Belvedere Tiburon council backs plan to harden library and town hall as community resilience center

At a special meeting the Belvedere Tiburon Emergency Preparedness Council voted unanimously to support planning to develop the Belvedere Tiburon Library and Tiburon Town Hall into a shared level‑2 community resilience center, council members said.

The proposal, presented by Greg Channes, Tiburon city manager, and Crystal Duran, director of the Belvedere Tiburon Library, would treat the library and town hall as one campus with three main infrastructure components: a one‑row parking expansion with a solar carport, additional rooftop or carport solar on the library, and a shared battery storage system to provide daytime power and clean air during outages. The presenters said the system would be a single battery serving both buildings and that diesel generators already on site would provide redundancy and charging during prolonged outages.

“The system we’re talking about here for the library and town hall would be a standalone system,” Channes said, adding that the battery would serve both facilities. Duran said the project team’s goal is “at least 48 hours” of consecutive daytime operation based on local stakeholder feedback about when county OEM support would likely arrive.

Why it matters: organizers said the CRC (community resilience center) would give residents a trusted, powered location to charge devices, refrigerate medicine and receive official information during outages or other disruptions. Crystal Duran noted the state is allocating climate‑bond funding for CRCs in California, a potential source for project support.

What the study found: the town and library worked with the Bay Area Regional Energy Network (BayREN) through a technical assistance grant to produce an energy roadmap and feasibility analysis. BayREN’s high‑level, all‑in cost estimate the presenters recalled for the conceptual package was about $2,450,000. Presenters said funding would likely be a mix of grants (including state climate bond programs), town and library contributions and other sources; no final funding commitments were made.

Grid and EV constraints: BayREN modelling indicated the site could host roughly eight to ten level‑2 chargers with a one‑row parking expansion, but the local PG&E 'Alto' circuit is largely at capacity, limiting DC fast (level‑3) chargers to roughly one at the site under current conditions.

Communications and reliability: Channes described prior uses of Starlink units during internet outages, saying the town deployed Starlink systems and restored building connectivity within about an hour. He also highlighted a separate, awarded grant: the town has received a $660,000 grant to install a 400–600 kW battery at the police station, which the city council will consider the following day; presenters used that project as an example of how battery installation could work locally.

Council action and next steps: the council moved and voted to support advancing planning for the library–town hall CRC. The motion was introduced as the agenda action item and carried with unanimous approval; presenters and council members said the item starts a conversation about activation, roles, implementation steps and funding. Channes and Duran said further technical analyses, scoping and funding strategy work will follow, and the council will continue deliberations as details are refined.

The city council will consider related battery sizing and grant decisions for the police station at its next meeting.