SANDPOINT — The city’s Sustainability Committee voted unanimously to move forward with a partnership with the University of Montana on Tuesday.

The committee had been searching for a collegiate partner for the last few months but had been unsuccessful in receiving a response. That changed when University of Montana Professor, Dr. Robin Saha responded and said he had three graduate students who could help the city review its energy usage. 

“[Saha] has experience and has a couple of master's students that he would like to get going on it,” Committee Chair Christine Moon said. “We're hoping to work on it, he described that one possible thing is that we could have a student do basically an inventory of expenditures on energy in the city.” 

Committee members are building the pilot program from scratch in order to gain more clarity and data on how to improve the city’s sustainability. Moon said with the data from the project the committee could work with Avista to see if the city could lower energy expenditures over the course of the following years. 

“He said, ‘Oh, I love data.’ He was pretty enthusiastic about doing something like that,” Moon said. “We could have a baseline for energy expenditures that might provide us with something that we would do with Avista." 

Alongside Moon, city staff Rachel McKinley and Councilor Pam Duquette will be meeting with Saha on Friday to discuss a memorandum of understanding between the university and Sandpoint. The MOU would lay out a timeframe and scope of the project between the two parties. 

Moon said Saha is taking a sabbatical in the fall, which would narrow the timeframe to complete the data project in the spring and summer.  

“He wasn't thrilled about working over the summer, so we kind of have to work all that out,” Moon said. “It would at least give us a start with a university, and it would be a pilot project. We’ll learn something from it, both in a deliverable that we can use in the city and how to work it.” 

In addition to the University of Montana, Duquette said she received interest from Boise State, Washington State and Gonzaga on Tuesday. Committee member Makayla Sundquist said the interest was welcome and might allow the committee to expand the scope of the pilot program in the future. 

"Maybe we could take it bigger, too,” Sundquist said. "Once we can get the city stuff, we would take it to more of the city, not just government." 

Duquette said she would remain in contact with those schools and that the trio of committee members would be sitting on a Zoom call with a professor from Boise State in February.  

More details about the project will become known following the signing of the MOU. The entire sustainability committee meeting can be viewed on the city of Sandpoint’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/@CityofSandpoint.