Lamar county B.O.S vote 5-0 to move forward with green plans

LAMAR COUNTY, Miss. - The Lamar county Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to move forward with Schneider Electric on an energy saving plan Monday.

Lamar County Administrator Jody Waits said, "What we want to do is leverage any savings, from running the buildings more efficiently, to do kind of a budget neutral solution making capital improvements.”

The board said Schneider Electric will evaluate all county buildings for the next 26 months, and the money that can potentially be saved will be stored in the county's budget.

“As big as our power bill is, you save a certain percentage of that, so obviously, amounts up to a lot of money, and you know you can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, savings annually pretty quick" Waits said.

The company is hoping to install new and improved equipment like LED lights and heating/air systems. Waits said following a green trend instead of raising taxes on residents is a good first step.

Waits added, “Only in that it helps us, maintain millage increases, and their taxes on an annual basis, its just our way of being better stewards with the money, that we have, and finding ways to make improvements that the county owns, with the money that we already have.”

The county and Schneider Electric have been working on an energy saving budget since September 2017.