Chania: the new deputy mayors from 1 September

The Mayor of Chania, Panagiotis Simandirakis, announced on Friday 21 August 2026 the new composition of the municipal administration, appointing fifteen deputy mayors with effect from 1 September 2026. Alongside the deputy mayors, six councillors with delegated responsibilities were also appointed, bringing the total to twenty-one people. According to Flashnews.gr, which published the decision, this amounts to a “redistribution of posts, small additions but also people staying in the positions they held”, that is to a line-up that combines continuity with limited reshuffling. The announcement gives the names and areas of responsibility of each appointee, but is not accompanied by a detailed description of how the individual competences are allocated within each portfolio.

The new line-up covers the main areas of the municipality’s operation. Finance and Digital Governance go to Anastasios Aloglou, Technical Services to Michail Kalogridakis, and Environment, Green Spaces and Cleaning to Michail Tsoupakis. Civil Protection is combined with Rural Economy and Development and with licensing in the portfolio of Ioannis Nikiforakis, while the Building Service, traffic matters and municipal property go to Nikolaos Chazirakis. In the social field, Social Policy, equality, disability matters and the Registry Office pass to Eleni Zervoudaki, while Public Health and services for the elderly go to Ioannis Sfyrakis. Separate deputy mayorships are provided for Culture, Sport, Tourism, pre-school education and lifelong learning, school welfare together with the libraries, in-house works and the municipal police. Repairs and maintenance together with street lighting are listed separately, as are the ΚΔΑΠ, that is the centres for the creative occupation of children.

A feature of the line-up is that several deputy mayorships combine a thematic area with a specific municipal unit. The municipal units of Chania, Akrotiri, Souda, Therisos, Nea Kydonia, Keramia and Eleftherios Venizelos are covered in this way, each with a deputy mayor as its point of reference. This choice gives every municipal unit an elected official with local responsibility, over and above the thematic area he or she serves in parallel. The six councillors with delegated responsibilities take on more specialised areas: the ΚΑΠΗ day centres and the “ΚΗΦΗ” programmes, street lighting and networks, the municipal unit of Akrotiri, disability matters, nurseries and childcare centres, as well as operational planning together with digital policy. In two cases, street lighting and Akrotiri, the same area appears both under a deputy mayor and under a delegated councillor, without the announcement making clear how the two roles are separated.

The announcement does not indicate the duration of the new deputy mayors’ term of office, nor whether any of the posts are unpaid, details usually included in the relevant appointment decision. Nor is it made clear which of the outgoing deputy mayors are not being reappointed, and no detailed comparison with the previous line-up is given beyond the general description of a redistribution of posts. The allocation of responsibilities has immediate practical significance for everyday matters in the municipality, such as the scheduled three-day power cuts in areas of Chania at the end of August. More news from the area on the Chania page.