Urbana Solar Farm Protest Voted Down

The Urbana City Council had an opportunity to protest under a state law (see Page 3 of Exhibit E, page 16 of pdf file from resolution) new zoning rules on Solar Farms in Champaign County (more on the solar farm issue here). The council voted against doing so. Two before and after articles on that, the first from WAND with a video segment citing the News-Gazette:

Urbana city staff have suggested council members not stand in the way of a Champaign County zoning proposal that could bring solar farms to rural areas.

That is according to the News Gazette.

The recommendation comes ahead of the Urbana City Council meeting.

The council is scheduled to vote on whether to protest changes to the county rules on solar farms. The rules were proposed this month by the county board.

Urbana must give approval for the proposal to move forward.

Solar farms need a special permit from the Champaign County Board to be built.

The News Gazette reports there are already seven applications for solar farms.

The county board will consider final approval of the solar farm rules on Thursday.

If that passes, the first solar farm public hearing will be on Aug. 30.

It was reported after the meeting that it was rejected. From the News-Gazette coverage of the Urbana City Council meeting afterward:

In other business, council members unanimously rejected a resolution that would have protested proposed zoning changes at the county level to allow solar farms.

Council member Bill Brown said the county's process was thorough and kept Urbana in mind.

There doesn't appear to be any controversy, but from the resolution documents you can see that a lot of work went into assuring that City ordinances, rules, and concerns were looked at for these new zoning rules before giving their recommendation to the council not to stand in the way. I doubt that'll change anyone's mind on the issue, but for others it may be interesting.