Floyd County supervisor chair, zoning board chair, clash over pipeline amendment timing

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

It’s unlikely a proposed Floyd County zoning amendment regarding the placement of underground hazardous liquid pipelines will be approved in time to be introduced as evidence in the first carbon dioxide pipeline hearing before the Iowa Utilities Board, according to discussion at the county Board of Supervisors meeting Monday morning.

Floyd County Supervisor Chair Mark Kuhn said it looked like the chair of the county Zoning Commission was purposefully “slow walking” the proposed amendment in order to delay its passage. Some of the members of the commission were at the supervisors meeting Monday.

Kuhn said the attorney representing the county, from Ahlers & Cooney in Des Moines, who had helped draft the 18-page amendment, had emailed county Zoning Administrator Jeff Sherman the draft on April 7 and the first meeting of the Zoning Commission had still not been held.

“The lack of consideration of this item is troubling,” Kuhn said.

In order to be considered as part of the presentation by the county before the Iowa Utilities Board, the amendment needed to be approved by July 10, he said.

In an email to the Zoning Commission members and others dated May 10, Kuhn said, “I hope you’ll agree the Zoning Commission has had adequate time to do its due diligence on the ordinance and it is past time the proposed ordinance is made available to the citizens of Floyd County so they can make their own decisions if it is good policy or not and make their opinions known to the Zoning Commission.”

Because of the requirements for public hearing notices, multiple readings of the ordinance by the board of supervisors and publication of the ordinance before it can become official, Kuhn asked the Zoning Commission in the email – and again at the supervisors meeting Monday morning – to schedule a meeting of the Zoning Commission on June 13 as both a discussion and action meeting to be able to make a recommendation to the supervisors at that meeting.

Dean Tjaden, the commission chair, said the delay has been because he wants 100% of his members as well as 100% of the county Board of Adjustment members to be at the meetings where the amendment is discussed, because of its importance.

The members of the boards are volunteers who have other careers and obligations and sometimes it takes a while to coordinate things, he said, adding that one of the members of the board was out of the country.

Tjaden also said he expected that it would take several meetings of discussion by the board before it was ready to make a recommendation to the supervisors regarding the amendment.

“We agree 100% with you on your email where the Floyd County citizens deserve a thorough, transparent and timely review” of the proposed amendment, he said, adding, “This doesn’t happen overnight.”

As far as having everything done by July 10, “I don’t even see that realistically,” Tjaden said. “We’ve got a lot of investigation to do. We’re not going to just rubber stamp what you’ve given us, what Ahlers & Cooney has written.”

As the person who sets the Zoning Commission agenda, Tjaden said, “June 13 is a workshop meeting with no action planned.”

Tjaden asked the other two supervisors besides Kuhn if they had issues with the way the Zoning Commission was operating or if there were problems.

Supervisor Dennis Keifer said to Tjaden, “We’ve got a deadline to meet, and I guess I don’t know what you want to investigate. Most of these ordinances, all they want to do is enact some common sense setbacks and land use regulations. … Safety’s an issue. … I don’t know what else there is to investigate.”

Supervisor Jim Jorgensen, who had abstained from the initial vote in January that hired the Ahlers & Cooney attorney to represent the county, saying it was moving too quickly, but who has voted with the rest of the board in most related matters since then, said he didn’t see problems.

“I don’t see any issues how the zoning department and your commission are proceeding. I fully understand this takes time. I understand some counties, as you said, have taken three to five workshop meetings, …” Jorgensen said.

“There’s obviously people opposed (to the pipelines), there’s obviously people in favor. You’ve got somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-plus percent on the Summit that signed and 60-plus with Navigator. At the same time you’ve got to represent those people, too, who are looking for the (pipeline) process to move forward,” he said.

The discussion took up about 45 minutes of the meeting, and ended at an impasse, with Kuhn again expressing frustration that it was taking so long on an item that was so important to so many people, and Tjaden reiterating that the meeting of the Zoning Commission, likely on June 13, would be a workshop meeting.