Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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e e e e we'll call the meeting to order roll call please Chad Gart here Janette Johnson here Robson here present Dan BR here here with six members present there is AUM thank you have there been any

Communications from the do the welcome first if you want to do this yet before we get into that do that first all right um tonight's meeting is a work session only we thank you to the public who's here in attendance it is appreciated please note we will allow public comment only during the designated time on the agenda we will not have a specific time for public comment or interaction in regards to tonight's work session on solar energy conversion systems the purpose of the work session is to allow the Commissioners to discuss and brainstorm we will have additional work sessions and time for a public hearing at a later date comments can also be emailed to planning at sn. us and now I can ask are there have there been any Communications from public to staff um we did receive one email um after we sent out because what we did if many of you recall as a part of this process to begin with we had a lot of communication with the public um during the discussions on a moratorium in b um so we have an email list or mailing list of people who were interested in being able to participate we do have a few people who have reached out to us on occasion over the last few months since the moratorium was passed on solar um and so we did send out a mass email to everyone who had asked to be a part of that list and let them know that tonight's meeting was happening um and then we have published the agenda online but anyways in response to that we did get one email from um Miss uh Denning uh Denham I'm sorry I don't have the email in front me so I have her name wrong but we did get an email and she just wanted to remind all of the planning

Commissioners that there was a petition that was circulated and there were a a number of people who had signed that petition who were against um both wind and solar utility um and they wanted you to just keep that into consideration and actually as we go through some of this I'm going to grab her email because she did have some input on um a few items that are relevant in regards to things that we discussed tonight um with setbacks and distances from different locations so I will grab that here in just a second but that's the only communication that we received on back from anybody thank you um any exp part take Communications by members of the commission um any Declaration of conflict of interest by members of the commission uh zoning and subdivision items there are none correct and so it is time for public comment on non-agenda Planning and Zoning items is there any member of the public that wishes to address the commission okay all right then we'll have a discussion of planning related issues in our work session yes so sorry um so the only item that we're discussing today is solar energy conversion systems and so I'm going to reduce that and pull up a sheet that I have as a running Word document that I've been working on as I make notes and look at various regulations and things that I think that we need to discuss um and let me make this bigger so we can see it because I cannot see it okay so as a whole the you you guys are going to have

to make some decisions tonight you can make votes and you can make decisions about how you're wanting things to move forward what that means is not not that what you have decided tonight is how it's going to be it is these are the the processes that we're taking and the the decisions that we're making as we are putting the draft together so let's call them kind of preliminary votes um you know first I think that you guys should as a whole make a vote that you are going to allow solar energy systems in Shaunie County and then as we move forward we will Define you know what exactly does that mean how big what are the setbacks what you know and so each of those little categories we're going to discuss once you have directed it because if someone makes a motion here tonight that we don't want to have regulations or that we want to ban solar then that would kind of end the topic and we would move down a different route if the route is that we would like to have regulations that Define what we're going to do with solar energy conversion systems I think we should have that set out first um and then we will start going down each of the various categories that we can put into play in regards to these regulations now as I said these are preliminary votes you don't make any final decisions today what you do is you start taking those steps to put a packet together as a whole which we then at the end will end up having a public hearing on and we'll do it like we did with the moratorium we may not be able to have it here just kind of depending on the in input that we're getting from the public we may have to move it to a different location um we would have a big public hearing where you would hear the specifics of a ban of regulations of the regulations that we've drafted and then once you've made a motion and approved or denied whatever it is that you do with that

then that would go on to the BCC but we do have to make some decisions in the meantime to help you guys move forward so that not only the public knows kind of the route that we're going but also I know as I'm drafting stuff and presenting things to you what it is that we're looking to do or if we need to bring topics in from other people discussions legal discussions or other experts that may want you know you may want to have come in and discuss so um I think off the bat my first request would be do you as a Planning Commission want to move forward with solar regulations for the solar energy conversion systems and I will turn it over to you to have that initial discussion on what we think we want to do I move that we continue to to have discussion on solar okay I'll like at that it's been moved in seconded that we continue to have discussions on solar uh Energy Systems any discussion at this so are we voting on what are we voting on here are we voting on that we're moving forward to right regulations that's the way I will let Terry um explain his his motion but I believe that that's what he was motion is to yeah is to continue to look into into uh those those items that we would require for uh to for somebody who would be uh asking to put in a solar farm and I would assume there's battery storage that goes with that system so inside of that vote would we be voting on writing a set of regulations or are we voting or could that also Encompass placing it under a zoning

class and just regulating as a cup my my motion is just a discussion so that we moving yeah moving forward in discussion on how we would go about that okay so my understanding then would be that your motion is we would move forward in writing regulations no matter what those regulations may be or how we move forward with that that we would be drafting regulations for the allowance of solar energy conversion systems is correct okay but could that regulation be that we place it under a as we move forward with this discussion under this motion could that lead to us you know I mean I'm sure you he where I'm headed with this specific versus generic yeah I think that first let's make the motion that we want to have allow for these solar farm regulations to be placed on there and then the next step could be a question of whether they're specific or generic okay but yes that my my belief on that would be yes Chad okay any further discussion take the role Janette Johnson yes Ros yes Terry Robinson yes myON lineer yes Dan Bryan Yes Chad Gart yes with a unanimous vote in favor the motion is approved to continue discussion okay so then the next question I think then since Chad has brought up the topic is whether um you want them to be specific regulations or generic and I

guess before you discuss that let me pull up our current zoning regulations and show you kind of what I have in mind for what that may look like and these are our current zoning regulations now as you realize we're while we're doing this we do have the intent to do some modifications to our zoning regulations whether we strike this as a whole and write all new regulations or whether we come in with just very hot button topics and enhance what we have and kind of rewrite what we have those are things that we're going to be doing later so as of right now what we're working on is how we integrate solar into our current zoning regulations as they sit okay and so what you can see as as on our website the way we have it laid out is this very first line if you click on that it takes us into the the book that are the Shaunie County zoning regulations as a whole um these were WR written in 2000 well I mean they were written in 1992 but then adopted in 2006 here for Shaunie County and um by this resolution there have been a couple of minor amendments since that time but as a whole they've stayed pretty much the same since 2006 and so what I would propose is that we look at allowing solar regulations or solar Farms to be added as a use underneath ones allowed under a conditional use permit and so to do that as an example in ra1 or in rr1 if you click on those regulations or go to the book as a whole what you see is we have the purpose of and intent of our

A1 and then it shows you what is allowed as a permitted use by WR so they don't have to come to us and ask us to do these items as long as they fit under these categories whomever is doing whatever it is that they're doing as long as they fit it in here it's a permitted use my recommendation is that we would come down here to uses permitted by conditional use permit and that we would write solar energy conversion systems as one of the options now to caveat that we would have to separate out by definition the different types of solar energy conversion systems because those that are on a person's house or a person's business that we're calling personal solar energy conversion systems would be a use Allowed by right so if it's one for your house if it's one for your business and it supports your house or your business alone and you're not um you know putting it back onto the grid those are allowed by right we allow those by by right right now we did not include that as a part of this but I think if we're putting it in here that we need to differentiate so that it's very clear to people what that means so under those items permitted the personal ones could fall in there and then under uses permitted by conditional use permit we would include the other types um and my thinking is that you could have them allowed in ra and in RR and probably in i1 and I2 which is are the light and heavy industrial um I we don't have a ton of O Andi and we don't have a ton of

commercial properties and for the most part what we do have have in terms of those categories the parcels are pretty small and so you're not going to see a 200 acre or 150 acre parcel that is O and I or C1 C2 C3 you're going to maybe see 10 acres 15 Acres maybe three or four and so a solar farm is not going to fit on those the way that we are writing them um I think as you're moving forward you'll have to decide whether you want to allow solar farms in RR and maybe what I'll do here next real quick is pull up our appraiser map so you can see what that encompasses and why I think that that works and I'm going to use as an example the one that we we have off of Auburn Road here's the substation that it's associated with and here's the solar farm and our nice updated 2024 Maps allow us to actually see the solar farm so if you look at the zoning here this is zoned RR so if you don't allow solar farms in the RR Zone the existing solar Farms I believe the other one and I don't have the exact

address of the other one but I'm going to go on a limb and say the other one is probably located in our a Zone because it's more on the agricultural area next to Farms whereas this one is fairly close to town um so if you didn't allow RR a solar farm such as this one would not be allowed and so if you look at how the ra and RR Falls around Shaunie County as a whole everything in the light green is RR and everything in the dark green is RA a of course as I back out it took it off so if you only allow it in R A you're only in these areas in the dark green and so as a whole I think that you want to be able to allow it in the RR Zone um as long as you can do so under a conditional use permit because you can take into considerations uh you know size and setbacks and it may eliminate specific properties just based on the other regulations that you put into play so I don't think saying you can't do it in ra or RR makes sense I think you should allow for them in those two zones um and not in the Oni or the commercial now I think when it comes to Industrial you probably are not going to have very many really large industrial Parcels so they may not fit on an industrial parcel anyways um let's give a couple of examples of what that may include and some of these currently fall these are industrial Parcels here and they fall outside of the city limits but my assumption would be that depending on what is being put into some

of these Parcels if you look at the city limits they might be annexed a solar farm maybe not but if you put some sort sort of other industrial building out here they may the city may require it to be annexed if they're needing to connect to water and sewer and stuff like that a solar farm may be different if you put a solar farm on this parcel based on its location and not needing to connect to water or sewer it may be that the city says we or we may not they may not have the authority to Annex um so let's scroll in here just a little bit and see the size of some of these parcels does that say 425 yeah so this is a parcel where if you allowed for 150 or acre solar farm you know it's in industrial so it could be allowed now again my recommendation is even within the industrial parks well I guess that's up for you to decide in ra and RR I think it should be required to have a conditional use permit in the IND industrial I guess you could decide whether or not a conditional use permit would be required based on the fact that most of these industrial Parcels are located next to other items that don't require conditional use permit things are allowed by right and so is that type of use a heavy or a light industrial use that it can just be allowed without a conditional use permit maybe that's not a decision you have today but as a whole the the one that you just showed us there that was on Auburn Road how many acres is that um I think 15 to 20 yeah it's small they're one the two solar Farms that we have now are one megawatt Farms so they're not substantial um one of the other discussions that we'll be

having tonight that I want you to consider and decide upon is size I think that it would be very helpful for the public to know what size we're looking at considering As you move forward so that we don't have a lot of public comment focusing on these 1500 or 2,000 acre utility scale Farms that we just aren't going to consider I think that you know as we're moving forward and you make these you know temporary or brief interlude decisions that it helps the public know what it is that we're thinking as we move forward so that they're focusing their comments and their thoughts on on what we're actually talking about and so yeah that one I think is just a like 15 to 20 acre um could you uh email to the Commissioners the requirements that we made on that Auburn Road Project because none of them were on the commission at that time uhhuh yep we absolutely because that would I think help with a starting point on some of those ideas yeah is that a never G free state evergy uhuh y it was done as a an a group an I don't want to call anou but like a co-op yeah Co-op they were working together to get it done I think because it's an evergy substation but free state wanted to do it and it I think that there was a purchase of land and then a rent lease type thing and then eventually I believe free state is supposed to be taking it all over as a whole is that just the one on Auburn or uh there's that one on Auburn Road and then there was another one [Music] on yeah North and it was a tad bit smaller now both of those were right next to a substation um and the argument being

with that is that you have to be close to those substations to get the highest advantage of what you're capturing the further away you are from the substation you lose that energy as you get further away and it's probable that any so farm that we have now is going to want to be located either very close to a substation or at least to the transmission lines that they could tie into so I'll write a note email the cup for solar farm so you can see conditions okay so Chad did that help answer your question and in regards to what I personally am thinking about how we would move forward with that think it be allow as a matter right Alles no it would not be allowed by a matter of right I don't think it should be allowed by a matter of right in any Zone I think that it would be a permitted use only under a conditional use permit in ra and RR and then in i1 and I to I would consider it being allowed by right as but the problem is is that then we can't regulate well I mean we could we could put we would have to put regulations within i1 and I2 that specified certain setbacks that are special to solar versus any other type of heavy industrial use and what about personal personal are allowed by right on any of them and that will just put in all of the zones as Allowed by Wright for the personal ones yeah I just yeah yep let me pull up again the

sheet that I had going because I have definitions on there that we've already so these definitions are ones that we utilized in um my staff report that I wrote when we did the moratorium and so how we have personal and and these can be changed these are not set in stone um we may decide that the way that we had written them for the staff report and for the moratorium isn't the best way to proceed forward but the personal solar energy conv conversion systems are ones in in each of these it's not just the solar panels or the arrays it's any combination of all the mechanical Structural apperences Buildings anything ass assciated with a specific uh solar system um so the combination of all that where the primary purpose of the electricity generated created or collected is for the consumption by the individual residents or business and it's located on the same site as that solar energy conversion system it's not for transfer sale to a third party net metering could be allowed and what net metering is is if you know they get their all the solar that they need and they're no longer using it and they have extra they can sell it to everg or free state or whoever and so then in theory some of that does go back to the grid and again you guys could say net metering is not allowed but we have not regulated that on personal residences or businesses to date I'm assuming that there are people who utilize that for the purpose of being able to probably pay for some of their solar panel uh invest investment um you know anything that they're able to get by selling that so that's called net

metering and a lot of communities allow an individual or a business to net meter um and they see that separate from commercial or utility solar so those would be your individuals who put solar panels on their own house um an example of a business that did this uh Hills Pet did this and they have a pretty big solar farm but they don't sell that to other people for their use they use it to run their own company and they're attempting to go Net Zero what's the word yeah Net Zero they're attempting to go that direction where they're covering and you know able to generate all of their own needs and so they have a pretty substantial sized solar farm but it's not considered limited scale or utility scale because it's just for the purpose of Their Own company now do they get to net meter it if they have excess yeah I mean if they want to at this point we haven't regulated that they can't and the VA is another example VA is another example however that one Falls within the city limits so um in that case we don't have the authority to regulate those because whatever we're regulating is only for the unincorporated shaune County so if the city of toeka or Auburn or Silver Lake rosville any of those cities want to have their own solar or even wind regulations they can um within their city limits yeah but VA is another example of that right there off of gauge they have a substantial sized one that supports their their hospital um okay so then we defined a limited or Community scale solar project to be a group of people or entities that join together to create collect and use a a solar energy conversion system with all the apperences ETC that

they may need however it supports those groups and so this can include a municipality or a co-op and so in my mind this is where we see the free states although they're also public utility but they're they're an Electric Co-op so technically they fall under this limited scale solar conversion system it supports their people only it doesn't get put onto the Big Grid that gets used and transported wherever anywhere it's just within their own little grid um you know if you have a subdivision who wants to put up a solar farm to support that subdivision it would fall under this um a school system if they wanted to put up solar to to support their own set of schools in that case you may have to they may have to transport it to different properties depending on the layout of the school system um but there could be groups of individuals just you know they come together as a group you know out off of 45th in Shaunie Heights Road there's you know a an area of homes what if those people want to come together and create their own little solar farm that's what would fall under this limited Community scale um commercial scale then by the way we defined it is any solar energy conversion project whereby it is collected to be sold or put into the larger electrical Network and so this is anything that goes onto the Big Grid any big company coming in from out of state that says hey we're a private entity we want to put up a big utility scale solar farm on these thousand acres in shaune county and we're going to tie directly into the

grid and um and it'll be part of the the big system I suppose commercial based on the way that we have it defined could mean even potentially more than that I think that that's where we have to really watch our definitions on how we what we allow um notice that by defining these we didn't put a size requirement on any of them because we felt like you know a lot of times you think utility scale it means someone coming in wanting to do 1500 2,000 acres 2 200 Acres whatever I think that you can have a commercial conversion project that's much less than that um and so we didn't put a size requirement on these original definitions we just did them as a whole and that's a decision that you guys have to make and so in my mind I think that by allowing these projects we could allow limit The Limited scale and the commercial scale and just put a size requirement on it saying that it can't be more than a maximum of so many acres how much did you say the one on Auburn Road was again I'm sorry like 15 20 and then the one at Hills theirs so theirs is a personal so they don't have a size requirement I can pull it up it falls all with on their own personal property fac yep on their facility so there's maybe like three or four acres as a whole like when you look at the size of it but really all we did in regards to that was um permitted like a personal I me okay I have to turn off my zoning now they added another building or something but they also put a lot of the panels on top

of parking yep spaces covered parking spaces if I can find I to like try to visualize that nope that's usually I can see it off the so that's theirs right there it's not huge but it's also as a part of that when I mean it's setb and we when they did theirs theirs is a PD and so when they came in to modify their PUD they included the plan for the solar as a part of that so in essence we did consider it under that plan and their master plan modifications and the discussion at the the time of that was that it's so far away from any other residents that it really wasn't going to have an impact on anybody so we did have a little more oversight on that one I suppose but that wouldn't necessarily be the case on others okay so I think as we move forward kind of your first

discussions um I think you need to move make decisions on both limited and Commercial scale my recommendation would be that you allow them with conditional use permits under ra and RR and I would recommend at this point that we allow them with conditional use permits under i1 and I2 and I think that that could be up for discussion at a later date if you end up saying no we think that i1 and I2 zoning is sufficient enough to allow it just by right but I think as of right now my recommendation would be to recommend a conditional use per on all of them um I would also recommend that you not allow these types of energy conversion systems in any other Zone and so that would Encompass all other zones M1 M2 o Andi all the on Andis all the commercials um Open Spaces other things like that I would recommend that you allow personal solar to continue you on any Zone as long as they apply for proper application and approval of a building permit okay so a couple of other do do you guys have any questions or discussion on any of that before I move on to any other topic before you we I know we'll price cc go back to it but on the why are we not talking about commercial I mean if you have a commercial business that wants put solar panels on top of it why are we just automatically excluding them um so typically they right now they can put them up right now um we don't have any

regulations that don't allow a business or a home to put up solar panels they're Allowed by right because we don't disallow them and as we went through the original moratorium we we did not we specifically did not include personal underneath that moratorium we said that they can can continue to utilize building permits to put up solar panels to support their own business or home okay so we're not excluding them they're just falling under where the residential and where potentially or at least right now industrial is falling because industrial they can no industrial the way that industrial would work if an industrial company put up soul solar panels to support their industrial current industrial use they could put them up so if it was um I mean some of this is in the city limits so it's a bad example but if it were Mars or Walmart distribution or Target distribution all those are in the city limits but if they wanted to put up solar panels to support their business they could or if Forbes field wanted to put them up to support their Air Force Base they could because they're supporting their own entity it's when you are doing it to either sell for a commercial purpose to make money or when it's a like a bigger neighborhood or Co-op or entity that's supporting a group of entities and people and businesses but the only problem with that is the net metering I mean in a s it could be a problem it could be I don't you know as of right now we don't really have the thing is is we don't have any way of

monitoring that if they're net metering I don't we would have to do a bunch of research to find out how if we put a Prohibition on to net metering how we would attempt to regulate that well I mean if you're I mean if you're what we're talking about there you know Walmart Distribution Center something like that can put in a whole bunch of solar panels that they say is to support themselves right which in a sense they could put in a whole bunch of extra ones that we wouldn't ever know if it was to support themselves to put it back on the grid just for the sole purpose of the net metering yeah yeah again each of these topics we're discussing you can make small votes and kind of move in some directions or you make no votes at all and just kind of absorb it all tonight and think about it for another later date but you can always come back and say you know what I really think that net metering is an issue I think we need to have more discussion on that what's permanent by right under i1 and I2 okay you're going to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole by this I'm going to show you I2 right now yeah so the way that on the on the heavy end on i1 and I2 the very first thing that it says is the permitted uses are everything in i1 so this is I2 and it says you can do anything that's included in i1 plus you can do these types of things pretty much an I2 you can do anything um except for living

houses there are a lot of houses within our i1 and I2 zones right now but those are all grandfathered in they were built and put in when those were residential parcels and then at some point the county well in the 1960s the county came in and rezoned large chunks of area into i1 and I2 for future industrial use but the houses all remain so long as they're continuing to be used as such if they tear the house down if they burn they can't rebuild it um there is an allowance for caretakers so if you have a a I2 use and you need to have someone staying there for a night Watchman that is allowed kind of an old concept but again these were written back in the 1990s and so you know how that may have changed since then I'm not you know I'm not going to profer at this point but there's also a couple of provisional uses and what a provisional use is is it's a little over and above what would be allowed by permitted but they may just have to comply with some additional regulations and as long as they're complying with those regulations it's still a permitted use um our provisional uses are a little bit strange because there are some items that they have to come in and get approved by the governing body and to me that's not a provisional use that's a conditional use and so when we redo the zoning regulations we'll probably rewrite how it sets out I mean it either needs to be permitted or if it's a provisional use that needs to just be something that's easy for them to meet that they don't have to come for to our office for approval um and then a conditional use and then items that are conditional uses are some heavier extraction gravel pits raw material type things and sanitary landfills they require to always have a conditional use permit so pretty much anything goes in Ian

or I2 and so then you look you then have to go down to i1 to see well what is it then that's allowed in i1 that's also allowed in I2 and it does list off you know construction Dairy demolition landfills um Laboratories manufacturing wrecking uh you know junkyards railroad facilities warehouses welding storage units if you didn't know all storage units in shaune County have to be at least i1 we have people that call us every week wanting to put up an arvan boat storage facility on their ra agricultural farm and you can't do it it has to be at least i1 to get storage facilities um so Chad here's this is your best answer to what's allowed now also allowed in i1 the very first line item is anything allowed in the C4 district and if you go look at the C4 anything allowed in the C3 is allowed and then it starts so it goes all the way down so once you're up at that top pretty much anything all the way down to commercial is allowed so from C1 all the way up and actually I think even in C1 you're allowed to use it for o and I so I would say from o and I if you're up at that i1 I you can do everything all the way down to O and i1 in those zones so there's some pretty significant things that you can do in i1 and I2 I don't know if a solar farm is any worse than any of these items like a public use facility a substation in a substation in R A or RR

requires a conditional use permit but once you get up here to um you know the industrial it's allowed by right and so if a private or public utility structure except for the fact that we have a moratorium right now a solar farm could probably go in i1 or I2 by right because it's considered a private or public utility structure facilitating that transmission distribution Andor collection but the uh moratorium prevents it right now you think that was the intent that was written I don't know because you know in the 90s were wind and solar a topic a topic probably not it was I mean we utiliz that more for water towers substations transmission lines to see all the i1 and I2 is that POS it's um well it's hard because once you get far enough out I'm going to take off the city limits what I can show you is right now a lot of your where you're at right now physically right now is i1 I2 but it is in the city limits we are located in the city limits um and so this is also a little complicated because our i1 and I2 is so similar to not having any sort of zoning that it's hard to see but like all of this light gray stuff in here is i1 if it's a little bit darker so it looks like maybe this maybe I2 it's a little bit darker but this is all i1 and then you see if I click on the city limits you can see how much of that then rolls into the city limits there

that helps so the gray not in the city limits and not in the green that's industrial um um where we have Futurama stuff over [Music] here up in here these you can see are industrial so this is uh Southeast Second Street is area right there and Seward so we have Industrial in there now also a topic of discussion which I have noted a little bit further is flood plane um whether or not we would allow solar Farms to go into the flood plane or the flood way um and so in some of these industrial zones the the industrial sites were probably there before the flood plane Maps were put into place but if those uses were to be discontinued they may not be able to put something in to the same extent that they have now because flood plane regulations are much more strict than what they went before they existed so taking the flood plane back off those great areas are industrial and then down does does the cup on the 20 Acre Farm of free states set any precedents for anything nope and we specifically when that one was decided um commissioner cook specifically added a condition that those solar Farms would have to they would not be considered grandfathered in and once we put the the solar regulations into place they would have to come into compliance now I will tell

you the biggest part that they will struggle with probably none of the areas other than setbacks and so you when we get to that point we're probably going to have to have some discussions about what they're going to be required to do in regards to setbacks because depending on what we lay down as a setback if they don't comply it could require them to be eliminated altogether and I don't know that that's the intent of I think that commissioner cook just wanted to make sure that they don't just say well we don't have to worry about that because we were in place beforehand he wants us to look at those conditional use permits again and say well they don't comply with these regulations that we're putting into place so are we going to spe specifically line item that they're exempt from those those specific rules and so we will have to see those again so while we're on where we're going to put them I guess trying to figure in where the public is on on these issues is there is there some wisdom and this is a question uh maybe restricting them to i1 and I2 with the idea that if somebody wanted to put in a wind farm elsewhere they could go for not wind farm just solar y I know what you're saying but I want to make sure that the record says that we'll have a lot of people that are like what yeah yeah that that was my bad I'm sorry yeah solar uh that that they would have to then rezone to one of those two and they could do that anywhere in the county is I guess is there any conventional wisdom that so that there could be more public input because there would be a resoning process that's my question um okay so if we allowed them whether it be through a conditional use permit or by right in i1 or I2 what

you're looking at right now would be only a few areas right here by the city right here by the city and like right up here by the city so there would be all of the solar Farms would then be really shoved right up against City Limits um I think that if we were going to suggest that that we would probably be it would probably be a good idea to go to the city and say do you have opposition to them being this close to the city limits is their issue with that because as they Annex and expand if you have a big solar farm right next to the city that could potentially significantly impact how their expansion could go and since it falls within the three mile radius they may want to have input on that anyways yeah but the other part of my question is is then if they wanted to be in the county in an area that's zoned egg right now or any other zoning that right they they would have the ability to then rezone the property okay and then the wind form go I I guess what I'm the reason I'm asking that is is if the public I think understands that they have more input and rezoning would require more input is that a wise thing for us to think about it for right C so historically historically the answer to that would be it's easier for us to condition and control a conditional use permit than a total rezoning and I'll tell you why because when if you have it as ra and r r and you put a conditional use permit on that property once that solar farm is gone and that use as a conditional use permit is gone what you have left is a zone of R A and

RR and solar Farms may be there for 25 years or 30 years we don't know that they'll last forever into Infinity if you rezone to Industrial and then you have a solar farm on there for 25 or 30 years after those 25 or 30 years that solar farm leaves any use that's allowed and the industrial use could go on that property so the argument that I would have if I were a neighbor is that it's actually more dangerous to force them to reone to i1 or I2 and I as the planning director um would be less inclined to make a recommendation for approval if the resoning is to such a heavy use because once that solar farm is gone they could put whatever they wanted on there and as we looked at those zones I2 allows you to use anything in O Andi commercial i1 I2 without restriction and so that's where we tend even with the storage units my recommendation with storage units tends to be that we not just do a straight rezoning to i1 or I2 that instead you rezone to a PUD and then we limit it like with i1 or I2 underlying zoning but we put a condition that the only use allows is a storage unit or a solar farm but then rezoning to i1 or I2 really doesn't make any sense really what makes more sense is for it to be an allowable use with a conditional use permit under one of those lighter zones okay does that make sense it it it does I just you're already kind of doing this process with storage units I just was trying to see if we could adapt it to and my recommendation when we redo our zoning RS is that we allow storage units in lighter um uses I think that

limiting them only to i1 and I2 is too much because people want and need storage units but if you have to do it within i1 or I2 you're really limiting it to specific areas on where you can do it and I think that we can better put conditions on them in and this applies to a lot of different uses it's easier to allow something with a conditional use that we can over regulate BAS on whatever it is that they're doing than to say you can only do it in these particular zones it gives us better control okay yeah other questions so really um when it comes to the industrial then you can see down here we have some industrial Zone as well but really that's it we're very I mean very small spaces of industrial zoning and when they did the the industrial park over here I mean that was a very hot button Topic at the time and I'm sure a lot of you remember the arguments that went into play about turning you know that Prime Farm ground into industrial parks and some of it has been used in has moved forward and other still sits as Farm ground right now okay um okay so some other Counties have limited distances from City Limits and so if we allow them in industrial this would kind of be the exact opposite of what some counties have done some counties have put a two to three mile limit from any city limits to keep them pushed out further so you know that is one question that I had I don't know that we need an answer to that tonight but think about it do we want to force

them to be located away from the city limits and in more agricultural areas from from what I understand with Cedric County and I did talk to the county commissioner uh his name was uh David Dennis okay he was the one he's no longer a commissioner there but he was the one involved in writing their regulations and and and uh their major concern was putting solar Farms where there's possible abil ability to expand residential and so they kind of made their their regulations more in terms of where Housing and Development might go in in their County as as right the city moved out so I I don't know how you incorporate that into what well it's almost kind of exactly as you say I think that there should be some conversation with the city of topa specifically and then we may want to reach out to you know Auburn and Silver Lake etc for those of you who live in other cities or have close Communications with them you might reach out to those governing bodies to find out right now the only city who has a three mile radius is Topeka so we control zoning and building permits all the way up to the city limits of Auburn um Willard uh wash what am I saying rosville Silver Lake so we go all the way to the city limits in the city of Topeka we do the building permits and the zoning but we don't do the subdividing and so they're going to want to have input in their three mile radius and the places that they have deemed to be their Urban growth area where they do plan to expand over the next 40 or 50 years and they're going to want to know if we're going to permit a solar farm in those areas and so it may be that we say well we'll stay out of the urban growth

area or you know I think saying that we'll stay out of the full three miles is probably too much because there's a lot of area within that three mile that they will never expand um but I assume the i1 and the I2 is not in their Urban growth area I don't know I would have to look at the the ug to toell to tell you that I don't know that for sure now you have to understand that the urban growth area isn't necessarily just for residential it they may very well want to take IND Industrial Area because they I mean industrial buildings can produce a lot of tax base so if we if we do talk about the urban growth development area then we would need to make sure that we Define it exactly correctly correct yes yeah back on that city limit thing um I know we're not talking about to much but just so I can think about is it even legal or possible to say make one rule for Topeka since they already have their three mile buffer and they take more seriously and different because some of the smaller towns I mean I could see someone one mile outside of a small town wanting to put one up make two different rules is what I'm saying absolutely okay absolutely I'm not advocating or yeah proposing that yet just yeah um another thing that I think that we really need to consider is the tall grass moratorium and I'm going to pull up our map again so you guys can see where this is now the Tall Grass moratorium is a ban on wind farms that was instituted by the state we don't have anything to do with it it's by the state and what happened was back probably back to Zimmerman versus wuni County I believe um governor cilus

before she was a governor was part of or was brought into part of the arguments that were being done on Zimmerman versus Wun County so in Wun County there was a consideration of wind farms they were going through all of their process of deciding whether or not they were going to have wind farms having a moratorium doing all the things that they were doing just sort of like what we're doing now but years ago and um at that time they decided to put in a moratorium and ban it well it kind of kicked off this discussion about wind within the Flint Hills because W buuny County Falls within the Flint Hills and at that time then when governor cilius was the governor a ban was put on certain counties within the Flint Hills saying you're not allowed to have wind farms in these counties um years passed and Governor Brownback I believe it was Governor Brownback expanded it and encompassed additional counties and so now there's like 18 counties that as a whole or in part fall within that moratorium and that was again um not approved but just kind of confirmed by Governor Kelly so over the years they've continued to say no wind in The Tall Grass moratorium uh and I say this because Shaunie County does fall in part in that tall grass moratorium and when we have looked to [Music] see what that looks like it encompasses it is that apply to solar as well it does not it just says wind so I'm I'm bringing this up so that you guys can think about it do we want to keep the

area that's not allowed to have wind whether we have a ban or not it's not allowed anyways in this area but do we want to say also any of the area that's within the Tall Grass moratorium would also not be allowed to have solar because it is I in theory part of the Flint Hills so the area that I see on the Heartland map goes from Highway 24 and follows the highway my lines are not exact because but it follows Highway 24 and then it comes down here to I70 and then follows I70 over to here and then goes down to along K4 as it goes along down in here so all of this area to the west and in between that green that all based on what we have seen is part of the Tall Grass moratorium and wind is not allowed in there so the qu question that I'm posing is do we want to apply that to solar as well and say we are not going to allow any solar farms in that area Food For Thought wind and solar are two different entities they're two different types of facilities um you know I don't believe that they've I I'd have to do a little more research to see if there's any moratoriums throughout the Tass area I mean that's a big that I me I've seen the whole map it's it's huge yeah it's huge are there any solar I don't I would inside of it I would assume there are but I don't know the answer to that exactly that's why I'm saying i' have to do a little more research to see if there's been any utility solar because I know like

in Coffee County is looking at putting regulations up and um pot County did I don't know if Wun county has looked at solar so my thought is is that it does not prohibit solar but it would be a method of us limiting a certain area if you would want to consider that um okay so the next on my topic was whether or not we should limit or ban solar in the flood plane or flood way and so let's go back to our GIS map I'm going to clear off that my maps a minute as we're waiting for this to load the reason why this is a topic for us in our office we are the flood plane managers for shaune County for unincorporated Shaunie County so anytime anybody wants to do any development and it falls on a parcel that has flood plane or flood way they have to come to our office to get additional permits so any sort of building all the solar panels themselves if they are ground Mount solar panels not just on a roof mount um they would have to come in and get a building permit but they would also have to get flood planes development permits and if we did massive Farms we would have to have extensive permit permitting for each of the items that are looked at or

considered but we would have to check with the state to see if the state would require permits because not only do we at the county level require permits but the state requires permits on certain types of actions and then if you're close to any anything that is operated under the the core of engineers they require permits and so it's possible if they went into the flood plane or the flood way that a either based on regulations that we wouldn't be able to allow them to be used or we would have to restrict them so heavily and then they would have to have a lot of permits that it would just turn into a major project I can you educate me why are we restricted why is that restricted so heavily I mean I think of it more of an insurance thing you put it there you lose it it's it's Insurance on them but why are we as restricting safety so anytime you put anything in the flood plane or the floodway if you um let's just go with an accessory building if you put an accessory building in the flood plane what you're doing is the water that used to be able to free flow through there now has an obstruction and has the water has to find another way to go so for every obstruction that's in place it changes the water height because it's no longer able to just cut straight through um and so and not everything has anchoring properly or proper boyancy and so then the other problem that you run into is if you have a bunch of stuff on your property and you have you're in the flood plane or the flood way that water comes through everything that you have there just goes and that water is heavy and dangerous and then you have a bunch of floating items so if you have a bunch of solar panels in the flood plane if they're you know just on T Bar anchors will the flood plane Waters just pick them up and wash them away and then for everything washed away it runs into people cars places causing more and more

damage and so that's why we spend a lot of time and it's you know it's kind of from the top down uh FEMA is the top level that directs what the states have to do and then the states direct what we have to do and then we are the local action people who enact what it is that has come down from the top but if you want to build a house in the flood plan and your I don't know exactly but your finished floor level has to be one foot above Bas Bas flood elevation which would be the same if you stuck a um it's a little bit different for accessories so like if you have a carport and uh you know think of gazebo or a carport that's open you can put that in the flood plane and it does not have to be one foot above BFE because the water can flow in and around it so there'd be a consideration for that on the solar panels they may not need to be one foot above B one foot above yeah got it yeah but they could I mean that is going down a whole another ball game of regulations but there are you know if it's not a building that people are living in um depending on if it's in the flood plane or the flood way you can also do what's called a no rise certificate where you have an engineer come in and say this item being in the flood way is not going to cause the flood waters to rise and so it could be that solar panels are a type of thing depending on where they're located that wouldn't cause flood waters to rise but then they would have to every time someone put one in they would have to get Engineers to come in and do all of the reports to show and prove to us and sign off on the certificates that it wouldn't have that effect or else we can't approve them and we've enacted flood plane regulations um as the state has asked us to do and

we participate in programming that gets um those within the flood plane who live in the flood plane and have insurance that get them discounts and so if we don't comply with those then we can get kicked out of programs and it can cost our taxpayers your recommendation to keep a solar installation out of the flood plane all together as of right now that's my recommendation I think if you wanted to consider it and we wanted to dig into it deeper my recommendation at this point is that we would not have it in the flood plane or the flood definitely not the flood way the floodway is the most like the purple along the Kansas River that's the closest to like you flooding there is probably going to happen when you get to that dark blue it's a little more likely the light blue still has a really good chance and it's probably more Creeks uh the gray area is a very very low chance and you can still build and do whatever in those gray areas and the flood plane maps are changing they were last created in 2011 and we think by 2027 or so that we'll have new flood plane Maps where stuff is either expanded or uh Le lessened but we do have a lot of flood plane in Shaunie County a lot and of course as soon as I scroll out it pops away so I can't show you the nice big picture but let's look at the North First and so purple like I said is flood way I would absolutely recommend none in the flood way uh the dark blue I would still say probably not a good idea the light blue maybe but they're going to have to get permits and it's just a lot of extra paperwork and money and work and I don't know um one of the other discussions that I had even um with our Public Works director had to do with prime Farm ground and also the Kansas riverbed and so being able to

identify you know do we need to stay out of the Kansas riverbed cuz you know is that dangerous close to water tables and that's the other thing with flood plane you know where are the water tables if you have a bunch of perces in the the ground are they leeching off and creating issues with soil are we taking what is known to be better Farm ground and taking it over with solar panels um who decides if it's better to farm ground or not what's the i' probably say that there's um the state has yeah puts out Maps the Kansas Department of Agriculture it's in the comprehensive plan for sh County at least as yeah so all of the blue purple dark blue and light blue is all a flood plane obviously you can see a lot of it runs along rivers and creeks and then the Kansas River okay so I think probably one of the last topics maybe we talk about tonight so that we don't overwhelm ourselves and I want you guys to do some thinking um would be maximum acreage and you don't have to make a decision tonight but this is kind of where my recommendation is at um maximum acreage size for the entire project and when I say the entire project that means not just the area of the solar panels that means everything within that boundary including setbacks including any

apperences roads buildings anything that has to Encompass has to fall within that total project area um and I mean I'm thinking no more than 150 to 200 Acres although you know whether or not you go bigger or go smaller you have to remember that the the Farms that we've approved already are like 15 to 20 um and so this this is a lot bigger I definitely don't recommend going bigger well my recommendation would be not to go bigger than 200 now to that end what you also have to remember is that you can also put distance limitations so you know say for instance you have okay we're going to allow 200 Acre Farms what you don't want to have is four projects come in with four 200 Acre Farms right next to each other just under different parent companies and so another thing that a lot of County have done is put distance requirements between each one where you have at least a mile or at least two miles between each one um there's been some discussion between myself and Kyle whether we have the capacity to say okay we're going to allow up to 200 but we're not going to allow any more than five in shaune county or 10 or whatever the total may be I I just don't know exactly how over over the time we would necessarily regulate that we you know once you approve one or two then you know do one or two fall off do one or two more come along you know maybe it's better to say either a maximum you know will allow up to 200 acres and shaune County can't have more than 2,000 acres of solar Farms total and they all have to be at least two miles apart I mean we may be limiting it at so much that you couldn't

get 10 of them on there but I do think that we need to set maximum projects so that we don't end up with 15 or 20 200 Acre Farms yeah I think I think kind of what I've in talking with some people the the main thing is wherever they are or however big you allow them to be is that the they're close to where they can be they're can to transmission lines and you you had brought that up before that was something that that I was glad you you brought up at the very beginning and because one of the things that I would be incredibly concerned about and we were talking about battery storage and typically a lot of in these solar energy companies as I understand it if they can if they can harness that energy with battery storage they they will try to combine those projects then you get into the idea the the issue of what happens if those batteries catch on fire because they do not you don't put them out with water you just keep cooling them down till they till they run their course and so then you're getting into a whole lot of other things that you know like your your water district providing water your your fire you know District providing fire protection and so I mean as we look at that we're you know we could limit the of the Farms maybe based on you know how far we're going to let them be from transmission lines and those connections yeah I think the the public too um one of the things that that was mentioned was having transmission lines

put you know along their properties when when there AR transmission lines for the solar farm and they have to give up that right away mhm and so making them closer to transmission lines would be one way well and right now imminent domain that came up was imminent domain and right now at this moment the way that it is is that really you have to be a public utility or a government to be able to exercise that eminent domain I think that there's a much more limited scope of what it is that would be allowed for imminent domain in the private sector now there have been discussions about opening that up and if that opens up I hope that people really pay attention and talk to their legisl you know their legislative Representatives about whether or not allowing private entities to to do imminent domain is a good idea because the people who are really going to be looking at utilizing that are you know wind farms storage facilities battery storage facilities anybody who needs to get their product from their location to the Big Grid and if they are able to operate and utilize eminent domain to do so that will be much more complicated and I agree uh Terry you do have to really keep the wind and solar and battery storage facilities close to transmission lines if not two substations um but again depending on if you're linking into the Grid or you're just supporting local projects would kind of depend and so if it's a subdivision that's just supporting their own subdivision and not selling elsewhere it wouldn't have to be next to

a transmission line or a grid because they're not putting it on to the Big Grid it would just be those utility scale projects that would potentially do that they would have to use somebody's transmission lines they would part of the project would have to be to but they're not not at that point they're not considered transmission lines they're called feeder lines or there was another word K do you remember what they were no we had it in the definition yeah and I didn't copy and paste all of those I don't think but there it's they feeder lines to get it to the location not necessarily transmission lines as we consider them where it's going from a substation and transporting it across the country or continent or two homes um transmission collector or feeder lines tie-ins I think that I'm trying to think of what Josh spotty called he was talking about tie-ins yeah there they're the same all the same thing me it's the same line transmission line has a particular it's defined in federal law so yeah really yeah I mean so and that's why they go through the threeyear process to get connected to the grid a whole yeah they're really only fed the federal government but they regulate essentially from the transmission line or the substation to it's not very long yeah and so that's when they stop becoming transmission lines and something different so we so we would need to almost identify that would we or not I think dougas County did from the KCC we did get so when we were originally looking at this moratorium we did reach out to the KCC to get some input and they provided us some language and and they said now look

we only oversee stuff that falls under the KC the Kansas Corporation Commission you know the stuff that they regulate um you know there's only certain portions of it that they are in charge of and the transmission lines they do but those collector and feeder lines do not fall under their purview and so he the guy that had reached out to us had said that you know they had made some recommended changes to the one for Douglas County on how to word it and you know anybody that falls within a project so you know as I was saying a project area if you have a project boundary and you have a you know a big line around a certain project does everybody within that project Then Fall within the conditional use permit are they all leasing properties that are working with them are they getting paid for it you know our feeder lines or transmission lines Going Underground and so making sure that whatever happens within that project area is um encompassed as a part of the conditional use permit and considered outside of that if they've connected to the grid we don't have authority to regulate the the transmission lines or the grid themselves okay so in terms of size what do you guys what have you guys been thinking think is 150 200 too big have you been thinking sizewise is more like the 15 or 20 that we've got how how did you land on maximum size of 150 to 200 um just kind of based off of definitions that I've read in other counties um a lot of other counties go like 15 to 20 acres or smaller are just considered you know little garden farms and and then from 15

or 20 up to like 2 250 maybe kind of that me middle ground and then 250 and up but to me 250 and up is very extensive I that's a big difference of what a 250 Acre Farm looks like and a 2500 Acre Farm looks like um I was thinking more along the lines of that area because you don't have a whole lot of parcels that are that size most if they want to get 150 to 200 Acre Farms they're probably going to have to get multiple owners involved um also as my recommendation with even in allowing up to 150 acres or 200 acres for the total project area that you put a limitation of you can only have 70% of that be solar panels because we have to make sure that we have enough space to allow for good setback and making sure that the the solar panels are compacted within there and so even you know if you have 75% solar panels on a 150 acres what are you looking at 100 acres of solar panels um very signicant so you know and do I mind the the the solar Farms I think that the ones that we have right now are very low impact they you know they've been put up we don't hear about them at all we don't hear any discussions about them cons concerns complaints um you know so those haven't been an issue at all I don't know what the magic number is yeah they actually have kind of different yeah and that's also with the way that we have them defined we may have to change and not no longer call

them limited scale and Commercial we may just have to say personal and nonpersonal whatever we call them and then just put a size limitation on them I don't know if we want to get into the nitty-gritty of whether or not it's a community or subdivision or a utility um I think that no matter what we want to have certain setbacks we want to have certain size requirements no matter what that may mean I do think you're right I think topography and and parcel size you know what's available is going to be very limited to get really anything over 200 Acres I would imagine because you get into that size you're going to be getting in somebody's Farm ground somewhere I don't think that'll that will be advisable yeah for sure the the parcels that are the except for maybe some areas where you have a lot of Rocky terrain um and cliffs and hills and such those may not be as suitable for solar to begin with but they're also not going to necessarily be suitable for farming maybe for ranching and cows and horses and sheep and goats and stuff but yeah I mean we do have some that are substantial in size and one of the things that I can provide you guys is we did have our GIS mapping Department as a part of this early on tell us well how many you know how many Parcels do we have that are 300 or more how many Parcels do we have that are 150 to 200 and we have a large number that are very small but you know if a Solar Company is coming in and really wants to put a 200 Acre Farm and they found 100 acres they may go around to all the surrounding neighbors and say hey we want to buy you out to put solar panels I just don't know what that looks like from private entities at this point and what what

that looks like when they start cutting down trees yeah that's another thing yeah did you say early like last meeting that there were before the moratorium hit there were some proposals or people that were coming forward companies that were thinking about doing solar or was it just wind no uh we have not heard anything on solar we do know that there were leases out there in in some areas of the county that were Wind Farm people who were leasing land um I had not heard that there were any that were solar now it doesn't mean that they're not there um there could be leases I would assume that they've recorded those leases with the register of deeds and so if we went and did a search we could probably find them but we're not personally aware of any solar leases at this stage I did have a company kind of Quasi reach out to us after our last meeting looking at a couple of parcels that were over 600 acres saying hey can you get us contact information and help facilitate contact with these people to do a utility scale solar farm and I said nope we have a moratorium I will not help that and at that point I didn't want to say hey we're probably going to limit the size and utility is probably not going to happen here because you guys haven't voted on that and at this point I still can't say that um you know at this point it's just we have a moratorium and we don't know know what the answers are going to be just yet have there been any to have Joanie also um email her list of things that we made need to we need to make decisions upon and yeah then at our next meeting come prepared with your ideas on on

those so that we can start making some decisions unless there's something you want to make a decision on this even I I don't know that we can make a a good decision but in reading all the different resolutions and and regulations from the different counties there there's a lot of similarity and you had talked about cutting and pasting yeah you know but I I still think we need to put these discussion items in in that cut and paste specifically for sha County yeah you look at them there's I mean you I there was legal aspects involved and that's and I think that's you know other than I am not concerned about solar itself the biggest concerns I I have about it is if if you try to do battery storage and then you know make sure what and I'm sure this is the legal part of it to make sure that whatever we create is is uh will stand up under under legal stress and so from what I understand from SED county is that that was a big item for them was when they wrote it to make sure that that it would it would stand up under any legal stress that was placed against it so so in in regards to that as well um some of the discussion that we had when we were putting the moratorium into place is you as the Planning Commission and then also the board of County Commissioners kind of sit in two different roles the role that you're doing in writing regulations is what we call or consider a legislative action because you're creating laws um when you take those laws and then Implement them you're sitting in more of a quasi judicial position so when you consider a

conditional use permit or a rezoning case you're making a decision on a quasi judicial basis and you have more you have more factors that are have already kind of been set out there through our golden vers you golden versus Overland Park and in those factors you look at you know a variety of different things and the courts have found that if you have considered all of those things or you know whether you say yay or nay on them that you are making a decision that is not arbitrary it is reasonable and as long as you've looked through those and you say well yeah it looks like it's fit with the golden factors that you know complies with all these different or when you look at it and say nope it doesn't fit with the character of the neighborhood then you've made a reasonable decision and it's not arbitrary and the courts typically uphold those decisions so then on the the contrary to that when you're doing a legislative action you don't have that same set of factors to consider now when you look at the golden factors and you look at some of them you can say oh well this still can apply and so you can use some of those golden factors as kind of a basis to say well you know what should we do here not do there but your decisions are legislative in nature and the legal consideration of that is a little bit different energy companies have money yep that's all I'll say about that yeah been watching too much land man so um nicely enough I had these all numbered and I couldn't get my margins and everything to match up but apparently word decided they needed to be bullet points instead of numbers and now my margins all line up perfectly so I don't know how that happened but I have this is to me as I was going

through regulations I was writing notes about things that I found were important and I started writing them down and putting them in this list and as you can see the list is extremely extensive and I didn't even once I got down here all I was doing doing was writing items I wasn't even putting any sort of information about them and I will tell you right now that this is not everything that we have to consider um it's you know it's a it's a major task to undertake and I think that you had some good discussion today and so yes I will send this out to you guys and I will try and keep updating it as I add stuff in um so for next meeting we do have an April meeting today's March right we're in March we do have an April meeting we have our rodeo and did we have is that the only thing that's okay so we have the rodeo so um so Mr chy AR's got his stuff refiled and so we will hear uh NOS Rodeo case in April um and so that will just remember that that's going to involve a a public hearing that's historically been a little bit contentious and so we will have some stuff around that we can um also after that is over have additional discussion on solar but my question for you guys at this point is what do you want me to do for next month what you know where do you want me to go what do you want me to look at what do you want to discuss at the next work session on this so that I can be helpful in moving this forward it might be helpful to uh since I I'm pretty sure you're the best expert we have in here if you can prioritize like what are the first four to five things that'd be most beneficial for you to get a vote on to keep moving forward so we

don't get stuck discussing flood planes and we don't even know how big or what we're going to do in these zones so kind of prioritization of what we're needing to vote be help okay at what point do we have to extend this like when are we when do we need to vote on extending the moratorium but it doesn't feel like we're going to get this I mean do you think we're gonna get this done inside the based on tonight no yeah right I mean unless we're here for like three hours every time and and once I get some stuff written it may be easier to break it down but I need to know what direction you want me to go to know what to write and um I think that we had good discussion tonight and I have a better idea of kind of what you guys are thinking but no there's no way that we will get this done by the end of the moratorium um My Hope Has has always been that we would have it done by the end of 2025 but I believe the I believe the moratorium was signed in June and I have the date written down of when and I can't remember if it was here or not I don't believe it's here so we I I do have the date that it was approved and I believe it was in June and it's published shortly thereafter and so it took effect as of the publication date and then um once we but we need it to be extended prior to the publication date so let me go I can look real quick what does it take to extend it like a whole public hearing and every no nothing crazy I think that you just need to do a motion and a vote we should have public comment on it so yes have a short little public hearing where you I think don't I mean since we did a public hearing to approve it do you think we should do a public hearing to extend it

I think based on past precedent I don't know that we're required to but yeah probably frankly I don't think we really needed to have a public hearing to do the moratorium but we did because we wanted to make sure that we got good public input on what we were doing um and so our our position has always kind of been that we would rather overdue du process then underdo it so I think that a public hearing would be a good idea well obviously you know this is one of those uh projects where you know you ask the question how to you eat an elephant one bite at a time right because and so we're we're if we had five things starting at the top and moving down into more into the details that would allow us and if you send those out to to us ahead of time and then we we could have time to work on those so we could get some of that done I me it feels like we're probably not skipping any months meetings anymore with trying to do this correct probably not unless we have a specific time that I mean I guess I don't I was just headed down the path and we know we're having a meeting for sure in April do we just stick it on that agenda so it was approved on June 13 and then it [Music] was published on June 24 so we need to have a decision back from the BCC prior to June 23 I mean so I would have to look at the calendar to see that means when we put things on so even if we we had a hearing on it here and you made a motion like the way that we do it now is typically like if we have March

10 is our Planning Commission meeting we don't take it to the BCC until April 13 however that's not by resolution that's because we have a you know protest petition time frames and we have things that have to get done between those two meetings on a legislative action like this like a moratorium if we heard it at your May 10 meeting I believe it's May 10 May 12 May 12 meeting then within a couple of weeks or a week I could get it on the agenda but because we've done it as a public hearing I think we need to allow enough time for notice to be put out and so I would say that at your May 12 meeting you need to make that decision and then that gives us time to you know put out any proper notice and get it onto the BCC because the 24th June 24th is a Tuesday and if it went into effect the 24th then you know we need to be before the 24th so no later than June 19th I think we need to have something official by the BCC are there any other questions or any other business to come before the group a non non-related issue um the decision that we made last time with the uh Rural Water District that went to the C board County Commissioners what was the end result of that they haven't gone so it's a plat what happens with plats is once it gets considered here then they have to go

through the process of getting it considered by the County Surveyor by um our mapping department and get all of the boxes checked and make sure everything is correct and then once they have that done then they bring it to us for the uh chairperson to sign and myself and then I have to put it on the agenda for the BCC to hear it and so we haven't gotten it back from them yet so it hasn't gone to the BCC got it back from the water district or from who the water district has not brought us the myar so once you guys consider it they have to take what you have approved and take it to the County Surveyor and by law the County Surveyor has to review it and look at it and make sure it meets all of her standards and that none of the descriptions need to change or layouts that nothing needs to change um once she has done that and signed off on it then it goes to GIS mapping department and they double check all of the legal descriptions and property owner names and make sure that it meets with whatever it is that they need to to finalize once that has happened then the owner of it so the Rural Water District brings it back to my office and myself and Janette will sign it as the chairperson and we get it on the agenda for the BCC to consider it the BCC has to sign off on it when there's things like dedication of RightWay or easements anything like that that has to be approved by the BCC um and so we have not gotten it back in my office for us to put it on the agenda for it to go back to the DCC any other questions that was called a little bit ago we asked if there was any before

this discussion we asked if there was any public comment so I'll leave it up to the if you want to well so if you go back to my that's why I specifically said in the presentation that um I'm gonna go down here so F public comment on non-agenda Planning and Zoning items and then we had the work session and we said here please note that we will allow public comments only during the designated time on the agenda we do not have a specific time for public comment or interaction in regards to tonight's work session the purpose of the work session is to allow discussion and brainstorming we will have additional work sessions and time for public comments and at later dates and then also we will have public hearings later once we start making decisions and if you have any comments that you would like to email to us then I can present those to the planning Commissioners so y if there's no further business then I think we stand a Jour unless I have to ask for a motion I don't think Robert's Rules no not for AJ