"Millville BOE Wants Green Energy Audit", (c) Jason LaDay, NJNews.com, February 24, 2009

MILLVILLE - The city school district is trying to get audited, with hopes that it will save the disctrict money in the long term.

The Millville Board of Education on Monday approved Superintendant Shelly Schneider's reccomendation to apply for a "green energy audit," a program overseen by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, to receive reccomendations on how to update district buildings to be more energy efficient.

According to Millville Schools Business Administrator Bryce Kell, the state program offers incentives to municipalities of up to 75 percent of the cost of the audit.

The state will, in addition, pay the remaining 25 percent if the cost of implementing those reccomendations exceeds 25 percent of the audit.

"It's a new program, and if we can save money and energy in the process, then all the better," said Kell. "We think this will be very beneficial for the district and those who work and go to school here."

The city next month will send out a request for proposals to energy firms to conduct the audit.

However, the state has only approved five auditing firms to take part in the project.

They are Camp Dresser & McKee and Dome Tech Incorporated, both out of Edison; Parsippany-based Clough Harbourt & Associates; Concord Engineering, in Voorhees; and Steven Winter Associates, headquartered in Norwalk, Conn.

"If we're accepted in the program, we'll send out the RFPs to those five companies that qualified with the state," said Kell. "My hope is that the responses come back as something like, If you replace your current light bulbs with this kind of bulb, you'll save X amount of dollars."

According to Millville school board member Mike Beatty, the audits will center around replacing old windows and doors with energy-saving counterparts, as well as updating weather stripping.

"It's going to be a multi-stage project that will benefit us in the long run," said Beatty. "It'll help us save on energy costs throughout all of the district's facilities.

"And if we go through with these reccomendations, we can even get some of these things paid for."

According to Kell, Trenton has recently approved an incentive program that works with energy services companies to help municipalities finance the cost of efficiency upgrades on a 15-year plan.

Kell said he was unsure of what such audits would cost, though he guessed that each school would take less than $3,000 to $4,000 to evaluate.

The program includes a $100,000 cap on state reimbursements.

"We'll see what the cost is when we get the responses to the RFPs," he said. "At that point, we can still turn them down if the cost is prohibitive."