CARLTON FLETCHER: Lee County, others rake in tax dollars Albany left on the table

“Sunshine go away today, I don’t feel much like dancing.”

— Jonathan Edwards

As we wade through the results of Tuesday’s municipal election and ponder just how the results will affect our community, I find myself thinking about the impact seemingly innocuous decisions made by such bodies can wind up having a long-term impact.

What brought this train of thought to mind was the recent announcement that ground had been broken on a clean-energy solar farm in Lee County. The price tag on that project? $220 million.

Now I congratulate officials in Lee County who made this project possible, and I applaud them for their forward-thinking decision-making in approving a project that will bring the tax revenue-generating facility to the county. Solar arrays are, to oversimplify their impact, among the most hands-off revenue-producing projects a government can greenlight. Once construction of large solar farms is completed, the sun essentially does all the work.

The impact on the surrounding community? From minimal to absolute zero. There is a road in for maintenance, a typically minimalist facility for a small on-site crew (usually three people or less), and virtually no moving or noise-generating parts to annoy nearby neighbors. There is virtually zero negative environmental impact … in fact, once the solar panels are in place, most such facilities are located such that you wouldn’t even know they are there.

Why do I bring all this up?

A few years back, officials in Albany found themselves with a grand opportunity to get into the solar energy business. A company located land within the city limits that was easily accessible but remote enough that it could be built with zero impact on nearby neighborhoods. There needed to be an access road, but it would have taken construction workers and engineers deep into a secluded wooded area that, when the project was finished, would have hidden the project completely on all sides.

The proposed solar farm would have been an oasis in a sea of greenery that would not in any way have intruded on the peace, safety or nature of its only nearby neighbor, a southwest Albany neighborhood. But the Albany City Commission — and I try not to overuse this word lest it lessen its impact, but here it fits — amazingly voted down the project. I talked with the representative of the solar company that pitched the project, and he admitted that he was flabbergasted by the board’s decision.

Oh, and since you might, in retrospect, wonder why the commission made such a backward-thinking decision, let it be said that the no vote was primarily inspired by a then-commissioner who represented the ward in which the solar project would have been located. His pretzel logic — which somehow was agreed upon by other members of the board — was that the project would have a negative impact on the nearby neighborhood.

Now the then-commissioner did not in any way do any research on this topic; he simply took the word of members of that neighborhood who said the “noise” of the solar farm would impact the neighborhood. When told that such solar projects make no noise, the commissioner — and constituents in the nearby neighborhood who’d decided they were against the project although they didn’t have a legitimate reason to be other than obstinance — started coming up with silly excuses like children being endangered by construction of the project and damage to the quality of the air.

And so, just as a wealthy citizen’s earlier insistence that “light pollution” would destroy the solitude of a neighborhood near where businessman Darrell Finnicum wanted to place a small car dealership, these citizens — whose sway over the then-commissioner was so emphatic, he dared not make a move without first getting their permission — succeeded in keeping a project out of Albany that would have, in addition to generating solid tax revenues, put the community on the map for future such projects.

Alas, Albany citizens can lament, that was not to be. Now, such revenue-producing projects go to Lee and other nearby counties whose leaders are willing to look at the positive potential — whereby, for example, all taxpayers benefit — over the selfish interests of groups or individuals who place their own comfort and displays of assumed power granted them by feckless elected officials over the good of the community.

So, while the then-commissioner and the cohorts he convinced to vote down the solar array in Albany can rest assured that they secured the solitude and kept the peace and quiet in a neighborhood that actually stood to benefit from the solar project, the citizens in Lee County are going to be subjected to a different “noise” from the solar project they just greenlit: the constant cha-ching of cash registers ringing as a constant flow of tax dollars pours in.