Even if there is never enough when demand grows, the city with 24 district and 13 outdoor sports facilities maintains a fairly dense network of public spaces for football clubs and other amateur athletes. In order to reduce costs and facilitate access for external users, the sports department (RBS) and the city council want to convert as many of the areas as possible into outdoor sports facilities, which mainly means that the city will no longer place a groundskeeper there. Instead, the clubs should in future keep their pitches in good shape themselves for a flat-rate fee. It remains debatable whether they can do it.
In October 2021, the sports committee decided to rededicate four facilities for a year on a trial basis. With Kronwinkler Strasse in Aubing, Westpreußenstrasse in Englschalking, Bert-Brecht-Allee in Neuperlach and Thalkirchner Strasse in Sendling, the locations are evenly distributed throughout the city. The decisive factor was also that the groundskeepers are not stationed there with their own apartments and at least two clubs play on the pitches, including a larger one.
The city wants to save around 466,000 euros per year in this way. But the clubs concerned are protesting against the change. Execution is suspended for the time being, negotiations are ongoing. The city has been saving on the groundskeepers for a long time. According to previous calculations, maintaining a larger system ideally requires 80 working hours per week, i.e. two full-time positions. This support has already been thinned out in recent years because groundskeeper positions have not been filled. An increase of 16 positions, which was accompanied by longer opening times in 2016, was largely recovered by the city. Assuming that two full-time employees are still needed, the club boards are wondering how they are supposed to close this gap. To compensate, the city pays a groundskeeper fee of a maximum of 18,000 euros.
In Sendling, the Spielvereinigung (SpVgg) Thalkirchen is to receive 12,500 euros for the services, which, according to the current minimum wage, would correspond to 26.5 mini-jobber hours per week, with the increase from July almost 25 hours. “A drop in the ocean,” says club chairman Thomas Huber about a concept that obviously includes unpaid work from the outset. It’s not that the willingness among the 800 SpVgg members isn’t high, but the volunteers are completely committed to sports in looking after 18 football teams of all ages as well as in the table tennis and gymnastics departments.
“It’s not just about the money”
The South Americans from Latino Munich and FC Bosna i Hercegovina also play at the Sendlinger facility. According to Huber, both the division of labor between the clubs and the question of what specific consequences the domiciliary rights – according to the city concept it should be in the future with the largest club – remain unclear, according to Huber. On the one hand, the club, as the host, is threatened with liability against their will, on the other hand, he is apparently not authorized to give instructions either to the two smaller clubs or to the other school, club and other sports groups that will use the outdoor sports facility in the future.
“It’s not just about the money,” emphasizes Huber, who would find it easier to motivate his members to perform free of charge if he could also promise them “added value on a sporting basis” in return, be it free usage times or even participation in the usage fees of future guests in favor of the club treasury. The previous contracts provide for many obligations and hardly any rights, which Huber simply finds “shabby” compared to volunteering. The “higher identification with the sports facility”, according to RBS also a goal of the innovation, will not be achieved in this way. In mid-March, the board members concerned held virtual discussions with the city councillors, but did not reach an agreement, for example on higher compensation.
Meanwhile, the district committee (BA) Sendling is demanding a complete withdrawal of the plans and the retention of the district sports facilities – as is the BA in Ramersdorf-Perlach for the Bert-Brecht-Allee district sports facility in Neuperlach. There, the city must fill both groundskeeper positions immediately and “bring the facility into proper operating condition for the sports clubs and district population,” according to an intergroup motion. If the plans of the RBS were to be implemented, the committee warns, this would mean “an excessive demand on volunteers and an abuse of non-profit sports clubs for tasks of public interest in the city”.
Kurt Damaschke (SPD), BA member and chairman of the SVN Munich also expresses criticism. According to RBS plans, he should take over the domiciliary rights to the Neuperlach district sports facility – “for pocket money of 17,000 euros,” says Damaschke angrily. He emphasizes: “As a club, we can’t take responsibility for this huge facility, where someone can climb over the fence at any time. And we certainly can’t do that if schools also do sports there.”
In addition, the BA points out in its application that the RBS plans effectively abandon a city council decision from 2016, according to which the city should open the district sports facilities longer – also for the residents. The planned conversions to outdoor sports facilities “also thwart the current discussion about improving the use of public space for sport and play”.