The Probistip municipality has signed a contract worth 4,679,290 denars for investments in the "Naum Naumovski-Borce" secondary school. The project has two parts - one nobody will write about, and one that will be photographed.

The backup boiler is the one that will not make it into any press release

The first part is the purchase and installation of a new backup boiler. Mayor Toni Tonevski says this will secure a reliable and efficient heating season for pupils and teaching staff.

A backup boiler is not an eye-catching news item. But anyone who went to school in Macedonia in the nineties or the first decade of this century knows what it means when the main boiler fails in January: lessons in a winter coat, shortened timetables, children sent home. A backup boiler is precisely what school infrastructure here most often lacks - a plan B.

The handball court: surface, netting, stands, floodlights

The second part is a complete reconstruction of the handball court. A new sports surface will be laid, the protective netting renewed, the stands repaired with new seats and new floodlights installed.

The floodlights are the detail worth noticing. A court without lighting works until seven in the evening in September. With lighting it works until ten. For a small town like Probistip, that is three extra hours in which young people have somewhere to be.

Where the money comes from

The bulk of the funds comes from the Development Centre of the Eastern Planning Region via the Bureau for Balanced Regional Development. Around 180,000 denars comes from the Probistip municipal budget.

Do the arithmetic: out of nearly 4.7 million denars, the municipality is putting in around 3.8 percent. That is not a criticism of Probistip - it is how balanced regional development works, and it is exactly why that mechanism exists. But it is worth knowing when somebody poses for a photo in front of the new surface.

The contractor is "Kop Inzenering", with supervision by "Evro Konsalting". The municipality is also preparing a sports support programme for 2027.

The contract is signed. The next step is selecting a contractor and starting work, and the real news will be a photograph of the court in use - not of the table it was signed at.