Financially healthy sounds good. But can it also mean the city is less investing in itself? For instance by cutting much subsidies?
Financially healthy sounds good. But can it also mean the city is less investing in itself? For instance by cutting much subsidies?
11 comments
A debt of €1000/inhabitant is a lot of money…
Shouldn’t it be common sense to cut costs if you are already deep in debt?
The color scheme is extremely biased because it implies that the current mayor racked up all that debt while it could very well be that it was from a previous coalition and that the newly elected mayor just got stuck with it.
Let me guess…. NVA created this infographic? Actually, I can already tell by the color of the background. That’s the typical color scheme they consistently use.
Edit: Also I’m not sure why NVA is proud of this graphic. 2020 was the height of the COVID pandemic. People were struggling financially very hard and yet NVA-controlled cities had a budget surplus?
If I lived in Antwerp I’d be furious that my local government was not using all the means they had available to financially help people during such a huge crisis. All to score political points on an infographic? Nice….
It might just mean that Antwerpen did a great job to get money transferred from other cities. You can proof anything with graphs without context, something the NVA is specialized in.
Lacking some context, but generally speaking a city without debt is a good thing. It’s possible that the city cut down on subsidies, it’s also possible that the city made its admin more cost-efficient, it raised taxes but hasn’t raised outgoing costs, it’s possible that by investing they managed to cut in the running costs, … There’s a bunch of reasons because of which a city could be performing better than it did the year before, as there’s infinite reasons for one city outperforming the other. A well-performing city doesn’t by definition mean cutting down on necessary investments / subsidies, but it can be part of the reason 🙂
Antwerp, is that the city where they throw grenades, Molotov’s and shoot people in the streets?
As for Oostende it’s debt created by corrupt Vande Lanotte, he made many dubious deals with entrepreneurs, financed with taxpayers money, while doing also good things to cover up aftet himself. But when he lost local elections a few years ago he understood it was his end in the political scene and too dangerous to continue with other political parties in power breathing down his neck, even thought he’s well respected (for guarding and keeping inter-party secrets).
He is also the lawyer, or maybe he was briefly, from corrupt El Kaouakibi from OpenVLD. It’s actually one big mess and clique if you think about it.
Die 80 mil in gent dat ze zoeken zat er dus wel langer aan te komen.
Ik denk wel dat deze cijfers super outdated zijn na all de miserie die steden gehad hebben.
This explains why Bart Somers in Mechelen is desperate for a fusion to get some debt relief. Could instantly shift 500 euros of debt per inhabitant to Flemish level. And surrounding smaller towns are probably financially more healthy.
Also, graph conclusion is wrong. Not Antwerp but Turnhout is most healthy. Turnhout can pay off all debt in slightly over 1 year with surplus. Antwerp would need 2 and a half years.
Genk 😍
So, as someone who is familiar with city budgets these graphs are correct, but they miss a lot of stuff and are misleiding. Both of the standaard and maker of infographic.
Two points; autofinancieringsmarge and schulden.
The autofinancieringsmarge is a number that is roughly: (omzet – costs – rente per jaar). That number is calculate each year and has to be positive (above 0) at the end of the legislatuur (after 6 years).
If it is negative at the end of your legislatuur Vlaanderen rejects your begroting as your spending will make the city bankrupt for the next mayor. It’s to ensure you can pay all your costs and rente. In this graph it is taken on a random year, but only the last year (2025 here) counts. If a city has a lot of investeringen this year, it can be negative. But that’s not alarming if the next years are positive.
Secondly schulden. Vlaanderen only wants to log OCMW and Gemeente for agency Binnenlands bestuur. These are used in statistics but they are not all financial numbers a city has.
Every city and gemeente has got ‘gemeentebedrijven’, and these are companies that manage a cetain aspect. For example AGB (autonoom gemeentebedrijf) that manages sport infrastructure, a company that manages woonzorgcentra, hospitals, etc etc.
You just can group as much as you like as city, and that is mostly a good idea. As you can put people in the raad van bestuur that actually know how to govern certain aspects. It’s illogical that a gemeenteraad has to do all of those..
I do know of cities that mostly put their schulden in different companies to smuck up numbers. I do know of cities that do the opposite, to get a better view of whats going on.
Tl:dr the infographic and numbers of de standaard are incomplete and the part about the autofinancieringsmarge (right) just plain misleading
Don’t know why you’re posting NVA propaganda here, kind of weird.