A 32-acre solar farm in Cortlandville will get a $476,000 break on its property taxes, which the Cortland County Industrial Development Agency approved Monday in a big step to install the panels off Route 215.
The new solar farm would put almost $130,000 into the town’s coffers over the course of 15 years, about $8,667 yearly, project documents say.
“We get some money out of it, but we don’t control it really at all,” Town Supervisor Tom Williams said Monday. The Cortlandville Town Board received the proposed agreement documents June 5.
The Cortland County Industrial Development Agency negotiates tax deals with solar energy companies, and it requires companies to reach an agreement with the host community first. In this case, Cortlandville.
New York City-based developer Cortlandville PV LLC’s property tax bill would be $475,569 less under the tax agreement, according to IDA documents – about 62% of what it would otherwise have to pay.
Cortlandville PV wants to open a five-megawatt solar farm at 3023 Route 215 on agricultural land west of the highway. Cortlandville PV would mount about 10,000 solar panels at the site, which would require the property to be re-zoned to “light industrial,” the IDA said in May, when it first heard the proposal.
The company would place solar panels on 32 acres of the 76-acre site.
“Deciding on the what and the where, that’s not us,” Williams said. “We did at one point.”
Williams said in the past the development agency took towns’ recommendations for tax agreements.
“That lasted for a year or two,” Williams said. “For whatever reason they rescinded that and took the PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes). Now they own the program. Why they did it, I don’t know, it was never explained to me.”
Solar development in the county stalled between 2020 and 2022, a period when the county legislature required solar developers to pay $7,000 per megawatt of capacity, twice the rate other upstate counties charge. That was added to similar PILOT standards in several municipalities, pushing the cost in lieu of taxes to $14,000 or even $21,000 per megawatt.
That decision came after Solon town officials and some residents raised concerns about EDF Renewables’ $90 million, 90-megawatt solar project proposed for about 600 acres in the towns of Cortlandville, Homer and Solon.
The towns agreed to set a minimum rate of $7,000 per megawatt produced for the EDF project. The county also set its rate at $7,000.
Eventually, the county gave the power to negotiate tax agreements to the IDA.
Several greater Cortland area communities have welcomed solar projects. Dryden recently green-lighted a 12.5-megawatt solar farm at the site of the former Caswell Road landfill, which closed in 1985 after 15 years of use. In Cortlandville, county lawmakers recommended in April granting a 29-year lease to an American and Canadian company that has previously developed 33 solar facilities in Central New York.
Earlier this year, Cortland County produced nearly 67 megawatts of electricity from 298 solar projects, nearly 10 times its power-generating capacity of just five years ago.
