FC commissioners will discuss additional amendments to solar farm ordinance and hold executive session regarding litigation prior to public meeting

From Franklin County Commissioners’ press release

Franklin County Commissioners will hold an executive session prior to their public meeting Tuesday morning, May 18.

At the public meeting, commissioners will discuss possible amendments to the recently adopted zoning regulations involving solar farm and wind farm business concerns.

The former, solar farms, has been the most pressing for some residents, commissioners and Area Plan Commission members.

Solar companies have approached various landowners in the Bath and Springfield townships seeking to lease land for solar farm purposes. When this all became public knowledge in the summer of 2020, Franklin County did not have any zoning regulations involving solar and/or wind farms.

A series of meetings by the FC APC and commissioners worked out a zoning ordinance regulating the two business concerns. However, the ordinance was passed quickly to have something on the books before any applications were made by solar farm concerns to the county’s zoning department.

When passed by the commissioners, the commissioners promised to add amendments to the zoning ordinance, which would greatly increase the regulations regarding those enterprises.

With the executive session, the commissioners have at least one pending lawsuit concerning the five people killed in the spring of 2020 when an approach to a bridge washed out and Franklin County dispatchers at the county’s Communication Center appeared to ignore warnings of the washout, and did not send any officials to investigate it prior to the drowning deaths.

Another pending litigation matter involves an abandoned road on the Dearborn/Franklin counties line. The Wilhelm family want a road on the county line designated a county road and improved so there can be a housing addition in that area on property owned by the Wilhelms, which will be in Dearborn County.

Two of the three commissioners first agreed with this matter, but then an attorney for a resident, whose driveway is part of the road in question, brought up questions on whether action of this type by the commissioners would set a precedent which could cause the county to improve hundreds of abandoned township roads within the county.

One executive session was already held recently to talk about the road situation.

Tuesday’s executive session, which is not open to the public, begins at 9 a.m., while the public meeting takes place one hour later at 10 a.m.