City plans survey on several topics

City of Bonn: Festspielhaus to be looked into at a later date

Bonn's mayor Jürgen Nimptsch recently presented his elaborate concept "New Forms of Citizen Involvement", its centerpiece being the citizen survey scheduled for May of this year. The administration has decided not to include the issue of the newly planned Festspielhaus in the survey, but plans to deal with the issue before the start of summer recess. This decision has caused some concern over yet another delay.

"In these times of dwindling trust in political decision-making processes, I invite the citizens of Bonn to share their thoughts and opinions," says Nimptsch. The administration accepted the initiative and has broadened the scope of the citizen participation committee's responsibility to include the direct survey of the city's residents.

The project will begin with a scientifically conducted survey to be held together with state parliamentary elections scheduled for May 9th. The committee will determine the survey topics at its next meeting on February 4th. The city's administration has struck the Beethoven Festspielhaus project from this list of potential survey topics until a consensus has been reached regarding the next-steps in the opinion-gathering process, which could involved a referendum, for example, or a separate survey. The administration believes that the complexity of the issue demands individual treatment; the Festspielhaus partners are also to be included in determining both the content and timing of the survey.

Manfred Harnischfeger, project lead for the Festspielhaus project at Deutschen Post DHL, commented on these developments saying, "A citizen survey is a democratic process and it is up to the city to decide how it wants its citizenry to participate. We're interested, of course, in seeing progress made in issue of the Festspielhaus." SPD councilperson Bärbel Richter told the newspaper Bonner Rundschau: "The survey should be finalized by summer. Further delays would only harm the project."

The association "Friends of the Festspielhaus" has voiced concern over this latest delay. The association board and its members are worried that further delays could cause the federal and state governments as well as private investors to no longer feel obligated to the project and renege on promised financial support. The project stands to lose these monies. "The City of Bonn should avoid talking the project to pieces, and instead focus on gathering the information they need to make an informed decision," says the chairman of the Festspielhaus friends. The association was "mystified" by the way City of Bonn spoke about its annual grant of EUR 4.6 million to the foundation in charge of the Festspielhaus' operation. Included in the sum cited is EUR 1.6 million in municipal funding for the Beethovenfest Bonn.

Q&A online

In the meantime, the city has published an online catalogue of questions and answers on the topic of the Festspielhaus project (www.bonn.de/tourismus_kultur_sport_freizeit). Planning for the Beethoven Festspielhaus continues, with the administration working together with project partners to clarify project-related issues in order to create a basis upon which the political committees can make informed decisions.