City pushing for green home ordinance

Mar 3 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Alex Breitler The Record, Stockton, Calif.

City officials hope to improve the energy efficiency of 8,500 homes -- nearly 10 percent of Stockton's housing stock -- over the next three years, under a draft ordinance set to go before the City Council this month.

The voluntary plan takes the place of an earlier proposal that would have required potentially expensive energy audits whenever homes are sold.

The compromise -- called "Green-Up Stockton" -- seeks an average 25-percent reduction in energy use for the thousands of retrofitted homes built prior to November 2002. If the goals aren't met, then new mandatory energy audits would kick in.

The ordinance was approved by a committee last week.

"I think we came up with a pretty solid program. The hard part is now making it work," said Deborah Howard, a spokeswoman for the Lodi and Central Valley associations of Realtors.

It'll be largely up to residents to make it work. The city will provide information about energy retrofits, but cannot offer financial incentives, said Mike Niblock, the city's community development director.

"What we can do is lead people in the direction where funding programs are available," he said.

Working in the city's favor are existing programs that already are helping people retrofit their old, drafty homes. For example, a county program provides caulking, weather stripping and other services for elderly residents.

Those retrofitting efforts, and others, will count toward the overall goal of 8,500 homes, said city planning manager David Stagnaro.

Stockton's Climate Action Plan Advisory Committee is tasked with reducing the city's carbon footprint, mirroring a similar statewide effort. The work is part of Stockton's settlement with the state attorney general over the city's growth-governing General Plan.

The climate committee first debated mandatory home-energy audits last year. Realtors, however, were concerned the requirement would add costs to home sales already complicated by short sales and foreclosures, and the City Council sent the provision back to the committee for reconsideration.

Trevor Atkinson, a slowgrowth advocate and member of the climate committee, said he thought it was a better idea to go with a voluntary program.

He said he thinks the goal of 8,500 homes is "probably doable."

"There's a number of forces coming together to keep it at the forefront of peoples' minds, the need to do what they can in their own homes to reduce greenhouse gases," Atkinson said.

The committee agreed Thursday that even if the threeyear project is successful, the city should continue to push afterward for voluntary retrofitting of the remainder of Stockton's existing homes.

Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler@recordnet.com.

Visit his blog at recordnet.com/ breitlerblog.