Baden-Württemberg: series of breakdowns delays the search for a new mayor

The post of mayor of a community in the Göppingen district has been vacant for months.

Baden-Württemberg: series of breakdowns delays the search for a new mayor

The post of mayor of a community in the Göppingen district has been vacant for months. The citizens should actually determine a successor twice. A series of glitches threw a spanner in the works. Does it work on the third try?

Birenbach (dpa/lsw) - The worm is in there with this election: After two failed attempts, the small municipality of Birenbach in the Göppingen district now wants to find a new mayor in a third attempt. Because the previous attempts at a new election failed due to formal mishaps, the 1945-inhabitant community tries again with an election date on November 27th.

A successor to the community's chief chair has been missing for months. The previous mayor has been on sick leave since September 2021, said a spokeswoman for the Göppingen district office. In August, the authority finally granted an application for dismissal.

The citizens of Birenbach should therefore go to the ballot box for the first time on August 7th. But because the municipality incorrectly stated the start of the deadline for applications in the advertisement, the election had to be postponed. The tender would otherwise have been contestable, the spokeswoman said.

The second attempt to find a successor as head of City Hall should be on September 25th. But here, too, a breach of the formal requirements was fatal to the community. The call for tenders was initially published without a date on the municipality's website and, according to the spokeswoman, also violated municipal regulations in terms of content.

The fact that an election is canceled by the district office is extremely rare and has not happened in recent years. During the pandemic, an election was only postponed by municipalities, said the spokeswoman. Now it should work on the third attempt.