Politics

Asphalt plant request 'has really stymied me,' commissioner says

By Lightning Reports, Published: May 17, 2021

Henderson County Commissioner Daniel Andreotta did not tip his hand on where he stands on the rezoning for a proposed asphalt plant, which the Board of Commissioners will take up tonight.

Commissioners are holding a public hearing on the request for permission to build the plant at 5:30 p.m. at Bo Thomas auditorium at BRCC. In brief remarks Saturday morning at a Republican Party breakfast meeting, Andreotta talked about the controversial request and other county commission matters coming up this spring.

"Lots of questions, lots of opinions, lots of viewpoints," he said of the asphalt plant request by Southeastern Asphalt. "It's tough, it's challenging. It's easy to ride by or to look at Facebook or the newspaper and go, 'Well, this is what should happen or this is not what should happen.' You start diving into the details and it gets really complicated and I'm telling you, this one has really stymied me. I keep waiting on something to make it easy, something that just blows away the other side. That hasn't happened yet. So we'll see what happens."

"It's the easiest place to be a commissioner because there's a lot of people sitting in those offices that make the five of us look really good," he said. Upcoming issues are this week's budget review and the hiring of a new county manager, "which is huge. That could be the biggest decision we make, at least one of them."

"If you're happy with us and you like what's going, tell everybody you can in every form of communication you can," he said. "If you got a question or a problem, you come tell me. Don't reverse those two."