Zoff in the town hall: Council resolutions for Delmenhorst remain inexperienced!

Zoff in the town hall: Council resolutions for Delmenhorst remain inexperienced!

Delmenhorst, Deutschland - In Delmenhorst there is currently growing resentment about the delayed implementation of council decisions. Numerous inquiries in the town hall indicate that basic decisions are not put into practice promptly. The situation is particularly critical by the lawsuit of the Delmenhorster List/Die Left Council group, which was submitted due to the inactivity of the administration regarding the new building of the special school for intellectual development. This lawsuit is a drastic step and illustrates the frustration of the political actors in the city about the current situation. Weser-Kurier also reports that the SPD city council group has also drawn attention to the long delay by warning a report on the planned renewal of the skate park on the Graft. This decision dates from 2021 and impressively shows that the implementation of urban projects has not only stalled due to a lack of planning preparatory work, but also has to be questioned open communication within the administration.

In addition, the SPD member of the state parliament Deniz Kurku makes it clear that a report on the implementation status was announced last August, to which the city administration has not yet responded adequately. Young people who regularly use the skate park also urge progress that become visible in the width of the citizens' interests.

lawsuit against the city administration

A key point of criticism is the construction of the special school for intellectual development, the council decision of which was already taken in September 2019. Since then, those affected have been distributed over several locations, which is considered unsustainable. DK-Online informed that the city administration had the time to submit a binding construction planning, which was not. This led to the submission of an action for inactivity. Interestingly, a video on the Facebook channel of the Delmenhorster list shows how members of the party document the lawsuit of individual representatives before the Oldenburg Administrative Court. The procedure could thus be an important precedent for similar cases in Lower Saxony, since no comparable case has been documented in the past five years.

In addition, members of the council, such as Uwe Dähne from the Greens, express concerns about the unequal treatment between the planned construction of a new high school and the special school. The first city councilor Markus Pragal said that in the case of the high school there is a legal right to school places, while the situation for the special school is not equivalent. The city nevertheless works on a room concept, which is to be presented by the end of November 2023 to advance the planning.

criticism and challenges of the city administration

Local politics in Delmenhorst is therefore faced with a number of challenges. Pragal emphasized that the development period in school planning can take five to six years on average and that the city is unable to realize all projects at the same time. However, this raises the question of whether priorities are placed or whether an improvement in internal processes is necessary to treat citizens' concerns promptly. Finally, it remains to be seen how the city administration reacts to the lawsuit and whether it can finally show the promised progress in the development of the special school and other projects.

For further information on the challenges in local politics and the understanding of democracy in Germany, you can here read.