Sept. 7th, 2010 City Council Workshop Meeting

This particular workshop was riddled with special presentations. So here goes my bullet points of information:

1)      The first one was with United Power Energy Consulting which is a company that helps corporate entities choose from whom to purchase their electricity and natural gas from and to do so at cheaper rates than what the company pays for now.   It also provides consulting on different technologies that the City can use to save money and become a more Environment Concious City such as building solar panel farms on government buildings or using sewar water to heat buildings rather than natural gas (sounds disgusting but there is actually a cool science to this).   Even School Board Commission Jonathan Hodges was interested as seeing solar panel farms on school rooftops would provide a great source of education for the kids.  Now the cost?  Supposedly nothing….As too good to be true as this sound, the company offered to do a free energy audit of the city to see where such savings can be found.  DPW, the Green Team, Councilman Sayegh and Benjie Wimberly will be tasked to follow up on this audit.  

2)      The next session was a consultant hired by the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development that Paterson had only committed 11.8% of the $2.26 million grant it received last year.  Unfortunately there was no conversation as to why this was the case because there was a huge sense of urgency to make a decision: they had to make the Paterson Housing Authority into a sub-recipient, which means they get the money directly (because they were originally the developer and the City the recipient). This way they wouldn’t have to give the unused money back.   Supposedly there was an 18 month deadline since Paterson received the grant and the Torres administration did not follow through.  Check out a detailed article at northjersey.com website for more information about this matter.

3)      The above matters took most of the night that Council President Goow decided to table many ordinances until the next workshop session on Sept. 21st such as the Environmental Commission sponsored by Councilman Sayegh, Tavarez and Wimberly,  a referendum to propose holding Municipal Run-Off Elections in Paterson sponsored by Councilman Tavarez and other items.

This writer left at 1030pm and they were still discussing items.   I promise next time I will do better. Ill touch base next week!