18 - Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Program

Home Browse Search

real property records of the county in which the property is located. The notice must contain: (1) the amount of the assessment; (2) the legal description of the property; (3) the name of each property owner; and (4) a reference to the statutory assessment lien provided under this chapter 4. Lender Contract between Property Owner and Capital Provider (Required by Section 399.006(d)) — Provides financing by third -party lender and servicing of the debt through assessments. — Servicing Agreement: Includes billing, collecting and remitting payments to the third -party lender. Servicer also maintains payment records, account balances, etc. (See Section 399.015, Local government may contract with another entity for collection of assessments imposed by the local government.) 5. Review of Proposed Project and Completed Project (Required by Section 399.011(a) and (b)) — Owner must obtain a review which must be conducted by an independent third party with no financial interest. — A program established under this chapter must require for each proposed qualified project a review of water or energy baseline conditions and the projected water or energy savings to establish the projected water or energy savings. — After a qualified project is completed, the local government shall obtain verification that the qualified project was properly completed and is operating as intended. The scope of the program may be city-wide or may be limited to a specific area or areas. STATUS OF ISSUE: The city has been approached by representatives of the developers of Paris Lakes about establishing a PACE program to help finance PACE eligible improvements to an addition they hope to construct to the now freestanding ER on their property. There is quite a bit of leeway in the details of setting up a PACE program. As noted, the program may be city-wide or may be limited in geographic area. Council may wish to consider creating a PACE pilot program specific to the Paris Lakes project, which could enable the city to bypass obtaining a third party administrator for the purposes of the pilot program and pass on some administrative services such as servicing the loan to the lender, thus relieving staff burden. If the pilot program is successful, the program could be scaled up at a later date. After discussing these issues with Mr. Path, we have agreed if council wishes to set up a more ambitious program, this may require the services of a third party administrator, obtained through the RFQ process, which will delay putting a program into place and which might provide an obstacle for Paris Lakes. There are many moving pieces here, and setting up any program will take a fair amount of staff time, although counsel for the proposed lender in this circumstance has been very helpful in offering to take on part of the work load to get a PACE program up and running.