After 43 years, Mayor Theo Weterings (66) of Tilburg thinks it is enough. He stops boards and chooses his private life. August 31 he says goodbye. There are other things in life, he thinks: “Now I make the choice with my wife to give our grandchild the priority.”
Around the turn of the year he decided, together with his wife, that he is going to stop. The long working weeks, the intensity of his work, it breaks up Weterings, confesses on Tuesday in his letter to the residents of Tilburg. “You notice that it is a difference whether you are 66 or 26,” he says about it. “How much physical pressure can you handle in your life?” He wonders. Read pieces late in the evening: it is heavier for him.
“The lives of my children also determine that I was mayor.”
He talked about it with his eldest son last weekend. For the children it was a fixed fact that father was bent forward on Sunday afternoon above a thick pile of paper. Or he was on the road in the evening. “The children grew up with that. And yes, that has also determined their lives with it. And I have stuck in the choice between work and private life a bad decision. But the balance is good under the line.”
Since 2017 he is mayor of the city in which he was born. The low point is without a doubt the coronacrisis. It was a complicated balancing act for Weterings. He had to find space between the strict rules that he had to maintain. So that it was acceptable to the inhabitants of his city: “That was a struggle. It was the toughest thing I experienced in my period.”
“Support from the home front is necessary.”
Yet it has not left any traces for him. “When I got home, I could give it a place. With support from the home front. That is also necessary. Because if you keep carrying it with you, then you can’t do it anymore.”
On all sides, Weterings was confronted with coffee shops. The legalization of weed, the spreading of coffee shops, the recently closed from Coffeeshop Caza, after an attack was committed ten times. The rules that national politics must make for this continue to frustrate him. “We have been tolerating for 60 years in this country. You can’t even translate the word: it is not allowed, but we still allow it.”
That you can only buy weed illegally and sell tolerated legally, it really has to change, says Weterings. That is why he started the weed test with his colleague Paul Depla van Breda in Brabant. That test has since expanded, but as far as Weterings is concerned, it is all possible to go a bit faster: “In the meantime, we have overtaken by other countries that have already legalized it and we are still on the poldering. We have to stop, clear decisions have to be made.”
“If they said something condescending about Tilburg, we attacked.”
Weterings is proud of Tilburg. And he is pleased that residents are also proudly talking about their city: “That was not unique in the Tilburg in which I grew up. Then we said something down -buccering about our city in the attack. But now people come here and they are surprised.” If you find this surprising, then you’ve not been here for a long time, “residents say now.”
His farewell on August 31 will be with the city, with the Tilburgers. “That’s my way.” And after that? Will he be such an former director who still pops up everywhere in all kinds of jobs? “No, I am not out of that. The priority lies with the personal, with the family. Effe nothing at all. So don’t call me.”
