County’s APA board to host meeting

 “These are large organizations that are pro-saving farm ground, and their stipulations aren’t that strict,” Winegar said.

 He said Washington County’s APA and Farm Bureau are now partnering to host an open meeting on Monday, May 12, from 6-8 p.m. at Homedale’s Expo building, choosing that location to allow a broader base of ag producers in the Treasure Valley to hear from four of the larger organizations. See an advertisement of the meeting on page 2 in this issue of the Signal American.

 “One of the cool things is one of them is called CCALT and their focus is mostly on range lands, which isn’t something we’ve dived into,” Winegar said. “That’s important, as well.”

 He pointed out that Washington County’s APA commission is the only one, so far, that has met every month. He said other counties have appointed them, “but they just don’t know what to do with them.”

 “This will be a good thing, giving some direction,” he added. “We’ll set up for 300 people. I don’t know that we’ll fill 300 seats, we might only fill 50, who knows. One of them is a lady from the USDA, and I guess there are programs through that to do the same …  why we’ve never heard of these before, I don’t know, but we should be.”

 Roberts said his board’s initial recommended changes to the model ordinance includes making the definition of large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) be the same as the existing state definition. Found in the same section are restrictions on siting commercialized solar or wind farms without an approval of the advisory board, but the board’s members agree they don’t want to discourage farmers and ranchers from using solar or wind to produce power for their operations.

 Another suggestion is to strengthen the expectations of applicants to keep their land in production within the APA policy, and a third is within the code’s section addressing early termination of an APA as a result of an undue hardship.

 At the conclusion, Winegar questioned the commissioners about rumors they would be allowing a building lot per every 20 acres in the county, a change from the precedence set in the county’s 45-year planning and zoning ordinance history.

 “I’ve heard the rumor from four different people,” Winegar said. “If the rumblings are true, it concerns the APA board a bunch, because it almost makes this moot. It opens up the whole county just to be built on.”

 Commission Chair Jim Harberd replied the board hasn’t made any changes to the code, “right now.”

 Winegar said they heard it has something to do with a different interpretation (of the code), with Commissioner Gordon Wilkerson responding, “It’s part of our executive sessions.”

 “I was talking to someone from Washington State,” Winegar said. “If you’ve ever been to the Tri-Cities area, it is an amazingly beautiful area. They’ve done a good job of protecting their farm ground and the way they do it is with planning and zoning and impact zones and stuff like that. “

 Commissioner Nate Marvin said he personally isn’t in favor of changing the county’s code.

 “Unless we can make it better than it is now,” Marvin said. “If we do make any changes, we’ll have to hold public hearings.”