JEREMY DUDA - Daily Herald | Posted: Monday, March 12, 2007 11:00 pm
A proposed wind farm has Spanish Fork officials looking eagerly to the future, but it's the Nebo School District that may benefit most.
For more than a year, Wasatch Wind has been trying to work out a deal that would put nine commercial windmills in Spanish Fork. But because the company is asking for a large rebate on its property taxes, the four entities that collect that tax revenue must give their approval. Of those four entities, the Nebo School District gets the majority of the money.
The district gets almost 77 percent of those property taxes, with Spanish Fork, Utah County and the Central Utah Water Conservancy District divvying up the rest.
Nebo superintendent Chris Sorensen said Wasatch Wind officials have met with him and his staff. But the company has not yet presented its proposal to the school board, which will decide whether to opt into the tax rebate. At Wednesday's board meeting, Sorensen will inform the school board of the company's intention to meet.
"They asked for an opportunity to share it with the board," Sorensen said.
Wasatch Wind spokeswoman Christine Mikell said the meeting will likely occur in April.
Sorensen said the board is unfamiliar with Wasatch Wind's proposal and would not speculate on what position the board would take. But, he said, according the company's numbers, the project would be a financial boon to the district.
Spanish Fork Mayor Joe Thomas was a bit more outspoken about the financial benefit to the district.
"Doing the math, it's just a no-brainer," said Thomas, who is an enthusiastic backer of the wind farm.
According to Thomas, the private property where five of the windmills would be -- the other four would be on city-owned land -- generates $3,241 in property taxes a year, leaving $2,495 for the school district. Wasatch Wind is asking for a 70 percent rebate on property taxes for the wind farm's first 10 years.
But that doesn't mean the district would be giving up money if the rebate were granted, Thomas said, citing a report from Wasatch Wind. Because the wind farm would raise the property's value from $286,921 to about $25 million, he said, the district would still collect about $70,000 a year in revenue from the property tax during the rebate period. If the property value stays the same after those years, that number would jump to $222,395.
"It's not that we're going to give back. Really what we're going to do is we're going to accept less for the first 10 years. And then after that, the next 30 years, we get it all," Thomas said.
"We either take $82,000 and divide it amongst ourselves or we take the $3,241 we're currently getting and divide. I think it's going to be pretty easy for them to support."
If all four entities don't approve the tax rebate, the entire project could be jeopardized. Mikell said the rebate provides an assurance to Wasatch Wind's investors that they will get the returns they expect.
"They need a certain rate of return," Mikell said. "If they don't get that, then they have to weigh if it's worth it for them."
The other three entities have not approved the rebate yet, but Thomas said Nebo's decision is key.
The city is behind the project 100 percent and would approve the rebate "in a heartbeat," Thomas said. He thinks the county and the water conservancy district would follow Nebo's lead.
"The biggest player in this is the school district," Thomas said.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.