The Municipality of Bitola today finished asphalting "Kozara" street. Length - 230 metres. Value - 4 million denars from the municipal budget. Before the asphalt, the water and sewage network was reconstructed, paid for by the Ministry of Transport. The street is part of a project covering four streets near the health centre.

The figures are tidy and verifiable, and that's exactly why they're worth working out. Four million denars for 230 metres works out at around 17,400 denars per linear metre of asphalt. Is that expensive or cheap? Not one municipality in Macedonia publishes a price list a citizen could compare against. The tender is public, but the comparison doesn't exist.

The Municipality of Bitola says that "due to objective reasons" the pace of implementation slowed. That's a sentence anyone living on a building site knows by heart. Which objective reasons? A contractor running late, a shortage of materials, an unpaid invoice, a change to the design? The wording was chosen precisely so it means nothing specific while still sounding like an explanation.

Next up are "11 March" and "Pande Nikolov". The people of Bitola already know the rhythm - the street gets dug up, the water mains get replaced, then comes a pause, then asphalt, then a photograph. The problem isn't the order, it's that months pass between the digging and the asphalt in which nobody answers with a date.

An asphalted street is good news. But good news only becomes accountability when there's a deadline next to it. When will the other three streets be finished? That's the one question still waiting for an answer.