Estonia: Supplementary budget of Tartu to focus on education, renovation of streets

TALLINN - The city government of Tartu has submitted to the council the draft of a 12.3-million-euro supplementary budget that will increase investments in education and the renovation of streets compared with the original budget. 

Spokespeople for the city government said on Monday that the preparation of a positive supplementary budget was enabled by the precise determining of the amounts of state support, which turned out somewhat bigger than initially planned, and tapping into the leftovers of liquid assets from 2018.

Mayor Urmas Klaas described the supplementary budget as a direct follow-on to the main budget.

"We will be able to implement several plans that were left out of the original budget due to absence of money and to increase investments," Klaas said.

The fields of education and economy stand to get the biggest amounts of money from the supplementary budget -- respectively six million euros or 46 percent of the total and 2.5 million euros or 20 percent of the total.

The extra budget will provide additional money for the reconstruction and construction of streets and roads. 

"The budgets of the reconstruction of Vanemuise and Ulikooli streets received additions, while of new undertakings, the intersection of Turu and Ropka roads and the Roopa-Variku-Maasika sidewalk will be added," Klaas said.

The reconstruction of streets will get altogether 1.4 million euros in additional funding.

Investments in the field of education will increase by 2.1 million euros, of which 0.8 million euros will be spent for the modernization of kindergartens.

Of the income of the supplementary budget, state support and designated funding items make up five million euros and tapping into liquid assets 7.3 million euros.

After the adoption of the supplementary budget, the size of the budget of Tartu for 2019 will be 204.4 million euros.