Eindhoven’s council approved the city’s budget with a narrow majority on Tuesday night. Opposition parties voted against the budget due to what they called an insufficient approach to the millions in deficits.
Most opposition parties submitted a vote of no confidence. The groups think the measures will have little effect, and do not believe in the council’s ability to solve current problems.
Eindhoven has struggled with huge deficits for some time, with a shortage of tens of millions of euros. One cause of the shortages is hefty expenditure on care for the elderly and disabled public.
The council wants to tackle the problems with more efficient organising of healthcare through more stringent agreements with health companies, doing less business with care institutions, and preventing patients from receiving more expensive care than necessary. The council also wants to increase parking fees and taxes on citizens and companies.
According to the coalition parties PvdA (Labour Party), D66 (Democrats), Groenlinks (Green Left Party), and SP (Socialist Party) the current package is insufficient. The opposition parties said the measures were too late and too frugal.
Tuesday night the coalition, especially the opposition, proposed to further reduce deficits through measures such as increasing the tourist tax, provisional suspension of investment, hiring less external staff, cutting health care institution WijEindhoven, and delaying the renovation of the Tongelreep swimming pool. Few proposals were accepted, in part because the funds raised would be low. A proposal to absorb money from Eindhoven Airport did garner plenty of support.
Source: www.studio040.nl
Translated by: Bob
