What is the PILOT [Payment In-Lieu Of Taxes] program?
The PILOT process is a financial arrangement, in this case between the East Hill Wind Farm and the County of Otsego Industrial Development Agency (COIDA). We envision that the parties will enter into a PILOT (Payment in lieu of Tax Agreement) where 1) the IDA will hold tax title to the project assets and 2) the parties will agree on a payment schedule in lieu of the payment of property taxes. Typically the financial recipients to a PILOT are: a) the local school district, b) the Town and c) the County. Normally the distribution of PILOT payments is calculated by the respective tax rates, pro-rata to the normal property tax bills, amongst the taxing jurisdictions. What that means is that the local school district would receive the largest share, followed by the Town and the County respectively. Using the established benchmarks for annual PILOT payments in NY State, should the East Hill project have a rated capacity of say 70 MW, that would mean annual PILOT payments totaling $350,000 pe
