Presentation by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to the City of Alameda for the Alameda Main Library.
All right. Three C presentation by the United States Green Building Council to the city of Alameda for the Alameda Main Library Project. Pretty cool. Evening. Mayor Spencer and members of the City Council. I'm George Saki, library director for the Alameda Free Library. Excuse me. I'm very pleased to be here tonight to have my project team. With me as the city receives our. Lead gold for. Existing. Building. I want to really thank my project team. Building Wise was our consulting firm. Barry Giles is the founder and CEO. And he is here with us this evening. Levi Jimenez was our senior project manager. He couldn't make it tonight. Yvette Becerra is also a project manager with Building Wise. Westlands from. Stop Waste. Dawg really pushed us through this project and was a huge, huge help. Maria de Meglio, I think, was the heart and soul from Public Works. She's a. Project specialist. And really. Kept our project moving and attended to all the details that didn't fall through the cracks. Britney and Kerri from AC. I helped Maria a lot. Digging through our garbage. Thankless job, but we really do thank them. And tonight, we're honored to have Kevin Hydes, who's a member of the Northern. California chapter of the USGBC. To actually do the presentation. So I don't want to spend too much time at the podium. I'd like to bring Barry up here to say a few words about our project. Thank you. Madam Mayor, Vice mayor and members of the council, thank you so much indeed for the opportunity to be here this evening. I'm Barry Giles. I'm the CEO of Building Wise, and we are the consulting company that worked with your team to get them through the process, to get them to the end and get this great plaque put on the building event. And I and I'm sure she would say as well, it's we've been in this business for some years. We are a very experienced consulting company. But one of the main things we know is that we cannot complete these buildings without the help of people in there. And Jane and Maria, without fail, have been pushing and arguing and helping and asking all the difficult questions of the members of the team and to get us through to this program. So now you are in a moment going to be presented with this plaque and the building will be called, we believe, the first library in the nation to get a version for all of this LEED existing building program. What are you going to do next? Because the one of the big things about lead and the lead program, especially the lead ebb program, which I was very fortunate enough to write back in year 2002, is that we wanted people to continue to work on the building. And one of the ways to do that is to ask you, it's not mandatory. Can we come back in five years and do it all again? Because what is important is the data that comes back from that. How are you maintaining the building over the over the next few years? How are you improving it? No, we don't want you spending millions of dollars on the building. We want you to work with the team that you have and Wes Sullins and stop waste and everybody else who was part of this to maintain the building so that we can keep it going. The other big advantage of doing this building is that we generated a lot of new programs. We had policies. We have programs that went through the council, went through a lot of the public works. They can be replicated very, very easily in other buildings that you have. I assure you, plagiarism is alive and well with the USGBC. We'd love the opportunity to do it again. Now, without further ado, I introduced introduce Mr. Kevin Hydes, who's here representing the U.S. Green Building Council. Yeah. There's two of us with an accent. I'm Kevin, and then I'm mayor and council members. Don't say I don't need to say much after Barry. But I will say that the thing about certification, which I think is so important, it's actually something very tangible. And your public of obviously elected the members here to represent their values and vision and deliver on this this lifestyle that you referred to earlier. I love those words. I love this notion from the earlier awards as well that, you know, you're actually acknowledging and rewarding your own people that go the extra mile. You know, I think you should acknowledge and reward yourself for going the extra mile, you know, as leaders in your own community. And as Barry mentioned, these these certificates are really important certifications. It is the first in the country for a library with version four. You should be very proud of that. But as Bob knows, it's a journey. It's a journey. And this is this is you know, we celebrate today and then we move, move on. I'll remind everybody that two months from now in Paris, you know, the countries of the world, the major, our own governor and major and mayors from cities around the world are going to arrive in Paris to talk about climate change and what actions are they going to take to help the planet at large. And I think what, Alan, the city of Alameda is doing here in its own facilities, with its own leadership, is actually completely in alignment with those conversations that are going on at the global level. So congratulations to everybody and thank you for your leadership. Thank you. Mayor Spencer. You can come. Yeah. Inspector picture. This rebel, right. Oh. But know. Oh. Actually. Madam Mayor. And a mayor when you. Thank you. I just want to recognize two of my colleagues, because none of this certification at the library would have been possible without the two co-chairs of the library who stood up on the dais today. And that's our vice mayor and council member Ashcraft. Thank you. And thank you. And I it is a thrill for me every day to see our beautiful library. And we knew we wanted to do more. Back when we were on the library building team. But we had the restrictions of a budget to work with. But, you know, we did things like make sure that the roof was engineered so that we could put solar panels there at some point if and when the funds became available and they did. But it was always a very inspired project that started right from the beginning with huge community support, and it continues to this day, as Mr. Fakih can attest to. So thank you for taking us the extra mile. But I swear. And I do want to acknowledge the people of alameda because without their vote in measure ro to fund this. 78.8%. To match of the state of California from the State Library Board, which brought our tax dollars back to Alameda, none of this would have been possible. So the people of Alameda saw the need and spoke with their their wallets. Thank you. Any other comments? Thank you very much. Number item for oral communications. We do have a speaker under oral communication.