As of: February 21, 2024, 6:23 p.m
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Huge brownfield site in the middle of Neuried, with the maypole and the village church of St. Nicholas in the background: One part of the local council wants to sell the “Ortsmitte Nord” and another just wants to lease the area.
© Martin Schullerus
The municipality of Neuried is having massive problems putting together a balanced budget for 2024.
The current draft budget could only be implemented if loans of around 3.3 million euros were taken out, as treasurer Robert Beckerbauer explained to the main, finance and personnel committee on Tuesday.
However, the municipal supervisory authority in the Munich district office is unlikely to approve this given the municipality's already high debt of 16.8 million euros.
There are therefore only two options, according to the treasurer: either you generate further income, for example by selling the property in the north center of the town, or you put the red pencil on it, rigorously cut the investment program and postpone projects to the following years.
Beckerbauer emphasized that cosmetic operations are not enough.
“You really have to get down to business.”
Neuried's tense financial situation is also due to the exceptionally high trade tax revenue in 2022.
The municipality must therefore pay more than 14 million euros to the Munich district as a levy this year.
In addition, there are unexpected burdens from the school associations.
As recently became known, the municipalities of Planegg and Neuried paid too little for the extension of the Feodor-Lynen-Gymnasium due to a calculation error.
Neuried will therefore probably have to shell out a good one million euros.
In addition, there is an additional payment of around 300,000 euros for the new equipment of the state Würmtal secondary school in Gauting.
These high burdens lead to a deficit of 6.3 million euros in the administrative budget.
In addition, there are planned investment expenditures of 7.4 million euros.
Even by using the remaining reserves (around 10.6 million euros at the beginning of the year), the budget cannot be balanced, says Beckerbauer.
Marianne Hellhuber (CSU) again spoke out in favor of selling the property in the north town center.
“We could solve a lot of problems with this.” Group spokesman Michael Zimmermann had a similar view.
The community must finally come to a clean solution, otherwise the financial problems will just be postponed.
In this context, Zimmermann pointed out future expensive compulsory tasks such as all-day care for students from 2026.
Corinna Pflästerer-Haff (Greens) defended the council's decision to grant the property a long-term lease.
Only in this way would future generations have the chance to shape their future.
Revenue would also be generated through the leasehold.
And the trade tax increased significantly from five to ten million euros in the previous year compared to the time before Corona.
Pfästerer-Haff said she doesn't see anything bad for the future, she just has to manage the current budget through savings.
Eric Kirschner (SPD) also advocated not selling the property.
“When the silverware is gone, it is gone.” With a sale, the community could solve all the problems at once, said Birgit Zipfel (Greens), but this would only postpone the overall problem to future generations.
“They have to invest again.” Zipfel complained that the municipalities were being burdened with more and more tasks by the state government without taking local revenues into account.
Mayor Harald Zipfel also saw the district council as having a duty.
“We cannot save for the district.” The latter should also influence the district to reduce expenses.
The Finance Committee finally unanimously agreed to refer the budget draft back to the parliamentary groups and committees and to look for savings options in order to compensate for the deficit.
Andreas Deny