Just as oliebollen and champagne are part of the New Year’s Eve, the New Year’s reception is also on the program around this time. Often an obligation, with many familiar headlines and superficial conversations. That can be done differently, they thought in the municipality of Gilze en Rijen. They are going to the public this year. But is he waiting for that?
Due to the expected bad weather, the New Year’s reception 2.0 has been moved from the Rijen weekly market to the covered shopping center De Laverije.
It is quite busy there from the beginning, at half past one in the afternoon. About thirty to forty men move around mayor Derk Alssema and the aldermen. Many gray heads among them and the number of mobility scooters is overrepresented.
“I saw you at the food bank!”
But it would be silly and inappropriate to be condescending about it. Where normally mainly representatives of the local association life show their face, it is now, for example, Mrs Roelands (65). Enthusiastically she drives her scooter towards mayor Derk Alssema. “I saw you at the food bank!” she exclaims enthusiastically. “Yes, I was there helping out,” he recalls. “I wasn’t wearing a suit, I was undercover. Glad you’re here.”
This meeting is an ideal way for Roelands to shake Alssema’s hand again. “I never actually came to the New Year’s reception in the town hall. I’m not the type to get off quickly. But after I got to know the mayor at the food bank, I wanted to meet him again.”
Other visitors also respond enthusiastically: “In the past you all stood in a hall, you were obliged to go. That’s different now,” says one man. “I talked to the citizen. Nice man,” says another cheerfully. “This is more non-committal, so you have more contact with people.”
“I now see people who come to the municipality less often.”
Of course it sounds like music to Alssema’s ears. “The presidents of the football association and the business association, they always came to the New Year’s reception. And now I see people who perhaps come into contact with the municipality less often.”
To make it attractive for children to come by, Cato de Visser (12) is standing with a plate full of candy bags in his hand. She is the youth mayor of Gilze en Rijen. “This is a lot nicer than a New Year’s reception. Now they come into contact with people and can tell them what they think of how things are going in Rijen.”
What doesn’t change: the inevitable New Year’s speech. At a quarter past two the chain goes on, Alssema steps on a platform, microphone in hand. He considers last year: how the war in Ukraine also affected his municipality. But he also discusses the diminished trust in the government and reaches out: “We are here to help you and to look for solutions together.”
Friday is the New Year’s meeting in the other core of the municipality: at the weekly market in Gilze. If it gets that busy there too, this New Year’s reception 2.0 is a keeper as far as Alssema is concerned.
