It happens more and more often that Leipzig does not receive any funding from the Free State of Saxony for its construction projects. Usually on the grounds that the funding pots are empty. Happens, for example, at the swimming pool that is now being built on Otto-Runki-Platz. But even with school and road construction, there are more and more rejections from Dresden. Will Leipzig be kept extra tight? The left faction wanted to know that.
“Currently, the city council in various areas (e.g. schools, roads) has to take note that the announced and requested investment funds are not approved by the Free State of Saxony,” stated the city council faction in their request.
In fact, it should be easy to list. Which is why the left-wing faction simply wanted to know about the positive funding decisions from the Free State of Saxony in 2019, 2020 and 2021. But that was probably the question of the philosopher’s stone. Because – whoops – nobody has this overview.
The finance department was also surprised, because one would have expected that they would know exactly how much funding Dresden transfers to the city of Leipzig every year. But such an overview does not exist, the finance department now reports.
“The city of Leipzig does not yet have a central subsidy management system, which means that it is not possible to respond within the desired period of time and that an administrative-wide query would be required, which would involve a great deal of effort,” writes the finance department. Each department writes its own funding applications. And fights the battles with the granting authorities alone.
Often with the result that projects have to be postponed to later funding periods. Sometimes with the result that Dresden shows its empty funding pots and politely regrets that Leipzig doesn’t get any money and best finances everything on its own if the road, the school or the sports hall are to be built in time at all.
In the hope that at least the intermediary development bank of the Free State, the SAB, has all the numbers and simply has to press the button to filter out the Leipzig numbers, they also called the SAB.
Result: “An inquiry to the sponsor of the investive state subsidies of the Free State of Saxony, the Saxon Development Bank (SAB), led to the same result. It is technically not possible for the SAB to evaluate and process the desired information so quickly and would also have to evaluate all the data manually. In principle, SAB does not create such evaluations for its customers. The SAB would first have to check to what extent they can process the data at all and how much this effort is billed to the city of Leipzig.”
Perhaps the reference to the city’s non-existent subsidy management is a comfort to the fact that such a central department will soon be set up. The need for this has already been discussed several times in the city council, not only to get an overview of the funding process at all, but also to streamline and concentrate it. Until now, the tough struggle for funding in many planning departments has eaten up time, energy and personnel.
Which is particularly demotivating when Leipzig still doesn’t get an award. And that for projects that urgently need to be implemented. So there are only guesses as to what could be causing Leipzig to keep coming up empty-handed. Or whether the growing city on the western edge of Saxony is simply overtaxing the poor Free State with its debt ban.
Otherwise, failed requests for funding are then usually tried to be clarified in talks with the Free State, as the finance department emphasizes:
“If the funding fails, the first step is to talk to the funding provider in order to find a joint solution. If this is not possible, cover options are examined within the budgets of the specialist offices or specialist departments. The progress of the measures to be used for coverage is compared with the available funds.
If no cover is found after an intensive search, after weighing up the city-wide priority, either – if possible – cover is provided from the overall budget during the year or the measure is postponed. The aim is to acquire new funding or to enable funds to be classified without third-party subsidies in subsequent budget planning.”
You can confidently describe it as an egg dance, which ultimately tells us that the funding jungle in Saxony is actually such a jungle. And that when you try to hunt an elephant in it, you often return unsuccessfully.
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