Consultant estimates project will bring EISD $1 million annually

By James Rincon

Pflag Reporter

As contracts between Travis County and Austin RRE Solar draw near finalization, supporters of the state’s largest solar-power project highly anticipate its launch.

“We’re standing on ‘Go,’” Elgin ISD Superintendent Bill Graves said. “We really are in favor of it in most ways because we’ve already reached our bonding capacity right now.”

A public hearing for the project is scheduled for 9 a.m. Sept. 7 at Travis County Precinct 2 Commissioners Court.

Austin RRE Solar have been in negotiations with the county over tax incentives to locate the 60-megawatt solar farm in Pflugerville’s extraterritorial jurisdiction and within the boundaries of Elgin ISD.

City of Pflugerville and Elgin ISD officials plan to send representatives to the hearing in Austin, though no one said if they will sign up to speak in support of the project.

“We hope to have not just supporters for this project, but supporters for the entire clean-tech community be present because it’s important that we look even beyond this project as a region and see what other possibilities might come about as a result of this project and to attract them to Central Texas,” said Angelou Economics CEO Angelos Angelou, whose company is a consultant on the project.

County Finance Director Rodney Rhoades said details on the county’s proposed contract with the solar company will be posted on the Commissioner’s Court website within the week.

“With what we are proposing is that there be some strings attached to ensure that they are moving at a responsible pace to get the project up and running. As that development occurs, obviously we’ll receive the tax revenue from it,” Rhoades said.

Travis County currently collects $750 in annual revenue from the proposed site of the solar farm. Angelou said once the solar farm is fully operational even with the tax rebate the site will generate more than $100,000 in property tax each year.

“The school district [EISD] will probably be collecting near a million a year,” Angelou said.

Graves said the money generated by the solar farm will be much needed for Elgin ISD.

“This would increase our ability to reduce our [Interest and Sinking Fund tax] rate,” he said. “You can [tax] up to 50 cents for debt retirement (INS); you can’t go beyond 50 cents… we just adopted a tax rate of 50 cents which is the maximum INS rate that we could adopt and are still having to dip into fund balance a bit to meet our debt requirements,” said.

Angelou said the solar company is waiting on county contracts to begin negotiations with Elgin ISD.

“As soon as the county approves the incentives for our project, then we will move in with a formal application to the Elgin ISD,” Angelou said. “If there was no county support, this project would probably not pan out. There is a $75,000 nonrefundable obligation fee that goes with the ISD application. We didn’t want to start spending money without having any assurance from all the taxing jurisdictions that this was a plan they wanted to support.”

The city of Pflugerville has already signed an agreement with Austin RRE Solar to delay annexation of the site in its ETJ, thereby exempting it from city property taxes until Jan. 1, 2040. Beginning in 2020, Austin Solar will pay the city an annual fee of 5 cents per $100 valuation of the property.