‘Villageism’ brought Medemblik into trouble: the budget deficit rose to six million

The village hall in Abbekerk is more than just a coffee table, says chairman René Veerman as he climbs the stairs. Upstairs are the general practitioner, the chiropodist, the dentist and the injection point. Downstairs is the youth room and a BSO. Children of primary school De Place exercise in the theater hall. There is still a hatch for the prompter on the stage. “The village hall is the center of Abbekerk.”

But the village hall is under pressure, says Veerman. Due to the financial shortage at the municipality of Medemblik, the planned renovation has been postponed again and the municipality has to cut back again. Even more cutbacks, you see Veerman thinking. When Abbekerk still belonged to the municipality of Noorder-Koggenland, he received 20,000 euros per year, from Medemblik he has to make do with 4,000 euros per year.

The merger between Noorder-Koggenland and Medemblik in 2007 has changed a lot for the village hall. In the municipality of Noorder-Koggenland, all villages were about the same size, which made the distribution of the budget a lot easier. “We sat there like equal monks with equal hoods.”

villageism

After the merger with Medemblik, the differences between the villages have increased. Wognum and Medemblik are much larger than Abbekerk and will be given priority, according to Veerman. “After 2007 we had to deal with an electoral shift. Most voters now live in Medemblik and Wognum. And what do they vote for? Someone from their own village, who represents their interests.”

‘Villageism’ is what professor of Innovation and Regional Governance Marcel Boogers calls this. It occurs when councilors tend to focus more on the interests of the previous municipality instead of on the general interest of the new municipality.

A deeply rooted problem in the city council of Medemblik, researcher Werner Holzmann concluded this year after an administrative strength study. Council members are mainly concerned with the facilities in their own villages and the council is unable to take the lead.

budget deficit

Keeping all seventeen villages ‘liveable’ also turned out to be almost impossible to pay. The municipality alone has seventeen village houses and seven swimming pools, for approximately 44,000 inhabitants. By way of comparison: Amsterdam has ten municipal swimming pools for almost 900,000 inhabitants.

The financial shortfall rose to about six million this year. The province threatened receivership and hinted at a new administrative merger. Tensions ran so high at the municipality last year that the director resigned after a conflict with the mayor. The majority of the management team also resigned during that period.

The fusion

Back to the merger. The first took place in 2007, between Wognum and Medemblik. The second followed three years later, with Andijk and Wervershoof. The three municipalities were not dream partners. Andijk did not want to work with Medemblik, but with Stede Broec. But Stede Broec did not want Andijk. The municipality of Medemblik remained.

Yannick Nijsingh, the alderman on behalf of D66, tells in his office in Wognum that the merger took a lot of work. “You have three municipalities and they should be about the same. But there was so much different: financial policy, healthcare and swimming pools. It took a lot of time to harmonize.”

The council was therefore unable to formulate a clear vision about the future of the municipality of Medemblik. “The council received a lot of requests at that time, for example a shed from a rowing club or a tennis court, but there was no policy on which we could make those decisions. Requests came to the council and then it was looked at whether it was important And the answer was often yes.”

Twelve years after the merger, no long-term vision has yet been drawn up. Nijsingh: “It is difficult to talk about the long term if short-term decisions fail.”

Before the merger

The three different municipalities also came from different financial situations. Andijk already had a financial shortfall, but Wognum and Wervershoof were in good financial shape.

Just before the merger, these municipalities quickly invested in a few large projects. In Wervershoof permission was given for the construction of cultural center De Schoof, a village hall and an inline skating track. Wognum wanted a multifunctional center in Nibbixwoud. Cost: 8.8 million euros.

The new municipality of Medemblik agreed, but part of those depreciations are still weighing on the budget.

Veerman looks from Abbekerk with a jealous look at the luxurious new construction of the center of De Dres: “Then you think: how did it end up in Nibbixwoud?”

Councilors and their villages

The merger did not happen by itself in the council chamber either. Although the councilors now shared an office in Wognum, they did not just let go of their own villages. For example, the Andijker Belang party was still in the city council from 2010 to 2014.

Municipal councilors within established parties also remained strongly attached to their own villages. Silva Visser, the leader of the Christian Union in Andijk and later in Medemblik, opposed the closure of the child health center in Andijk for a long time. Councilor Roelandt Paarlberg has been fighting for the village hall in Abbekerk for a long time and Tom Beerepoot is the chairman of the Wognum futsal association.

The cover

In the first years after the merger, Medemblik did not experience any financial problems. But when the merger money ran out in 2015 and the municipality was given responsibility for youth care and the WMO, there was a turning point. Alderman of Finance Harry Nederpelt: “We were surprised for a number of years by extra expenditure. And that involved millions.”

However, the council did not opt ​​for budget cuts. Yannick Nijsingh especially remembers a specific council meeting in 2018, when twenty-one million was spent in two hours. “There was no line in the decisions, and I found that worrying.”

Also problems within the town hall

After 2015, the city council found itself in a dilemma. On the one hand there had to be considerable cutbacks, but on the other hand there were several signals from the own official organization that investments had to be made in new personnel. There had been a shortage of qualified civil servants and too little was being invested in new recruits.

Piet Wijdenes, who was appointed director of the organization in 2018, made several attempts to put things in order. He wanted to invest in the official organization, but neither the Executive Board nor the Council fully agreed.

‘With budget cuts, you also have to cut your own flesh and money has already been given several times to “grey out” the organization’, said council members Visser, Koning and Berlin.

Later, the province identified the lack of investment in its own organization as one of Medemblik’s biggest problems. It had ensured that the municipality was no longer able to perform its statutory duties.

Mayor Frank Streng disagreed with Wijdenes’ approach and after a conflict Wijdenes resigned in 2021. Tension ran so high that a large part of the management team left the organization. Council members spoke of an ‘official exodus’.

As a result, the hiring of external employees grew sharply: in 2014, four percent of employees were hired externally, in 2021 this was eighteen percent. And hiring someone is about one and a half times more expensive than hiring a permanent employee.

Governance research

Back to the city council. ‘Fighting for your own village’ was still not solved in 2020. Councilors Tom Beuker (Morgen!) and Yannick Nijsingh (D66) were concerned and asked for an internal investigation into the administrative strength of the municipality.

Beuker: “The municipality was doing relatively well at the time, but we noticed that council members were mainly concerned with their own villages. We were at a sort of tipping point and had to ask ourselves: how can we stay in control with each other?”

The results of the investigation were disturbing and hit like a bomb. The biggest problem: ‘The desire for one’s own core stands in the way of embracing overarching problems’. The researcher spoke of ‘clientelism’, ‘villageism’ and ‘kinnesinne’. He also spoke of an unsafe working environment.

The province

On June 7, 2022, the province had had enough. The budget deficit had risen to 6 million, the official organization had been eroded and, despite large deficits, money was again promised to the village hall of Abbekerk.

Confidence in the municipality had been damaged, deputy Ilse Zaal reported. She regretted that Medemblik had not been placed under preventive surveillance earlier. The commissioner was particularly dismayed at the fact that the council had not been prepared to invest in its own organization, while this was desperately needed. As a commissioner, she is not allowed to initiate a new merger, but Zaal did advise Medemblik to think about their administrative future.

‘Worst boy in the class’

Alderman Harry Nederpelt must put things in order for the next four years. His preference was not necessarily for this alderman’s post, he says in his office in Wognum. “Finance is not completely new to me and I think it’s important to be busy with new things.”

He is especially looking forward to his other tasks: “Roads, traffic and field service, those are my biggest challenges for the next four years.”

He is not too concerned about the warning from the province. “We are now a kind of signboard and it seems as if we are the worst boy in the class and that is simply not an issue at all. That is something that plays out throughout the Netherlands. We are no exception in that, but Abbekerk just made that one difference.”