Two meetings, but mostly wind turbines

A demonstration of recording software took up about half of Monday's City Council meeting. The software (and hardware) is based on software from the same company that is used for court recording and for police interviews/interrogations. It comes with many options, including the option of live-streaming meetings. No decision about the product was made at the meeting.

The Chief of Police wanted to change some job titles. I did not understand the whole thing, which involved a promotion, but the matter will be discussed at the next Board of Public Works meeting and will come back to the Council in two weeks.

There was a discussion of planning for a future water well. The most promising sites are south of the City and the Mayor would like to secure a parcel of property for future use. The land the City is interested in is currently owned by SJC and is south and west of the existing well, close to Lake Banet if I understood the discussion. The reason for moving on this now is that the future of the SJC lands is uncertain. It seems reasonable to assume that if SJC and Farm Credit agree on a debt settlement, SJC may lose the farm land it currently owns. One interesting tidbit from the discussion: the City helped the people planning the assisted living units planned by Fountain Stone negotiate the purchase of the property from SJC.

(An aside: How did SJC come to own the land it has? That is one of many things that will be revealed on the Weston Cemetery Walk on September 22.)

There is now an excavator on the site of the proposed assisted-living apartments and lots of little flags in the field.

The Police Department is planing a open house for the new police station on September 12 at 1:30.

The meeting ended at about 7:00 and I hurried out to the Fairgrounds to see what would happen at the Plan Commission meeting. The BZA meeting had finished and I think the Plan Commission had discussed a couple of rezone requests before I got there, but I was in time for the main event, a public hearing/discussion of revisions to the wind farm ordinance. The hearing began with a presentation by Gerritt DeVries showing why he does not like wind farms, at least not in Jasper County. When it was finished two or three Board members noted that they had nothing to do with the presentation.

When the floor was open to public comments, almost all of the people speaking were opposed to having wind turbines in Jasper County. Several speakers said they just did not like the looks of turbines. One speaker said that he would rather see his taxes go up than to see wind turbines spreading across the County. Another noted that wind turbines had adverse effects on livestock. Apparently there are sound frequencies that we do not hear but which can affect animals. There was one speaker in favor of wind turbines, a young lady from the Sierra Club who argued that coal was the thing we should fear and that wind energy was good because it reduced our need for coal. She got little support from the audience.

Mr. DeVries listed some options for the Commission, one of which was to simply ban wind turbines. The audience favored that option. Mr. DeVries waited for someone to make that motion, but no one did. So he reluctantly turned to proposed changes, which he displayed on a screen for the audience.

I was surprised at how little discussion there was on the proposed changes. The Commission went through them, but not in the way that I expected. I thought that someone should have moved the entire package and then they could have moved to amend as they proceeded through. Instead as they discussed the items, some changes were made when a member or two suggested a change and no one challenged it. As they approached the end, a man from the audience objected to the way the whole meeting was being run and the Chairman pushed back. However, two members of the Board agreed with the complaint.

In the end the Commission voted to table the matter until the next meeting so they could see exactly what they were voting on.

In retrospect the Commission approached the matter backwards. They started with an amended copy of the ordinance but there were no justifications for the changes that had been suggested. It would have been better to start with just the changes and their justification and decided which of the changes they wanted to incorporate into the final document. They should have been asking questions such as: What interests of neighbors need to be protected? Should setbacks be to property lines, or to structures, or both property lines and structures and why? What is the appropriate setback to non-participating neighbors and why? Since wind turbines seem to affect livestock, what should the setbacks be for livestock operations? Should they only be for CAFOs or should smaller operations also be considered? Should the setbacks be the same for cattle as for pigs or for chickens? If setbacks are set correctly, should there be a need for other protections, such as from noise or flicker? How much protection should be granted wildlife and why? What is the justification for protecting (or restricting) participants as some of the proposals did? Much of what was changed in the  proposals and in the changes to the proposals seemed arbitrary with no justification.

At least two people mentioned a poll in which more than 80% of the people opposed wind farms and suggested that that poll represented the general public. Any sample that does not have some way of randomly selecting respondents is worthless for drawing conclusions about the population. (If the opposition to wind turbines is as widespread as the opponents say it is, no wind farm will ever be built because the wind companies will not be able to find enough participants to form the blocks of land that they need.)

In a previous post I had wondered why setbacks were proposed to property lines of participating land owners. At the meeting the justification for this was that a future landowner might not want a wind turbine as a neighbor. That is a strange position for a group that claims to support property rights. Any future buyer will take into account whatever legal restrictions are on the land and pay accordingly. If the windmills do decrease property values, the person who signed the participation agreement will bear the costs when he sells.

Perhaps the most depressing moment came at the end when the Commission passed a recommendation for a moratorium on construction of wind turbines. No one mentioned that the moratorium was meaningless. Do the members of this regulatory body not understand the steps that are needed to get wind turbines built? Before any dirt is moved, the Commission itself would have to recommend that the area be classified as a wind-turbine overlay district. Jasper County has no Wind Farm overlay districts and until it declares one, no wind turbines can be built. The builder would also need permission of the County Commissioners to use the roads and there would probably be a need for drainage board approval. There are undoubtedly a variety of state regulatory hurdles that must be leapt as well.