Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic said on Thursday the city would accept a proposal from the Drito party to extend free public transport to high school students aged 18, while confirming that a waste-to-energy plant would not be built at the planned waste management centre in Resnik.
Tomasevic said the Resnik Waste Management Centre would include three facilities: a biocomposting plant, a sorting plant and a mixed municipal waste processing facility, but not an energy plant. He said a separate location would be sought for a waste-to-energy facility after a feasibility study is completed and published.
He said the study, which is nearing completion, indicated that the City of Zagreb would likely need to invest in a waste-to-energy facility, but decisions on location and technology would be made later and the process would take several years. In the meantime, fuel produced from waste would need to be processed elsewhere.
Responding to criticism from the Croatian Democratic Union that the city’s waste management plan was inadequate, Tomasevic said the plan reflected the policies he had advocated during his election campaign and criticized opposition parties for not proposing alternative locations for waste facilities.
Tomasevic also addressed the restructuring of KK Cibona, saying the basketball club was not city-owned but a private association that would become a private sports joint-stock company after an investor agreed to cover its debts. He said the new structure would improve transparency and help stabilize the club financially.
The mayor said the ruling majority in the city assembly would support a proposal by the Drito party to expand free public transport to high school students who have turned 18, but added that the city must first assess how government measures would affect public transport operator finances and the city budget.
City assembly members from the Social Democratic Party of Croatia said they would support both the waste management plan and the restructuring of Cibona, describing the waste plan as rational and feasible while stressing the need to minimize additional waste transport and disposal costs during the construction period.