The "Šansa za Centar" initiative reports: school yards, shelters and playgrounds in Centar municipality cannot be leased to commercial businesses. The Centar municipal council yesterday rejected the proposed decision that would have allowed it.

What did the proposal include? Centar municipality wanted to be able to lease not just school premises, but also school yards, shelters and playgrounds. The intended uses: school spaces could be used for entertainment, production, hospitality and trade. In other words - the potential to be turned into cafés, warehouses, small shops.

Why is that a problem? With the proposed decision, as Šansa za Centar pointed out, the mechanism by which the school, the School Board and the parents could push back against poor food quality vanishes. When a third party opens a café in a schoolyard, parents have no way to object if it's run badly or if the kids have access to inappropriate food.

And it gets better - the proposal was copied from a decision the City of Skopje passed in 2023. That decision was challenged before the Constitutional Court and struck down as UNCONSTITUTIONAL. In other words, Centar municipality tried to pass a decision that had already been ruled contrary to the Constitution. Lucky for them the Council didn't approve it.

"What's needed are clean and safe yards and public spaces, not commercial zones for somebody's profit on school grounds," Šansa za Centar said. It's a story a Balkan reader knows by heart. Public space steadily gets converted into private space through "temporary" contracts. Once it's leased, once fences and terraces go up - getting it back is nearly impossible.

This time, citizens won. With help from an initiative that paid attention to the council session, and from councillors who voted against. That isn't always how it goes in North Macedonia - but when it is, it's worth remembering. And the question worth asking every time: whose kids get to play on these playgrounds if there aren't any left?