Heather Knebel.

August is here and we are in the home stretch of summer. July has been very eventful for the Tama County Board of Supervisors. We appointed three new members to the Board of Adjustment and one new member to the Zoning Commission. I welcome the new members who’ve been appointed and am confident they will uphold their role in each of these boards to ensure the ordinances are followed.

We made it to the end of the fiscal year with a positive balance. As you recall, if you have been following county business, we were projected to end the fiscal year with a negative balance. Four of the five Supervisors are newly elected so this financial situation is a result of the prior Board of Supervisors failure to budget this account. One week into the new fiscal year, we were already low on funds. We are short in the General Basic Fund until property taxes are paid starting mid-September. We thankfully have other healthy accounts that we can borrow from until taxes come in. Obviously, this is not an ideal situation but is a remedy for the short term until the new fiscal year cost savings are realized.

We found that we had ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds that could be reallocated to Tama County IT for Technology Infrastructure. The amount available is $223,926.20. This will be extremely helpful for IT expenses for Tama County. We are thankful for James, Marshall County IT Specialist, who has been a valuable consultant in assisting us. He is part of the ISAC IT Team that we hired to conduct the IT Audit a few months ago. Supervisor David Turner and James are working on urgent needs until we decide on the final IT plan for Tama County.

I am working on a plan for Economic Development for Tama County. I’ve met with IDM (Institute for Decision Making) from UNI recently. They will be helping train county employees, business leaders, and cities that are interested in advancing Economic Development. I will be visiting other counties’ Economic Development and Chamber of Commerce groups to gain knowledge and best practices in this area.

South Central Iowa Workforce Development is a Board that I serve on as Supervisor. Beginning July 1, 2025, the Local Area had a 17% reduction in federal funding, which equates to nearly $200,000 less than the previous program year. The Local Area does not have sufficient funding to support two full-time staff members, which are necessary to meet compliance requirements for WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) tasks. Therefore, it has been decided that the CEOs (Chief Elected Officers), such as myself for Tama County and the other counties in the South Central Workforce Development Board, will explore merging with another Local Workforce Development area. During the exploration, it was found that Mississippi Valley Local Workforce Development is interested in joining with us. Our only other option is to have the State take it over. Therefore, we will merge with Mississippi officially in July 2026 as it will take time to get new 28E contracts created. Ottumwa and Marshalltown will continue to be the locations for Iowa Workforce Development, as only the Board is merging.

There has been much discussion and debate concerning the Salt Creek Wind Project for over three years now in Tama County. There are landowners that support the project, and others that now regret signing easements. There are acreage owners worried about how it could affect their family’s health, their livelihood or their property values. I understand there are landowners with signed easements desperately needing additional income to support their operation, with the county’s responsibility to protect all residents from future risks concerning decommissioning. The Board of Supervisors have been in litigation with Salt Creek concerning their original Conditional Use Permit that didn’t follow the County Ordinances. The 2024 Building Permit also did not match the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) approved in 2020 for things such as turbine heights, collection line locations, outdated studies, etc. A District Court Judge ruled on the temporary injunction filed by Salt Creek Wind saying it was likely Salt Creek Wind would win on vested rights merits. A general theme on wind projects in Iowa is that most District Court Judges side with the wind companies. In this case the Judge didn’t have all of the facts yet since the trial wasn’t to be held until March 2026. Our attorney believed we had a 50% chance of success as the law must be followed, but we would likely have had to appeal the case all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough funds in our budget as I mentioned before to continue the fight. This is a hard and frustrating truth to grasp as I’m a big proponent of always doing what’s right. Supervisor Mark Doland brought up settling with Salt Creek Wind, and we all agreed to hear what they had to say. When it came to who should negotiate, I volunteered to be one of the Supervisors with a seat at the table because I was the most versed on this topic, it’s my district where the project will be built, and I have 15 years of experience negotiating with large businesses and suppliers. Supervisors Doland, Turner, and Curt Kupka voted to only have Doland and Turner negotiate. This broke my heart when it was my district they were negotiating on behalf of. I care about all people whether they have an easement or not, want wind turbines or not. I was thankful for Supervisor Curt Hilmer having my back but the decision had been made. I have so much passion on this topic and I know that was on display. It was clear three members wanted to settle, so I worked to ensure we got the most concessions possible.

We ended up getting $1.2M in payments to the county over the next year, that is in addition to taxes. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the strength of our case and the work I had done behind the scenes. It’s not typical for a wind company to give additional payments in that amount to a county. We now also have a $10.7M bond for decommissioning that will be updated every three years. Both of these things would likely have never happened with the prior Board of Supervisors. The Conditional Use Permit approved in 2020 stated that decommissioning wasn’t required for 15 years. The turbines would likely need to be repowered before 15 years was up. I’ll take that as a win as we’ll receive a 50% upfront payment which the county desperately needs, and we also secured the decommissioning bond.

Another win we negotiated in the agreement was that anyone who had signed a Good Neighbor Agreement and now wants out can do so if it doesn’t affect the Project. The road use agreement will be followed and the wind company will take care of the roads during construction as well. I tried to get money for acreage owners that may have their property value affected by the wind turbines being 1,500 feet from their house. This was not agreed upon in the negotiation. I also tried to get ADLS (Aircraft Detection Lighting System) approved. This is newer technology where the red blinking lights are off unless an airplane comes into the airspace of the turbines, but this was rejected as well. The entire county will have 60 blinking red lights to see every night from roughly 500-foot-tall turbines. I hope Salt Creek Wind reconsiders this point and gets ADLS installed soon. The Vienna Wind Farm in Gladbrook will be installing ADLS this fall so that area will see 20 less lights blinking.

I did vote to approve the settlement; however, I believe allowing this project that was allowed to proceed according to the outdated ordinances is a risk to those that live around them and to taxpayers in the future. I’m disappointed in the prior Board of Adjustment and Zoning Administrators for not ensuring the ordinances were being followed and yet approving this project anyway. I’m also disappointed in the prior Board of Supervisors’ lack of fiscal responsibility for not monitoring the budget closer which left us with huge deficits, and they also did not allow the ordinances to be updated as the public repeatedly demanded. We voted 5-0 to approve the settlement for Phase 1 of the project with Salt Creek Wind as it felt like we had no other choice in the matter. I apologize that we couldn’t keep going forward but I will continue to enforce the ordinances and work to provide transparency from the wind company on the project.

As usual, please reach out with any questions or concerns!

Supervisor Heather Knebel (R-Traer), the first elected female supervisor in Tama County history, represents District 3, including the townships of Spring Creek, Crystal, Perry, and parts of far northern Carlton (excluding Garwin) and Howard. She can be reached at 641-481-2532 or hknebel@tamacounty.org.