Around 80 appeals were received by officials regarding the relocation of the station in Brno

Brno - Officials of the Brno City Hall will begin sifting through piles of documents related to the reconstruction of the Brno railway and the relocation of the train station in the coming weeks. Among other things, they will decide on the legitimacy of approximately 80 appeals filed by individuals and environmentalists against the zoning decision made by the Brno-Centrum building authority. The City Hall has a sixty-day deadline to make a decision. It is not yet clear whether they will meet this deadline or request an extension, said Eva Řehořková, head of the Department of Zoning and Building Procedures, to ČTK today.
     The zoning decision, a key document without which construction cannot proceed or European funding cannot be requested, was issued by the building authority of the Brno-Centrum municipal district at the end of November. Following that, the appeal period began, and at the beginning of last week, all files were received by the appellate authority, which is the Brno City Hall. There were so many documents that they had to be transported on a cart. The zoning procedure regarding the redevelopment of the Brno railway is likely the largest ever conducted by officials at building authorities in the Czech Republic.
     According to Řehořková, the law provides several options for how officials can decide in the appeal process. They can confirm the favorable decision of the Brno-Centrum building authority; in that case, the investor could apply for a building permit. The second option is to change the decision, and the third is to annul it and return it for further consideration.
     If officials find that it is not possible to assess some of the objections due to the lack of expert opinions, for example, they can ask the investor to complete them. However, the authority would then have to inform the participants of the new findings and allow them time to respond.
     The reconstruction of the Brno railway junction and the associated relocation of the main train station one kilometer to the south is already several months behind the original schedule. The building authority of Brno-Centrum was supposed to issue the zoning decision initially last June, but due to official errors, they only managed to do so in November.
     Furthermore, environmentalists want to challenge this decision. They believe that the officials at Brno-Centrum City Hall did not post the decision on the official notice board in a manner required by law and intend to file a criminal complaint as a result. Miroslav Patrik from the environmental organization Děti Země confirmed this to ČTK today. The deputy mayor of the municipal district, Dagmar Hrubá (ODS), has previously denied any mistakes.