The town is preparing to spend $35,000 with Deloitte Global to prepare documents to receive government credits and incentives related to the municipality’s electric vehicle and combined heat-and-power initiatives.
The town stands to get back $100,000 to $131,000 for CHP initiatives and $7,500 per EV, according to Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer in the Department of Public Works.
Deloitte “will prepare and help submit under the Internal Revenue Code, Section 48, for an investment tax credit for the CHP at Lapham [Community Center],” Zagarenski told the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting Tuesday, held in Town Hall and via videoconference.
He continued: “This requires them basically to submit a zero dollar tax return on behalf of the town, and then we get a credit against that for a certain percentage of what we spent on the CHP units. And then there’s a second effort that they will actually submit for commercial clean vehicle credits for our fleet of EVs. And these are just another incentive that’s out there that they’ll help us to obtain.”
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the contract.
The selectmen asked whether the town has already submitted its paperwork for the EVs (no it’s not due until May 25), whether the town will incur an ongoing expense with Deloitte for compliance (no, that’s the town’s responsibility) and whether it’s a one-time credit (yes).
Town CFO Anne Kelly-Lenz said there are four different tax forms that must be filed and “we do have to do the physical filing—paper.”
“And then we do have to set ourselves up, and we’re already set up with the Treasury, so I don’t know which entity we’re going to receive the money through. And then we have compliance every year after that to make sure, so we’re taking care of all that.”
What is CHP? And what exactly has the town done on EV – is this the one charger in Morse Court or is there something more?
CHP stands for ‘combined heat and power.’ It just refers to a single system that produces power/electricity as well as heat/cooling, instead of the traditional two separate systems. In addition to Morse Court, the town has EV charging stations in the Town Hall lot. Two months ago, the selectmen voted to charge the public for use of those stations, though I don’t know whether they’ve set up the payment system yet.
$35,000 seems like a lot to prepare four zero-dollar tax returns. Does Deloitte do anything more to earn that fee?
Deloitte is also preparing the applications for commercial cleaning vehicle credits, and is training the town on what it needs to do for compliance. If there was something else discussed at the selectmen meeting on Tuesday, I didn’t hear it. Here’s a link to view that agenda item.