Selectmen hold off on vote to approve bond for solar farm
The Board of Selectmen put off a vote to accept a bond for the solar project on Tobey Road Tuesday night. The bond for $418,363 for the Eversource Solar Farm project was requested for a one-year term. Selectman Alan Slavin said many people have been asking what is being done in the lot on Tobey Road.
“We’ve all received some sort of phone call asking what’s going on,” Slavin said.
Some Selectmen expressed distaste for the solar farm project.
“It will just be this fenced in thing to look at..they're not the prettiest things in the whole wide world,” Selectman Patrick Tropeano said. “We’re running out of commercial space as it is.”
But the decision wasn’t up to the Selectmen.
“Really the only thing that could have stopped this would have been the owners of the property saying no,” Town Administrator Derek Sullivan said. He said the solar farm on Tobey Road will be good for Wareham residents who don’t like traffic, but that he was hoping to see new businesses and job opportunities on that land.
Tropeano said he was disgruntled because work should not start on a project until after the bond has been accepted, and work has already begun to clear the land for a solar farm.
The Selectmen decided to wait to vote on accepting the bond until the Sept. 19 meeting. They hope to set a two-year term on the bond rather than the one year that was requested.
“That’s just in case there are issues,” Chair Peter Teitelbaum said. A longer bond term will protect the town, neighborhood and property itself, since it gives the town some leverage.