Absurd community meeting: Even saying no 14 times makes no sense in Niederweningen

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The location is appropriate: the Niederweningen community center in Zurich is located in the fire brigade building. In two weeks, a kind of ‘fire drill’ will take place there, namely an extraordinary community meeting (AV).

Before the aperitif was offered, ‘credit settlement’ was on the agenda a total of 14 times. This is by no means the same statement that was incorrectly stated several times. Here you will find an invoice for the replacement of the water pipe on Hüsliweg-Urbligsteig, and sometimes for the “renewal maintenance” of the local cemetery. Not really big things.

Just released

But that’s exactly the point. In the past, the Niederweningen ZH municipal council was only allowed to grant loans of up to 50,000 francs on its own initiative. The water pipeline from Hüsliweg to Urbligsteig cost 117,412.20 francs. The Audit Commission (RPK) complained that “an actual loan amount had not been approved.” In July 2016, the municipality simply decided that the necessary credit would be removed from the account after all.

The RPK objected to another 26 loans during the audit of the 2021 annual accounts. This also included the renovation of the cemetery, which cost a total of 125,202 francs. Here too, no loan has actually ever been approved. The planned amount of 110,000 francs was also released in the 2020 Investment Law. In addition, there was a budget overrun of approximately 15,000 francs.

Mind you, no one in the community is enriched by this. And chances are the community meeting would have approved the loans. The loan decisions were simply not formally correct.

“expression of disapproval”

What would happen if the community meeting (GM) said no to one of the loan settlements on November 21? Nothing! “Yes, it is true that a rejection of a loan scheme at the general meeting would have no impact,” confirms Mayor Mark Staub. The construction work has already been carried out and the money has already been spent. “So it would only be an expression of disapproval,” said Staub, who was not yet mayor, when the RPK criticized the loan decisions in 27 cases.

What sounds a bit like a joke is not. Schilda is not located in the canton of Zurich. But to set the record straight, the municipal office of the canton of Zurich Niederweningen announced in July that, although some of the loans in question had already become legally binding, “we had to submit the remaining fourteen loans to the municipal government.” meeting, what we are doing now,” says the mayor, explaining the procedure.

Nobody complained before?

So everything is clear? Not quite. Staub was already serving as vice president of the City Council when the formally incorrect 27 loan resolutions were criticized. He states: “No one, no body, neither the audit committee, nor the external control body or anyone else, had previously informed the municipal council that the loan decisions were not formally completely correct. The RPK only criticized this in the second quarter of 2022.”

However, the documents for the extraordinary municipal meeting of Niederweningen state: “The audit committee had already criticized the municipal council’s loan approvals outside the financial authority several times during the term of office from 2018 to 2022.”

In any case: Since the Niederweningen municipal council can now grant a four times higher amount on its own initiative, even for a sumptuous aperitif in the community of 3,000 people, it cannot be assumed that the municipal council will again exceed the credit limit with the free snacks at the general meeting.

Source:Blick