County learns more about abatements, valuation

A Fort Worth district manager for a valuation consulting firm gave an overview of tax abatements on wind farms to Jack County Commissioners during the Monday, Nov. 8 meeting.

John Rutledge with Pritchard & Abbott, Inc. said wind farms were focused in West Texas for a long time, but an improvement in blades, most notably their size, has begun moving wind farms eastward. Due to this, Texas has surpassed California in the amount of megawatts produced, topping 300,000 in 2020. Much of the focus of the presentation was on value limitation agreements for schools, which went away in 2019, because of the concerns of property owners but are expected to come back in the near future.

“312’s got renewed,” Rutledge said. “313 have to have the opportunity.”

Rutledge said what more and more entities are doing is putting into the contract that if the production goes under 50% the abatement is over. One person in the crowd asked why do companies still ask for the abatements.

“Anything to help their performance,” Rutledge said. “ You have to remember they have investors too that are trying to earn money as well.”

There is an eight-year limit on tax incentives as property is fully taxed for the first two years. The amount of tax incentives can be limited by the size of the actual tax base of the entity, Rutledge said.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Nov. 17 edition of the Jacksboro Herald-Gazette.