What's happening with performance contracting?

Some of you may recall last year's August 30 capital budget meeting. During the meeting, I was accused of "grandstanding." Why? Because I pointed out that after a year of my requests... the majority had failed to thoughtfully consider performance contracting as an alternative financing mechanism for a number of Town projects.

But that was related to my opposition to the current year capital budget. And since I'm normally willing to compromise, I tried to work with the majority on the 5-yr capital budget. And here's the 2 minute clip:

In light of the assurance given, you'd think that as we start the new capital budget process (the timeline is: November referendum, August Council vote, July 15 TM gives budget proposal to Council, June 1 departments give budget proposals to TM), we'd be making some serious progress on the consideration of performance contracting. Right?

But earlier this year at the March 11 Council meeting, this is one minute of what we heard:And the rest of conversation included discussion about why the project must move forward and there was concern about the late nature of this request to finance the CHS electric retrofit with a performance contract.

In fairness though, I also must mention that the Budget Committee did meet on December 17, 2007. And that meeting included discussion of performance contracting. But here's the rub... while the Budget Committee requested action by the Energy Commission... and (I understand that) the Energy Commission provided the Budget Committee with additional information (specifically, a sample of a performance contract)... the Budget Committee has yet to respond (I also sent a followup email on May 20)... and yet to ask the Energy Commission to return for followup discussion on performance contracting.

So I ask the question... what's happening with performance contracting, particularly in relation to last August's assurance that the $1.9million CHS electric retrofit would be considered for a performance contract?

Tim White