Logan County Briefs:
New State Rep Butler introduces himself, Zoning Ordinance amends discussed, county employee health insurance ready to pass

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[March 17, 2015]  LINCOLN - The Logan County Board met for a briefly last Thursday for its March Workshop. Multiple topics were brought up but little discussion was had by the board members or the guests.

The meeting began with a greeting and introduction from Tim Butler. Butler is the new state representative for District 87, which Logan County is in.

Butler said he is filling the seat left behind by Rich Brauer. Butler previously lived in Lincoln for a few years in the mid 90’s, and is very familiar with Logan County.

“I’ve always got an open door. I’m always happy to talk to folks. I come out of Operations with Congressman LaHood and Congressman Davis where we believe fully in constituent service and dealing with people and helping them navigate government, so that’s how I’m going to approach the job as well,” said Butler.

Under the Zoning Committee, the proposed ordinance revisions were briefly mentioned. There was little discussion from the board members. Laurie Muck was present as a guest to voice her concerns on revisions concerning M-3 Districts.

The proposed change to this section would be to add borrow pits to the permitted uses. Additionally, all of the current permitted uses would be moved to conditional uses. Borrow pits would also be added as a permitted use under Agriculture zoning. A grandfather clause of December 31st, 2014 would be inserted into the language in order to allow existing extraction designations to remain in effect.

Muck said she has not heard a solid reason as to why they want to change the ordinance. Muck also said she thinks the board should instead create a series of regulations that would apply to all extraction applications under permitted uses.

“Why change this to a conditional use? What would those potential conditions be?” asked Muck.

Jan Schumacher said it was the intention of the committee to intentionally leave such conditions out, as the board wants flexibility for dealing with individual needs of future zoning applications.

Zoning Officer Will D’Andrea added, "You can’t have a preset list of conditions if you don’t know what the use is, you don’t know where the use is, you don’t what’s around it, you don’t know what the potential impacts are, so you can’t come up with a list of preset conditions without knowing all of those factors, which are determined during the public hearing process.”

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States Attorney Jonathon Wright added to the discussion, saying that the court system has not outlined a set of conditions that could apply to every application. “There are some general principles you can glean from courts’ interpreting it and enforcing it and striking down conditions,” said Wright.

Muck said that the effective date clause proposed would be considered prohibited due to its retroactive nature. Kevin Bateman said he would be bringing forward a motion to amend on Tuesday. The amendment would change the grandfather clause to go into effect as of the adoption of the ordinance instead of using the retroactive date.

Bob Farmer said he would like to see the discussion return to the committee for more investigation. Multiple board members disagreed, saying that the revisions have already been worked on for over a year. The board is expected to vote on the matter on Tuesday night.

Under the Insurance Committee, Andy Anderson briefly touched on county employee insurance renewal under Blue Cross Blue Shield. Anderson said the overall increase in cost was only two percent. Anderson also said he would be bringing forth a motion to accept Liberty National as optional supplemental insurance for employees. Supplemental insurance is paid for by county employees.

Board members present at the meeting were Chuck Ruben, Gene Rohlfs, Robert Farmer, David Blankenship, Pat O’Neill, Andy Anderson, Emily Davenport, Kevin Bateman, Jan Schumacher, David Hepler and Scott Schaffenacher. Rick Aylesworth was absent.

[Derek Hurley]

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