Monday, October 06, 2008

Altieri email requesting info on PC at pool - 5

The first four emails between Councilman Altieri and me were all on Sept 6 and 7. But since Councilman Altieri decided to punt (by refusing to think outside-the-box and consider the pool as part of a comprehensive energy action plan for the town)... my last email redirected my questions from Councilman Altieri to Council Chair Hall and Budget Chair Ecke.

Unfortunately, it seems the Council leadership may have either never received the email... or it may have slipped their minds before they had a chance to respond. So after several weeks of no response from either of them, I sent them this email on October 2:

Dear Council Chairman Hall and Budget Committee Chairman Ecke,

I sent the below email on Sept 7, but never got a response from either one of you. Regardless, I’m still hoping to get an answer to my question – Is performance contracting still on the Budget Committee agenda? If so, when will there be followup to the December 17, 2007 budget committee meeting when it was last discussed?

And so as to avoid any additional delays and as has been requested by several Council members, here are the contact details for several people who regularly engage in performance contracts and who contacted me following some of the recent press about performance contracting in Cheshire :

Nate Audette
Energy Solutions
TAC
300 Brickstone Sq, Suite 101
Andover
Direct: +1 (978) 424-3149
Fax: +1 (978) 933-5293
Office: +1 (978) 269-1000 X556
Email: nate.audette@tac.com
Web: www.tac.com

Christopher Bleuher
Public Sector Solutions
Building Efficiency
Johnson Controls
21 Griffin Road North, Suite 4
Windsor , CT 06095
Tel : 914.456.2968
Fax : 860.731.4834
Email : christopher.r.bleuher@jci.com
URL : http://www.johnsoncontrols.com/

Tim Nettleton
VP Sales & Marketing
Applied Energy Solutions
Waterbury , CT
203-267-6800
866-941-7100
nettco7@netzero.net

and of course, Ameresco spoke at the December 17 meeting.

By the way, I have no particular interest in performance contracting. My goal is a comprehensive energy action plan. I sense though that using a performance contract may expedite the process.

Also, I agree with Councilman Altieri’s suggestion that a comprehensive energy action plan may work best for a performance contract. And that would include the pool.

How shall we proceed?

Sincerely,
Tim


And that's where we stand. Again, no response. Unfortunate, but acceptable. Email is imperfect.

Regardless, I'll keep pressing. Governing by omission and inaction is unacceptable.

Tim White

p.s. Councilman Altieri deserves credit for at least responding. Others prefer to consistently remain silent and simply wait for their boss staff to respond.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can some of the heated air that is used to keep the bubble up be recycled in the short term to help save some of the 20% that is lost? Just a thought.

Anonymous said...

Since economic times are so tough and we should all be paying down debt, how about if we remove the pool bubble and put the near 1/2 million in savings from not having to heat it towards the 2.8 million we owe. We could also put the $525,000 (turf grant) towards that debt. The remaining 1.8 million or so could be paid off through Cheshire's "slush"/rainy day fund. Continue on with the RFP's for a new type of pool cover and when it's all written up and a bid comes in that's acceptable, then construct a new cover. We'll get the new cover - we'll just have to sacrafice a season or so without our year round pool, but it may be the right thing to do - sacrafice something that is. At least we'll stop the bleeding for a while.