Expert Mezentsev told what will change in SNT after the arrival of management companies

– Dacha legislation has been changing all the time in recent years, what is the reason for this?

– Let’s start with the fact that life in dacha villages for a long time was determined only by the provisions of the SNT Charter. There are four main components of the dacha structure: the chairman, the board, the audit commission and the members of the partnership. This design was borrowed from the charter of the collective farm artel, which no longer exists, but it has taken root in gardening partnerships and still helps to effectively manage dacha areas.

But life changes, so laws also need to be adjusted over time, including for summer residents. For example, during the pandemic, many holiday villages, where people vacationed only in the summer, turned into a place of permanent residence for city residents. Hence the new requests for this type of real estate. Summer residents outside the city want to live with the same comfort as in city apartments. They have a need for social infrastructure, they need normal transport accessibility. Moreover, in some SNTs near Moscow there are an order of magnitude more people living than in neighboring villages.

– So, the new bill is aimed at satisfying this request for a more comfortable life in holiday villages?

– Not really. I think that this initiative is being lobbied by management companies who saw that in rural areas there is a huge niche open for their business, and naturally they want to occupy it as quickly as possible. Now management companies manage only apartment buildings and cottage villages, but if the law “On the management of low-rise residential complexes” is adopted, then they will be able to serve the rural population too – work in villages and villages.

– However, SNT are not part of the settlements – they are a separate structure.

“That’s the point, that’s why there is now such an intensive campaign to convince dacha residents that SNT is a relic of the past, that if the gardening partnership is transformed into a populated area, then life at the dacha will immediately become better.

– Isn’t that so?

– There are always both pros and cons. Therefore, before making any decision, you need to weigh everything carefully. Some summer residents think that it’s good for the villagers, they don’t need to go to meetings, argue until they are hoarse about every issue related to the improvement of the village, the municipality decides and does everything for them. But this is a myth. Local budgets are small, they are hardly enough to serve those villages that are already part of the municipality. It is enough to talk to rural residents to be convinced that they have the same problems as members of gardening associations – people also complain about the poor quality of roads, the lack of social infrastructure, delays in garbage collection and old utility networks.

– But there are also advantages to SNT becoming a full-fledged village?

– The only positive thing that can be said is the absence of general meetings, which are usually very hectic and not always constructive, and also the fact that the summer residents will not have to support the chairman or pay him a salary from membership fees.

– In general, you won’t have to pay membership fees and extract them from malicious debtors. SNT is like a communal apartment. There are friendly ones, and there are those that you wouldn’t wish to be there for your enemy.

– That’s right. But it is much easier to destroy the existing control system than to build a new one. If SNT members are able, at the expense of their contributions, to maintain order on the territory of the gardening partnership and monitor the infrastructure, then it is better not to break what works well. It is naive to hope that by reorganizing the SNT into a populated area, summer residents will be able to shift the solution of all economic issues to the municipality and not worry about anything else.

– Then let’s talk about the disadvantages that gardeners may encounter if SNT does merge into the nearest settlement.

– First, they will have to demolish the gate, because the gardening partnership is a closed area. If SNT is liquidated and becomes part of a populated area, then its territory should become open, and any vehicles, including heavy-duty trucks, will transit through it. By the way, the entire territory of the village will be open, including sports and children’s playgrounds. And we have large SNTs that can afford to equip a play area for children at a cost of up to 1.5 million rubles. And since SNT is a closed area, even kids can play there safely without adult supervision. But as soon as the gates are removed, everyone who wants to will have access to SNT.

– Probably, summer residents, who have everything in order with the infrastructure in SNT, do not want any kind of unification with neighboring villages. But there are also partnerships where there is not even a normal access road.

– Yes, roads and utility networks are two of the most pressing issues for rural residents, and not only for summer residents. The municipality is responsible for repairing the road network in populated areas, but how many villages do we have with ideal roads, sidewalks and street lighting? But there are such SNTs. And unlike village residents, who can only wait for mercy from local officials and write complaints about Dobrodel, members of the garden partnership have a real opportunity to solve all their problems on their own, if only they have the desire and will. Most normal SNTs collect targeted contributions every year for the repair of access roads and maintain them in satisfactory condition. It costs an average of 5 thousand rubles a year – not that much money by today’s standards.

– But if the road becomes municipal property, then the municipality will also have to clear the snow in winter – is that bad?

– It’s like looking at it: the chairman of the SNT himself hires the driver of the snow removal equipment and monitors how he works, and the officials gave the task to the contracting organization, and then at least the grass won’t grow. For example, a grader can remove part of the asphalt chips from the road along with the snow, and it is not a fact that the municipality will later restore it; in addition, workers will sprinkle the roads in a holiday village with reagents, simply because it is so according to the instructions for maintaining roads, and in the spring all this chemistry will end up in your garden.

– What else “good” can you say about the consequences of joining SNT to the populated area?

– An increase in land taxes, which awaits summer residents as soon as their land plots change the type of permitted use from “agricultural” to individual housing construction. Today, according to the cadastral value, the price of land in SNT is 30% lower than in the neighboring village. But as soon as the gardening partnership is liquidated, the land will immediately increase in price.

Another unpleasant moment is that in the villages there is no such thing as summer water supply. And many of our SNTs have collective wells, their maintenance is very cheap – per plot it works out to about a thousand rubles a year. But when the well becomes the property of the municipality, you will have to pay for water according to the tariffs set by the regional government, that is, 30 rubles per cubic meter, cucumbers will become golden.

– You say that the new law that the Duma is currently considering will help management companies enter rural areas, but it seems to me that many summer residents would like their villages to be managed by professionals.

– Let’s compare: in cottage villages there is a management company, and there residents pay for housing and communal services from 5,000 rubles and more. In SNT, the farms are managed by the summer residents themselves; they collect contributions to cover the costs of electricity, garbage removal and other expenses, which costs them about 1,500 rubles a month. There is a difference? I think that the transfer of SNT to populated areas is a direct path to ensuring that management companies can occupy a niche that is free for their business.

When one of the summer residents complains that he is tired of noisy general meetings in SNT, that he is dissatisfied with how the chairman and the board cope with their duties, and that it would be better to transfer economic issues to professionals, I always answer: the activities of any management company are aimed at making a profit, therefore the cost of housing and communal services in a holiday village served by a management company will always be more expensive than in SNT, which, in fact, is itself a non-profit management company.