The district council is supposed to decide the supplementary budget for the current year today.
The new debt is expected to increase by 11.2 million euros.
Where does this huge additional financial requirement come from?
When the district assembly meets in the Weilheim town hall on Friday morning, there are unpleasant decisions to be made.
There is a huge gap in the budget for the current year.
An additional 11.2 million euros in debt will have to be incurred to plug it.
Almost half of the amount is required for the hospital GmbH.
District
- It was already clear that a supplementary budget would be necessary this year when, in the middle of the first Corona wave, the holiday committee, representing the district council, decided on the 2020 budget.
This did not take into account the effects of the corona pandemic at all.
"We still wanted to have a certain degree of planning security, but agreed that there would be a supplement," says district treasurer Norbert Merk.
Said addendum is now available, should be decided today and has it all.
The district has to incur 11.2 million euros more debt than planned this year - a total of 21.4 million euros.
The hospital GmbH remains the biggest cost driver
How does this dramatic increase come about?
Actually, the corona pandemic has not yet affected the finances of the district, at least this year - the communities dutifully pay the specified district levy.
"We had quite a dramatic increase in spending," says district treasurer Norbert Merk.
The district office had to transfer 3.2 million euros back to the federal government for the incorrect documents in the asylum accommodation.
In addition, there was the purchase of protective equipment, masks and disinfectants in the spring, which also cost 3.2 million euros.
The biggest cost driver this year, however, was the Weilheim-Schongau GmbH hospital.
And this despite the fact that considerable compensation payments were made by the federal government and the Free State when no predictable operations were possible during the lockdown in the spring.
Nevertheless, Merk expects - so far - a subsidy requirement of three million euros for the ongoing operation of the two hospitals in Weilheim and Schongau.
And it is foreseeable that even this sum will not be enough, because the current situation in the Schongau hospital has not yet been factored into this figure.
The cost of the admission freeze at the Schongau hospital cannot currently be quantified
For more than a week, there has been an admission freeze among the employees there after the massive corona outbreak.
This means that urgently needed income is lost, while the costs - such as the wages for around 600 employees - of course continue to run.
The managing director of the Krankenhaus GmbH, Thomas Lippmann, already made it clear that there is currently no state aid for a case like the one currently in Schongau.
Because the Schongau are the first hospital that was hit so badly.
It is therefore completely unclear how high the deficit actually is in the end, which the district has to compensate.
What is clear, however, is that planning errors in the renovation of the Weilheim hospital resulted in high additional costs.
In the summer it became known that the planning had forgotten to take into account the usual price increases in the construction industry.
It was also decided to replace the fault-prone elevator after all.
The bottom line was that this also resulted in additional costs of around three million euros, calculates district treasurer Merk.
This year, the district levy remains as it is
A small part of the additional expenses could be saved elsewhere, so that at the end of the said 11.2 million euros additional debt.
At least until it becomes clear how much the hospital will really need for subsidies.
The district levy should not be increased this year.
