Valley Range offers neighbors $75,000 guarantees as county sets comment rules
Accelergen is negotiating agreements to cover up to $75,000 if a neighbor of its proposed solar and battery park sells below market value, The Journal reports. Commissioners take up the rules for public comment on the permit Tuesday, and residents online are already asking for more than tax revenue.
The developer of Valley Range Energy Park, the 125-megawatt solar and 62.5-megawatt battery project proposed about five miles east of Cortez, is offering its closest neighbors a written guarantee against lost property value, and the county is about to decide how the public will be heard on the permit.
The Journal reported on October 11 that Accelergen Energy is negotiating agreements with residents who share a property line with the project or live within 1,000 feet of its panels. If such a neighbor sells and cannot get fair market value, as judged by an independent assessor, the company would cover up to $75,000 of the difference. Draft agreements have gone to Bright Star Campground, the Desert Mesa Estates subdivision, Crooked Sky Ranch and a resident at the end of County Road H, the paper said.
Accelergen also moved the layout east to put 1,500 to 2,000 feet between the panels and Cielo Bonito Ranches. “We weren’t able to make as many concessions for the neighbors further south,” project developer Matt Ryan told The Journal.
Who is for it and who is against
A group calling itself NoValleyRange is led by Bryan and Joanne Davis, owners of the Dolly Wampus Chocolate Factory, with Brandi and Kent Atkinson of Bright Star Campground. Their objections, as The Journal reported them: the scale of 900 acres of panels three miles from Mesa Verde National Park, the view from the park’s north overlooks, property values, tourism, the effect of construction on neighboring businesses, and the fire risk of lithium batteries. Bryan Davis asked commissioners at a town hall to consider a moratorium on battery storage systems until their failure rate falls.
Two Cielo Bonito residents, Eve O’Neill and Richard Garrard, told the paper they support the project. O’Neill said Accelergen had been “very responsive to our concerns,” including replacing planned motion-detector lights with switches.
Cortez Fire Protection District Chief Roy Wilkinson said his department is evaluating the hazards of the battery system; Accelergen gave him a draft emergency response plan about a month ago. Mesa Verde’s superintendent did not respond to the paper’s questions.
The money question
Empire Electric and three other cooperatives have agreed to buy the project’s power, and the developer says the county would collect about $13.9 million in property tax over the project’s life, roughly $398,000 a year. That figure is now being argued over in public.
In a widely read local Facebook group this weekend, one resident wrote that treating the project’s taxes as a windfall “is like arguing that the minimum wage is a great salary,” and that the county should “demand an enforceable community benefit agreement, including annual payments,” as a condition of approval. “They want to build this thing because there is money to be made off of it, and we should get some of it,” the post said. Community benefit agreements, which bind a developer to payments or local commitments beyond what the tax code requires, have been used in other Colorado counties for large energy projects; nothing in the county’s land use code requires one, and none has been proposed publicly here.
The county’s own finances give the argument weight. Its 2027 budget would draw $2.6 million from reserves, and a pavement study put the cost of fixing county roads at $38 million over ten years.
What happens Tuesday
The Board of County Commissioners meets Tuesday, October 20, and its agenda carries over a land use procedures resolution that it held on October 13 after three residents objected to its document-submission rules. As The Journal described the proposal, written comments on a land use application would have to be filed through the county’s planning portal at least seven days before a hearing, and none would be accepted at the hearing itself; spoken comment would follow the board’s usual meeting rules.
Accelergen filed its application in early September. The Planning and Zoning Commission reviews it first and recommends approval or denial; the commissioners decide. No hearing date has been set. Written comments go to the Planning Department at planning@co.montezuma.co.us.
Sources: The Journal, Oct. 11, 2026 · Valley Range Energy Park · Empire Electric Association, Oct. 5, 2026 · Public Facebook group post, Oct. 17, 2026