To the Piedmont City Council:

To date, the City has engaged the community in the design and funding of the new pool but has yet to assess community sentiment for building a pool that will not add to Piedmont’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  All of California and indeed the world are experiencing the early stresses of unchecked climate change and I think most Piedmonters do not want to build a pool that will add to that problem for their children.

The establishment of the Pool Advisory Committee offers the City the opportunity to have this community engagement about the proposed pool’s impact on climate change. To that end, selecting the right Project Architect will be essential to engaging the PAC and community in designing a pool that offers creative options but also tradeoffs to achieve the 2030 and 2050 GHG reduction targets set forth in Piedmont’s Climate Action Plan (CAP).

Unfortunately, the Griffin template used for the RFQ/P is inadequate for soliciting proposals to conduct this engagement and creative pool design.  For example, the staff report states that the “Scope of Services and Work Plan notes the City’s environmental goals” but that is not true; nowhere in the request for proposals do the words “Climate Action Plan” occur.  GHG reduction is without question the City’s most urgent environmental goal, yet there is no condition in the RFQ/P seeking services to assist the City with meeting it’s 2030 and 2050 targets.

The only concession to city environmental goals appears to be the incorporation of LEED silver design principles, outdated principles that do not address GHG reduction, rather than LEED-Zero, the latest LEED standards that incorporate renewable energy into the design.  Similarly, the RFQ/P calls for a Net Zero Energy (NZE) assessment of the conceptual facility, not Net Zero Carbon (ZNC)-driven design that could help achieve the city’s CAP goals. The RFQ/P should at least acknowledge the 2030 and 2050 reduction targets as project goals and solicit proposals that show how the new pool will integrate with the city-wide GHG reduction targets.

Staff gave assurances that if the RFQ/P does not solicit adequate proposals then additional rounds of solicitation will be undertaken. Unfortunately, this RFQ/P starts on the wrong foot and should be re-drafted to seek stronger proposals that deliver the services the city needs to achieve CAP goals.  The staff report acknowledges that the original date for issuance of the RFQ/P was August 2.

I suggest that Council take no action this evening [July 19] and instead give direction to staff to incorporate stronger language into the RFQ/P requesting proposals address GHG reduction of the conceptual design through design and energy infrastructure.  The current conceptual design fails to show any GHG emissions calculations so the City can obtain this analysis by having consultants do this in their proposals.

In the event Council decides to proceed with the RFQ/P, consider the following changes:

Acronyms/Definitions: add a definition for “building” to this section to clarify that the term includes the pool house and the pools.  GHG emissions from the pools vastly exceed those of the pool house and must be included in any LEED or NZE analysis for the facility.

1.1 Basic Services:  Don’t specify LEED silver as the design goal. First, this bar is too low and it sends a signal to consultants that they can achieve this project objective without appreciably addressing GHG emissions.  State instead that the city seeks the highest LEED certification for the pool and let consultants compete by submitting creative proposals.

1.2.12 Value Engineering: This is a very important element of the work plan as there are numerous redundancies and inefficiencies in the current conceptual design. Language should be added to this section stipulating that value engineering be initiated during the conceptual design phase so changes can be presented during the community outreach phase.

And some clarification may be needed in the RFQ/P.  The first table below is from the feasibility assessment of the pool presented on the City website during the community pool bond initiative.  The second table below is that presented in the RFQ/P (page 6).  While the total lap pool area is the same (9600 sq. ft) there is a discrepancy in the number and length of swimming lanes.

Garrett Keating, Former Piedmont Council Member