City to Offer Green Training to New Rochelle Building Supers

Training superintendents in New Rochelle to operate environmentally friendly apartment buildings is the result of a partnership between the city and a private sector union.

Mayor Noam Bramson announced Monday the city would host the Green Supers Training Program beginning Wednesday at City Hall.

"We are teaming up with SEIU 32BJ to provide instruction on the state-of-the-art best practices of building operations, maintenance and systems," he said, making the buildings more energy and cost efficient.

The union represents building superintendents throughout the region, including 56 complexes in New Rochelle, Bramson said.

"So the benefits for our city will be significant," he said.

The program will, over the course of five days, cover all aspects of green building operations and maintenance, including building science and envelope, lighting, heating and air-conditioning systems, air quality, water conservation and energy efficiency. Building managers will have to opt in to the program in order to have their superintendents participate. It is not a mandatory program.

Robert Muldoon, the director of green building initiative for the union, said the training would not be limited to lectures.

"It's not just a matter of lectures and classrooms," he said. "We will also do walk-throughs of apartment buildings as well" to better learn what can be accomplished.

Bramson said the program was created and implemented first in New York City, with 1,000 superintendents trained.

"New Rochelle will be the first community outside of the New York to benefit from it," he said, adding that the funding comes from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—stimulus money. No city funds will be spent on the training.

Hector Figueroa, the union's secretary-treasurer, said that about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions nationally are the result of buildings.

"So by training the building service workers and putting in effect programs that can be enegy efficient for buildings and control emissions, we are going a long way of addressing the other problems that are associted with greenhouse gases," he said.

"The future of our children and our grandchildren (and) how we are going to live on this planet depends on little things we can do today," Figueroa said.

Establishing the program in New Rochelle was the idea of Deborah Newborn, the city's  sustainability coordinator, having read a newspaper article about New York's program.

"I immediately thought I had to bring this program to New Rochelle," she said. Cleaner, more efficient building practices "make environmental and economic sense and can save thousands of dollars of yearly operating costs for a single building."

Abel Rodriguez, a building superintendent in Larchmont, took the training. He said one of the things he is doing in his building is changing the incandescent light bulbs to either compact fluorescent bulbs or LED lights. He is also running efficiency tests on the boilers to make sure they are operating properly.

"I would say this is probably the best course taken in my career," Rodriguez said. "This will help to save energy throughout Westchester County."