| The authorities of an Italian town have begun monetizing street names The leadership of a small Italian town has found an original way to cope with the lack of budget funds. Recently, the mayor of the city of San Giorgio Del Sannio, located near Naples, put up for sale the names of fifteen streets in his locality. This was reported by the French weekly Le Point. “In the current period of lack of budgetary funds, this is the only way not to raise local taxes,” assures the mayor, who promises to use all the proceeds to repair the municipal cinema and build a nursing home.
Of course, the holy of holies - Mussolini Square and Berlusconi Boulevard, which exist in almost every Italian city - will not be sold. But the names of the small streets adjacent to them and alleys located on the outskirts of the neighborhoods may well be bought by local residents. The only condition that the city authorities set was that only the names of those people who were born, lived and died in San Giorgio Del Sannio can be immortalized in this way.
So far the streets are being sold out reluctantly. However, this is not because local residents do not have relatives whose name they would like to perpetuate. It’s just that the stated price of 15 thousand euros for a street in the city center and 10 thousand on the outskirts is quite high for a resident of a peripheral Italian town. So far, only one buyer is known - Giancarlo Capozzi. Now one of the central streets will bear the name of his father, a doctor who lived his whole life in this small town. Moreover, as Mr. Capozzi himself admitted in an interview with French journalists, he bought the street much cheaper than the announced price. “They gave me a discount because I was the first, and it cost me 6 thousand euros,” he said, noting that he was not going to stop there. It is possible that in the near future a street named after Mr. Capozzi’s aunt will appear in the town. “I would like to name another street after my aunt, but now it costs 15 thousand, so I’ll think about it,” he said.
In world practice, this is perhaps one of the few cases when municipal authorities are trying to solve financial problems of filling the local budget in an original way, rather than resorting to traditional measures: loans, selling city land, leasing premises, etc. In Russian cities, which are also experiencing a revenue shortfall, they have not yet thought of selling “name” signs with house addresses, although the authorities are trying to listen to the wishes of residents regarding street names. For example, in the city of Zelenodolsk in the Republic of Tatarstan, the city administration, through local media, appealed to city residents with a request to name two new streets in the Mirny microdistrict. The competition was announced on January 27 this year, and so far the administration continues to accept applications from the public. As the city authorities promised, consideration of all proposals will begin after the end of the competition - February 27. The final decision will be made by the city toponymic commission. Moreover, it is possible that the winner of the competition will even be awarded.
However, such cases are rare. Our compatriots for the most part receive the streets for merit, and not for cash, and it is almost impossible to achieve such an honor during one’s lifetime. Unless, of course, we remember that in certain periods of Russian history there were exceptions. For example, in the late 30s of the last century, Stalin, as a gift to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, named the street on which the director lived in his honor. Some received named streets in addition to high state awards, coupled with a plaster bust in their historical homeland. For example, even the current Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov can boast that a street in one of the regional centers of the Smolensk region, the city of Demidov, where his parents were born, is named after his father. Moreover, as local authorities are now justifying, the name was chosen “based on patriotic feelings, and not political circumstances.” Hero Fradkov Street (Efim Fradkov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union) appeared on Demidov’s map back in December 2003, when no one even thought about his son as the head of government. Anna ShPAK |
|
