Call from Mainz: where to put the money? – Munich

Thanks to the success of Biontech, the city on the Rhine has become rich in one fell swoop. Getting rid of the many millions is not that easy. Looking for help, they asked a city that knew about it: Munich.

Munich likes to think of itself as the best city, but is also willing to learn from better ones. Again and again, the city councilors go on political educational trips to look at clever ideas from other municipalities. In Stockholm and Copenhagen the focus was on traffic and mobility, in Venlo and Utrecht on modern office space concepts for administration. And then there was the trip to Vienna, which was reputed to be almost heavenly. With cheap rents and the famous “Gemeindebau”, the communal social housing. The fact that the pavement gardens in Munich spread the following year has nothing to do with this trip, but with Corona.

It also works the other way around. Learning from Munich can mean very different things. Cities all over the world have imported Oktoberfest, what they mean by it. Berlin has tried to copy Munich’s rental market in recent years – quite successfully, one has to admit. And recently, more and more delegations have been knocking on the door about the new Isar Philharmonic Hall. They want to know how it was possible: completing such a large construction project in the planned time and at a comparatively low cost. The concert hall is said to be called “The Miracle of Munich” in cultural circles.

Towards the end of last year, a telephone rang in Munich City Hall, and it was the turn of the city of Mainz. A miracle happened there recently. The biotechnology company Biontech, which has developed a vaccine against the corona virus, is based in Mainz. Because trade taxes are incurred on company profits, the heavily indebted city received more than one billion euros for the past financial year alone. It was like someone who had been on the losing side of life for years suddenly won the lottery, wrote the time. Well, and now people in Mainz wanted tips from the city with a wealthy background: What do you do with so much money and how do you do it? This is how the anecdote is told in the Munich City Hall.

Not only saving, but also spending money can be quite exhausting. No way, that little bit of household chores take care of themselves. What the financial experts of the big state capital have advised the small ones to do remains a secret. Maybe there will soon be green cycle paths to marvel at in Mainz too. Because of the color, the costs are pretty high, as the opposition in the Munich city council recently complained about. Maybe Mainz will do a lot more feasibility studies in the future. Such examinations are always good if it’s supposed to be a bit more expensive. And if all else fails? Then you can only advise the city to build a trunk line.

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