Sunrise for Solar?

I attended a meeting of the Solid Waste and Environmental Concerns Committee (SWECC) a couple of weeks ago. I'm still attending as many committee meetings as possible, whether I'm a member or not (they're all open meetings, so anyone can come). To find the committee meeting schedule, got to Otsego County's website (here), click Legislature, and then Committee Meeting Schedule. This is where the real work of the County is done.

I'm especially interested in SWECC meetings, because that's where I learn what there is to be learned about the dissolution of MOSA and the trash world after MOSA. We certainly covered that, and the quick summary is that dissolution is on-track for April 30 of this year, and an RFP (request for proposals) is being prepared for the public-private partnership that will handle solid waste in Otsego County after that.

But the most interesting part of this recent SWECC meeting was a presentation by Jan Myers, Solarize NY Program Facilitator; Jim Kurtz, RER Energy Group President; and Michael Roach, RER Energy Group Project Developer, regarding a solar project which could generate 2MW of electric power for Otsego County building use.

Here's how it works: the 2MW solar array would be built on County land and owned by an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) made up of private investors who have raised $2.4 million. They would sell the electricity to the County at rates that would be lower than current rates, and going forward, projected rates from the solar array would rise, but not to the level of projected power company rates until the 17^th year. There are complicated sets of incentives, accelerated deprecations and tax breaks provided by NYSERDA grants and other agencies, which make investing in the LLC very attractive.

There are a couple of points along the way where the County can buy the array from the LLC if it wants to; from then on, of course, the electricity generated would be, essentially, free, and the savings would be used to pay off the price of the array.

Madison County is moving in this direction, and SWECC voted to send a letter of support for the grant proposals.

So far, I think this is a great idea; it does sound too good to be true, but sometimes that kind of stuff is actually true. So stay tuned; I'm going to keep track of this initiative.

Sunk in Admin

The raise for M&C workers in Otsego County (see the second post down from here) is dead.

At the Administration Committee meeting today, the raise was the last item on the agenda of a five-hour long meeting. It was clear from the beginning of the discussion that three of the five members (I am not a member but was there to observe) were against any raise proposal. The actual motion that came to the floor, after an extended executive session, was for a substantially smaller raise for a much smaller group of people. The final vote was 3-2, with Betty Ann Schwerd, Don Lindberg, and new member Rick Hulse voting against, and Chair Ed Frazier and Oneontan Kay Stuligross voting in favor. I have to give Ed credit for making a sincere effort to get a proposal out of Admin, as he said he would, and to the full Board. The full Board is where a proposal of this magnitude belongs; we all need to go on record on this issue.

To be fair, the debate on the raise came right after some bad news regarding sales tax for December: it was down 17% from December 2012, after a pretty encouraging year. This represents about $300,000 less in revenues than expected, which is significant, but the Committee had spent all day approving significant expenditures with very little debate. To cry poverty and blame the death of the raises on this bit of financial news was, in my opinion, more than a bit ingenuous, especially since Schwerd and Lindberg had voted against the raise at the December and January Board meetings, before we knew anything about the sales tax.

To me, it's a matter of priority. Otsego County has a wide variety of assets: buildings, equipment, supplies, vehicles, contractors, etc. But chief among our assets – our first priority, I believe – are our employees, and especially those who shoulder most of the responsibility for getting the work of the County done. To ignore the simplest measure of support for these people is, I believe, just wrong. And to have the raises sunk in committee, after the full Board had agreed to them, is, if possible, even wronger.

Committee Assignments

It's a new year, which means that the County Board elects a new Chair and Vice-Chair. Kathy Clark was reelected Chair unanimously, and after a close vote in which Kay Stuligross was not elected Vice-Chair (a post that Rich Murphy held before his retirement from the Board), Ed Frazier from Unadilla was unanimously elected Vice-Chair. He will also hold the key position of Chair of the Administration Committee (Admin).

Kathy Clark made the committee appointments as the meeting ended. After two years on the Human Services and Health and Education Committees, I'll be on four committees, like most of the other Board members. I'll stay with Human Services, and chair it, which is a great honor and a great responsibility. I'll also be on the Public Works Committee and the Manor Committee (which we all hope will disband sometime this summer, when the Manor is successfully sold).

I'll also be on the Performance Review and Goal-Setting Special Committee. This may prove to be the most interesting post, as all three members agreed, during our brief conversation after the meeting, that our top priority should be to begin work on designing a merit raise system in the County. This would create Board policy covering future M&C raises (see previous post) that will be more dependent on employee performance than current politics.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns about any of these appointments. New committee appointments should be available here as soon as the page is updated.

Happy New Year, M&C

What seemed to end as a good year for county M&C employees was followed by a New Year that started very poorly for them. Their first raise in six years was suspended, and it suddenly depends on the action of a small number of Board members on the Administration Committee.

M&C stands for Managerial and Confidential, and anyone who works for the County who isn't in one of the unions is an M&C employee. I'm and M&C employee, as is my wife, who is a part-time Special Educator in the Department of Health.* Every January, the Board must, by law, set the salary for all these employees. For six years, the numbers have been the same, as we tried to claw ourselves out of the recession.

This last December, the Board and the Treasurer, Dan Crowell, worked to set out a proposed raise that provided any M&C employee who had worked over one year with a raise of 1% per year of longevity, with a cap at 5%. There was also a one-time payment of $100 for part-time and $200 for full time employees. The raises totaled about $160,000, money which was available from another line in the budget – a budget which was lean and fair and resulted in a tax levy increase of only 0.14%.

The December vote to transfer these funds – to provide the raise for these employees, some of whom made less than union workers they supervised – was very close. All seven Democrats voted for it, as well as one Republican: Jim Powers. The rest of the Republicans voted against it, but the weighted votes were in favor and it passed.

Today, at the first Board meeting of the new year, some bureaucratic complexities arose which I can explain in detail to anyone who is interested, but which are too convoluted to include in this post. Long story short, an opportunity appeared to send the raise to the Administration Committee (Admin), instead of approving it today. The new Board split along exactly the same lines as last time: All Democrats voted to approve the raise as passed by the last Board, and Jim Powers joined us again. All Republicans voted to send it to Admin. However, there are now more Republicans, and fewer Democrats, on the Board, and so the raise was sent to an uncertain future in committee (a committee comprised, this year, of four Republicans and one Democrat). Elections have consequences, and this truth was made evident within an hour of the new board being sworn in.

The new Chair of Admin, Ed Frazier of Unadilla, assured me that he would get the raise out of Admin and back to the full Board. I hope this happens, and I will be at the Admin meeting on January 23 at 9:15, in a non-voting role. It's an open meeting, and anyone can come.

If Admin approves the raise, then it still has to pass the full Board in February. The outcome of this issue may set the tone for a long time to come.

* - If the raise is saved, it will not include the Board members or the Treasurer; we have all exempted ourselves. My wife will make 36 cents an hour more, in a job where she can work no more than 20 hours a week. So this is not an issue that has a lot of personal impact. It's just a question of right and wrong.