The Enterprise spoke by phone with Paul Flemming, the former district comptroller who worked on the Ameresco project. Jim Welsh, former superintendent, and John Scudder, former director of finance, did not return calls from The Enterprise.
“The energy project was a win-win for the taxpayers, students and staff,” Flemming said. “It provided needed energy-retrofit projects that we didn’t have to go into debt for by issuing a bond and freed up dollars. (It) was paid for not out of pocket by the district but out of energy savings.”
Flemming said there were no ties between officials and Ameresco.
“I had used Ameresco before, in Washoe,” he said. “I was familiar with the company, but we went forward with the formal process and interviewed all respondents.”
A panel viewed presentations from companies who bid on the energy project and made a recommendation for Ameresco, he said. The panel included Flemming, Scudder, district staff Paul Plumis and Rena Jackson and possibly other staff, Flemming said.
“We had (companies) submit a list of officers and how long in the business and how many school districts and other municipalities (they’d) done before,” Flemming said.
Flemming said the board approved a Request for Qualifications, or RFQ, for the project before it was advertised in 2002.
When he presented the project to the board in January, 2005, he said the RFQ was approved in December 2002.
No record of the decision appears in December 2002, board minutes and agendas. A search of board documents for the eight months before also turned up nothing.
“It was probably a consent agenda item,” Flemming answered after a long silence. “I thought for sure the board had approved to post the thing on the street and go forward.”
When asked why a letter of intent was signed with Ameresco a month before the board heard of the project, Flemming said the district needed to sign the letter before Ameresco could do a study of district buildings.
However, Ameresco had already done a study.
The “Technical Energy Audit” was published in November 2004, a month before the letter of intent was signed. The district has no record of another study being done after that time.
“They did a preliminary, cursory overview and what they did after that is a detailed energy audit,” Flemming said. “The second one is when they do a detailed energy audit where they identify specific energy conservation measures, or ECMs.”
However, the November “Technical Energy Audit” was a formal, in-depth study of what would be done school for school, and included energy conservation measures, or ECMs.
When asked if a second, more in-depth study was done after that, Flemming said: “I don’t think they did any more (studies) in December.”
When asked why not wait a month for board approval before signing a letter of intent, Flemming repeated that the letter had to be signed before Ameresco could do a detailed study.
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