How Oberursel plans to increase childcare costs

Oberursel's town hallTwo weeks ago I sat in on a meeting of the town council where the charges for Kindergarten places were discussed at length.  Now the town administration has come up with new proposals that will be put to the next town council meeting for approval.

It is worth taking a moment to look at the demands that parents had made a few months ago when the topic first arose.  Many of them have been fulfilled, such as keeping the Siblingbonus in place and not reducing the quality or number of places available in the town.

They also wanted the increase to take place in several steps, which is what will now happen.  The increases will take effect on 1st August 2012, 1st February 2012 and 1st August 2013.  However they insisted that the increase should be “moderate”.  The question is: what is moderate?

At the town council meeting some parties were more direct, and announced the highest percentage that they considered to be reasonable.

In the end, however, some people will end up with a larger increase than many wanted. [Read more…]

How much should parents pay towards Kindergarten costs?

Last night I went to my first ever Stadtverordnetenversammlung at Oberursel’s town hall.  Roughly speaking that’s probably best translated as “town council”, and the mixture of things being discussed reflects that.  Things like bus shelters, roads, budgets and planning permission.  In fact, it was the planning permission part that I was most interested in, as the Frankfurt International School and Mountain Lodge plans were on the Agenda.

Oberursel's town hallIn the end, there was little discussion about either of them.  Instead, over half of the time allowed was spent discussing the level of Kindergarten fees.

It was obviously a popular topic as well, as over half of the local residents who were watching from the public seating were still there when the debate started – and they were still there when time was called on the sitting at 11pm. [Read more…]

The new face of Oberursel’s administration

The local elections last year in Oberursel saw a change in the ruling coalition.  The parties CDU and FDP had held a majority for many years and suddenly found themselves replaced by a mixture of the Green, SPD and OBG parties.

At the end of the day, no party holds more than a third of the seats, so the only chance for the town’s parliament to move anything forward is to work together.

It is something that is reflected in the new structure of the town’s administration in the Rathaus. [Read more…]

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