Money for education and trade – Waldshut-Tiengen

. The Waldshut-Tiengens coffers are tight. Not much will change in this regard in the years to come. There are two reasons for the misery: loss of income due to the ongoing corona pandemic and a continued bulging list of investments in the infrastructure of the twin cities. Against this background, it was up to the members of the administrative and finance committee of the municipal council to put the finishing touches on the 600-page figures drawn up by treasurer Martin Lauber and his team.

An application by Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen had no chance of adding a blocking note to the planning costs for the expansion of the Gurtweil elementary and technical secondary school, i.e. an expenditure block, despite support from the FDP. A blocking notice could in fact have led to a significant delay in the project. City councilor Peter Kaiser from the CDU parliamentary group made a plea against the Green motion. Not least against the background that the Gurtweiler facility is the only Werkrealschule in the entire city and the expansion has been postponed again and again, “we now have to do something for the students,” he clarified the attitude of his group. A blocking notice “would now be the wrong signal”. Rather, it is now, so Peter Kaiser further, to approach the project, which is to be implemented within a period of four years, as quickly as possible.

Gurtweil’s mayor Claudio Helling also argued against the application. He reminded that the inclusion class was taught in a room that, according to the door sign, is a storage room. Helling continues: “We are endangering the school site if the renovation does not go ahead.” The measure was not only decisive for Gurtweil, “but for the entire city,” emphasized the mayor. The external advisor to the municipal building department, Holger Hasse, supported the opponents of the application: “If the need arises, the building department is ready.” The expansion of the elementary and technical secondary school would also be a good sign for the employees, because it would be the “first project without contaminated sites”.

A possible subsidy was also fought for the city’s three trade associations (Werbe- und Förderungskreis Waldshut, Action Group Tiengen and Interest Group Schmittenau) for further advertising measures as well as an extension of the exemption from costs for outside seating in 2021 – loss of income: around 18,000 euros. For the CDU parliamentary group, their spokesman, Philipp Studinger, brought a sum of 50,000 euros to the discussion as a basis for discussion. Jörg Holzbach (Free Voters) also complained that there was no budget for the trade associations in the draft budget for 2021. For the current year, the local council approved 10,000 euros in the spring for the welcome campaign that is still visible in the city. It is also a shame that planning costs for another parking garage for Waldshut have flown out of plan. Holzbach: “There’s no way around another parking garage.” After a lengthy discussion, the committee followed (with two votes from the Greens) Mayor Philipp Frank’s proposal to include 30,000 euros in the budget to support measures by the trade association – even if he himself would prefer to approve project-related funds, as well as an extension of the exemption from Outside seating costs. From the point of view of treasurer Martin Lauber, the decision about 30,000 euros is a bad indication in the direction of the regional council, which has to approve an unbalanced budget.

No playground

At the suggestion of the SPD parliamentary group, the planning costs of 40,000 euros for the children’s playground on Robert-Gerwig-Strasse in Waldshut will be removed from the draft budget. Claudia Hecht justified this with the possibility of using the playground on the nearby Stoll-Vita area, for which, according to Adelheid Kummle (Free Voters and Head of the Stoll-Vita Foundation), additional play equipment is to be purchased.

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