Chowchilla, California

CHOWCHI LLA , CAL I FORNI A was the biggest chunk issued, were CREB bonds, or Clean Renewable Energy Bonds - bonds the federal government helps to subsidize; taxable bonds where the federal government gives us a subsidy to reduce our debt service payment for putting in clean, renewable energy. For the general fund, we had a bond issue of $3.6 million. That’s the total cost for the general fund. We have a CREB subsidy over the life of the repayment of the bond that’s going to give us $1.3 million. So, with the general fund as an example, of the 3.6 million that we obviously have to pay back over 30 years, we will get back 1.3 million from the federal government, with a similar set up for the water and wastewater bonds. “Each one of these projects is stand-alone, and analyzed on its own, and each one generates savings on top. We take the savings we get from not having to pay our electric bill to Pacific Gas and Electric and use that money to pay our debt service. The debt service is the bond issue we used to put in all the new infrastructure. On top of being able to pay back our debt service, there’s the additional savings by doing solar for each one of the funds. The general fund comes to an extra $1.4 million in savings, the wastewater $5.1 million in savings, and the water $3.8 million in savings. After we pay off all of our debt service over the course of 30 years, those are the estimated additional savings we would get, based off a 5 percent escalator, annually, for increasing energy costs. “The upshot, when we looked at it, was that no money came out of the city’s pocket! All we did was issue bonds. Instead of paying PG&E, now, we’re paying our debt service, and we get extra savings. So for all this infrastructure improvement, nothing came out of the citizens’ pockets. We didn’t have to reduce any programs or anything like that, and no increase in taxes; it was all just savings from solar, as the reduction in energy costs are considered savings. And these savings used to make debt service payments are guaranteed. If the solar systems do not produce the savings, the contractor, Johnson Control, Inc. (JCI), writes us a check to cover the difference. This guarantees our debt service will be made.” Chowchilla’s population of 18,000 has been somewhat stagnant over the past decade, but the last couple years the city has seen some growth. “We did have a small development project that built out,” Pruett notes. “We have a few projects on the table, moving forward. One is a very fairly large project called the Rancho Calera project. We have another project, called Sessions, with around 200 units, and a project called Legacy in the works. So we definitely are seeing some steam picking up.”