Mayor: Reduce energy usage

City officials have a variety of concerns on their agendas for 2008, from finding a new city administrator and attracting new development to dealing with an expected economic slowdown and finding new ways to go green.

Conservation is the theme for Mayor Debbie Cook, who used her first speech after taking office in December to call for a serious effort to reduce energy usage in the city. Since signing the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection agreement last year, the council has been discussing incentives for green building and other conservation measures, and Cook said she hoped to make progress in that area. The city government’s own use of energy and water is a good place to start cutting, she said.

“We have to look at our own conservation of energy,” she said. “I’ve just asked staff to get me some numbers to look at the last seven years of our energy costs, to see where we are and how much it’s grown over the years.”

Cook also worries about the mortgage crisis that has given the state a projected shortfall of more than $14 billion.

While City Treasurer Shari Friedenrich recently said local tax revenues were holding steady so far, some council members said they expected problems to trickle down.

“People are coming off of kind of a binge we’ve been on for the last several years,” Cook said.

“They’re beginning to recognize we’re not going to have this revenue growth we’ve seen and ask where we are going to make those cuts.”

Council members are also looking for possible ends to issues that filled headlines last year, such as a scheduled February vote on a compromise plan to add economic incentives to spay and neuter pets.

Though new Interim City Administrator Paul Emery has taken over temporarily for his former boss Penelope Culbreth-Graft, the council still needs to decide on a permanent replacement.

If school sites in the Huntington Beach City School District are marked as surplus, Councilman Keith Bohr said he would like the city to move right away.

“If they declare anything surplus we’re going to go forward,” he said.

And numerous new developments, ranging from an expected proposal for a second phase of the Bella Terra shopping center to the proposed senior center in Central Park, will need council discussion, Bohr said.

“I would like to see the fruition and completion of some of these things,” Bohr said.

“They do always take longer than we want them to.”