Supervisors appoint leaders for 2016

During its first meeting of the New Year, the Grundy County Board of Supervisors named Barb Smith the new chairwoman and Chuck Bakker the vice chairman on Monday morning.
 
Smith will replace Mark Schildroth as chair, and both changes passed by a unanimous 5-0 vote before the reorganizational meeting was adjourned and reopened with Smith at the helm.
 
The board also held a brief public hearing on the proposed rezoning of a four-acre parcel of land outside of Dike, where Farmer’s Co-Op plans to build an anhydrous ammonia plant. The current plant is inside of city limits, and a representative for the Co-Op who attended the meeting noted that they wanted to move it away from a daycare facility in Dike.
 
Members of the board did raise some concerns, including the volume of school traffic traveling along the road between New Hartford and Dike where the plant would be located and whether the theft of anhydrous for the purpose of producing crystal meth was still a major issue for co-ops. The representative addressed both, as he pointed out that the plant would really only operate for a few weeks in the spring and a few in the fall, and he added that anhydrous theft has decreased dramatically in recent years. County Auditor Rhonda Deters did not receive any written or oral comments, and a motion to approve the rezoning passed unanimously. The board then voted to waive second and third readings and adopt it immediately to expedite the process.
 
Read more in this week's Grundy Register.