Things remain restless in Meppel politics. SP member Xander Topma has decided to step down as committee chairman. After a confusing debate about culture last Thursday, he has had enough. He criticizes the way politics was conducted in Meppel last year.
“In my experience, the way in which decision-making took place, and by that I mean the entire process, is so far removed from how it should be done that I can no longer and do not want to bear responsibility for this in the future as committee chairman,” Topma writes. on X about last Thursday’s culture debate. In that debate, Topma already spoke about backroom politics, which ultimately resulted in a culture memorandum that was not very concrete. He expressed his concerns about this.
Topma is now going one step further and immediately withdraws as committee chairman. In council committees that he chaired, council members prepare the council meeting on certain themes. In this way, ideas can be exchanged prior to decision-making and the mayor and aldermen can be asked for explanations. The SP does not make any other candidate available as chairman.
It has been smoldering in politics in Meppel for some time. After the formation of a coalition (Sterk Meppel, VVD and D66), opposition parties got the feeling that they had been completely sidelined. This led to a halt in voting on the budget in July. After the summer, Mayor Korteland gave a remarkable speech about that situation. He thought it was a ‘shame of democratic law’ that the meeting ended prematurely. Earlier this year there was criticism from opposition parties ChristenUnie and SP about the number of topics (and their content) that are covered.
Topma states that he does not find it a problem if parties and council members disagree substantively on a subject. “That’s politics and how it should be.” He believes that councilors are currently ‘refusing to really listen to each other and then act accordingly’. “That’s what got me to this point.”