There are conflicts in between city municipal and community – the way municipality examines these issues is discussed in represented master’s thesis. The subject of the thesis itself is relevant, since municipality, as state’s territorial - administrative unit, is assigned to give heed to the welfare of the citizens, residing in its territory, as much as to avoid conflicts within community. Kaunas city municipality has held a number of conflicts, where both municipalities and community’s interests were confronted to one another. This work aims to clarify the role of municipality as much as its observance of adopting effective and logical decisions.

The object of the research is Kaunas municipal work.

The aim of the research is to explore Kaunas municipal work on the way to conflicts, happening within community, resolution.

The tasks are: 1. to analyze what are the municipal functions on regulations of public relations and how should they be accomplished by the municipalities. 2. To discuss the nature of the conflicts, taking issues within Kaunas city municipal work, and their resolutions. 3. To investigate the opinion of Kaunas city municipality officials on conflicts, happening in municipal work, and their resolutions.

The hypothesis of the research is Kaunas city municipal officials’ lack of competence in collaboration with citizens and community within particularly complex and contentious issues.

The method of the research is scholastic literature analysis, analysis of legislation, survey questionnaire. The results of the survey are summarized, conclusions being drawn. There were 103 respondents in the survey, what contains 72 women and 31 men. The data was processed on programme MS Excel 2003.

Results and conclusions of the research. After accomplishing the research and analyzing several examples on the conflicts, which are displayed, it emerged that municipal officials often face dishonesty, evasion of responsibility, lack of transparency and information. Tensions, resulting during the conflict, undermine the quality of work. In order to clarify the issues, problems are not to be reduced by local municipal methods, such as meetings and discussions with residents, the implementation of “one-stop” principle. Even if conflicts are being solved according to laws, there is still number of selected methods of resolution, which may force officials to be responsible, according to the procedures, which have been established by law (bribery, negligence, clash of interests, etc). Conflicts are often associated with ethical issues, when community and officials are being hostile to each other. These findings confirm author’s hypothesis.

The structure of the thesis. Master‘s thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters, which correspond with the nature of the tasks, that are setted, conclusions, suggestions, the list of references, which were used, annotation and summaries both in Lithuanian and English languages, also appendix. The work consists of 74 pages (67 pages without appendix). There are 16 pictures and 57 literary sources.

Raktažodžiai: Kaunas city municipality, municipal collaboration with community, conflict resolution