Portage County commissioners plan a public hearing to consider designating eight townships as exempt from construction of “economically significant” wind and solar farms.
A public meeting is planned at 6:30 p.m. March 26 at the Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Operation Center, 2978 State Route 59 in Ravenna.
Kassidy Parabel, clerk to the commissioners, said the eight townships have expressed interest in following Shalersville‘s lead. That township has had a ban in place since 2023. The proposed restricted area would include Mantua, Hiram, Nelson, Freedom, Paris, Rootstown, Randolph and Atwater townships.
Parabel said the state approved Senate Bill 52 in 2021, which gave county commissioners the authority to declare parts of a county as areas where large scale wind and solar operations were not permitted. The county’s authority extends only to unincorporated areas, such as townships, and not to cities. Streetsboro changed its zoning code to restrict solar arrays last year.
In 2023, when Shalersville pursued the restricted status, commissioners held a public hearing and declared the township a restricted area.
Parabel said a couple of other requests came in from other townships, but communication was inconsistent. She said commissioners asked her to reach out to all townships in 2025 to see if they wanted to address the issue.
“The goal was to have one comprehensive meeting involving every township that wishes for restrictions, instead of separate meetings for each area,” she said. “The other townships simply decided that they do not want to pursue restrictions, or they did not get back to me.”
Shalersville Trustee Ron Kotkowski said his board decided to ban the large, commercial arrays out of concern for how they could impact the community long term. The legislation has no impact on solar panels at private homes, just large-scale, commercial operations. Some land owners were being solicited about leasing their property for a solar farm.
“There’s been a lot of bad press about solar panels degrading,” he said. “We didn’t want to ban them on people’s private property. We just didn’t want solar farms because we were concerned they would ruin the property eventually.”
Nobody has approached trustees about putting such an array in the township, and Kotkowski suspects that with a decline in federal subsidies, large scale solar arrays will become more expensive and less prevalent.
“I think when people have to pay for the whole cost themselves, it isn’t going to be as much of an issue,” he said. “I think the technology isn’t there quite yet. The math doesn’t work out if you take away the government giveaway.”
Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at dsmith@recordpub.com.

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