Is Kirchheim’s mayor Maximilian Böltl (CSU) censoring? In any case, the Greens municipal councilor Rüdiger Zwarg accuses the head of the town hall of such misconduct. After a contribution by the nature conservation association IG Wall was not printed in the municipality’s newsletter, Zwarg now submitted an application to the entire municipal council to disapprove of the “exercised censorship of the first mayor”.
As Zwarg explained, IG Wall was prevented from publishing an article in the community newspaper at the end of last year. In the text, the conservationists criticized the clearing of trees, pointing out that old trees “cannot simply be replaced by new planting”. For the Kirchheim 2030 infrastructure project, trees had repeatedly been felled and compensatory plantings made in the village in recent years. IG Wall had previously protested against this approach. “Due to the extensive clearing of the grove and the destruction of old trees,” woodpeckers have been pushed out of the town center, the association wrote in the rejected contribution.
A disapproval by the municipal council would allegedly not be possible
Mayor Böltl considers this statement to be a political expression of opinion, as he explained to the municipal council at the request of Zwarg. According to the guidelines for the newsletter, however, these are reserved for the parties or groups represented in the municipal council. In Böltl’s opinion, associations such as IG Wall must use other means to take a stand on community affairs.
Green municipal council in Zwarg sees it differently. For him, the contribution is not political, but merely an objective description. His parliamentary group colleagues Berit Vogel and Christian Zenner were also shocked at the meeting by the rejection of the contribution and accused Böltl of censorship. However, Zwarg’s request met with little understanding from the majority of municipal council members. As the town hall administration noted, the committee is not entitled to issue a resolution disapproving of the mayor anyway. With six dissenting votes, the local politicians rejected Zwarg’s proposal.