NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Counselor Patrick Hoffman explained for the benefit of the Board of County Commissioners on Wednesday what the process is when the Planning and Zoning Commission writes regulations, like they are currently doing with commercial solar development in the county. The vital point is that whether you are for solar development or against it, the planning and zoning commission level is where you can get changes made.
County Commission chair Daniel Friesen distilled the public, in person, verbal comment opportunities regarding the issue down to their essence.
"Will there be public comment? Yes," Friesen said. "It will be after your draft is done. Should there be public comment before the draft? Currently, the answer is no, based on what the planning commission wants. Is the county commission taking public comment? Currently, the answer from staff is recommending no, but we can do what we want at the time."
With that said, if you have information you want the planning and zoning commission to consider, they are still taking emails to that effect.
"We prefer that, when people want to email or whatever, not to a single planning and zoning commission member," said Public Works Director Don Brittain. "When you send to staff, it goes to all of them at the same time, so that not one person is coming with some information to the meeting and the other six don't know what's going on, you've got to discuss it. They all get it a week or so ahead of time, they can all digest it and start making up their mind on how they want to act on it."
The public hearing date for the regulations has not been set yet, as they do not have a final draft of the regulations done yet. That could happen in the coming weeks. Once it does, they will put out public information letting everyone know where and when that public hearing will be.
"People feel so strong about this issue," Hoffman said. "You could just do a town hall hours and hours every day. Until they've actually drafted something and are close to figuring out where it's going to land, it's premature to just hear all those comments."
Brittain gave his own email address at the meeting for the public to send their written comments to at [email protected]. Please put Solar Regulations in the subject line of the email so that it can be sent on to the planning and zoning commission and become part of the public record.
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