On Wednesday, Sept. 16, Malibu City Council voted unanimously 5-0 to approve a new sustainability program for property owners throughout the city.
“I think this is a great opportunity,” Craig George, Deputy Building Official under the city’s Environmental Sustainability Department, said.
The opportunity, called Ygrene Works for California PACE financing program, or Ygrene Pace for short, helps to finance home improvements to save energy and cut water waste.
PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) brought its first program to the city in February of this year with the HERO (Home Energy Renovation Opportunity) program. The two, HERO and Ygrene, are designed to make energy and water saving renovations affordable for property owners. PACE does this by offering long-term, competitive financing through payments made from their property taxes for up to 20 years.
Both programs work through the California Home Finance Authority.
“The city’s participation in more than one PACE program will provide property owners with the ability to choose the program that best fits their needs,” the staff report for Wednesday’s meeting stated.
“I think the main thing is, it’s an opportunity for the city to increase its sustainability, to have a mechanism for homeowners to do energy savings, energy conservation, using renewable energy sources and … water savings,” George told council.
James Ross, a representative from Ygrene, explained some of the benefits.
“By adding the Ygrene program, you’re actually extending some features that are not available in the HERO program,” Ross said.
The program is enacted largely by contractors who are interested in participating.
“What I do is, I train the local contractors to use the Ygrene PACE program,” Ross said. “We do not cold call your homeowners at all.”
“It’s such a cool program,” Mayor Pro Tem Laura Rosenthal said.
More information is available at ygreneworks.com/homeowners.
Sewer project rebid
The council also voted to re-bid the Civic Center Wastewater Treatment Facility, after bids received came in well above the previously estimated amount.
The City of Malibu received three bids for the project, the lowest of which was from Shimmich Construction Company, Inc., $38,426,050.00, according to the staff report.
“The low bid amount from Shimmich Construction Company, Inc. is over the available budgeted amount for this project,” the report read. “It is proposed to separate the single bid document into three distinct bid packages. In doing so, staff believes that it will allow for more bidders and competitive prices that will fall within the budgeted amount for this project.”
Once the plans are broken into three separate projects, an eight-week bid process will begin. A total of $25,000 was allocated by council for the re-bid of the project.