The first meeting of Oberursel’s Ausländerbeirat after their inaugural meeting started off less spectacularly than the previous one had.  Held on Monday, 8th February, 2016, it was a 18:03 that Dr. Franz Zenker (ILO) asked “shall we start?”, with only 5 of the 9 members present.  “You’re the chairman” came the reply from Natalia Bind (AZO), who only a month before had appeared to be more eager to get things going.

At the time, there were several hundred refugees still camped out in one of the school halls, so it was a topic likely to be discussed.  Indeed, it was even on the Agenda.  Twice.  Four weeks previously the mayor, Hans-Georg Brum, had made it a key topic for the committee.

So when a question was posed about why there had been no mention in that previous meeting of a local building being set up to take 200 asylum seekers, less than 24 hours before the fire brigade carried the beds in, the reply was that the town itself was only informed by the local government (Kreis) at a very late stage.  Thomas Eifert, the committee’s contact in the town hall, commented that “the communication is really bad”. [Read more…]