Law setting fees for solar developers passed | Greene County | hudsonvalley360.com - Hudson Valley 360
CATSKILL — A local law that sets a specific fee rate for developers hoping to build solar projects in Greene County was adopted by the Legislature in a special meeting Wednesday.
The local law was adopted unanimously Wednesday after the board closed a public hearing on the proposed law.
The approved local law is designed to promote the installation of solar fields in the county through payment-in-lieu-taxes, or PILOT, programs.
Under the law, for solar projects with a capacity greater than 50 kilowatts, the annual payment under each PILOT agreement will be set at $8,750 per megawatt of capacity. The law dictates that the annual payment will escalate 2% each year and if an annual payment is not made to the county when it’s due, the county may cancel the PILOT agreement and the solar project would be subject to taxation at its full assessed value.
The law, which was crafted by Greene County Director of Real Property Tax Services Ray Ward and Greene County Attorney Edward Kaplan, will allow the county to avoid PILOT fee negotiations with solar developers that would see the county receive a percentage of the revenue generated by the energy created by each facility.
“The state used to give recommendations and they used to tell you somewhere between 3% and 3 1/2% is where your PILOT should fall,” Greene County Legislature Chairman Patrick Linger said after Wednesday’s meeting. “So that’s where everybody started their negotiations all of the time. NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) has now taken that off the table. It’s not in their paperwork anymore and it’s not in any of their documents anymore. So what’s been happening around the state is that when companies apply for these PILOTS, they are required to inform the county that they’re going to put in a system and then we tell them whether we’re going to require a PILOT or not. We do and what happens is the assessed values have been undervalued or what’ll happen is there winds up being very little negotiations on these PILOTs.”
The law sets a uniform fee that will be paid each year on January 1 for any developer interested in establishing a solar energy system in the county.
“It becomes a fighting match between the municipalities and the solar companies trying to figure out where these solar PILOTs should be,” Linger said. “What our law does is put a specific number on the books and there’s no negotiating. Everybody knows what it’s going to be. So when you come to the table here in Greene County, you’re going to know what that figure is going to be per megawatt for what you’re producing. So it kind of puts it all on the table and makes it fair for everybody. It’s the same number for everybody. One solar installer can’t say that they got a different number than somebody else. Everybody’s going to get the same thing.”
During the public hearing, Greene County Legislator Michael Bulich asked Ward about the logistics of inspecting the solar projects that enter into PILOT agreements.
“Who is going to oversee the inspection of these solar fields to see if they are upgrading or the changes they may be doing over this 15-year time period?” Bulich asked.
Ward replied that in the law, municipalities will have the right of review in the eighth and 15th years of the lifespan of each solar project.
“They can basically request their production levels and finance that they see from that construction,” he explained.
No members of the public voiced their opinions in support or in opposition to the local law during the public hearing and the law was subsequently passed.
source: https://www.hudsonvalley360.com/news/greenecounty/law-setting-fees-for-solar-developers-passed/article_47d161ef-6276-5de5-839b-d83a7d4e6ea0.html
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