The Saline County Board of Adjustments voted on reorganization at their first meeting of the year on March 5. Mitch Fritz will remain as president and Gary Veprosky has been named vice president. Lyle Weber, Saline county zoning administrator, was renamed as Secretary.
“The big cane is coming for me,” Fritz said. “The show is about over folks.”
The Saline County Board of Commissioners approves the members for the Planning and Zoning and Board of Adjustment boards.
On Jan. 7 at the Board of Commissioners meeting Russ Karpisek made a motion for Fritz and current member Aaron Ourecky to remain as members of the Board of Adjustment. That motion did not receive a second, preventing action from being taken.
Both Fritz and Ourecky will carry out their duties on the Board of Adjustment until they are replaced or removed.
A citizens forum was also held during the March 5 Board of Adjustment, during which Jason Kotas of Western expressed his frustrations with the processing of a formal complaint made in 2024 to Weber about shadow flicker on his dwelling caused by a wind tower on a neighboring property.
Kotas said that nonparticipating properties should have no more than 30 hours of shadow flicker on their residences annually. Kotas provided video examples with his complaint, but not totalling 30 hours.
“He (Weber) gave me the form and said that they (Board of Commissioners) do not want this to go to the board because they do not want to risk getting sued again,” Kotas said during Citizens Forum.
Weber explained the process for a citizen with a complaint is to contact him, and then he attempts to facilitate a resolution between parties. If those resolution steps are unsuccessful, complaints are to be heard by the Board of Adjustment.
Weber notified county attorney David Solheim of Kotas’s complaint.
“I talked to him (Solheim) right away,” Weber said. “He (Solheim) said just contact their (Milligan I’s) attorney and see if they can’t settle it. He was afraid that the county was going to get sued again.”
Weber contacted the legal representation for Milligan I, who contacted Kotas directly with a settlement offer. Kotas was dissatisfied with the settlement offer.
No action was taken during the meeting, but Kotas was advised that if he would like to be added to the agenda for a future Board of Adjustment meeting with public notice, he can do so based on the procedure outlined by Weber.
Kotas asked for time to consider if he would like to be placed on the agenda as an action item. On March 7, Kotas notified Weber he would like his complaint added to the agenda for the Board of Adjustments as an action item.
On March 10 Weber notified the members of the Board of Adjustment by email that Kotas does want to move forward with a complaint, but according to Solheim it is outside of the scope of the Board of Adjustment and would need to be addressed by the Board of Commissioners.
“The Board of Adjustment does not have the authority to regulate that, so it was advised to Mr. Kotas to take his complaint to the Board of Comissioners,” Solheim said.
Kotas is determining if he wants to take the matter to the Board of Commissioners.
Solheim was not in office when the conditional use agreement for wind turbines was put into place and is researching what actions, if any are availabe to Saline County, to address Kotas’s complaint should he decide to take it to their board.
