Speech OB 18.07.2007

on the ceremonial inauguration at the City Council meeting on 18 July 2007

The spoken word counts!

Honourable Members of the German Bundestag, the Saxon State Parliament and the City Council
Dear Mr Jurk, Minister of State
Professor Weißgerber and
Dear Mr Rotstein
Dear Lord Mayors, District Councillors and representatives of the municipal family,
Magnificence,
Presidents Lohse and Mothes,
Dr Seifert,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you all very much for coming to my official inauguration today.

It is a pleasure and an honour for me to have you here.

In June last year, the sovereign of the City of Chemnitz, the citizens, elected me Lord Mayor.

I am delighted that the legality of this decision is now beyond question and that the will of the sovereign is being symbolically recognised today.

I would like to expressly thank the Chemnitz City Council for electing me as mayor - a term for which I have never been able to develop any sympathy, by the way - and for making it clear across party lines that the will of the people of Chemnitz is decisive for them with this appointment.

Chemnitz is a remarkable city.

Chemnitz has proven its worth: Sustainable change for the better is possible if you want it with determination and work courageously for it.

I would therefore like to thank - once again, today and here - all those who have supported and helped to shape this successful transformation over the past two decades.

My thanks go above all to my predecessor in office: he served his city with the full force of his personality and achieved a great deal.

Anyone who recalls - just for a moment - the situation of our city in 1993, for example, and looks at Chemnitz today, will have an idea of the magnitude of what has been achieved here.

And I would like to add my own personal thanks: When it came to deciding whether I should apply to the Chemnitz City Council for this high office, you, dear Peter, had many good arguments in favour.

And the best thing is, they were all right!

And today, after this kind of trial period, so to speak, I can tell you with full conviction: I am happy to be Lord Mayor of our city.

My thanks naturally also go to the citizens of Chemnitz, to the companies and institutions that have helped to transform their city with diligence and vigour.

Chemnitz has never been as beautiful as it is today!

Labour - Prosperity - Beauty, the mural by Max Klinger that you see here in the hall, has accompanied the mayors and city councillors for around 90 years.

Highs and dramatic lows have been experienced and endured here.

But the patron Herrmann Vogel and the artist Max Klinger have given the city a wonderful gift with this painting.

Klinger, who was born 150 years ago and always struggled for the dignity and autonomy of his figures, has created a timeless masterpiece.

Chemnitz was the heart of the industrial revolution, the cradle of mechanical engineering.

Labour - Prosperity - Beauty still describes the beat, the spirit, of this city.

Today, Chemnitz is once again a modern place of work and the economy is the engine of our city.

As a centre of knowledge, research and development, Chemnitz is a force field for the entire region.

This work creates the conditions for art, culture and education, for local transport, sport, good residential areas and a lively city centre.

They are an expression of quality of life, lifestyle and joie de vivre.

Yes, they also reflect prosperity and beauty.

I see my election as Lord Mayor first and foremost as a mandate to continue on the successful path of recent years.

But I also see my election as a mandate to think of all those who have hardly had a chance to participate in this positive development without barriers, e.g. due to unemployment.

And I see my election as a mandate to make our city strong so that it can meet new challenges.

On 13 December 2006 - as it was completely unclear when my official inauguration would take place - I gave a keynote speech on the further development of our city on the occasion of the presentation of the 2007 budget and the medium-term financial planning up to 2010.

So today I will only outline five key areas of action for the coming years.

What tasks are involved - now and in the coming years?

1) We are faced with the task of further strengthening Chemnitz as a city of business and science.

2. we are faced with the task of accepting and actively shaping the demographic change that is already taking place in our urban society.

3. we must consciously establish Chemnitz as a place for families, as a place with quality of life and social responsibility.

4. to maintain our financial capacity to act and our ability to perform and to lay the foundations so that we can stand confidently and securely on our own two feet when the solidarity pact expires in 2019.

5 We have the task of further developing trust in administration and politics. It is about a reliable, good political culture in our city.

On the first point:
We are faced with the task of continuing to make Chemnitz strong as a city of business and science.

Chemnitz is an honest city that shows part of its history, with fractures and yet full of robust vitality.

What characterises Chemnitz, what distinguishes us Chemnitz residents, is our drive and motivation and the courage to try something new.

The fact that Chemnitz is once again a city

• of mechanical and vehicle engineering,
• automation and microsystems technology
• and also a centre of thought and production for the textile industry

is no coincidence.

Chemnitz has long been the city of engineers and technicians. They characterise the spirit and mentality of our city.
The historically new location in the centre of Europe and at the same time at the interface to the new EU member states is a great advantage.

The current economic situation is strengthening and dynamising development in many sectors in our region.

In the first quarter of 2007, sales in Chemnitz industry rose again compared to the previous year, now by an impressive 15 %.

This puts them above the Saxon average (of 12 %) and even more clearly above the national average (of 8 %).

This growth is all the more remarkable as it builds on two very positive previous years and thus demonstrates the now stable foundations of Chemnitz industry.
Without any comparable financial support from the Free State of Saxony, our city today has a forward-looking, medium-sized company structure and active, strong craft businesses.

We have every right to be proud of this.

This economic success is not only the prerequisite for maintaining and expanding employment.

It is also the prerequisite for ensuring that we can continue to build Chemnitz well.

At the same time, we must realise that the competition between the regions does not stop at our city and that there is still a lot to do.

I want the Chemnitz region to establish itself permanently and confidently as one of the economically successful regions in Europe and for Chemnitz to assert itself as an economically strong city with a high quality of life as an urban centre.

To this end, we will continue to actively promote economic development.

Projects such as the Paul-Gruner-Straße industrial and commercial estate or the TechnoPark are not just investments in buildings, roads and concrete, but are above all investments in modern and new jobs - in people's minds - and thus in the future of the city.

With the TechnoPark or the "Smart Systems Campus", Chemnitz is equipping itself for what is to come. The concept of combining research with start-up spirit and entrepreneurship through short distances is promising.

Proximity should enable foresight.

The close intermeshing of business, science, education and training is vital for a city like Chemnitz.

The non-university research institutions, the two Fraunhofer Institutes and the numerous other research institutes work in an application-orientated manner and with a remarkable amount of third-party funding for the new federal states.

The university is the intellectual centre of the entire region.

It is a place of teaching, research and further education, it is a training centre for our young academics and is also a decisive factor from a demographic point of view.

A cooperation agreement between the university and the city is currently being finalised, which contains concrete steps for further cooperation and is due to be signed after the summer break.

Thank you very much, Your Magnificence, for the excellent cooperation.

During my visits and discussions with entrepreneurs, but also with academics, it becomes clear time and again that the city needs to step up its marketing efforts.

The city is currently still selling itself short. It would be a misunderstanding of modesty if we did not want to change this.

You could almost say: we have everything - except image. City marketing is also location marketing and we have potential and reserves.

The expansion of conference and congress tourism is one building block, others must follow.

I am convinced that Chemnitz has sufficient energy to be effective and visible as the regional centre of Saxony's most populous region.

The forthcoming functional and administrative reform in the Free State harbours risks and offers opportunities for us and for the entire region.

As the third largest city in the new federal states, Chemnitz will in future be the second smallest regional authority in Saxony.

Of the current seven independent cities, only Dresden and Leipzig will continue to exist alongside Chemnitz.

What will this mean for the Financial Equalisation Act, but also for the urban self-image? Cities create identity.

In my opinion, the great opportunity of the reform is that the four districts of the administrative district of Chemnitz and the city of Chemnitz will be able to unite behind common interests and ideas.

More than a third of the gross domestic product of the Free State of Saxony, i.e. over €30 billion, is generated in the administrative district of Chemnitz.

If we are united, this common voice cannot be ignored.

I look forward to working with the district councillors in the region and I look forward to working with my colleagues, the mayors of the independent cities and with the municipal family.

I hope that together we will succeed in combining our respective strengths, perhaps in the Saxon Triangle metropolitan region, so that we can present ourselves well internationally.

A strong joint presence will make us all winners.
In Chemnitz - and this brings me to my second point - as in many German cities and a whole series of European cities, we are faced with the task of not enduring demographic change, but embracing it.

At today's city council meeting, we have a presentation on the current population forecast for our city up to 2019. According to this, the predicted population decline in our city is less dramatic than was assumed a year ago and is expected to be between 5 and 8 %.

However, the forecast is based on the assumption that we will succeed in stopping the exodus of young people in the long term. Good jobs will be the basic prerequisite for this.

We have succeeded in doing this in recent years. We had a positive migration balance in 2004 and 2006 and also in the first four months of 2007.

Nevertheless, we must not delude ourselves at this point. We are all faced with the task of organising life in a smaller and ageing urban society.

People are getting older and that is a very good thing.

I want our citizens in Chemnitz to enjoy growing old. In other words, ageing is not a problem, but a benefit that people have always dreamed of, researched and cured.
Our problem is the lack of children. It is no longer people moving away, but the lack of children that is causing the population decline.

Vacant flats and expensive, large-scale infrastructure are the consequences. This means that there is no alternative to urban redevelopment for Chemnitz in the future, i.e. demolition on the one hand and upgrading residential neighbourhoods on the other.

The visible quality of our city is a key argument in favour of the location. It allows a good attitude to life to develop and grow: for young people, this is a second criterion for staying, leaving or coming, in addition to the workplace.

The urban development concept, which is currently being drawn up and will accompany further urban redevelopment, encompasses both the development of the city as a whole in the various areas of life as well as a sub-area development concept for the city districts up to the year 2020.

In other words, the city as an organism is being reconsidered and further planned.

We want to start the public discussion on the urban development concept next year.

Despite the good conditions that already exist for families in Chemnitz today, despite a slight increase in birth rates in recent years and despite slight immigration gains among younger people, it remains to be seen that the proportion of children and young people in our city continues to decline.

Over the next three school years, the number of school leavers will fall from the current 1,800 to 800. At the same time, many sectors are indicating an increasing need for skilled labour over the next few years.

We need skilled labour, especially in our growth sectors of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and the metal industry.

The fact that our companies are indicating a need for skilled labour for the coming years is a good sign of vitality and confidence in the future.

But we are also in competition here:
After all, anyone with a proper engineering degree from a Saxon university or university of applied sciences is not only in demand here, but also in Sindelfingen, Ingolstadt, Wolfsburg or even across Europe.

In the future, qualified young talent will be one of the key location factors without which our competitiveness and the successful economic development of the city and region will be jeopardised.
For this reason, and above all against the background of the demographic development in Chemnitz, I have also made this topic my personal task.

This need for skilled labour is an opportunity for our city. First of all, young people need to know that they will be needed here in the future.

A working group I set up, which includes companies and institutions involved in this topic as well as representatives of the student council and the parents' council, has now drawn up concrete proposals for a joint approach and is already implementing some of them.

Our aim is to improve careers and study guidance for our pupils, to sensitise them to the actual needs in our region and to strengthen links with local companies.

Although the topic of skilled labour for Chemnitz has now reached almost everyone, teachers, parents and pupils as well as entrepreneurs are reaching the limits of effective careers guidance.

I am therefore convinced that career guidance and preparation for working life must become a mandatory part of the curriculum at all types of schools.

If school really prepares students for life, and that is the primary task of school, then careers guidance must be part of it.

The decline in the birth rate alone, the shortage of skilled labour and the certainty that Chemnitz offers a home: a city in which people can live and work with self-confident dignity, a city whose long history and revitalised beauty, whose growing economic strength are inviting, these reasons alone urge us to consciously establish Chemnitz as a place for families, as a place with quality of life and social responsibility.

This brings me, ladies and gentlemen, to the third field of action that I would like to touch on.

Chemnitz is already a good place for families and intergenerational coexistence. This is one of our city's strengths and we must continue to build on it.

The promotion of young families through

• good, affordable housing,
• a good living environment,
• the compatibility of family and career,
• education and childcare facilities in crèches and daycare centres of exemplary quality,
• ever-improving co-operation between daycare centres and schools,
• good health care and
• the emerging youth forum

all of this is already a reality in the family city of Chemnitz and these are good arguments in favour of the city.

Quality of life and urbanity are significantly influenced by art, culture and sport.

They create identity and influence the attitude to life of the citizens.

Art, culture and sport help to characterise the spirit and climate of our city.

This year's cultural highlight will be the opening of the Gunzenhauer Museum.

An exhibition that will permanently establish Chemnitz as a centre of classical modern art of the 20th century.

A new museum with an outstanding private collection of mainly 20th century German art, from Lovis Corinth and Otto Dix to international representatives of postmodernism such as Andy Warhol and David Hockney.

An art treasure that no one has ever seen before.

My predecessor in office, Dr Seifert, also laid the foundation for this together with the city council.

Chemnitz - as a city of modernity - is open to developments in the best sense of the word and is supported by a diverse, moving art and cultural life with breadth, depth and cultural excellence. The fact that Chemnitz's image is changing for the better has a lot to do with the fact that this culture comes and goes in Chemnitz.

And this is another reason why it is important that the citizens and our guests can also experience the new Chemnitz city centre as an urban, cultural centre.

Anyone who experienced the cheerfulness of thousands of people - triggered by the warmth and Latin American rhythms - in the city centre last Saturday can see and feel it:

People are enjoying their new centre, they want to take possession of their city even in the evening and occasionally at night.

And to the few people who still want to prevent this, I say: in a city where people work hard, it's important to celebrate properly from time to time.
Please respect this will of the citizens, which has been demonstrated thousands of times over generations.

However, ladies and gentlemen, we also bear responsibility in other areas.

Despite all these tasks and many positive developments, we must not forget that there are people who need our support.

According to Kant, human dignity has no price.

I want there to be a climate in our city that does not marginalise these people.

This includes, for example, the Chemnitz Pass, which allows people on low incomes to use city facilities at a lower price, and also includes financial support for the purchase of school materials for children from socially disadvantaged families.

We currently still have an unemployment rate of 13.8% in our city. This is the lowest rate for over 10 years.

Nevertheless, more jobs and fewer unemployed people remain a key goal for Chemnitz and the region.

For example, anyone who needs support in order to have a chance on the labour market again must receive targeted support from the employment agency.

It is hoped that the municipal combi-wage and funding from the European Social Fund in the new funding period up to 2013 will open up new opportunities to fully reintegrate people into society through work subject to compulsory insurance.

Because I want the people of this city to experience that they are needed, that they can achieve something and that they belong.

Our goal must be to ensure that no young person in Chemnitz starts their career without a qualified school-leaving certificate and a qualified apprenticeship.

The emerging need for skilled labour underlines the necessity of this and provides orientation.

Another focus of our work, ladies and gentlemen, is to consolidate the city's financial capacity to act and perform.

During my term of office, which runs until 2013, the course will be set to ensure that Chemnitz can stand on its own two feet by 2019, when the solidarity pact expires.

Several stages towards this goal have already been completed:

• The city's tax revenues exceeded the general key allocations for the first time in 2007.
• Trade tax, a major tax revenue in its own right, more than doubled between 2003 and 2006
• and Chemnitz has had a balanced budget for years and a balanced financial plan for the coming years.

I would therefore like to recognise once again the very personal contribution made by the employees of the city administration with the 36-hour week and the associated salary sacrifice.

This contribution made it possible to save EUR 30 million between 2003 and 2006 and a further EUR 18 million by 2009, when the collective labour agreement expires.

In every public budget, there is a permanent tension between what is desirable and what is financially feasible. We all know this, which is why we have to ask ourselves one question again and again:

How do the resources deployed (money, staff, buildings ...) bring the most benefit to the people of Chemnitz?
To be able to judge this, we need clear coordinates and goals.

This applies to our external decisions on which project or investment to realise, as well as to our actions within the administration.

I expressly advocate a sustainable budget policy, i.e. debt reduction in small steps and moderation in the administrative budget, so that we can continue to invest primarily in the renovation of day-care centres and schools and in a modern infrastructure.

The funds from the Solidarity Pact II are in decline from 2009.

Budget consultations, ladies and gentlemen of the city council, will continue to be a feat of strength in the future.

It is above all thanks to my predecessor in office, the mayors and the City Council that reliable, fact-orientated City Council work has become the hallmark of local politics in Chemnitz.

The issue is at the centre of the assessment and not the party ticket. Dr Seifert's basic attitude is the right one and one that I have gladly adopted.

And I am firmly convinced that this way of working is entirely in the interests of the citizens we represent and that reliable, quick, fact-based decisions are an argument in favour of Chemnitz as a location.

However, this does not mean that we do not wrestle over the right decisions, disagree and argue passionately about issues.

Argumentative debate is the essence of democracy!

Occasionally, I would like to see more empathy for this in the media.

If mistakes are made in the administration, they must be clearly labelled as such.

But I also ask for fairness here: rumours or suspicions are not facts.

This must be clearly separated and clearly stated, especially when it comes to the building department.

And I would also like to make it very clear: without the employees of the entire city administration, this great development achievement in Chemnitz would not have been possible.

Dear city councillors, we have the task of further developing trust in administration and politics.

• Citizens' consultations with you and with me,
• public discussions on urban development,
• residents' meetings,
• the youth forum

invite the people of Chemnitz to help plan and get involved.

Because I think it's important that the people of Chemnitz know that their vote counts for more than just the elections.
And in everything we do and decide in the city council, we must be aware that we do so as administrators and service providers on behalf of the citizens.

I invite you, dear city councillors, to continue developing this contentious and reliable political culture in our city.

Chemnitz is a city worth working for.

Difficult decisions lie ahead of us.

• We will need strength,
• we will need backbone,
• we will need courage,

to venture into the new and unknown.

But that is a good part of our task - that is what makes this city what it is.

I am looking forward to the next few years.

I invite you all to continue building this city together.