and infrastructure Mizil is governed by a mayor and 17-member local council. Since the 2016 local election, six councillors belong to the Social Democratic Party, five each to the National Liberal Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, and one to the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party. Running water comes from Bălțești and is supplied by a private company on a network built in 1968. Since 2005, garbage collection is done by a private firm contracted by town hall. In 2002, the town switched from heating oil to natural gas, supplied by a public utility. There is also an electricity network, and the street lights were modernised in 2006. Mizil has 35 km of roads, 36% of which are asphalted. The most significant of these is the Ploiești-Buzău European route E577 that links Bucharest with Moldavia. There is no public transportation, but there are private buses running to Ploiești, Buzău and surrounding communes, as well as taxis. There is also a Căile Ferate Române train station, lying between Ploiești and Buzău. Companies active in Mizil offer fixed and mobile telephone services, cable television, Internet, postal services, banking and gasoline. As of 2002, Mizil had 8 ha of green space, including roadsides and parks. Agriculture was a primary occupation for the town's inhabitants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but is much reduced in importance as of the early 21st. Still, as of 2005, 1448 of the total 1931 ha are agricultural land, of which 89% is cultivated arable land, 7% pastures and 6% vineyards. Since 1990, the small tracts of land used for producing hay and growing fruit trees have been converted to other uses. During the Communist era, Mizil depended for employment on three large factories employing almost the entire workforce. The largest, established in 1951, produced armaments; the next turned out spun textiles and the smallest made mattresses. The town reached an economic nadir in 1998-1999, when these laid off thousands of workers. One factory, formerly employing 8,500, fired all but around 400, while another dismissed almost all its 2,000 employees. Unemployment rose to 17.5% (against a national average of 8.7%); including those who had stopped looking for work, unemployment reached 80% of the working-age population (18 to 62). Poverty had reached alarming levels, with tension and crime also rising, particularly among the generally jobless, under-educated Roma. As of 2005, 39% of Mizil firms are involved