As of: January 31, 2024, 3:52 p.m
By: Josef Hornsteiner
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Should make way for a new building: the property on Mittenwalder Tiefkarstrasse.
© Wolfgang Kunz
A statement from the water management office turns out to be an arduous process of paragraphing for the Mittenwald local council.
Reducing bureaucracy?
Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that.
Mittenwald - Who doesn't know him, Asterix, the small but strong Gaul, as he once tried to get his A38 pass?
In the house that does crazy things.
Mittenwald's local councilors didn't go crazy at their recent meeting.
But they weren't far away either.
“This is just crazy,” commented Kurt Stransky (CSU), almost stunned.
“It's bad for your health, I've had a headache from reading for the second time,” said parliamentary group colleague Ludwig Hornsteiner (Danzer).
What made her so angry that evening?
It wasn't like walking through the house of crazy people like in the cartoon “Asterix Conquers Rome”.
But the councils still had to deal with a bureaucratic monster that was relentlessly wearying.
At its meeting, the market town council worked through the comments from the public and authorities on development plan No. 52. Here, all institutions, authorities, associations or citizens are allowed to express concerns if a new development plan is drawn up or changed.
As reported, the Mittenwald housing cooperative would like to implement a housing project there with 18 contemporary and affordable units.
An aging house on Tiefkarstrasse is to be replaced by a new building.
24 pages of pure bureaucracy
So far, so good, one would think.
A formality that is actually relatively dry, but takes place quickly.
After all, plan number 52 is an area that has already been developed.
But the relatively large number of visitors, who, among other things, were still left over from the previous item on the agenda (athletes' ceremony), were disabused.
While KEW GmbH, district fire chief Josef Gschwendtner and Deutsche Telekom submitted their suggestions in short, telling sentences, the tentacles of the bureaucratic octopus of the Weilheim water management office wrapped around Mittenwalde.
Market builder Ralf Bues had to read out a whopping 24 pages word for word for over 20 minutes - a legal act, therefore mandatory.
Passages are repeated, sections of text are sometimes included one-to-one in the submitted development plan
Countless passages were repeated.
“We've had this before,” said Bues, commenting on these points.
Some sections of the text were already included one-to-one in the submitted development plan.
“That’s actually in our draft word for word,” said Bues.
Stransky raised his hand during this bureaucratic Bible study and asked whether he was actually serious.
“Everyone in the government is talking about reducing bureaucracy, but in the meantime everything is getting much worse.” For Bues, such excessive texts are everyday life.
“Now you can see what building authorities have to deal with all day long.” But that’s just the beginning.
“It will get even worse in the future,” he said, after he had finally announced his work and had completed his task.
The statement can be summarized casually: The building owner should adhere to applicable law.
And the Mittenwald building authority made a few editorial changes.
The local council approved everything unanimously.
Point.
“In the end, the statement would have been said in one sentence,” said Ursula Seydel (SPD).
As an architect, she knows what she is talking about.
Dieter Schermak (CSU) even suspected whether AI, i.e. artificial intelligence, might already be being used.
There would be no other explanation for the long paragraphs in perfect bureaucratic German.
Among other things, authorities want to protect themselves 1000 percent
He wasn't entirely wrong about that.
The sentences are not yet written by the AI.
However, some authorities have fixed text modules that they use in “copy-paste”, i.e. copied and pasted.
There is a reason for this: among other things, the authorities want to legally protect themselves 1,000 percent against any lawsuits that could follow during the course of the procedure or afterwards, an authority spokesman said.
There are always cases in which the state has relaxed rules and bans.
However, not everyone likes that.
For example, environmental associations, among others, fear that this will undermine democratic rights to have a say and participation.
There is sometimes a difficult balance between bureaucracy and democracy.
The local council took note of the statement and approved the small improvements.
Now the construction of the residential units on Mittenwalder Tiefkarstrasse can go to the next level.