The turbines are a fairly valuable piece of real estate, and their value would be added to the property owner's tax assessment. The contracts, while secret, are presumed to have the developer (and not the property owner) pay the increase due to the new turbines. Each turbine is "worth" several million dollars, but in an effort to subsidize wind power, Ontario has specified that the assessment rate is $40,000 per mw of capacity. If the total capacity is 80 x 2.3 = 184mw, times $40,000 equals $7,360,000 in new assessments on AI. With an annual rate of about 1.4%, that provides Loyalist Township with $103,000 in additional annual revenues. The total 2007 township budget was almost $19,000,000.

This doesn't include any payments the developer would make directly to the township. In the case of Wolfe Island, CHD has promised to pay their township (which includes Howe and Wolfe Islands) $650,000 per year. I imagine Loyalist would get something on the same order. This payment is not a tax, and I'm not sure what recourse the township has if the developer decides to change or withhold the payment of the bribe amenity. In the US, this is called a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes). What happens to the PILOT when the developer sells the farm to someone else when the tax incentives dry up? Beats me. And does the Province provide the Township with any funding? Would that formula change? Again, beats me.

Balanced against this would be the loss of property values from the wind farm's presence, and the resultant loss of assessment and revenue. The following numbers are very conjectural, and any suggestions to revise them will be gladly entertained. Let's guess there are 200 homes (not including vacant lots, although they'd be affected also) around the Island's shoreline, with an average assessment of $200,000. If the average home decreases in value by 20% (I'm assuming the decrease for homes would vary, some more and some less), that's a total assessment loss of $8,000,000. This pretty much balances the increase from the addition of the wind mills at their subsidized value. Over time the loss from the generally appreciating shoreline properties would continue to increase, while the $40,000 limitation may or may not change over the lifetime of the turbines.

UPDATE - with the passage of the Ontario Green Energy Act, the township will lose the ability to bargain for any bribes considerations with a developer. So I'm guessing PILOT's are a thing of the past. The Township loses big time, to the point where I'd bet they'd think about turning the ferry service back to the Province. We live in interesting times.