Hammond Unveils New Green Fleet in Front of Civic Center

Surrounded by snow plows, dump trucks, police cruisers and more, Hammond Mayor unveiled a new fleet of vehicles at a ribbon cutting ceremony held at the Hammond Civic Center on Thursday.

“Finally we did the right thing,” said Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. “The city of Hammond has partnered with Leopardo Energy to form a comprehensive energy savings program that helps the city of Hammond go green. Over fifteen and a half million dollar improvements are included in this program. There are three aspects that we focused on. Fleet, the city of Hammond has vehicles on the road 24 hours a day. Anywhere from 12-15 cars at all times, 365 days a year are on Hammond streets. Anytime you can save money on your gas, is important. We added 76 new vehicles in phase one of this program. We will be able to replace 250 vehicles with the four phases of this project, 120 of these vehicles will be bi-fuel propane,’ added the Mayor.

The city of Hammond Indiana partnered with Leopardo Energy, a division of Leopardo Companies, to develop and implement an overall energy conservation program back in May 2017. Construction began in September 2017. This is the first energy program for Leopardo Energy in the state of Indiana.

Heather Garay, Hammond City Controller explains the benefit to the city. “Because of this process, we were able to start a complete energy saving program for this city,” explains Heather. “With the help of Leopardo Energy, the city of Hammond, we will be able to add 250 new vehicles to create a completely green fleet. You see some of them today. Every single department in the city will be touched by this. We welcome you to check out the police cars, the tanks are in the trunk. This will help us reduce our carbon footprint and increase savings as far as fuel costs go. We were also able to update our heating cooling and lighting systems in almost all our city owned buildings as well as convert over 4800 street light’s to new LED technology. It’s an incredible program, my favorite part of this as city controller is how it’s financed. All upgrades will lead to a reduction in energy costs, reduction in fuel usage, reduction in maintenance for vehicles and HVAC in our buildings. All of these improvements over twenty years, pays for themselves and gives the city an additional sixteen million dollars to spend however they want,” she told the guests.

Savings generated by Leopardo’s energy conservation program which includes lower energy, fuel and maintenance costs will be used to pay for the $13.5 million in improvements and will result in an additional $16 million in savings over the 20 year guaranteed period.

As Mayor McDermott Jr. spoke in front of the Hammond Civic Center, he talked about the improvements in the building.

“The building behind us (the Hammond Civic Center) was a big part of the upgrades. It is an expensive building built in the 1940’s. Anytime you can save money in buildings like this. I remember when I first became Mayor, walking in city hall in the winter on a Saturday, I could literally see my breath. We replaced outdated HVAC equipment in thirteen city buildings including the Civic Center, the Hammond Police Station and fire stations. We replaced all automation controls in these buildings that are temperature controlled throughout the city and also replaced old lighting with LED lighting in thirteen of our buildings. The beautiful part of this project was the financing. We floated a bond for thirteen and a half million dollars and the payments for the bond is coming right out of our budget. Money we were spending on fuel costs, money we were spending on repairs. All the money now that we’re saving is going to be used for the bond payments. This program did not cost the taxpayers any additional money,” added Mayor McDermott Jr.

Rob Vollrath Chief Business Officer with Leopardo Energy spoke about the project and the future with Hammond.

“ I was responsible for overseeing the development of this project from the ground up,” Vollrath said. “Making sure we had the right resources. Making sure we had the right development team in place and making sure it was executed properly. For me, my background is finance. Working with Heather, going through the budget and identifying areas that can make an impact to leveraging savings through creating capital for these buildings and being able to create a savings stream that we could leverage without changing their budget and impacting the taxpayer. For me that was the most fun part because I’m a numbers nerd. Since this project we’ve closed two more in the state of Indiana and talking to multiple other communities in the state of Indiana. We are hoping this will be a launching pad,” added Vollrath.

Leopardo created a multi-phased energy conservation program aimed at helping the city of Hammond go green. Leopardo is currently working with other cities in Illinois and Indiana to join this new program within Leopardo. Some of the work that was done for Hammond that Leopardo implemented in their energy conservation program are: City of Hammond converted 4,800 city-owned streetlights to new LED fixtures, upgraded building automation controls and HVAC systems across a number of municipal facilities such as; police station, fire stations, civic center and public works complex. Hammond also converted many of it’s existing gas-burning fleet to bi-fuel propane systems including detective vehicles, plow, garbage and dump trucks in phase 1 of the program. An additional 175 vehicles will be replaced in the next 3 phases.

Jeff Sauline project manager with Leopardo Energy thanked the city of Hammond for welcoming Leopardo Energy.

“We had a great team, the city of Hammond was great to work with,” said Sauline. “Meeting all the people in Hammond and building those relationships was my favorite part of the job. We had a lot of fun, a lot of meetings and late nights but as you can see it’s a great success. This project, 13 and half million dollars, you’re never going to see. A lot of the HVAC is in mechanical rooms, a lot of air conditioners are above ceilings that the public won’t get to see. I want the residents of Hammond to know it’s not just the 4800 street lights, there’s a lot of equipment behind the scenes that was installed. You feel it will be cooler in the summer in these buildings and warmer in the winter. The city of Hammond was special, we not only helped build projects, we built a good relationship. If other cities are half as easy to work with as Hammond, life will be good.”

According to a press release from the City of Hammond, Leopardo Energy worked with the City of Hammond to employ many local contractors and vendors for the project. Budd Mechanical provided HVAC sheet metal and piping work; Bellsom Electric provided building lighting and building BAS upgrades; L&S Electric provided decorative street lighting improvements; Midwestern Electric provided cobrahead street lighting improvements; Korellis Roofing provided roofing and patching work; All fixtures were purchased from Graybar; vehicles were ordered from Smith Ford; Cubit provided fabricated brackets, racks and trays for vehicles; Advantage Signs provided vehicle decals; and R&S Auto performed the vehicle propane upgrades.