■ Panel offers to cover big portion of climate plan coordinator salary

Benicia Community Sustainability Commission wants to keep Alex Porteshawver as the city’s contract Climate Action Plan coordinator for two more years.

It initially backed that recommendation in March with an offer to pick up the tab for first year of the proposed contract extension that will be more costly since Porteshawver has changed employers.

Thursday night, the CSC sweetened its proposal to the City Council, offering to pay for 75 percent of the second year of the contract, as well, and asking the Council to find $25,000 in city funds for the balance.

City employees are developing a “status-quo” two-year budget that would start July 1 and end June 30, 2017. Unless other money is saved elsewhere and applied to the expenditure, the city’s share of Porteshawver’s budget — and any other new expenses — would come from the city’s reserves, Community Development Director Christina Ratcliffe said.

The CSC’s proposal is to spend $150,000 in Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee Settlement Agreement funds in Fiscal Year 2015-16, and $75,000 from the same source in Fiscal Year 2016-17 to underwrite keeping Porteshawver on board.

Porteshawver became the local face of a team from Sonoma State University that initially won the CAP coordinator’s position in 2011.

That contract was extended and expanded, costing the city $80,000 for the two-year extension that will end June 30.

Last year, she joined the environmental consulting firm PMC that recently was acquired by Michael Baker International.

PMC has proposed a $250,000, two-year contract that would reduce Porteshawver’s physical presence in Benicia, but would give the city access to the company’s expanded array of services, such as monitoring the city’s progress in sustainable matters, previously unavailable through the current contract.

In addition, the proposed two-year contract would task Porteshawver to work with city employees who might be able to take on some of her duties when her contract ends in 2017.

At the Council’s May 5 meeting, members expressed interest in the two-year contract, but asked for additional information on grant applications that were about to be submitted to the commission.

Since then, seven agencies, including the city Public Works Department and the commission itself, have applied for a combined $399,264 in Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee Settlement Agreement funds which the commission can distribute with Council permission.

In the past, Commissioner Bruce Barrow has expressed concerns about the operation of the award-winning Benicia Resource Incentive Program (BRIP), a CSC grantee that helps Benicia Industrial Park companies reduce consumption of water and energy and production of garbage.

At first he suggested the commission pay for Porteshawver’s contract by pulling BRIP funding. “That money should come from Economic Development,” he said.

Porteshawver differed, saying BRIP is not only a significant economic development tool that is underutilized, it also could aid in achieving the city’s CAP goals.

But Barrow concurred with the rest of the panel in a unanimous vote on its funding recommendation. The Council will hear the recommendation at its June 2 meeting.

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