Just for this presentation today, I think it will be a great education for certainly was for me, and I think for many of us.

Um we have staff from Councilmember Kamen's office as uh uh vice chair.

Do you have any comments on behalf of council member Kamen?

Thank you.

Uh so today's uh agenda, we have presenters from the Texas PACE program, which if you don't know what that stands for, they're going to tell you.

It's a great it's a great program that uh property assessed clean energy, and it talks um they've got a lot to to educate us on.

Um so welcome.

Um tell a little bit about yourselves, and uh if you'll introduce yourselves, would be great.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Charlene Heidinger.

I'm the president of Texas Pace Authority.

With me today is James Cargis, our counsel.

Some of you may remember James, he was counsel for the city when this program was created back in um 2015-2016.

So we're delighted to be here today.

Thank you.

Um I'd like to welcome uh councilmember Vice Mayor Pro Tem Amy Peck, Councilmember Julianne Ramirez, and then staff from Councilmember Kamen, Councilmember Thomas, Councilmember Castillo, Councilmember Martha Castex Tater Tatum, and uh Councilmember Sally Alcorn's office.

Please proceed with your presentation.

Thank you.

Um sorry to bother you with this, but how do I advance SLA?

Oh, it's already done.

Thank you.

It's magic.

Um Texas Pace Authority is a 501c3 organization, a nonprofit organization.

We were created to administer pace programs for cities and counties under the Texas PACE Act, uh, only after it became clear that um local governments didn't have the wherewithal to uh advance this program.

So we have a what's known as a local adoption model.

The state gave cities and counties the ability to create this program, authorize authorization, but not a lot of guidance.

Uh there is no oversight of this program.

And so after the statute passed in 2013 on the consent calendar, primarily because of drought, um, we had built a huge business coalition.

We went back to them and said if we want this to work, we need to create a very high quality, trusted program that will deliver the actual energy and water savings, uh, which is the public benefit that the statute was created to provide.

But it had to be everything a local government would need model documents, process uh how to create the program, how to close a project, all of the all of everything that you would need.

And it had to be trusted, and it had to be uniform.

So we wrote what we call pace in a box uh for COGS to run, and our councils of government basically said no.

So as a last resort, this nonprofit was created.

This is all we do.

We do it as a public service at the lowest possible cost.

The challenge with that is that as a scrappy nonprofit, it's hard to get the resources to get this done.

We don't receive revenue from a project, and our revenue comes from user fees, and we got started with grants.

So the owners who voluntarily use this program are the ones that uh fund us.

Uh so there are no taxpayer dollars used, and there's no imposition on your staff.

So getting this started in 2015 was a real challenge because this is an alternative source of financing.

Um power was free.

So a lot of people were like, why would we ever use that?

So we're back here today saying this is enormously successful, but we have not gained traction in Houston the way we should, and we really need help with outreach and education.

So if you do newsletters, if there are businesses or uh other organizations in your uh districts that could benefit from this, we really hope you will help us reach out to them.

So this slide is is a demonstration of the problem we're trying to solve.

Equipment that makes property more energy and water efficient, and all of that equipment increases the resiliency of these buildings.

But this uh energy and water saving equipment is very expensive.

So if somebody's going to invest in a building they already own, or a building that they're gonna buy, or a building that they're gonna build, they're very cost conscious.

So in addition to asking private property owners, businesses and non and nonprofits to invest in their buildings by spending more money up front uh to make matters worse.

This equipment will break even.

It will pay for itself with energy savings with less repair, et cetera.

But it has really long ROI.

It will take years to break even.

Investors want to make their money in 18 months or less.

So this is why we have deferred maintenance.

This is why so many beautiful buildings sit empty, it just costs too much money to bring them back to life, or they're underutilized, or people continue to build the cheapest buildings they can when there's an alternative that they don't know about.

So from the lender's perspective, we're talking about equipment loans, loans that basically have no collateral.

You can't come and take somebody's roof if they don't pay, right?

And so the lenders want to reduce their risk by getting paid back quickly.