What was half a million spent on last year in the run-up to the TT festival, when the festival was held online only? City Party PLOP has been waiting for this answer for weeks. Party leader Henk Santing asks: “What is the municipality forbidding me?”

The municipality of Essen had until 1 April to report on the costs and revenues of the TT Festival. But that accountability still doesn’t exist, even after several questions from PLOP.

“On August 26, I asked about the financial accountability of the festival. Normally I have to receive it in three days, these are the agreements,” Santing says. “But I did get an email saying that the employee responsible for this was on leave until September 5th. But even after that leave I didn’t receive an answer. A week later, I put the question on the register. I wanted to speak to an alderman, but again I haven’t heard anything yet. that “.

contempt board

“That’s not how you deal with the council,” the counselor continues angrily. “I’m experiencing this as contempt. I want to open up, that’s the supervisory job of the board. My experience is that if things like this take longer than usual, they obviously have to sort things out.”

Santing does not know what the municipality has to deal with. “It’s just a report that TT Week Assen submits to the municipality. Maybe the report didn’t exist at all, or it contains things that aren’t interesting. Maybe the accountant’s signature is missing. Are you behind?”

The budget of the TT Festival is more than 1 million euros. Half a million comes from the municipality of Asin Ton from the province of Drenthe. “This is public money. I’m amazed at the high spending of a festival that didn’t pass. Let’s see what happened. Because they hold back on something, that’s for sure.”

Everything is prepared

Principal Sander Ten Bosch of TT Week Assen said earlier that the costs are easy to explain. According to him, everything was prepared, purchase obligations were entered into, production costs were incurred by organizations and permits were arranged. But in the end it wasn’t an actual festival, it was an online version with 20,000 visitors online.

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