Alderman Freek Buijtelaar of Municipal Interests is working on his last days as alderman of the municipality of Borger-Odoorn. He will not return after the March 16 municipal elections. Buijtelaar will stop after eight years, he has decided that himself. “A few months ago I thought about it and then the electoral lists are made and then I decided that two periods were enough,” he says in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata.
“After eight years you are in good shape and you have your network in order. But I also have the feeling that after such a period you will leave a mark on the whole and it is also good that with a fresh look things will be looked at,” says the outgoing alderman. “You are so experienced in the work that you can easily convince the council of a certain direction or decision. That is easy, but on the other hand you also want the game of pros and cons to be played well and then it is very good that new people are coming and looking at it fresh.”
The decision to stop was not easy for Buijtelaar. “I immediately regretted it, the first time I put it into words, I thought: ‘oh what am I saying’. I still have that because it is the most beautiful profession you can have. You gain insight into how a society functions, how villages function, what the interests of people are and what you can do for them. I look back on something I will miss enormously, melancholy, already.”
‘It’s a profession’
“It’s a profession. I come from technology myself, and then there is often one solution, but with people there are several solutions possible. I am a solid person, go for the business and not for my own person. alderman take into account personal interests and collective interests. Sometimes it happens that personal interests of people come at the expense of collective interests and you have to be able to explain that well. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
According to Buijtelaar, suitable people are ready to succeed him. “Of the top ten on the list, there are seven new people, who are all suitable. The community knows them and that’s what matters, they are well rooted in society.”
Buijtelaar ended up in politics as an amateur. He is originally an asparagus grower. “I was asked in 2013 if I wanted to be a candidate alderman for Municipal Interests, during the Easter bonfire in Klijndijk. I knew the people in Klijndijk, had an enormous network in the local community. They chose me based on content. I also always worked with spatial planning and the environment in Friesland, at the implementation department.”
No experience
The fact that he had no council experience was a loss in the beginning. “I was not used to giving your opinion about subjects in public. On day one I thought: ‘I have to learn very hard. Fortunately, Borger-Odoorn has a culture in which you are given the time to grow into it. After six months I had the feeling that I had a handle on the matter, but it takes four years before you really get the hang of it.
Windmills
Buijtelaar has climate and energy, permit granting, public space and greenery, environmental law and spatial planning in his portfolio. “Beautiful subjects,” he says. He also got the construction of windmills on his plate. “For that you also become an alderman, to try to get a grip on things like that. It was tough and it still is. It was also the first topic I spoke about in the provincial government. The feeling was we are on all sides sewn into the suit and we can try to get out again, but it’s going to get really complicated.”
If you want to build a lot of windmills, the government has jurisdiction, so we were at a distance. We started a lawsuit against the state, but it didn’t stand a chance. They are there now, but I think it’s terrible. It has become an industrial landscape at night with those lamps.”
What is still going on is that new standards must be drawn up nationally. “There has been a European lawsuit that has determined that the rules for the construction of these types of wind farms must be different, better substantiated. So we are looking at what those new rules mean for our situation. The goal is to have rules that can be enforced, for example in the field of enforcement in the event of noise pollution.”