{"id":68290,"date":"2016-11-10T00:10:19","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T07:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-approves-solar-panels-for-new-city-hall\/"},"modified":"2016-11-10T07:10:19","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T07:10:19","slug":"cortez-council-approves-solar-panels-for-new-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-approves-solar-panels-for-new-city-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez council approves solar panels for new City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The new Cortez City Hall will include solar panels to help with the electric bills.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Solar power is coming to Cortez\u2019s city government.<\/p>\n

During its Tuesday meeting, the city council voted to authorize the mayor to sign a solar lease agreement with Durango-based company Shaw Solar. The council has been considering putting up solar panels on the new City Hall for some time, and at the meeting they voted 6-1 to contract with Shaw, doing business as Solar Garden Partners 2. According to the agreement, the city will essentially be renting the solar array for five years, with annual payments of about $4,100, before buying it outright in the sixth year for $15,682.<\/p>\n

City Manager Shane Hale said the plan will allow the city to save money on electricity in the long run. He predicted the investment in solar panels would pay for itself in energy savings within the first few years of the lease. Under the lease agreement, Solar Garden will install the roof-top panels and maintain them at no extra cost, and will also give training to city employees on how to use and care for the solar array.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is about as good of a structure as possible,\u201d Hale said.<\/p>\n

Most of the council members quickly voiced their approval of the agreement, although a few did point out a mistake in wording that scheduled the city\u2019s final payment for 2023, instead of six years from now in 2022. They amended the wording in their motion to approve the lease.<\/p>\n

Ty Keel, a city council member who also teaches social studies at Montezuma-Cortez High School, brought several of his students to the meeting so they could see an example of government in action. He thanked the rest of the council on their behalf for approving the solar array, saying it will save money for taxpayers and help the environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think maybe one of these days, if they\u2019re still sticking around here, they\u2019ll benefit from this kind of action by our city council,\u201d Keel said.<\/p>\n

Tim Miller was the only council member to vote against the agreement. Orly Lucero hesitated, but eventually he agreed to vote for it \u201cif it\u2019s going to pay off.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Tuesday\u2019s meeting, the council also voted unanimously to appoint Rachel Medina to a vacant spot on the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Advisory Board. She was recommended by Parks and Recreation Director Dean Palmquist, who also mentioned to the high school students in the audience that the board still needs another youth advisory member.<\/p>\n

Jill Carlson gave a report to the council about the latest Historic Preservation Board meeting, including Chairwoman Linda Towle\u2019s plan to step down within the next year. Mayor Karen Sheek also gave a report from the latest council workshop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Project will be part of new City Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,318,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68290"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}