The long political career of 80-year-old Wiel Dreessen from Bemelen is now really coming to an end. After 56 years on the council or college, the alderman is working on the last stretch.
Dreessen is no longer on the list of the EML in the municipality of Eijsden-Margraten, a decision he and his wife made a while ago.
Wife
“If it had been my wife’s fault, I would have stopped much earlier, but now the time has finally come. You can’t continue until you really can’t anymore,” Dreessen realizes. And that while he still functions well physically and mentally. The last four years he was a part-time alderman, before that he was a councilor for decades, although he once started as a councilor and alderman.
1966
That was in 1966, when Bemelen was still an independent municipality. There was still no question of dualism in politics and Dreessen combined his position with a planner at the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, which was then based in Maastricht. Dreessen was the youngest alderman in the Netherlands at the time. “We started with our own list (Dreessen list) in Bemelen and actually started from scratch. There were almost no facilities in Bemelen, but that all came about after that.
University
He remembers that there were plans at the time to set up the University in the outskirts of Bemelen, but in the end the choice was made for the location where Maastricht University is now. “Perhaps for the better, because something like this has to be in an urban area.” Parts of Bemelen were also annexed by Maastricht, something Bemelen was less happy about. “We didn’t have very many inhabitants then, I estimate 500, and because of this we lost 70 again,” Dreessen looks back.
First merger
A reclassification was therefore inevitable in time and in 1982 Bemelen merged with five other villages into the municipality of Margraten. “At that time we functioned quite nicely as an independent municipality, partly due to chauvinism, but a merger was actually inevitable. And in retrospect it has of course also been good.”
Second time
Dreessen moved with them to Margraten and in 2011, another merger followed, this time with Eijsden. But that reclassification was no reason for Dreessen to say goodbye to politics. In fact, he was actually a staunch supporter of it at the time. “We had to keep up with the times, everything is becoming more and more digital and reclassifications are unavoidable. A town hall has almost no function anymore,” says Dreessen, who would have liked to experience an even larger reclassification.
Municipality of Heuvelland
“In the end it won’t be long before there will be a large Heuvelland municipality,” is his firm conviction. As an alderman or councilor, Dreessen will no longer experience this, he will now have more time for his wife and his family. He wants to pass on his political experience to his family. “Two cousins of mine are now up for election, one in Eijsden-Margraten and one in Maastricht. So the political blood continues to flow in the family.”
Goodbye
According to Dreessen, no farewell has yet been arranged, but there will be. “Until there is a new lecture, I’m still resigning, so they haven’t got rid of me yet.”