For local elections you don’t need to be a Dutch citizen. All EU-citizens over 18 living in the Netherlands are eligible to vote. Non-EU citizens who have legally resided in the Netherlands for at least five years are also eligible to vote.
So, why vote D66?
D66 wants a progressive, free and tolerant city where everyone lives alongside one another. A city where it doesn’t matter who you love or what your cultural background is. We must stand firm against the dangers of a polarised society and let the city of Rotterdam be a place where you can be who you are, even more so than it already is today.
Rotterdam is becoming an increasingly popular and attractive place to live, developing into a world-class city. A vibrant and bold city with a focus on renewal, innovation and modernisation. Over the past four years, D66 – as part of the Rotterdam Executive Board – has put policy into place that enabled the building of a record number of houses. We have taken measures to preserve and create green city areas, cleaner air and a vibrant city centre. We invested 500 million euros in the sustainable refurbishment of school buildings. We have also invested in good childcare, focused on equal opportunities for your children – regardless of their background. Even though our city is doing well, our work is not finished yet. D66 believes there are challenges ahead in terms of education and employment, climate change and urban development.
Equal opportunities
Every child deserves a quality education in order to lay the foundation for a promising future. Factors such as skin color, gender, or parental socioeconomic status still influence the opportunities a child gets in life. This leads to inequality. D66 is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for everyone by investing in the quality of education. D66 wants an environment where lifelong learning means lifelong opportunities. We do everything we can to provide professional training and education opportunities for unemployed citizens and connect them to the labor market.
We will:
Provide all toddlers from the age of 2.5 access to preschool. We are committed to enhance the quality of teaching and prevent language and developmental delays.
Invest in teachers to help achieve a standard of excellence in the classroom.
Remain an attractive student city with affordable student accommodation.
Tackle low literacy.
Support Rotterdam asylum status holders, by offering them Dutch language courses and helping them towards work or education.
Ensure a zero tolerance policy on discrimination in the workplace.
Green growth
Cities play a key role in the battle against global warming. Municipalities are responsible for the local and small-scale generation of energy, the insulation of houses and the installation of energy networks.
We will:
Generate energy locally wherever possible, using windmills and solar panels.
Make sure the city no longer depends on natural gas. Replace gas heating with sustainable alternatives.
Reduce harmful emissions and air pollution. We further reduce the number of vehicles with harmful emissions entering the city. Public transport should be fully electric.
Make Rotterdam rainproof by placing more ‘green roofs’: 1,000,000 m2 in 2022.
Work together with educational institutions to make sure young people profit optimally from this new economy.
Healthy housing market
As an economically vibrant and internationally attractive city, Rotterdam is becoming an increasingly popular place to work and live. The number of inhabitants is growing and companies – from start-ups to large internationals – are all settling in our city. It is of great importance that we develop a healthy housing market. For many young professionals and starters it is almost impossible to find suitable housing in the city. Annual incomes of 36.000 euros and up are not eligible for social housing and have to compete in a private housing market, where affordable, high-quality property is scarce. D66 wants the housing market in Rotterdam to be accessible to everybody. This is why we choose to substantially increase the supply of housing for the middle-class and upper middle-class income households. We also need to invest in more sustainable public transport, both North and South of the river.
We will:
Encourage project developers to come up with innovative building strategies and to build 12.000 houses in the next 4 years (60.000 before 2040), primarily for middle-class and upper middle-class incomes.
Create a green, healthy and liveable city for, with more parks and green playgrounds.
Improve the infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, by creating more parking spots for bikes and fast-track bicycle-roads.
Het bericht March 21st local elections – Vote D66! verscheen eerst op Rotterdam.