The Jacksonville Plans Commission struck down a rezoning request for a proposed solar farm on the east side of Jacksonville.
The plans commission denied a request by property owner Jeff York to rezone his current farm ground from a residential to a manufacturing district with a special use permit. York has entered into a preliminary agreement with Summit Ridge Energy for the proposed construction of a 5-megawatt solar farm on just under 60 acres of property located between Reynolds Consumer Products and the Prairie Knolls subdivision along East Morton Avenue.
Representatives from Summit Ridge Energy requested the zoning change and a possible variance in the city’s solar ordinance to allow the farm to be built within 1,000 feet of the current residential district that sits to the property’s western border.
Summit Ridge presented the project to the City Council in March and held subsequent open houses in the city prior to last night’s rezone request attempting to answer concerns about the project’s use and location.
Plans Commission Chair Mike Oldenettel says that members of the commission had received communication from constituents and adjacent property owners that said they were not in favor of the project for various reasons: “We had a lot of actually a healthy discussion – good questions from members of the commission panel and also members of the community. There seems to be – and I had received and many members of the commission also – [communications] from many individuals in the community that weren’t in favor of this rezoning with this petition for the solar panel farm. My feeling is that it was because of its location – not that anyone is necessarily against clean energy – that’s not it. It’s just that the question was ‘Is this the right location as a gateway into the City of Jacksonville?’ I think that was the resonating issue for most everybody. That’s how I feel that the Plans Commission went this evening with it, and was listening to what the constituents have offered, and we agreed.”
The rezone request failed by a 5-1 vote, with commission member and Ward 3 Alderman Aaron Scott the only vote in favor of the project. Scott put forward a motion early in the discussion to vote in favor of the rezone request but it died due to a lack of a second.
Members of Summit Ridge nor property owner Jeff York remained after the meeting to provide comment.
The denied rezoning request will now head to the Jacksonville City Council for the next meeting on July 22nd who can override the commission’s recommendation.
Disclosure: The author of this article is an adjacent property who offered both in-person and written dissent to the Plans Commission and to the Jacksonville City Council over this project due to citing concerns, questions surrounding property taxes, local traffic and road use agreement concerns, and sun sheen/reflectively problems and shielding of electrical current on solar panels that interfere with AM radio transmission signals. This disclosure is to provide transparency and to present to the public that an attempt to set bias aside in this reporting has been attempted.
This post was originally published on 3rd party site mentioned in the title of this site
