(Spirit Lake)– Several public hearings took center stage at today’s (Tues.) Dickinson county board of supervisors meeting.
The first was on the county’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The total in property tax askings is slightly more than 6.3 million dollars…an increase of 156-thousand over the current year. Even though the asking is up, the levies in both the General and Rural Services funds will be down thanks to increases in valuations. The supervisors unanimously adopted the budget following a public hearing that drew no comments.
Two other hearings dealt with zoning issues. The first, to rezone land on the southwest side of Little Spirit Lake from Agricultural to Lakeshore Residential drew very little discussion and was approved unanimously. The other request, to rezone some land just east of Orleans from Agricultural to Light Industrial, drew quite a bit of discussion and wound up being continued. The request was filed by Beck Engineering which plans on building a repair facility on the site. The county’s Planning and Zoning Commission voted six-to-one February 27th to recommend the supervisors approve the rezoning with the stipulation that no crushing of rock or aggregate be allowed on the 12 acre site…of which two acres are already zoned light industrial. Greg Owen, an attorney representing Beck Engineering, requested the hearing be continued to give them more time to get something in writing from the railroad to allow them construct a crossing across some adjacent railroad tracks and to see if the rezoning is even needed to build a repair facility. The request to close the hearing drew concern from a neighbor who’s opposed to the rezoning request, saying they had to take time out of their schedule to attend today’s (Monday’s) hearing. However the hearing had already been closed and a motion was made and passed to continue to it to 11:00 a.m. April 18th. The concerned neighbors were allowed to make informal one-on-one comments with the supervisors following the meeting.
In other business, the supervisors approved another 64,937-dollars in changeorders for the courthouse project…bringing the total in changes so far to 442,221-dollars…or 65 percent of what had been budgeted for changes. That’s starting to cause concern as construction of the second phase of the courthouse hasn’t even started yet.
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