hatton meadow solar vendor receives preferential...
TRANSCRIPT
SAVE HATTON MEADOW COALITION
1 Press Conference 10/25/15
Hatton Meadow Solar Vendor Receives Preferential Treatment The selection of Greenskies Renewal Energy, LLC has put the future of Hatton Meadow at risk.
The members of the Save Hatton Meadow Coalition have requested this conference in order to share with the public, our findings from the Freedom of Information (FOI) request that was filed by one of our members earlier this year. First and foremost, we want to dismiss any assumptions and speculation as to the timing of this release of information and offer an explanation why we have now decided to go public with these findings.
There are SHMC members before you who are currently plaintiffs in litigation against the Town of Southington and Greenskies. It is a well-known fact, determined by the court already that the lawsuit is about the Town’s illegal process in terms of violating its own zoning regulations. The latest trial date of October 21 was continued at the request of the Town. You’ll recall that we won the initial phase of the trial, which found that the Town of Southington violated the law in not requiring Greenskies to apply for a special permit to install a commercial structure in a residential zone. The continuance was granted by the court and the Town of Southington and Greenskies almost immediately filed their 2nd Motion for Dismissal of the case. The SHMC has had every intention of disclosing the FOI findings at the conclusion of this legal case. However this Motion has further prolonged our case, upsetting the neighbors further and has now accelerated our desire to share this with the public. After months of townspeople only hearing part of the story, it is time for the picture to be viewed more fully by the residents of Southington.
Finding #1: The Town of Southington failed to develop a Formal RFP for its school solar project.
Ours is not a fight about the benefits of solar to the Town, only the flawed manner in which it has been handled here. The process of selecting a vendor by the Town of Southington for a 20 year solar contract has been flawed from the beginning. The FOI documents clearly suggest that the Town failed to issue a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) or open competitive bid for this project. This project commits the Town to a vendor for twenty years, is worth millions to the vendor, and has millions of dollars in penalties to the Town should it ever opt out of the contract (see Doc. #14). The Town hired consulting firm Woodard & Curran to offer advice on the process for the selection of a vendor for this highly complex and technically sophisticated project. Woodard & Curran recommended, in step three of its “Southington Energy Procurement Strategy”, that the Town develop a specific “RFP" (see Doc. #1). The Town ignored the consultant’s recommendation.
RFPs are typically used for large scale projects such as the one described above. RFP goals are to:
• Ensure that all participating vendors are responding to the same questions• Guarantee that all vendors have the same requirements• Ensure that the Town has been given the best value and pricing. All bidders are held to the
same scrutiny in an unbiased process.
SAVE HATTON MEADOW COALITION
2 Press Conference 10/25/15
Finding #2: The Town engaged in an artificial, non-competitive selection process designed to award the project to Greenskies.
The Board of Education (BOE) and Superintendent at the time had been dealing with the selected solar partner Greenskies, approximately one year prior to the selection. The Superintendent at that time brought the company to the attention of Town Manager Garry Brumback (see Doc. #3). The Town asked Woodard & Curran to compile a list of recommended solar companies. The consultant emailed a list of six companies. The Town Manager directed staff to “randomly select” two companies from the list developed by Woodard & Curran (see Doc. #12). Greenskies was not on the list of recommended vendors. They were added to the two random selections by the Town Manager, forming a final group of vendors who would be asked to put together a proposal for the project. The two other companies from the original list were RGS Energy and Solar City (see Doc. #4).
Finding #3: The Town engineered the process so that its favored vendor would win.
The criteria for selection was not specifically stated. There was no formal RFP. Greenskies utilized a 4% escalator for the current utility bills. The primary purpose of an escalator clause is to protect the utility’s (Greenskies) rate of return during inflationary periods. After an email from the BOE Finance Director that questioned the “significantly overstated” savings they were told to reduce that to 3%. Solar City was instructed by Town staff to utilize 1% and RGS utilized 3% (see Doc. #13). Consequently the Greenskies proposal was “more aggressive” financially, according to Town staff (see Doc. #4) producing higher cost savings for the Town than competing proposals. In its desire to work with Greenskies, the Town granted the firm an unfair advantage over its competitors. (see Docs. #6, #7, #8).
Finding #4: The Town’s flawed bidding process resulted in unreliable “assumptions” for cost savings from the Hatton solar facility.
Only one solar vendor was allowed to present to the Town Council. Only recently, in a memo from Greenskies to Town officials, did that company admit that its representation for cost savings to the Town were merely “assumptions”, and that they now had the “real numbers” based on a year’s worth of utility bills from several of the schools that were to receive solar panels (see Docs. #3 and #8). This is alarming, causing one to question the overall validity of the numbers projected for savings. Why haven't these "real numbers" been given to the public?
Finding #5. The Town gave Greenskies inappropriate assistance in order to assure that it won the project.
Additional information reveals an attempt by the Town to rush the selected vendor to a final contract as evidenced by email from the “point person” for the solar project. Further, the relationship between the Town and Greenskies has been shown to be excessively cozy throughout the sales process, a relationship not offered to the other competing vendors. For example, Greenskies had at least a one year “head start” over the other vendors, due not only to its favorable relationship with the Town, but also with the Board of Education (Doc. #3). Greenskies also suggested that they would walk away from
SAVE HATTON MEADOW COALITION
3 Press Conference 10/25/15
the project and “fully absorb the financial hit on this project” in an email dated June 15, 2015 a week before the Town Council reconsideration vote (see Doc. #11).
If there was no previous relationship between the Town and Greenskies, as the Republican leadership has claimed, then why did Greenskies make a $250 donation to the Republican Town Committee in September 2013? Centerplan Development, whose CEO happens to be Chairman of the Board and a founder of Greenskies, contributed another $500 between 2013 & 2015 (see Doc. #10)
Conclusion: The Town of Southington engaged in an unfair selection process in the awarding of the school-based solar projects.
The Town did not issue a formal, detailed RFP that would have guaranteed a level playing field for vendor selection. The Town randomly selected two vendors from a list compiled by its hired consultant. Greenskies was later added to the mix. The Town favored Greenskies with accumulated knowledge that was not available to all vendors. No other vendor proposed utilizing the meadow at Hatton School. It is further alarming that the final proposal was never given to the Board of Finance for its scrutiny: this was a twenty year contract worth millions of dollars and the elected financial board of the Town was not involved. It is obvious to anyone who examines the Town’s selection process for its “solar partner” that Greenskies was the selected vendor right from the start. This was not an open, competitive bid process. This type of behavior must be stopped now.
The residents of the Hatton Meadow area have proven in multiple legal victories that the Town of Southington needs to be held accountable for its actions. The SHMC strongly believes that the effort to “Save The Meadow” will encourage our town leaders to apply proper, open, competitive procedures to the Town’s practice of doing business. The meadow has only been subject to one vendor proposal, the one generated by Greenskies. There needs to be fundamental fairness in the process from start to finish so that before anyone’s property rights are infringed upon and before the Town commits every Southington resident to the consequences of a 20 year contract, that we have less discussion about solar simply being good and more discussion about the bidding process being done right. We suggest the Town accept Greenskies earlier offer to walk away from the Hatton Meadow project and consider revisiting this proposed site as a roof installation in the near future. The Town of Southington needs to begin to LISTEN to its residents and they should start right here, at the Hatton Meadow. DO NOT DESTROY GREEN SPACE for the sake of creating green energy.
Contact information: [email protected] http://savehattonmeadow.yolasite.com/
