The Mayor of Geldrop-Mierlo, Berry Link, has criticized the redivision plan of his colleague, John Jorritsma, from Eindhoven. He calls the draft proposed by Jorritsma as “arrogant”. It proposes that all the suburbs of Eindhoven should be merged with the city.
According to Link, there are several evaluations being done about the managerial collaboration in the region, both within Metrool Regio Eindhoven, and Stedelijk Gebied, which includes Eindhoven, Helmond and seven smaller municipalities. The mayor, therefore, found it to be very premature to ask for large scale redivision.
Link also said that Eindhoven should rather solve its own problems instead of “wanting to play boss”. In Eindhoven, after all, the municipal management was found to be vulnerable to fraud. Several councillors have also already left. Link found that Geldrop-Mierlo was doing just fine, and it could conduct its own affairs very well as a medium-sized municipality of almost 40 000 inhabitants.
Jorritsma’s argument that the large-scale redivision will mean more clout in The Hagueis also a touchy subject for Link. He believes that the Zuidoost-Brabant region, with the current administrative collaborations, can also get a lot done in The Hague.
Jorritsma suggested, during his first speech of the year last month, for a large-scale redivision of Zuidoost-Brabant. If it were up to the mayor of Eindhoven, the region would go from 21 municipalities to 3 or 4 larger municipalities. In this scenario, Waalre, Oirschot, Geldrop-Mierlo, Neunen, Veldhoven, Son en Bruegel and Best would be added to Eindhoven.
Source: studio040
Translator: Melinda
