Raska Spends 1.76 Million Dinars on Jovana Pajic Concert

Singer Jovana Pajic takes the stage tonight, September 18, starting at 8 p.m. on the Town Square in Raska, as part of the municipality’s Municipality Day celebrations. Only now have the municipal administration and the Raska Tourist Organization, responding to a request from the local outlet Razglas, revealed what the performance and the concert as a whole actually cost: a total of 1,765,600 dinars, or close to 1.76 million.

Most of that sum goes toward the singer’s fee. The Raska Tourist Organization set aside 1.03 million dinars to book and stage Jovana Pajic’s performance, while physical and technical security for the concert added another 67,200 dinars.

The Raska municipal administration, for its part, arranged the stage rental along with the full set of concert equipment. That part of the job cost 550,000 dinars before value added tax, or 660,000 dinars once tax is included. Add the two together, the fee and the technical setup, and you get the 1.76 million dinars the municipality is spending on its own holiday.

The figures given to Razglas show the costs were split between two budget users within the same local government. The Tourist Organization covered the artistic side of the program, while the municipal administration handled the technical side, from the stage to the sound system. As a result, the total isn’t run through a single account but through two separate budgets.

Adding up the three individual figures from the responses, the 1,030,000 dinar fee, the 67,200 dinar security cost and the 660,000 dinar stage rental with tax included, comes to 1,757,200 dinars. That’s 8,400 dinars short of the officially announced total of 1,765,600 dinars. Neither the municipal administration nor the Tourist Organization explained the gap, and it may reflect some smaller cost that wasn’t itemized separately in the two responses they provided.

Admission to the concert is free for everyone attending, meaning the municipality and the tourist organization are covering the entire cost of the event from their own funds.

The Gobovic Sisters Add Another 200,000 Dinars

Jovana Pajic’s concert isn’t the only cultural program Raska is funding to mark Municipality Day. According to Razglas, the local government also set aside 200,000 dinars for a performance by sisters Marina and Marija Gobovic at the ceremonial session of the Municipal Assembly, which is likewise being held for the holiday. Add that figure to the cost of the Town Square concert and the price tag for the cultural side of the celebration climbs past 1.96 million dinars.

Neither of the two responses the municipal administration and the Tourist Organization sent to Razglas says whether the money came out of the regular municipal culture budget or was a separate line item tied specifically to Municipality Day. Neither response names the exact date of the holiday that Raska is marking with the concert and the ceremonial session, nor whether similar spending happened in previous years.

Why Did the Numbers Only Surface After a Reporter Asked?

How the figures became public is itself part of the story. The municipal administration and the Tourist Organization only handed over the cost breakdown after Razglas asked for it, not through a routine, publicly announced statement on how public money was being spent. Until tonight’s performance by Jovana Pajic, residents of Raska had no way of knowing how much their local government was spending on a single concert, not until the numbers reached journalists who asked directly.

It isn’t yet known whether the Municipal Assembly, meeting on the same holiday, will discuss the cost of the concert at all, or whether the whole item will only surface later in this year’s final budget report. So far, neither the municipal administration nor the Tourist Organization has said they plan to start publishing spending figures for this kind of program without a journalist having to ask first.