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October 7, 2024

Edgar County Board appoints 2-person Zoning Commission, approves Airport Leases –

By John Kraft & Kirk Allen

On June 8, 2016

PARIS, IL. (ECWd) –

The Edgar County Board, during its monthly meeting this morning approved the following:

  • Established an Airport Zoning Commission – this commission is required in order to establish zoning for the airport, which is required in order to comply with previous federal grant assurances. The county has been in violation of state law in regards to zoning and airport expansion projects since the airport’s inception. Now that IDOT and the FAA has stated they will not provide any more funds until the county comes into compliance, the board is attempting to do that by establishing zoning as they should have many years ago.
  • Appointed Jake Barrett and Rob Howery to the Commission
  • Approved lease of 1/2 main hangar to Mid Continent Aircraft Corporation
  • Approved lease of 1/4 main hangar to Chris Patrick
  • Filed the Sherriff and County Clerk annual reports

In other business:

  • Alan Zuber stated the County Health Insurance will soon go out for bidding
  • County Clerk stated that the county received around $50,000 in property tax stamps as part of a massive land transfer, purported to be the largest in the history of Illinois, where the Forsyth properties changed hands
  • Jeff Voight stated that 58.88% of the year has passed and only 49.7% of the budgeted amount has been used to date
  • Don Wiseman asked that the county consider a “no passing zone” on Highway 1 south of the new high school road and into town
  • Don Farris talked about the property taken from him thru imminent domain more than 20 years ago and the fact that imminent domain was used improperly because the county was required according to state law to have zoning in place prior to any airport expansion. This taking of private property was accomplished when Adonna Bennett was a county board member, so it is no surprise to us that it was accomplished without following all of the appropriate legal processes.
  • Rob Bogue stated that he believed the State’s Attorney could petition the Court to overturn the imminent domain decision based on the fact that the county could not legally expand the airport without zoning in place – and it was not in place at the time
  • John Kraft asked the board to reconsider its outdated tall structure ordinance to better suit today’s needs and the protect county residents from encroachment of wind turbine farms. I told them a vehicle from E4G was spotted in east central Illinois and their website states they are a wind farm developer and have partnered with the Grain Belt Express Clean Line Energy Project, which is the high power electrical lines scheduled to work its way thru Edgar County
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1 Comment
  • Theodore Hartke
    Posted at 10:07h, 09 June Reply

    E4G is a wind energy company. Look at this: http://www.energyforgenerations.com

    Their website says they are getting ready to build their “flagship project” in 2018. The project location must be a big secret because they DO NOT IDENTIFY WHERE the flagship project will be except to say “The site is intensely agricultural with few residences and reflects an exceptional degree of compatibility between existing agriculture practices and an operational wind farm.” (It could be in Edgar County.) It fails to mention that the occupants of those residences will be safe from the turbines….if their health and sleep is compatible with these turbines. Burns and McDonnell is listed on their “alliance” page, and BMcD is the engineering company which created the decommissioning “study” for the Vermilion County APEX project, where APEX purchased 2 or 3 properties from neighboring homeowners so far.
    The ECWd organization should do a story about this. Call (620) 843-1888
    or (620) 391-2230 to find out where this so-called “flagship project” might be. Hopefully it is in the state of Kansas and NOT Kansas, Illinois, which is in Edgar County.

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