Relief for the municipalities in the Offenbach district

• fromAnnette Schlegl

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The 13 cities and municipalities in the Offenbach district will have to pay fewer taxes to the district in 2021. The levy rate drops all in all by 0.16 percentage points.

Good news for the cities and municipalities in the Offenbach district: In the coming year they will have to pay less surcharges to the superordinate regional authority. This was decided by the district council in its most recent meeting. The Offenbach district is one of the few in all of Hesse that relieves its municipalities.

In the corona-related adjustment of the budget in 2021, the school levy in the Offenbach district increases by 0.49 percentage points to 18.90 percent, but at the same time the municipalities only have to pay 31.82 percent of the district levy – that is 0.65 percentage points less than in this one Year. For the 13 cities and municipalities belonging to the district, this means a total of 0.16 percent less municipal levies.

This is possible because the surplus this year is higher than expected. The federal government assumes a large part of the accommodation costs for social welfare recipients. District treasurer Carsten Müller (SPD) made it clear, however, that there are more welfare recipients because of the pandemic. “We have more than 1,000 communities of need to take care of,” he said. Corona has also had an impact in schools: The cleaning and disinfection effort there has increased significantly – “by one million euros”. And the additional staff required in the health center to track infected people will cost two million euros more. Personnel costs in the district administration increase by 2.7 million euros, the social budget by 3.7 million.

In the budget for the 2021 budget, there are 695.7 million euros in income, and 692.1 million euros in expenses. According to Müller, the district is investing more than 60 million euros; around 36 million of this will be spent on converting and expanding schools. 1.2 million euros flow into the rehabilitation of district roads.

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