The meeting of the main, finance and personnel committee took place in Neuried town hall. (Photo: Unser Würmtal)
Neuried’s financial misery has reached a new level: after the trade tax has continued to fall, the budget is short by four million euros. A budget freeze was imposed on Tuesday. The municipality now has to see where it can save something and the prospects for investments are bleak. A loan to cover the running costs should also help.
At the meeting of the main, finance and personnel committee, treasurer Robert Beckerbauer not only presented the annual accounts for 2023, but also immediately called for a budget freeze for the current year. He made it clear that the trade tax, which had been set at 10 million for 2024, currently amounts to just over 6.1 million. The budget is therefore around 4 million euros short. This time, it is not a single company that is suddenly paying significantly less trade tax, like the Neuried branch of Biontech last year, but rather business income is lower across the board.
This year, the district levy is also at a “record level” of 12.7 million euros due to the high profits of the aforementioned company during the Corona pandemic. Beckerbauer expects the levy to be lower again from next year.
Budget freeze unavoidable
For the treasurer, a budget freeze is “unavoidable” in the current situation. “We have to think specifically about what we are going to do now,” says Beckerbauer, for whom a budget freeze is a new experience despite many years as treasurer, just as it is for the municipality of Neuried, which is at this point for the first time. Although not all of the municipal expenditure has been paid out in full, expenditure to which the municipality has contractually committed itself must be made despite the freeze, as must expenditure that is part of the municipality’s responsibilities, such as paying daycare employees. Only voluntary services may be eliminated. Investments that have not yet begun cannot be tackled with such a financial situation.
Beckerbauer lists the savings that could be made: repairs, gifts, hospitality, material costs, school budgets and club funding. Corinna Pflästerer-Haff (Alliance 90/The Greens) is “strictly against” cutting the grants to the local music school and TSV Neuried. The treasurer pointed out that savings have to be made somewhere.
“Hope dies last”
At the request of Luis Sanktjohanser (FDP) and Regina Lechner (BZN), Treasurer Beckerbauer is preparing a catalogue with all the savings options from a limit of 5,000 euros upwards, including their effects, which Eric Kirschner (SPD) sees as the “critical point” in the whole matter. Lechner is also demanding a “right to have a say”. Some of the committee members would have liked to have received the catalogue at the next municipal council meeting next week, but since, according to Beckerbauer and Mayor Zipfel (SPD), this cannot be done at this speed, it is now expected for the HFP meeting in October. Beckerbauer also wants to prepare the 2024 supplementary budget for October, much earlier than usual.
Beckerbauer does not want to call the budget freeze “a symbolic decision,” but “90% of the administrative budget is fixed. Four million cannot be saved under any circumstances.” He therefore calls for a “higher credit authorization,” but at the same time stresses that it must be the “absolute exception” to pay the running costs with loans. The debt of the approximately 9,000 Neuried citizens already amounts to around 1.862 euros per capita, which, according to Beckerbauer, is more than twice the average for comparable communities.
The budget freeze is passed unanimously and comes into effect immediately. Mayor Zipfel tries to encourage everyone one last time before the meeting ends: “It could be that a company registers a high trade tax tomorrow.” Then the problem would be solved. “Hope dies last,” he adds. Hardly anyone on the committee believes that the tide will turn so quickly, as nice as that would be.
Editor: Unser Würmtal / aw
