New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
As part of a two-day national mayors’ summit on smart cities and new energy technologies, sponsored by The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) and hosted by USCM’s Energy Chair New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, mayors developed “The New Bedford Principles,” a six-point energy recommendation to be included in the USCM National Infrastructure plan that will be presented to the nation by USCM President New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu later this year.
The six principles include recommendations for tax reform and tax laws as well as infrastructure legislation.
The principles are:
1. Seek an energy-friendly tax reform package that doesn’t undermine current progress:
o Keep tax-exemption on municipal bonds
o Keep state and local tax deductibility
o Preserve and extend tax credits and other incentives to support renewable energy
2. Authorize additional tax and other incentives to promote more investment in microgrids, distributed generation, and storage systems.
3. Direct funding to support the development of local energy assurance plans to advance local resiliency efforts, especially those to combat climatic events.
4. Direct funding to municipal utilities or tax incentives to investor-owned utilities to modernize local grids, including microgrids, to increase resilience to climatic events.
5. Direct funding to support local energy block grants to support city energy independence goals
6. Restore federal challenge grants to incentivize smart grid efforts.
“Conference President New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for an infrastructure proposal that includes not just roads, airports, and bridges – but to include water, ports, energy infrastructure,” said Tom Cochran, USCM CEO and Executive Director. “Today here in New Bedford to answer the call of our President Mitch Landrieu, we have come forth with six points of energy recommendations to be included in our national infrastructure proposal that we hope to push forward after Congress gets tax reform behind them.”
