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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN 01.26.2010 CC-WMinutes of the Meeting of the Governing Bod • . of Georgetown, ' {y { Tuesdar r ! 1 • The City Council of the City of Georgetown, Texas, met in Regular Session on the above date with Mayor George Garver presiding. Council Present: Keith Brainard, Gabe Sansing, Dale Ross, Ben Oliver, Pat Berryman, Bill Sattler, Patty Eason Council Absent: All Council Present. Staff resent: Paul E. Brandenburg, City Manager; Mark Sokolow, City Attorney; Jessica Hamilton, City Secretary; Micki Rundell, Chief Financial Officer; Jim Briggs, Assistant City Manager for Utility Operations; Ken Arnold, Energy Services Director; Laurie Brewer, Assistant Finance Director; Thomas R. Benz, Systems Engineering Manager; Kathy Ragsdale, Utility Office Manager; Robert Fite, Fire Chief; Keith Hutchinson, Public Information Officer; Brent Schachrel, Police Chief; Elizabeth Cook, Community Development Director; 1IMP111 =A& A Presentation to Council related to Energy Efficiency/Conservation and efforts to implement future enhancements -- Ken Arnold, Energy Services Director and Jim Briggs, Assistant City Manager for Utility Operations With a Powerpoint Presentation, Briggs gave a presentation on energy efficiency to the City Council. He said that lighting by itself consumes 25% of each generation resource. He said the City's Codes relative to energy started in 1996 with the Good Cents Standards for energy efficiency on homes. He said this was primarily identified for residential energy usage. He spoke about the current Ordinances relating to energy efficiency. He showed Council a graph demonstrating comparisons of annual energy use between typical homes, energy star homes and high efficiency homes. He said conservation reduces the need for future and more expensive energy uses. He showed the City Council a pie chart of national energy consumption statistics. He said cooling and heating takes up the highest percentage of the consumption. He outlined the energy efficiency and renewable programs currently in place at the City. He named a few of those programs and said the City has energy audits through energy depot, a buyback program for residential solar as well as State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) rebates and federal IRS tax credits. He described how these programs work. He said the City's utility is in transition and conservation efforts will eventually stay local so the City will be able to retain 100% of the benefits. He spoke about the current Texas Residential Energy Efficiency Incentives and Programs currently in place, including Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), Utility Rebate program, Personal Exemption and Production Incentives. He said more information on these programs is available on the State Energy Conservation website. He the City's website offers a program called Energy Depot, which is a questionnaire that will provide current utility customers with a comprehensive energy assessment. Arnold described Energy Depot and how it is used. He showed Council the full energy profile and noted it is very extensive. He showed Council a graph of the Georgetown Utility System (GUS) Energy Consumer Profile for his own home. He described what the resulting graph shows and the type of information Energy Depot provides for citizens. He said Energy Depot gives citizens advice on what they can do to reduce their energy consumption. Briggs spoke about new program considerations for energy efficiency. He said, in terms of lighting, flourescent City Council Workshop Minutes/January 26, 2010 Page 1 of 3 Pages lighting provides quick benefits and savings. He provided Council with statistics on CFLs (Compact Flourescent Lighting) and LEDs. He showed Council Energy Star numbers relative to cost savings and return on investment for Energy Star products. He spoke about modifications and considerations for the budget regarding this energy conservation issue. He spoke about possible programs that would benefit the budget including LEEDS (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Development) certification and development, commercial solar development and a possible buyback program, commercial distributed generation for peak shaving, residential renewable energy options, appliance rebates, insulation rebates, HVAC rebates and lighting retrofits. He said these are all proven programs that Council may want to evaluate. He said those programs could be considered for the 2010-2011 budget. Briggs showed Council a photo of the solar project at the TLCC. He also showed Council the local CARTS facility which includes a wind turbine. He showed Council an example of residential solar installation. Mayor asked about the solar installation and Arnold spoke about how it works. Mayor asked and Briggs said the City has not come up with any payback numbers for this residential system. Brainard asked and Briggs said those solar panels cost about $35,000 - $40,000. Brainard asked and Briggs confirmed the PACE program is the program the legislature approved. Brainard asked and Briggs said he is not sure if Austin has adopted the program or not. Brainard asked and Briggs explained the PACE program to the City Council. Berryman asked and Arnold said it took him 20 minutes to do his Energy Depot assessment online. Arnold noted, if someone did their assessment for the first time, it would take about an hour at most. There was much discussion. Mayor said it may be good for staff to study these programs and come back to Council with specific and viable energy conservation options. B Workshop Discussion and possible action regarding the upcoming 2010/11 Annual Budget process, strategic planning process and related Budget Calendar -- Laurie Brewer, Assistant Finance Director and Micki Rundell, Chief Financial Officer With a Powerpoint presentation, Brandenburg and Finance staff reviewed the 2010/11 Budget process and priorities. He said staff is trying to be more strategic with this budget in terms of what Council wants as the City's priorities. He noted staff would also like the link the Council's priorities to the goals of the 2030 plan. He noted the citizen survey is also running parallel to this process. He said the City will be having another challenging budget process this year and noted staff wants to know if Council's priorities are the same as last year or if they want the priorities to change. Brewer reviewed the agenda for the presentation. She summarized the budget cycle and said the five year Capital Improvement Plan starts in December or January, a citizen survey is done biannually, the staff obtains Boards and Commissions input, council priorities are set, policies reviewed, base budgets are prepared, revenue models are updated/revenues projected and new budget program requests are developed. She said the Council will review the fiscal and budgetary policy, social service programs, facilities, the CIP and compensation and benefits. She also spoke about City Manager work sessions with staff including "red line days." She spoke about Council workshops related to the budget cycle including setting the tax rate, adopting the 4A and 4B budgets, holding public hearings and then adopting the budget. Polasak gave a brief overview of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. He said it is required by the Charter as an ongoing element and program of the City. He said the plan defines what the citizens feel the community should be in 2030. He said it touches on four areas including quality of life, quality of growth/sustainable growth, balance transportation/efficient mobility and effective governance. He said the 2030 Plan is meant to be flexible and provide options. He said staff will be updating Council on the many elements of the 2030 Plan that need to be updated. Brewer said the 2030 Plan does not have the specific goals/strategies needed to prepare the budget. She noted, traditionally, Council provides the direction through priorities using the guiding principles of the 2030 Plan. She said staff expects this will be another difficult budget and noted the Council should expect to have limited funds. She reviewed the twelve priority areas developed for the budget. She said staff would like for Council to determine if these twelve priorites are still relevant and added there will be an online survey which will allow Council to rank the priorities for staff. She said, on February 9, a review of the City's current debt will be given to the Council. She noted the weighted priority list will be presented at the February 23 Workshop. She said the citizen survey will be presented on March 9th. She showed Council a summary of the budget process calendar. She noted, on March 23rd, there will be a review of social service policy, the budget priorities, the facilities update and initiating the compensation and benefits discussion She said budget adoption has been scheduled for August 24th. Sattler asked and Rundell said infrastructure is handled through the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) process. Rundell said the Council priorities are to be placed on a five year horizon. She reviewed the ranking process for these priorities. She said she wants to know what each Council member feels is the most important priority and least important priority. Eason said she would like to keep the same list Council has used in the past, unless City Council Workshop Minutes/January 26, 2010 Page 2 of 3 Pages Council sees a drastic change in response from the citizens via the citizen survey. Ross said, just because those priorities were relevant in the past, does not mean they apply today. Ross asked and Rundell noted, at this stage, staff wanted to keep the numbers out of it. She noted staff does not want to apply each priority to a particular portion of the budget. Brandenburg said this would allow staff to pull certain projects that apply to those priorities according to whether or not funds are available. Ross said his opinion would be to look at the priorities from an accountant's perspective using the different fund in the budget. Brandenburg said there are different ways to fund the various priorities and a lot of questions regarding funding particular projects are included in the citizen survey. He said the survey may push Council one way or the other in terms of their priorities. Mayor reviewed the presentation and said there is a need for Council to identify the priorities for the City's budget. Rundell said, once Council determine the priorities, a survey will be sent to the Council so that they may rank them. Mayor asked and Rundell agreed Council can add to or take away from the list of the twelve priorities that were just given to Council. Mayor asked and Rundell said, if Council has any additional priorites they would like to add or remove from the list, they should notify her or the staff. Brainard asked and Rundell said the online survey would be used to rank the priorities. Brainard asked about emergency response levels and parks and recreation priorities. Brainard asked and Rundell said staff did not initially intend to have the results of the community survey available to the Council before they rank the priorities, but noted it could be a possibility. Oliver asked and Rundell confirmed, this year, staff is trying to link the Council priorities to the 2030 plan sections. Rundell said the City staff is trying to look at the implementation of the 2030 Plan as it relates to the Council priorities. Mayor asked and Rundell agreed that what the City is working on is a strategic plan. Rundell also noted, just because a priority is ranked at the bottom, doesn't mean it would get funded eventually. Mayor suggested Council waits until the results of the citizen survey have been provided to them before they fill out the priority survey. Oliver clarified and said staff would like for Council to create their priorities for the City in terms of development over five years as a whole and not on a financial basis. Brandenburg clarified and said it seems that Council would like to wait until they receive the results of the citizen survey before they do their own priority survey. Mayor said there is an open invitation for any Council members to add items to the priority list, but Council will not rank priorities until the complete list has been finalized and approved by the full Council. C Presentation Regarding Project Lab -- Mark Thomas, Economic Development Director This item was pulled by staff. Meeting recessed to Executive Session under Sections 551.071, 551.072 and 551.087-- 5:17 p.m. Meeting reopened and adjourned -- 5:50 p.m, Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 05:50 PM. Mayor Geode Garver City Council Workshop Minutes/January 26, 2010 Page 3 of 3 Pages