As of: March 7, 2024, 6:00 a.m
By: Sebastian Tauchnitz
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Empty glass case: Suitable for the household of the Weilheim-Schongau district.
© Sebastian Tauchnitz
The district and finance committees have recommended the current year's budget to the district council for resolution.
The Hospital GmbH voluntarily foregoes investments worth millions.
District – District Treasurer Norbert Merk demonstrated a sense of humor when he pulled a tiny, empty glass case out of his jacket pocket: “That sums up the district’s financial situation quite well,” he said, before giving the key data at the joint meeting of the district and finance committees of the current budget.
District Administrator Andrea Jochner-Weiß had already described this as a “Herculean task for the administration”.
The “creative skills of the treasurer” were “highly necessary” in order to present a set of figures that “requires approval, but can also be approved”.
She alluded to the accounting tricks that were necessary to even get a budget on its feet: The hospital GmbH transfers money to the district, which takes out a loan in order to transfer it back to her (we reported).
District levy increases to 55 percent - Hospital GmbH wants to forego investments
The assessment rate for the district levy that the municipalities have to pay only increased by one percentage point to 55 percent.
It could remain at this level in the coming years and does not need to be increased further, said district treasurer Merk in his budget presentation.
The supervisory board of the Weilheim-Schongau GmbH hospital has decided to forego the investments that had actually been registered in the coming years.
45 million euros were actually supposed to be invested in the houses in Weilheim and Schongau.
This should now be postponed until the loan that the district has to take out this year to pay the 12 million euros in “transformation costs” for the hospital GmbH has been repaid.
Merk praised the decision to describe the 12 million euros as transformation costs and not as social plan costs.
Since only 7.7 million euros had to be spent on the social plan, according to Merk, important investments in the hospitals could be financed from the remaining funds without risking funds being misused.
Two million euros went into expanding the intensive care unit at the Weilheim hospital and 116,000 euros into building six observation beds in the Weilheim emergency room.
The operating rooms at the Schongau Hospital were upgraded for the outpatient center for a further 1.7 million euros, the conversion and relocation of the physiotherapy to the specialist center in Schongau cost 100,000 euros, and the expansion of the endoscopy rooms and the recovery area in Schongau cost 360,000 euros.
The district councilor is surprised that significantly less investment should now be enough
Manuela Vanni (Independent/Peißenberg) was surprised that in September the 45 million euro investment package had been presented as absolutely necessary, but now apparently with five million euros a situation would be achieved that would be sufficient.
She feared that this would be used again as a basis for argument if the hospital GmbH needed more money than planned in the coming years.
District Administrator Andrea Jochner-Weiß contradicted this representation.
The 45 million euros “would have been necessary to achieve the optimum,” she said.
Schongau could have been converted so that patients would come to the medical care center (MVZ) directly at the entrance.
Now the MVZ and outpatient center were not located “where it was optimal, but where it was right”.
At the end of the year, the district is in the bank's debt of 101 million euros
Franz Seidel (BfL/Peiting) and Rüdiger Imgart (AfD/Weilheim) also criticized the district budget - especially the debt.
At the end of the year, the district will be in the bank's debt of 101 million euros, and in the coming years this figure is expected to rise to up to 140 million euros.
With the expected interest and repayment payments, investments are hardly possible in the long term; future generations will still have to pay for today's political decisions, it was said.
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In the end, however, the majority in both committees were of the opinion that after the decision to rescue the hospital GmbH in September, the necessary financial resources must now be made available.
District Administrator Andrea Jochner-Weiß once again emphatically described the budget as having “no alternative”.
If there is no consent, this would have “devastating consequences for health care in the district”.
In the end, the majority followed this argument.