The professional mgmt of the city of Bad Homburg

(Part II of “We need city planners not politicians for our metropolis”)

Upon the election of a new mayor in the Philippines, he/she brings with him/her few confidential staff. These are usually the social secretary, chief of staff, an “aide de camp” and some field employees. Those that will be retained are civil service personnel who remain in the office regardless of who will be the new chief or mayor in the city because of their permanent status. If they do not feel like working for the new chief executive, they may request for a transfer of office, otherwise, they have to work with the new team.

In the case of city administrators (or the so called “little mayors”), who are running the operations of the city government, it is necessary that they share the same vision as that of the incoming mayor, so that projects of the succeeding chief executive will be efficiently implemented.

What happens then with the unfinished projects of the outgoing mayor? This is a dilemma in our country – politics is still the name of the game. Unlike in other countries, programs of the government are continued by whoever will sit as the leader.

The lady administrator of a historical German city

I met Frau Scholz in 1992 when she spent Christmas in the Philippines with her brother, German Ambassador Peter Scholz. After being a teacher, she assumed the position of a professional city hall administrator. A true professional, she has stayed in that office almost all her lifetime. In the Philippines, Mayors keep changing every election time, replacing city administrators with their own protégées who unfortunately are not necessarily competent. In Germany, while the mayor and the 59 parliamentarians are elected regularly, the administrative staff never changed, providing a stable bureaucracy.

In her modest penthouse flat overlooking the Taunus Mountain, the Homburg Palace, and the treetops of the woods which surround the city, Frau Maria Scholz and I chatted over a glass of sweet Vermouth about her life and work. After 20 years, she has officially retired as “first lady” of Bad Homburg (“bad” stands for thermal bath), the famous European spa half an hour away from Frankfurt. This holiday spot was founded by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Landgrave Friedrich II. Royal guests from all over the world fell in love with the place and are never tired of vacationing there. Today, it is a place for everyone, especially German retirees. The newly-elected mayor then, Wolfgang Assman, still counts on Frau Maria Scholz as a consultant.

City administrator works out the mayor’s major concerns

Before fulfilling a travel grant in Germany to see samples of apprentice and technical schools the Hanns Seidel Foundation has been helping establish in the Philippines, I requested Ambassador Scholz if I could visit and interview his sister. Typically, the organized German, he confirmed all the details of my one and a half day stay in Bad Homburg, accompanied by my husband. We took a taxi from Frankfurt airport to the Maritim Hotel of Bad Homburg, less than an hour away. After calling Frau Maria Scholz, she was in the hotel in a couple of minutes to take us to lunch with the thrice-elected Mayor Wolfgang Assmann. With an extra hour available before lunch, she drove us in her red car around the city of 51,000 people to see its two highlights: The famous Kurpark and the famous Homburg Palace, with a side visit to a Montessori kindergarten.

After lunch, we toured the modern city hall, She was especially proud of the Parliamentary Hall where she would arrange weekly meetings of seven committees to discuss the town budget. This relates to taxes and their distribution, building plans, traffic problems, environmental problems, sports and recreation, problems of social and cultural affairs. What fascinated me was the city Hall Planning Office, which contained about 10 tri-dimensional models of the city of Bad Homburg, showing its expansion within 40 years. In other words, they conceived of the ideal plans for reconstructing the city after the damages wreaked by the war. The professional city engineers, construction and maintenance teams have been implementing them faithfully.

City planning competition provides the model landscape architecture

My two-week tour of apprentice schools in different federal States, allowed me to observe German country-type hotels and voc-tech courses, at Saarland which borders France and reunified Berlin. As planned earlier I paid another visit to Bad Homburg to have a closer look at how they maintain and beautify the city. Since my PAL flight back to the Philippines starts from the Frankfurt airport, I took the regular bus rides direct to Bad Homburg, made for the convenience of retirees. Frau Maria Scholz continued to assist me, introducing me to the Green Office. Hector Aguilar, a Filipino computer specialist, one of several Filipino professionals who reside in the city graciously took time to act as my interpreter.

On one wall, seven three-dimensional models of different landscapes for the city hall were on display as winners of a city planning contest held many years ago. The existing stadhause was built according to the winning plan. Two huge steel cabinets revealed landscape architectural plans of trees, shrubs, colored ornamental flowers per season to complement the geyser fountains of Kurpark as designed in the latter part of the 18th century by Joseph Lenne. The various trees were bought from two major tree nurseries in Germany to replant the old fallen trees using young trees which cost cheaper at 600 DM instead of the 3,000 DM taller and mature trees.

6 department heads care for this tourist haven

The Green Office was right beside the Clean Environ Office. In the latter, I met the over-all Finance Manager Herr Daltzow who gave me several white and yellow statistic papers which explained very clearly in diagram form that there is an Administrative and Technical Department for cleaning and beautifying Bad Homburg. Sixty-one workers under Herr Mitwoch and three assistants look after the canals and streets of the city as well as the carpentry maintenance of fences, plant boxes, benches and signboards. Herr Schobert manages 58 garbage collectors and drivers who pick up the debris regularly according to the detailed one-year calendar given to each resident and commercial place. Days are specified for garden refuse, metal, glass, bulky house furniture. Herr Weber is the motor pool chief with seven workers. The playgrounds, jogging pathways, and trees are cared for by 24 workers under Herr Horn, while the smaller shrubs, hedges, and ornamental flowers are maintained by 23 gardeners under Herr Wilming. The seasonal flowers which surround the monuments and statues all over the four parks (by the Castle, the Church, the Roman Fort, etc.) are grown by Nursery lady Frau Vaupel and her 10 workers. They also provide cut-flowers for the official functions of the city mayor.

The landscape that charmed a Russian czar and a Thai king

Early in the afternoon, Frau Scholz took me for a stroll across the Kurpark. It is the second loveliest stroll I have taken in Europe, the first was in the Tivoli carnival park in Copenhagen. The bust of landscaper Lenne, surrounded by pink pansies, greeted us along one entrance pathway. A mother with a toddler smiled at Frau Scholz. I noticed from my first day in the city that almost everyone knew her. The dark-and-yellow-green trees mingled with various conifers all over the four-hectare park. The park is covered with grass which is allowed to grow wild with flowering weeds here and there and is not manicured like a lawn.

A small onion-domed Russian church, donated by a Russian Czar sat on a hillside. The two-meter-wide cement pathway, bordered by a bicycle path, wound gracefully in and out, up and down the uneven garden, punctuated by a giant three-geyser fountain and a pond with a few ducks. Beyond this, the newly repaired golden Thai gazebo rose brightly against all the greenery. It was a gift from the grandfather of the present Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej. We passed by the red-sanded tennis court with a white country clubhouse filled with teenagers and their parents. We were in the middle of the park where we could see the geyser fountain across. Frau Scholz pointed out how the trees were constantly pruned to give a clear view of the sight from every angle of the park.

As we walked further, we reached the small casino. It was dwarfed by the red brick Kaiser bad (bath house) which was fronted by a colorful courtyard of flowers. The lady manager welcomed Frau Scholz warmly. She then gave me handful of brochures about the different cures and a gold jogging pin. By this time, we were tired and hot. Beyond the theater, where a small concert was being played, was the ice cream house where we sat down to have a big cup of ice cream. Here, we watched three men play golf in a 9-hole golf course for children.

In six spots a few distance away from the bath spa were six old-fashioned fountains. A handsome man in his fifties smiled at us while he filled his thermos with the mineral water. I stopped to taste the cool water. It was salty, fizzy, sour and cool. Medically analyzed to cure body ills, I felt energized by it.

Men who love their work

If every city has this green sphere of beauty, quiet and harmony-woven by men who love their work, “The peace of God shall flood our soul. In our ear shall ring the glorious freedom song of the bird on wing and the very air one breathes shall be rich with the fragrance of celestial bloom.” (At the Foot of the Master)

When will we Filipinos make that world come true?

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