|
Logan County Board
Special Regular Board meeting
[June 08, 2026]
On Thursday, June 4th, the
Logan County Board held a special regular meeting to vote on two
items that came out of the Zoning and Economic Development Committee
the previous Monday: modifications to the data center ordinance and
a part time office worker for the Zoning Office.
The meeting started at 6:00 p.m. and was held in the second-floor
courtroom of the Logan County Courthouse. Ten of the eleven board
members were present including Chairman JR Glenn, Vice Chairman Dale
Nelson, Lance Conahan, Kevin Knauer, Kathy Schmidt, Hannah
Fitzpatrick, Bob Sanders, Gil Turner, Joseph Kuhlman, and Jim
Wessbecher. Keenan Leesman was absent.
The meeting started with a prayer by Turner followed by the Pledge
of Allegiance. Nelson, the interim chairman of the Zoning and
Economic Development Committee, presented the first item on the
agenda, that being the changes to the data center ordinance. He
informed the other members of the board that more legal counsel was
needed on this matter and moved on to the second item.
Zoning Officer Al Green spoke on the second item, the hiring of help
for the Zoning Office. He stated that the person would mostly need
to help him organize digital files on the zoning computers. He
continued that the person he was wanting to hire was County Engineer
Bret Aukamp’s son, who recently graduated high school. The board
took a vote on this, with stipulations on Aukamp working from June
to August of this year and being capped at $12,000 total payment.
The board members voted unanimously to approve the motion.
Public comments were next. The first commenter told the board that
people do not trust them and stated that she did not feel the board
was keeping people informed. She accused the board of not responding
to emails from their constituents and stated they could be live
streaming their meetings but are not.
The next commenter stated that she would like to see a task force
created of people in the community who have been researching data
centers and have been coming to the meetings. She also expressed
frustration that the board was originally planning on holding a vote
on the data center ordinance. Since there is a one-year moratorium
on data centers in the county, she asked the board what their rush
was.
She continued that the board’s stated reason for rushing the passing
of the ordinance was to get it in place for new smaller data centers
that, according to her, are being built to support wind and solar
projects. Due to the wording of the ordinance applying to data
centers that are 20 MW and above, the ordinance would not apply to
these data centers. Nelson stated that he never said the ordinance
was in regard to wind or solar at all. The woman asked if this
meeting was necessary. Nelson stated that according to the Open
Meetings Act (OMA), meetings cannot be cancelled less than 48 hours
before they are set to be held.
There were more comments from community members urging the board to
take their time with the ordinance. One man stated that, while he
does not want a data center, would be as okay as he could be with
one if he felt the board did everything they needed to do the
correct way.
[to top of second column] |
A woman stood up
to make a comment, set a timer on her phone and stood silent.
After two minutes and fifteen seconds, she stated that this is
what the board does to community members when they place public
comments after the action items have been voted on. She argued
that the board should place public comments before the items
since so many people come to the meetings for an item that is on
the agenda. She stated that she felt the board should hear the
thoughts of the people in the room before making a vote, not
after. Later
in the meeting, someone asked if Hut 8 was fully out of the picture,
or if they were going to wait until the one-year moratorium is up to
try to get their data center built again. Glenn stated that, as far
as he knows, they have not submitted an application. Nelson stated
that, the last he heard Hut 8 was not sure if they were going to
give up the land or hold on to it. Green stated that, since they
lost their contract with Ameren because of the moratorium, they
would need to wait two years to reapply anyway.
Scott with the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) got up and spoke on his
displeasure with the board members and their not doing anything to
fix the electricity problems that the people of Latham are having.
Knauer stated that he recently had a phone conference with several
higher-ups from Ameren and they told him that they were aware of the
problems and that they were currently working on updates.
Once the public comments came to an
end, Nelson made an announcement that he is going to be seeing about
making a resolution to put data centers on the ballot in November.
According to Nelson, it will be generally to see if people in Logan
County want a data center or not. There were some comments from the
public regarding this, with one woman asking about the wording of
what is going to be placed on the ballot. Several people stated that
they have been working on this for a while and that, if the wording
is not right, it may not matter.
After some more discussion about this potential referendum, the
meeting was adjourned.
[Matt Boutcher]
|
