This past week, Pittsburg City Commissioners approved the final payment to Custom Energy, LLC, for an improvements project that should pay off with city energy bills.
While the repairs are finished on the Facilities Conservation Improvements Project (FCIP), the savings are just getting started. Commissioners had approved Case III — the largest and most expensive option for an energy contract with the company — which calls for energy savings-only projects, along with a new roof and LED stage lights at Memorial Auditorium.
“We’re going to hope that our utility costs will be cut tremendously,” said John Van Gorden, interim Pittsburg City Manager. “We were able to get a lot of new things, from new air conditioning units to new lights for maintenance. There were a lot of reasons it was a good project.”
One of the reasons is that the improvements should make several city buildings more energy efficient, while coming with minimal cost to the city. The city pays the improvements over an extended period of time with savings generated by the more efficient energy fixtures.
Because the city went with the most expensive option, some additional money will also come from the city — some from Memorial Auditorium’s annual operating budget, a portion from the Sales Tax Capital Outlay Fund and the rest from the city’s 10-mill annual capital improvements debt service.
Jon Garrison, Pittsburg finance director, said he wouldn’t be able to tell exactly what the savings would be until a year or so had passed. But Jeff Wilbert, Memorial Auditorium director, said it was apparent the areas where the auditorium would be saving.
For one, there’s a sensor now in several of the rooms, which can adjust the temperature based on the room’s occupancy. Wilbert said many of the temperature settings were also hooked up to the auditorium’s computers. Then there’s the changing of the light bulbs to a smaller LED bulb.
“But I think the largest effect in all the bills will probably come from the fact that the roof is fixed,” Wilbert said. “We have several inches of insulation in the roof now, and that’s going to keep energy from just going out of the top of the building.
“We were really pleased with Custom Energy’s work,” Wilbert said. “They were good to work with our facility. Just the ability to control a lot of that energy is a big asset.”
Van Gorden said he didn’t see a need for another large FCIP in the future, but said it would remain a possibility.
“The project allowed us to work on a building like the auditorium, which is one of the biggest cost-savings projects we could do,” Van Gorden said. “I don’t think we’ll have to look at these projects in the near future. We addressed most of the buildings we have now. It was a good project, and we’ll see how good it is when the savings start to come in.”
Kevin Flaherty can be reached at kevin.flaherty@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 Ext. 134
PITTSBURG —
