City councilors in the magistrate: Hartwig, Weber and Josef are re-elected

The city councilors re-elected the three SPD city councilors Ina Hartwig (culture), Sylvia Weber (education and building) and Mike Josef (planning and housing) in their first meeting of the new year on Thursday.

Hartwig received 54 yes votes, 32 voted no.

Mike Josef received 57 yes to 31 no votes.

Weber needed two ballots because she narrowly missed the required majority of 51 votes.

In the second ballot, 48 yes votes were enough for her to be re-elected.

Martin Benninghoff

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Mayor Peter Feldmann (SPD) then presented the three confirmed members of the magistrate with their certificates of appointment: "In challenging times like these, continuity is particularly important," he said. According to the Hessian Municipal Code, full-time city councilors are elected independently of the local elections for a term of six years.

Before the election, the city councilors took the opportunity to evaluate, praise or criticize the past work of the three re-elected councillors.

However, the discussion largely turned into a general debate about the first months of the new coalition of Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt.

The leader of the Greens, Tina Zapf-Rodriguez, cited the abolition of voluntary police service, Frankfurt's declaration as a safe haven in refugee policy and the coalition's proposal to repeatedly block the northern bank of the Main as examples of successful politics.

CDU criticizes "announcement policy"

Nils Kößler, parliamentary group leader of the CDU, countered with a criticism of the "announcement policy" of the "traffic light plus volt".

The coalition does not agree on important issues.

As examples, he cited the discussion about the location of the planned multifunctional arena or the municipal stages.

Yanki Pürsün, head of the FDP coalition faction, praised the good cooperation in the magistrate.

For the SPD, whose city councilors were up for election, faction leader Ursula Busch focused more on the performance of Hartwig, Weber and Josef. Since 2016 there has been a trend reversal in residential construction, said Busch, praising Mike Josef as "hands-on and straightforward". Head of culture Ina Hartwig is a “worthy successor” to former head of culture Hilmar Hoffmann, who died in 2018. She also had words of praise for Weber, saying she was "motivated, hardworking and assertive". Martin Huber, the parliamentary group leader of the smallest coalition partner Volt, emphasized the importance of the experience of these three city councilors in a magistrate in which there are also newcomers.

The city councilors of the opposition naturally saw things differently: Michael Müller, parliamentary group leader of the left, criticized the "penetrating calls for trade tax reduction" on the part of the FDP: "Liberal ignorance dominates here in the city government." Patrick Schenk from the AfD spoke of the expansion of the magistrate's posts in the in the course of coalition building and criticized the "self-service mentality". He recalled - from his point of view - successful imports of department heads from other cities. An aspect that Mathias Pfeiffer from BFF-BIG, who after his divorce bears his birth name again and is no longer called mouth, did not go along with it: "First of all, someone would have to come along to do it better."

The non-attached city councilor Tilo Schwichtenberg from the Garden Party, on the other hand, initially attracted attention with an unrelated contribution: The mask requirement in the hall was just an appeal, he said provocatively, whereupon some of the city councilors demonstratively left the meeting room.

The head of the city council, Hilime Arslaner-Gölbasi (The Greens), tried to be moderate and campaigned for fairness in dealing with this city councillor.

The magistrate is thus starting the new year with renewed legitimacy – and new facts have also been created in the city parliament.

Against the votes of the CDU, Left Party and parliamentary group, the city councilors of the coalition have changed the seating arrangement.

Accordingly, the largest opposition faction, the CDU, moves to the edge of the plenum, while the FDP moves alongside the Greens and thus moves closer to their coalition partners.

Group leader Kößler had already criticized the decision in the elders' committee in the afternoon as a "forced transfer".

The coalition parties are "apparently enough for themselves".

The idea of ​​“minority protection” no longer plays a role.