Štip mayor Ivan Jordanov has presented his report for 2026, with the message that the city "continues its accelerated development". "2026 is a year of continued work, concrete results and visible changes for Štip," he said, and then opened the list.

His biggest trump card is the new "Jackson" sports hall, with room for 1,300 spectators, which the mayor called "a true temple of sport". Next to the "Promaja" building, a three-level multi-storey car park for 50 vehicles has been built, and there are new parking spaces in the Prebeg neighbourhood, in the yard of the "Jordan Mijalkov" hall and at "7 Towers", near the Faculty of Economics. According to Jordanov, Štip is the first municipality in the country with automated software for recording and charging for public parking.

On the streets: "Pitu Guli", "Džemal Bijedić" and "Kežovica" have been reconstructed, and "Boris Kidrič" has been fully renewed for the first time in five decades. In Belo Brdo and the Levaci neighbourhood, road infrastructure more than 60 years old is being replaced, and construction has started on a new road between "Todor Kolarov" and "Mirče Acev" streets, meant to ease access to the "Jane Sandanski" secondary school and the new Clinical Hospital. On the social side: financial support for families of children with disabilities, scholarships for students and athletes, and free uniforms for pupils up to fifth grade.

What's done, and what's "in progress"? Part of the list is still projects under way: the ring road, new water reservoirs, the bridges over the Bregalnica and a mega-park of around 70,000 square metres along the river, which the mayor says they are "working on creating". The report contains no figures - how much the hall cost, how much the garage cost, how much the park will cost.

People in Štip will measure all this the simplest way: whether they can find a parking space, whether the water runs, and whether the mega-park becomes an actual park rather than one more line item in the next report.