T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY
City of Marshalltown Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman Jon Boston addresses the council during Tuesday night’s meeting. The council unanimously passed the first reading of an ordinance change to ban ground solar arrays on all residential properties.
After several discussions among the Planning and Zoning Commission and the passage of a moratorium on new ground solar arrays at the previous meeting, the Marshalltown city council went one step further in codifying a more restrictive set of rules on Tuesday night, voting unanimously on the first reading of an ordinance that will ban ground arrays completely on residential properties.
City Consultant Cindy Kendall provided some background on the situation and explained that the ordinance change in front of the council would “solidify” a ban on residential ground arrays within city limits while leaving the full moratorium in place for the time being. Councilor Gary Thompson thanked the P&Z Commission for its hard work and attention to the matter but also wondered how city staff would handle future issues regarding the new zoning code, which he felt was rushed through under previous Housing and Community Development Director Michelle Spohnheimer.
“This is one of those things that came up after the fact, after somebody gets approval (and) then all of a sudden we’re chasing our tails to solve a problem,” Thompson said. “So I’m asking staff, do we have a plan in place so we can start going through that rewrite to find these other loopholes and ifs, ands and buts type thing, or are we gonna have a lot of these where someone gets one and if they’re the first one to get to the water trough they get it, and then we change the rules after the fact?”
Kendall then reiterated that the current moratorium would stay in place while the commission reviews city codes, and the parking ordinance is still being worked on as well.
“The P&Z felt that (solar) was urgent because of the popularity of such things, and so we needed to have some clarification in the code so that staff would be able to say yes or no, you can or cannot build. This does not change any of the setback requirements that are required of various permits within the city, but all of those things are being discussed with the Planning and Zoning Commission,” Kendall said.
Councilor Mark Mitchell raised the issue of solar fields where the buffer zone requirements have not yet been fulfilled, and Kendall said it would be a question for legal staff as to what the penalty for noncompliance should be or if those units should be taken down completely. In defending the P&Z Commission, Councilor Mike Ladehoff commented that while a lot of things he had done “looked good on paper,” something unforeseen almost always comes up eventually.
“I’d like to thank Planning and Zoning for basically stopping and addressing this quickly. I do expect more things to come up as we go along because on paper, it looked great, but in practice, sometimes it just doesn’t work out, and we’ve all been there,” Ladehoff said.
Councilor Jeff Schneider echoed Ladehoff, indicating that he had read the entire zoning code overhaul two years ago but still missed it. He ultimately felt it was the right choice to ban the units on residential property.
Mayor/Acting City Administrator Joel Greer commended P&Z Chairman Jon Boston for his “institutional knowledge” and added that the job of understanding the code is not an easy one. During the public comment period, Katherine Raveling, who lives next to the array on North 6th Street that set off the larger discussion on ground solar rules, asked who was in charge of enforcing the codes as they currently exist because the unit in question “was not put up legally.”
“The permit wasn’t issued until the day that we were here at the meeting for Planning and Zoning. I don’t feel like this was a Planning and Zoning error. I think it was an internal error,” Raveling said. “I guess I’m wondering why we have to suffer because of the internal error. The permit should never have been given, and the way that it sits is also incorrect.”
In response to a question from the author about whether the ordinance before the council would also ban ground arrays on commercial property as Boston had previously indicated was a possibility, Kendall said the full moratorium remained in effect while the council and the commission consider further changes, but the current motion only pertained to residential.
Boston then stepped to the podium and said that the ultimate goal is to only allow ground arrays on industrial and agricultural land within city limits.
“We found, in reviewing it, that there was so much territory in the city that’s intertwined residential and commercial, that if you start putting ground solar in commercial areas, almost everywhere is gonna be within (the) site of residential property,” Boston said.
He added that the commission will be looking into canopy solar over parking lots, and Thompson joked that Boston would be serving a lifetime appointment with P&Z. Raveling then came back to the podium and raised another issue with the 6th Street array — a glare that goes into a neighbors’ home.
“That, again, was in the code, and so it shouldn’t happen either,” she said.
Greer said there were “anti-glare” mechanisms that can be used, and Schneider added that the city is looking into remedies but needs legal opinions before anything further can be done. A motion to pass the first reading of the code revision then passed by a unanimous vote.
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Contact Robert Maharry
641-753-6611 ext. 255 or
rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.