Circus organizer Hans Klok on Texel appeals against penalty payments | Book & Culture

Last August, Klok went to Texel with a traveling circus to give a series of shows on a former ice rink. The municipality had granted a permit for this.

But the crew arrived on site with the caravan too early. The employees also ended up erecting more temporary housing units than agreed. For this purpose, the municipality imposed penalty payments of 10,000 and 9,000 euros.

“We were first assigned another site. We then contacted the municipality and this site emerged, not knowing that residents have been objecting to this site for years,” says Willem Schildt of Beam Event.

“It should be a nature reserve and vulnerable, the municipality also knew that. There was even summary proceedings about this from one of the residents just before we arrived.”

“Afterwards, under pressure from those residents, they looked at imposing a penalty, because the whole story blew up in the face of the municipality,” says René Duursma, producer of the show.

According to Duursma and Schildt, this would have been discussed in discussions with the deputy mayor, among others, as well as the symbolic value of the penalty payments. “That’s what happened,” says Duursma. “And that will soon become clear from the documents.”

Schildt and Duursma say there are records of those conversations. According to Duursma, this shows that Beam Event “is not to blame whatsoever”. The company has now requested these documents with an official Woo request.

The municipality of Texel announces that it has already shared all existing documents with Beam Event following an earlier request for information. According to a spokesperson, if the matter were to go to court, nothing new would emerge.

Klok simply received his money and has nothing to do with the case. “You are the man on the poster, so people speak to you. But I had nothing to do with the organization,” he says.

“I have spoken negatively here and there, but Texel remains a beautiful island. I am not grudged, I just expected a little more welcome. But it is only a small group of people. We performed well, but had a bit of bad luck .”