Falmouth: First Wind Turbines - Now Solar Fields For Sale

Falmouth Proposes Lending Money Despite Turbine Fiasco

EDIC Proposes Solar Land Rent Payments Be Lent To Local Business As An Asset

The Falmouth Economic Development and Industrial Corporation proposes the creation of a recovery loan fund making loans available to downtown businesses.

Plans are in the making to ask for state "special legislation" to allow the Town of Falmouth to loan money to private parties for private purposes.

In order to first lend money, the town needs assets to borrow the money from a bank or lender.

The plans are to hand over the land lease payments from the solar project why not the wind turbine protect ?

Taxpayers and Town Meeting Members need to ask why the Solar project as an asset and not the assets of the two town-owned wind turbines?

Town Meeting in November of 2019 allocated 2.5 million to take down and move the wind turbines and lease them out of town. Accordingly, there were nine companies interested in wind turbines.

The turbines last year were worth between 5 to 10 million in taxpayer assets. There have been no recent updates on the disposing of these assets. The town hopes to enter into a partnership operating the wind turbines shut down by the courts in June of 2017.

Why not use the assets' future profit of the wind turbine leases at the new locations proposed by the Select Board?

The Massachusetts legislature in 2007 passed "special legislation" that allowed the Town of Falmouth to borrow money through bonds etc to build wind turbines. The two town-owned wind turbines built in 2010 and 2012 were shut down in 2017 as they lacked "special permits."

The Town of Falmouth still owes 3.5 million of a 5 million federal ARRA American Recovery and Reinvestment Act loan of Falmouth Wind II the second town-owned wind turbine as the turbine is no longer energy efficient.

The town and neighbors around the wind turbines spent millions on up to eleven lawsuits and multiple appeals. The town lost ten million and law firms made millions.

Money has been allocated to hire more law firms to use solar project assets while the wind turbine loan and assets sit in Limbo.

The question now is how many lawsuits can the Solar project generate over the next ten years at taxpayer expense ?