Destroyed by wind
Industrial wind developers, in an effort to convince voters to change their zoning ordinances to allow wind turbines, have promised huge reductions in property taxes. This is exactly what Angus King and Rob Gardiner from Independence Wind are promising Roxbury.
Here’s how that might play out.
Towns not having wind turbine projects would claim discrimination under the state constitution and demand the tax benefit be shared among all the towns in the state. In a similar situation in Vermont, towns with ski areas and second homes had much lower property taxes than other towns. A second-grade student’s parents sued, based on her constitutional right to equal educational opportunity.
The court agreed and the inevitable result was a state property tax which forced the”gold towns” (in Maine’s case, the towns with wind farms) to send the tax dollars they thought they were going to save to the state for distribution to the “poor towns”.
Where will Roxbury be when the second-grader from Byron or Mexico prevails in a similar suit?
Stuck with a landscape destroyed by 400-foot-high wind turbines and high taxes to boot.
Steve Thurston, Andover
5 September 2008
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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