Social Democrats are alone in Karlsfeld in rejecting the municipal budget

Created: 04/30/2022, 07:38

By: Thomas Leichsenring

The Karlsfeld budget comprises 60.7 million euros (symbol image) © Francis Dean/Dean Pictures / IMAGO

The Karlsfeld municipal council has passed the 60.7 million euro budget for 2022 by a majority.

The SPD voted against it.

Karlsfeld - That didn't come as a surprise.

For years, the Social Democrats have been criticizing what they consider to be the wrong and insufficiently forward-looking budgetary policy in Karlsfeld.

"Coincidental circumstances" such as the higher than expected tax revenue "and the exclusive focus on the current financial year are not enough for us," said the parliamentary group leader Venera Sansone in her budget speech.

The majority in the municipal council only wanted to “hang around from one financial year to the next”.

Karlsfeld SPD also fails with two budget proposals

As is usual in budget meetings, there were also budget speeches by the other parliamentary group leaders and finance officer Stefan Theil (CSU) on Thursday.

There was no longer discussion after the speeches.

However, the municipal councils made up for this when the next two items on the agenda were called.

As reported, the Karlsfeld SPD had submitted two sensational applications that relate directly to the financial situation of the community: the commissioning of an external consulting firm to analyze the budget and develop a financial forecast and the application to sell the community center to an investor by long-term lease.

In both votes, Sansone and Full were left alone, the motions clearly failed.

CSU local councilor Andreas Froschmayer said that in the end it is always "about political decisions" that a consulting firm cannot take over from the local council.

He also sees the request as an "attack on the skills of the municipal council and the administration".

Sansone rejected this.

Her parliamentary colleague Full said that the external consultant should relieve the administration.

The SPD had "never doubted the competence of the administrative staff".

The application was not well received in the Karlsfeld town hall

However, the SPD application was well received in the town hall, as Francesco Cataldo made clear.

Normally, the head of the Karlsfeld municipal administration leaves opinions to the municipal councils.

This time, however, he spoke up.

"Your request was not taken as support in the town hall," Cataldo said to the two SPD women.

“A consultant gets facts and figures from us, and he then tells you the same thing, just maybe in a different language.” A consulting firm spends two years just looking through all the data, says Cataldo, “that’s another job for us in the Administration!"

Mayor Stefan Kolbe (CSU) added that there was "professional and professional competence in the town hall".

"I don't think it's expedient to shoot out money for a consultant who tells us what we already know anyway."

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The SPD application for the privatization of the high-deficit community center was also without a chance.

Greens spokesman Michael Fritsch praised the SPD for "a constructive motion" ("You have thought about how to solve a problem"), but in the end also voted against pursuing the motion.

As expected, a clear no came from the CSU.

An investor would have to "earn 2,000 euros" every day if he wanted to balance the annual deficit of around 350,000 euros and at the same time refinance a 30 million euro new building, said parliamentary group leader Bernd Wanka, "that's not feasible".

Marco Brandstetter (Alliance for Karlsfeld) said that the community center was one of "the most important places of identification in Karlsfeld" and that this place of identification would be destroyed if sold to an investor.

Brandstetter's parliamentary colleague Adrian Heim also spoke out against the application, but said that the municipal council "must discuss the future of the community center with an open mind".

Thomas Nuber (Greens) agreed: "We must not impose any bans on thinking." (Further report will follow.)

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