Donna Essegian
Comments to Town Board August 11, 2011
Tonight I want to express my concerns about any PILOT that could come through industrial wind development and also express my concerns about the Acciona economic Impact Report presented last evening in Three Mile bay.
I attended the Acciona presentation on their Economic impact study. One of the papers that Mr. Conboy provided explained the pilot payment process. Remember that PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) allows a developer to make payments at a significant reduction of the regular tax rate. Mr. Conboy explained that the Acciona Pilot would split payments to five jurisdictions: Town of Cape Vincent, Thousand Islands Schools, Jefferson County, Town of Lyme and Lyme Central Schools. HE used the Galloo Island PILOT as an example to show how the money could be divided. The Galloo Island PILOT gives 50% of payments to Jefferson County, Sacketts harbor Central Schools get 35% and Town of Hounsfield gets15%.
Any PILOT to be negoated for the Acciona industrial wind development would not have to be divided this way, but it will be split among five entities, not three. Using Mr. Conboy’s example of the payment rate at 8,500 for each megawatt of power developed, Acciona would pay a little over $20 million for the St. Lawrence Wind Farm over 20 years, or about $1 million a year. That has to be divided five ways, not three as in the case of Galloo island. I listened carefully to this example and became very concerned about the actual amount of money that would come to our town and school district. Although Mr. Conboy ‘s report states that there will be no reduction of property values in our town, there is much evidence to the contrary, a fact that he simply rejected last night. If our town assessments are lowered and if we lose any tourist dollars, I believe that this town could actually lose money from three PILOTS being suggested by both the proposed Acciona and BP projects. We cannot afford to have this happen. As town leaders, you must devote time to develop full understanding of all the possible income sources to our town and what impact the PILOT might be able to provide. I am worried that it will not be to our advantage and I believe it is your job to question everything any developer presents to you. Overall, this very complex issue cannot be taken lightly. At the end of the evening last night , I thought to myself… maybe Don Mason is right on this one… he told me twice in the past year that a PILOT will not lower our taxes, maybe just not have them go up so fast.
Overall Acciona Economic impact study is simply disturbing. The data used to prove no loss of property values was collected from 1996- 2007 and the sample of home sales had 86% of the sold homes having no turbine view. Even though they were in a one – five mile radius of a wind turbine. This is due to geography of the area. Our town is basically flat and both the Acciona and BP view shed information they have provided states that almost all of the proposed 137 turbines will be visible to most homes in our town. This major difference makes the study cited by the Acciona report irrelevant to our town. He also noted that because the number of visitors at Cedar Point and Burnham State parks showed a slight increase from 2009-2010 that we would not lose tourists to our town. I simply fail to see that connection! Last, he said there were 54 leaseholders in the Acciona project and that the payments to them are cash crop payments that would save the dairy farmers. We have only 10 active dairy farms in Cape Vincent, so all those leaseholders are not farmers. Overall the quality of the report is poor and I would hope that you spend no time reviewing this document… instead focus on understanding not the unique situation of any possible PILOT that has to be divided five ways, not three like the rest of the projects in NYS!
Donna Essegian
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Additionally, before Donna Essegian was able to return to her chair Donny Mason felt it necessary to give a rebuttal to Donna's statement ~
Don Mason is right on this one… he told me twice in the past year that a PILOT will not lower our taxes, maybe just not have them go up so fast.
Mason denied saying any such thing.
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