See What Will County Wants To Let Property Owners Do

Changing special uses to permitted uses might not seem that big a deal until your neighbor adds a wind turbine over the night.

That's why Will County wants your feedback before they change their rules.

spoke to this week about Renewing Will County, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded project that would let homeowners and business owners make certain changes to their property without going for county board approval.

Adding wind turbines and solar panels and putting a trailer on your property for elderly relatives would now be easier and cheaper for Will County residents to do.

See a full list of proposed changes and give your feedback.

"A lot of things right now require they come in and get a special use permit to do something with their own property or whatever or change something that they do at their facility," Weigel told Mokena's board. "We're going to streamline that so that it isn't required that they need special uses for all these things."

"This should be able to save residents say $1,000 on application fees and filing fees and a small business maybe $3,000," he said.

Will County has set up a website, renewingwillcounty.com, so residents can read and comment on the proposed changes and learn more about the project.

Also, there will be two public workshops so people can come in and discuss their concerns in person.

Those will be:

• 6 p.m. Jan. 18 at the Forest Preserve District of Will County Sugar Creek Administration Center in Joliet
• 6 p.m. Jan. 19 at the Frankfort Township Hall in Frankfort

Watch video of Weigel speaking before the Mokena Village Board.

This would only affect residents of unincorporated Will County. If you live in the village limits of Mokena, New Lenox or Frankfort, you will still have to go before the village before you can make these changes.

However, Mokena Trustees Joseph Siwinski and John Mazzorana said villages should follow what the county does on this.

"I kind of get fearful when I start hearing a lot of 'We're going to make things not special uses, but we're going to make them ordinary uses' and we start talking about wind turbines and some of these other things," Mazzorana said.