Resident urges support for Crossroads Solar Grazing Center, cites tax relief and disputes online misinformation

A resident told the Morrow County Board of Commissioners that he supports the Crossroads Solar Grazing Center project and urged county leaders and trustees to work with the developer.

The speaker, who identified himself as Dylan, said he and his wife have lived in Morrow County since 1979 and called the county a "safe community." He described the Crossroads project as a roughly $100,000,000 initiative that would use about 550 acres of farmland and said that, by his calculation, that acreage represents less than half a percent of the county—s roughly 120,000 acres of tillable farmland. He asserted the project would generate tax benefits and help relieve local tax pressure. He also said misinformation about the project has circulated on Facebook and that he is collecting signatures from residents who favor the project to present to township trustees.

During his remarks Dylan asked about the role of referendums and resolutions; a commissioner (recorded only as a commissioner in the transcript) responded, "Referendum is usually when the voters decide they wanna try to change something that has already happened." The resident said a trustee meeting in Cardington Township had discussed the project and took no action.

Dylan described visiting a Crossroads representative and speaking with a trustee at his home, and said he has spoken with farmers and landowners who plan to lease their land for the project. He said solar farms vary in size and configuration and that developers are proposing smaller, dispersed sites that would be set back from roads and screened by woods.

No formal action on the Crossroads project was recorded during the commission meeting; the comments came in the public-comment portion of the session.