Free civil aid or expensive inefficiency? Halver debates!

Free civil aid or expensive inefficiency? Halver debates!

In the Märkisches Kreis, there is a significant change that affects the structures of public administration. In order to optimize efficiency in dealing with citizens' inquiries and statistics, the district wants to take responsibility for the collection of numerous residents statistics in the future. So far, this was in the hands of the city of Halver. Mayor Michael Brosch explains that all 14 municipalities belonging to the district, with the exception of Iserlohn, are discussing these measures, since most recognize the potential added value.

The handover of the static tasks to the circle seems to be characterized by broad approval. In the meantime, a group representative from Halver, Sabine Wallmann from the UWG, shows up skeptically regarding the costs, because no information is listed in the original documents. Brosch, on the other hand, thinks that the costs for the statistics office are already included in the general district levy, which would mean that Halver has no additional financial burdens. The main committee has spoken out in a unanimous decision to award these tasks externally.

telephone service in new hands

In addition, the Halveran administration also plans to hand over the general telephone service to the Märkische Kreis. This applies in particular to calls that enter the central collective number 02353/73-0 and will be forwarded to the district service center (TSC) of the district in the future. The employees there have an extensive knowledge database that enables you to answer frequent questions directly. More complex inquiries would be connected to the relevant employees in the town hall in Halver. If nobody is available there, a ticket will be created to process the call later.

The idea behind this step is to relieve the urban employees. Jürgen Wichert from the SPD welcomes the proposal and emphasizes that better telephone service is important to the citizens. His view is shared by the FDP by Sascha Gerhardt, who rates it positively that such a measure is in the political discussion. The costs for the assumption of the telephone acceptance amount to EUR 21,860.30. Actually, the administration could have implemented this change without political approval, since the limit for necessary resolutions is 25,000 euros.

But with this commendable concept there are also critical voices. Despite multiple inquiries, the administration could not provide any information about how many calls arrive in the town hall every day. The Märkische Kreis estimates that between 36 and 50 calls a day will be received by the TSC. Chamberlain Simon Thienel noted that if you could calculate the entire working time that was lost on phone calls, you could probably save a full -time position. However, the political representatives do not see this uncritically.

Politics is rather reserved in relation to the outsourcing of the telephone acceptance and wonders whether the city employees should not continue to take part in part of this workload. Marvin Schüle from the CDU expresses concerns because he perceives the costs as significant and questions the need for the project. In a subsequent discussion, he applied to an interruption of the session in order to receive more time to exchange them with his faction colleagues. Mayor Michael Brosch will meet this wish and the decision will be postponed to the next council meeting in the coming week.

For citizens and administration, this means that a lot could change in the near future. It remains to be seen how these developments ultimately affect and whether the planned measures will actually work more efficiently. The political discussions and decisions will continue to be observed in the coming time to clarify how the changeover to the citizens and the administration will affect.