To Meet Community Needs

Liepaja City Council informs and involves the community into the daily processes taking place in the city through its Community Service Centre.

The first Latvian Community Service Centre (CSC) was established on May 31, 1999, with the aim of providing qualitative service to the community. People should not any more wait at different doors of the City Council officials. Cooperative and welcoming CSC staff assists, informs, explains, consults and organizes. If still necessary, citizens can also fix with them the appointment with mayor, his deputy or council members.

Daily the CSC is orientated on the needs of the client, availability and transparency of the information on the City Council work, reduction of a citizen's time, facilitation of the dialogue between the community and the local government. During its three years the CSC has shared its experience with almost all the Latvian local governments.

The experience of Bellevue, WA-the sister city of Liepaja in the USA - has inspired the establishment of Mini City Halls in the most remote neighbourhoods of the city to make the municipal services available to the citizens closer to the place where they live.

On September, 14 this year during the Autumn Fair the Liepajans could also visit for the scond time the Information Day organized by Liepaja City Council. The participants were various municipal and state institutions, authorities and utilities whose operation and assistance is used by citizens every day. They demonstrated their services and everyone could find out more by asking questions to the companies' representatives.

To raise the community awareness and information level, the City Council's Press Service prepares a monthly newsletter "For every Liepaja citizen". The newsletter speaks about the topical issues, informs about the activities and initiatives of the municipality - street and road repairs, new construction plans, cultural activities, etc. Further, it explains and clarifies the most essential decisions of the City Council in the language understandable for everyone as often the decisions are formulated in "red tape jargon". The newsletter provides feedback from the community as it includes short questionnaires on relevant topics. Provided free of charge, also in Russian, it reaches the mailbox of the each household.