Marshall County Board of Zoning Appeals falls short on time, plans to set another solar meeting

MARSHALL COUNTY, Ind. -- The Board of Zoning Appeals met for a second public meeting, over a request from Tamarack Solar Energy, to allow them to get a special use permit to continue moving forward on their project.

Marshall County Council Members Nicole Cox and Deb Johnson watched back in Sept. as County Commissioners voted two to one in favor of the decommissioning plan, to allow Tamarack Solar Energy to build a solar farm in Marshall County, but they state that it shouldn't have happened how it did.

“The ordinance that was put in place for industrial solar was not for all the residents. I feel like it was really pushed through rather quickly. The setbacks are not fair and it’s not protecting those residents that are going to be next to those solar panels, those industrial solar fields. It’s, it’s not fair,” stated Marshall County Councilwomen Nicole Cox.

The previous meeting was cut short after people who were for the Solar Project got the chance to speak.

So, the meeting today started out with public comment, where the rest of the community against the project got to speak, then Tamarack Solar Energy got the chance to make an official rebuttal, before the board had the chance to ask questions for clarification.

The President of the Board, Jeff Gustafson, explained the decision is not one that they take lightly.

“I want this to be done right, I want to make sure that two years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, these people here don’t come up to me and say ‘you should have known better, you should have known that,’ so I have spent the last year and a half of my life going through this stuff,” stated Gustafson. 

Now the board has public letters to read on their own time before officially making their vote at the next meeting, which will have to be rescheduled soon.