The holiday events schedule for Mount Vernon was recently released by Experience-Mount-Vernon and we were surprised to see that Open Road Renewables is the primary sponsor.
This is surprising because Open Road Renewables (ORR) is not a local company. It is a utility-scale solar development company based in Austin, Texas which is currently locked in contentious battles to construct an 840-acre solar facility on prime farmland in Southern Knox County and a 2,000+ acre facility in Licking County. Both developments are being opposed by a significant portion of the citizens in those areas.
This is a company that started quietly laying the groundwork for a utility-scale solar facility in Knox County back before March of 2020, but almost no one heard about it until around May of 2022 and many Miller Township residents still did not know about it until March of 2023. In the case of the Licking County facility, most residents there had no knowledge of the proposed development until the first public information meeting that ORR was required to have by law, three years after they had quietly begun leasing farmland in the county. This greatly restricted the time the residents had to organize any opposition.
ORR also mailed out what they call “Good Neighbor Agreements” to residents living near the proposed facilities. These agreements offered the residents money in exchange in part for them supporting or being silent on the proposed facility with this stipulation, “The Neighbor [meaning the resident to whom the agreement was being offered] agrees that the Neighbor either supports or expresses no opinion about the Project." In addition, ORR has sent some of their employees to every Miller Township Trustees meeting since May of this year, raising concerns from the citizens that they are having an improper level of influence on our elected officials. Their continual presence also has served to intimidate people from speaking up or attending and kept the citizens of the township from having direct unchallenged conversations with their Trustees. Every time someone has tried to bring up a legitimate question or concern, an ORR employee has attempted to challenge or “debunk” it. This appears to be an intentional effort by ORR to limit and filter the access of citizens to their public officials.The fact that a company like Open Road Renewables would attempt to use the holiday season in a cynical effort to polish their public image and that Experience-Mount-Vernon would allow them to do so is disheartening. This sort of mercenary cashing in on the holiday-spirit is something we should all decry.It’s a shame that the holidays in Mount Vernon are for sale to the highest bidder. It is even more of a shame that the highest bidder this year was an out-of-state utility-scale solar development company that has treated local residents so poorly.
As residents in the proposed Knox County facility area, this has put our family in a quandary. We love to shop local and have enjoyed participating in the holiday events in downtown Mount Vernon in past years. But this year we don’t see how we can. We think we will have to take our holiday celebrations and shopping dollars elsewhere.
~ Ben & Sarah Dean, Mount Vernon, Ohio
