Sandhills Post
Ogallala, Neb. - Community members and residents of Keith County gathered in person to voice their concerns about the rezoning of land, while others supported it. The meeting was also available online on Zoom. In a vote, the Ogallala city council voted 4-1 in favor of rezoning the land.
The rezoning land on the agenda was a request to change zoning from A-1 Agriculture to C-4 Interstate Highway Business District, with the land located in section 7. The land is located near Walmart on the south side of town. A Denver, Colorado man currently owns this section of land. The public hearing lasted around two and a half hours.
Public Hearing
A big chunk of time during the meeting was used for the public hearing. Supporters for the change and non-supporters had roughly ten minutes to speak. In total, around 27 different individuals stepped up to the podium.
Mary Wilson with the Keith County Area Development spoke on how this area would benefit the community with job creation included. "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the commercial hospitality of gaming sectors can create approximately 1.8 million jobs nationwide, by transforming this property into commercial, we can expect to generate hundreds of local jobs," said Wilson.
Many of the supporters for the rezoning change brought up topics like more money being brought into the community, more jobs being created, the casino bringing in more tourism, and more.
During Tuesday night's meeting, one of the residents who spoke against the rezoning change currently lives in the impacted area and his concerns along with his neighbors. "Our homes are the ones that will be directly affected by any proposed zoning changes and speaking with those neighbors a lot of them have the same questions.... Their questions were how this affect my property value, how does it affect my property taxes, how does it affect traffic along our road, “said a property owner whose property is impacted by the zoning change.
Other topics of concern brought up by residents included a potential increase in crime, a potential increase in traffic, property taxes/property value, and more.
The hallways were filled for the meeting, the Zoom was capped off at 100 guests and the audio from Tuesday's meeting will be posted online at a later time. A reminder this voting changed this section of land from agriculture to commercial and could be used for commercial development in the future.