Tuesday's council work session saw long lines at the podium as solar advocates, preservationists, and others weighed in on where and how Lexington should allow solar to be developed.
Though speakers were generally agreed on the value of advancing renewable energy, proposals permitting larger scale solar installations on the city's signature farmland drew mixed responses.
"Should ground-based solar be allowed in the rural service area, it would be the last crop that the prime soil beneath it would grow," another speaker claimed, while another said the question "shouldn't be an either/or choice if you have a company that is well versed in this."
Some solar projects in the city are already advancing, while others —including a facility at the former Haley Pike landfill —are being studied. But the concerns surrounding industrial-scale solar outside of the urban core led to several rounds of motions and amendments as the city council worked to unearth common ground.
"What you witnessed tonight in the last hour or two is also what democracy looks like," Vice Mayor Dan Wu said at the end of the marathon meeting. "It's a little bit messy. It's a little bit hairy. It gets confusing. It gets convoluted. But I think that's how we move forward."
Ultimately, the council okayed language permitting small scale solar for homeowners in rural areas and pushed the more contentious questions about bigger facilities and broader reforms into a work group intended to study and hammer out those issues.
The council also capped the amount of allowable large scale solar at 1% of agricultural land.