Local elections will be held in Latvia on June 7. Unlike other Latvian local authorities, the new Riga City Council will be elected after five years in the office, because in 2020 extraordinary elections were held and the Riga City Council lasted a year longer than it normally would. Currently, eight political forces have already applied for the 60 seats on the Riga City Council. For Latvia’s Development party has nominated Juris Puce, chairman of the party's board, to lead the list. In an interview with LETA, he stressed that better cooperation with the municipalities of the Pieriga region should be developed, the organization of traffic in Riga should be reviewed, the fight against cars in the center of Riga should be stopped, and the sad situation with the renovation of apartment buildings should be addressed by reviewing the financing model and the functions of Rigas Namu Parvaldnieks municipal housing manager. However, the most important goal is to change the situation that the population of Riga continues to decline.

Why is Puce the leader of the list of For Latvia’s Development and not, for example, Viesturs Zeps or Iveta Ratinika, who currently work at the Riga City Council?

The number one on the list is always a political decision within the party and an agreement on who is the most suitable candidate for the particular election. I am the chairman of the party, and it was a joint feeling when we started preparing for these elections after the European Parliament elections that it would be right for me to be the leader of the list in Riga.

But all our Riga City Council members are at the top of the list, in the top ten. We have quite a dense list in terms of leaders. We offer a good team.

Did the party also consider the events after the previous elections, where you were involved in the parking permit scandal? Although the events are now old, an unpleasant tail is dragging along.

First of all, it should be remembered that in the autumn of 2020 I also resigned as the party chairman, but of course I continued to be an active member of the party. Many party members still reproach me and say that I should not have resigned. That will certainly be a factor that the electorate will also judge in these elections.

There will certainly be attempts by my opponents to blame me for this situation. I am not afraid of that, I admit the mistake that I made at the time. I also think I did the right thing politically by resigning and taking responsibility. That gives the voters a chance to decide.

How have you been doing in this term of the Riga City Council, since the party is still represented in the coalition, but for a while it was also in the opposition?

We went to the last elections as part of a bigger team, we had a joint list that included Movement For and Progressives, and this list was the most successful one. But, in fact, on the election night it became clear that our two partners would prefer to go their separate ways. They reached an agreement with New Unity and threw us out of the coalition. But we made it clear even then that this coalition was short-lived. And so it was. Time passed and it turned out that we were needed, because New Unity and Progressives could not and still cannot get along. They are in the same coalition in the government, but in the Riga City Council they are always "fighting" with each other. But we are stable, predictable and ready to implement our program.

Puce’s Plan covers many different topics. Each of the 12 points has many sub-points. In your opinion, what is the most important thing that should be done in the next term of the Riga City Council?

Puce’s Plan is really a detailed vision and it is focused on one main goal - to amend the situation in which Riga continues to lose population, as it is today. We are the only Baltic capital where this is happening. Neither Vilnius, nor Tallinn has a shrinking population.

There is no one-size-fits-all miracle recipe. There is a need for many targeted measures to make Riga a place where people see their future, their dreams, their jobs, their careers. That is why there are so many things, but they have a common goal. This is what the work of the next Riga City Council should be judged by.

But how to do it? The main reason for moving away from Riga is related with family matters.

Yes, of course. You have to create a good living environment.

For example, in this term in the office, this was also the motto of Progressives. But what they wanted was for people to change, for people to stop wanting to drive cars in the city and so on, instead of giving people what they need. People need houses, and Riga is full of areas where you can build one-apartment houses if you want to. You can build new houses with a more friendly environment around them than is currently the case in many housing estates. To have convenient public transport. To solve the appalling condition of transport infrastructure where people break their cars in potholes. These are all conditions that would give us the feeling that Riga is worth living in.

On top of that, it is very important that Riga should be economically attractive, that it should be a place where you can earn your wage, and it is easier to do that if you work and live here rather than commute long distances.

However, many families now choose this model, living in a friendly environment outside Riga and commuting to work in Riga.

Riga has some advantages over the Pieriga region. Riga has the best schools in Latvia. But at the same time, Riga also has schools that are among the weakest in the country. And this has to be tackled. Riga has to have a competitive offer both on a Baltic scale, so that big companies want to come here and pay big salaries, and Riga has to be competitive against the growing Pieriga region. It needs a good living environment, good green space, the possibility to build a private house if you want to, the possibility to get good education close to where you live. It is possible to combine these things, but it is clear that it requires quite a lot of work. That is why there were so many points in Puce’s Plan, because it is not possible to solve it with one miracle recipe.

You already mentioned public transport. How can we create convenient connections to the Pieriga region so that these residents do not drive their cars to Riga, causing traffic jams? The idea of Rigas Satiksme creating extended routes is several years old, but it has stalled. The main thing that it all comes back to is that the municipalities of the Pieriga region do not want to participate financially.

I had the opportunity to take part in a discussion with Riga Mayor Vilnis Kirsis, and he made a very similar argument - we would like to do it, but they do not want anything, that is life, you cannot do anything about it! Who is the biggest victim here? It is the economy of Riga. Business is adapting to the existing conditions. If people move to the Pieriga region then eventually businesses move there. We are already seeing business centers, office buildings being built in Marupe. So why go to Riga at all? However, Riga is what holds all these suburbs together, so the city center has to be attractive.

The most efficient form of public transport to get to the center easily is train. Riga is doing nothing at all with the rail network, there are just talks about park & ride car parks.

But a single ticket for rail and Rigas Satiksme has just been created.

It is a pilot ticket. It took seven years to get to the pilot ticket and the pilot project. If we keep going at this rate, we will not solve the problem. A realistic proposal that the government should think about is, for example, to merge Rigas Satiksme with Pasazieru Vilciens into a single capital company and jointly manage this holding, because, in fact, 90 percent of the passengers served by Pasazieru Vilciens are passengers from the Riga area.

Secondly, Marupe, Adazi may come as partners, become co-owners of Rigas Satiksme and we will make decisions together. Just like Getlini EKO, which is partly owned by Riga, partly by Ropazi municipality.

However, even if they become co-owners, they will not be able to influence anything, as they will be minority shareholders in Rigas Satiksme.

No, it depends on the company's culture. Getlini EKO is a good example. The minority partner owns 2 percent, but the culture of the company is such that everyone comes together when decisions are made. Riga's goal is not to squeeze the juice out of the others. The city's goal is to make it more comfortable for the residents.

Is not your [as the environmental protection and regional development minister’s] municipal reform the reason why it is difficult for the Riga agglomeration to develop as a single region, because there are many small municipalities around Riga?

Much fewer than before the reform.

Yes, but there are still many, and there are even discussions about splitting them up again. There was an idea of creating a second tier of municipality - a Riga region, relatively - but that has not materialized. What other possibilities are there to bring together all the municipalities of the Riga agglomeration and to create a common vision for development?

Firstly, the number of municipalities in the Riga region is much smaller than it was before the reform. The municipalities have remained stronger, yes, more independent in their own way, and often no longer look to Riga as a mandatory service provider and manage on their own because of the growing population and large budgets. But at the same time, these municipalities are very well aware that a significant part of their problems, for example in education, are solved by Riga, for example, children from Pieriga region go to schools and even kindergartens in Riga. The same applies to public transport and street infrastructure, because a large part of the residents of the Pieriga region work in Riga on a daily basis. And this will continue to be the case. This is also normal, because this is the common life of the agglomeration.

What is a political problem... Even the current Riga Mayor Vilnis Kirsis talks about the municipalities of the Pieriga region like some Viking king, that they should be forced to contribute to the costs of Riga. It is the other way round. This is cooperation, it is not a conquest campaign. It is a question of offering services jointly provided by the municipalities of Riga and the Pieriga region. For example, as I mentioned with Rigas Satiksme - we are opening up the company for others to participate. This does not have to wait for any government order, it can be done by ourselves. A very similar solution is with Rigas Udens water utility. Rigas Udens already provides services in Marupe, Kekava, is considering servicing Dreilini, Garkalne. We are proposing not, as has been the case so far, to give away their networks, but to become co-owners in Rigas Udens. Same for Getlini. Now all municipalities have to take their waste to the regional waste centers, which in the Riga area is actually only Getlini. So why are only two municipalities the owners? Let us offer this also to others. Then it is clear to everyone that we are developing this site jointly and it is a joint service.

The idea of a metropolis of Riga needs to be ‘sold', and this applies primarily to services where the benefits are very close to the residents. There is no need for any conquest crusade, we should try to ‘sell’ the attractiveness of the Riga metropolis to the residents with the argument that both residents of Marupe and Riga will benefit.

In the run-up to these local elections, many politicians are using empty shop windows in the center of Riga as an example. How to bring cafes, shops and other service providers back to the city center? Is the City Council also thinking about support programs.

The basic problem with empty spaces is that there are too few consumers, there is no such flow of consumers as there used to be. Of course, a part of the consumer flow has been taken away by the development of supermarkets, which have created shopping habits outside the city center. But there are also fewer consumers because, as I said, people now not only live in Marupe, but they also work there, they shop there, and they are not really motivated to go to the center of Riga anymore.

A part of the solution to the problem would be if we saw more people living in the center of Riga. The other part could be solved if there were more tourists in Riga. The third part is if we had a very targeted offer to develop the sale of certain types of goods and services that would create a special attraction.

Another thing is that the historic center of Riga has very strict building regulations, very many restrictions on what can and cannot be done. Some of these restrictions are justified, some of them were introduced 20 years ago, in the meantime technology has changed, opportunities have changed, but these restrictions have never been reviewed. For example, it is very difficult to create underground parking in the historic center of Riga. Not for technical reasons, but for regulatory reasons. Technically, it is possible in many places today. Yes, it requires money and investment, but it would create new opportunities.

OK, this applies to businesses. How to make people want to live in the city center?

It is not that everyone wants to live in private houses. First of all, the population in the historic center of Riga has stabilized, there is no more decline. This is good. Now we should work on increasing the number. There are several things. First of all, there has to be a supply of places to live, because at the moment the supply is relatively small, it should be bigger. There are enough places where new apartment blocks could be built in the historic center. One part of people wants to live in historic houses, but there is a part of people who want to live in new types of houses. So, it should be allowed to be done more freely, so that there are fewer barriers to it.

Yes, but it is the historic center.

There are some rules in the historic center that are objective, and it would be very bad if Riga was to lose its UNESCO status. But there are not that many.

Another thing that comes up in people's reasons for not choosing to live in the center is that it is difficult to get to the house and there is nowhere to park the car. This is also one of the pointless struggles being waged by a section of activists, including in the political party Progressives. I am very much in favor of making the city safe for cycling, scooters and pedestrians. That is very important. But if we do not have parking and mobility in the city center, families with children will not come here. We just have to understand that. Yes, an absolute minority of families with children will live without a car, but an absolute majority of families will choose to have a car, and they need a place to park their car. The city's building regulations actually restrict the possibility of creating new parking spaces in the city center, and in every way discourage them from being created.

Finally, people say that there are too few trees in the streets of Riga. Yes, they do not complain about the lack of parks, we have parks, we have green spaces, of course we could do with more benches here and there, we could have more lighting in parks, but these are small complaints. There are very serious complaints about the greenery in the streets. As a result, the city streets are dirtier, because trees do remove some of the dust and reduce the heat on summer days. There is an incomprehensible administrative barrier in Riga which prevents more trees from being planted on the sides of streets. All sorts of boxes are invented to get around it. Go to Tallinn, where two new streets have been built and trees have been planted. There, too, is sewerage infrastructure below, but when the street is rebuilt, it is put into one box and trees are planted on top and green space is created.

Riga is not succeeding with the housing insulation program. What needs to be done to motivate people to insulate their homes?

I was working in the Economics Ministry at the time when we launched the program, which is still called "Let Us Live Warmer!". It was one of the milestone programs, because until then - in 2010 - only five houses had been insulated in the whole of Latvia. Since then, there has been a radical development - a significant number of buildings have been insulated and a huge effort has been made in terms of awareness-raising and education.

We have positive examples in Valmiera and Liepaja, but Riga is a disaster.

A big part of the problem is that we need enough positive examples to get the municipality and the citizens involved. This has not happened in Riga, but Riga is not alone in this respect. In Riga, progress is ridiculously low, and it has to be admitted that the state support program for the insulation of buildings introduced in Latvia is the most favorable to the population among the Baltic states, but its results are the worst. This means that we cannot solve the problem with more money, but we need to change our approach.

I have been trying for a long time to convince both current and previous decision-makers of the need for a different strategy. One of our main problems with the Soviet-era housing stock is that many of the apartments are owned by people who cannot make long-term commitments in the form of loans. Taking out a loan is difficult for them - either they already have a mortgage and will no longer take out a loan, or they do not have sufficient income, or they are elderly and are refused financing because of the discrimination that exists in the Latvian financial system, or because of fear, because debts seem to be a very heavy burden. Therefore, individual loans, where the state then partially repays, will not be an effective solution. Instead, we need to move in the direction of the Estonian example, where specialized, prospective private companies are being set up to renovate buildings. Such a function could initially be taken on by, for example, Rigas Namu Parvaldnieks.

The main challenge is decision-making, as Rigas Namu Parvaldnieks has so far only dealt with housing management...

Energy service provision does not require a mandatory 51 percent majority vote to make decisions on building renovation. The new regulation foresees that in such cases it should be possible to commit even with a smaller share of votes, as the energy service would be, for example, the same as in waste management. Just as the law requires to sign a contract with waste management companies - even if you vote against it, the house has to have such a contract. For example, the law requires an extermination service, which is provided regardless of the wishes of the individual apartment owner.

For years, there have been talks on reforming the Fund for the Equalization of Local Government Finances. For a while, work started in the Finance Ministry, local governments were involved, but nothing has happened. Riga complains all the time that huge sums are being spent on contributions to Fund.

We got this issue put in the Krisjanis Karins’ government declaration, but it has not moved forward in four years.

The problem is that we are still thinking in terms of 'who gives money to whom and who gets money from whom', but we have to look at it from a national point of view that all municipalities have to provide a certain amount of functions and make them available to the population. It is possible to understand quite precisely how much these functions cost. For example, municipalities receive a subsidy for teachers' salaries. This money is precisely calculated. Similarly, the costs of the municipalities themselves could be added up, for example, how much it costs to run schools, what is the cost of heating a square meter, etc.

And then we could move away from the principle of leaving a lot of money to the municipalities and taking some of it away, and we could introduce a clear system - the municipality would receive a certain amount for each child for the provision of educational functions. Then equalization would effectively disappear as a problem. Riga, as the main provider of education services in Latvia, would probably be the beneficiary, and the municipalities of the Pieriga region would also participate fairly in the maintenance of the education system, while in the regions the funding for education and social services would be set in regulations, rather than municipalities fighting every year over budget distribution and equalization.

But would the current system of distributing personal income tax between the state and local governments then make sense?

In fact, 100 percent could be allocated to the municipalities, but it should be distributed functionally, not according to the number of employees in each municipality. There should be some kind of proportion between the municipality where the person lives and the municipality where the person works, because it is clear that people spend municipal resources not only where they live, but also where they work.

In the pre-election campaign, Latvia First mayoral candidate Ainars Slesers promised to introduce a 50:50 system, where 50 percent of taxes would stay in the declared place of residence, and 50 percent in Riga, where the person actually works.

When I was the local government minister, we modelled this situation. This approach is not entirely fair, because municipalities have to finance different functions, and a fair proportion could be 70 percent for the municipality of declared place of residence and 30 percent for the workplace municipality.

If you become the mayor of Riga, will you go to the government with such an offer?

I believe it should be done, but before that we need a broader discussion. I am not only the mayoral candidate, but also a responsible citizen of the country. It should not be the case that because Riga needs more money, Kraslava or Talsi need less. In Talsi, too, children need to be educated, they need social assistance. Therefore, there must be a formula that ensures that both in Riga and in Kraslava, according to clear criteria, children receive money for education.

Do you think there will be any progress on financial equalization in the next four years?

I think that no major changes are expected before 2026. New Unity does not want to change anything. This is a big criticism of New Unity as the ruling party, because they hold the positions of mayor, prime minister and finance minister. Nothing will change.

Should Riga finance all the meals for pupils in its schools, given that a large number of children from the Pieriga region go to schools in Riga?

That is correct. The catering approach at schools is typical of northern Europe and has been proved to have positive benefits. It is important to recognize that there are children in Riga for whom school meals are often the only wholesome meal of the day. It is therefore important that meals are not only affordable, but also healthy.

The model introduced in Riga to save money, where parents pay for a part of the meal and the municipality pays the other part, is, firstly, very poorly administered. I really do not understand why I, a resident of Riga and a Latvian citizen, should pay into a Lithuanian bank account. If a political decision stipulates that we have to pay for catering, which is acceptable, but why is such a flow of money going outside Latvia?

The caterers themselves chose the scheme, and as a result, the system was set up on the basis of the caterers' interests.

Let me remind you that caterers in municipal educational establishments are not "God-sent" creatures. They are selected through tenders, which could be organized in a better and more transparent way. The current model is poorly organized and complicated, when it could be much simpler. Other municipalities manage it much better.

What should Riga as the capital do in the field of security, given the changing geopolitical situation?

First, there are areas of municipal responsibility where we definitely need to do better. For example, the civil protection system - we have a detailed plan and eight exercises, including practical ones. But although such a plan exists, the reality is more complex. I can give you an example: when you go to the Tallinn website, you can see all the shelter sites, the locations are marked. In Riga, for some reason, you cannot mark the places, because the enemy will find out. But how the citizens will find out about these places is beyond me. We have been spending money on a notification system for two years, but there has been no progress, no procurement, no system. Since 2022, we have actually lost three years. One part of the blame lies with the government. For example, if I am not mistaken, in October 2022, the Economics Ministry announced amendments to the regulation of standards on what a shelter should be. To this day, the amendments have not been adopted and are still in the process of being harmonized. Two and a half years have been spent discussing the regulation, not building shelters. Riga is doing something by giving money to schools and kindergartens to build shelters, but it is not enough.

Bureaucracy is more important than real human security in national and local life.

The other important thing is the overall security environment in the city. The city must set an example to its citizens by showing that safety is a priority. For example, in Tallinn the streets are brighter than in Riga. When you walk down the streets in Tallinn, the lighting is more efficient, but since Covid-19, Riga has deliberately reduced the intensity of lighting to reduce electricity bills. This austerity is making the city more unsafe, especially in neighborhoods where lighting is already inadequate. This saves us around EUR 80,000 a year, but in reality it makes the urban environment less safe. Funds are available to improve lighting in cities, but for some reason Riga is very inactive in accessing funding.

Finally, cooperation with citizens and businesses is essential. In the context of global threat, many companies are ready to get involved to improve security. Riga as a city should foster dialogue with the public and business, set priorities and involve different institutions. In addition, Riga has development prospects in the field of military industry. The city has large industrial areas and ports that could be used to develop production and attract both local and foreign companies. However, so far Riga has not actively engaged in this race to attract military industry investors. For example, the German armaments company Rheinmetall is scheduled to visit Latvia soon, but Riga is not even offering its territories.

How do you see the next Riga City Council coalition, and which parties would you never work with?

First of all, we and many other political forces need to get into the Riga City Council, because polls show a highly fragmented population among both Latvian and Russian-speaking voters. There are many choices to be made, and a large part of the electorate has not made its choice yet. It is clear that a coalition will have to be formed and that we will have to work together. Personally, I believe that it is important to see all elected members in local government working, and not to have a model where 31 members are making decisions and 29 members are not. We need to find a way for everyone to agree and work together.

It is not always easy to come to an agreement in political work, but of course there are basic things that remain the same. We will not be able to form a coalition with parties that still think in Kremlin terms. After the events of February 24, 2022, politicians had to be able to mobilize and make their position clear. If Stability leader Aleksejs Roslikovs or anybody else is saying that the situation [in Ukraine] is not plain simple, then it is quite clear for us.

It is clear about Roslikovs, but what about Harmony?

I have not heard about Harmony for a long time. When they were in the Saeima, they took an active position for Ukraine after February 24. I hope that they have maintained that position. But I do not think it will be the primary choice.

Slesers?

The question of what to do with Ainars Slesers will have to be answered seriously. I personally will have to answer the question of whether I am ready to work in the leadership of New Unity in the Riga City Council. In the current Riga City Council coalition, talking is replacing doing. Slesers, on the other hand, has grand plans, but in experience, these plans often turn into personal projects, nothing more. Both of these approaches are a mistake. The idea that we have to choose between Kirsis and Slesers is a mistake. The political model offers many alternatives.

What will the cooperation with Progressives look like? They were close partners earlier, but not any more.

I do not exclude that there can be cooperation, but it will not be a priority.

What is the priority?

The priority is to get as many votes and support as possible in the Riga City Council, to have as few coalition partners as possible, to make it easier to agree and not to work in a coalition of nine or ten partners. For example, at the moment the Riga City Council works with six factions and independent lawmakers, which makes it almost impossible to reach an agreement and most of the energy goes into fighting amongst ourselves. Instead, the focus should be on big changes and development projects.

How many seats are you hoping for?

Our campaign goal is to win more than 20,000 votes, which is likely to be around 10-12 percent of the vote in these elections, depending on turnout. That would give us seven or eight seats. That is the job we are working on.