The goal is clear: "we do not want to become less, but to maintain the status quo or to receive a subsidy." this is how mayor helmut dietz sums it up at the municipal council meeting on monday with regard to the strategic orientation of the municipality in terms of population development, and the council is in agreement.
Whether a planned change in the use of land on the outskirts of gereuth would be the right way to do this is still subject to criticism. Although there was unanimity in the untermerzbach committee, three public sponsors and the koser family from gereuth voiced their concerns about the planned inclusion statute for the gereuth part of the municipality in the context of a previous participation of the citizens, authorities and other sponsors.
Various interests
The lines of argumentation ran between questions about the actual need for new building plots (regional planning association main-rhon), which the municipality expressly affirms on the basis of the surveys from the 2015 and 2019 land management and existing building inquiries; questions of building law (is it really a matter of rounding off the village or rather of a new building area on the western edge of gereuth?? Koser family) and questions about regional development: who should be addressed with the new building plots?
35 minutes were devoted to the topic at monday’s meeting, four interim resolutions and one overall resolution were passed unanimously by the municipal council in a vote of no confidence. In the end, the municipality backed up its previous plans, which, according to mayor dietz, "represent a long-term strategic orientation" were.
The untermerzbach community council is thus sticking to its plans to obtain building rights for up to five single-family houses on the western edge of the village of gereuth. The plots concerned are numbers 211 and 181/182. Although the parcel with parcel number 396 is to be included in the inclusion statute, according to mayor dietz there is no possibility of building on this parcel in the short or medium term, as long as the land is used for agriculture.
Demand from local residents
As the mayor emphasized several times, the intended provision refers exclusively to requests from gereuth residents who are looking for building sites and want to stay in the village. In view of the concerns expressed, the basic surface area for new building projects was limited to 0.35, and the number of storeys to 0.7. Houses with one full storey and one attic storey as well as a maximum height of eight meters were thus permitted.
It is not surprising that the koser family feels distressed by the planned changes in land use, since their current view of the open countryside and the immediate surroundings were affected by two major construction projects in the community at the same time. The planned solar park, which is to be built near buch, is also only 750 meters as the crow flies from their property.
The buch solar park was then also the second building project dealt with by the municipal council. One remembers: the plans for the solar park buch had already triggered fierce discussions between the community and burgers and a burgers’ initiative "saves the panorama path" called on the plan.
As a result, the first referendum in the history of untermerzbach was held last september. 506 voters voted "no" and thus spoke out for a solar park near buch, only 156 voters put their cross at "yes" and thus voted against the planned photovoltaic plant. The voter turnout was 48 percent of all eligible voters in the municipality of untermerzbach.
Confirmed by this result in his work and his views, the council brought the project on monday into the next phase and approved the third change of the land use plan and the development plan for the project, which is to be built on 21 hectares of flat land. Once again, suggestions from citizens and authorities were incorporated into the plan. Once again the community council decided unanimously.
New in the drawings are a green corridor between the grass strips and a widened, more intensive border around the park. A meadow orchard with seating for hikers is to be created in the west of the site.
Even more green
The operator, energiebauern gmbh, also wants to prevent possible glare and better integrate the photovoltaic system into the landscape with hedges and flower strips along the edges in the east and west.
The maximum height of the modules is set at 3.20 meters in the new version. The area remains accessible to small animals such as hares and hedgehogs by means of a fence without a base. A newly inserted corridor between the two sections of the site is intended to provide a barrier-free passage from the forest to the open grassland and farmland to the east of the site for larger wild animals such as deer or wild boar.
Renewed interpretation
For both construction projects, it was also decided to involve the public and the authorities again in view of the new changes in the plans. The plan drawing and reasons for the solar park buch are to be available for inspection again at the beginning of the next year, the same applies to the planned supplementary statute of gereuth.