(a) Established. The Director must create and administer a Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy Program.
(b) Third-party lender.
(1) The Director may enter into an agreement with a third-party lender that funds a loan for a Climate Related Improvement. The agreement must provide for the repayment of the loan for the Improvement and any cost of administering the Program through a Surcharge on the qualified property. The loan may include the cost of materials and labor necessary for installation, any permit fee, any inspection fee, any application or administrative fee, any bank or lender fee, and any other fee that the property owner may incur for the installation of the Climate Related Improvement. The third-party lender must submit a request for collection of each Surcharge amount to the County designated program manager or, if there is no County designated program manager, to the Department no later than April 1 of each year.
(2) The third-party lender must record a document among the land records of Montgomery County within 30 days of the time the loan is funded, which provides notice of the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy loan associated with the property and that the surcharge will be collected and have lien status like all other real property taxes.
(c) County designated program manager. The Director may enter into an agreement with a County designated program manager. The County designated program manager must notify the Department of the amount of the Surcharge for each account to be collected on the real property tax bill for that year’s levy no later than May 1 of each year, and in a format approved by the Department. The County designated program manager will receive the collections from the County, reconcile the collected and billed Surcharge for each account, and remit the Surcharge amount to the private lender. The County designated program manager must report annually to the County on the participants in the Program by name, property address, property tax account number, amount of each Surcharge billed, collected by the County, and remitted to the private lender, description of project, any administrative fees, the amount of each loan, the amount of each loan balance, and the term of each loan. This report must be submitted to the Department no later than February 15 of each year pertaining to activity in the prior calendar year. (2015 L.M.C., ch. 16, § 1; 2016 L.M.C., ch. 23, § 1; 2022 L.M.C., ch. 9, §1; 2023 L.M.C., ch. 21, § 1.)