Zoning Board of Adjustment - Regular Meeting

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And then again. I think I'm okay. Welcome everybody to the Mills County Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting here tonight. I'm Matt Wyant. I am with the Building and Zoning Department for Mills County. I just wanted to provide just some general housekeeping before the meeting tonight.

First off is the restrooms are right back there to go all the way to the restroom. Presentation and public speaking podium is going to be up here. So the way the meeting will roll is the Apple team will come up here and give their presentation meeting. And those who are wanting to speak in favor of the request will come up next to the podium to speak. And then after the people in favor speak, the people opposed to the project will come up and speak. And then at the end, the applicant will get a closing statement for their case, which is on the board of the Justified Care tonight. So just to make sure that once we open public speaking aspect of it, and Corey likes our chairperson to call for any members of the public who want to speak in favor, you can come up here to the podium. You have to state your name and address for us, because that just gets entered into the record. Same thing on the opposed side. State your name and your address, gets entered into the record for us. but thank you all for joining us here tonight. I appreciate it.

OK, that said, welcome everybody to types Mills County Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting. All the start of the meeting. Can I get a roll call please?

Yes. Here. Evans here.

Thank you. Can I get a review action and approval of the current meeting agenda?

I get a review and action approval of the previous meeting minutes.

Resolution.

Second. Second. All right. At this time, I'm going to read a lengthy statement. If we can, the span's a little bit loud, so I can't hear you.

All right. Public hearing will be conducted pursuant to the board's rules and procedure. We will first hear the report of the department on the detailed information and observations regarding the request before the board. If not done so, in written form prior to the hearing. Next, we will take the testimony of the applicant and his or her witnesses. At any time during the presentation of testimony, the members of the board may interrupt to ask questions or to make comments on what has been said. Upon completion of the applicant's testimony, I will call upon members of the audience wishing to be heard in serving the request. Persons in favor of the request shall be heard first, followed by those opposed to it. Upon completion of all testimony, the applicant will be allowed to make a closing statement to the board. Upon completion of the applicant's closing statement, I will entertain a motion from the board to close the public hearing on the request. The board reserves the right to ask questions of any member of the audience. However, we will not hear any unsolicited statements unless the public hearing is first reopened. Each speaker addressing this board shall step forward to the podium and state their name and address before proceeding with their testimony or evidence. The board shall now not be bound by strict rules of evidence, but does reserve the right to exclude evidence or testimony that it may deem to be irrelevant, immaterial, incompetent, or unruly repetitious. As chairman, I will rule on all questions relating to the admissibility of evidence which may be overruled by a majority of the board. Consistences may be granted by the board in case for good cause shown to any interested party who has entered their appearance. the board may request a continuous of a hearing for their purpose of giving further notice, taking further evidence, gathering further information, touring the proposed site, or for such other reasons as the board may find sufficient. In such case, we shall state the specific reasons for the continuance and set a date, time, and place when the matter will be continued. All official actions of this board will be made at a public meeting by motion made seconded in a polling of the membership. conditions are imposed such conditions shall be included in the motion for amendment thereto our final decision will be prepared in writing and will be part of the public record of this work at this time we'll have the discussion of formal action on conditional use permit 26.09 for the proposed utility scale solar farm involving the protection of utility scale Energy located at the properties with parcel numbers C attachment A. It's in the St. Mary's and Oak Townships and the Ash and Industrial Zoning Districts. At this time, we are ready for the applicant.

Would you like me to take the microphone for this portion? Yes, sir.

Hello, everyone. My name is Lee Greenwald. I'm with the Barrett Home Law Firm on behalf of Orion Renewable Energy Group. We are excited to be here tonight to introduce this project to you. I see a lot of you in orange shirts. You already know the details, but we're excited to share this with the board as well. Before we get to our presentation and as the staff report calls for, if it pleases the chair, I have a number of items that I would like to offer into the record. These items have already been received by the board in the planning department, but we would like the record tonight to reflect them. So with your permission, I would like to offer a property value analysis, an acoustical analysis, a preliminary traffic analysis, a proposed road use agreement with the county attorney, the packet of supplemental information we provided to the board to answer questions posed in the staff report, and the proposed resolution and conditions of approval, we will reference all of these items throughout our presentation. So I'd like to offer them now and then turn the microphone over to Sasi Gourley, who will introduce the project to you all.

Thank you. Hello, everyone.

It's great to be here with you all tonight. My name is Sazi, and I'm the project developer for our Folsom Lake solar project. Here's an overview of what we'll cover in tonight's presentation. We'll share some background on our company and our work in Mills County, provide an overview of the project, and dive into some details with our third-party experts. At the end, we'll cover legal compliance and then wrap things up. Orion Renewable Energy is a company developing the Folsom Lake Solar Project. We're a privately held American founded company that began 28 years ago, and we're still led today by our four original co-founders. We've developed clean energy projects across the country that have generated enough electricity to power over 3.1 billion homes throughout the US. We're also one of the first companies to construct utility scale projects in the Midwest, including a 765 megawatt project in Jasper County, Indiana. We've had hundreds of meetings with folks over the past five years and wanted to share some specifics for how we approached working with the community here in Mills County. We began meeting with local farmers in 2021, which was also when we first met with county officials. Since then, we've worked to introduce our project to as many groups as possible across all sides of the county, from Bidding Glenwood and Pacific Junction Railroad Clubs on the west side to Silver City's Youth Council and the Henderson Activities Committee on the east. We've also met with local fire and rescue groups and held a coordination meeting with Offutt Air Base, which we'll share more about later in the presentation. We opened an office in Glenwood where we've held lots of meetings and we've really enjoyed getting to know the other businesses on the block. A quick shout out to Joe Designer who did our project logo here on the screen. Over a hundred local first responders attended our initial safety training in June. One of our main takeaways was that no additional or special equipment is needed if there's a worst case scenario on the site. And the group who ran our presentation has a representative, Paul, who you'll hear from later in the presentation this evening. We wanted as many local residents as possible to hear about the project from us so we could answer any questions directly. Here's a photo of our door knocking team. We knock on all residences within a third of a mile of the project We also held office hours, attended community events, and hosted one-on-ones. It's been a privilege to work with local groups doing incredible work across the county. Our project is on the westernmost side of the county. We've collaborated with groups in nearly every town in Mills County. As just one example, we recently held a workshop series at the Malvern Public Library for community members to help create this mural under the theme, what does Mills County mean to you? When people ask me what part of this project excites me the most, the first thing I mentioned is our community grant fund, which will grant out up to $17.5 million over the life of the project. These dollars have to stay in Mills County and can support a broad range of issues from emergency services to parks. All funding decisions will be made by a committee of Mills County residents. And overall, we just care deeply about being a good neighbor and ensuring as many people as possible benefit from our project. Here's some other key economic benefits. One that impacts everyone in the county is property taxes. A full build-out of our project will generate over $36 million in property taxes across Mills County taxing districts. We'll also have an annual six-figure contribution to the local levy district. And the scale of our project, importantly, allows us to do things that will impact people on the individual level too. So we have a solar neighbor program that will offer non-participating residences within a third of a mile of the project annual payments of $2,500 a year, which escalate by 30% each decade. Additionally, we have a tenant transition program that offers a one-time payment of $300 per acre to any tenant farmer who is farming ground that will be used for the solar project. I'll note that both of these programs are completely voluntary with no strings attached. And in addition, the project will create hundreds of construction jobs and about 10 to 15 permanent jobs once operations begin.

This is a bird's eye view of our full project.

We're seeking a conditional use permit, or CUP, for 800 megawatts of solar and 900 megawatts of battery storage. As you see on the screen, our project is mostly south of Bungie Avenue, east of the Missouri River, and west of 195th Street. The red background shows the county's industrially zoned land, while the light green is ag land. In the purple box, we have our proposed project substation, battery storage, and operations and maintenance building. That's 31 acres. And as a whole, the total fenced acres for our project is 3,221 acres. This includes 20 foot gaps between each row of panels and about 35 feet between the final row of panels and the fence line. And I share that information to illustrate that you know, the vast majority of our area within the fence is still open. The entire project will be sited on privately owned land, and we have all of the land needed to accommodate our facilities. So you may be asking why we chose this location, this part of Mills County, and there are a few reasons. First, our average CSR2 rating is 60.51. In this context, the Farm Bureau considers anything below 65 to be lower quality farm ground. Many of our farmers have to use live irrigation or even cannot farm all of their ground in the bottoms. As you saw from the map, this is also an industrial area. We're near Bungie and the Walter Scott plant, but we're away from highly concentrated residential areas. We also had a lot of interest from local farmers, many of whom are looking to retire or could use the stable rent income from our project to invest in their farming operations elsewhere. And lastly, this is an area with flood risk that solar is uniquely able to accommodate compared to other businesses. So why are we requesting the conditional use permit now? There are a few reasons. Our project requires several time intensive permits before we can start construction. CUP is just one of those. We also have to get our permit from the state, which is the Iowa Utility Commission. That process alone can take about a year, and they prefer that we apply for that state permit after we've gone through the process locally so that we can show that we've taken the local community seriously and we've gone through that permitting process before we zoom out and go through the state. The FAA clearance is another permitting process that can take around a year, a year and a half, and we'll talk about that in just a bit. But overall, our CUP establishes an initial local approval. It's the start that confirms our ability to move forward for other permits with a specific design. That being said, the county is legally protected through many conditions of approval, so we cannot secure building permits or start construction until all of those conditions of approval are met. We wanted to specifically address our coordination with FAA and office since there have been some recent questions. Overall, We have to submit an application for FAA clearance that involves coordination with several different DOW departments. OFFIT is one of those departments, but they're not the only one. The outcome that we're looking for is a determination of no hazard. And this process as a whole can take up to a year and a half. So where are we now? We filed our initial FAA documents in July of this summer. Those are submitted in July because that was just after we confirmed our conditional use permit application and design. Our initial coordination with Offutt Air Base began in August. After we reached out to them, they requested some specific materials, so we shared a project map, confirmed that we were not in accident potential zone and shared our glare analysis. Then we had a kickoff meeting with their team to talk about things directly and make sure we have open lines of communication. I'll clarify that this direct coordination with OFID is in response to the county specifically calling out OFID in their ordinance, but the formal process is that formal FAA review where OFID will officially provide comment. But in the meantime, we have open lines of communication with them. Today we held a follow-up meeting with zoning administrator and OFID to make sure we had confirmed our notice and confirmed access to the FAA request. Our next steps will be that the FAA review continues. And just to clarify, OFID cannot separately grant approval outside of this larger FAA process. During that process, there could be more questions that are raised by various departments. They might require or want to talk about a mitigation agreement. They might want to look at equipment that we selected for our final design down the road, and they may want to see construction ready site plans. So a lot of those details wouldn't be finalized until much later in the development process anyways. To account for all of that, we have condition of approval number 17 in your proposed conditions of approval list. And this basically establishes that prior to construction, we have to get final FAA and authored approval. This does three things. It provides legal protection for the county. It ensures that our project cannot build without authorization from FAA and OFID. And in the meantime, it allows our other permitting efforts that will take significant time to move forward. Before we can hold building permits, we're also required by the county to have road use agreements in place, ensuring the roads will be in as good if not better condition when the project is complete. The version included in our application has been internally approved by the county engineer and the county attorney and will require official approval by the Board of Supervisors after permitting. Our application also includes a decommissioning plan which outlines how the project's facilities will be removed at the end of the project life Although the county does not require decommissioning security until 10 years after commercial operations begin, we're committing to providing security after the start of construction. The Board of Supervisors will also need to approve a final decommissioning agreement after permitting. And I also wanted to clarify that all of these commitments in both agreements are at the project's expense. There's no specific requirement for screening in the county ordinance, but we wanted to go above and beyond. And so we've committed to about 6.25 miles of vegetation screening along Bungee Avenue and Interstate. We'll be planting native and other regionally appropriate shrubs and trees. This is a rendering on the screen of our type two screening at full maturity. so you can get an idea of what to expect. At the end of the project's life, we expect the soil to be more productive than it is now, and that's for a few reasons. The ground will go without widespread herbicide and pesticide use. We'll have pollinator habitat planted throughout the project area. We avoid jurisdictional wetlands, ponds, and have wildlife corridors throughout the area. And some of our landowners may even continue to farm these buffer strips. Now I'm going to hand things off to some of our consultant experts for a deeper dive into vegetation management, health and safety, emergency response and legal compliance.

Good evening.

My name is Pete Berthelsen with Conservation Blueprint of St. Paul, Nebraska. And I come to you tonight with 43 years of experience designing, establishing, and managing vegetative cover to produce multiple environmental benefits. You know, any time that agricultural land is being converted to another use even temporarily, what's going to happen to that land and what's going to happen specifically to the soil health is really important. As a farmer and a rancher, I get that. It's a deep concern of mine. What's gonna happen to soil health? What's gonna happen to weed control on the site? And how can we work this land so that it can be returned to agricultural production? I'm gonna talk a little bit about that tonight because the future viability of the land is really important to the landowners that are in this project, absolutely the adjoining landowners, the community, and it's also important to Orion Renewables. Thank you, Dr. Olson. So, how do we ensure that we get these environmental benefits? Most of the environmental benefits that we're going to talk about right now are delivered through the vegetation. that's going to happen on the site. So you have in your packet a vegetation mitigation plan. And a vegetation mitigation plan is prescriptive and detailed to the exact site for this project. And a vegetation mitigation plan talks about how, when, where, and why the vegetation is established, designed, managed, not just during construction, But over the course of the entirety of the project, and that is really important for how we're going to. Excuse me deliver a range of multiple environmental benefits. So, what are some of those multiple environmental benefits that we're going to be talking about on here? One of them is soil health. I've already talked about it. Some of the benefits that we're going to be designing to deliver for soil health is related to increased organic matter, aggregate stability, macro nutrients in the soil, but also things like reduced erosion, improved water quality, reduced temperature within the array area, reduced soil compaction, um going through and sequestering additional nitrogen in the soil a lot of multiple environmental benefits that are all related to the soil and to the vegetation that we're going to have on there one of the important considerations is that these multiple environmental benefits are being designed thought of and planned for across 100 of the site not a portion of the site not a garden portion or a corner of the site, but across the entirety of the site. And one of the things that we can talk about tonight is that these benefits are designed to not just maintain soil health, but to improve soil health on the site. So some people might be thinking about that thinking, well, how is something like that going to happen? Well, we have a great real world example of how that happens and occurs right here in our backyard. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program, also called CRP, is really a co-equal track to exactly what we're talking about doing here. CRP takes active agricultural land and retires it from production by planting a permanent vegetative cover on it. That's the exact track that we're talking about doing on this utility scale solar site. CRP is well, well researched about what those soil health and environmental benefits are that happen. And just to kind of put it into perspective about how commonly that happens, this month in Iowa, 273,000 acres this month will leave CRP. The vast majority of it will return to agricultural production. We know what the benefits are and we know how to do them. And one of the ways that we're going to achieve the last benefit that I'm going to talk about is Orion has elected to use two different vegetative colors on the site. One within the array area that only grows to a height that is lower than the panels and one that is a more traditional pollinator mixture that will go into the outer areas of the project where it doesn't matter how tall it grows. And I'm just gonna conclude by saying that this project is also designed to deliver significant pollinator health and habitat benefits. And we document that by using the Mills County, Iowa Pollinator Habitat Planning Scorecard for Solar Sites. I don't know who named it, but that's a long name for a document. In that document, if you score 76 or greater, you're providing significant pollinator health benefits. This project right here scores 86, and that scorecard is in your packet in this vegetation mitigation plan. And I hope to receive more questions from you later on tonight, but for right now, I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Chris Olson.

Thanks, Pete. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Dr. Chris Olson. I have a PhD in environmental sciences, and I'm an independent consultant, and in this case to Orion. And I also teach at the University of Toronto, so you're going to hear some of the bouts and spays thrown in here tonight. I've been working in renewable energy projects for about the last 17 years. In fact, in the last 10 years here in the state of Iowa, I've participated in numerous meetings like this in front of the PZAs, in front of county commission boards on wind and solar projects. happy to be in front of each site. So my role in these projects is looking at the project as designed, as proposed, to ensure that the setbacks and everything else meet the public health safety welfare standards. So making sure if the project was to move forward, that the members of your community here in the county, that they're all protected. So when I look at the project as a whole, there's a couple of things I'd point out. One is that you've got the voluntary setback from going from 300 feet from the ordinance to non-participating homes to 500 feet. You've got, they're complying completely. You've got the noise report in front of you. They're going to meet the sound requirement of 50 decibels. All of these things are cited as a properly set project. The one I'm going to focus a little bit on today, and I'm actually going to move over this way a little bit, is on, we hear often, and I know that it's come up in the county as well, is what are these solar panels? Do they have the ability to impact soil, groundwater, surface water? So we'll just take a little bit of what's in the panels themselves. So by weight, Over 80% of the weight of these panels is the actual glass and the tempered glass in the panels. That tempered glass is very similar to the glass you have on all of your smartphones, your iPhone, your Android, whatever have you. There's no material in there other than glass. You then have about 5% is the aluminum frame by weight, just typical aluminum. You then have about the other 5% is the solar cells themselves made up of silicon and trace levels of copper and silver in order to conduct electricity. And the other 10% is give or take plastic material, benign plastics. There's no liquid in these panels. There's got to be any discharge from these panels. And so it's all very benign material that are in the panels themselves. There's no toxic or hazardous materials in the panels. Orion's going to go one step farther. This is now more or less become industry norm. But Orion's committed in this project to only use panels that have gone through US EPA TCLP testing. So what's TCLP testing? It's toxic characterization leaching procedure, where effectively they grind up the panels into fine dust. They put them through a weak acid test. and to make sure that after that, they analyze that weak gas to make sure there's nothing leaching out of these panels that could impact the soil or the groundwater. And that's where we're at today is that they will be using those T-clip panels. Solar panels are designed to withstand severe weather events. So up to 120 mile an hour winds, in fact, tornadoes, one to four inch hail storms. These things can occur, of course, even if the panels are damaged. It's just a physical debris cleanup issue. There's nothing coming out of these panels that are going to impact the soil. If it doesn't impact the soil, it's certainly not going to impact groundwater or surface water. So I just want to leave you with the message that the properly designed project to ensure public health, safety, welfare of your residents. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Paul Brown from ESRG.

Thank you, Dr. Olson. Thank you. My name is Paul Brown. I work with ESRG Energy Safety Response Group. We did the training back in June with 100 plus first responders in that room. Just quickly about ESRG, we've done over 300 medium tests when it comes to battery energy storage systems. So we're able to use that information and knowledge to share with the industry, with the public, and obviously with the first responders. We're here for the first responders, for the firefighters that's going to respond if there ever is an incident. But really quickly, I want to go over a couple layers of safety that are built in, and we'll go in depth on the next slide. There's quite a bit of layers built in when it comes to safety, when it comes to codes and standards. As it says right there, it has to follow UL 9540. 9548, the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA 55. Everything we do in the fire service, we follow NFPA. If we want to buy a fire engine, we're going to go into NFPA. We're going to read that and follow that. Another key thing I'd really like to point out, which I think is awesome for, I'm a 25-plus-year retired guy out of Ohio. So I did 25-plus years. I retired and switched over to ESRG. ESRG has a ton of firefighters, retired firefighters, and fire engineers. So for me, what I think is super cool is the BMS, the battery management system. Every single system has a BMS, and it's monitored 24-7, 365. The other layer that they have in there is the thermal management system. They also have the fire detection system, which is NFPA 72, your heat, your smoke, your gas detectors. And then, like I said right here, the other layers that are built in for internal fire management, NFPA 68 or 69, and then the 24-7 monitors. So getting into NFPA 855, that's the overarching umbrella. That's what we follow inside this industry, without a doubt. Then you follow the International Fire Code. International Fire Code for Iowa will be the 2024. So they'll follow that for this project. Majority of the time, it points right back to NFPA 855. And then the other layers that are built in that I briefly touched on before is your NFPA 68, 69, NFPA 72. So what they have there is what's called deflagration protection. They go through rigorous testing with this. So they know what it's going to do if there ever is an effect. These events are extremely rare, but it goes through testing so they know what's going to happen if there is an effect. Then you have your UL 9540, 9540A. Inside these, you have a AA battery, basically slightly bigger than a AA battery. They call it a cell. A bunch of cells are put together to make a model. Models are put together to make a rack. So when it comes to testing a 9540, 9540A, They test it all the way down to that singular cell. Does it propagate? Is it charging correctly? Is it discharging correctly? Further, we get into some kind of the kind of safety overview here. Like it says right here, we did the training, 100 plus part responders. So currently working on emergency response plan. Emergency response plan, we're going to do it with the fire department and with Orion. That response plan is not completed until the project is completed. We do what we call boots on the ground finals to ERP with the fire department. This is conjunction with the fire department, the whole entire project with this emergency response plan. So we'll continue with that annually with the training. I think another super cool feature is the 20,000 gallons of water that Orion is putting on out there for this project. So if there is an incident, they have immediate water supply they can make access to. The other cool factor is, let's say there's a car fire, field fire, or any other event out there, The fire department has another water supply that can tap into 20,000 gallons of sitting out there. So with that said, we did cover earlier that there is no additional special equipment that's needed if there is an incident. The key factor is that emergency response plan and that training with the fire department.

Now I'm going to turn it over to Lee real quick. Thank you, Ward.

Thank you. Once again, Lee Greenwald with Bear Home. I'm here to address everybody's favorite topic, legal compliance. So the first thing I want to say is that the project under the ordinance is a utility scale solar energy system and the ordinance authorizes utility scale solar energy systems in the agricultural and industrial district where this project exists by conditional use permit. That is subject to very robust site and design standards. I have them listed here. I don't expect you to remember all of them, but I will be highlighting a few of those key standards. And what I show here is the pages of the application that addresses each and the proposed conditions of approval before that coincide. And with that, that will grant the county the legal protection it needs to feel comfortable approving this permit. One of the things I also want to point out, under your ordinance, When we submit a conditional use permit application, it goes to what's called the Mills County Department Approval Committee, which consists of all of these bodies that are listed here. And each has to sign off that the application requirements that are applicable to that department are met. And I would submit to you that this application has been signed by all of these parties certifying the same. Despite that, we got some follow-up questions in the staff report, so I wanted to address a few of them here. And so number one, as stated in the application, the solar panels will have a minimum clearance of 24 inches. There was a discrepancy in that the vegetation mitigation plan had a reference to 20 to 24 inches. We have removed that, made it all consistent at 24 inches. Needless to say, the site design documents are at 24 inches. I address that only because the staff report called it out and wanted to respond. Next, the staff report required about the soil analysis. Excuse me. The agricultural impact mitigation plan includes a soil analysis by a qualified professional using natural resource conservation service or NRCS data. The zoning administrator and ourselves discussed that. That is the industry standard for those initial agricultural impact assessments. But what I want to clarify is that this project would still be subject to the detailed geotechnical soil studies that are required at the time of a building permit application. So while those are, they sound similar in the ordinance, they are separate requirements. We recognize we would need to comply with both. There was also a question about the consultation with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. I want to reassure the board that consultation has occurred. Orion held a meeting. with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on June 1st. In your packet of supplemental materials that I submitted to the board at the outset, there is minutes from that meeting. And really, there's no approval for the Iowa DNR in these types of developments. That said, your ordinance requires consultation to incorporate their feedback into the design. Orion has done that here, and we've provided that evidence to the board. As we talked about earlier, there were some questions about the aviation protection provision and what it required with respect to FAA and now I guess DOW approvals. As we noted in the application, well, let me start here. What the ordinance requires is notice to those agencies and either a non objection or no response at the time of the conditional use. Where we stand today is that there is no formal response because it is The project is still in that DOWFAA review process that we talked about at the outset. That process is an iterative process that will require follow up on final designs of the project. And we have submitted to you in the proposed conditions of approval, condition of approval number 17, which says that this project can't turn a shovel of dirt until those approvals are received. And so that's our way protecting the county with the understanding that this process is a longer process just like anything with the conditional use right the conditional use permit is the start the first step in a series of development permits that are required we require building permits we require state permits we require other federal permits all of those will follow the way that we protect or that the county can protect themselves by requiring those in the application we cannot start construction until we've completed them the faa and dow approvals are noted Finally, there was questions about flammable materials, and so that's one of the things we wanted to clarify. Under the International Fire Code, the components of battery energy storage systems are not considered flammable materials. That said, there are a number of conditions and commitments by Orion, as we just heard about, regarding safety training. One of the large session which has already occurred but then in the ordinance there's ongoing annual safety training um there the emergency response plan and uh added condition approval in number 16 we've suggested that those items be incorporated into the permit requirements i want to talk a little bit about some supplemental information that orion provided that is not required by the ordinance but that we thought would be helpful to the county in evaluating this project Number one is a property value analysis. We provided a property value analysis from independent third-party phone Resnick, which has expertise in real estate valuation. The property evaluation concluded that there is no expected negative impact on surrounding property values for this specific project site, as well as concluded that other projects similar to this have not shown decreases in property value. And that report is based on that evidence. Next, we provided a preliminary traffic analysis that we provided at the request of the county engineer to help in the development of the road use agreement. As we talked about at the outset, we proposed a draft road use agreement so that you can see the provisions that would go up to the county board ultimately for approval. Again, that is a post CUP requirement, but something that we wanted to provide as it helps that. If the traffic study were to show additional impacts, we are obligated under the road use agreement to coordinate with the county engineer on all routes and the mitigation of any other concerns that they may have. And so I wanted to point that out as well. And finally, an acoustical analysis. While the ordinance contains the sound limit, It does not require formal acoustical analysis. However, we thought it would be best for the county to be able to view that report to understand that this project would in fact comply with that portion of the ordinance. I want to also talk about a little bit, a few commitments that exceed the site and design standards in the ordinance. The ones that are shown here are primarily aimed at minimizing any community impacts. I think a major one right off the bat is that the The project has committed to a residential setback for non-participating residences of 500 feet and proposed the condition of approval condition five that's before you to hold them to that. That exceeds the 300 foot setback that's in the county ordinance. So they're voluntarily committing to a greater setback. As they discussed earlier, Orion has committed to significant landscape screening projects As I as I just mentioned as well, the acoustical analysis demonstrates compliance with sound ordinance. No man is committed to providing an updated acoustical analysis at the time that the design is finalized. Similarly, with the glare analysis, we provided the preliminary glare analysis. However, Orion has committed in condition of approval 11 to provide an updated glare analysis to ensure compliance at the time of final design, i.e. at the time of the building And lastly, I want to mention the decommissioning security. Obviously, decommissioning security is very important to the county, and I understand why. In this case, your ordinance requires it at 100% of the net decommissioning cost estimate plus a 10% contingency. Orion has committed to that full amount, but rather than giving the county that security upon the 10th year of commercial operations, they have committed to doing that right after the insurrection, which means the county would receive that security immediately. and have that moving forward for the duration of the project. I want to highlight a few other proposed conditions that we included that exceed those that are required in the ordinance. Orion has committed to host a local job fair prior to the start of construction so that they can use local labor to the extent practical and provide more local jobs. they will establish a 1-800 hotline to address public concerns to make sure there's responsiveness and that folks are heard and that they get what they, when they have feedback, that we can take that seriously and act upon it quickly. As Ozzie talked about, there are also a number of direct benefits to the county that Orion would commit to as conditions of approval, including the contribution annually to the Folsom Lake Solar Community Fund, the solar neighbor program payments to adjacent landowners and then the tenant transition program payments, all of which were addressed earlier in this presentation.

Thanks.

We wanted to wrap up with some final takeaways. First, we really want to be a good neighbor. From 36M dollars in property taxes and 17.5M dollars in grant funding to the solar neighbor program, the tenant transition program, local jobs. We've created a package that shows everyone in Mills County could benefit from our presence. It will improve the soil health and habitat for local wildlife. And as we've heard from our experts, the project was designed with industry leading safety standards to meet or exceed all county ordinance requirements. I'm joined tonight by several third party experts, consultants and senior Orion staff. We only had a limited time for this presentation, but we're happy to answer any questions. So thank you so much for your time tonight and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Thank you. Okay, this time I need to have a motion to open public hearing. Second. Okay.

At this time, I'd like to open public hearing. Can I get a motion?

Can I get a second?

Second.

Can I get a second? Nay, same time.

All right. Beautiful now.

I've got some questions.

I've got some questions. Talk this project will substantially increase local tax base. Mills County we have some of the highest property taxes. In the in the state. And uh. The way I see it, the real benefit to people that live in Mills County is the increased local tax base, the property tax. And you have this here that the project is going to have a replacement tax, 0.006 per kilowatt hour of electricity generated. It doesn't say what that number is. And then the project owner will pay statewide property tax at a rate of $0.034,000 for the project facilities. And I haven't seen anywhere what you project that cost is. So my question is, what is this 3,200 plus acres? What is the property tax revenue that the county is receiving now? And how much more property tax revenue will the county get with this project? Yearly and the 35 year term.

Thank you for the question. So the project will be generating over 36Million dollars in property tax taxes for all of the mills county. taxing jurisdictions over the lifetime of the project. So in the application that we submitted, there's a breakdown for exactly how much each jurisdiction will get each year, but the total is a little over $36 million.

So what's the total now? I mean, it's $36 million. It's attachment K. Yeah, I see that K. So I know it's what approximately is the tax revenue now?

So right now, all of our landowners are paying taxes just on the ag land as they farm it. If I unplug this, I can try to pull up the PDF so we can share that.

And it's just my thought, yes, yes.

Hi, uh, board members, Michael cross and vice president development. Um, so don't have an answer in terms of what the overall, uh, tax revenue of the county is currently, uh, maybe to help clarify. Well, it pulls that up. Um, what landowners pay currently in property taxes, they will continue to pay, uh, to the county. In Iowa, state law is that projects such as these are centrally assessed. And so property tax dollars go to the state agency that collects property taxes. Those then get flowed back down to the county separate from that, that the underlying landowners are already paying taxes. So I don't have an exact answer in terms of What the county is currently taking in, but the amount that had quoted, and that's over, I believe a 35 year period is what we call project life. Generally that that is additional revenue that then flows back down to the county separate from existing property. But I'm not sure what the assessor would answer in terms of what the current revenue is.

Good.

Well, is that the only way?

Yeah, so it says in there that additionally, 35 years. It's like, you break down here.

And I think it's, I think what he's asking is if you took some of the current people that are under contract or possibly under contract, like a David Sieg or somebody, and looked at what his property was generating, what's the benefit for that today? What would this be the benefit today compared to what it is currently? Yeah.

So, the tax revenues that the state assesses in terms of property taxes is pancaked on top of what the landowners. Are already paying if that makes sense so again, I don't know what each individual landowners property tax bill on the basis, but the revenue that's being quoted is incremental on top of that. Hopefully that answers your question.

36,000 on top.

Thank you. I'd like to tell you guys it was a great presentation. I think you guys answered a tremendous amount of questions. Handle yourself.

Great. It says anybody in the fence portion of the project will no longer be required to pay property tax.

That is within the fence portion of it, not the fully leased property. So there, that's right.

So basically, if you think about, let's say we have a giant square, that's a parcel. our fenced area is not taking up 100% of that parcel because maybe we have a setback from a project neighbor or maybe there's a wetland or road. So the landowner will still pay their regular taxes on that portion of their ground. And separately from that, our project will pay a tax based on the land that we have, the acres that's inside the project fence. And so that's what we estimated in the attachment K that you see.

So how much increased property tax relief will the county get from this? I mean, you put that $36 million number out there.

I mean, that $36 million, that is the new tax dollars that will be coming in as a result of our project being there.

Well, this is going to help our property tax burden in the county.

Yes, substantially. That's one of our... biggest project impacts and benefits is all of that additional tax revenue that the county is looking at.

And how much it is.

I can't say the exact order of magnitude.

I don't know. Well, 15 million. That sounds about right. What those property owners are paying right now. They're saying... It's 36 million.

Basically, our estimate for year one is that the project's going to be providing about $1.1 million in tax revenue. That's for year one. So that money is money that the county is not already receiving from property taxes.

And how much, whether that's five times, six times, ten times? the current tax revenues that are received currently under normal the existing property tax bills i i don't have that exact calculation um to answer that specific question but it is many times greater than what the county would receive uh without the projects and that the landowners currently Now, what happens in terms of whether or not that's going to then reduce every individual property tax bill in the county? Again, that's probably a question to the assessor of whether or not that that incremental amount does that at all. But again, you're talking about many, many, many millions of dollars or 35 that the county otherwise would not have as a result of project not being operational.

There's another question. It says the materials. Try to use.

Project construction.

That will purchase materials for project construction locally and regionally where available and feasible. It just seemed like an open ended. We need all the. All the panels are going to be from China?

No. So currently the U.S. government has imposed quite significant trade tariffs on anything coming out of China related to solar projects. And that has been in place for many, many years. So that has what was the intention of that onshore manufacturing facilities for solar panels. And so as opposed to 10 years ago, there is a tremendous amount of domestic production of solar panels in the country and including the battery storage components as well. What we tend to mean is that the steel, the wiring, the copper, the vegetation, the seeds, all that stuff is regionally procured and made. The solar panels themselves will more likely than not come from domestic manufacturers, not necessarily in Iowa, but there is a significant amount of manufacturing in places like Colorado, Texas, Atlanta, Indiana, Illinois, and other states throughout the central US.

Basically, all your components are going to be stateside. Nothing's international in your components.

yeah i mean whether or not some come from uh some uh small piece comes from a european manufacturer or a south korean manufacturer that i can't not say and like you guys say 100 every single nut and bolt is going to be u.s made but the major components have to be from the u.s again Solar industry is no different than any other manufacturing industry in the United States. We are, for better or worse, internationally connected. But the question specifically of stuff like Chinese components, there are national defense reasons that that cannot happen in a place like where this project is. And so whether or not some components might come from Canada, I don't know. More recently, that seems to have gone down in chances. But the major components are manufactured, for the most part, again, in the United States. And that's a result of all the tariffs that have been around for nearly a decade on solar energy tariffs specifically.

But because of the location, is there any type of certainty we can have? that the components or anything is going to come from a U.S. allied country.

Yeah, so the DOD is likely to implement those types of restrictions like this. And ultimately, it's the Department of Defense, through the review process that's outlined, that will put those restrictions that the project obviously has to abide by.

Is that part of the review we're getting from Op-Ed other than just Claire?

I'm sorry.

Is that part of the review, the feedback we're going to get from Offit other than just the glare?

Yes. So they have to look at the location and the overall project impact. So it isn't just necessarily glare that they're looking at. They are allowed to put other restrictions such as components as any type of facility near a U.S. military base has to go through that process as well.

You touch on the grant of the 17,500 over the lifetime of the project, the mills county residents.

Yes, and luckily I can correct that 17.5 billion in total over a 35 year lifespan. So yeah, we've been working with the Community Foundation for Western Iowa on this grant fund. It'll be a minimum of $200,000 each year or up to $500,000 annually for the life of the project. That final number is just based on how much of the project is actually built. So, once the full project is built, it'll be the full 500,000 dollars. We've been working with the foundation to establish our grand committee. So it'll be all those county residents. We're making sure we have representation from folks throughout the county. We'll be able to make those decisions about where those dollars can go. And as you saw on the screen earlier, we've collaborated already with a number of local organizations that are doing great work in the county. So we're really excited to see how that can be put to good use.

Is this project going to... but excess burden on EMS and in fire services in Mills County.

Well, I can start with with that question, because, you know, that's something that we've thought about a lot, you know, as we're proposing this project. And so that's why we met with multiple local fire and rescue groups and why we wanted to hold the training that took place this summer so that we could get everybody together actually in this room and answer any questions that people might have go through several scenarios. that ESRG was able to share during the presentation as the group that is often called out when something goes wrong to do testing and make sure everything's OK. And I think, you know, since one of our main takeaways from that presentation is that, you know, in a worst case scenario on the project, there's no special equipment that's needed. There's no sort of treatment that is different from how they would respond to a typical house fire. You know, that should ensure that there's not going to be undue burden on the local fire and rescue groups. But we know that in Mills County, based on all the conversations that we've had, you know, the local fire and rescue groups are already under a lot of pressure. There are not very many full time staff members and they need a lot more capacity. And so that's where we're hoping that this community grant fund, which is designed to be as flexible as possible, but specifically calls out emergency services in the text of our agreement with the foundation, can provide some extra financial relief and funding to the fire and rescue groups as well.

I know you touched a little bit on the decommissioning.

I'm assuming you've got a, pretty ironclad agreement with the homeowners or the landowners with the reclamation plan that you have a bond that follows this for the lifelong document of the project.

yes so we have a lot of our landowners in this room they certainly grilled us on decommissioning what's going to happen to the project at the end of its life and so our lease agreements commit us in addition to the county zoning requirement to remove the project facilities on ground and below the surface down to four feet So our decommissioning plan outlines that. And then in addition, we'll be providing that security for the county so they have all the funds that would be needed to fully decommission the project 10 years before the county's ordinance requires it. So hopefully that gives people peace of mind that that funding is available.

I just wanted to add, it's often a question that they get asked, like, okay, you post this money at start of construction as our decommissioning agreement will do. What happens in 10 years, in 15 years, in 20 years in terms of the cost? Because inflation happens, as we all know very well. So as part of the decommissioning agreement will also be every, I believe, five years, that that amount has to be Reexamined and recalculated by 3rd party expert to set the financial security amount that the project has to place all the way again from starting construction, essentially through the commissioning. And so that number might fluctuate to reflect. Relatively real time costs of the commissioning as well will change over time. So it is not a static. security amount. The project has to post that agreed upon amount that the county ultimately has purview over.

What happens if, say, eight years, you guys go out of business, you haven't met that 10-year surety bond yet, and the decommissioning falls back on the landowners?

Yeah, so there is a lot of concern around, we get a lot of those types of questions. So that is not how financial security works. So It parts out why I would argue that has not happened ever on the utility-scale solar side in the U.S. To just take out the worst-case scenarios and to respond to that, that is why financial security is there in place. So if the project owner, whether it's us or somebody else, 20, 30 years from now, something crazy happens, the type of financial security is in place to not go away if that company goes bankrupt. Bankrupt the county is going to be able to pull on those funds. That is why surety bonds and that type of financial instrument exists is to guarantee that there's an insurance policy that no matter what financial happen financially happens to the project itself. That that bond that is in place is there specifically to address that situation so that the county can rely on the financial security that's in place. They can pull it.

and they can force decommissioning of the project and ensure that there's actually funding in place but michael you're not waiting for 10 years you're going to put it away again right that financial security will be in place within 30 days of startup construction so you said something that piqued my interest so are you guys just mainly constructing this solar farm and then looking to sell it to someone else and if so upon that sale to another company to run the solar farm for the next 30 years. How can everyone be assured everything that we're hearing today is followed through with?

That's an excellent question. So we've been very transparent with folks that Orion may or may not be the owner-operator of the project. We might not even be involved in construction. And so the assurance that it doesn't matter whether it's Orion or another company, or as often that happens in pretty much every power generation unit, be it a coal plant, natural gas plant, or solar project, over a 30 to 50-year operating life, ownership is going to change. Probably multiple times, it's not just an Orion project or solar project that that happens in all those agreements are based with the project. And they are legally buying binding agreements. So it does not matter who owns the project or the way that that financial structure is. They have to assume the obligations. legal and financial as long as that project is around. And it's why our landowners are also protected from that. It's a lease. It's a legally binding agreement. It's connected to the land and the project and not a specific owner, if that makes sense.

One thing I might add to that, sorry to just jump up here, but the conditions of approval that are included in your conditional use permit are going to run with the land and with that permit. And so regardless of who any owner operator of a land use, those conditions still apply to any successors that might come into play.

Question for you. I really appreciated hearing about how the panel was built. I think I heard it this summer too in the emergency training. What about the footers in the post going in the ground? How are those secured from a groundwater perspective for people who have wells around the area?

Yeah, also another common concern as it relates to solar projects. So the way that the solar arrays are secured to the ground are through steel piles that are probably four stop signposts. together to give you a sense of the size of them. And they're pile driven into the soil, depends on soil conditions, but on average about only 8 to 12 feet. You know, we looked at local area wells. It's very unusual to find a well right next to a post that is going to be many hundreds of feet away from that, that it's going to ever interact with a groundwater resource. And so This is like a big erector set, essentially, that's put into the ground. It's also easy to remove. But that's the only footing. So you're not drilling down post 50 to 100 feet. There's not large concrete footings that are associated with it. There are obviously going to be quite a number of piles involved in it, but there simply isn't the physical. Nature of this construction type and the type of structures we're talking about. That it's not like fracking, you know, you're not going down deep into the earth that might interact with an underground reservoir or something like that where area residences might be tapping into for for their water.

So are you guys coordinating with the pipeline going through? I'm not sure how deep that is, but that 8 to 12 feet just really concerned me.

Yes, so that's a good question. We do have some of our landowners who are also working with the pipeline, so we've had to coordinate with them and make sure that our design is not going to interfere with their pipelines. They're also in our project area, a number of pipelines, some of which are no longer active, that are running across our landowners So we have to avoid those pipelines as well.

If I could also add, prior to submitting for a building permit from the county, we'll be doing two different types of surveys. One is the geotechnical survey, which are ground boring to look at soil makeup that informs the actual structural, final structural design. The other is an ALTA survey, which will go and look at every single existing or legal right granted to another piece of infrastructure, be it a fiber optic line, be it a water line, gas line, whatever, thing is underground, that all has to happen and taken as part of the final design and is documented prior to issuance of a building permit as well. It's obviously in our benefit and everyone else's benefit to avoid this issue.

Especially that pipeline.

Will there be any third party testing on this project?

What do you mean by testing?

Well, besides just Orion, will you have anybody hired as a third party to oversee the construction?

Yeah, the typical setup for these types of projects, and it's not unique again to solar, it's often how a lot of different generating assets are constructed, is you will have the project owner. That project owner ultimately hires an EPC, a contractor, And that firm is the 1 that is in charge of construction, obviously, in coordination with the project owner in compliance with all the agreements that the project owner has entered into. But ultimately, in terms of the group that is in charge of construction is going to be a engineering procurement construction contractor in the US. There are. Only a couple nationwide that really have the experience and expertise in this type of stuff. And so it's the same kind of pool of contractors, EPC firms that do a lot of these types of projects across the country. But ultimately, they end up hiring local subs and whatnot. And that's exactly why we do the local jobs fair is to expand construction opportunities as much to as many local firms and workers as possible. Because at the end of the day, even though it's the EPC company, that might be a national firm, they're utilizing and hiring a lot of local firms for anything down from dust control during construction to electrical contractors to steel pile companies and that type of setup.

Thank you. On Corey's question there, I think our county needs a qualified project safety inspector to protect Mills County's interest Would you provide funding for that?

We would.

No problem.

Thank you.

I don't know how to word this. Who will you be selling the electricity to? Who is buying?

The answer to that is, we don't know yet. So, the same permitting sequence that Sasi outlined in terms of where we stand with the CUP and what that's going to enable us to do next in development. Um, most our customers, which could be a utility, it could be a large industrial user, um, uh, factory and whatnot. Um, they don't want to ever talk to us until they know that there is very little risk to the project. And so. Ultimately, what that really comes down to in a place like Iowa is whether or not we receive local approval. And so it's only after that point that we can really have serious conversations with potential purchasers of the electricity. Now, I will say, obviously, we don't build these things on speculation. Construction can't happen until there's a customer back, you know, $1.8 billion that you have to spend to construct a project. whatever the total cost is, but it's that order of magnitude. And so we wouldn't come here five or six years ago without having a strong confidence that this is a needed resource in this region, which we believe very much, if not more so today, just given the deficit of electrons that are needed to power our current economy, let alone anything that happens in the future. So we're very confident that we will not have difficulty finding a purchaser for the electricity of this project.

Just because I asked friends to throw in questions. So what's the, I don't know, do you say when you harvest the electricity or whatever, what's the lifespan of it to be used?

Yeah, so solar panels are warranted for 30 years.

I'm talking about the electricity, once you the electricity when you sell it?

It is literally hour by hour. So every electron produced gets in real time put onto, you know, other than the storage aspect of it, which has a lot of benefits to not do that and to store it for a certain number of hours to sell it when it's most useful to the customer. But it's real-time production and storage allows us to capture that electricity when it's of lowest need and then provide it to the customer when it's at their highest need. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think you did like so essentially like a couple hours. It's not like you're storing it and transporting it somewhere.

Oh, it can be. So what we have done here is to allow for up to eight hours of energy storage. So on either side, when the sun's not shining, we can store up to eight hours of duration any day of electricity to then move that electron when it's needed most.

Yeah.

OK, at this time, anybody that's in favor of this project, I'd like to go up to the podium. Speak with the microphone. State your name in your address. And if you. We didn't have a time limit of how long three minutes and if you have the same thing to say is the prior person in front of you, you can just go up and say the same thing to say. I agree with the person I'm Lori Green and my address is 17889 Pallas Road, Council Bluffs, Iowa 515

zero through. My husband and I, we live on a 400 acre farm here in Mills County. And that property has been part of my husband's family for over 100 years. And it was farmed before us by his father and grandpa. Tonight, I'd like to share with you why we decided to sign a contract with Orion Renewables. Our property, the soil on our property, is not the rich prime soil that much of Iowa is noted for. We are farm leasing with an excellent farmer, but he is now 90 years old. The last few years, he planted just two-thirds of the acres on our farm because he was concerned about the low yield potential. Yet we still have to pay taxes despite that. Anyway, so with rising operational costs, unpredictable weather, less than ideal soil, and profit margins continuing to shrink, the reality is no younger farmers are coming forward wanting to farm our farm. So Tom and I finally came to the realization that we really need to make decisions on what opportunities are available to us rather than those that we thought existed or perhaps even wished existed. Orion has been extremely easy to work with. They've been honest, open, transparent, never pushing or forcing us to make a decision. They have offered us a practical long-term solution that allows us a reliable income to ensure that we can pay our property taxes and not be forced to sell. Our request tonight is not really asking anybody else what they should do with their farm. We are simply asking the freedom to make the decision for what we feel is best for ours. Change is never easy. We didn't make this decision overnight. For years, my husband and I, we've explored the realities of the thing we need to farm. But to quote my husband, with Orion, he's eager to see a losing farm situation turned into a solar winning one.

This choice allows us to keep our land and our family, which is very important to us and to them.

Thank you.

Are you wrapped up? You did great.

Thank you. Thank you.

Every farm is unique. Good job.

My name is Jim Goodman. We own 360 acres just south of Highway 370 that's enrolled in this Orion project. There are many opportunities to have win-win projects. In fact, I would tell you that this is a win-win, win-win project. And the people that win on this obviously are Orion and probably MidAmerican and all those companies that may have use of this new clean energy. Also Mills County benefits from this. We've already talked about the property taxes, but think in the future, the availability of clean energy in your county is going to help you develop in the future. that this will have an impact on not only our generation, but future generations. Of course, the farmers are going to benefit from this as well. This isn't the best farming area. We've owned our farm since 1982, and we've had two major floods, and we've had several minor floods when the St. Mary's Dish backs up. We are now rated high risk by RMA that makes it more expensive for us to buy crop insurance because of all the crop claims that we've had over the years. This is an opportunity to utilize our ground to the highest extent that by developing this ground, it's going to make the neighboring ground more valuable because of the availability of the electricity. In addition, you may be aware of the Paulson LA lawsuit with the Corps of Engineers. There's going to be a settlement that's probably going to include an easement for the government to run water over these farms. They are going to make a payment on the farms, but it's going to give the government an opportunity to flood it without having to pay retribution. That will further devalue our properties. The next group that will benefit will be our descendants. I brought along with me a newspaper article from the Des Moines Register this Sunday, which U.S. summer was the hottest on record, NOAA says. Whether or not you believe in global warming, we had an awfully hot summer. This is our opportunity that maybe do a small thing to make a positive influence on global warming and clean energy. So in my estimation, everybody wins with this project. So I'll give you this article next week.

Thank you.

David Carl, and I'm going to be a little bit different here. 2302 Nottingham Drive, Bellevue, Nebraska. Good evening. I'm also the Secretary-Treasurer for the Junction Mile Railroad Club over in Pacific Junction, Iowa. Due to the Mayor, Andy Young, we were given an invitation to rebuild the Methodist Church over there. And I'm sure many of you know the Methodist Church and it was in the flood. The Junction Model Railroad Club met with representatives of Orion Company earlier in the year to discuss the possibility of putting a mural on the side of the former Methodist Church building in PJ. The company presented the club, me, with a $10,000 check for the project. The mural took over four months to design and complete by a midsummer mural company, Omaha, Nebraska. It is 30 feet high at the front and 70 feet long, and it covers the complete east side of the building. It has enhanced the community and shows that the community can take an existing building and restore them back to useful, functioning, buildings after the floods of 2011 and 2019. And a plug, we have an open house every third Sunday of the month, which is coming up. Come over to PJ. Look at the mural. It is complete. And come in and see what we have done with a flooded building and $40,000 worth of donations to create this train club. And I wanna thank the Orion Company for their contributions to the community. Thank you.

Good evening, I'm Jody Hilsbeck, 63253 Levi Road here in Glenwood. I am representing Vision Glenwood, which is the organization that helped connect David and the Train Club with Orion, and it has been nothing but a pleasure to work with the Orion staff. Their generous gift to the fund, the two community projects. I think David mentioned also the playground project that is happening in Silver City. Hopefully you'll get to hear from Lindsey. These two projects are having significant impacts on these small communities. Professionalism and kindness and commitment to supporting these projects was evident throughout the whole process. We have been very lucky to have the opportunity to work with Orion. And as mentioned in the presentation, the opportunity for the future that up to $500,000 that will be able or will be available annually will help other community organizations within Mills County. And that is very significant for small projects and to boost the economy within the small communities. So I want to thank the generosity of Orion and their staff for helping us get those projects off the ground.

Thank you.

I am Katrina Zerval with the Community Foundation for Western Iowa, 536 East Broadway, Council Bluffs, Iowa. I am Director of Operations of the Community Foundation. Donna Dostal, our President and CEO, sends her regards and deep regrets she can't be here this evening, but asked me to share some thoughts on the Folsom Lake Project, as well as our new philanthropic fund, the Folsom Lake Solar Community Fund. At the Community Foundation for Western Iowa, We are dedicated to creating a lasting legacy in our region by engaging citizens and communities for durable change and fostering a culture of philanthropy. Our strategy to achieve this mission is to provide a solid foundation for philanthropic giving in our nine-county region of western Iowa, to be the convener and connector to strengthen relationships and divide solutions for positive community-wide outcomes, and to be a trusted resource and subject matter expert for philanthropic giving. The foundation first met with Orion in November of 2025, and we have spent significant time working through the details of this fund to ensure it can be as impactful as possible. This broad and flexible funding structure gives the community the power to choose where the money goes as needs shift over time. There's no bureaucracy, it's just a simple application process. The funds can be immediately granted out each year. and decisions will be made by a committee of Mills County residents, which is currently in formation stages. This is what the community foundation does. The fund is estimated to grant $200,000 to $500,000 to the community each year based on projected revenue. So over a project lifetime of 35 years, that could be up to $17.5 million invested back into our community. This year, the project has already granted out $60,000 to community groups across Mills County. From the perspective of the Community Foundation, our focus is on long-term sustainable impact for the region, and we believe this focus is shared by Orion. They know the investment being made by a philanthropic perspective will create long-term transformational opportunities for the folks that live here in Mills County. Those opportunities and investments impact the quality of life, ensure that children and families are able to work, live, play, and grow in the communities that surround this project. This will lead to economic impact and attract new people to move to this area, increasing population, tax base, and retaining the folks that live here. We feel this kind of philanthropic investment helps to transform the landscape of Mills County and attract people for now and into generations to come. We are honored to be a part of this partnership.

Good evening.

My name is Billy Frost. I'll be speaking for John Poor and his wife, Sharon, who couldn't be in attendance tonight. John Poor lives on 17628 Alice Road. So I'll just start with my name is John Poor. My wife, Sharon, and I live on our family farm. We signed up our land with Orion just a year ago, and after much consideration, we are ready to express our full support. for the Folsom Lake Solar Project. Sharon and I have had an excellent relationship with Orion. We have been working on including our ground in the project, and they have also been great to my work and my capacity as the chairman of the levee district. From the first time I heard about the solar project, I was concerned about the impact it might have on the levee. However, after working with the Orion staff, who are wonderful, I have come to find how attentive understanding and considerate they are while discussing the levee operations, and most importantly, the guidelines and requirements set by the US Army Corps of Engineers. They have implemented these requirements and guidance into the design of their project, and I feel very comforted knowing the levee will be safeguarded. No one knows better than I do of the risks that the river poses to everything we do on the bottom, but I strongly believe this project also offers opportunities. Over my lifetime, I've witnessed the decline in animal populations. We don't see raptors anymore, and if they are here, there are very, very few of them. There are a lot of fewer rabbits, and the rodent population has also declined, as have insects. Now, there are lots of causes for that, but I'm convinced that setting this land aside for the solar project will help those animal populations recover. The project is designed for that purpose with its seed mixes, wildlife corridors, and fence design, and having the river running alongside the project is a tremendous opportunity. It may take some time, but it's amazing how fast Mother Nature can take over. I've learned a lot over my lifetime farming the bottom, and I believe I've done a good job of it, but it will always be more of a struggle down here than it is in other areas. There are just too many things to fight, The solar project is a suitable alternative use for these farms. This solar project will help me retire, but in my mind, it will also allow me to use my ground for conservation. I very much hope that you will approve this project, and I hope to live long enough to see what Mother Nature does after it's built. Thank you for your consideration, John and Sharon Ford.

Hello, my name is Lindsay Shoemaker. I live at 110 Oak Street in Silver City and I'm here on behalf of the Vision Glenwood as well as the Silver City Youth Council. And I don't believe that Sharon McNutt is here tonight. She also serves on both of those councils with me too. Our playground is in some desperate needs of updates and One day I'm walking down the street and this kid walks up to me and I said, hey, what would you like to see down at the park? What needs improved? And he told me we could really use some basketball beds. Now, in my mind, I'm picturing some big, fancy playground equipment and not that. At the same time, we were having some vandalism in our community and We're brainstorming ways to kind of take that creative energy that they had on this side and focus it more on something positive. So insert Orion looking to fund some projects. Sharon and I put together an outline of what we would like, not only the basketball court project to be, but our youth council as well. And so with the $10,000 that they donated, That was a very good start on the basketball court. But also, we started meeting with these kids. We run our meetings like city council meetings. So the kids follow an agenda. They make motions. They vote on things. They share their ideas. But they're also responsible for asking for their own funding. And they even have had to approach our city council to ask for permission for their projects. And just to be clear, these kids are 8 to 13 years old that are doing this. So the biggest win that I take out of this is the basketball court is going to be great. It's going to be done here in a couple of weeks. But not only did we have a child admit to doing vandalism in our town, he told us that that would not happen again. And he was there with two other kids he recruited, grading, raking rock. and measuring grade to get everything ready for the poor that we're hopefully doing this weekend, whether permitted. So I'm seeing not only did Ryan's donation run deeper than the basketball court, it's teaching these lifelong skills to the kids and instilling community pride and ownership in them. And I'm really excited about their coordination with the Community Foundation just to see where that can go in the future. So thank you, Orion, for what you've done for our community. And this has made a huge difference in these kids' lives. I'd like to add this youth council was something I had in mind for two years down the road. And I feel like everything came together the way it was supposed to so that we're reaching these kids now that need it.

Good evening. My name is Carlene Hall and you'll see I'm purposefully not wearing a t-shirt tonight. However, I am for the project. I come here to represent my community. I've lived in Mills County for the past 20 years and off and on for 10 years before that I was a Fremont County resident. I, full disclosure, am under contract for Orion Renewables. And I gave it very deep thought. And when I was recommended and Sazi called me, I asked Sazi questions on the phone for two hours, much like all of the questions that you asked Sazi. And by the time I got off the phone and dug into renewables myself, I felt very confident. I feel that Orion has been very conscientious of community. They've been very conscientious of our environment. And I feel like they have basically bent over backwards to meet every requirement and extended a hand of friendship in the community. in the neighborhood. And I am very proud to say that I'm working for them. Now, I don't go anywhere without representing my country. And as an American, I want to let you know that I stand very firm on landowner rights. I feel like that's our American right. Having said that, I wanna say thank you to every farmer sitting in this room and every farm family, because I know the sacrifices that you make. I know the struggles that you go through and that you are appreciated. You are deeply appreciated either side of this issue that you're on. But the fact that Orion came in and they placed their project In land that has been leaning on the farmer to be able to survive and those of you who are farming prime farm ground this year are very aware of the profit margin and or the lack of profit margin there so. I have become friends. with some of these landowners that are involved in the project. And my heart stands with them. I stand with them firmly for them to be able to hold onto these farms. And as you heard from the first presenter, these are century farms. These are family farms, generation after generation. So I want to thank Orion for coming in and preserving, helping to preserve that. And I feel like solar energy is And I think it is, this is my opinion. I think it is a wonderful thing. Thank you to the Board of Adjustments for all of your wonderful questions, the depth of your questions. I feel like you've dug down in and revealed some things that might have not been known prior to this. And I feel like Orion stepped up and answered those very successfully. So thank you for letting me speak.

I work on this project with Orion to take some of the images you saw in the presentation

The view of the farm, the picture of the farmland, it's not quite prime. It's something that I want to hit, and you can't really see it from the road, so we took some aerial images of that. One thing I really appreciate about Ryan is that they are committed to local. I think, Heather, you asked if they are committed to local, and I will tell you labor-wise, they are committed to local. They could have flown in people from California to do this job. They could have flown in an agency from California to do this job, but they chose to hire locals here. and in Des Moines, and actually went on their way to ask the Chamber of Commerce of Mills County for recommendation. That is how I became acquainted. I got to interview all the day loaders as well, and that was kind of a fun process. It turned out that the Greens worked with my grandfather. Now his job is a lot more fun than mine. He had to throw dynamite at helicopters and blow up ditches.

I don't get to do that anymore, but I feel proud to know that I can contribute to them continuing to farm their land just like my grandfather did 50 years ago. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Anna Stoisich. I live at 202 East 5th Street in Melbourne, Iowa. I'm an artist and a lot of my work in art focuses on conservation and also the relationships people have between the land itself. You can see some of my work in Melbourne. You saw it tonight when Sazi was showing the presentation. I helped lead that mural project with the community. I've also done some other work doing collaborative community murals in Melbourne. There's a tile mural on the outside of the library in Melbourne. I helped do that. So I'm just here to echo a lot of what was already said. just witnessing the children be able to work on those projects and the pride they felt after we did the mural unveiling and they got to see their work. And now that mural will be installed on the bike trail in Melbourne. They're really excited for that. I was hired to do that by Orion, that mural project. What really stood out to me working with them is that their relationship with community building and hiring someone local to do the work like myself. This is a total business venture for them and it could have been some sort of transaction, but it's not. It's about building relationships and They're showing that through what they're doing and investing in. Also, just personally, as an artist and my work in conservation, I'm really excited to see just the pollinator-friendly planting, the native grasses, no-till, no-pesticide management, all of that, and just a clean energy and community investments. Excited for all those things, so thanks.

So anyway, there we go. Nobody stole it. So I'm Bernie Poore. My wife and I currently live out in Johnson 7510 Northwest 97th Court, Johnston, Iowa. But I also grew up here on the river bottoms of my brother, John. And I escaped after graduation from high school here and went to Iowa State and became an agricultural engineer working for John here. So in my career, I've seen a lot of good energy projects and I've actually worked on electrification with John Deere and products and tractors and stuff for a large part of my career. So I think most everybody proceeding has talked about the value of the solar to this risky land that the Missouri River has created. forever. And in our case, and I've been back here farming and have been here for the past 50 years, I guess it is. And so I'm fully aware of all these floods, 11 and 19 and whatever these other excursions have been in the middle of that. So it's kind of a big picture guy. I think the value to the whole community and And county is kind of, you can put this all together, you know, all these individuals that have benefits from Ryan Dean here, the farmers that have benefits from the income. And there's another example. There's a place, Badcock Ranch in Florida, where we used to have a winter home, has built a city around solar energy. and done really live technical things like the body taxis and things like that. And so I think the new technology will just kind of bring new life to Mills County. So thank you.

I'm Jeff Green. My land's at 17173 Alice Road. I encourage the work of the food project. Our family's been farming in Middle China since the 1850s. We had a century farm about 10 years ago. I had the opportunity to buy the farm next to that, and it was an emotional decision, not a good business decision. It's not a really good farm ground, and it's sandy. OCSR, subject to flooding, insurance risks are coming up. Again, emotionally, I'm glad I have the ground. Ground is really important to me. When the solar farm first came, I was pretty skeptical. There were several companies looking at us, and I was very, very impressed with the Orion team. I did a lot of research on them, what they've done across the country. And to me, it's how does this company operate with the community? What's their likelihood of getting the job done? And then how do they relate? And all those categories, I've always been very, very happy with what Orion has done. I've been with every meeting involving the project. And I think Orion is interested not just in Mills County and the area, but the whole Mills County. Because Mills County runs quite a ways east. It's involved in negotiations with the law firm and the landowners. and Orion was smooth. Everybody was trying to look out for everybody's interest, and I thought that was very fair. I'd like to add a little color. One of the questions was on taxes, and what I pay in taxes is about $35 an acre, so the project's about 3,200 acres. Right now, about $110,000 is what's being paid in property taxes, so if Orion's paying over a million dollars additionally, that's a tenfold increase, so Again, I encourage you to approve the project. I'm very, very happy with Orion and very, very excited about the future.

Hello, I'm Evan Seek. I live at 52605 195th Street. My family is signed up in the project. I want to thank all the other landowners involved in the project. I've known many of you for most of my life and your support of this project gives me the confidence that it is a good and right thing to do with the area we live in. My only thing is I will make a call to Orion. We have three community school districts in Mills County. Please reach out to the school districts, get involved, see what their needs are, because we can renew energy, but we need to renew the youth in our community, so thank you.

My name is Jack Sayers. I live at 509 Maple Street, Henderson, Iowa, 51541. I'm not going to speak on behalf of my profession, but I am going to speak as a resident of Mills County. My family has farmed in Mills County for Well, 75 years now would have been in 1951 when the Sayers family moved. But prior to that, we were the Haney family who farmed along the bottom ground along Missouri River. The county has had two solar projects proposed, the one on Eastern Mills County and the one in Western Mills County. I believe it's important not to confuse either of them as the exact same thing, as the exact same specifics. Number one, the one in Eastern Wilson County, where I'm from, where I've lived my entire life, where my family farms, is bought in by Mid-America. It's also really high-quality farm ground. Average CSR on that ground is in the low 80s. Contrary to the west side, here along the river bottom, the farm ground, as mentioned, has a lower CSR, as well as it's being leased. While I personally understand the concerns with solar, I've shared my thoughts and concerns with Orion Energy extensively. I've shared my thoughts and concerns with many of you when we discussed ordinance changes last year. I see this as one of the only ways that you folks can keep your family farms within the family. And I would urge that the Board of Adjustment approve the Conditional Use Permit this evening. Thank you.

My name is Mackenzie. I'm sorry, I have two more family up here to talk. I live at 208 North Chestnut in Glenwood, Iowa. My brother, sister, and I might be the first descendants coming into this. My uncle and my dad signed the contract with Orion. I had to come up and talk because I can't let Jack be the last one to talk because he thinks he's better than us because they got out on the river bottom. But I when I inherited the property, I'm very much somebody who maybe, you know, my dad and his political views and views. So I'm on sort of the opposite end of things, and I'm very concerned about conservation. And so I reiterate what we're hearing for the excitement. And I'm also, I came in, I wasn't going to talk because I'm a skeptic above all things, and I'm very much worried about the future of a lot of these projects across our country. And I can say now that I'm fully proud of being part of this. I can see that they have taken the time to work with our community. This is not just a one and done, in and out, push it through kind of thing. And I'm excited to be part of it. And I'm also committed to making sure that a lot of the things that we're talking about tonight are followed through on our land and in our project. So thank you guys.

Thank you. One more. One more.

Dan Robbins, 18519 Alice Road. Landowner. I really got jacked up when he said what he said. I just want to expand on that too. There's a lot of social media and stuff out there about the project. and a lot of the rumblings on social media. Really, the narrative is kind of a false perspective, and that is the land is not being sold to a big power company. The landowners are leasing land in an effort, as you heard, to increase their profitability and ability to afford those additional increases in cost of taxes. We just got another bill on the drainage that's a separate subject that's getting ridiculous. And to secure ownership for our generations to come. So the farmers that are currently farming the majority of the land in this project are the same people that are in this room. They're not losing income. They're not losing farm to ground. They are essentially increasing their income Securing supplemental income for future purchases, retirement, and fisheries when we're all out. That's all.

Thank you. Okay.

No more in favors. We would take anybody that would be against at this time at the podium.

Just to remind everybody just that you're talking to the board, not to the audience.

And the audience is not talking to the speaker.

Carolyn Kern, 17536 Alice Road, Mills County. I am not a farmer. I'm a resident. We have a residential. I'll try that right off. Good evening to everyone. I have been notified by Orion that property farmland adjoining our property is being considered for installation of solar panels. My concerns are one, close proximity residents and fire risk. Solar batteries are unresponsive to conventional firefighting methods and leakage can cause soil contamination. The nearest EMS fire rescue squad is approximately 15 to 20 minutes away, dispatching from either Mineola or Glenwood. In Bray application of Oak Run Solar Project, LLC, Ohio 2025, concerns were construction of substations housing 328 large battery containers, water source, and battery energy storage. Batteries were to be lithium ion, subject to bug-catching fire, not extinguishable by water. Fire departments need specialized training. On May 26, 2026, the Ohio Supreme Court reversed a state permit officials previously granted. This case is being cited as the precedent for Iowa and other states to review when considering applications submitted in behalf of solar. The World Journal of Advanced Research and Review stated in its May 2024 publication, the environmental footprint of battery storage systems extends across their entire life cycle from raw materials extraction to end of life disposal to Loss of acreage and annual yield of row grain crops and economic impact in 15 to 20 years. Iowa State University partnered with Alliant Energy in 2023 for a four-year solar research project. Research has determined that produce crops can grow under solar panels. Economic impact over a 15 to 20 year time period because of acreage loss and annual yield of row grain crops has yet to be determined. According to the USDA Economic Research Service publication, dated June 30th, 2026, US wheat imports reached a six year high in 2025. Three, production of utility scale energy does not mean clean energy. On May 2nd, 2024, WTS Energy published an article stating that utility-scale energy includes conventional fossil-based power plants, such as coal, natural gas, and oil. Orion Renewable Energy.

It's closing. It's closing. I can just go on.

is closely affiliated with Orion Energy Group, acquired in 2007 by BP Alternative that produces gas and oil.

We're going to shut you off. Thank you.

Thank you.

There's nobody else against it.

Ed Cambridge. I live in 207 03 Barris Road, Oak Township, Glenwood. I'm not for or against it, but I want to advise the board on some of my thoughts. What Brian has done in outstanding job and spent a lot of time and money preparing their luminous application for the conditional use permit. Frankly, the volume of information submitted is more than I can grasp in the time available. And they've also been very generous in benefits to Mills County and the community share some of the proceeds from the operation of the solar park. But at this point, my concern and question is, how can Mills County be certain that all of the terms of the zoning ordinance, as well as the generous promises, will be fully complied with in the next 35 years?

Orion is admittedly the developer.

It obtained the leases and seeks permission to build the farm. The actual construction and operation for the next 35 years will be carried out by others. Contractors, subcontractors, operators, non-resident investors, even perhaps foreign investors. And those entities may be guided by other objectives and motivations. You can be certain that many of them will not have read that reminder. A project of this scale and magnitude has a potential problem that does not ensure the protection of the health, safety, and welfare of Mills County. The board approved the landfill. Nobody envisioned that 85% of the garbage would be coming out of state. I don't want to come up with other eventualities, but 35 years is a long time. I know the county department heads have reviewed the application for compliance. I don't believe any of them have the budget or the staff in place to monitor or inspect what actually happens in the field. They may not be equipped to deal with problems and complaints that very well may occur in the future, 35 years in the long run. I suggest the county should require the contractor and the operator to provide funding as well as Good evening. My name is Tarinas Gladman, 56629 180th Street Pacific Junction.

Don't judge my address. I've heard some judging there with riverbottom. My family and I own the property half a mile south of the boundary for the proposed Folsom Lake Solar project where we built our home. I wanted to start by stating a core principle that I heard echoed in someone's speech that I believe deeply in property rights. A landowner should have the freedom to use their land as they see fit, so long as that use does not cause harm to others. But property rights don't grant a blank check to disrupt an entire community shared landscape for the next 35 years. This isn't a dispute about a couple thousand acres. It's an unmitigated conflict of land use. This specific project area serves as a critical, irreplaceable ecological bridge. It's directly between the St. Mary's Island Wildlife Management Area to the south and the Folsom Lake Wildlife Management Area to the east and north. Probably 20 years ago, public resources and tax dollars were invested to build up these tracks. Habitat restoration takes a generation, and our community is just now starting to realize the full ecological returns of that investment. In fact, that corridor is working so well that it is a proven pathway for deer, migrating fowl, and even elk have passed through there that trail cams can prove. God only knows how he managed to cross the Missouri River. And now we want to place that at risk. The developer will tell you that they can mitigate this with wildlife-friendly fencing or cover crops and seed mixes, but a few small holes at the bottom of the fence and cover crops don't fix a massive industrial footprint. Replacing a contiguous wildlife corridor with thousands of acres of steel and glass and inverter noise completely fragment this habitat. Big game and the migratory birds will simply avoid the area. So what was the point of that 20 year public investment in conservation if we allow private development to choke it out? That very wildlife system that makes those public lands viable. My concern is about protecting a massive public asset. maybe if the boundaries were a little further north and closer to the existing industrial lands i would feel different but because it goes further south that's why i would urge the board to seriously consider the decision they make about the permit thank you

Hello, my name is Stephanie Miller. I live at 58258 390th Street, Emerson 51533. So I've heard a lot of pretty words, and I've heard a lot of pretty presentations, and I've heard a lot of positivity, all from people who are compensated. I can tell you, I am not compensated. I live next to the solar farm on highway 34. I am less than half a mile from it. I am one who has experienced firsthand what construction is doing. I listen to it before dawn every morning. And I listen to it until dark every night since they have started. I have had to deal with construction noises, construction people. I have had to deal with blocked roads. I have a neighbor whose mailbox has been knocked down four times through construction. So I haven't been compensated for anything. I don't want to be compensated for anything. I'm not for or against this project. But people need to understand that this is a $1.8 billion project, and maybe they'll give Mills County, I don't know, 60 or $70 million over 35 years. Mills County negotiate better. Okay, let's actually do something about property taxes. Just recently, I looked into the solar farm. Now, MidAmerican Energy owns that land. They have paid no property taxes for two years. Zero, as far as beacons, you know, that's where I looked. So if they're paying taxes in some other form, maybe y'all can let me know how to find that. It should, I would think, be part of the public knowledge. So no taxes for two years. Our property taxes have gone through the roof. We're dealing with construction. What's it going to be like when it's done? We don't know. Time will tell. But I can guarantee you one thing. Time will tell, and then so will I. So thank you.

Okay. This time.

Anybody else would like to have anything opposed to it?

You can go to the podium. It's hard to.

Stephanie Bowden 5632240 industry. And I am not willing to stand for or against this. It's been great conversation. I understand why the contributions are very appealing. Our communities we need funding. I get it. Our communities are struggling financially. Our kids, everything, our people, everybody needs more money, right? depending on farming, has not been easy for a lot of people. I'm not personally a farmer farmer, I guess. You know, that's not our sole income, but I understand the ins and outs, okay? All right, and they have been generous, easy to work with. They're also working to earn your trust, okay? They are wanting to be your best friend because they want something from you, right? And we all know that they're also only here temporarily, Because it's going to be someone else and then someone else, right? And so all I can say is, 35 years, folks, you know, I just, I don't want Mills County, who I love, I think of all of you as a part of my world. I don't want you falling into shiny penny central. I think that it's very important that we aren't always just focusing on money. Because you know what? They are not making new dirt. You can make it healthier, but you're really not making new dirt. And last time I checked, we can't really live on electricity. Okay. We just can't. We have to have farmland. I understand this farmland maybe isn't the most productive. I know that those farmers that have worked for and toiled to try to get something out of that soil over the last hundred years, they work hard and I get it. I do. But the problem is you open the door and sometimes the bad guys gonna put their foot in it and block it open. And I don't know, we open the door to them, then how many others are gonna come knocking and push harder on that door, okay? You know, as Mills County, all I can say is you're worth more. Whatever it is, you're worth more than that. So just stop and really think about what the benefits are versus what it's going to cost because it's not just these short-term things that are coming.

Thank you.

Hello, my name's Laverne Robert. I live at 602-64 Kid Road in Glenwood. It's southeast of here. I've known a lot of people who've lived out there in this area. I had a relation who lived there. They had a lot of work to do. They had the floods, et cetera. The one thing I'd like to do mentioned is that this land is going to be gone for 35 years at least. Then it has to be cleaned up. These companies don't always do 100% diligence on taking care of what they had destroyed. Destroyed, I agree that This ground is going to have pollinators, et cetera, to build it up. I have ground on my farm that is in the CRP with pollinators. It's been in 10 years. I enjoy the benefit of it. But if solar is so great and windmills are so great, why is it that The people overseas have been putting the solar on top of parking area, etc. In other words, we got Target, we got Walmart, we got shopping centers. Put your towers up and put it there. I haven't heard anything about that. But I agree with these people. The reason I have 30 acres in CRP is the same reason they have. I have thin ground. But it's good. It has a 72 C rating, which is a whole lot better. But you need to think and make sure that our county is being taken care of. And a lot of these farms that are up there had cattle, hogs, and other things on them. And the Lord will not make any more ground.

Thank you.

Okay, this is the last call for anybody against.

At this time, if the applicant would like to do a closing statement, you're welcome to do that.

Hello again.

I know it's been a long night, so we'll try to be as quick and expeditious as possible. First, I want to thank all of you, the county, over the last six years for talking with us and working with us to get to this point. That includes county supervisors, especially the county staff that evaluated our application, and obviously you folks taking time of your evenings tonight to listen to all of this. We're a small company that does lot of stuff and enable for us to do a lot of that stuff that we love and believe in doing, such as these types of solar projects. Our reputation means everything. I want to clarify that there was a statement made that somehow we were related or owned by BP, British Petroleum. That is not true. We are an independent private company. We are not related to any large multinational corporation. But more importantly, I mentioned this because what is extremely important to us as a company when we develop these projects and we build relationships with these communities over the years and ultimately decades, that these projects and we as a company are around doing this. We've been doing this for over 30 years. is that this project and every project we do is going to be a good neighbor to the community that it's in and ultimately is going to be a net benefit to the community as a whole, not just to our participating landowners, not to just us as a company, but to everyone. That includes making sure that there is a long-term stable property tax revenue source that this project is going to represent. That ensures that we are also extending the benefit of the project to those who are not directly involved with it through our solar neighbor program that will be providing money to our neighbors over the next several decades as well. And lastly, and very much probably more importantly to this body. is creating a thoughtfully designed and cited project. And that includes extensive setbacks from non-participating residences. Again, we're at 500 feet, well above the 300 feet minimum in the ordinance standard. That is including landscape buffering to reduce the potential visual impact of a project like this. We understand that we want to try to blend this in as much as possible. It's going to be something that's new on the landscape. And that's the best way we can address that issue. And that's also the vegetative management program that is meant to protect soil health while the facilities are there. And so that at the end of the project life, this project will and has to be removed and returned back to . But as has been stated by many people, you should not rely on just promises or statements that we make here tonight. Your decision ultimately on whether or not this is a net benefit and something that should be approved should be reliant on facts and legally binding agreements. Regarding facts, while solar might be somewhat new to Mills County, it is not new to the United States. Over the last several decades, over 2,000 operating solar projects are currently operating across the U.S., and many of those are in the Midwest ground that looks very similar to what we have proposed here in Mills County. We know from that operating history that these projects are safe. We know, for example, to address a comment that was made, that the fire risk is extremely low for both back and solar projects. And we also know, among a lot of other facts, that it does not take special equipment or special response that's any different from what emergency response organizations already address when they arrive to a house fire. And we know that there's operating experience to back up the statements that we have made in the forward-looking potential for these types of projects. On the legally binding agreement side, I want to pass it off to Lee to address the ways in which this project protects our landowners, the community, for the life of the project, regardless of who is going to be the ultimate owner over the long term or whether or not things change five years, 10 years, or 30 years from now.

Thanks, Michael. And I wanted to hop up because I think Ed had a good point. And I'm sorry, I'm even better at writing down first names than last names while everyone's talking. But Ed asked, how do we ensure if there's a subsequent developer or if two decades has passed, that this project is still bound by the same obligations and the same commitments that we've come here and stated today? And the answer is relatively simple. With each of the landowners, there is a binding contractual agreement, and those landowners can enforce that agreement. And obviously, we hope we never get there, but you have that protection. On behalf of the county, there are 25 proposed conditions of approval that Orion has voluntarily agreed to. Now, some of the reports are required by the ordinance, like the road and the decommissioning agreement, but those required conditions of approval also address some of the concerns that we talked about. Like Michael just said, to Carolyn's concern about residential proximity, they voluntarily agreed to a larger setback to non-participating residents. To Stephanie's concern about conservation, we've talked about all of the methodology that's in place. Excuse me, to your concern about construction timing. There's a voluntary condition of approval in there that talks about the hour during which construction would be limited and days of the week that would give that additional protection. And to Laverne's comment about decommissioning, there's, of course, the decommissioning protections and then the greater commitment to provide that security now rather than 10 years in the future. And so what I want everybody to understand is it's not just lip service. It's not just commitments that we're making here. These are all binding legal obligations when you put them in that permit and you sign those agreements. And so we're prepared to stand by those and we're prepared to have you hold us accountable through your permitting authority. Thank you.

At this time, we're going to close public hearing.

Can I get a motion to close public hearing? I've got a few more questions.

Sazi, can you guys come back up? I've got a few more questions. Sorry. Is there, somebody asked a question about like your voice testing and things like that. Is there any, like, do you guys do annual testing or anything that you can provide to the county, like test results, just to make sure the mitigation is still low and acceptable levels?

That's a good question. So, yeah, we did submit an initial noise analysis. That'll be that acoustical analysis will be updated again before construction based off the final equipment, just to ensure that, you know, that compliance. You know, in terms of once the project's operational, we still have to be within that 50 DBA limit. So we're already showing that we're under that. The average, I believe, is 36 dBA. So if somebody had a concern, they felt like the sound levels were higher than appropriate, if it is actually, for some reason, above 50 dBA, then the project would no longer be in compliance with the solar ordinance, and that would prevent the project from continuing. I'll let Michael add, but just anecdotally, you know, I have personally been to one of the few operating solar projects in Ottawa, and I was curious for myself, what would I be able to hear? So I went with one of my colleagues in the room here. We stood at the fence line, and we couldn't hear the project at all. So just to sort of share that personal context from my perspective.

Yeah, and just to add, because we had that discussion about whether or not the project would help out with ongoing compliance obligations for the county. And so we are more than happy to work out with county staff. About not only with that compliance obligation to ensure that there's funding and, you know, to the extent that the county wants to hire a 3rd party to evaluate compliance during construction, rapidly talk about that as an ongoing obligation to ensure compliance with the overall permit for the life of the project as well. That includes not just compliance with the noise standard in the ordinance, but everything that's involved with the permit. Should it be approved voluntary conditions? Okay, but you guys. Don't do like an annual test that you can, you know, just anecdotally speaking from my experience in the industry and working in a lot of different states across a lot of different counties. It is not a standard obligation or at the state level, or in a lot of conferences to do that. The compliance happens. at construction essentially to ensure that the equipment can meet that standard. So it isn't as part of the industry and as part of regulation across a lot of different counties, not just Iowa, but across the states to include that compliance. And I think part of the reason why is when you think about acoustics, you know, there are very few noise emitting sources for projects like these. It mostly comes down to the inverters, which are located into the interior of the project, although some older solar projects have located those inverters that create that kind of humming sound while the project's operating. It doesn't happen at night. Towards the end of ROSE, through the fence line, we as an industry know that Well, the easiest thing is to create distance between those noise emitters. And so that's why we show compliance at the beginning is the location of that equipment, how much under maximum circumstances it would produce, what the closest receptors are, homes, and so here in those counties as part of our conditions approval, the added buffer of that is 500 foot setback from the solar panel. Then you gotta include many more feet in addition to that to the closest inverter. And so that's why most counties, not speaking as an expert in this, but why most counties have been comfortable with showing compliance prior to starting construction. It really comes down to where those types of equipment pieces are located within the project area.

Thank you on that. And one last one. Can you somebody touch on the litigation you guys have going on in Ohio? What is that regarding?

We're not involved in litigation in Ohio. I'm not sure what that was in reference to.

The Supreme Court reversed a permit.

it might have well again so we have no projects in ohio so that is not us so i'm not close to any of the details of that um whether or not it's not your guys it's not us no and i wish i could give you a little bit more background on it but that's that's all i was wondering

ALL RIGHT. ALL RIGHT. CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT.

CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT. CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT. CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING?

ALL RIGHT.

CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING?

ALL RIGHT. CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT.

CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT.

CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT. CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? ALL RIGHT.

CAN I GET A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING?

ALL RIGHT. CAN I GET A MOTION TO Okay. This is a reminder, we're done with any public comment with any type of back and forth. So there's no more, I guess, correspondence between either parties. So right now, it's just going to be up to the board discussion and the board action. So thank you.

Thank you. Staff reports. We haven't voted on anything yet.

I'm just letting you know that there's no more.

Thank you. Thank you. Cool, I have a cousin. I don't think we'll ever meet again. we took a five minute break oh okay that's nice yeah i was going to tell everyone that Thank you.

Okay, guys, at this time, can we get everybody to quiet down? We're going to get back into our meeting here.

So if everybody could just quiet down, give us, hopefully not too long time, we're going to move right into our staff report. That includes you, Dave.

So I had submitted to you the staff report prior to the meeting tonight.

And in that staff report, they had given you nine suggested, section number nine of it. They gave you three different options for the permit request tonight. And IN THE LEADING UP TO THE MEETING, PART OF MY STAFF REPORT HAD NOTED IN THERE, MY MAIN CONCERN THAT I HAD WITH THE APPLICATION WAS THE FAA AND OFFIT CLEARANCES TO THE PROJECT. AND SO I MET TODAY, YOU KNOW, OFFIT CALLED ME FRIDAY, Matt Bautista, Matt in today with the company in line and I made reference to them, as you know, once. Matt Bautista, If you all know scanning zoning Board of Adjustment tonight issues a conditional use permit or Orion or the solar projects Orion really starts the clock. Right. That is the trigger to their five year block that they have to either build a project or come back to the zoning board of adjustment. And my challenge to them really was, was I said, you're going to have to really make a case to the zoning board of adjustment as to why in the process of permitting wise. you are coming to them now with the FAA and off-air clearances kind of hanging out there. Notice has been given, yes, which is part of our statutory requirement, is that they have to provide notice to the FAA off the Air Force Base, but at the end of it, it's got to come back and state that this is not going to have an effect on their military and or civilian air traffic in the area. But As I, you know, I'm not a large solar developer, so I don't know all the other increases that they have along these projects. But one of the statements was made was that, you know, well, after the county, we need the county approval because we have to, we want to get to the Iowa Utilities Board to get there, get on their schedule to, on those hearings of those. So I contacted the Iowa Utilities Board today and I spoke to their general counsel up there. to find out how does it work, what is the process that they see coming from developers of energy projects and coming to them. And their general counsel had informed me, while they do not have a set requirement that the developers come to the counties first before they come to the Iowa Utilities Board, it is favorable to the companies to have come to the county first to gain county support for the project as it goes through the Iowa utility board process that they have set forth on there. So what they stated up there is factual as far as those timelines run. They're coming to the county for this conditional use permit approval process because they want to be able to state on their other permit request applications that they have this part of it done. that they have county support with the project and are able to move forward if these other jurisdictional authorities then grant the permits to them on that. So that was my main concern answered in there for their application of that. That being said, on the staff report that I gave to you, section eight of it would be recommended conditions for approval on that.

And one today.

Section eight of that would be the if you work adjustment does choose to move forward with approval on that, then I have the conditions of approval that we have in there would be number one, The approved plans and general compliance is that the project shall be constructed and operated, maintained and repowered decommissioned in substantial conformity with the application. And the August 17th, 2026 preliminary zoning site plan, except as expressly modified by these conditions and shall comply with 27.1, 2.4. and other applicable law. Construction crews will limit their activities to the daylight hours no earlier than 7 a.m., no later than 7 p.m. on weekdays, no earlier than 9 a.m., no later than 7 p.m. on weekends. As noted in their presentation on there, we do need to make sure that we had a condition on there to correct the panel height on it, and that's not withstanding any contrary statements that they had, which the company did correct on the vegetation mitigation plan. The solar panels shall be no less than 24 inches above the ground, and no solar panel would extend 20 feet at grade above the maximum tilt. Residential setbacks, the applicant has represented the 500 foot minimum setback from all non-participating residents should be maintained and likewise with the levee district. The levee district was also requesting a setback distance of 500 feet on there. The AIMP soils and tiles, the company should comply with the approved AIMP, complete any of the supplemental qualified professional topsoil geotechnical analysis required map any known drain tile before construction, promptly repair the project, damage, and use an environmental professional, and submit monitoring reports to the county every 30 days during construction. They should obtain the NTDS permit and SWPPP before soil disturbance construction or building permits. submit a detailed stormwater management plan, including any pre and post-development runoff rate analysis. For the vegetation and pollinator, they should comply with the BMD and the pollinator requirements, including final map seeding zones, approved seeding mixes, perennial covers, three-year established management replanting of failed areas, and annual reporting for at least five years after the commercial operation starts. landscaping, install and maintain all landscape screening as approved, including the type one, type two screening shown on the improved landscaping screening plan, except for the approved modifications providing equal or greater screening value. I do want to just state, and I think I mentioned this to the zoning board of adjustment. I've also mentioned it to the board of supervisors and the county attorney's office. You know, this is in total, You know 6500 acre project area it's going to be the largest will be a large development that's going to happen that probably any one of us will see in our time and in this and so with this condition this condition probably bother me more than any because. How do you see how do you see the unseen. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" aspect of this in an area that should be screened and we don't quite know. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" That pops up later on, so I wanted to make sure that with this condition that with the size and scope of the project that the developers required to can show screen areas if need arises within 90 days of written notice from the zoning administration. On the noise, we're gonna operate in compliance with the 50 decibel standard and 7.12.4C11 before construction and submit final design acoustical analysis. Glare, we're gonna maintain project design and minimize glare and remain consistent with the submitted glare gauge analysis, submit any final update or updated final design glare analysis to the zoning administrator. Prior to, on aviation, it would be prior to construction to provide and maintain all FAA Offutt Air Force Base notice and no objection evidence as required by 27124CE21 and comply with any 11 is on the B battery storage component aspect of this and the emergency response before building permits, submit the formal emergency response plan for tour and the best facilities addressing the fire hazards and thermal runaway detection, suppression, emergency access, shutdown, isolation, responder, safety site, maps, contacts, and other measures required by Apple codes and reviewing processes. The best shall comply with the applicable UL, NFPA, electrical and fire standards. The project owner will coordinate with the local fire department's emergency management agency and 911 director to provide the safety and emergency management training for solar and battery storage facilities on an annual basis following project construction. The signs responder access and training maintain locked entrances the high voltage warning signs utility your contacts 911 address GPS coordinates access provisions responder training slash offering has required 527.12.4E the training shall commence within six months of the project construction. Thereafter, the project owner shall offer training on the annual basis for the life of the project. The project owner shall also submit formal emergency response plans to the zoning administrator during the building permits. Fencing has maintained the eight-foot security fence chain link. Fencing top barbed wire shall be limited to the critical electrical and communications equipment and only were approved by the zoning administrator for the necessity of public safety. Lighting, utility, storage and waste. Lighting shall be shielding and downcast twice as lines will not be underground to the extent as reasonably practical. Outdoor storage shall be protected and related. Chemicals waste free shall be handled as required by 27.12.4 C. 13 through 19. Five year establishment reauthorization. This is in this The five-year clock is what we were talking about. The use shall be established in accordance with draft plans within the five years. Any portion not completed within the five years would require reauthorization or be subject to regulations in effect when reauthorization is requested consistent with 27.12.4 C4E inspections and successors. The applicant, owner, operator, successors in a shop and assigned shall provide a third-party inspector selected by the county and paid for by the developer to ensure that the project is constructed for submitted and approved plans. Now they did have, they did submit, I have one more, sorry. 17 will be on the decommissioning Security shall be posted no more than the 30 days after commencement of the project construction in amount equal to the net decommissioning cost estimate, taking advantage of the solid value into account for the 10% contingency. The decommissioning security should be maintained for the operational life of the project to ensure the decommissioning security amount remains current. The project owner shall update the net decommissioning cost estimate every five years after the project commences commercial operation. operation and shall update the . Decommissioning agreement will be binding on the project owner, operator, and their successors. The other conditions that they had proposed in there and related to their community fund contributions, their solar neighbor program, kind of transition program, And those pieces are really pieces that should be memorialized in a community benefit agreement. Don't leave along in zoning piece of it, because I don't know how enforceable that would be on our side. The zoning aspect of it, because if, you know, our, and just to give a, idea of it, if somebody were to come out of compliance, something like that, you know, our immediate remedies to that are, is that you get pulled back in front of the zoning board of adjustment, zoning board of adjustment can make some, make some decisions on that, but it's not like they're going to receive a fine. And even, you know, even if they were to receive a fine, I don't know what it would do necessarily to the company. So I think that's something that development can work on with them on the community development. Benefit agreement that would be signed in and placed with the project, but I just don't know that it goes into the actual conditions of permit.

Okay, Matt.

Okay, so one big concern is the five-year establishment. And you're saying that it's pretty much on them. that if they start the process and it takes longer for them to get the approvals through the FFA, no FAA, then the construction timeline just shortens the window that they're going to have to be able to complete their construction project.

Correct. Or they're going to have to come back to the zoning board of adjustment that is here at that time and or potentially even new codes and readdress the whatever remainder is left of the project too. I mean, it does in some essence, I guess not in some essence, I mean, it truly does. It puts them on the clock. So once this is approved through Mills County, that five-year clock starts. Then they have to get their, they have to finish their reviews through FAA and the military. They have to get their pieces through the Iowa Utilities Board. or they do wind up back here. Now there could be, and part of the potential risk to them is as well, that say the military and or just FAA wants to have significant site plan changes on what they have proposed and approved through you all right now. that too would then trigger them to come back and they would have to readdress their site plan for the project um with you all at that time but it you know i'm thinking of it on their side you know like i said it gives them the support that they'll have at the iowa utilities commission uh so you can be able to look forward i think we will i know we want that third party inspector

It's going to be paid by Orion. It's on condition 16. And that should be for the full 35 years of the project. Does your condition reach a little bit different than what you said? The applicant, owner, operator, and successor shall provide inspection access as required and be bound by the condition to use permits. That's saying that our county can provide a

So I know you just said the 35 years, like, I don't believe we would have an inspector hired by them for 35 years specific to the project, right? It would be, you know, once it is up and operational, really that inspection portion of it is done. There's nothing else that the inspector is going to carry on with.

If there's a complaint about it, it'd be the zoning official view that would look into it?

Correct. If they, and that's why, you know, even on the, the noise rating and things. Once it's turned on and operational, we want that final reading from them to say, hey, our equipment is operating at design.

I don't think there's going to be any noise issues.

Like 500 foot. Proper taxes are like...

AGREE WITH MATT ON THE GRANTS.

THAT STUFF'S NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO BE PUT INTO THE APPLICATION PACKET. NOW FOR SOME BOARD DISCUSSION.

I know I'm talking a lot about property tax, but I mean, our county has no commercial or industrial tax base. This is a significant chance for us to help our property tax burden. Anybody who owns property in Mills County knows what property tax is like. It keeps going up, up, up. And I really never got an answer. 0.006 per kilowatt hour of electricity generated each year. Can I ask?

No.

So we have no, I should have asked that did, but how much, how many kilowatt hours of electricity are generated each year approximately?

This comes from the utility replacement.

That is their projection.

Yeah.

So I don't know. This would be at full scale now. But that would be at full scale. Yeah, roughly a million a year.

Is that significant? A million a year significant?

Not really.

Never had an answer. What's that 600 or what? 6,000 acres. What kind of revenue is that producing right now? 6,000. Yeah. Is that significant? We're not getting it now. And we got... 0.03 per 1000 of assessed value of project facilities. They say if it's a 3.1 billion capital investment. So is that? Should ask them before.

Right there. I mean, it's just 35 years.

We're going to be looking at voter panels on either side of the interstate. Very significant for our county.

That's how they came up with their dollar to the taxes. That's just how they came up with that.

The kilowatt hour, one of the assessed values.

The three cents per bag.

That's what this schedule K. They don't have a number for the kilowatt hours of electricity generated each year. Do we know what that number, projected number is? You can't ask them? No. I should have asked before my bed. It's it's. It's going to help with property tax, but is it significant? And so this this is not part of the condition. This increase the substantial increase local tax base and we talked about the kilowatt hours 00.60.00 kilowatt hours electricity generated each year. and 0.03 per 1,000 of assessed value. That's part of their application, so that's not a condition that we have to put on it, correct? Is this part of their application that they're going to do 0.0006 per kilowatt hour of electricity generated each year and 3 cents per 1,000 of assessed value for the project facilities? Is that part of their application? Do they have to follow that? What section did you take that out of? This is the first letter that we got from Lee Greenwald.

That's talking about the state law and the way in which the state of Iowa accesses these facilities. That's the paragraph that you're reading. Pursuant to Chapter 437A of the Iowa Code, In lieu of local property tax on project facilities, the project owner will pay a replacement tax on the project's electrical generation output at a current rate of six hundreds of a cent per kilowatt hour of electricity generated each year. The replacement tax revenues from the project would be allocated among local taxing jurisdictions based on the the location of the project facilities. In addition, the project owner will pay a statewide property tax for $0.30 or $1,000 of assessed value for the project facilities. That's all state law. That's all state property tax law.

Well, the state came up with .03.

The state comes up with those, yes. The counties don't have any input.

They could have input on it, but it doesn't seem like they do, basically.

Bill, don't know if that's a significant number or not.

I would say that just in the budget hearings that I've been in, in relation to county government, when you were talking about a million dollars on a rural levy, that's significant in any county. Rural levies are your lowest levies. They fill out your ag land, your things like that. So to add a million dollars on your rural levy, that's a big deal. ON THEIR SCHEDULE K, WHAT IT'S SAYING HERE, THE MILLS COUNTY PORTION OF THAT IS $543,921. I THINK IT'S ALMOST $15 AN ACRE VERSUS $321,000,000. WE'RE NOT PROPERTY TAX PEOPLE.

I'm saying that in my opinion, it's a significant deal. I also think it's a significant deal that we're going to build this infrastructure in Maryland. One way or another, what we have in this area, if it's going to be a cattleman someday, if it's going to be the Google plant that's here, whatever we have, they're going to raise power rates if we don't have something, or they're going to build something that's going to charge us more money. If we have something that's here now, there's a possibility of them not raising rates on is this project is not guarantee lower, no it doesn't or like this is the best thing to do is that but it also rates are going to go no doesn't mean that everything goes up but it also gives people the option that that powers there and it's a different way to for that power to be there, it's not a monopolized system so much.

If we do not have the power to generate other businesses We don't get other businesses. That's been part of the problem all along.

I'm in agreement and I'm ready to approve, but I'd just like more clarity on are we going to get significant property tax relief? You guys seem to think so.

I think so. Thank you.

THAT'S THE BIG ISSUE.

I WOULD LIKE AN OPPORTUNITY TO READ THE MATERIAL THAT WE GOT TONIGHT THAT WE DIDN'T GET BECAUSE WE GOT THROUGH A MAJORITY OF THIS, BUT TWO WEEKS WITH ALL OF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH. WE DIDN'T REALLY TOUCH ON 24-7 SITE SECURITY BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE SOMETHING THIS BIG NEEDS TO HAVE SITE SECURITY THERE. And also, especially with understanding from the DNR, somebody's out there hunting and the bird lands in the property, they have every right to go retrieve it.

So they're going to need somebody on site. It does say that in their DNR consultation.

They would have to be approached. primarily from people.

But if anything.

Right. But if they have site supervision, then that makes it easier. I mean, you don't want people on fences.

We'll have to request to be able to get in there. Be on the hunter, and if they want to sit there and hunt in an area that they think that pheasant's going to fall on the other side of the fence, I think we'll get way into the weeds. And

If I shoot a deer in front of the court, call the court and say, hey, I've got a downed deer that I need to get. It's okay. It's no too bad. I'm going to put you to do it myself.

I think there's a ton of people that have come back.

Are we going to have more than just one 911 address?

Yes. There will be more than one 911 address on this.

There was in one of the questions that we got their concern over traffic on.

I don't think once the project is completed, I don't think the traffic is going to be.

Abnormal. Most of this project is south of it.

Yeah, the majority of it is. Great.

So on the traffic part of it, I'll make really two comments on it. Number one, we've already learned some. I think the engineer's office has already learned some lessons on the road use agreements moving into it. So for this one, I think they would handle things a little bit different than we before. Also to that is the size of this one, right? There would have to be some shifting things just based on the amount of traffic that they're getting in. And depending upon their phases of construction and where they decided to do their lay down cards at, I think the county is going to be a little bit more stringent on where those pieces are located at so we don't run into problems that we

So they're going to be more involved than some of our other things that.

All of the conditions said that in 3rd party inspector paid by Ryan during the construction time.

On them.

The county commissioners are talking about a levy on property tax for EMS. Maybe we can put a condition on that they should do a big, whatever you want to call it, donation every year for EMS.

We can't hold them hostage for our EMS.

We'd have to put that in the community benefit agreement. That'd be something that works out there.

And there's a lot of questions on that. Who's on that committee?

Supervisors is on it, one board of supervisors. 35 years is a long time.

Yeah, it's a long time.

Obviously, it's a great deal for all the property owners there. The rest of the county.

What do we get from it? Am I going to get lower rates? Well, there's going to be an economic boom.

No, you've got people that, for example, you're getting economic funding that also allows them to purchase different things and be able to purchase land in the 1031 exchange or not 1031 exchanges, but gives them different funding opportunities and avenues that they didn't have prior. It's a whole different animal of money that they're going to have versus a lot of acres.

Also, there's more than just glare studies that's needed to go along with all of it. I mean, glare study is a biggie, but There's a lot bigger things to go on over there. They need to talk with, you know, civil engineering at STRATCOM or maybe it's a civil engineer for the whole base that will cover for STRATCOM. But...

Didn't you just say that you were talking with OFA today?

Well, yeah, I did. I've spoken with OFA two different times on this now, and that is why... with what Heather's saying, we have in there on the conditions, we know that they're going to come up with their own conditions, right? And so they, and it's going to be to comply with the applicable aviation conditions that either FAA is going to put on them or office is going to put on them. And it, and it won't just be around flare. I'm sure it will be around other areas, whether it could be the widening of their crash zone. They had mentioned in there something about, potentially putting a film on top of some of the panels that lessen the glare aspect of it or the sheen aspect of it in different areas. It may not be the whole project, but in different areas of it. So I'm sure that whatever their review process will be, that the company will come back and be like, you know, an office is going to let us know the conditions that we gave to them. Here's the site that we gave to them. So we will have all of that on record. That's what, yes, they're going to give them that review, right? Whatever conditions that they give to them, that's what's going to be applicable to us.

It's going to come back through us through those channels.

What's the time frame of getting that back?

I mean, I know it's the government, but. A year.

But that's that, that's that clock that I talked to me. That's the company, companies basically at that time, they're operating at their own risk because they started their five-year clock with us.

The back of the answer to your question.

Other than the fact, I mean, there's no magic ball. It's going to come in and lower everybody's taxes in this with one business coming in. But the amount of money coming in will help the tax base from this count. And at that point, it's up to our county supervisors to spend that money wisely.

Yeah, is that money coming in significant? That's what I don't know.

Anybody else want to give us a million dollars a year?

It's going to change our economy.

Very significant. I think you can ask for more. Raise the rates and get it back.

Well, I can say, I will say that I started a meeting very top-level people from MidAmerican Energy. They're very proud of the fact that they have not increased rates in 14 years. They did not see a rate increase on the horizon to that. And I want to say that we are like 44th in the nation for as far as our electrical rates are for that. So I know that there's been a lot of talk about electrical rates and everything that's going on there, but.

It's definitely good for the landowners.

I think we should approve it with conditions, of course. Okay, do we have a motion?

Are you going to chime in?

I move we approve it. With your staff recommendations all being a part of the approval.

And the third party inspection paid by Orion during construction time. Number 16.

I so move.

That is 16.

Okay. We have a motion by Jeff for approval The conditions.

I'll second. We have a second from Ted. Can I get a roll call, please?

Collins.

Well, are all those conditions, they were a little bit different than what? I have them all listed right here.

They're a little bit different than our handout here. A few words of it, yes. That's why I read them out into the record. They're read into the record for you.

Okay.

Yes.

Volker? Yes. Like?

Yes.

Gentlemen?

Yes. Evans?

Yes. Okay.

Thank you, guys.

Is there any new business? No new business. Our motion to have the meeting adjourned.

Thank you.