He still has to master Drèents, but otherwise Jouke Spoelstra thinks that the mayoralty of Westerveld suits him like a glove. “The countryside really appeals to me.”
Spoelstra’s evening passed without any notable events yesterday, until that redeeming phone call reached him around eight o’clock. On the other end of the line, the confidential committee spoke from the town hall in Diever. The word went out. ‘Jouke, we would like to nominate you’.
In the run-up to his appointment, there was some sweating, the CDA member admits. “It was quite exciting.”
Spoelstra regularly crossed the Drents-Frisian provincial border from his hometown of Drogeham to discover Westerveld. “Mostly from the mountain bike,” he says. “You see beautiful villages, where people look after each other.”
According to Spoelstra, the current municipal council is close to the residents, something he also strives for. “My style is informal, approachable and formal when necessary. I am someone who wants to be among the residents with his family.”
At 34 years old, Spoelstra is a lot younger than Rikus Jager (69), the current mayor who will transfer the chain of office in May. Yet managing is not new to him. Spoelstra has been a councilor in the municipality of Achtkarspelen since 2016, before which he was a councilor for two years. And for the CDA he was able to enter the House of Representatives this year, but as eleventh on the electoral list, that office turned out to be too ambitious.
Even though he was a candidate for MP, he is more attracted to the municipal council. “There you can actually work for residents. And the countryside, that really appeals to me.”
Spoelstra sees many similarities in issues that arise in the Northern Netherlands. Themes in Achtkarspelen also play a role in Westerveld, and vice versa. The young mayor is thinking about housing construction, maintaining facilities such as public transport, the future for village halls and impending financial problems. And the wolf? “That is also a theme,” Spoelstra readily admits.
Does he, as a ‘Frisian om utens’ (Frisians who leave their province to live elsewhere, ed.), also go down well in Westerveld? Spoelstra is already offering a first helping hand: he is going on a Drèents course. Within a year he wants to develop a Drenthe accent, he indicated in his presentation.
In Friesland, Spoelstra noticed that Frisian ‘is the language of the heart’. “When it comes to personal facts, you notice that people speak more easily in their own mother tongue. That is why I want to learn to speak Drenthe as quickly as possible,” he concludes.