Capital Budget '10/11: schools - roofs & the Energy RFP

There's a lot of information in the capital budget, so I want to recap the entire CB and the schools now.

- If you want to attend any meetings, you can find the meeting schedule here.

- If you want to see the TMs entire proposal, click here for the 2010 / 2011 overview.

- If you want to see the BOEs portion of the TMs proposed 2010 / 2011 capital budget, click here to see the three sections: code compliance, roofs & renovation.

On Friday, I offered some details on code compliance. Now here are the details on the second part of the BOEs request -- roofing:Obviously, roofing needs to be done. But I still have questions, including:

1) When must various roof sections be repaired?

2) Can they be responsibly delayed, so that they can either:a) be included as part of the Town's comprehensive approach to energy and building envelope issues via the soon-to-be-released RFP;

or

b) minimize spending for the time being?

My hope is that the pending RFP will allow us to move past the piecemeal approach to maintaining our infrastructure and take a comprehensive approach to our energy and building envelope issues.

This comprehensive approach is something I've been pushing -- in one way or another -- for years. Unfortunately, facilities management isn't my background. So I wasn't sure how to properly advocate it and get buy-in from all the stakeholders. Regardless, we're about to issue an RFP and I think we're on the cusp of something good.

On a side note, at last week's Energy Commission meeting there were several people there who work on state-level energy issues. And when the topic of performance contracting and the RFP arose it was noted anecdotally that Cheshire is leading the state with its approach. So I thank the Council, particularly Tim Slocum and David Schrumm, and staff for getting us this far and encourage everyone to keep pushing forward on this.

Tim White