Ismaning has always been one of the municipalities in the district of Munich that attaches great importance to high standards and the best equipment in new buildings – and in the past it was usually easy to afford. Although the business tax revenue is still bubbling up in the community and a total of 68.5 million euros was flushed into the coffers in 2022, you have to “say goodbye to the sense of entitlement that everything is nobler and more beautiful in Ismaning than anywhere else,” according to the SPD Group leader Johanna Hagn said on Thursday evening in the municipal council’s management committee. “The possibilities are getting narrower for us too, we have to go simpler and definitely new paths in the future.”
Treasurer Christine Weiß had previously explained the budget planning for the current year to the committee: With a total volume of almost 163 million euros, the figures are among the richest in the district. The committee approved the budget, which now has to be decided by the municipal council, which should be a formality. But even in Ismaning, in view of the global crisis, all that glitters is no longer gold. Exploding energy costs and massively increasing construction prices are having an impact, the maintenance of buildings is becoming more and more expensive, the reserves are dwindling. At the end of 2023, the community will only have 11.5 million euros in general reserves; the per capita schooling in Ismaning is 1565 euros and is therefore more than twice as high as the Bavarian average (704 euros).
Against this background, the treasurer warned the “very decision-making body” to save, “even if we’ve always had a dizzy spell” because the income then increased more than was set in the budget plans, as Christine Weiß said in her refreshing way. For Mayor Alexander Greulich (SPD), this fact has less to do with luck than with the fact that the financial administration in the town hall “calculates carefully”. According to the motto, those who expect little can be happier when the cash register rings loudly at the end. Nevertheless, savings must be made and further prioritized. Between 2017 and 2022 alone, the municipality invested more than 191 million euros in structural and civil engineering, with large sums being invested in education and social affairs in particular.
But because the money is finite in Ismaning too, the planned expenditure must be examined intensively, specifically in the categories of “unstoppable projects”, because contracts have already been signed and are well advanced, according to Andreas Hobmeier, manager in the town hall, and on the other hand in Projects that could be pushed. At the top of the list of ongoing projects are the new construction of the technical town hall, the upcoming expansion of the local grammar school, the comprehensive renovation of the daycare center on Dorfstrasse, participation in the renovation of the Kallmann Museum and also the construction of a third primary school, which according to the requirements plan is necessary, although it is not yet at the top of the priority list. There are still a lot of ambiguities here, said Greulich. As long as the Free State does not make any more specific specifications in terms of all-day activities and the expected state subsidies are between five and ten percent, implementation will have to wait and, moreover, we do not know “what we should actually advertise, a campus with multifunctional usage options or not”, said Greulich and called for more planning security.
First of all, plans to build a new fire station, a gym and after-school care center on Kirchplatz and a senior citizens’ center on Aschheimer Straße, among other things, have to be postponed. The renovation of the youth center, Goldachhof and Schlossstraße will also have to wait. In addition, the wishes of clubs cannot be fulfilled at the moment: the footballers of the FCI and Grüne Heide will not get new changing rooms and no floodlights, the tennis club will not have an air dome and the boys will have to continue to make do with the sanitary facilities in the Kienaststadel.