Jamestown Board of Public Utilities board meeting

The Board of the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities has voted to eliminate the Energy Efficiency Program Coordinator position.

The civil service position was created in 2009 for the purpose of development, implementation and administration of energy efficiency incentives and rebate programs in the BPU territory. Dan Reynolds had held that position since 2009.

General Manager Dave Leathers said work under the title has changed significantly over the last 13 years with the workload changing to system enhancements versus customer rebate programs, “The system level improvements are LED street lights that are put throughout the community, advanced metering infrastructure projects, anything that we’ll work on related to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, so the difficulty with a utility position similar to city positions is this is a civil service position that has minimum qualifications.”

Leathers said due to those qualifications they can’t just place the current employee in another job. He also addressed a concern raised by citizen Doug Champ about the elimination of the title ahead of New York State trying to “electrify everything,” “If we’re looking at electrification of buildings and we need to help people with electric services, that’s likely an electrical engineer, not the individual that’s qualified for the Energy Efficiency Coordinator position with an Environmental Sciences degree. So it’s a very difficult decision that’s been made but it’s necessary decision for the utility.”

The BPU board also approved the purchase of two new garbage trucks at a cost of $449,650. These vehicles will replace a 2015 and a 2017 garbage truck which will be sold. Leathers said they do not expect delivery of the new trucks until 2023.

Leathers added the City Riverwalk Lighting project has begun with light units being installed on the BPU’s silo. He thanked the Jamestown Fire Department for their assistance in hosing down the silo in order to clean the surface.