The coalition of the Greens and the CDU will vote on the budget for 2021 with the votes of its cooperation partner Uffbassse. The deficit will be reduced to 39 million euros.
A lot of building contractor rhetoric was heard on Thursday evening during the latest meeting of the city council in the Darmstadt congress center. On the agenda was the resolution on the budget for the next year, which was passed with the votes of the coalition of the Greens and CDU as well as the cooperation partner Uffbasse.
City treasurer André Schellenberg (CDU) said at the beginning of the meeting that in the past few weeks “many stones had been turned around” in order to “correct the budget in the right direction”. A month ago, when he presented the first draft of the figures, he had calculated a deficit of 69 million euros.
Darmstadt: Deficit has decreased by 30 million euros
In the past few weeks, it has been possible to incorporate expected additional income into the budget, for example from state allocations or through higher tax revenues, so that the deficit has decreased by 30 to 39 million euros.
However, Schellenberg had to budget a further twelve million euros for the health department, the municipal subsidiaries currently affected by closings – such as the Centralstation or the Darmstadtium congress center – and the state theater. The treasurer said he was confident that the budget would be approved by the regional council because the city was in the comfortable position of having generated a surplus of 31 million euros this year and last year. This could almost make up for the shortfall expected next year.
City of Darmstadt invests in school building projects
Green group leader Nicole Frölich said that the city is investing “responsibly” with an “economical and responsible course”. Her colleague Roland Desch from the CDU became even clearer when he spoke of the fact that next year the Corona crisis would “not just be spilled, but padded”. Frölich and Desch emphasized, for example, that around 86 million euros in the budget are earmarked for school renovations and expansions such as at the vocational school center north or at the Erich Kästner school in the Kranichstein district or for a complete school building in the Lincoln settlement.
The SPD parliamentary group leader Michael Siebel criticized, however, that the city is “far too slow” when it comes to providing fast WLAN connections in all schools. The planning for the construction of further elementary schools is also not being advanced. Siebel accused the mayor and head of school, Rafael Reisser (CDU), of having “failed”.
SPD criticizes intransparent budget policy in Darmstadt
The SPD parliamentary group leader also spoke of a “miraculous turn” that the deficit is now 30 million euros lower than when the budget draft was introduced in November. The September tax estimate, the agreed collective bargaining agreement and the remainder of the household were already known a month ago, said Siebel. “This is anything but a transparent budget policy,” criticized the spokesman for the strongest opposition faction.
The AfD parliamentary group chairman Günter Zabel complained about “excessive transfer expenses” and called for “more spending discipline”. For the left, the city councilor Uli Franke said there was “no reason for the green-black coalition to pat itself complacent on the shoulder”. Franke called for better pay for educators and criticized the current shortage of staff, for example in the immigration office and in the vehicle registration office.
Sebastian Schmitt (Uffbasse) said that even if the Greens and CDU co-operation groups rejected their own initiatives, the group agreed to the budget in order to show that they were “a reliable partner”.
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