The drafts were presented at a meeting of the municipal council on Wednesday and will be published on the municipality’s website. The citizens of Haßloch can make suggestions on the draft budgets between September 21 and October 5.
The council members will discuss the draft budgets in the municipal council committees. If the deficits are not significantly reduced before the budgets are passed, property and trade taxes will probably have to be increased significantly, according to the preliminary report. The state government has been demanding this since last year from municipalities that are unable to balance their budgets.
Debts were continuously paid off
In order to raise the money for the planned expenditure, the municipality would have to take out new loans for around 16 million euros in the next two years. This would include a loan to finance current expenditure for the first time since 2011. In 2026, almost 550,000 euros would have to be taken out to cover current expenditure. In 2016, the municipality paid off the rest of the liquidity loans at that time. Since then, Haßloch has only taken out loans for investments. These are being paid off continuously and currently amount to around seven million euros. If nothing changes in the draft budget, the debt would have to triple in the next two years.
The amount of equity – i.e. the value of all the municipality’s property – can only be estimated, since the last time a final balance sheet for a financial year was drawn up was in 2019. At that time, equity was around 97 million euros. According to the administration, it is currently estimated to be around 100 million euros.
Two new daycare centers
By far the largest item in the planned expenditure is around 11.3 million euros for the construction of two new daycare centers. Of this, around 4.5 million euros can be covered by subsidies. A further 725,000 euros are earmarked for major renovations at daycare centers.
The planned relocation of the construction yard will cost around 2 million euros. The renovation of the second section of Westrandstrasse will cost around 1.6 million euros. A turntable ladder and a new vehicle for the fire brigade will be purchased for around 1.2 million euros. Subsidies are also expected for this.
New positions in administration
The municipality plans to spend 900,000 euros on renovating the council chamber, installing a ventilation system in the town hall, and carrying out fire protection and electrical work on the town hall. 1 million euros are budgeted for fire protection measures in the Schiller School and 500,000 euros for building a cafeteria in the Schiller School.
The operating budget provides for increases in expenditure, including additional positions in the administration and in the municipality’s daycare centers. There are to be almost 11.5 additional positions next year and a further almost 17.5 positions in 2026.
The drafts are still partly based on imponderables. For example, it is not yet clear how high the key allocations that the municipality will receive from the state will be or how high the loss compensation for the municipal utilities and the levy that must be paid to the Bad Dürkheim district will be, the preliminary report states.
