 Executive Constantine tours the Microsoft Smart Energy Building Tracking System.
Energy-tracking software will save money at County buildings
King County has become the largest government in the nation to pilot the innovative energy-tracking software used by Microsoft to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions at many of its smart buildings.
"This serves two of our goals: becoming the best-run government and confronting climate change," says Executive Constantine. "We address not only internal energy use, cost, and carbon impacts, but we help demonstrate the benefits of the technology to encourage others, public and private, to adopt it."
As part of the pilot project, Seattle-based MacDonald-Miller will install the system at no charge to taxpayers at the Executive's office building, two transit facilities, Bow Lake Recycling & Transfer Station in Tukwila, and Brightwater Center in Woodinville.
The energy-tracking software will provide County maintenance workers with real-time analytics that help them identify heating and cooling problems faster and prioritize repair work knowing where the big issues are. They'll spend less time identifying the cause of problems and more time fixing them.
This pilot project builds upon the progress made during Executive Constantine's administration to make operations more efficient. Over the past five years, King County has reduced annual energy costs by nearly $3 million.
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More buses in Seattle: 223,000 hours of service added
Executive Constantine and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray thanked the City and County Councils for adopting the contract agreement with Metro that will add 223,000 hours of additional bus service starting in June.
Seattle is the first city in King County to take advantage of the Exec's Community Mobility Contract program, which enables cities to purchase additional bus service from Metro. Seattle's investment will focus on reducing overcrowding, improving on-time performance, and adding extra service in transit corridors that don't meet targeted levels.
As a regional leader, Executive Constantine says his task now is to ensure that bus service countywide meets the transit demand of one of the fastest growing regions in the country.
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ORCA LIFT reduced bus fare starts March 1
Floribert Mubalama (at left), a refugee from Congo, received one of the first ORCA LIFT cards from Executive Constantine earlier this month. On March 1, Metro will become just the second U.S. transit agency to offer reduced fares for lower-income riders.
Mr. Mubalama moved to America several months ago with his wife and two children. He has a college degree in business but is starting from scratch here. He says being able to ride Metro will enable him to get to job interviews throughout the region.
ORCA LIFT is the result of two years of work by Executive Constantine and the King County Council to make riding the bus more affordable for people struggling to make ends meet. The reduced ORCA LIFT fare is $1.50 per trip regardless of the time of day or number of zones traveled.
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Safe Energy Leadership Alliance meets in Portland
Executive Constantine will convene the next Safe Energy Leadership Alliance meeting March 3 in Portland. SELA is a coalition of local, state, and tribal leaders from across the Northwest working to protect our communities from oil and coal trains.
The SELA meeting in Portland comes two weeks after a federal study predicted trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times each year over the next two decades, causing $4 billion in damage. Just days after the study was released, a 109-car train derailed in West Virginia, burning for a week.
SELA's 100+ members will continue to keep oil and coal transportation concerns on the radar of decision-makers and weigh in with federal government regulators on strengthening protections for our communities.
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Executive Constantine in the news
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