Alutaguse Municipal Council chair Marek Kullamäe says that municipal borders should be reasonable, logical and, if possible, visible — whether marked by a road or a forest line, for example. Unfortunately, this is not always the case in practice, he acknowledged.

"There are many such cases in Estonia, where, following municipal mergers, borders don't run along property lines, but instead seem to have been drawn at random — in some places through a village, in some places through a specific plot of land," he explained. "In our municipality, we even have a case where the border runs through a house. Two-thirds of the house is in our municipality, and one-third is in Kohtla-Järve. There are plenty of cases like that."

Alutaguse Municipality wants to straighten out its borders with both Jõhvi Municipality and the city of Kohtla-Järve. A land swap has been proposed with Jõhvi, while talks with Kohtla-Järve revolve around the village of Ereda, two-thirds of which is located in Alutaguse Municipality but one-third of which currently falls within Kohtla-Järve's Sompa District.

"The part that currently belongs to Kohtla-Järve is actually served by Alutaguse Municipality," Kullamäe explained, adding that they handle road maintenance as well as the local water supply system.

"And the area we would like to incorporate from Kohtla-Järve consists of five farms," he continued. "I don't believe the City of Kohtla-Järve should be dealing with farms; that's more within our scope."

Kohtla-Järve Mayor Henri Kaselo (SDE) considers it logical for the village of Ereda to belong to Alutaguse Municipality, but the process of transferring an inhabited unit of land to another local government is a lengthy one.

Meanwhile, Kohtla-Järve itself is also negotiating with Jõhvi Municipality regarding the village of Tammiku, most of which lies on the Jõhvi side, but part of which lies on the Kohtla-Järve side of the administrative boundary.

"Why these borders were drawn this way — looking at a map, there's no logic to it," Kaselo noted. "The village is split in half, the mining area is split in half and the border itself is extremely illogical. But I've always said that instead of swapping these little plots of land or addressing the question of where a particular given farm belongs, it would make more sense to simply continue with the administrative reform."

Kaselo believes Ida-Viru County should have two major local governments — one centered around Jõhvi or Kohtla-Järve and another encompassing Narva, Narva-Jõesuu and Sillamäe. The recent passing of a constitutional amendment disenfranchising non-citizens could help facilitate municipal mergers.

"When I spoke with representatives of neighboring local governments, there was a certain degree of opposition in Ida-Viru County," the Kohtla-Järve mayor noted.

"It had to do with the issue of non-citizens — there were concerns that the voter base may not be, in their view, sufficiently loyal to the Republic of Estonia," he acknowledged. "Such concerns were expressed. But now that decision has been made, and maybe these concerns wouldn't be as much of an issue in this case."

Kaselo believes the state should nudge Ida-Viru municipalities toward mergers.

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