KINGMAN - Two residents raised concerns about how their comments were interpreted in a report to the Board of Supervisors during Thursday's County Planning and Zoning Commission meeting.
The report summarizes public comments on three major amendments to the County General Plan that were heard by the commission on Sept. 9, 16 and Oct. 14. Two of the major amendments deal with the Albiasa and Hualapai Valley solar projects. The last amendment deals with the adoption of the Desert Hills Area Plan near Lake Havasu.
The report is part of a packet of information the Board will use when it considers the three major amendment to the General Plan during its meeting today.
"I'm unhappy with how my comments were reported. I'd say they were spun," said resident Jim Kanelos.
When asked what the differences were between the report and the statements made during the meetings, Kanelos said his comments were more specific during the meetings than, "was concerned about the amount of ground water that was used."
Commissioner Sue Donahue pointed out that the report was not a verbatim transcript of the meetings. The commission could request a verbatim transcript if it wanted, she said.
Commission Chair Earl Hamlyn asked if Kanelos wanted his comments removed from the report and said Kanelos could submit his own record of his comments to the commission.
Kanelos said he didn't want the comments removed.
Resident Elizabeth Barnett also objected to how she was quoted in the report.
The report said, "She was surprised that all the questions had to do with water usage."
Barnett said when she attended her first meeting about the Albiasa project she was not surprised that all the comments were about water because the area was in a 10-year drought.
"This is the exact opposite of what I said," she said. "You need to change this because if you're making decisions on misinformation you're going to have a problem."
The commission approved staff working with Burnett and Kanelos to provide verbatim transcripts of their comments to attach to the report.
The commission also voted to continue four amendments to the county zoning ordinance after Vice Chair Carl Flusche asked for more time to consider the amendments.
The amendments would have created three new zones: the Planned Area Development (PAD) Zone, the Commercial-Office-Retail (COR) Zone and the Residential Cluster (R-CL) Zone.
The PAD zone would make it easier for master-planned community developers to adjust zoning within their projects.
The COR zone would allow developers to create communities with residential living areas above businesses.
The R-CL zones would allow developers to cluster buildings close together in order to avoid major land features, such as rocky hills and wetlands.
The commission will consider those zoning amendments at its next meeting in December.
