Environmental Sustainability meeting November 18, 2010 Culver City Unified School District th
Date: Thursday Nov.18 Meeting was called to order at: 6:07 p.m.
Place: Culver City Unified School District
2nd Floor, Conference Room 3 4034 Irving Place Culver City, CA 90230 (310) 842-4220 In Attendance: Jon Barton, Committee member Patti Jaffe, CCUSD Interim Superintendent Todd Johnson, Committee Chairman Mike Korgan, CCUSD Maintenance Supervisor Diana Martin, Committee member Kathleen McKernin, Committee member Cully Nordby, Committee member
Minutes I. Review and approval of previous minutes Cully Nordby corrected the spelling of her name. The minutes were then approved X. Report from district on the “cool schools” baseline energy audit: Item X was moved up, because Patti Jaffe may have to leave early. Patti Jaffe reported that CCUSD heard back from Trane, and that we have a new contact with them. The Energy Star benchmark from Trane will be done in a few days. This will review and identify the schools with energy savings potential. CCUSD won’t know the number of sites identified until afterwards. The ESC will get back to Patti for dates that work to visit the sites with Trane. The committee members will email in their dates, this will need to be within 2 weeks after November 29th. Jon Barton: will be unavailable from Dec.4-9 Cully wanted to know who/what Trane is. Trane manufactures HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning) systems and they do free energy audits. They were picked to do a CCUSD energy audit. They are paid by the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) to do the audit at no obligation to CCUSD. Do we need to hire them to do the work? Mike Korgan: They can do any part of the project we are not obligated for them to do it. The questions asked are if this is worth the investment to the district and will it save us money. Diana mentioned that both Chevron and Edison had been involved in audits, why were their audits not considered? Mike and Todd explained that Chevron had a “divorce fee” amount that had to be paid if they were not involved in the improvements. Jon wanted to know if Trane would look at what CCUSD needs, but would also offer information on the savings effectiveness of such things as solar.
1
Environmental Sustainability meeting November 18, 2010 Patti Jaffe: We may not want Power Purchase agreements, Santa Monica does not like being involved in this. The ESC and CCUSD really needs to look at this. Jon wanted to know if Trane will give us dollar amounts for offset and savings. Cully said that Google is offering funding for sustainable and green ideas, grants can be cobbled together for some of the ideas. The committee needs to create a list of questions for Trane before their site visits, Patti Jaffe will forward the questions to Trane. II. Approval of Mission statement – the mission statement was approved. III. Parliamentary procedure – the committee agreed that we could have a more informal version of Robert’s Rules followed at the ESC meetings. IV. Tools for prioritizing: the ESC will establish a matrix spreadsheet for what is being covered. Todd will create the spreadsheet. The committee discussed what will be featured in this matrix. They agreed that main headings would include: Greenhouse Gases Financial Impact Educational Value Health Benefits (Harder to quantify and may need to be a sub heading) Difficulty of Implementation (The ESC will have additional headings for the matrix as we define it.) V. Green Schools Initiative resources The committee discussed how this is a good jumping off point, however, the information covered ranges from broad to specific. Kathleen offered to look at the initiative and organize the information it contains, she will present at the next meeting. Jon introduced Chicago’s Healthy Schools as an additional resource to the Green Schools Initiative VI. Status of California solar initiatives: The committee was asked if we should pursue the CA Solar Initiative. It needs to be decided soon since there is work that needs to be done and the rates of return are diminishing. In order to meet the timetable for the CA Solar Initiative a design needs to be submitted that would lock in the state’s rates. Diane asked if Trane could do this. Patti also asked if the firm that would do the design would pay the application fee of $20,000; Cully questioned whether we were already past the higher returns as shown. Todd explained that the $20,000 fee for application and the design fee are rolled into the cost of the final system. VII. Kathleen McKernin on Sustainable landscaping --This was tabled. VIII. Directions from the board at the last board meeting. Cully questioned whether the pursuit of the solar initiative was realistic since it seemed that the capitol funds were already allocated. Todd: the operating budget of CCUSD is the board’s main concern Diana commented that the this may be the only way to access some of the $8,000,000 capitol funds.
2
Environmental Sustainability meeting November 18, 2010 Mike Korgan feels that the “divorce fee” from Chevron is actually the cost of design, so you are paying for that if you back out of the agreement. The committee felt that these questions could be added to the list for the Trane walk through: Could Trane do the preliminary design for the state solar initiative submittal? Could Trane give us a timeline for this? What would Trane charge for this? Todd: the board wants the committee to come back to them quickly with resolutions. The committee discussed whether to present precedents of existing projects (pros and cons) rather than projections by vendors of costs. The committee will do some research on precedents. Jon Burton will look into and present at the next meeting: ü Environmental Charter School ü Edison School Santa Monica ü Soqual High School Kathleen will contact John Adams about its artificial turf field and present at the next meeting. IX. Converting the Chevron proposal: Should we use this info for the Power Purchase agreement Cully: Wouldn’t Trane also do this? Diana: If we use the Chevron proposal does it expedite the process for us? Todd said that it would expedite the process. The committee said that we could use Chevrons findings. XI. Communications: external We are too early in the process to start a website and publish information. This is good to do further along in the process, it serves as good publicity and community outreach. Patti Jaffe should do a write up about the committee, its purpose and its (publish in the CCUSD newsletter) so that the school community and board will know of us. XII. Communications: Internal. Its been working so far for the committee. Next meeting: Thursday Dec. 16 at 6:00 at CCUSD. Meeting adjourned at 8:25 p.m Meeting minutes taken by Kathleen McKernin, Recording Secretary, (11/18/10). These minutes are considered final.
3