In in overflow, standing room only meeting, representatives for Orion Renewable Energy Group LLC requested TAX ABATEMENT from the Jefferson County Council for their proposed 3,324 Acre, $850 million planned Idlewild Utility-Scaled Solar Project in Saluda Township (Paynesville, Chelsea areas, generally State Road 62 South to the Clark County Line).
In exchange for tax abatement, Orion’s rep proposed to make “economic” payments to the county in an undisclosed amount, over a period of years. He said the county would have freedom on how to use the funds.
As for technical questions asked the by the members of the county council, Orion’s reps repeatedly referred to documentation the company submitted with the conditional use application to the Jefferson County BZA. One problem is, this supporting documentation had not been distributed to the county council for review or to the public at the time of the meeting. One must ask, why would that be?
A private citizen made a records request for the 1,200+ pages of project support documents incorporated with and referred to in the application. The request was denied by the BZA on advise of their counsel (R. Patrick Magrath) even though the documents were in the possession of the BZA.
This denial occurred after the application disclosing all the parcels in the project had already been released and disseminated throughout the community. This only generated more questions on transparency and served to further divide the public.
The council president stated that the council was not voting on the abatement request at this time; they were only receiving information. That’s good, considering the missing documents and lack of transparency with the project support documents to the application that were withheld from disclosure.
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