From the administration's point of view, all of the positions proposed in the 2023/2024 job plan update are necessary to keep the city administration efficient. With additional positions, it wants to perform the many tasks, master future challenges, respond to the worsening shortage of skilled workers and, for example, make Bonn climate-neutral by 2035. New jobs are also necessary because there has already been a drastic increase in the number of overload reports from city employees. From the employer's point of view, a further increase in workload is not justifiable.

"Every qualified position that can be filled today is an investment in the future and will help to ensure that the city administration remains efficient in the coming years and can maintain its range of services," explains Personnel Director Wolfgang Fuchs.

In accordance with the Finance Committee's decision to cut personnel costs by four million euros per year, 55 planned new positions will not be created to consolidate expenditure. This will result in savings of 3.5 million euros per year, while the administration will achieve a further 500,000 euros through personnel management and task-critical measures.

In total, 389 new positions will be created in the 2023/2024 job plan update. Of these new posts, 84 will be marked as "to be discontinued in future" and will therefore only be created temporarily. The total number of posts after the job plan update will therefore increase from 5,542 to 5,931.

The city administration believes that the number of jobs and staff will consolidate in the future anyway: On the one hand, a large number of employees will retire over the next few years due to the "baby boomer" generation. On the other hand, younger colleagues in particular are very willing to change jobs. The city administration expects the number of unfilled positions to increase by almost ten percent by 2032 - from around 5.8 percent at present to 14.5 percent. The number of actually filled positions will not increase or will only increase slightly in the coming years.

In order to avoid contributing to a further increase in workload, the administration is intensifying its measures to optimize its processes through digitalization and automation. With the involvement of politicians, task-critical proposals are also being developed to limit the growth in personnel costs and maintain the efficiency of the administration.

The update of the staffing plan is subject to the approval of the 2023/2024 double budget by the Cologne district government.