The Greene County Board of Supervisors met Monday in regular session.

The Board held a public hearing for two proposed hog confinements in section 30 of Highland Township for Towers Pork. Pat Fitzpatrick and Charles Hoskins voiced their opposition to the confinements. Fitzpatrick said he lives one-half-mile from the proposed buildings and he claimed John Towers didn’t contact him about his concerns. Hoskins lives southeast of the buildings. His concern was about decreasing the quality of life. He also claimed that the manure was supposed to be knifed into the soil and he hadn’t seen any of the other hog confinement operations do that. He thought the manure was only applied to the surface. The Board also read two letters that were not in favor of the confinement.

Following comments from the public, the Supervisors gave their remarks. Pete Bardole said his father has an open feed area for hogs, as well as enclosed buildings. He noted that he could smell the open area more than the enclosed buildings. Tom Contner said he has three hog confinement areas around his property. Even though he noticed the smell from time to time, he was in favor of hog confinements because it is an outlet for young farmers to start a career in the agriculture industry. Mick Burkett said the Board technically can’t deny any of the applications, they can only have public hearings and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has the final say. He added that the Board has only denied one application in his tenure since the company who wanted to operate it was not based in the county. Finally, Vice-Chair Dawn Rudolph said if they chose not to participate in the master matrix, then there would be no public hearings and all applications would go straight to the DNR.

The Board then approved their recommendation to the DNR for the project.

The Board also approved an actuarial services contract with Nyhart Services, a bridge project contract on County Road E-18 with Dixon Construction as presented, and the Board gave permission for Greene County Farmers Market to use the eastside of the courthouse grounds for farmers markets to be held on Tuesdays from June 5th through September 25th.

During open forum, the Board agreed to schedule a budget amendment for this fiscal year in May so that the Sheriff’s office could purchase all new body cameras and in-car cameras from Panasonic for nearly $70,000.