In Liberec, the first of the controversial contracts has begun - the completion of the swimming pool

Liberec - In Liberec, the first of the controversial contracts began today, leading to the collapse of the city council coalition. The completion of the swimming pool for 140 million crowns will be ensured by the local construction company Syner, which won with the lowest bid in the public tender. The costly project is 85 percent funded by European funds, with the remainder to be covered by the city. The entire construction is expected to be completed within a year, said Lukáš Martin (ČSSD), deputy mayor of Liberec, at the inauguration today.
The extension will be built next to the swimming pool, which was constructed in the 1980s and has a fifty-meter pool. The extension will utilize its technology and will include a twenty-five-meter pool with six lanes and a variable water level primarily intended for school swimming training. "The pool will be barrier-free," said Michal Vereščák, head coordinator of EU grants at the Liberec city hall, to ČTK. The extension will also have a small saltwater pool, a children's sauna, and a nine-meter tower for diver training.
"This project is important for the city mainly due to school swimming; teaching non-swimmers in a large pool is a significant problem," Jiří Šolc (Liberec občanům), the deputy mayor for economics, told ČTK. He mentioned that the city has smaller pools in schools, but they were mostly built in the 1970s and their technology is outdated. "Investing in their repairs would be very disadvantageous for the city," added Šolc. However, he admitted that one twenty-five-meter pool would not be sufficient for all schoolchildren, so it will be necessary to reconstruct one of the school pools in the coming years. It is still unclear how the city will finance this.
The completion of the pool is one of two controversial projects examined by the Office for the Protection of Competition. The other project is the revitalization of the municipal baths for 360 million crowns, which, according to Vereščák, is expected to start in September.
The preparation of both demanding constructions was initiated by the previous city council led by the ODS party and Mayor Jiří Kittner. The newly elected representation, then still led by Jan Korytář from Změna pro Liberec, evaluated the contracts and announced the winners at the beginning of the year, but Korytář ultimately refused to sign the contracts. He argued with two legal opinions and a report from Transparency International, according to which the contracts are disadvantageous for the city. They warned Liberec that it could face having to return European grants or pay millions of crowns more. All parties then turned to the Office for the Protection of Competition to investigate the contracts. However, the office found no irregularities that would lead to the initiation of administrative proceedings.
Nevertheless, disputes led to the collapse of the city council coalition and, in mid-April, to Korytář's removal from the mayor's position. Since then, the city has been led by a minority coalition of ČSSD, Liberec občanům, VV (Věci veřejné), and two of the three representatives from the Union for Sports and Health. The coalition holds 18 mandates in the 39-member city council.