The city council of the small town near Gießen has that

Proceedings to vote out the mayor Jörg König (CDU) initiated.

All city councilors voted in favor of the corresponding motion with two abstentions.

The factions accuse König of continued inaction.

They have withdrawn their confidence from him, including his own faction.

Thorsten Winter

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for central Hesse and the Wetterau.

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Before the vote, CDU parliamentary group leader Thomas Altenheimer explained the reasons for the application to initiate the voting procedure on behalf of 33 of the 37 city councillors.

King is a "nice person" and "human integrity".

Therefore, a comparison with the deselected mayor of Frankfurt is misguided.

But König was overwhelmed with managing the administration.

The mayor likes to moderate and represent, but he often leaves the day-to-day work to the employees.

As a result, many decisions are delayed or not made.

For example, parents of kindergarten children have been waiting for the repayment of meal money from Corona times for months.

Childminders regularly received late grants from the city.

A week for the mayor

But König regularly calls for more staff, although some positions have not been filled for some time or have only been filled for a short time.

Management turnover is higher than ever.

Linden no longer has a good reputation as an employer and that has something to do with the top management, i.e. the mayor.

König now has one week to refrain from objecting to the vote.

"A mayor is deemed to have been voted out if he waives in writing within a week of the decision of the municipal council on a decision by the citizens on his deselection," says the Hessian municipal code.

The head of the town hall will therefore resign from office at the end of the day on which he declares that he will not be voted out of office.

If König does not bow to the vote of the city parliament, the approximately 10,000 Linden voters are to decide on March 12 next year whether he will remain in office.

About 3,000 votes will be needed to vote out.

König had not recently indicated that he wanted to leave office prematurely, not even in the face of a motion to be voted out.

CDU faction leader Altenheimer described the quorum as "crunchy".