The Sawyer County Zoning Committee voted 3-2 to recommend approval of a rezoning request from residential to commercial for a property on State Highway 27 that applicants say will host an equipment-repair shop.

The vote followed a lengthy public hearing in which neighbors raised environmental and noise concerns and the Hayward Town Board voted to deny the rezone. Rebecca Roker, legal counsel to Sawyer County, advised the committee that the town may file a statutory objection and described the narrow circumstances in which a town can seek to block a county rezoning under the statute referenced in the hearing record (59695E, as spoken at the meeting).