Regensburg has to save on staff: reports show that the city is well above average in some areas

Created: 07/16/2022, 19:44

By: Stefan Aigner

The Regensburg city council now has to deal more with staff savings.

© City of Regensburg

According to a report by the municipal auditing association, the CSU parliamentary group in the city council is demanding a hard cut in personnel expenses.

Regensburg

The city of Regensburg spends significantly more on staff than other German cities.

This is confirmed by a comparative study with four other municipalities carried out by the Bavarian Municipal Audit Association.

She will be presented to the City Council Personnel Committee next week.

Report on personnel costs in Regensburg: over 150 areas checked

A total of 152 areas with a total volume of around 124 million euros (in total, the city's personnel expenses are currently over 260 million, a good 34 percent of the total budget) were compared by the experts - voluntary and mandatory tasks.

The adjusted result: In terms of personnel expenses per 100,000 inhabitants, Regensburg is 16.8 percent above the average of the comparable cities.

The experts describe a total of 30 areas with a total volume of 56.6 million euros as particularly conspicuous, as some of them stand out clearly and cause on average more than a third higher costs than in the (anonymized) comparison cities.

(By the way: Our brand new Regensburg newsletter will keep you regularly informed about all the important stories from the World Heritage city and the Upper Palatinate. Register here.)

Report on personnel costs: Up to 60 percent more than other cities

Examples are road maintenance (plus 40.1 percent) or winter service (plus 52.3 percent), but also things like the municipal expert committee (60.4) or youth social work in schools (49.2), all of which are mandatory tasks of a municipality.

But the city is also above average when it comes to voluntary tasks: For museums and exhibitions, youth centers and early childhood education in the arts, Regensburg spent an average of around 28 percent more on staff than the comparable cities in the 2019 budget year under review.

High personnel costs in Regensburg: CSU calls for a hard cut

And here seems to be a lever where the city wants to start with possible savings.

According to the resolution proposed by the administration, new positions for the coming financial year should only be approved if they are absolutely necessary to fulfill legal tasks - or if they are offset by corresponding savings.

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A total of only 15 new full-time positions are to be approved for the coming financial year.

A measure that the co-governing CSU expressly welcomes.

According to a press release from the city council faction, 25 positions were previously considered.

According to parliamentary group leader Jürgen Eberwein, the reduction saves the city around one million euros.

The CSU also demands that the city's personnel expenses should be "drastically reduced".

"The coming, hard but necessary cut" is "long overdue".

Savings in personnel costs: focus on voluntary tasks

Exactly where this hard cut should take place is largely left open by the experts from the municipal auditing association.

You speak of a review of personnel expenditure in conspicuous areas and of a necessary task review.

As far as the voluntary areas are concerned, they go a step further and speak of “purpose criticism”, i.e. checking whether this or that area could be necessary at all.

This train of thought can also be found in the administrative proposal for the Personnel Committee.

The experts' distinction between voluntary and mandatory tasks could "serve as a basis for identifying areas that could be completely or partially up for discussion and for estimating what potential for consolidation would be associated with this," write the two speakers.

However, such decisions must then be made by the city council.

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