proposal did not pass.
Regarding the Bauhaus Doesn't Have To End initiative, the mayor of Ostrava stated that, in his opinion, sufficient dialogue had taken place, which we disputed by pointing out that since the petition was submitted at the end of February, the Ostrava city leadership had not initiated any meetings with representatives of the initiative. This issue was also addressed at the May city council meeting, when, in addition to representatives of the initiative, opposition councilor Kateřina Šebestová called for negotiations.
The mayor of Ostrava finally publicly promised a meeting based on our repeated requests, and it took place on June 7, unfortunately four months after the petition was submitted and three weeks before the closure of Bauhaus.
At that meeting, the mayor admitted that the city had not engaged in sufficient dialogue. We also pointed out to him that, since October, when we learned of the closure of Bauhaus, the city had not initiated a single meeting or roundtable discussion with the diverse communities and groups from Bauhaus until the June city council meeting. Deputy Mayor Andrea Hoffmannová, who also attended this meeting and then yesterday's council meeting, promised to start negotiating with the communities and working with them, for example in the form of round tables, which we welcome. At the meeting on June 7, the deputy mayor and the mayor also promised to provide the initiative with a detailed statement, including expert arguments as to why the city decided to terminate Bauhaus's activities as of June 30. At the same time, they promised to publicly thank the communities.
We trust that this promise will be fulfilled and that the public will receive the documentation on the basis of which the city decided, in our opinion, to prematurely terminate activities that are unique in Ostrava and the Czech Republic and currently irreplaceable for Ostrava. We have not yet received such documentation.
Yesterday, we also told the councilors that we regret that no politician from the current coalition was present at the round table on the future of Bauhaus, even though the round table was announced to the city a month in advance and we asked the mayor to send a politician and not an official who has no say in the termination of Bauhaus. In the end, however, a civil servant was sent to the round table as the city's representative, which led to frustration among the round table participants, as repeatedly expressed during the discussion. At yesterday's council meeting, we therefore reiterated that the city's political leadership is not engaging in sufficient dialogue with the communities.
Therefore, the same scenario is repeating itself in both communities, where there has been no dialogue from the city's side for a long time and then the city decides to close the buildings without the participation of community representatives, citing their poor technical condition. Despite repeated calls for dialogue, city representatives are postponing negotiations until irreversible steps towards liquidation are already being taken. The city's residents are thus faced with a fait accompli without any possibility of influencing the situation.
It was precisely this lack of communication and lack of expert arguments that were repeatedly raised by citizens yesterday on the balcony of the Ostrava City Council. We believe that at least in Bedřiška there is still a chance to reverse the decision to demolish this settlement, which is considered a model of community coexistence in the Czech Republic.
Unfortunately, Bauhaus will be closed on June 30, 2024. Although opposition councilor and former mayor Tomáš Macura teacted to our appeal and initiated a vote to maintain activities at Bauhaus at least until demolition (arguing that the six months or year would allow the city to meet with the Bauhaus communities and find replacement space for them), only nine councilors voted in favor of preservation. Nine councilors were against it, and most councilors abstained or did not vote, which means that on Sunday, the unique and currently irreplaceable community space PLATO-Bauhaus will close.
Original version by Ilona Rozehnalová from the Bauhaus Doesn't Have To End (Bauhaus skonřit nemusí) intiative, made in Ostrava on 26 June 2024.