Falmouth Legal Fees Look To Hit $800 Per Calendar Year

Law Firms Statewide Milking Falmouth Taxpayers In Lawsuits That Can Not Be Won

Town of Falmouth is now spending what looks like up to $400,000.00 every six months on town litigation up $100,000.00 from 6 months ago or $800,000.00 per calendar year

Falmouth total legal fees look to hit nearly $800,000.00 per year. There does not appear to be any clear accounting as the town accidentally posted figures from a previous year prior to the most recent town meeting last week. The town notified Town Meeting Members by leaving about 30 sheets of paper on a table outside town meeting the first night.

The Town of Falmouth has had up to eleven ongoing lawsuits over its two town owned wind turbines.

Town Meeting Tuesday night, November 15, 2016 approved an additional $260,000 in legal fees for the wind turbine litigation bringing the town total until the next six month meeting to $400,000.00 . Only one town meeting member asked why there had been no notification about the additional litigation fees and was told some one from the town left 30 sheets of paper at the front door of Town Meeting the night before as a notification. This sounds about how the neighbors of the wind turbines were notified.

Most Town Meeting Members voted in favor of litigation Article 18 without knowing any of the accounting of the litigation fees or asking about future litigation costs.

At this point you have to ask is $800,000.00 a year in total litigation fees for Falmouth including Town Attorney Frank Duffy a fair guess ? The litigation fees are going to exceed the original costs of the wind turbines !

The Town of Falmouth Town Meeting meets biannually.

The Town of Falmouth tried wind turbine mediation through a twenty six meeting process called the, WTOP-CBI, Wind Turbine Option Analysis Process through the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge. The cost to taxpayers was $136,000.00 in 2012.

Town attorney Frank Duffy and former Select Board member Rebecca Moffitt made an agreement with wind turbine neighbors on November 7, 2013 in which the Select Board rejected one week later.

In both of the mediation processes the town hid wind turbine documents from the public including an August 2010 noise warning letter from the manufacturer of the foreign made wind turbines that the turbines were dangerously too loud for residential locations and also warned of ice throw onto route 28 nearby.

The Town of Falmouth has claimed dire financial consequences if the two turbines are shut down. Falmouth Wind I is already shut down and Falmouth Wind II only operates 12 hours a day six days of the week only when the wind blows. The town is losing money in generating revenue and maintenance contracts as the older gear driven wind turbines age.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative today the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center purchased two Vestas V 82 commercial wind turbines in 2005 for 5.2 million or 2.6 million each. The litigation fees will soon equal the purchase price of Falmouth Wind 1.

Town officials just completed one lawsuit last Wednesday and face at least two more in the Spring.

The courts have determined the Town of Falmouth should have filed Special Permit 240 - 166 to install the wind turbines.

It appears to everyone the town avoided the special permit process because it would have required additional notifications to the residential abutters. One simple fact is the town hid noise warning documents at that time that showed the wind turbines operated at a chest pounding 110 decibels of noise.

Heather Harper the wind turbine project manager and assistant town manager said in the past : “We took on a huge risk and I think we were successful but we’re a large community and I think we can take on that risk,”

The Town of Falmouth has put up to 200 residential home owners backs up against a wall with a noise from the turbines described around the world as torture from lack of sleep.

The town should never have hidden the documents including the noise warning letter and filed the special permits

The Falmouth public officials were well aware of the gamble the took taking the health and property rights of the up to 200 residential home owners with NO compensation/

The home owners show no sign of giving up their health and property rights for a commercial wind turbine agenda gone terribly wrong.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in an April 2, 2013 memo to the Town of Falmouth admitted the acoustic noise studies mistakes prior to the installation of any wind turbines in Falmouth

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center funded the noise report and was the original owners of two Vestas V-82 commercial wind turbines they could not sell at auction.

The MassCEC gave Falmouth one million dollars to take Falmouth Wind 1 off their hands