With the Haines Borough projecting more than a 30 percent increase in energy costs, the message of the Haines Borough Energy Sustainability Commission has come full circle, Stephanie Scott told a meeting of the Haines Chamber of Commerce on Earth Day Friday at Whiterock Nursery.
The commission was established in June 2008, when the borough was anticipating a 40 percent increase in budgeted fuel costs, said Scott, who served as commission staffer.
The group developed a borough energy conservation plan in its first year and in its second year notched a 13 percent decrease in heating fuel delivered to the borough and a 5 percent drop in electrical use.
For more than two years, Scott made monthly audits of fuel oil and electricity consumed by borough facilities – and their cost. Under Scott’s leadership, the commission launched a website, held two energy “fairs,” created a radio program on KHNS about energy conservation, inventoried streetlights, and secured a $140,500 state grant for a wood heat feasibility study.
The commission held regular meetings through last October, culminating with an energy conservation handbook for municipal workers and a borough energy conservation plan.
The borough assembly, however, never adopted the handbook or conservation plan as policy. Scott said she believed that was a mistake. “In my mind, the government has the responsibility to set the standard. Why shouldn’t we obligate our public employees to be responsible? We’re paying them.”
Taxpayers are at least doubly burdened by the increased cost of fuel, paying their own bills and a share of the government’s bill. Business owners pay the increase a third time, Scott said.
Among Scott’s findings was that the local school district never asked what the cost of energy would be for its rebuilt school. “The architects said that would have been an add-on. That should always be a question when you’re building a building. How much does it cost to run? No project should be signed off until the operating costs are delivered.”
Scott said it may take a voter initiative to put in place a policy that the borough can’t articulate.
Chamber of Commerce president Ned Rozbicki believes Scott is on the right track.
Part of evaluating a borough department should be based on efficiency so workers have an incentive to save money instead of spending it, he said.
“We haven’t charged (the borough manager) with that, but it should be a part of his job. Meanwhile, you look at city trucks all over town, idling for hours. The manager’s directive should be creating more efficiency in government through energy conservation and sound practices,” Rozbicki said.
Assemblyman Steve Vick was liaison to the commission and also agrees energy conservation should be established as policy. “There’s no reason why we can’t require people to turn off their computers. There were a number of things we didn’t implement (from the commission) as well as we could have.”
Borough facilities director Brad Maynard said the value of the commission was promoting conservation within existing systems, but he’s skeptical of making its recommendations policy. “You could save the borough a lot more money by replacing aging boilers, tightening up buildings and putting in electronic thermostats. That would do more good than making a to-do list.”
Maynard said the group also had too much diversification in its goals and had difficulty focusing.
Scott and some commissioners, however, said the borough was biased toward oil-based heating systems. “The big thing is it’s hard to conserve on oil when all you’ve got is oil burners,” said commissioner Leonard Dubber, who owns a heating business and heats his laundromat with a wood boiler.
Dubber said there was a bias against the commission because its members weren’t engineers. “The whole thing was frustrating.”
Maynard said he was amenable to looking at wood heat for individual borough buildings, though a centralized system wasn’t viable because of the distance between buildings. “It’s very doable.” Maynard said he hoped to proceed in that direction but he was directed to not hire a person to pursue it.
Andy Hedden, who served a year on the commission, said he thought the group’s recommendations may have been too much for the borough administrators to digest at once. “It was a tough time for the message because there is so much deferred maintenance. It’s hard to adopt another level of intricacy and commitment when you’re trying to play catch-up.”
“I think their hands were full and it’s possible that it’s hard to sort out the wheat from the chaff in the (commission’s) recommendations. If something appears burdensome, you tend to throw out all of it,” Hedden said. “The most beneficial thing is creating a culture that cares about conservation. It’s a cultural shift.”
Scott said she would like to see a borough policy that stipulates that energy conservation, efficiency and utilization of alternative sources of energy are the law in the Haines Borough.