On October 14, 2005, within the Third Annual Meeting of Local Governments in Bulgaria , in the Albena resort , the Foundation for Local Government Reform awarded its 2005 Annual Innovative Municipality Award . The official ceremony was attended by mayors, municipal councillors, municipal experts, the Mission Director of USAID, Mr. Michael Fritz.

Mrs. Ginka Kapitanova, Executive Director of FLGR, and Mr. Lachezar Rossenov, Chairman of FLGR Board of Directors, awarded the winners in the competition.

5 municipalities were honored for their innovative achievements in 2005:

Montana Municipality - 8 innovative practices

Razgrad Municipality - 8 innovative practices

Straldja Municipality - 8 innovative practices

Zlatograd Municipality - 9 innovative practices

Botevgrad Municipality - 11 innovative practices

The third place winner with 15 practices , implemented

in cooperation with civic organizations, is Municipality of

Sliven. Municipality of Sliven received a Certificate and

administrative infrastructure for electronic signature with

possibility for issuing numerical certificates, signing

and encrypting of papers by all municipal employees.

The program product is provided by the Central Laboratory of Computer Graphics and Information Systems Axter, Technical University Sofia . As an additional award Municipality of Sliven received a fax machine, provided by Office 1 Superstore Bulgaria - Kutsarov 2000 Ltd.

Municipality of Mezdra won the second place within Innovative Municipality 2005 Competition. For sharing the impressive number of 29 practices Municipality of Mezdra got a Certificate and a multimedia presentation on local economic development of Mezdra, provided by Balkansys AD, as well as a multifunctional office system (copy machine printer scanner fax), provided by Kolbis International Transfer AD.

The national prize of Innovative Municipality Award for 2005 was won by the Municipality of Svishtov that shared 59 practices and that in the last few years has never stop working and encouraging its employees and partners to strive for improvement and innovation in their activities.

Mr. Stanislav Blagov , mayor of Svishtov Municipality , received the unique statuette that symbolizes climbing the spiral way to a better future. As an additional prize Svisthov Municipality got two airplane return tickets for a European destination. It is an opportunity for 2 municipal employee s to participate at an international innovative event. Tickets are provided by Imperial Travel. Legal products , provided by APIS Christovich Ltd ., were also awarded to the contest winner for 2005.

In 2005 FLGR awards for the fourth consecutive year the Innovative Municipality Award.

The winners of the previous contests are:
Municipality of Silistra 2002
Municipality of Sliven 2003
Municipality of City of Dobrich 2004

The innovative practices database is maintained for eight years now and consists of over 760 practices that are available online at www.flgr.bg.

For the period from October 1, 2004, to October 1, 2005, the innovative practices database was expanded with 177 practices, shared by municipalities, regional associations, civic and business organizations. Most practices are on the following topics: international cooperation and European Integration, economic development, public-private partnership, intermunicipal cooperation, sustainable development and administrative services.