Frankfurt Mayor: Feldmann only mentions the deselection

VOf the two ways out of office that Mayor Peter Feldmann (SPD) presented on Friday, only one remained on Monday. He will have himself voted out by the city councilors in mid-January 2023, according to a “Current Announcement” on the “Transparent Mayor” page of the city’s website. And he will irrevocably accept this deselection. Then no additional decision by the citizens would be necessary.

There is no longer any talk of an application for retirement under Section 76a of the municipal code, which Feldmann spoke of on Friday. He had also wanted to deposit this variant in a letter to a notary. On Monday, Feldmann spoke to the chairmen of the four coalition factions, the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt. The mayor was asked by the parliamentary groups to limit himself to one variant, his spokesman said on request. “He therefore decided to accept a deselection by the city council in January and to no longer consider the application for early retirement.” The deselection is a common procedure that was also used by the CDU department heads after the local elections be.

Voting request still on the agenda

From coalition circles it was said that a clarification of the statements made on Friday had been requested. The participants were apparently surprised that an application for retirement should no longer play a role. In any case, a special meeting of the city council would be necessary, because a regular one is not planned for January. Feldmann is sticking to the January 31 deadline for leaving office.

The motion to vote the mayor out of office is therefore still on the agenda for this Thursday’s meeting. Whether the city councilors will withdraw it after all will probably only be decided shortly before on Thursday. By then, the coalition factions will have consulted on Wednesday evening. They must also include the opposition CDU in their deliberations. Your votes are needed to achieve the required two-thirds majority for voting out in the city parliament.

The city council office has pointed out that the audio transmission will be switched off during a consultation on the vote-out application on Thursday. As is usual in personnel debates, Feldmann would have to leave the hall as the person concerned, and he should not then have the opportunity to follow the debate on the Internet. The decision could disappoint many who will listen to the session like this. Because the discussion about the mayor has proven to be a huge hit.

During this election period, the listening option was clicked an average of 365 times per session, compared to 210 clicks in the previous election period. At the meeting at the beginning of June, however, in which the city parliament asked Feldmann to resign, 1,200 calls were counted.