Update on Georgetown Energy Assessment Townhall

The energy assessment town hall was deemed a bust in an earlier post because of extremely limited attendance and lack of audio for the internet and broadcast video.

It turns out that video was restored about half way through the presentation, but, reviewing the video shows at most 3 citizens attending! The City Manager and several staff were there in addition to the Schneider Engineering presenter.

One of those in attendance was the newly elected councilman from District 3, Mike Triggs. It is unknown whether or not Mr. Triggs has been sworn in as he missed the formal swearing-in ceremony at the last council meeting.

Councilman-elect Triggs asked several insightful and penetrating questions about the Bloomberg grant for installation of solar panels and batteries in/on 15-20 homes. WilcoSun, Sunday May 26, 2019

Mr. Triggs was absent from the meeting(where the grant was approved), but said he would not have voted to accept the grant. 

“When you currently have financial difficulties it is not wise to enter the unknown,” he said. “We know this is filled with expenses and are not sure of the financial rewards. It all comes down to risk and reward and at this time I see more risk than reward.”

But he added he’s not surprised council voted for the grant. “Experience tells me that people who make poor financial decisions tend to continue to make poor financial decisions. There is a little bit of not admitting to being wrong earlier, and in this case they are not playing with their own money. It’s the ratepayers’ money they are gambling with. They have no skin in the game,” he said. 

He questioned city officials about the solar program’s impact during the town hall. Mr. Morgan said the program’s impact will be small. The city plans to install solar panels on the roofs of 20 homes. “It’s a very minor impact, but the results of the study will have a tremendous benefit for distributed energy,” Mr. Morgan said. 

“You may consider that minor, but with the problems you have, you can’t have any more bumps in the night on those things,” Mr. Triggs said. 

The councilman said it’s disappointing that the city has not already undertaken Schneider’s suggested remedies. Hiring a professional and having better financial reporting and control are both basics and they should have been undertaken long ago, Mr. Triggs added. “It appears not much progress has been made by the city to correct the situation,” he said. “To mitigate the situation you have to act, not sit back and wait.”

Mr Triggs is articulating all the right questions and clearly he has a bias for action. Let us hope for the tax payers and rate payers sake he continues to aggressively question city spending.