Correction: County Counselor Patrick Hoffman will be making the presentation to the county commission on the solar process rather than County Planner Mark Vonachen. Hutch Post regrets the error.
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Board of County Commissioners will hear from County Counselor Patrick Hoffman about where the Planning and Zoning board is in the solar regulation writing process at their meeting on Wednesday.
According to agenda documents, the process of creating solar regulations started with staff creating a draft set of regulations for the Planning & Zoning Commission for them to have an orderly document to work from. This allows for creating regulations to be much easier and productive.
From the time regulations are being created, the Planning and Zoning members can search for information relevant to solar and the public can send information to staff by a written document or email. They can also call staff at any time to ask questions or state their concerns.
All written or emailed information received from the public is sent to all members, prior to the next scheduled meeting. This public information is used to help create regulations.
This process continues until the Planning and Zoning Commission believes they have enough information and have created regulations that would become a final draft. This final draft is then reviewed by the County Counselor for possible changes and sent back to the Planning and Zoning Commission for final review and made available to the public.
Now that the Planning and Zoning Commission believes they have regulations close to being finalized, a public hearing date can be scheduled. This is the stage of creating regulations the board is currently in. The public hearing is left open until the Planning and Zoning Commission believes everyone has had an opportunity to voice their views or to recommend changes to the regulations.
Once the public hearing is closed, public comments are no longer allowed. At that time, the Planning and Zoning Commission makes necessary changes to the regulations draft, due to new public information or chooses to send the regulations to the County Commission with a recommendation to approve the regulations as submitted.
Solar regulations being a legislative action, the County Commissioners can open the subject for public comments and keep it open as long as they choose and they then have options available at their level to send it back for further review, approve as written or change the regulations without sending them back, this requires four of five commissioners to agree to the exact changes.
The Board of County Commissioners meets Wednesday at 9 a.m. in the Veterans Room of the Reno County Courthouse.
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