Chris Webb, a planner with the Southwest Regional Development Commission, answered questions about a draft comprehensive plan for Lyon County on Tuesday.

MARSHALL — For the past year, Lyon County has been looking at its goals stretching 20 or more years into the future. On Tuesday, Lyon County Commissioners heard an overview of a proposed new county comprehensive plan.

Minnesota state law requires a comprehensive plan for the county to enforce its zoning ordinances, said Chris Webb, with the Southwest Regional Development Commission. “This plan, and the process that we go through, is supposed to be the basis for making those decisions,” Webb told commissioners.

Webb and Lyon County Planning and Zoning Administrator John Biren went over a summary of the draft plan. An open-house informational meeting for the public would also be held Tuesday.

A public hearing on the comprehensive plan will be held December 2.

“Really this is a final presentation to talk a little bit about the process, share some information about our open house, and then go through the goals that were developed for each chapter,” Webb said.

The process of setting goals for the plan with the Lyon County Planning and Zoning Commission, and workshopping different chapters, went on through most of this year. Webb said workshops were held once a month in March through August.

Webb said the comprehensive plan is now at the review and adoption stage. “That’s why we’re here today, to get input from the board,” he said. “Small changes can be made to the document, up until the day of the public hearing, which is December 2.”

Webb said there were four “big common themes” running through the comprehensive plan: collaboration and partnerships, infrastructure and services, resource management and workforce development. Those themes showed up in chapters covering everything from land use to economic development, housing and parks. Webb said each segment of the plan tried to highlight positive programs that are going on in the county. One example was career and technical education programs at area schools.

Some of the different goals from the proposed comprehensive plan included expanding and retaining child care slots in the county, encouraging workforce development in the building trades, supporting expansion of utilities in Lyon County, creating a county-wide parks inventory, and prioritizing erosion control in local projects.

Drafting a comprehensive plan for Lyon County started with a series of public engagement sessions in 2024, Webb said. “We did three town hall open houses, in Balaton, Cottonwood and Marshall. We also did a community survey. We received 195 responses from that survey,” he said.

Webb said the survey received responses from every city and township in Lyon County except for Shelburne Township. More than half of the respondents had either lived or owned land in Lyon County for more than 20 years, he said.

“I think that reflects that we had a lot of township input,” Webb said.

When it came to land use, steering committee members had a variety of opinions about how renewable energy worked with the agricultural structure of the county, Biren said. The goals in the plan included promoting and preserving public resources, supporting affordable expansion of rural water systems, and preserving prime agricultural land from encroaching development.

Commissioner Rick Anderson asked for some language changes on the land use goals, especially regarding habitat restoration.

“We’re pushing to set all this land aside and wanting to work with different entities, but they don’t want to work with us. Because they just come in and buy (the land) and put it into whatever they want anyway,” he said. Anderson said the chapter was “more geared toward Soil and Water than really toward the county.”

“I think what we were really talking about was preserving opportunities for residents to have outdoor recreation,” Webb said. But he said he could look at the language of that chapter.

Anderson also asked if language about “renewable energy” could be changed to “alternative energy” in a couple of different chapters of the draft.

Webb and Biren said an open house on the draft comprehensive plan would be held Tuesday. Representatives from Lyon County townships and cities, as well as the general public, were invited. A hearing would be held Dec. 2.

Webb said the comprehensive plan was supposed to be a 20- or even a 25-year plan. “So it’s recommended that the goals be revisited and revised in the future,” he said.