Rob Smuts Explains The Thermostat

Rob Smuts’s title kept falling down. When he figured out why, he realized it meant good news for the taxpayer.

Smut’s title is city government’s ​“chief administrative officer.” That title appears on a tile that greets people alighting from a third-floor City Hall elevator.

It didn’t greet them for a while during the summer months. The tile fell to the floor. Repeatedly.

It turned out that the city had been trying to save money on energy by turning down the air-conditioning after hours, when the public wasn’t in the building. The increase in temperature melted the glue keeping up Rob Smuts’s title tile.

Smuts came up with a fix for the title: velcro.

Smuts’s job description includes finding fixes like that — not only for tile, but more importantly for small and big budget costs. He has made a point of doing that in myriad ways in city government, to the tune of over $1.3 million.

He wanted to talk about that the other day in response to a comment made in a New Haven Independent city budget news story by a Wooster Square activist named Mona Berman. More needs to be done to cut city spending, like turning down the heat in City Hall, Berman argued.

“This place is too hot,” she said during a visit to City Hall. If she kept her house that warm, she’d be bankrupt, she said. ​“It’s a metaphor,” Berman said. ​“I think we’re very inefficient.”

“Mona’s great. Mona’s done a lot on her house [to make it more energy-efficient]. I’ve talked to her,” Smuts said in an interview that began outside the elevator by his office.” We’ve done a lot here [too] with city buildings.” Click on the play arrow at the top of the story watch some of Smuts’ explanation.

Smuts inherited a concern for environmental savings from his mom, who works for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and from the late city budget chief Frank Altieri, who won statewide recognition for cutting government energy costs. Smuts commissioned a study two years about about the small and big ways the city could save money on powering 30 of its buildings. (Read that study here.) Then he started with the ​“low-hanging fruit” — measures that cost little to get rolling.

Like turning the thermostat up after hours in the summer, down after hours in the winter. ​“I bring a coat [after hours] in the winter. I often have it when I’m sitting at the desk. In the summer it gets pretty hot,” Smuts said.

The city also installed new controls in many buildings to monitor and adjust temperatures. Officials determined it would cost too much to replace old windows. Instead, they retrofitted the windows to make them more energy-efficient. It installed devices to turn out lights when people left rooms.

At fire stations, workers used to keep the big garage doors open while trucks idled. They had to, in order to avoid inhaling carbon monoxide. Now the city has hooked up attachments to the tail pipes that, with the help of fans, send the exhaust out smaller openings in the doors.

Overall, the city has cut energy consumption by 10 percent over five years, Smuts said.

It has also saved money by no longer buying electricity from United Illuminating. (UI still handles transmission and distribution.) The city bids out electricity purchases. Same with natural gas. All told, according to Smuts, the city has saved $4.5 million on combined consumption cuts and cheaper purchases.

Meanwhile, it has gone green. A new 400 kilowatt fuel cell that arrived behind City Hall last month will save between $900,000 and $1.3 million over the next decades, according to Smuts. (Read about that here.)

All that said, Mona Berman is right, Smuts said: The city still can and should do more to cut energy costs. It plans to change the HVAC systems at police substations, fire stations, and other small buildings, he said. The year after next it plans to replace compact fluorescent street lights with LEDs. That not only saves energy and money, he said, but provides better light, according to tests.

“We’re going up the ladder of things that are easy and cheap and things that are slightly more expensive and have longer payoff periods,” Smuts said. ​“It’s bit by bit. And we do it constantly.”

Past Episodes of ​“Rob Smuts Explains”:

Rob Smuts Explains Potholes, Part II
Rob Smuts Explains Haste On Trash Plan
Rob Smuts Explains The Pothole Menace
Rob Smuts Explains Cop Overtime
Rob Smuts Explains Your Garbage
Rob Smuts Explains The Search
Rob Smuts Explains The Fire Department