County will ask voters to approve energy efficiency loan program

Education campaign is under way

It wasn’t an easy decision for the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners, but they approved a ballot measure that gives the county the authority to sell bonds and make loans available to people interested in investing in alternative energy or making efficiency upgrades to a home or business.

The vote, at a regular meeting Tuesday, September 1, was two to one in favor of the measure, with commission chairperson Paula Swenson casting the vote against it. She never had a doubt about the measure’s intention to provide financing for energy improvements, Swenson said, since she and commissioners Jim Starr and Hap Channell felt it was an important program to pursue. The question was about the timing.
“I want everyone to know how important this measure is to me and it has just put a knot in my stomach since this started,” she said prior to casting her vote. “I’m just really concerned that we started too late and failing wouldn’t just put us back one year—it would put us back four or five years, which is going to be too late if we want to achieve the environmental goals” that were detailed in the strategic plan.
The resolution that was passed at the meeting does not commit the county to anything, but allows it to participate in the November 3 election with a ballot initiative that would give the county the authority to explore any direction for a loan program to fund clean energy options for county residents.
“We had bond counsel draft a resolution and ballot language that does not require you to make a decision about the form of any [Local Improvement] District, should you choose to put it on the ballot and should the electorate pass it,” county manager Matthew Birnie said.
Birnie started the discussion with a list of concerns that had come up after a conversation he had the day before the meeting with representatives from Boulder County, which implemented a similar program last year.
“As folks are getting their bills as assessments go out [in Boulder County], it’s clear that they weren’t real clear on the costs,” Birnie said. Boulder County is “getting a lot of complaints as the bills go out. That’s incredibly concerning.”
He also said that Boulder County is discovering they might not have charged an application fee that covers their administrative costs. With 400 participants in the program last year, Boulder was hoping to have 700 participants this year to make the administration of the program more financially feasible. So far only 80 people have applied.
“What we’re finding out from the folks in Boulder is that the administrative burden of it is not being absorbed by the county’s staff. They hired an additional two and a half staff members and their debt manager is spending 50 percent of her time with it,” Birnie said. “That is different information than any of us had received until yesterday and it’s quite concerning.”
One of the major concerns Birnie was trying to convey to the commissioners was that time and experience has proven the program will not pay for itself.
And as he has stated before, Birnie does not believe Gunnison County would be able to sustain a program without lowering the costs, either on its own or with a consortium of other small counties.
“I can’t report that it can be done, because we haven’t seen evidence of the programs that are doing it,” Birnie told the commissioners. “It doesn’t mean we can’t do it, but that it would take a different approach to some things.”
But the evidence against the feasibility of the program did not deter commissioner Jim Starr, who was the first to say he would support the resolution to put the measure on the ballot. Even if the measure passed, the county would not be required to take on any debt, he reasoned.
“The advantage of going with the measure this year is that we wouldn’t have to compete with either the hospital or the library district, both of which might have a measure on the ballot next year that would increase taxes,” Starr said.
This year the only competition on the ballot for approval of county tax is through the Tourism Association (Local Marketing District), which is proposing to renew the 4 percent lodging tax and would apply only to overnight stays. Since the energy efficiency financing measure is voluntary, Starr felt there would be a better chance to get voters to give it a fair look.
While he admitted that it is usually favorable to have all of the details of a measure clear before going to the public with a campaign, Starr said this time might be the opposite.
“This time we’re saying, ‘Give us an opportunity to explore our options,’” said Starr. “I’m tending to think we should go forward with it…if we get it passed with the voters, we design a program that has no fiscal impact to the taxpayers, other than those who voluntarily opt into the program.”
The other reasons Starr gave for pursuing the measure is that it would create employment for local contractors who are hired with the loan money to install the upgrades “at a very critical time that we need to employ our working people here in the county. The second is that for the first time we give the homeowners in this county the opportunity to realistically utilize at least passive, if not active, solar applications in their home.”
But before the ballot measure can turn into money for participants in the program, members of the County’s Green Team and volunteers will have to take their message to the voters.
Andris Zobs, building director for the Office for Resource Efficiency (ORE) said 140 people have signed a petition in general support of the measure and 26 volunteers have showed interest in helping with a campaign to educate voters about the measure before the November 3 election.
Since ORE, which is a partner with the county, already has the support of some county contractors and homeowners, the biggest hurdle will be convincing doubters that the program is not a tax on every homeowner, just the ones who participate in the program.
According to the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, or TABOR, the county is statutorily required to make the first sentence of the ballot language, “Shall Gunnison County’s debt be increased by $3 million, with a maximum repayment cost of $6 million…”
The County is concerned that someone picking up a ballot for the first time might think the proposal is a tax, but the language that follows clears up the misconceptions. Starr asked that the clarifying sentences be printed in bold type and underlined so voters didn’t miss it.
The language that follows the first sentence says “…with no increase in any county tax or tax rate.”
Only the people who participate in the program will pay off the debt the county takes on as a result of the program. Those home and business owners will pay off their loan through the system for collecting property taxes, and the debt will remain with the property.
Zobs hopes the county can meet the challenge of the campaign. “We’re feeling like a campaign can be successful,” he said.
Along with concerns about the feasibility of passing the measure, Channell said he was “a little concerned with the cost of the election,” which the county elections office has so far estimated to be between $8,000 and $10,000 for each ballot measure. But that cost can change between now and the election since the formula to determine cost involves so many variables.
“This is going to be something we’ll scrutinize a lot closer this time when we’re asked to put an initiative on the ballot,” Channell said, recalling the large bills that were presented, somewhat unexpectedly, to voting districts after last year’s election.
In the end, commissioners Channell and Starr voted for the measure and commissioner Swenson voted against it. The campaign to inform voters about the program, which doesn’t have an official name yet, is already under way.