Thread by @shayshinecastle

Chatting now about a set of leases to put solar installations on 13 city buildings. This was supposed to be on consent agenda, meaning it receives little to no council discussion. Carlisle has requested a public hearing.

Essentially, the city will lease the space to a company who will own/operate the solar panels and then buy the power back. City estimates it will save $1.4M over 30 years, but the bigger thing is that it is adding 2.7MW of solar to Boulder.

City went this route bc it would cost around $12M to install and own the solar facilities themselves, according to Carolyn Elam, energy manager.

Carlisle speaks: "My q is why this came so late to the council."
Holding up a very thick book, saying there were three of them related to this issue, but she didn't get it to Friday.

"There were qs from the community, particularly the tech crew. These folks knew nothing about this. I'm not an expert, so I rely on persons in the community whom I know who spend an inordinate amount of time looking at these things ... to say what is good and bad..."

Elam: We entered into this process thinking about it as a city procurement of services, which is not something we typically think about communicating. But we should have thought of the visibility of this and communicated it.

Was going to come to council in February, but where they originally intended to do a big installation was re-mapped as floodway. So they had to rejigger the whole thing.

Carlisle: "We're asked to vote on these leases that go 20-30 years, without some kind of public hearing," or the chance to ask questions about how technology might change in that time.

Elam: One of the reasons we chose to do this is it pushes the financial responsibility and risk onto the company, Unico. If we own it, we're responsible for repairs, etc. If we're just paying for power, we're not.

Carlisle: Savings of $1.4M over 30 years is "not that much."
Elam: Savings is the benefit on top of our climate goals. That's how we looked at this.

Jones: I know we're asking lots of tough questions. It's a fantastic project.
Brockett: More time to review would have been great, but it's amazing.
Jones: That's key, is that we don't have to pay $12M to do that.

Weaver moves to support it.

Unanimous vote in favor.

Lots of folks in the audience leaving now. Guess the solar issue was a big one.

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