Communities under pressure: flood protection and new citizens' needs

Communities under pressure: flood protection and new citizens' needs

In September, the role of the municipalities was strongly focused on by the floods. Mayor acted as a crisis manager and not only had to react during the flood situation, but also to evaluate the damage and set up corresponding commissions. According to the latest reports, 400 municipalities in Lower Austria are affected by the effects, whereby 52 municipalities have more than 100 damage.

The core tasks of the municipalities are diverse and include flood protection, drinking water supply, sewage disposal and the maintenance of municipal roads. The list is long and complex. The expansion of fiber optic networks, which has become more important in recent years, has also been added to the tasks. This often happens in areas that are uninteresting for commercial providers, which brings additional challenges.

changing requirements of the citizens'

A recently carried out study by the Institute for Demoscopy and data analysis has shown that the requirements of the citizens to the municipalities have increased significantly. Over 2400 Lower Austrians were asked about their wishes. It is surprising that the most required points are often not among the traditional core tasks. For example, the citizens primarily want to finance medical practices, local local supply, an ATM and the establishment of a post partner.

Thomas Ratka, head of the Department of Law at the University of further training in Krems, points out that the municipalities are also faced with many new tasks- such as refugee or elderly care, the digitization of the administration and the construction and new construction of public networks. These large -scale changes bring new financial obligations.

In the context of financial burdens, it becomes clear that only 11.88 percent of the federal tax revenue flow into the coffers of the municipalities. Ratka explains that a community should be serious, the country would be responsible for maintaining the basic services. A church bankruptcy is possible as theoretically, but practically unlikely, since municipalities, which have been severely affected, would have to continue to meet their obligations. This is expanded by the fact that there are no attachable means to cover financial requirements, which could influence lenders in their decisions.

Citizens' trust in local politics

The relationship between communities and their citizens is characterized by a certain distance. While trust in local politics was over 70 percent around two decades ago, this value has now decreased. The opinion researcher Haselmayer notes that almost half of the respondents consider community politics to be trustworthy, while the other half remains skeptical. It is particularly striking that 28 percent of the respondents do not even know their mayor. This difference between city and country is considerable - in urban areas, citizens are often less familiar with their political representatives than in rural regions.

The topic of reversing building land in areas at risk of flood also arose in the current discussion. Ratka warns that re -dedications that could withdraw areas of building land through the municipalities could result in legal consequences that could be considered expropriation, which would result in potential compensation. Due to the increasing demands from the population, the obligations of the municipalities are getting bigger and greater, which means the challenge to achieve the desired service level.