Dear Editor,
Public service benefits warrant a property tax exemption. Those who install solar panels to heat, cool, and power their homes, businesses, or cars are not just serving their own needs. They are also providing a public service that reduces health costs for everyone, brings in local jobs, and eliminates expensive peak load power. Most importantly, their actions serve to mitigate the rise in average global temperature, thereby reducing the expense and trauma of flooding, drought, food scarcity, forced migration, and social unrest.
Whether residents install rooftop solar or communities power their own wind turbines, their actions serve more than their own needs. Actions serving the greater good deserve to be honored and encouraged by incentives such as tax exemptions.
This principle is embodied in Real Property Law 487. According to this law enacted in 1977 and reenacted in 1990 and 2014, property that contains a solar, wind, or farm waste energy system approved by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is exempt from an increase in assessed property tax value due to the installed system for a period of 15 years.
However, town boards are now being lured by landowner associations into passing a local law opting out of this tax exemption. By discouraging renewable energy development, board members not only reject building a vibrant economy, they also turn their backs on the health, safety, and welfare of their constituents. Isn’t this what and whom they were elected to protect?
The time is now to talk with our town board members, speak up at board meetings, attend the public hearings, and say, “No. We do not want a local law opting out of the tax exemption for solar, wind, and farm waste energy because our renewable energy solutions are not simply ‘real property.’ They are also public service mechanisms that merit this tax exemption.”
Sincerely,
Gerri Wiley
Owego, N.Y.
