Albany officials ready to implement weatherization program

ALBANY — Albany Utility Board staff have approved 15 applications for the city of Albany’s $200,000 home weatherization program and will give contractors the go-ahead to start work on applicants’ homes in the near future.

Utility Board personnel Mary Petty, Carolyn Mathis and Robert Bishop gave a report on the program at the Utility Board’s meeting Thursday morning.

“Interest is excellent,” Petty told the board. “Once we’ve completed the process on each home, we intend to track utility bills for the next year to see what kind of difference the weatherization made.”

The city program has a $6,500 cap for each home, but with Community and Economic Development approval that funding could go up to $10,000, Assistant City Manager Stephen Collier told the board. Collier also discussed possible energy assistance programs that could help defray the costs of home heating for qualified customers.

City Manager Sharon Subadan told the board the city had closed on the purchase of the Pine Avenue Synovis Bank property on Dec. 29 and planned to move Utility Board offices into that facility by the end of the current fiscal year.

“We’re engaged with a space management consultant right now, and we hope to award a contract on the (renovation) project soon,” Subadan said. “We’re moving speedily toward moving into the building.”

Collier said Synovis officials had reduced the cost of the transaction to account for roofing replacement.

The board also voted to recommend to the Albany City Commission that it contract with Georgia Public Web to upgrade Internet bandwidth from 1 gigabyte to 10 gigabytes to increase the number of customers the utility can serve and also enhance revenue capability.

“We’re currently at capacity,” city Procurement Manager Mike Trotter told the board.

Collier said the tenfold increase in bandwidth would cost the city only an additional $1,000 a month for a total contract price of $407,420.

The board also approved an $81,060 bid by Heath Consultants of Houston to conduct a walking gas leakage survey, which is required every five years.

Prior to the business portion of the meeting, Assistant City Manager Phil Roberson and Utilities Operations Manager Jimmy Norman updated the board on staff efforts following an automobile accident Tuesday that knocked out power along Oglethorpe Boulevard

“We had a really synchronized effort by city staff,” Roberson said. “Utilities personnel worked with APD to make sure our citizens were safe. It could have been bad if anyone had been allowed to drive through there, but APD immediately rerouted traffic.”

Norman said the accident, which took out power poles and traffic signals, forced part of the Light Department staff to pull off another incident in which a sign company had bored through a cable, disrupting utility services in another part of town.

“I don’t know that we’ve ever had an incident that forced us to completely shut down all four lanes of traffic on Oglethorpe,” Roberson said. “Our folks got through about 8:30 Tuesday night, working a couple or three hours in the dark. That was a dangerous situation, but they got the job done.”

Mayor Dorothy Hubbard praised the Utility Board staff.

“That’s the kind of incident that separates us from other cities,” she said. “Our people are prepared.”