Initially, the city council of Bergen was to decide last night whether the controversial housing plans in Egmond-Binnen and Egmond aan den Hoef – against the wishes of the province – would be implemented or not. But it was taken off the agenda when Meis de Jongh of the VVD asked the council to raise the subject beyond the elections.
“We should not want to discuss such a big decision in the last council meeting before the elections,” she motivated her request.
A decision about the plan called Dorp en Duin was also announced last month postponed† At that time, according to alderman Klaas Valkering, questions were asked about the plan to which there was no answer at the time.
The fact that VVD asked last night to postpone the treatment again was painful for the coalition parties. Not only is the VVD a coalition partner that supported the plan, the elections are also next week. In that case, with a different composition of the council, it is quite possible that the housing plans will eventually be scrapped altogether.
“We must not rule over our own graves”
De Jongh asked that the housing plans not be discussed because ‘my group stands for a careful process’. “As a council, we should not at all want to deal with such a complicated plan with so many ifs and buts a week before the elections and thus possibly rule over our own grave,” she tells NH Nieuws.
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Why are the housing plans in Egmond so controversial?
The municipality of Bergen has wanted to build houses in Egmond-Binnen and Egmond aan den Hoef for years, but an approved plan has not been reached. Stricter rules from the province will soon apply and the pieces of land on which the municipality wants to build will fall under ‘special provincial landscape’, so that large-scale construction is no longer an option.
In order to prevent this, the Municipal Executive drew up a hastily put together zoning plan in 2020, hoping that it would still be possible to build on the site. The province was not pleased with this and already announced in 2020 that the zoning plan was in conflict with laws and regulations. The province previously threatened with legal action if the plan were to go ahead.
De Jongh is supported in her appeal by a majority of eleven to ten by opposition members GroenLinks, Municipal Interests and Good Governance Bergen. Mariella van
Kranenburg van Gemeentebelangen tells NH Nieuws: “From 2023, municipal finances will be under pressure; inflation will rise. Then we won’t spend public money on an expensive law firm to settle something that is crooked?”
According to Kranenburg, it is ‘much more useful and smarter to set up this plan in such a way that housing is possible, in consultation with the province’. earlier the province already offered to explore other options together with the municipality.
“If I wasn’t speaking on behalf of the council, harsh words might have been spoken. I would have called a party from the council unreliable.”
The CDA, the party of alderman Valkering, needs a suspension after the deletion of the agenda item. When that is over twenty minutes later, the alderman addresses the council:
“You (mayor Lars Voskuil, ed.) rightly told me outside the meeting: I am here on behalf of the council and not on behalf of myself. Otherwise, very harsh words might have been said,” said the alderman. “Then I would have called a party from the council unreliable, but I will refrain from that.” He also says that the housing plans have now been removed from the municipal agenda, but not from the election program.
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