Finance Committee - 10/17/2018 Page 3
Camille Pattison, Transportation Department Manager
Sure, so in August we were awarded a LOW-NO Emission Grant, it was a nationally competitive grant. These
will be replacing two of the trolleys with two new electric hybrid buses, so we will be continuing our efforts to
maintain a green fleet, we will get the diesel trolleys off the road. If we are able to get through our process
relatively quickly, then Gillig has assured us that they can actually start production of these electric hybrid
buses next August, which means we would have them about a year from now. That is actually expedited,
typically it takes 72 months for them to actually build the buses, so they are willing to work with us and get
those out here a little bit earlier, which is pretty significant.
Another kind of cool feature of this grant, they consider the selection process to be competitive with FTA
standards, so we don’t actually have to go out and do another competitive RFP process. So it does trigger the
sole source for the City. We like to partner with Gillig and BAE, those are the folks that we named in the grant
and as long as we partner with them, that qualifies as the competitive process. So it a sole source on the City
side.
Alderman Laws
| just wanted to thank you for this. | am sure that everyone saw the news article that came out recently that
says that if we don’t reduce our carbon emissions by 100% by 2050 we are going to have grow gills; so |
appreciate the effort that you guys are putting in especially with securing these grants. So thank you for that.
Ms. Pattison
Well Mayor Donchess had expressed significant interest in pursuing the electric hybrid buses so when we saw
the grant come out, we thought it was kind of a long shot, but we went for it. So it was a win.
Mayor Donchess
Very good job.
Alderman Klee
Thank you, | want to commend you on getting the grant and all that has been done to do this. If | am not
mistaken when we first talked about this, they talked about keeping at least one of the trolleys for, | don’t want
to say for entertainment use, but for something like that.
Ms. Pattison
So we will. This will allow us to take two of the trolleys off the road; we have another grant that will buy one
more full size CNG and that will replace the other one, but we will keep one for like special events when we do
shuttle services, things like the tours and the Holiday Stroll. So we will keep one for that, we will just rehab it
and keep it for special events like that. But what we found consistently and | know the Mayor’s Office has had
a lot of complaints as well, they are not comfortable especially for seniors who ride them. There are steps and
it does make it more difficult; it is a rougher ride and the new buses are more comfortable.
Alderman Klee
Ok and what are the plans with the other two, will we be selling those off, auctioning them?
Ms. Pattison
Yes we will sell them off. Typically we use the public auction, we work with Dan Kooken’s office and that was
how we were able to dispose of the previous buses that we had as well, the whole fleet.
