Noting that county zoning regulations could be changed in the future, the Seward County Planning Commission voted July 20 to send the county’s much-discussed, reformatted and revised zoning regulations on to the Seward County Commissioners for acceptance, rejection or amendment.
Planning Commission Chair Dale Niemann reminded commission members and the approximately 30 people who came to the meeting that the way farmers and livestock producers operate now is much different than when the county was a patchwork of 80-and 160-acre farms supporting individual families.
He reminded people the zoning regulations may change in the future, too.
“Everything changes,” he said. “This will be a continuous change. Keep in mind that this was adjustable. We are proceeding, but it is not in stone.”
In a later interview, Seward County Board of Commissioners Chair Misty Ahmic said it would likely be September before the zoning regulations could be on the commissioners’ agenda. Some provisions in the regulations first require review by the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy and Environment.
During the Planning Commission’s public hearing, there was discussion of how data centers, housing density and accessory dwelling units are addressed in the 266-page proposed regulations. But most discussion centered around the special use permit requirements for livestock operations – particularly for poultry feeding operations.
In a later interview, Niemann said he thought the meeting offered a good discussion of the different perspectives on the county’s zoning.
“Everybody’s opinion matters,” he said.
Keith Marvin, president and founder of Marvin Planning Consultants of David City, which assisted the county’s work on the updated zoning regulations, said a 19-page document created with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) is now posted on the Seward County Zoning Department’s webpage to show the differences between the 2007 and proposed regulations.
Previously, the proposed regulations were available only in person in the zoning office, which is open Monday through Thursday. That version did not provide red-lining or other means to note where content changes had been made in the years-long process it has taken to revise the existing version.
The public hearing at the July 20 meeting was a continuation of the discussion begun as a public hearing on June 15. The Seward County Planning Commission re-opened a public hearing it had just closed to enable discussion of the revised regulations to carry over and for the zoning office to put some additional explanations of the zoning changes online.
The 2007 zoning regulations and the updates and addendums tacked on in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2022, 2023 and 2024 were first revised and then the entire document was reformatted with the assistance of two consulting firms in recent years.
