Henderson City-County Planning Commission Executive Director Brian Bishop said that most likely he’ll present a wind energy conversion systems draft ordinance at the planning commission’s regular meeting in August. That meeting is scheduled for Aug. 4.
Meanwhile, the planning commission is meeting Wednesday to hold a public hearing–its third of a scheduled seven regarding WECS–on regulatory and administrative framework, which will entail the topic of the effect of wind farms on property values. That meeting will be 6 p.m. in the third-floor Fiscal Court Courtroom in the Old Courthouse.
Related to that and during a different part of the meeting, planning commissioners made a couple comments on Bishop’s annual evaluation asking that the executive director find a way to finish up the process of creating a WECS draft ordinance.
Wrapping up the process has been a push in the past couple months. Two of the scheduled seven public hearing have occurred, and some planning commissioners have indicated that they’d like to get a draft ordinance finished and sent to the Henderson Fiscal Court so that body can vote on it.
Planning commission Chair David Dixon said Tuesday that the planning commission was first tasked by the fiscal court to gather information to write a wind turbine ordinance with a second task to recommend an ordinance to the fiscal court.
Bishop said that after a draft ordinance is presented at the August regularly scheduled planning commission meeting, the planning commission and public would have a month to review it before the planning commission’s next meeting in September.
In other news:
- Planning commission board members gave Bishop a 94.4% annual evaluation score. Eleven of 12 planning commissioners filled out the evaluation, said Jennifer Allen, the planning commission’s assistant director. The score falls in the outstanding range and would have allowed Bishop a merit based-salary increase. However, the bodies that oversee the planning commission’s budget—the Henderson Fiscal Court and Henderson City Commission—did not approve merit-based increases for planning commission staff this year.
- The planning commission has currently spent $6,000 more than it budgeted for the fiscal year that just ended, and that number could increase, officials said at Tuesday’s meeting. They said that going over the budget has been due to the legal fees the planning commission has incurred regarding solar energy. Those legal fees are currently at $19,614, they said. They expect other invoices for bills from the last fiscal year to come in the next couple weeks and will need to authorize a transfer and amend the budget once a final audit is done in the fall.
