The National Association of Designers was actually doomed to hold an extraordinary congress by the new federal law No. 240, adopted in July this year. Bearing not the most memorable name - "On Amendments to the Urban Planning Code of the Russian Federation and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation" - he ordered all national associations of the SRO of the construction complex to confirm their legitimacy. A similar need arose for the following reason: at the time of the formation of the leadership of the NOP last year, many SROs were not yet members of the national association, and later, as you know, a conflict arose between its President Alexei Vorontsov and the Council. In addition, the new law obliged all SROs of the construction complex to become members of the national association of the corresponding type, starting from October 1 of this year. That is why the NOP decided to convene an extraordinary congress as soon as possible and invite all SRO organizations registered in Russia to it. It is important that the latter were endowed with the same voting rights on the agenda of the congress as the members of the NOP. As Deputy Minister of Regional Development of the Russian Federation Konstantin Korolevsky explained at the opening of the congress, “such an equal approach will make it possible to consolidate the entire self-regulating project community of Russia already at the congress and will allow a much larger number of professionals to get involved in resolving the problems facing the industry”.
However, it would be too great an exaggeration to say that the delegates really rallied in the name of a brighter future. On the contrary, from the very beginning of the work of the congress there was an impression that its leadership adhered to the principle of "hurry up - make people laugh". Thus, it took exactly an hour to settle all sorts of formalities with the credentials committee and the documentation provided by the delegates, and it was only at 13:00 that the congress was finally declared open. It took another 20 minutes to vote for the previously approved composition of the Counting and Editorial Commissions, then it was time to read out the official greetings. It seems that even the experienced bureaucrats themselves got tired of such slowness - when it finally came to discussing the agenda, the delegates began vying with each other to propose to go directly to the election of a new president of the NOP. However, it turned out that without the adoption of the new Charter of the NOP and the regulations of the congress, the elections would not be considered valid, so at first the designers still had to discuss a number of professional issues.
In particular, the stumbling block was the absence of the concept of "technological design" in the City Codex and, as a consequence, in the NOP charter. Konstantin Korolevsky promised to devote a separate meeting to this issue in the very near future and to consider the possibility of introducing this important concept into the City Code of the Russian Federation. The second critical issue was the definition of the powers of the president of the NOP - many delegates were worried whether the head of the national association had the sole right to dispose of property (read: membership fees collected from the entire professional community). The charter adopted at the congress gives an unequivocally negative answer to this question: certain decisions on the material assets of the NOP can now be made only collectively, that is, by its council. And although no one comments directly on the reasons for Aleksey Vorontsov's resignation from the post of President of the NOP in the national association, a number of facts can be judged: not so long ago, the conflict that flared up between the head and the NOP council was connected precisely with the vagueness of the powers of the head of the organization.
The procedure for electing a new leader stipulates that the congress must first vote to terminate the powers of the current leader. Alexei Vorontsov approached this ritual act with his inherent humor: he personally thanked those who voted “against” from the presidium, and about the much-needed majority of the Congress he shook his head and theatrically frowned.
As we have already reported, five people applied for the post of president of the NOP - the head of the Union of Architects of Russia Andrey Bokov, the chairman of the City Planning Council of St. Petersburg Alexander Viktorov, the president of the Union of Designers of Russia Viktor Novoselov, vice-president of the NOP Viktor Opekunov and the director of "Mosproekt-2" Mikhail Posokhin. At the congress, two out of five candidates recused themselves: Alexander Viktorov urged his supporters to vote for Andrei Bokov, and Viktor Opekunov gave “his” votes to Viktor Novoselov. True, this did not help the latter: Andrei Bokov and Mikhail Posokhin made it to the second round of the elections, gaining more votes. Paradoxically, the situation of relative equality persisted in the second round (Andrei Bokov got 75 votes, Mikhail Posokhin - 64, while any candidate needed to get at least 81 votes to win). As a result, the elections were suspended, and the post of NOP president was temporarily retained by Aleksey Vorontsov. A new vote is scheduled for October 27th.
