Because the impact on taxes is one of the most important issues to Roxbury residents when evaluating the desirability of the Record Hill Wind Energy Project, we have tried to calculate these impacts. We used the services of the Bernstein Shur law firm in Portland to provide estimates, because they have an extensive practice in municipal affairs. The following is our best estimate to date.
To estimate tax impacts, certain assumptions must be made. For this analysis, we began with the total town valuation of $33,375,311 for 2007. We assumed the town expenditure budget at $531,002 would require average annual increases of 3%. We estimated that the total valuation of our wind project would be $100,000,000. The final valuation could actually be somewhat higher or lower depending on final turbine selection, but at this level it would make Record Hill Wind responsible for about three-quarters of the property tax valuation in town.
When a town’s valuation increases dramatically, taxes generally go down for everyone in town, but there are side effects on other factors in municipal budgets. With a larger town valuation, state education subsidies and state revenue sharing will decline, and county taxes will increase. Thus the net effect on the town budget is a complicated calculation.
After making all of these adjustments, we compared the net tax impacts both with and without the project. The effect should be to lower individual property taxes 66%. Over the first ten years, the total tax contribution to Roxbury by the project would be $7 million.
Inevitably, these assumptions will be inexact, but we are confident that they represent a fair estimate of how Roxbury taxpayers will be affected if the project goes forward. Beyond the first ten years, similar tax impacts are expected; we simply stopped the annual calculation after ten years because it does not change much year-to year.