Bobigny: the Tourist Office, it’s over

For over 45 years, the Bobigny Tourist Office has welcomed visitors from Monday to Saturday at 125 bis, rue Jean-Jaurès. There, in premises loaned by the city, a handful of volunteers attached to their commune tries to answer questions from onlookers, to indicate the current shows, to set up walks around the Avicenna hospital, the Muslim cemetery or even from the original town hall wedding hall.

“Each year, we organize around fifteen thematic visits to Bobigny,” explains Jean Joubert, one of the members of the board of directors. In the heyday of the service, we made up to 5000 tickets to show off the wedding hall. Our objective is to give another image of Bobigny and to promote our city. ”

The association is dissolved

However, since February 3, the 12 members of the board of directors, all volunteers from the Tourist Office, have decided to dissolve the association. The reason: according to them, they never managed to establish a dialogue with the new municipality, headed by the mayor UDI Stéphane de Paoli.

“Since March 2014, despite a hearing with the mayor in January 2015, no representative of the municipality has been appointed to sit on the board of directors of the office in accordance with the statutes,” said Jean Joubert. Four municipal councilors should have been appointed by the city to join the board of directors of the office with, among them, the president of the association. Otherwise, it is impossible for the volunteers to validate the program of visits for the year.

“Since the last municipal elections, nothing has been done, since there is no president,” deplores the volunteer. We don’t understand why the new team doesn’t care what we do. As a result, there are no more events. ” The water drop ? The organization of the “Bobigny ville fleurie” competition, which the office has managed for forty years, in partnership with the city. This year, the municipality communicated well on the file in the municipal magazine and took care of the leaflets to distribute in the mailboxes. But when organizing the award ceremony, total silence. “We made several reminders in town hall without getting a return,” he says.

“Activities were very limited”, according to the town hall

Disappointed, the volunteers set up a tourist office in the town of Bobigny at the start of the year to relaunch the visits. But they are worried about whether the city will open the doors to infrastructure if necessary. Because the dialogue seems very limited. “However, we have no political color, says Jean Joubert. Among the 12 members of the board of directors, two are FG activists, one is a municipal councilor member of the majority. The others, like me, are apolitical. ”