July 20, 2017
New York

Wind farm developer to seek $1.9M P.I.L.O.T agreement

By Rick Miller | Olean Times Herald | July 19, 2017 | www.oleantimesherald.com

SANDUSKY – Developers of the proposed 107-turbine Alle-Catt Wind Farm will seek a payment in lieu of taxes – or P.I.L.O.T. – agreement valued at $1.9 million a year.

That amount would be split between the towns of Freedom and Farmersville in Cattaraugus County; Centerville and Rushford in Allegany County; the town of Arcade in Wyoming County; school districts within the area and the three counties.

Eric Miller, director of business development for Invenergy, said the company would be seeking a P.I.L.O.T. Corey Wiktor, executive director of the Cattaraugus County Industrial Development Agency, said he’d met once with Invenergy.

Wiktor said the IDA was “going to wait until they go their approvals” before accepting an application from the wind farm for IDA inducements.

Those inducements would include sales tax exemption, mortgage tax exemption and partial property tax exemption. Much of the equipment is tax exempt already, but site preparation including foundations may be taxable.

With the P.I.L.O.T. negotiated by the IDA, a fixed amount of payments in lieu of taxes based on megawatts of power would be divided among all the municipalities and school districts including Pioneer, Franklinville and Cuba-Rushford.

The IDA bases the value of each megawatt at $5,000, meaning about $1.9 million a year from the 380 megawatts in P.I.L.O.T. payments to the towns, counties and school districts.

An additional $1,140,000 in annual payments would be made to the host towns of Freedom, Farmersville, Centerville, Rushford and Arcade.

There is also $200,000 in payments Invenergy would be making to fire districts each year.

Invenergy also plans on making $2,760,000 in annual lease payments to host and neighboring landowners.

Total economic impact over 20 years of projected operation is about $120 million, according to Invenergy officials.

During the nine-month construction of the windfarm and its infrastructure about 200 jobs would be created. Between 10 and 15 people would be needed to maintain the wind farm from a central operations facility.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/07/20/wind-farm-developer-to-seek-1-9m-p-i-l-o-t-agreement/