BROOKLYN — The Brooklyn Board of Selectmen may be signing off on a financial agreement on the Quinebaug Solar Project within the week.

First Selectman Rick Ives said the agreement is close to being finalized and is designed to spread out the tax payments for the 50-megawatt solar array over 20 years, rather than following a typical depreciation schedule.

"We're not really talking about numbers,” Ives said. “It’s really a formula. The numbers won’t be clear until the project is being built, but it could be as much as $350,000 a year in revenues to the town.”

Ranger Solar, the developer for the Quinebaug Solar Project, won a bid to provide solar energy as part of a three-state effort reduce the region’s reliance on natural gas infrastructure and improve the reliability and affordability of New England’s electric system.

The project will sit on 544 acres straddling the Brooklyn and Canterbury town line.

CJ Walsh, a project manager with Ranger Solar, said 65 percent of the project is in Brooklyn and 35 percent is in Canterbury.

Of the 544 acres, about half will be have solar panels. There are also several areas within the boundaries that are off-limits for panels, said Aaron Svedlow, vice president of permitting for Ranger Solar. That includes wetlands, historically significant areas and potential archeological sites.

Brooklyn and Canterbury have no jurisdiction over the project. It will be the Connecticut Siting Council that decides whether to grant the permit, and, while they hold a public hearing, it may not be in the either of the host communities.

In forums hosted by Ranger Solar earlier this year in each town, representatives of the company said it expects to make its formal application to the siting council in early 2017.

The only jurisdiction Brooklyn or Canterbury have over the project is the development of a financial agreement.

Ives said state statute allows towns to give an abatement to green energy development projects. Brooklyn is not discussing an abatement, rather a smoothing out of the payments, he said.

The assessment on solar panels would drop dramatically, essentially front-loading the tax payments, Ives said. This allows both the developers and the town to depend on a constant payment schedule over the life of the project.

Ives said if the project’s specifications hold true for the development of the solar array, Brooklyn would have 35 or 36 mega-watts of the project and could expect to earn about $10,000 per mega-watt, or more than $6.5 million over the course of the 20 years.

Ives said $350,000 to $360,000 would likely be the high-end of expected revenues, with $300,000 being the low end.

In Brooklyn, one mill is worth $540,000, meaning $350,000 is more than .6 mills in revenues to the town.

Agriculture Commission Chairman Lou Brodeur also sent a letter to the Board of Selectmen on behalf of the entire commission suggesting that funding go straight into an open-space fund, since a significant portion of the project is on farmland.

Selectman Bob Kelleher said a town ordinance requires the town to set aside $1 per capita into open space.

With Ranger Solar’s timeline for construction of the project likely to extend into late 2018, the town will likely not be collecting revenues for about two years.

“We have some time to figure that issue out,” Kelleher said.

The Board of Selectmen has the authority to sign the financial agreement. The Board of Finance would likely have the authority to decide how to use the funding unless a town ordinance dictates otherwise.

Ives said the agreement will not go to town meeting before it’s signed, however, the agreement will be available to the public.

If the town does decide to set aside any portion of the funding for open space or any other purpose, the town should create an ordinance, he said.