CCMinutes - 11/08/04 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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B. WORK SESSION: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Evaluation for City Buildings City Manager Taylor introduced the item, saying staff would like to review the City's efforts in promoting sustainable, effective green practices throughout the organization in existing buildings. Ms. Solomon arrived. Facilities Manager Glen Svendsen said that new buildings receive considerable focus in terms of sustainabil- ity, and operation and maintenance practices are more often ;;under the radar." He said staff would review how the City was applying the United States Green Council's LEED Existing Building (EB) criteria to existing buildings. He called attention to the Agenda Item Summary (ALS) for the topic, which included a summary of what the City was doing now. Mr. Svendsen noted that Ron Sutton and Lynne Eichner Kelley of the Facilities Division were also present for the item. They had developed the idea of applying LEED-EB criteria on an inventory-wide basis, which the criteria were not designed to do, but they had believed there could be value to the exercise. That led to a request from the International Facility Managers Association to present a paper at the association's October 2004 conference. The presentation the council would hear was a shortened version of that presentation. He said staff would highlight some policy and budget issues for future council direction at the end of the presentation. Mr. Svendsen commended the proactive efforts of Ms. Eichner Kelley and Mr. Sutton. He believed the efforts reflected the extent to which sustainability had become integral to Facility Management's operations. Mr. Sutton provided a PowerPoint presentation on the topic. He emphasized the impact of environmental and budgetary impacts of ongoing operations on existing buildings. He said that the City used LEED-EB as a means of achieving a common standard to use as a benchmark to measure progress against the criteria applied specifically to existing buildings. He hoped that the US Green Building Council developed a LEED organization certification as the City would be interested in pursuing that on a pilot basis. Mr. Sutton said that staff decided to apply the criteria with the realization that operations and maintenance functions were not exclusive to a single building. Consistent standards established across the building inventory were important to efficient operations. Staff wanted to realize the benefits of the criteria in a larger context. While there were likely only five buildings that would be certified and 95 that would not, it did not mean staff could not apply the criteria to the other 95 buildings to maximize their sustainable operations. Mr. Sutton emphasized that the program was not just a facilities management program, but touched all departments in the City. The organization had considerable energy around the topics of green buildings and sustainable, and the LEED-EB gave the City the tool to harness that energy and focus it more productively. Ms. Eichner Kelley discussed how the City was using LEED-EB, reporting that the City first examined the prerequisites, or base requirements, for certifying a building. Staff determined that the organization met two of the prerequisites and assessed the organization against the remaining ten. She referred the council to a list of the prerequisites assessed, noting that they generally fell into two groups; about five were policy- and procedure-based, which staff decided to apply organizationally; the remaining five were operations- and equipment-based. MINUTES--Eugene City Council November 8, 2004 Page 3 Work Session