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 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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