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Colorado County Commissioners encouraged the state legislature to regulate common sense legislation regarding wind power development in a resolution read at the recent commissioners’ court meeting Monday, Aug. 26.
County Judge Ty Prause read the resolution in a “shot to try to put down everything,” encouraging state legislature to grant protections to counties to aid them in protecting the environment, and interests of the county, landowners and residents.
“Grant counties in Texas the ability to protect their communities and environments from implementation of harmful development,” said Prause. “The Commissioners Court of Colorado County urges the Texas Legislature to enact laws protecting Texans from further subsidization of wind farms in Texas.”
Prause goes even further, informing any entities seeking to develop a wind farm in Colorado County, that they must submit an impact study to the county’s permit office.
“We request any entity seeking to develop a commercial wind farm in Colorado County Texas to submit an environmental and economic impact study to the Colorado county permit office and seek the commissioner’s court approval prior to any development action on such project and a Compliance Certification in accordance with Texas Utilities Code, 301,” Prause emphasized.
The county according to Prause will require these entities to do extensive work to prove that their production would not be harmful to the Colorado County community.
“They come to us if they are going to be doing that,” said Prause. “We want to get knowledge of it and make sure that it is not going to be harmful, and that those studies are done for environmental impact, etc. We want to make sure that they have complied and given a certificate to our permit officer, that they have complied with the law that does exist, and has existed since 2019 as we found when we started reading and checking into this, and that those terms cannot be waived, changed or modified in any shape or form.”
Prause highlights his and the counties initiative however as a way of potentially shooting down any harmful wind farm attempts.
“That is just my shot at trying to put down everything and not be hypocritical about it,” said Prause. “Because there are two sides, landowners’ rights, but we also have to be reasonable and not create nuisances or things that are harmful to our county as well, in my view.”
Commissioners also proposed adopting a new tax rate for 2024 to fund the 2025 budget and setting a date for a public hearing on the proposed 2025 budget and the proposed tax rate for 2024 to fund the 2025 budget.
The choices the court had were to adopt either the no-new tax rate, the voter approved rate or the De Minimis rate.
The voter approved rate of an increase of $0.464913 would not require voter approval by election but would require a public hearing to vote for. According to Prause, the proposed budget would raise more total property taxes “The proposed budget will raise more total property taxes than last year’s budget by $969,137 or 6.38%,” said Prause. “Of that amount $470,824 is tax revenue to be raised from new property added to the tax roll this year.”
The public hearing for the proposed budget will be on Monday, Sept. 9 at 9 a.m.,” said Prause. “In the Colorado County Courthouse County courtroom. The public hearing for the proposed tax rate will be at 9 a.m. as well.
