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Continued third reading of Floyd County wind ordinance is tabled to allow finding potential compromises

Continued third reading of Floyd County wind ordinance is tabled to allow finding potential compromises
Members of the Floyd County Board of Supervisors, other county officials and a consultant sit at the front tables before about 50 people attending a meeting Tuesday evening to continue the third reading discussion of a proposed county commercial wind energy ordinance. The meeting ended abruptly after being tabled to allow for gathering more information, discussion and negotiations toward a potential compromise over the ordinance rules. Press photo by Bob Steenson
By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

What had the potential to be another marathon commercial wind energy ordinance meeting Tuesday evening with the Floyd County Board of Supervisors, ended up lasting only a few minutes.

Before Chair Mark Kuhn had even asked for a motion to approve the agenda, Supervisor Jim Jorgensen moved to table the meeting.

“After lengthy discussions with County Attorney Todd Pritchard and also our attorney, Thomas Reavely, it became very evident that we should table this and get a bigger picture, gather more information, make considerations,” Jorgensen said.

After a question from County Auditor Gloria Carr regarding a date or time period that the meeting is being tabled to, Jorgensen said, “No more than 45 days.”

Supervisor Dennis Keifer seconded the motion and after a few minutes of comments, the vote to table was 2-1, with Kuhn voting a loud “Nay!”

That 2-1 result has been the pattern with many of the actions taken – or not taken – at recent meetings concerning the wind energy ordinance.

Kuhn expressed his displeasure with the abrupt decision and the fact that what had been a fairly lengthy meeting agenda had not been addressed.

“I expected a discussion from all of you. I’m sorry that Supervisors Jorgensen and Kiefer have decided to waste your time,” Kuhn said, addressing about 60 people at the meeting.

Several people came up to Jorgensen and Keifer after the meeting, thanking them for their actions regarding the ordinance.

One of the results of tabling is that Jorgensen may not be involved in final decisions regarding the ordinance, which his amendments have played a large role in shaping into its current form.

Jorgensen was appointed to his supervisor position at the beginning of 2023 when the person who had been elected declined the seat. Under Iowa Code, his term will end as soon as the results of the Nov. 5 election are certified and the new supervisor is sworn in – which could be as soon as Nov. 12.

Jorgensen is not running for the seat in the election, and the likely winner will be Boyd Campbell, who is running unopposed for the District 3 position.

Asked after the meeting if Jorgensen had considered that his motion might prevent him from helping decide the final version of the ordinance, he said the issue was too important to not take the action that he had.

“I think it’s important to follow legal advice at this point,” Jorgensen told the Press. “And when you get two attorneys agreeing – which is sometimes rare – it would not be in good character to me to argue with that.”

Both County Attorney Prichard and private attorney Reavely, who the board had hired for a second opinion on a 2-1 vote, had advised the board regarding a recent Worth County District Court decision.

In that case, the judge had ruled that an energy company had a vested interest in developing wind in that county and that the county had acted “in bad faith” and with “improper purpose” in passing a moratorium and then an ordinance that made the proposed wind energy project not possible.

Prichard had advised the supervisors to “amend the wind ordinance to provide reasonable regulation and avoid the cost of a long-term court battle that the county will most likely lose. The highly probable outcome of a loss in court will leave the county vulnerable to inadequate wind regulations.”

Reavely had advised the board to negotiate with the wind companies that were attempting to develop projects in the counties to see if they could find common ground, and said the current version of the wind ordinance was almost certainly going to result in litigation, from the wind companies, from landowners who wanted turbines on their property and possibly from both.

Reavely had said negotiation and compromise should always be tried first, before they “step off the cliff” into litigation where the outcome is never certain.

Isaac Lamppa, the project director for the Marble Ridge Wind Energy Center project that Invenergy is trying to develop, has said previously that the company wanted to try to negotiate a development agreement with the county before the ordinance was passed, similar to the agreement that was used to develop the recent Chickasaw County wind project.

The Floyd County wind energy moratorium that the supervisors passed and which they have extended twice, allows the county to negotiate a development agreement with a wind developer before a new ordinance is passed.

The Tuesday evening meeting was to have been the latest in a process that has been going on for more than a year, involving the Floyd County Planning and Zoning Commission, the Board of Supervisors, other county officials, a hired consultant, and many long public hearings and meetings.

If a majority of the board had voted to pass the third reading Tuesday as the final reading, it would have become the law in Floyd County. That had seemed the likely outcome several weeks ago when the Tuesday evening meeting was scheduled, before the results of the Worth County case had been announced.

The Planning and Zoning Commission had unanimously proposed an updated version of the current wind energy ordinance in June, but then the proposed ordinance was heavily amended on mostly 2-1 votes by Jorgensen and Keifer, to the point that representatives of two wind companies working on projects in Floyd County called it “poison” and impossible to develop a wind project under.

Many residents in the county heralded the amended document as protecting the health and safety of rural residents, but others said it would thwart millions of dollars in potential property tax and other financial benefits for the county, as well as a guaranteed source of income for the landowners who voluntarily signed easements to have turbines located on their properties.

After the meeting, Keifer was asked if he had considered what the process would be to “get a bigger picture, gather more information, make considerations,” as Jorgensen had said in his motion to table.

Keifer said figuring that out would be the next step.

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