Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes -- April 23, 2002Meridian City Council Meeting April 23, 2002 Page 14 of 83 and roll? Okay. Alright, it sounds good. Bill, you've got the lead here and our attorney is called up--I don't know with that two attorneys on a committee together-- (inaudible) Nichols: I don't know whether this project is going to go slowly or just so rapid we don't keep up with it but (inaudible) Nary: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Yes. Nary: Mr. Mayor, I think things will go fine because only one of us is getting paid. De Weerd: That gives us the advantage, I think. Corrie: Okay, well, thank you, Bob. I appreciate that and we'll have people get going and we'll move right along. De Weerd: It's nice to see the two different skating communities come together on this. Item 6. Presentation by Ken Baker and Sue Siefferd regarding the Energy Audit for Rebuild America / U.S. Department of Energy: Corrie: Our next presentation will be by Sue Siefferd and also comments from Mayor Nancolus from Caldwell on the energy audit for Rebuild America, U.S. Department of Energy. Sue--- Siefferd: Thanks, Mayor and Council for allowing Mayor Nancolus and myself to talk a little bit about the Rebuild Idaho program. First up, I want ask you Mayor, how your vacation was. Corrie: Excellent. I didn't get stuck down there for anything that happened and I was kind of hoping I would get, you know, something would happen to the airline or something. Before I got on the plane, of course. But it was great. Thank you for asking. I'm a little sunburned now. Siefferd: Yes, I noticed that. The Rebuild of Idaho program is a voluntary U.S. Department of Energy and the State of Idaho program which helps communities form local partnerships whose focus is on improving their local economy, their quality of life and the creation of local jobs. The Idaho Energy Division received grant money from D.O.E. to administer the program and that's really what we do. We provide a service. We help communities write 5-year'energy and resource use action plans. We help them achieve Iow, to a no-cost energy savings, which Meridian City Council Meeting April 23, 2002 Page 15 of 83 can save up to 20% of your buildings energy use. We also previde energy management software to help you track your utility data. And we can also help design energy efficiency into your new buildings, previde technical assistance. So, in other words, it's no cost to you. We just previde the service and we help your buildings become healthier, more comfortable and preductive by trying to come up with different avenues that you might want to take in your 5 year energy resource use action plan. We previde technical assistance training to the building staff and the management for behavioral changes like turn off your computers when they're not in use, turn off the lights. Just real simple things. You'd be real surprised how much energy you can save by doing that. So, it's just a real simple program. We first start off by - we have and agreement that we partner with the City and the different communities. We have 25 partnerships right now. Cities, counties, school districts. I drug Mayor Nancolus here to talk about his wonderful city and what he's accomplished by partnering with us. And so I'd like the Mayor to tell you a little bit about the wonderful energy savings he is achieving. Nancolus: She didn't have to drag me. It was a pleasure to come over here with Sue and also to attend your city council meeting. Thank you very much for the opportunity of being here. Again, my name is Garrett Nancolus and I have the privilege of serving as the Mayor of the City of Caldwell. I also want you to know how fortunate I feel to be associated with your Mayor and Tammy. I work a lot with them on different greups and boards and commissions and I can tell you that they are delightful individuals. And I'm sure that is reflective on your entire community. But I want you to know that it's been a pleasure to associate with them. Also, Will, I've run into him on many occasions and he is also a pleasure to be areund. First, if I may just veer just a second, I'd like to compliment this young lady here and her partner. What a great vision that was and the volunteerism and enthusiasm. You can come over and do that for Caldwell if you like. We have all kinds of greund. We'll be happy to donate it to you. Siefferd: Garrett? Nancolus: Yes. Siefferd: No. Nancolus: I just thought I'd mention that. That's prebably not a real good way to start a presentation. One at a time, okay. Also, these other folks with the skating rink. What a great compliment that is to your community to have those kinds of individuals who would be willing to step forward on a volunteer basis. And really, that's what this is all about, is bringing a community together and exercising your leadership to bring about change in a community. We took a look at this a few years ago. It turned out to be very timely. Actually, when we started looking at the energy savings pregram threugh Rebuild Idaho, it was prior to all of the energy contreversy that has happened since that time with rolling blackouts and Meridian City Council Meeting Apdl 23, 2002 Page 16 of 83 shortages and the price of energy escalating. It was just one of those fortunate things we had the good luck of coming in at a good time. But since that time, we've recognized how really important it is that we made that move at the time that we did. First of all, what Sue has said, is through the program, there is a lot of resource available to you as a city to help you understand energy conservation, the benefits to your community, the benefits to the staff that live in those buildings. Literally live there. We don't know how much time staff spends in performing their services to the community. So what we looked at was an opportunity to take a look, not only at energy savings, but to improve the environment in which our employees worked. When you start talking about HVAC systems and lighting and circulation and those types of things, hot and cold versus wellness and sickness and the things that can be associated with it. There's a lot of savings to the community, not just in energy consumption, but also in efficiency through your employees and also just wellness. Those are things we were very interested in when we started talking about this program. And so we decided to join Rebuild. The City of Caldwell was the first municipality that joined the Rebuild program in the state. And we have been very, very pleased with our association with Sue, Ken Baker who now works for the Association of Idaho Cities, and the entire program. So from that stand point, I can tell you that it's been a wonderful and rewarding experience. That if you take the step forward and join with this partnership, I know that you will receive many benefits from them. I'd like to talk to you just a little bit about some of the financial things that we have realized from this program. First of all, we have gone forward, again we were the first city to do performance contracting through this rebuild program, and here are some of the financial possibilities we have. First of all, this is a win-win situation. Council members, I want you to know that you're not going to have to spend any money that you don't have the potential, first of all, of immediately receiving even if you don't go forward with performance contracting. And what I mean by that is, with the assistance of the Treasure Valley partnership Department of Water Resources, we applied for our grant through the Department of Energy that allows you to have your energy audit done. And again, what that means is having professional energy savings persons come into your community, look at your government buildings, and give you an estimate, a very accurate estimate, of what your potential savings are, not only through energy savings but also through, again, the efficiency and performance of your employees. That audit is a professional grade audit and you can choose to move forward then and take on their recommendations and go forward with the performance contracting, or you can say, no thank you and the grant that we've applied for will pay for the cost of your audit. So again, there is a no risk, win-win situation for you to have an opportunity to take a look at your buildings, see if there are some savings, if there aren't or if you decide not to go forward, you simply make application to this fund and they will pay for it for you. Okay? So that's the first thing I want you to know. When we joined, we didn't that available to us. We just believed in the program enough we were willing to pay for the cost of the audit and move forward. Now, the rest of it is, even if a city as small as Caldwell is, and we're growing but we're not growing like Meridian City Council Meeting April 23, 2002 Page 17 of 83 Meridian, we don't have the population you do yet. However, even in our small community, we found thirty thousand dollars a year in energy savings. Thirty thousand a year. And we decided to make an investment of about a hundred twenty thousand dollars in upgrading our buildings from the recommendations from this audit. So again thirty thousand dollars, hundred twenty thousand, that means in 4 years we have paid for the savings. And from that point forward, we are saving at least thirty thousands dollars a year, if not more. The other important issue was, that's at today's dollars. I don't think any of us are under the misconception that energy prices are not going to continue to escalate. So at thirty thousand dollars at today's dollars, we don't know what that means 5 years or 10 years or 15 years from now. But we know that those savings will multiply. Now, here's an opportunity. You take a project like hers or the skateboard park or others where funding is necessary, the performance contracting side of things allows you get a guarantee from the energy savings company that you will save that much money so that you can, in fact, finance projects within the budget you now have. Again, what that simply means is, is that if you're paying a hundred thousand dollars a year for energy now and they guarantee you 20% savings, you now have twenty thousand dollars within your existing budget that can be applied to other projects. And they guarantee you that those savings will happen. If they don't they write you a check at the end of the year for the amount that was different. Guaranteed savings. Okay? So again it creates a funding mechanism, if you choose to do that, for other projects. The University of Utah, did a huge project that saved them, I don't know how much it was, millions of dollars. But they built an entire new boiler system and whatever on their campus and it saved them millions. Now, obviously, we don't expect those kind of things are going to happen in a municipality but the City of Caldwell is saving thirty thousand dollars a year through this program. The other thing, of course, that we are recognizing is with the new light systems, with the new HVAC systems, that the offices are more comfortable, the employees are very happy with the new lighting systems and we are very happy because our employees have been trained on how to be more energy efficient. *** End of Side One *** Nancolus: Again, it's a win-win situation for everyone. So my purpose this evening, here, not to go on any further, is just to let you know that what Sue is talking about does work. We've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. I got a Rebuild America t-shirt when I attended the conference. We have been extremely happy with their support, with their efficiency and their professionalism. And we would encouragempart of our 5 year plan, our goal, was to take what we had learned and go out and share it with other municipalities and tell you there is a success program out there that you can be a part of. And so that's my purpose in being here tonight. Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, Sue or I will certainly be happy to yield any questions you have. Meridian City Council Meeting April 23, 2002 Page 18 of 83 Corrie: Garrett, thank you very, very much. I appreciate that. Nice presentation. Does anybody have any questions of Garrett at this time. De Weerd: Yes, what were you selling before you became Mayor?. (inaudible) Corrie: He does an excellent job for the Treasure Valley partnership too, I might add. Nancolus: Now that you've embarrassed me--thank you. We appreciate your time and if you do have questions, Bob, of course, has my e-mail address or you all know how to get a hold of me. I'll be happy to answer your questions. And also, Bob, if you would like to have a sit-down workshop where we can go into more details with your Council, I want you to know i'm happy also to come back again. I know that Sue and Ken would be happy to come back. If you have more questions about the audit, about the performance contracting, about the program, we would be happy to come back over and share more information with you. Corrie: Very good. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor, I do for Sue. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate it. Your enthusiasm is always infectious so--If you went through such an audit and you're trying to phase out one building and hopefully start planning for another, how does that work especially when you're looking at capturing a certain percentage of energy savings and that sort of thing. How do you measure that? Siefferd: So when you say you're phasing out a building, what do you mean? De Weerd: If we were to say we would like to build a new city hall and, you know, you would do an energy audit, certain recommendations would be made for this building. You don't want to put too much into upgrading this building when you're thinking-- Siefferd: Would you stay in the building? You don't know if you would stay -- okay. De Weerd: That would be the goal, not to. Siefferd: Well, I think you would negotiate that. I mean, you can talk about that with the auditor and tell them your situation and how far you want to go with that. If you really definitely think you're going to build a new building, that it would be wonderful, too, to have it commissioned. There's so much that we know that we can go into to but I think that you would negotiate that. They could do an audit and you could just do a few things. Say to change out the lights or just a few Meridian City Council Meeting April 23, 2002 Page 19 of 83 things you might want to do instead of going, you know, like HVAC, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning. De Weerd: We do have other buildings and I do like the behavioral part in looking at different tasks or habits that we have that could also be of savings. But I just wondered, until we know as a city how we want to move forward, how that would work for future plans? (inaudible) Worley: Tammy, if l may? Mr. Mayor? Tammy? We had a situation exactly just like that with our new police station. We did not have our old police station audited. Okay, we just simply said we're going to - now our building, of course, was a much older and more dilapidated. This is a nice building still. With ours, we chose not to have that building audited. However, on the reverse side of that, what we learned through the energy savings program, again helped to us to design and build what was just awarded as the number 3 project in the northwest with our new police station and make sure that it was as energy efficient as it could possibly be. And those were some recommendations that also came through their program and from the professionals that they work with. So, we didn't have it audited but they certainly helped us design and understand the importance of energy efficiency in a new building and make sure that we did it with the construction management team and also did it with having it commissioned. And those things, in turn, saved us huge amounts of money from an energy stand-point and (inaudible) Corrie: Anybody else (inaudible). Okay. Sue, Garrett, thank you very much. We'll be getting back with you very shortly. Garrett: Would it hurt your feelings if I went home and watched the Jazz game? Item 7. Discussion with ACHD Waltman Intersections: Commissioners regarding E. 1st ! Main / Central / Presented - Need to Meet with ACHD Corrie: Oh, yes. That's all right, thank you Garrett. Thank you very, very much. Somebody's playing a tune. Is that you? Okay. Our next item on the agenda is discussion with ACHD regarding East First, Main, Central and Waltman intersections. So at this time I invite the two ACHD or one or both. One, alright. Terry Little and if you want to intercede or talk to him, you're certainly welcome to. Little: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council. I have with me Larry Sale, our business manager, liaison, and with the Highway District and Larry White, who is our consultant (inaudible) project at East First, Central, Waltman, Meridian. And I would like to use the overhead for a few minutes here. Go back to the history of