Tallinn to take over street lighting, terminate tender process
The Tallinn city government has decided not to wait for the outcome of a public procurement dispute and will instead transfer responsibility for street lighting maintenance to the city-owned company Tallinna Linnatransport (TLT).
Last summer, Tallinn launched a public procurement process to find a contractor to maintain the city's street lighting, but the tender was contested. On Tuesday, the city government decided not to wait for the outcome of the dispute. Instead, it will remove the service from the private sector and assign it to the municipal company Tallinna Linnatransport (TLT) in charge of the capital's public transport.
Deputy Mayor Pärtel-Peeter Pere (Reform) said the city had two options: wait for the dispute to be resolved — risking the possibility that a new tender would have to be announced — or take the service into its own hands. According to Pere, if the procurement process dragged on, the city would have had to organize so-called mini-tenders to keep the service running until a winner was determined. This approach would have carried risks, but it would have ensured the street lighting remained operational.
"There was never any risk that the lights in Tallinn would go out, nor has the tender been delayed because it's waiting for a deputy mayor's signature. /---/ As for whether someone outside the city system is behind the delay, I won't comment on that," Pere said.
"No one could have predicted how long the dispute over the tender would last. That's why we considered whether to pull the service from the private market and hand it over to a municipal company. It seemed the right decision — rather than spending the whole summer watching the tender process like a sport, wondering if it would happen or not," he added.
Deputy Mayor Kristjan Järvan (Isamaa) said the city government's preference had been to keep the service in the private sector, so the decision to cancel the tender was not made lightly. "We saw that guaranteeing the full provision of the service came with risks, which is why we tasked TLT with taking over," he said.
According to Järvan, there is little time left to complete the transfer and TLT itself has said it will need three months to prepare. However, the new contract period begins on August 1, leaving slightly less time than that.
"Time is short and there are some concerns, but I believe this change will be practically unnoticeable to city residents," Järvan said.
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Editor: Marko Tooming, Marcus Turovski
