Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

meeting to order and the first item is the announcement of the hearing procedure. Um, thank you for your attendance and participation. The purpose of the public hearing is to gather information from the public to help the commission formulate recommendations in order to ensure a fair and orderly meeting where every can participate. The commission requests that you act respectfully to everyone in attendance and follow the uh public hearing procedures. Uh the chairperson will call the public hearing item. The planning department will present the staff recommendation. Commissioners may ask questions of staff. Uh presentation by the applicant or representatives. Commissioners may ask questions of the applicant. The chairperson will open the public hearing and will call for public comments from persons in support of the items followed by persons in opposition. The applicant will have a chance for rebuttal comments. The chairperson will close the public hearing and commissioners may ask questions and have discussion and then take action. Speakers must speak from the podium and state their name and address for the record. The chairperson reserves the right to establish a time limit for all speakers to that everyone can speak. I don't think we need a time limit this evening. The designation of a spokesperson for group sharing a common point of view is encouraged. All comments and questions will be directed to the chair from the podium and not to the applicant staff or audience. When the hearing is closed, additional public comments are not permitted. Roll call. Rosa Kavasos. Terry Robinson here. Janette Johnson here. Chad Gearhart

here. Dan Brian here. Myron Langwer with four members present. There is a quorum. Thank you. Have there been communications from the public to the staff? No. Any exparte communications by members of the commission? No. Any conflict of interest? All right. Then we will call C25-01 Rodney J. Trust requesting to amend the district zoning classification from RA1, Rural Agricultural District to I1 Light Industrial District on the property located approximately 125 ft east of the intersection of East Lakeland Drive on the south side of Northwest US 24 highway in Silver Lake Township. All right, thank you. Har Perez, um, planning and zoning administrator. Uh, we have only one case today, which is Z2501, Rodney Robinson Trust. Um, the requested action is to amend the district zoning classification from RA1 to I1. Um, it's located northwest of US 24 highway in Silver Lake Township and it's about 1.85 acres. Um here we have the general location and you can see that um in the blue star and um here we have the vicinity map and um the property owners within 1,000 ft. Um we sent out 13 letters. Um however, we received no responses. Staff recommends approval subject to the following

conditions. One, submission of a category A drainage report to public works for review and approval. Any requirements of the drainage report must be met prior prior to development. Two, a final plaid of the subject property shall be approved and recorded prior to development. Three, an entrance permit from K DOT must be obtained or if not available an ingress egress eastment with the parcel to the west will be considered upon consideration of the building permits. And that concludes um this item. representative here. Someone that wants to speak for the zoning request. Joshua Bolinsky with SBB Engineering. Uh it's a pretty simple case. Mr. Robertson owns the property to the west and his window and door company and he's just wanting to develop this 1.85 acres to provide additional manufacturing and storage space and possibly in the future some storage units possibly just keeping his options open. Uh those three um requirements uh we're preparing the storm report now with the plat. Uh we're applying for the entrance permit uh as we speak. So we'll have all that documentation documentation done fairly quickly. Other than that, not much more to be said. Any questions that any of you would like to ask? I guess not. Thank you very

much. Are there is there anyone from the public that would like to speak? I'm assuming you're all together. Then I guess we'll close the public part of the hearing and do the commissioners have any questions or any discussion? Storage units are allowed as a use under Yeah. And on this one, they're doing this one is the reszoning from RA to I1, but they also are in the process of working on a plat, which you'll hear once uh we have that on the schedule. Um and so they will be back again, but yeah, with the resoning, all of the uses that they've proposed, all they would have to do at that point would come in for building permits. They're allowed. The only question I would have is is it look pretty good to be able to get an entrance permit. Uh yes, we had the uh K representative out and we marked the location of the entrance and he approved the site distances and things like that and told us to go ahead with submitting the permit. Thank you. Any other questions? I'll move uh to accept the staff recommendation to approve the reasoning from approval according toending conditions. I second that. It's been moved and seconded

to approve the zoning change subject to the recommendations of staff. Chad Gahert. Hi, my lineer. Terry Robinson. I Dan Brian. Hi. Janette Johnson. Hi. With a unanimous vote in favor, the item is recommended for approval and will go to the board of county commissioners on June 9th to be heard by them. Remember that those meetings have been moved to Mondays. So June 9 is Monday now. We thank you and we're going to move on now to some planning related issues. Um, you're welcome to stay if you'd like to hear us discuss the the solar energy conversion systems, but you're free to leave. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay. So item H is discussion of planning related items and the what we have on there is the work session for solar energy conversion systems. Um after our discussions last month um what I did was I went ahead and put together the starts of a draft for solar regulations. Um, I was working on them up until just right before, otherwise I would have sent them to you guys to look at ahead of time. But ultimately, what we have here are several specific requirements

for the applications, but then I also did a section that's just termed recommendations. Um, in our discussion last month, part of the question was, do we have to lay everything out in the regulations that they have to do or is it possible that we have some regulations that they have to follow and then we have a list of other items that could be considered that may or may not apply to each specific case. um so that we're not overregulating every single conditional use permit, but at the other side of that, you have some direction of things to consider as you're looking through these cases whenever they may come up. So, that's how I that's how I did it. Um I looked through um I looked through Sedwick County's solar regulations. I know that Terry, you had been looking at those and there were a lot of great uh details in there. So, I took some of the information from theirs. I also took some from Harvey County. And then over like now that I have this set, I think that what I'll do is I'll go back even to some of the other counties and see um where they may have put items and if there are things that are in others that are missing in either Cedric County or Harvey County, we could always add those in. Um, so ultimately the first thing that I put was that personal solar or sex solar energy conversion systems are going to be allowed in any zone. So that would be if you have them on your um your house, your business, anything that's supporting your own personal use, those are allowed in any zone. Uh, and you do not have to get a conditional use permit. That would just be upon a building permit. Then I also put that all others would be allowed upon the approval of a conditional use permit only within zones RA, RR as well as then

I1 and I2. Um, none of them will be allowed within a special flood hazard area that would include all mapped flood plane floodway or other special hazard flood zones. Um I did inquire with um the one of the engineers with the division of water resources. Uh she was doing a flood plane presentation at our planning meeting a few weeks ago. We do an annual statewide planning meeting with other county officials and I asked her input or the state's input on solar within the flood plane and she said that they had no specific input but her personal recommendation is that we keep it away um for a multitude of reasons. Um, if we did allow it within a flood plane, obviously then they would all have to go through various flood plane development permits and potentially hiring engineers and depending on what it is that they're putting in, they may have to get um elevation certificates or norise certificates or whatever's required. So, it's just easier if we kind of keep it away from those flood plane areas. Um, after our discussion the last time, I indicated that the project area shall not exceed 240 acres. Um, we we stated that as kind of an across the board, but one thing that I thought about after the fact is that if you wanted to allow, you know, we were looking at those areas that were kind of further away and thinking, well, 240 acres may not be so bad. But, you know, another thing that we could do is have in the RA zone, which is the rural agricultural, which is further away, allowed for up to 240 acres. And then if you wanted to minimize that a little bit in the RR, which is closer to town, uh to the city, um we could always do that, but I put it in here as 240 acres. Um and then I indicated that a project area boundary, so that would be the

outskirts of any boundary of that project, should not be nearer than two miles to any other project area boundary. So that would allow us to then will allow those 240 acres, but you can't be any closer than two miles to another project. And that will help space them apart. Um, and that would be measured between a boundary line to the other boundary line utilizing a straight line as the growth lies from one to the other. Um, I indicated some setbacks from residences of 500 ft from any other buildings or accessory structures located on another that's not a party to the uh the project boundary um would be a setback of 150 ft from property lines. A minimum of 50 ft, but those others would push that back if there are um residences or structures that make it go back further. Um and then also 150 ft from any road or unimproved road rightway. Now, I included unimproved road rideway because we do have dedicated road rideaways throughout Shauny County that have not yet been built out. But if it were to be built out in 20 years, and there's a solar farm sitting there, you want to make sure that it's set back just as appropriate from any already built road. Um, and then one thing that we had included in our two previously approved solar farms is that they would provide a re review after the first year of operation. Um I don't recall whether they then had to submit an annual or you know every two or every five year review but I think that we would want them to have a review after the first year and then maybe also include every five years thereafter so that they can check in with us and update us on what's happening, how production has been

making sure that they're still operating and that we don't need to try and move forward with any sort of decommissioning. Does the county trigger those type of reviews or does the in here I put that it's the responsibility of the applicant? Um they they should be the ones responsible and I will be honest that we did get one just recently from the two solar farms. Now that it was late and we didn't have it on any sort of calendar system notifying us so that we could send out a reminder. I did talk we're in the middle of doing a building permit portal and I have been talking with them a little bit about whether there's any sort of reminder system that we can utilize and there's just probably not. The problem with this is is that as employees and staff changes. There are some of us that don't know that there are projects that have historically been told that they need to file these reports and if nobody knows and they don't do it then what's going to happen? So we have to have some sort of system to alert us if the applicant fails to get it accomplished. Is that a revocable their C if they don't you could if you felt I mean I I would say that yes you could because it's a condition of the CU if I think that there would be some flexibility in the sense that if we send out a reminder and say hey you haven't done it and they get it done then it's fine. Um, so then just real quick on that on that number 10, not that I want to get in crazy details, but I could see that being a problem in the future gray area of the first year of operation. Is that when we first approve it, when they first break ground, when they first turn it on? Once they um commence actual operation. So it takes a lot of time even from the point that they get the conditional use permit approved once they come to us for the building permits and get everything finalized and then actually flip on the lights. Yeah. So once they start actually running as a business. Okay.

Um so then number 11 I talk about all project applications. Now some of this is not going to be much different than any other conditional use permit. You have to include the site plan. You need to include a business plan or project narrative. But I want to make sure that they're including anything about the you know the total acreage of the project, number of arrays, how it's going to be, you know, phases of construction. Um, they should also provide a detailed narrative on the actual technology that's going to be used, height, mounting, so the actual uh solar panels and arrays. They would need to do a drainage report. Um, and some of this came from our prior approved conditional use permits that are what we required of them. Um, soil erosion plans, vegetative and landscaping plan, glare prevention. Uh, one thing that we did not have the two solar farms do is include a de decommissioning and reclamation plan or a financial assurance. Now, recall that on there they are to be held to the same standard as any new regulations and so we could go back on them and say you need to provide us these plans um for review and approval to make part of your approved plan. So a bond and then a decommissioning and reclamation plan. So then the rest of them and those are the ones that I required. The rest of them are recommended and once someone has applied, we would recommend that they provide us as much of it as possible. But also once they appear in front of you, if you found that there are things that they didn't include that you would want, you could go back and say, "Well, here's a list of all these recommendations and I think we need you to do these items." Um my office could also do the same based on the circumstances. If we felt like there was a specific environmental concern, we could ask them to provide those details. But it includes um pilot agreements, traffic impact analysis,

um construction management plans, uh a plan for removal of damaged panels and components, uh information regarding lighting or if it's close to an airport, needing an FAA sign off, uh environmental assessments, soil and groundwater testing, uh emergency sign, uh contact information for signs if there's a fire, a plan um utilizing exist existing terrain and vegetation and I noted in here because Terry had mentioned this to the greatest extent possible that they should retain existing native vegetation trees and tree lines. So trying to utilize trees versus taking them down. Um and then if they sell or transfer the lease then they would have to notify us in writing so that we could ensure that the new has to comply. Um, I have on here M andN for battery storage systems as well as the electrical distribution and transmission lines, but I don't really have uh I don't know what to put in there yet. And so that's one where I would like to put some additional detail before we vote on it. Um, and so hopefully before next meeting I can put some more details on that. Um, within 72 hours of an extraordinary event, they would have to provide notice. So, what if there's a big hail storm and all of a sudden a bunch of panels are destroyed or have been damaged and then that may be an event that triggers uh soil or ground testing. And then I also indicated that all other regulations that are currently underneath our conditional use permits would still have to be um applied. And that's where I left it. Do you guys have specific questions or direction you want me to go? I want you to look through these, study them, compare them to uh,

you know, regulations that are currently out there, think about it, and then we can have a, you know, a more in-depth study next month. But I wanted to give you guys some direction on where I thought it was going. I I think the biggest question that I have is what actions do the will the county or the county take, especially since there could be some environmental issues here if there's if the whoever puts the s puts this in does not comply. In other words, they get it in but they're not they're not maintaining the property, they're not we got soil erosion, we've got damaged panels or we get to the end and they don't follow reclamation plan. What what avenues does the county have in those scenarios and does that need to be put in in our uh in our literature? I think part of that's already in there with the bonding. So Oh, so you're going to rely on the bond. You'll just you'll just collect Well, so we have the ability to enforce in terms of um sending violation notices, which we we would do with any situation. you have, we can send violation notices. If they don't respond or don't comply with what it is that they're supposed to do, then I do have the ability to send that on to the county counselor's office who then has the ability to file court cases or get injunctions against them to force them to do something. Um some of that will fall back on the the bond or the the financial shity. Um where we so the the governing body if I went to them and I said they're not doing what it is that they're supposed to do. We need to call it back. Um then they would be able to

direct that that bond would get released so that we could mitigate damages. Some of it may be going to court though. Yeah. So how how are we to determine the amount of the bond. they will be responsible for telling us the total cost of and some of it is laid out in here and some of it I was still reading through um what other counties have done but it'll be similar to what we would require on other items where we were required like cory's um they would have to provide us the detail of what the cost would be to clean it up were there to be a major event or they have to do the reclamation so what is it that cost estimate is that it would cost. Um, and then I would want them to obviously they would give that to us. We would review it and determine if we need to upcharge them or make them do an overage percentage. Um, then they would need to do a review every five years and look at cost of inflation, see if we need to up that. Um, if so, then they would have to increase that bond or cash escro. Sure. Thank you. Some of it we would also probably need to rely on our own I mean people who know a little bit about it. We might reach out to our financial administrator. We might reach out to our county counselor who has a lot of experience in terms of bonds and um costs of those someone on our own planning commission. I don't know Chad, do you work at all with the bonds? There's been a couple counties that have required us to get or a professional study, right? Basically a couple. Okay.

I think there's statutes. Yeah. that sets the bond that we just increase actually the full amount that I don't so the way that I had I don't know about with queries I think you can usually do either way it's sort of like if you're bonding out of jail you can pay your cash bond and just pay the money or you can hire a shing company to do it and you pay a percentage Obviously these feels like one of those last week had a couple caviots. like they can derive from it county commissioners chose to like for instance number four if we vote on this and the county commissioners vote on this limited 24 that's something set commissioners and they want they feel like piece of land 640 acres. It would have to circle all the way back through us and then back through the to correct unless we put behind that unless approved by

And that's what Douglas County has. Um, so they have theirs limited to like a,000 or 1,200 to some degree. Um, whatever the number is. They have a set number and then it says unless an exception is provided by the BCC and the current system that they have under consideration. It the total project boundary is larger. The actual arrays are only like 600 acres of that but the total project area is much larger. And so yes they they have a clause like that. speaking for myself for more or less or either way. Either way on the size of the I have a couple of questions too. Uh I don't think the distance from the city limits or the metropolitan growth area was addressed in this. It wasn't. And so that's something that we need to think about. And then, you know, it's easy to approve it when they're using existing transmission lines, but if they have to put up transmission lines and go along a lot of other property owners property, then that's a different story. So, probably on page three, I mean, I did

number these pages, nor did I date this draft. So, just be aware that once you leave here, you'll never know when I presented it to to you. Um, on page three, we I do have a sentence about electrical interconnections, distribution lines, and transmission lines, but that is one that I did not delve deep enough into to properly write anything about. Um, a lot of the other counties discussed having underground lines, um, you know, requiring specific underground lines or following. So, I can look at that a little bit closer. Um, another thing that I didn't address in here is this makes the assumption that that 240 acres is all right next to each other. And in some cases, you may have a project boundary line, but the actual project area is divided up. And so, then how do we address it being skipping and jumping and maybe not all contiguous? And so, that's another thing that uh I did not address. Um, in regards to the city limits and the urban growth area, I think that I would be hesitant to limit that without first getting input from the city planning department to whether they care. Um, you know, there's a lot of people, some of the other counties specifically limit it from the the distance of the city limits, but when you have projects within the city limits, do we care if they're close to the city limits? Now, within we did discuss at the prior meeting whether putting one near a set of city limits may prohibit specific growth, but I think that what we would want to do is once, you know, if that is want to add in. I would want to bounce that off of the city to see if they care or not. And

if they don't, then we may not include it as a topic. I think Cedric County banned it from the urban growth area. I do believe with there were they did have some sets of specific areas that were not and I remember that because they were looking at a situation where they wanted somebody put a solar field within that area. They were trying to avoid that at all costs for the various reason of expansion. Yeah. What about the smaller town? So has it urban growth area, but the smaller towns, I mean, if we're only 500 ft away from residents, I mean, they could one of these things right up against Silver Lake or Rossville or whatever. I mean technically when we do these I think that it's a good idea to send them to each of the town the towns as well as the townships and allow them to review and give input because it will affect each of them. So so typically in a somebody going to make an investment like this would they typically come before they even purchase the property? No, they probably lease it, not purchase it. Okay, most of them will lease it. But, uh, no, I mean, just like with when we were hearing about leases out there on wind, they were in existence for years before we found out that they had leases on property. I I mean, I can assume we leased property for Okay. I can only assume that there there's entirely possible leases out there right now. We just don't know about I mean cancelsided.

Yeah. The trans the transmission line thing is that's a good good thing to bring up. I as a builder developer, I get phone calls all the time from houses that I built in areas where Everg is going to build transmission lines with them thinking that I can somehow fix it. No, I can come testify on your behalf, but that's about it. So, I know the transmission lines are big deals to most Okay. Anything else? You giving us a lot of food for thought here and some direction. I sort appreciate that. Um, absolutely. If you are reviewing it in your free time and want to send emails of other comments, if you do, send them to me um directly. Don't send them to the whole group, but You're absolutely free to send those over and we can always implement or include them as suggested changes in the next round. Like I said, I hope to bolster this just a tad bit more. Um, and I I will email this out to the other commissioners that were not able to be here tonight so that they can see it as well and give input and then I would like to have a a good serious discussion about it in June. Not saying that you need to vote on it in June, but getting it to a point where that we're moving towards having some public comment, public hearing type things. Um, also just as a side note, uh, we will put on the agenda the extension of the moratorum at the next meeting. So June 9 is our next meeting and it will have the extension of the moratorum on there. The

moratorum went into effect on June 24 of last year. So, what I'll do is I'll have it on that June meeting and once you've voted whether to extend it or to not extend it, then I would take that to the board of county commissioners at their following um BCC meeting so that that is done prior to the uh expiration. What's the order of operations going forward in terms of So, we have this I mean a pretty rough nice template here and we're going to keep Like when does do we we don't adopt anything until we hear public comment or do we adopt and then you let the comment public? Nope. So what the the standard is is that we get it to a point that we like and you guys have said, "Okay, here's where we think we're at." So you'll do some mini votes. You'll continue to give me discussions and updates and I'll make changes and moves and then we will at that point accept it as its kind of final version and then we'll send it out to review. um cities, townships, fire districts, um other county departments who may have input and get input from them and then we'll set it for a public hearing here in front of you guys just like we would a resoning or conditional use permit. Um so we'll publish notice in the paper. We will send out notice to everybody who's ever requested information about it. Uh and then we will do it probably not here. We might do it at Greater Overland Station or elsewhere, have a major public hearing on it and let people have public comment. And then you would vote to recommend approval or denial at that point um in official official status which would then budget over to the board of county commissioners. What if we would vote to deny then still come back in workshop it like because I'm sure we're going to hear some things from people that know more than we do.

Yeah. I I would expect public comment to be rather lengthy. If it's like the last if it's like the last time we did it, it will be rather gonna need that. Of course, we had wind on that wind on that one, too. Yeah. Well, I I I I'm I'm just sure there's going to be a bevy of questions. We better be ready to answer. Yeah. Is it are we going to li say that the array has to be limited to a certain percentage? I did not include that. Um, you know, we did I did mention that as an option to a percentage within that 240, but I didn't because I had all the setbacks and I limited it the total project to the 240 acres. And so already to a degree it's already limits um and so I didn't know if we really need if you still would like one I would absolutely put one in that's fine but I didn't because I had some significant setbacks from various things so and I think the setbacks do the job and you got to give them some freedom to use the land. Yeah. I mean not everybody's land's going to be big flat on the field so they might need to adjust as they go like Okay. Well, other than that, I don't have anything else on this. We will talk about it more next month. Um, do we have anything else on the agenda? Not tonight. Or you mean next month? Yeah, we have a zoning for Yes. And then is plat for windows and design

on July. Okay. So we just have it's a resoning of it's a a commercial construction office um that has is purchasing a piece of property practically out of the county. It's over off of um 24 highway, right? 24. Highway 24 um and practically to Carlson. Well, right off of Carlson Road. Wow. And so they were originally wanting to reszone it to C1, but we've modified that and downgraded it to just an O and I um reszoning, which is office and institutional, so it can never be used for anything other than an office. Um part of the concern that came by since it is quasi spot zoning, putting commercial layout there, um was that once you reszone it to C1, a lot of different stuff could go on that property. But by changing that to ONI, it limits it pretty significantly. So is that one that you think probably won't have a lot of opposition to? So it shouldn't take very long. That way we can devote more time to this. Yeah. Yeah. Take notes, read up. Like I said, send me comments or questions ahead of time so I can be prepared to answer specific questions if you have them. Um or other recommendations that you think that I've really just missed out on. I tried to not overregulate it. and I tried to put more of the, you know, here's what we're requiring to be smaller and here are other recommendations to be larger to give us a little flexibility. So, okay, there's no further business, then I guess some of the other ones