Udo Grafe, the chamberlain of Unterhaching, opened the last municipal council meeting before the Christmas break with a quote: “Nothing in the history of life is more constant than change,” said the man who manages the finances in the second largest municipality in the district. It’s true, the members of the municipal council must have thought, what Charles Darwin once said applies quite well. Another record household last year and this time we’re scraping the pennies together. The supreme guardian of Unterhaching’s remaining millions did not refer to the figures at all but rather to himself: Udo Grafe announced his departure.
So the treasurer is retiring, not immediately, but in April, as he says. His reasoning: “After 16 years in the municipality of Unterhaching, I have decided to devote myself to new tasks and challenges.” He is now 51 years old and has reached a point where he has to decide: Do I change my professional life again or do I stay? And because 16 years was a very long time, he wanted to work somewhere else. “A very personal decision,” he emphasizes, which has nothing to do with the current budget situation. “We always had challenges, whether it was the Corona crisis or the financial crisis, that doesn’t change anything about the chamberlain’s work. One plus one is always two,” he says.
“Our beloved Unterhaching must not be saved dead.”
Grafe has always worked in the treasury for 16 years in the Unterhachinger town hall, initially as Peter Lautenschlager’s deputy, from 2019 onwards he was the first man in the house who has to keep an eye on the finances, who books the income and reminds of excessive expenses , calculates reserves and compiles overviews of debts. He will do this one last time in the coming months and then present the 2023 budget.
Until then, there will probably still be some heated discussions about the necessary savings efforts by the municipality. The municipal council had postponed the first attempts to decide on various cancellations of grants and funding until after the turn of the year; but it was inevitable that this sensitive topic was also reflected in the Christmas speeches of the parliamentary groups. “We’re so worried about the financial situation in our community this year that we basically can’t switch off,” said SPD parliamentary group spokesman Peter Wöstenbrink. And Korbinian Rausch (CSU): “I venture an outlook: 2023 will be the year of reappraisal, task criticism and a lot of work. My, our beloved Unterhaching must not be saved dead.” Evi Karbaumer from the Greens warned: “We don’t want different positions to be the cause of the existing understanding between the administration and the municipal council being endangered”. Alfons Hofstetter (Free Voters), on the other hand, believes in the crisis “to recognize that the currently not very easy situation increases the willingness of all fractions for a constructive and objective cooperation”.