A former Trinidad resident says not passing the LED light project will have lasting negative affects on Trinidad.
Ken Marchiol of Next Step Energy Solutions, said he approached the City of Trinidad in July of 2011 in an attempt to “give back” to the community he grew up in.
"It’s all about job creation in the community I grew up in,” said Marchiol in an interview after the Feb. 28 city council meeting in which council members met to remove the city manager Ed Gil de Rubio.
Marchiol claims that Gil de Rubio performed substantial and thorough due diligence in his qualifying of NSES to retrofit the existing street-light fixtures. Marchiol said Gil de Rubio went beyond standard due diligence as defined by using the Prudent Man Rule. The Prudent Man rule is, as stated by Judge Samuel Putnum in 1830, “Those with responsibility to invest money for others should act with prudence, discretion, intelligence, and regard for the safety of capital as well as income.”
Marchiol says not only did Gil de Rubio perform the typical research and due diligence, but went several steps further and even took a trip with his power and light supervisor Dean Duran directly to the manufacturer to “ask every question and pre-empt every conceivable problem from product specs, to delivery schedule, to installation guidelines, to energy savings, to longevity of products, to warranty service commitments by the manufacturer, to pricing, etc. all in order to protect the city’s investment.” Marchiol said the city manager not only did his research, he got pricing from two other vendors to negotiate the lowest possible outlay for Trinidad.
The pair worked on making Trinidad a “pilot project” that others around the country could emulate. “Ed called his friends nationally to get them to recognize Trinidad as a pioneer” in this industry.
"I understand that the money was in the budget,” said Marchiol. The pair were “identifying properties” around town to use as a manufacturing plant and began talks with Rocky Mountain SER and the Colorado Workforce to serve as the employment agencies.
"These were going to be good jobs with salaries from $26,000 to $60,000 a year.”
Ed was in discussions with TSJC to develop a LED Retrofit Specialist certification program,” said Marchiol. He said anyone who bought NSES’s product would have had to come to Trinidad for certification.
Marchiol said that he is working with other municipalities, school districts and hospitals all over the country. Next Step Energy Solutions maintains its focus on retrofitting existing fixtures vs. completely installing new light fixtures as this is typically perceived as a “maintenance” cost, not a fixture cost. He blames the city attorney for “waiting seven months to weigh in and provide legal opinion as to proper protocol for the purchase.” This time lapse is what primarily caused NSES to seek a different site for the planned factory, service, and training center.
He said he believes the jobs would last at least 10 years.
Congress signed into law in 2007 the phase out of incandescent bulbs in favor of energy-efficient lights. The phase out begins in earnest in 2012. The City of Trinidad will have to replace every streetlight with more efficient lighting such as LED’s in the next few years under current legislation.
Marchiol said NSES would have charged the city tens of thousands of dollars less at the time of proposal for the LED lights, but much of that has now changed. As a further incentive and due to the “pilot project nature of the projects, Gil de Rubio was in direct talks with the manufacturer to replace the lights at Central Park for free and save the city thousands each year in energy costs over the next two decades of useful life of the lights. When asked specifically about the NSES discounted pricing under the current bid vs. going to market through and RFP process, Mayor John Rino’s response was, “Well if the lights are more expensive under the RFP then I guess we will just pay more.”
"This hardly seems like responsible commentary from the City’s primary public official, the Mayor, said Marchiol.
Next Step Energy Solutions, LLC is a Colorado based company that currently markets their products and services in 14 states with both municipalities as well as commercial businesses and expects sales revenues in excess of $75 million for fiscal 2012.
Marchiol says the “pedigree” of NSES is what sets this company apart from its competitors. Marchiol and other partners of NSES include the CEO who has an MBA from Penn State in economics and has spent much of his career in demand side energy management, one partner a former investment banker and CPA, has a bachelor’s from the University of Oklahoma and a Juris Doctorate from Washburn University, the president has a bachelor’s from Rice University and the company’s general counsel holds a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center.
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