Commentaries by Barry Finette, John Quinney, Jeff Finkelstein and Meg Walker
January 12, 2012, pages 2-3.....
Topics: Fees for use of CCS facilities and solar.

Is This the Community We Want To Be?
by Barry Finette

Let me preface this article by saying it is not about a bunch of old men, kids and occasionally women, playing basketball a few hours twice a week at the CCS gym. Throughout history, an apparently “insignificant” event occurs that is reflective of a larger social issue. Recently, a majority of the CCS School Board members decided to implement a policy to charge members of this community who use school facilities. Why? Because the School Board was required to raise $10,000 of this year’s approved school budget through revenues generated by community and private use of the school facilities. The School Board assigned this revenue-generating responsibility to the principal of CCS to not only determine the fees charged to individuals or groups, but to secure payment and enforcement of this policy. As a consequence, the kids, young adults and, yes, the old men who have been coming to play basketball for free at CCS for a few hours twice a week for over 35 years were asked to pay $1,848 per year to do so. This is actually half of the original fee requested. After protesting this fee, it was recognized that “public” and “private” fee schedules should be different, and the charges were reduced to $924. This amounts to a fourth tax for community members participating in this activity: an initial tax to build the facility, their town and school taxes, and now a school facility tax.
For those who have taken on the responsibility for paying this fee, it is actually not about the money. It is what this fee represents, in a social context, with respect to the values of this community. The basketball program is open to all ages (from about 14 years old), gender, race and, yes, basketball ability. It is not a private club, and although there are individuals who participate who are not from Charlotte, most are local, and two volunteer community individuals run this program. It has been a bi-weekly event that provides all participants an opportunity to exercise with their children, other family members and friends. Other group activities both private and open to the public are now being charged to use the school facilities as well. A good case can be made for charging private groups for using the CCS facilities, but should a local public group (or individuals) be charged as well?
My son, who participates in the basketball program and who attended the School Board meetings about this issue, made some important observations. He wants to know if parents/grandparents/or children will be charged to kick or throw a ball or sled on the CCS fields? Will families who bring their children and grandchildren to use the playground after school or on weekends also be charged? According to the current mandate they should be. What will the town be charged to use the facilities for Town Meeting or facilitating local and national elections? How much will those attending these meetings be charged to park? Is the School Board going to charge itself a fee for using the library for its meetings? If not, why? What is the logic of the School Board approving a budget that requires generating $10,000 and then placing the onus for raising these funds on the school principal when he should be focused on providing the best education possible for our children? This entire process has nothing to do with better educating our children. Does the Charlotte community really want its school to raise money on activities that benefit its community through the use of its school facilities? It appears that this “insignificant” event warrants the Charlotte community to take a good look at itself and decide whether what it sees is a reflection of what it believes it is or what it intends to be.

Barry Finette
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Commercial Solar in Charlotte
by John Quinney

I’m generally in favor of the 2.2 MW solar power plant proposed for a 46-acre open field in East Charlotte. I feel that the public benefits of this project outweigh the negative impacts. But that’s just my feeling. And like many on all sides of the issue, I’m short on facts and strong on belief and feelings.
As we learn more about commercial solar in general and this project in particular, I hope that more facts emerge in our conversations, as well as in the pages of The Charlotte News and in materials sent to the Public Service Board (see below).
During the recent Planning Commission and Selectboard meetings, several neighbors spoke about the impact of the project on their property values. A decline of 50 to 75% was mentioned. That got my attention, and so I spent a couple of hours looking for some facts on the impact of commercial solar on nearby property values. It has been a frustrating exercise.
I found no research that described the negative, or positive, impact of commercial solar plants on nearby residential property values. I found many instances where neighbors spoke of their concerns, but no data that supported those concerns. Perhaps the information is out there somewhere? Or perhaps it is not yet available because commercial solar plants are so new, and there haven’t been enough sales of nearby homes from which to draw conclusions?
Commercial wind farms have been around much longer. And sure enough, I found a research paper from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the Department of Energy that examined sale prices of 7,500 homes within 10 miles of 24 commercial wind farms in nine states. The conclusion was that “neither the view of the wind facilities nor the distance of the home to those facilities is found to have any consistent, measurable, and statistically significant effect on home sale prices.” Several other studies have reached similar conclusions. Two studies showing that wind farms lowered nearby property values have been described as statistically flawed or based on unsubstantiated guesses. And these reports all focus on wind farms, not commercial solar arrays.
I’ll keep looking. I hope that other readers of The Charlotte News are also doing this work and that together we’ll find some useful information to send to the Public Service Board and to submit for publication in future issues of the News.
Like many in town, I am pleased that the Selectboard and Planning Commission will seek party status to the Public Service Board process. This will enable them to provide testimony and take part in evidentiary hearings and to help ensure that, if this project is built, it is suitably screened and optimally sited on the proposed parcel.
Once this project has been assigned a docket number by the Public Service Board, all of us may send our input to the board via e-mail to psb.clerk@state.vt.us or by mail to Vermont Public Service Board, 112 State Street, Drawer 20, Montpelier, VT 05620-2701. I expect that the board will receive dozens of letters from Charlotte residents and that this information will help it make a thoughtful and informed decision about this project.
Many Charlotters have recently installed solar electric systems on their rooftops and in their yards, driven by their desire to do something about climate change. In addition, federal tax credits, state incentives, novel lease purchase arrangements and VPIRG Energy’s Solar Communities program have all helped make the economics more attractive. VPIRG Energy was created by Vermont Public Interest Research Group to organize local solar communities and provide them the tools to go solar. That’s a good beginning. Those of us who have expressed support for renewable energy in Charlotte now have the responsibility to help make more of it happen in our town. Ideally, these projects will be sited and scaled to attract broad community support. We are, after all, on record in our Town Plan to “encourage on site residential and commercial installations and the use of solar and wind turbine energy generation.”

John Quinney
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Local Energy Production… an Education?
by Jeff Finkelstein

Recently the Selectboard decided not to go forward with the local solar installation at Thompson’s Point. In turn a commentary was printed about “educating the public to guide us toward local energy production” (The Charlotte News, December 1, 2011). The commentary went on to say that the Planning Commission (PC) should “ask if local energy is desired,” even though the PC decided that the use does not conform to current regulations.
I do not believe this is a question of whether or not the solar installation conforms or doesn’t conform. The question should be, “What is the best investment the Town of Charlotte can make with its land and tax dollars?” In turn we should answer the question, “Should large- or medium-scale solar projects be promoted in Vermont and, if so, how should towns fund these installations?”
In general, large and or medium scale solar is not ideal in Vermont. The solar resource potential in northern Vermont, whether it be photovoltaic (PV) or concentrating solar (CSP), is approximately 4.0 kWh/m2/Day. Comparatively, 7.0 kWh/m2/Day is available in Arizona using PV technology, and more than 8.0 kWh/m2/Day can be generated with the CSP approach (see NREL.gov). Hence, we can never be more than 50% as efficient in the generation of solar power as compared with a sunbelt state such as Arizona… we just do not have that much sun.
There are grants out there from both the state and federal governments that will help cost share the development of local solar. But let’s not forget that it is our collective tax dollars that are used to pay for those grants. So the rationale that we should go after these dollars is faulty, just like it was going after the cost-share grants used to pay for the Charlotte Train Station. Look at the utility the tax payers are receiving for those dollars now…. next to nothing!
We need to start looking at this problem on a grander scale. Like much of the U.S. infrastructure, the electrical grid is aging and is in dire need of being updated to keep the U.S. competitive in the long run. Charlotte is not an electrically islanded community. Any power we generate will go back to the grid. Let’s try and be efficient as a nation and build solar power plants where they are most efficient. In Vermont we just need to figure out how to get local credit for funding these remote, yet more efficient, large scale solar installations.
All this said, if you want to put solar panels on your private land or structure and take advantage of the small amount of sun we do get, and you feel that the investment is worth it… go for it. But why lease? Why give the lessor the long-term benefit if you really believe in the project? We put up about 8 kW of power on our office roof top in Shelburne. With all the state and federal grants/rebates included (approximately 60% savings), assuming no maintenance costs, the current price of electricity and Green Mountain’s +6-cent power generation incentive, the payback will be about 10 years. If electricity goes up, then the payback will be quicker, assuming our maintenance costs do not outpace it. We made the decision to purchase versus lease, as the Town contemplated, because we wanted the benefit in the long run and were willing to outlay the required cash for it. If the town believes in pursuing another project, maybe we should consider a purchase rather than a lease model so the town can enjoy the long-term benefit.
It would be great if we had the option to put our collective investment (taxes) into the grid for reliable transmission, distribution and access to efficiently generated, renewable power. In general, I believe that would be much better use of our dollars and would help push this country in a positive direction for future generations.

Jeff Finkelstein
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Charlotte Solar Farm Proposal
by Meg Walker

Imagine this, you are driving on Hinesburg Road between Spear Street and Mt. Philo Road in East Charlotte, enjoying the open, green meadows and pastures on either side, when suddenly you see, plunked down in one of these lovely fields, a bank of solar panels; but this is not one or two panels, this is an “array” or as the developers euphemistically call it, a Solar Farm. This is an array of 345 fixed solar panels all facing south and surrounded by a “6’-7’ metal fence,” more or less filling the field.

Ref: Proposed Solar Farm, Hinesburg Road, Charlotte. Nov.16, 2011, 45 Day Notice of Petition to be filed under Section 248 at VT Public Service Board.

The above proposal sites the approximately 15 acre “farm” in the center of an open meadow of approximately 46.2 acres with views across the valley from the south and east. To put it in context, the “farm” is the size of nine football fields or a parking lot filled with two thousand cars. Not, as one supporter suggested, a “modest” impact on the landscape.
If this is approved, I and my family and at least 15 other neighbors will be seeing the “solar array” twenty-four /seven, every time we look out of our living room or bedroom windows. Not only that, in the proposal no thought had been addressed to the health and safety of the immediate neighbors and their families whose properties are contiguous with this field or, like mine, just across the road from it.
Apart from the aesthetics of facing a sea of ten-foot-high industrial-looking reflective panels across from our house, the design layout makes no attempt to integrate the solar development into the surrounding farming landscape.
Why is this being proposed for a farm field that is zoned by the Charlotte Town Plan as active farmland for agricultural use? I thought that we were supporting family farms, sustainable agriculture and appropriate rural development. The field is a productive hay field. It has been hayed or put into corn every year that I have been living across from it, 38 years.
I personally prefer my state and federal taxes, (for that is where this development funding comes from) be used to support family farms, sustainable agriculture and forestry and not to fund a project that benefits no one but the landowner and the out-of-state developer. Plus, my understanding is that we adjoining landowners can expect to see our property values decrease 50% -75%. This is crucial for my husband and me as we are literally in the middle of renovating our1850 farmhouse. Had we been forewarned of the above proposal this summer or even in September rather than in a letter post marked November16, 2011, we would not have proceeded.
That we are given such a short time frame (45 days), especially during this holiday season, for this project to be approved or denied is not fair, nor is it right! A dramatic visual and land-use change, as proposed, will be in place for 25 years. Surely we neighbors and the Town of Charlotte deserve more than 45 days to consider this project and the long-term implications that it has for the town and its residents.
I am a working artist; my husband, Peter Ker Walker, is a practicing landscape architect and planner. We have lived in our Charlotte home since 1973. Our lives have been devoted to art and architecture, to creating beautiful things and environments. The “shock of the new” is not an anathema to us. We embrace change, the big picture, moving forward in a thoughtful, well considered direction, both in our own lives and as members of the Charlotte community. But, the Solar Electric Generation Project proposed by Charlotte Solar Farm LLC, landowner Mr. Clark Hinsdale III and American Capital Energy is in the wrong place! Charlotte deserves better! And further, as a precedent, the implications for the rest of our rural state are considerable.

Meg Walker