[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEx4gcdOiPA[/youtube]

Well if you want to kill an hour of your time and lose 60 minutes you will NEVER get back, watch the latest Minnehaha County Commission meeting (10/6/2015).

As a commissioner said to me today (explaining the proceedings) “It was truly watching sausage being made.”

I guess that is a nice way of putting it. It was a cluster F’ of sub motions, memory loss, angry directors, staff attorneys and literally horse trading events. When the smoke cleared, Homan was sent back to the planning commission (3-2) to figure out how to re-build a horse barn (that doesn’t need to be re-built, because, well, it is still there).

The Homan’s were looking for a ‘safety net’ so to speak ‘in-case’ the barn would to burn down or get carried away by a tornado or other natural disaster (you never know these days). The problem? It’s not zoned ag (anymore).

See the county isn’t to blame, and neither are the zoning laws. It seems (what I could gather from the sausage fest) that the Homan’s were duped into buying a ‘quaint’ little acreage that isn’t zoned ag. See the barn was originally built on 40 acres of ag zoned land, and the owner of that parcel decided to make a smaller parcel for the Homans to purchase, but either he didn’t tell them the zoning would change OR they didn’t research it, either way, it seems according to the planning director for the county, they are SOL.

Funny, after all the years of Homan skirting the School District’s rules of actually living in the district you work for, it seems there are some rules that cannot be stretched.

9 Thoughts on “Homan’s Horse Barn Hectics

  1. Question on October 8, 2015 at 4:53 pm said:

    It appears that what the Homans are really looking for is to make this piece of property more attractive to any potential buyer by changing the zoning to allow a residential use. Not, as Pam Homan stated, to insure that the barn could be replaced IF it happened to be destroyed.

    Isn’t this the same kind of double-talk she used when she was Superintendent of the Sioux Falls school system?

  2. Yeah, kind of hard to get away with things when you are no longer a public official with a paper shredder that runs on rocket fuel, and you have to do things in a public forum in front of a board you don’t have by the nads.

    You do also realize, all the commission did on Tuesday was delay the denial.

  3. rufusx on October 8, 2015 at 10:44 pm said:

    Too bad she isn’t in Lincoln County – she’d get whatever she wanted from the Planning Commission.

  4. I’ll give her this, her horse barn is across the road from an existing residential development just north of Renberg Elementary by Renner. It’s not like they’re going to redevelop an entire cornfield in the middle of nowhere to be a subdivision. However, it IS funny to see that they basically got swindled in a real estate deal if they assumed they could build anything on the site but then can’t due to no building eligibility (driveway to the address may be on a blind hill making it a hazard, etc, I don’t know the specifics). It sounds like they’re trying to get it rezoned so they can sell it off and not lose a ton of $$$.

  5. anonymous on October 9, 2015 at 2:52 pm said:

    Whaaaat?

    It’s not like they’re going to redevelop an entire cornfield in the middle of nowhere to be a subdivision.

    Whaaaat, after listening to the testimony (BTW, have you actually listened to it?) developing a cornfield into a subdivision is not their intention.

    What it appears they want is the ability to sell off the property to a buyer who wants to have A residential dwelling in addition to the barn.

  6. Yes, that’s my point – it sounds like they’re jerking Homan around when rezoning her parcel wouldn’t be detrimental to the area. Which would allow the Homans to not lose $$$ when they sell it and focus on their other new home they’re already building a mile north of Hartford! I also haven’t watched the clip because I want to keep those 60 min of my life.

  7. anonymous on October 11, 2015 at 9:43 am said:

    Whaaaat?, according to the clip, which you have not bothered to watch, the decision to rezone this property as the Homans are requesting would have far-reaching implications.

    It would set a precedent that the Minnehaha County Commission does NOT want to set.

    It will be interesting to see who wins in this situation….the Homans or Minnehaha County residents.

  8. You’re gonna have to explain the implications to me because I’m not gonna waste an hour of my life watching the cluster****.

  9. It’s not the end of the world. Whoever buys the property from the Homan’s CAN build a house there. They just can’t ‘rebuild’ a barn. But the current barn can stay. I think interested buyers are giving the Homan’s grief because of the barn thing.

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