After having been an alderman for eight years, Brink will retire after the municipal elections in March. When his party, the PvdA, asked him eight years ago if he wanted to run for office, he indicated that he wanted to run for two terms. “Those eight years are now over and then new people have to come,” said Brink in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata.
In terms of age, he could have continued for another four years, but he thinks it is time for fresh blood with new ideas. “Who will be the next candidate for alderman for the PvdA is not up to me, but there are plenty of good people. The first one that comes to mind? Joop Slomp, the party leader. That is a solid and very experienced politician. He also has a lot of management experience, which helps enormously if you become an alderman. It could become that when the PvdA comes back into the council.”
‘Short distance’
Brink has been a member of the Labor Party since he was 19. He was also co-founder of the Young Socialists in Hardenberg and he has done many other things in politics, for example he was a councilor in the old and new municipality of Coevorden (after the reclassification of 1998, ed.). He was also party chairman for a period.
“I never had the ambition to become an alderman. Sometimes things come at you,” he says. Brink thinks the great thing about municipal politics is the short distance to the inhabitants. “You can easily make contact, enter the neighborhoods and really mean something. Research also shows that the confidence of citizens in the national government is very low, a big insufficient, but the confidence in municipal politics scores a solid 7.5. is little distance and the lines are short in the municipality of Coevorden, so you can do something quickly.”
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Before he became an alderman, the Dalenaar worked in healthcare. For example, he was location leader at the care organization Interzorg. The fact that he now has care in his portfolio is therefore a good thing. “I have had a lot of convenience and pleasure from my background. As a municipality we have a lot to do with care organizations, such as youth and elderly care and mental health care. If you know who you are sitting at the table with and what possibilities and impossibilities these organizations have, then talk that a lot easier and you get together very quickly.”
He was enjoying himself in healthcare but nevertheless opted for a carrier switch eight years ago. “That’s the social responsibility you feel then. But I also saw the challenge of holding such a position and politics has always attracted me… I thought: let’s just go for it.”
Resistance in Oosterhesselen
He says he has never been awake, but a “tough file” that comes to mind is the plan for an asylum seekers center in Oosterhesselen, which was on the table in 2015. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) asked the municipality of Coevorden to receive additional asylum seekers, separate from the asylum seekers’ center in Aalden, because of the enormous flow of refugees. The former location of conference center Overcinge De Klencke was in the picture for a new asylum seekers’ center. Brink: “I worked hard for that and then you suddenly find yourself in a packed sports hall with a few hundred Hesselers who are extremely critical”
There is nothing wrong with being critical, he emphasizes, but at the same time he also felt that the municipality as a government should take responsibility for receiving refugees. “Coevorden – and Drenthe too – is very hospitable, but in such a case you have to overcome some resistance. And then it turned out to be a difficult process with the COA, which went very smoothly. That was certainly not a highlight, but but in learning and developing yourself as an alderman. I wish every alderman a file like this at the beginning of his career. That makes you mature.”
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In the end there was no asylum seekers’ center because Brink pulled the plug on the plan himself. “It went on and on and on and on and in the end you leave people too long in uncertainty about what exactly will come. Then I said: ‘COA, if you don’t decide now, I will pull the plug myself and it just won’t work. more by’.” And he did. “The lesson I have learned is that you have to continue to take responsibility as a government, even when it is difficult. And you have to look at: where is the resistance, how great is it and how do you enter into dialogue with opponents.”
Poverty and health
What is the Dalenaar most proud of? “That we really started doing something about hereditary poverty, in other words poverty that is passed on from generation to generation. We are now deploying family coaches as a trial with a number of families. What is striking is that the children in Drenthe are just as smart as the rest. of the Netherlands, but that here is often opted for a lower level of education than the child can handle, because mom or dad also did that. That is something we are now finding out and we are trying to take action to do something about it.”
The big difference in health with other parts of the Netherlands, for which there is now also an approach, is something Brink is also proud of. “Municipalities are now focusing more on health promotion and on preventing health problems. We have worked hard in Coevorden to get this on the agenda of every municipality in Drenthe. In Drenthe we die on average seven years earlier than in the rest of the Netherlands We don’t want that to happen!
‘Rehab’
If there is a new council of mayor and aldermen after the elections, Brink will close the door of the town hall with peace of mind, he says. Will he go back to health care? “Who knows, I don’t have any plans yet. I still want to do everything, but first I will distance myself from the aldermanship, kick the habit. Then I make a plan for what I want to do.”