The mayors of Côte-d’Or must take the “ecological transition” turn
From Thursday to Friday, the Côte-d’Or Mayors’ Fair is held, organized by the Côte-d’Or Mayors’ Association at the Dijon Exhibition Center.
Meeting with Ludovic Rochette, mayor of Brognon and president of AMF21, the association of mayors of the Côte-d’Or.
I like Dijon. The living room of the mayors of Côte-d’Or has just opened today. can you see us explaining what it is about?
Ludovic Rochette. The Côte-d’Or Mayors’ Fair is an event organized by the Côte-d’Or Mayors Association, which I chair. It is a moment of meeting between the actors of the community, whether elected officials, but also services and companies (A hundred exhibitors are at the rendezvous in the exhibition center, editor’s note); a moment of dialogue too, between the territories, whether rural, urban, peri-urban, and which have never needed so much to communicate with each other. During the health crisis, we saw the essential role of local authorities, but also in the context of recovery. Today, we are at a third stage with the energy crisis. Despite the difficulty of energy expenditure, we have a common interest for our populations: take the turn of the ecological transition. This is also the central subject of our show this year. We must, with the State, companies, the department and the region, find ways to accelerate our policies in the context of ecological transition.
JD. The purpose of this fair is to bring together the mayors of Côte-d’Or in order to discuss current topics and the problems encountered by local elected officials. What topics are on the agenda?
G/D. In the context of the energy crisis that we are encountering, some communities will be able to invest in the energy transition with margins, but others could do absolutely nothing. We have to manage to find systems so that there are no territorial inequalities in the ecological transition. This is why theAMF (follow privilege) advocates a new stage of decentralization to be built with the State; a general overhaul of local taxation; and new forms of solidarity between territories – what we technically call equalization. Afterwards, we will have subjects which seem very technical, but which form very strong issues for our populations. In particular, what we call the objective Zero net land take. That is to say, to limit the consumption of new spaces as much as possible and, when this is impossible, to “return to nature” the equivalent of the areas consumed.
JD. Last November, you went with one hundred mayors of Côte-d’Or to the AMF congress in Paris. What message did you want to convey to the government?
G/D. The primary message that I wanted to convey was the future of rural areas, which concerns 51% of municipalities in France and around one in three municipalities in Côte-d’Or. The president of the national AMF, David Lisnard (LR mayor of Cannes, editor’s note), appointed me a national mission on the future of ZRR (Rural Revitalization Zone). These are devices to help rurality develop. One of the challenges today is to succeed in finding differentiation policies according to the territories.
JD. Last question. What does being mayor in 2022 mean?
G/D. First of all, that no longer means at all the same thing as when I was elected for my first mandate in 1998. Being mayor today means having to reform and knowing how to manage… It is a function that professionalizes, specializes and which also becomes more and more difficult. You know, in Côte-d’Or, one in ten mayors does not complete his term. On the other hand, there is one thing that does not change: being mayor means be attached to your community and its inhabitants.
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