A warrant article to provide tax exemptions to properties with solar energy systems in New Ipswich has been submitted to the town office for consideration at town meeting.
About 125 signatures were submitted at the Board of Selectmen meeting Tuesday.
“People were not pleased with the Board of Assessors’ decision and we got together to do something about it,” Matt Oliveira said.
Oliveira submitted the petition in person. New Hampshire does not tax private solar equipment and does not require towns to, but New Ipswich’s Board of Assessors elected to anyway. This warrant article, if approved, would undo that.
“It would exempt non-commercial solar arrays from property taxes from the town,” Oliveira said.
He said that it is important to specify that it pertains to non-commercial arrangements, where solar systems feed energy to their immediate site and send excess into the general grid, so that individuals and corporations using solar as a business can still be taxed.
Right now, there are no plans to bring commercial solar to the area, but there has been talk of installing a processing station at the town landfill.
Now that the signatures have been submitted and confirmed, of which only 25 are needed, the town will schedule a deliberative session for residents to propose amendments to the article.
Amendments cannot change the intent of the proposition, but they can alter any rates built into it, lowering the proposed full exemption as low as zero.
“We could decide to accept the exemption and then they want to have it be zero percent instead of 100 percent,” Selectman Tim Johnson said.
As it is currently written, the article applies select statutes from state RSA 72, which cover persons and property liable for taxation.
“Such property tax exemption shall be in the amount equal to 100 percent of the assessed value of qualifying equipment under these statutes,” the petitioned article says. It continues, “The goal of the exemption is to create a tax neutral policy within a municipality that neither increases an individual’s property tax, nor decreases the municipality’s property tax revenues.”
By being tax neutral, Oliveira said the article would not effect other taxpayers.
The deliberative session will be scheduled by the budget committee for sometime around the first week of February.
The last day to petition the board for a warrant article is Jan. 10, 2017.
Brandon Latham can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 228 or blatham@ledgertranscript.com. He is also on Twitter @blathamMLT.