This is a draft of meeting minutes of the October 8, 2009 meeting of the EECS steering committee.

1. Draft Minutes
10/8/9 EEACAC meeting
Committee members present:
Leia Lewis
Stuart Crichton
Dr. Jeanne Hamming
Ian Webb
Jeff Wellborn
Roy Griggs
Joe Pierce (arrived as the presentations were ending)
Greg Coates
Lee Jeter
Others present:
Tim Wachtel
Caroline Majors
Wes Wyche
Bruce Hoffman
Kim Mitchell
Patti Trudell
The minutes of the October 1 meeting were approved as drafted.
Kim noted that some potential names have been received from committee members for
the proposed work groups, and encouraged committee members to continue sending in
names.
Bruce Hoffman gave a slide presentation on the 14 eligible activities. He noted that a
goal should be to use the current $1.9 million dollar allocation to leverage more
significant dollars and programs. He showed an example “Energy Efficiency &
Conservation Strategy “ (EECS) document (also referred to as the EECBG program’s
“Attachment D”) submitted earlier by the City of Louisville, and stated that the EECS to
be submitted for Shreveport would need to be more detailed (patterned after a document
he showed which was prepared by the City of Chicago).
He noted that Caroline Majors is putting together a web-based database for use by the
committee as an idea-sharing resource.
He recommended that at least some of the EECBG funds be spent to build “business
cases” for projects (rather than being spent on projects themselves), contending that this
approach will result in allowing projects to grow in scale through leveraging with other
available resources.

2. He noted that Caddo Parish has received a $368,000 energy allocation through the same
EECBG program (in their case, administered by the state Department of Natural
Resources rather than directly by the US Dept. of Energy). He shared the
recommendation he has presented to the Parish on how this funding should be allocated
among the various categories of eligible activities, showing how he expected each such
allocation to result in a corresponding leveraging of additional dollars totaling
$3,730,000.
Kim Mitchell then gave a presentation on the concept of “strategic doing”—in essence, a
model of working in which ideas, resources and people are linked and leveraged and
work silos are eliminated. He encouraged the committee to adopt this approach to its
work. He and Caroline Majors discussed the proposed web-based platform for idea
sharing.
Among the comments from committee members:
- Leia Lewis asked how the idea of community gardening can be brought to scale
as city-wide “urban forestry” concept. Bruce noted that consideration of this type of idea
is a perfect example of the kinds of things this committee will be doing, and he and
Caroline noted how the web-based resource being developed would facilitate productive
discussion on this and other creative ideas.
- Greg Coates stated that the concepts discussed were excellent but noted that
there was potential for information overload, given the short time that the committee has
to do its initial work. He requested that efforts be made to prevent the committee from
being overwhelmed as it focuses on the task at hand.
- With regard to the proposed work groups, Joe Pierce noted that the objectives of
what those groups would be called to do should be clearly stated up front.
- Lee Jeter asked if there were any existing energy efficiency policies in place
with the City or Parish, and was advised that there are not.
- Ian Webb stated it would be very helpful for committee members to receive as
much information as possible prior to committee meetings, so materials can be reviewed
in advance. Specifically, it was requested that the draft framework document be
circulated prior to the next meeting, if at all possible.
Committee members were encouraged to continue submitting names for consideration for
the work groups, and to review the various eligible activities (including the lists of
potential projects within each category) on the Department of Energy’s website in order
to get ideas for projects/programs on which the City’s $1.9 million allocation will be
spent.