If you're a Lakewood property owner, Ward 2 councilman Tom Bullock and the FitzGerald administration want to make it cheaper for you to go solar. In a letter presented to Lakewood City Council on December 7, Bullock and Mayor Ed FitzGerald proposed that Lakewood take advantage of a new Ohio law that authorizes the state's cities to offer special financing to residential and commercial property owners for solar energy projects within their borders. The law, enacted in July, allows Ohio cities to create special-improvement districts (SIDs) to offer loans at below-market rates for the installation of solar photovoltaic systems (solar panels) or solar thermal projects that provide water heating, process heat, or electricity. Participating property owners agree to a special assessment on their property tax bill to pay the loans back over a period of up to 25 years. The tax bills of property owners who do not wish to participate are unaffected by the program. Participating cities may issue bonds or apply for federal or state grant dollars to fund such financing programs. 

"Clean solar power offers important advantages, like stable pricing for pollution-free energy and local jobs in the fast-growing clean energy industry, but the upfront costs frequently make solar installation unaffordable for the average family or business," Bullock says. The state's new solar SIDs authorization "is a creative new use of an established municipal financing tool to help more businesses and homeowners afford solar projects at little or no cost to the city," he adds. 

Beyond the proposal's support for renewable energy, it represents another way to encourage property owners to plant deeper roots in the city, says Nathan Kelly, Lakewood's Director of Planning and Development. "We are trying to build a bevy of tools to help property owners invest in their properties," Kelly explains. "Such investments make homeowners and businesses 'sticky'---or more likely to stay in Lakewood."  

Kelly says that Lakewood may need to work with other local municipalities, such as Cleveland or other inner-ring suburbs, to issue a bond to enable the financing at the lowest possible cost to the city. That's because issuing bonds involves certain one-time costs, such as fees for legal counsel and credit ratings, that would be reduced if shared with other cities. Bullock would prefer Lakewood to issue the bond on its own, if possible, to make city the first one in the region to create a solar SID. "I want Lakewood to be first. It would demonstrate our leadership, and it's completely in line with our values," he says. "Being first would help us continue to attract dynamic young people and brand our city as green and innovative." 

Several steps must first be taken before the city decides whether to issue the bond alone or with neighboring communities. The first step, says Kelly, is to build an administrative framework for executing the solar SID, which he hopes to have ready by late in the first quarter of 2010. Another near-term consideration is adopting design standards for solar installations, which Bullock says city council will swiftly turn its attention to. Then comes public education, which Bullock envisions in the form of three or four public sessions held around the city at which printed materials would be distributed and experts would field questions. Public education efforts would overlap with recruiting of participants for the first round of solar projects. Under the new state law, cities that want to create solar SIDs must circulate a petition for eligible property owners to sign to opt in to the program. The petition, which would function as a contract, would prompt city council to pass an ordinance to formally create the solar SID and provide for and oversee the financing. A SID board of directors would also need to be established to implement the program. 

Kelly expects the first financing opportunities under the program to be available by the third or fourth quarter of 2010. Bullock says more information about the process will be made available in the coming weeks. Both Kelly and Bullock say $2 million in total project financing is a reasonable goal for the first round of solar SID projects. "That's the sweet spot where you start to get the best rates," Bullock explains. Both officials favor a financing target over a targeted number of projects, although Bullock believes a broad group of several dozen homeowners in the city may be interested in participating in the program initially, and both he and Kelly anticipate interest from several of the city's industrial businesses.