Pat Loe, chairperson for San Benito County Planning Commission, caught everyone by surprise at its Nov. 15 meeting. In particular, she stunned Eric Cherniss, vice president of the Consolidated Edison Development, the current company in charge of the Panoche Valley Solar project, when she made a motion to approve a resolution recommending that the board of supervisors adopt an ordinance to approve the proposed first amended development agreement with Panoche Valley Solar LLC.
It wasn’t so much the motion itself that caused Cherniss to fidget in his chair eager to speak. It was about what Loe had just requested be added to the agreement, a $1-million payment to the Community Foundation that would go into an endowment to be divided up among the nonprofits that were in business in 2010, when she was on the board of supervisors that approved the original project. She said the payment would “heal the community.”
“You might think it’s real funny,” she said as she looked toward Cherniss, “but we lost over $100 million if you start adding it all up by the wages and the way money turns over seven times. I don’t know how anybody else feels, but I’m just extremely frustrated at what this has taken from our community.”
She made the motion and Ray Pierce seconded it. She started to ask for a vote and then acknowledge Cherniss, telling him she would allow him to speak after the vote. All five commissioners voted in favor, but Jean Zlotkin immediately posed the question, asking why Loe wanted to include nonprofits that were in business in 2010. Loe said it was because that was when the project was approved. Zlotkin said she did not have a problem with Loe’s reasoning, and that she just wanted to be fair with the people who lived in the county at that time.
Mark Tognazini asked Loe what she based the $1 million on. Loe said she extrapolated what was paid for construction jobs, using 2016 numbers, which she multiplied by 200 jobs for one year. Zlotkin asked her what was the relationship between those now involved with the project and those who were around in 2010, and asked, “Who’s going to pay?”
Loe said if anyone had a better idea, she was willing to hear it. She had spent the weekend trying to figure out a better way, but couldn’t come up with anything she felt comfortable with. Robert Rodriguez asked Loe if she had thought about considering how many jobs were cut in proportion to how much the project was cut back. He said that would seem to be a fairer way to come up with her formula.
“I know what you’re saying, but I’m talking about making the county whole,” Loe responded, adding that when she voted for the project it was because of the promised local jobs. “I would have never voted for the project otherwise.”
Barbara Thompson, county counsel, interjected that she understood what Loe meant by “making the community whole,” but wanted to remind the commission that there had already been extensive negotiations on the amount of money the project would “contribute to the county” in payments in lieu of taxes and sales taxes.
“There has been extensive discussion on that issue to try to receive as much benefit from this that the county believed it would be able to obtain,” Thompson said. “In order to receive an additional amount you have to go back to the negotiation process.”
Thompson attempted to come up with an alternate solution that would not require restarting the negotiation process. Loe remained adamant about her position, as well as her frustration.
“Barbara, this is the most frustrating part for me,” she said. “I don’t see why you bring things before us if we can’t change it. Why do we waste our time on it?”
Zlotkin said, as a lawyer aware of how difficult negotiations can be, she might agree with Loe’s motion, but she didn’t know if it was practical. She said perhaps the planning commission should recommend that the supervisors consider an additional $1 million settlement to be provided to county nonprofits.
“It’s softer and it’s not an order, and we can’t order it, anyway,” she said, “but it provides the idea that we’re offended and the county government should consider putting this money directly back to the people by the way of the nonprofits.”
Loe asked if any of the other commissioners had any suggestions. When no one spoke up, she recognized Cherniss up to the podium to speak. He told Loe he heard her concerns about people who were not able to go to work on the project during a crucial time for the county and state. He said the county and the solar company have been fighting side-by-side various lawsuits filed by environmentalists to stop the project.
Cherniss said he would rather have begun construction much sooner had it not been for the litigations that took money away from it and prevented it from moving forward. He wanted her to understand it was not the company’s intention to slow down construction or change it from what was originally approved in 2010.
Loe asked him what he would suggest in order to make the community whole. He suggested the amended development agreement already accomplishes what she was asking for.
“It was already a hard-fought discussion on both sides to take care of the county,” he said. “There are a couple of things happening here. The larger one is the project size may be modified, which would mean the public benefit the county had originally sought would be reduced. I think the current development agreement protects the public benefit, from a financial perspective, the county was relying on.”
He said a significant amount of money would be coming into the county for parts of the project that “may or may not ever be built.” He said the idea of providing additional money to nonprofits should be at the discretion of the county.
“The discussion has been ‘what is that bucket of community benefit that needs to be made available to the county?’ That agreement has been fleshed out and I think the proposal that you’re making is potentially more focused on how to allocate those monies that are coming from the project into the county General Fund,” he said. “That’s my personal view, but I think there’s a lot of ways the money can be allocated to San Benito County and its residents.”
Rodriguez commented that supervisors should be more careful dealing with “loan sharks,” who make promises and more careful in their negotiations.
“That’s why I think somebody should pay the community,” Loe said and immediately repeated her motion and Pierce, again, seconded it. The motion passed unanimously and with a rap of the gavel, a clause will be added to the amended agreement that will next go before the supervisors.
Supervisor Mark Medina, who was seated at the back of the room during the discussion, said he had issues with the math that Loe used to come up with the $1 million figure and would discuss it at length at the upcoming supervisor meeting.
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