Hancock County Board of Commissioners: 2/17/26

MEETING: Hancock Co. Comm.

Date: 2/17/26

Recorder: Terry Bynum

BACKGROUND:

Provide relevant links and/or context for the meeting.

SUMMARY OF SIGNIFICANT AGENDA ITEMS AND KEY POINTS

Not a lot of content here, other than normal county business.  

A couple of ongoing issues were finally finished–

Outback Storage zoning–Commissioners were unhappy with the requestor-Kim Medlin. Apparently he had begun construction before getting his rezoning approved, was late pulling his permits, then the permits expired. He came in wanting to get approval to finish the project. Mr. Spalding voted against it, and chastised Medlin, saying when he tried to get ahead of the process by beginning construction before pulling permits, then missing deadlines and not doing what the Plan Commission and BZA asked of him, was like a slap in the face to those offices.  McDaniel and Gray approved continuing the project, with the stipulation that he pay DOUBLE the fees as penalty.

     The Goodin rezone–this involves rezoning the Goodin Landscape property along the Pennsy Trail.  They finally agreed to the rezone, after accepting an agreement stating how Goodin will landscape a buffer between his land and the Trail.  He will plan trees and maintain them for a year, but after a year, if the trees die, he won’t replace them. 

There were a couple of large expenditures approved–$292K for total renovation of the elevator in the courthouse, and over $172K for change orders in the Old Jail/Prosecutor’s office.

Public comments at end of meeting were interesting.  Mr. Charles Cook wanted to talk about the Data center going in at 600 W & 100N.  He is particularly concerned about the water. Commissioners could not answer his questions. McDaniel pointed out that everything right now is rumors and speculation.  And that even if the project goes forward, it would not come before the Commission, because a Data Center is an acceptable use on that piece of property, because it is already zoned industrial.