Committee questions city'owned solar buyout, cites maintenance liabilities

A staff member told the finance advisory committee the city does not own several solar installations and therefore is not responsible for ongoing repairs and replacements, creating a financial trade-off if the city were to buy the arrays.

"We don't own, we don't have to deal with any of the maintenance issues that go on with the solar," the staff member said, noting replacement panels and inverters make upkeep costly. Committee members asked for the contract and the model used to estimate long-term savings.

The staff member said the city owns two solar fields (at the Civic [facility] and the cemetery) and receives REC credits for those meters, but a private vendor manages and owns other installations under an agreement renewed this summer. The staff described prior buyout discussions: earlier asking prices of about $3,000,000 were negotiated down in scenarios to roughly $855,000'$1,200,000, but that lower number still did not make acquisition financially feasible.

Committee members requested the underlying spreadsheet and asked finance to report original capital investment, estimated return on investment and current generation or cost-savings data. Staff said the spreadsheet exists but is "not user friendly" and offered to forward it to committee members for review.

The exchange left the committee focused on three follow-ups: a contract copy and renewal terms for the private operator, an accessible ROI spreadsheet detailing REC credits and projected inflators used in the model, and clarification of which arrays the city already owns and which remain the vendor'owned responsibility.