Macoupin County Board Economic Development Committee met Oct. 4.
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
I. CALL TO ORDER
PRESENT: Armour, Starr, Blank, Kilduff (Remote), Klausing (Remote), Rosentreter, Duncan, Garrison, Wiggins, Heuer, Barr, Ibberson, Adden
ABSENT: Payne
II. AGENDA ITEMS
1. Solar Panel Ordinance
Michael Jurusik updated the Board on a the changes he had made to the draft ordinance from last month. He found some language regarding vegetation screening, outdoor storage, fencing height ranges, and update the fees schedule. The permit schedule was based on kilowatt hours which he recommended instead of just a flat fee schedule. He also discussed that the county could not enact an acreage limitation on solar farms based on his reading of the state statute. There was a discussion about if the county could put those limitations in regarding not total acreage but in terms of how much each landowner's acreage could be included in a project. There would be the potential that the county could lose if there was a challenge in court as we are not a home rule county. Jurusik also thought that potentially seeing if other counties would be willing to see if the state would adopt clean up language which might help handle some of these issues. Jurusik did say there was one law firm that had reached out to him about potentially 2 applicants, one which is hoping to file in 2023 and the other in 2024. The committee decided to discuss the topic again next month.
2. Cummins Engineering Handling Agricultural Impact Mitigation instead of Soil Water Conservation
Terry Fountain from Cummins Engineering discussed that back in March the Board had asked if they could handle the agricultural impact mitigation instead of the Soil & Water Conservation District. He said they would be able to but that he wasn't sure if the county wanted to get into doing that since it would be dealing with personal property owners. He walked through the 21 items that would be considered for the mitigation that they would handle if they were hired to do it.
Garrison said he had discussed with Soil and Water Conservation and they felt they would be able to handle the work so the topic did not need to be address tonight.
3. Illinois Alluvial representative Marty Reynolds Presentation
Marty Reynolds from Illinois Alluvial came to discuss getting quality water to the Carlinville area through this company. The Illinois Alluvial Regional Water Company is trying to run a water line from Fieldton, Illinois to Carlinville, about 50 miles, to get this ground water source to Carlinville. It will require multiple easements throughout the county. They have received about 62% of the easements in place and are getting closer to having the project complete. He was not asking for any financial support from the County, just wanted to introduce the project to the County government. Starr pointed out that there was another option from Litchfield water that wouldn't have easement issues and would be surface water from the Litchfield area.
4. Discussion of Letter of Support fo Frontier Broadband Project
Armour said that he had talked with a representative from Frontier about the grant application the folks from Greene County had presented on last month. The deadline had probably been missed for this application period, but the application would hopefully be submitted at the next submission period. He was requesting having the power to sign a letter for support for that application for that application. They were also discussing other potential areas in the county a grant application could be submitted.
Motion by Blank, seconded by Rosentreter to recommend granting Chairman Schmidt or Economic Development Chair Armour the ability to sign a letter of support at a future date for the Greene County joint application for the Chesterfield Station.
RESULT: MOTION TO RECOMMEND [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: John Blank, Member
SECONDER: Molly Rosentreter, Member
AYES: Armour, Starr, Blank, Kilduff, Klausing, Rosentreter
ABSENT: Payne
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