Fort Collins Air Quality Advisory Board - 06/12/23

7:19PM Jun 13, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

community

board

city

hear

air quality

grant

conversation

question

council

cassie

part

climate

work

focus

big

goals

project

monitoring

space

plan

hydrous it has 30 seconds units coming in.

Audio check 123 Hello. Thank you

when he knows very thoroughly during the show an extra Yes. That does mean other day just

remember number one

Yeah. Whatever you wanted to hold up order and once you do I'll start recording

going to start recording. Okay,

I'm going to go ahead and follow order recording in progress. Brief we've got a great, myself here, and Gavin are online. And

so let me just cover the agenda briefly. We have a couple of people online to public comments, and we'll check that you want to go over those minutes from last month covering the previous two presentations on array on climate program, sustainable revenue. Angel value, we'll be here to talk about

money laundering advisory committee, or the

number of parts

of your business six months at Council calendar. And so let's go to public participation. I noticed we have Samantha and Kevin online. Did either one of you want to add a public comments? Are we just here to listen?

Hi, I'll just introduce myself. I am from the Colorado citizens pilot program. And we are trying to get citizens engaged on government meetings. So I'm just here to observe and I'll be recording the meeting as well just to get some public participation. Nothing, nothing from me other than that.

I'm really quickly housekeeping so you can put in your last name and the chat and so I can record your not at all. Thank you.

And Kevin, would you want to Republican liberal you just

still an input? Are you there, Kevin? You're muted. Yes. I'm also with the League of Women Voters and I'm just here to observe. Okay, thanks. All right. Well,

it's good to have you here.

Matt is also technically that's it Hey Matt

Matt Ayers is

I guess he's officially guest right now he's gone through the process of becoming a board member but that will happen at some point later this month so should we have one other

this is going to be

so next month you know introducing everybody talking about backgrounds and more people have somebody here to potentially make volunteer bad news for those that don't have and hopefully want to okay so we can be agenda or the approval of minutes sorry

my name

shouldn't be on mine

so let's do the usual stuff to do that and then thank you for the edit from us sorry

yeah, I don't know were you looking to find out who that another board member was?

I think it was waiting

oh, okay. It's probably

okay yeah okay

the graphical things

from a workbook there was something about something being planned

was accompanied by something that's crazy

and I'm not see on my own right now sorry

Oh, yeah. I didn't appear but it's in the city is considered a workshop

and I thought hey, Brexit actually exactly cabinet

so the city's held a workshop where I went to undergrad gene that second line from the bottom the city is also considering

it replaced with as recently

so I'm just going to read through

so now my comment was

was so poor

he actually worked

too to

rethink transportation really, it's one of the bicycle sitting who's

worked with communities.

They said that works with communities

to rethink transportation, to make it more high school

and more ecological.

This might be an easy one.

You want to For

almost a week on second on favor Sonics

okay thanks guys

really

sorry I think we may have lost audio I don't know if you can hear me not sure what happened. Can you hear anybody down? No. Okay

yeah I was just chatting the same thing I seem to have just lost audio of the group.

I can hear you Dan. I just can't hear the main room.

I can hear you Gavin is sorry to interrupt the rest of the group

Kevin Dan I assume you can hear me through my computer Yeah, so this isn't gonna work though this is This is Andre here Cassius collard and so we need the the full zoom to work to be able to record the meeting right

now that would work for the room. Do you want to try this one more time since there's one more minute so Tassie just restarted the computer system and trying to get it to work through the

rooms audio visuals

some 5037645163764516

She's reconnecting I'm gonna mute my system here

testing you guys serious

I wonder what's up

chilling it's hard to large

Yeah back on track. Okay, so

I will finish I'm gonna save it for the agenda planning because the only updates I was doing was gaps next one and you're totally requested to join us at your August meeting we will not be live and she has available

okay the only thing I had about previous to this important one right

recommend

so next move on to operate

I have a pretty extensive site that will provide some broad information I've got a section on our planet teacher Background section on sustainable funding, sustainable revenue compensation and then two additional information utility shared with the energy board so before I begin to see how much time you want to watch this in which you know which of those three sections I'm sure the sample revenue section

I mean, some of the Who here has seen presentations before about the future plan

Okay,

I can't get some of the people on board if you could do feature and

staple and then I believe you know, that's already up in your shared folder. So I can leave that for a follow up questions. And so we'll Yeah, we can kind of play by your Well, thanks for having me. My name is already the Environmental Services Department with Cassie I have the pleasure

audio someone choir

so I'm a member of climate team, environmental services, co leader our future which is our update to the atomic action plan of years past I'll be sharing more about that

because I get better down there

somebody in the back say something Cassie standing right next to the mic so I can hear her well.

I'm the one that's gonna be talking for a while. Hear me okay.

I can hear you. It's just a little on the quiet side. So if I get any background noise at the house and overwhelmed and I can maybe grab some some headphones. Well, that's anything you can do to turn up the mic is helpful. It's also hard for

our recorder minutes recorder if it's too quiet, and there any remote mics down there. We could put a couple of those around the table

and test that we're

just working on today.

Yep, I can hear that better.

And when you guys do and I can pass them around as well. Those

sounds sensitive.

Super. So again, honored interview. I'm Cathy's team here at the city and environmental services. And I have the pleasure of CO leading our climate future. So I'm going to give you all just you know a brief overview of our climate future is a framework for action. Just like setting.

So yeah, as you can see here, we really do look at it, systems based approach and, you know, try to it's a pretty inclusive and exhaustive way of organizing our environmental policies, programs and initiatives. So here's the first section slides are coming future reaffirms the commitment to these three key areas. In the past, we had just a Climate Action Plan dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That's called mitigation. And that work goes back to 1980s. With our first Climate Action Plan adoption, then we added in 2021, a focus on incorporating our renewable electricity goal 100% renewable electricity by 2030, in partnership with Platte River, and zero waste for 2030 coal. Most recently, just last year, city council adopted an additional interim goal on our way to carbon neutrality. And that's to reach 50%, below our baseline by 2026. So out of you know, key targets, measurements, a lot of the work of our climate future, basically all of that dovetails with these strategic plans, and many more, you know, all the way to the right is city plan, wonder we want to just shrink down that. Feedback.

So, Baldwin, the city plan in order to sort of mothership focused on communities, livability, and you've got housing, strategic planning, transit, this master plan, plan, and our future fits right in with that suite of Community Priorities, well vetted, well established. And, of course, our strategic objective climate, but also long ways, really want this plan updated, was bring into focus, the idea that it's not just a math problem, to address the climate crisis, you can't just be focused on mitigation has to be bad. And what I mean is, you have to also be thinking about how we adapt to changes that are already happening. And we build more resilience and especially how we put some people at the center of the process and the center of the outcomes. So that we're not just looking for more and better technology, or really figuring out ways to help the community build capacities, co lead solutions, and to really embrace our climate future, as as a transformational way of living our lives to make ourselves better, to be healthier, happier, and more well rounded. And just to go a little deeper on how the plan came about 18 months, over 1000 people beginning getting before COVID, continuing through, both in person and virtual, and especially in focus on center in the process of inequity leading with race and align with strategic objectives, city council, and really recognizing that there are past harm systemic oppression and racism that are keeping people from being able to actively participate in processes like these and taking part and actively engaging with local government. And so there was a special emphasis on asking folks to bring in voices that don't typically show up in, you know, city led engagement process. So just to mention a few examples, there was funding to compensate people to act as plan ambassadors to take that material and go to the communities a liaison with, identified in plants, you know, young people, people of color, black indigenous people with disabilities, students, right, not a whole slew of folks who don't participate. Same right. And that plan ambassador program was really successful and really created this visionary framework for action, including a focus on equity before, this is not the most updated because it doesn't have the 2026 target. But just to ground you back in our goals and the targets that city councilors adopted, we did achieve that 2020 goal of being 20%, below our baseline from 2005. Since then, we are holding a bit steady, we haven't been making that, you know, rapid progress towards the 2030 goal. And we know that progress is not linear in this space. We can talk more about that in more detail. So after that long process of you know, engagement and community ambassadors and all of that the output were these 13 big moves is visionary outcomes that tried to articulate what we heard loud and clear from the community as what they envisioned as a better sustainable Nature, Fort Collins, not asking people how can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Or how can we achieve 100% renewable electricity, not the technical side of things. We asked people, what do you want to see for the future in this community, if we're really a sustainable place to live? What would that look like and deed, this is what emerged. One fun thing for this group in particular, I'll highlight is that water and air quality did not come out in such a explicit way. Because of the time that this plan was developed, I think there was an air quality strategic plan. And I think there was maybe Cassie controlling more, because I was I was actually in a different department when this plan was developed, so it wasn't as involved. And then and then water obviously has a huge focus in our utilities department, I would say that both do become a big part of the conversation inside our resilience work. And there's an opportunity where we could reevaluate and decide to make some amendments to this framework, if it really has legs. It is designed to be evergreen. So if we could, you know, bring air quality and water more tangible way, I think that might help people understand better how it's how those things are related. So each of these visionary outcomes, each of these big moves, has a number of strategies or next moves that roll into that. And that's what we, you know, commit to and plan around and evaluate on a two year cycle. We're just in the midst of releasing the second two years strategic plan, what we call this next moves plan, which will then died work, at least on the staff side for now, through the end of 2024. And what you see here is where it gets a little more wonky, but this is how we've talked to counsel about it, recognizing that there are a number of different ways that we can get towards our goals. And each one of them has costs and trade offs and investments, policy and programmatic decisions to be made. And so I won't ask you to read all these, but you can kind of see how there's focus on transportation, buildings electricity, another way of looking at that will be through this graph. So just to orient you to this, the goal on the right hand side of the graph is, you know, 2030, and the dotted line is that 2030 goals. So on the right hand side is 2030. The dotted line is where counsel is asked our community to get to and coming down from the top is better because you're talking about the reduction from baseline top. And so the dark line, you can see we've tracked our progress, sometimes up sometimes down. And then as of 2021 20 24%, below baseline, what we've mapped through these pathway pathways, which are quantified strategies is a potential reduction of about 70%. From baseline. So quite get in there to 80. That's it? Oh, yes. So that is if that sort of the do nothing more for us. That's great question and a longer presentation, we have more of a breakdown of that. But basically, we just continued with the same programs we had around to the you know, efficiency and conservation of energy. That would be what we might expect to sort of balance out population growth. What the bigger dotted line represents that pathway is the combination of a number of policies, programs and investments that need to be made in the various sectors. And none of these are set in stone. None of these are definite. But this is the conversation that city council had last fall, when staff tried to answer their question of what will it take to get to our goals. You also notice there the undetermined to goal, you know that that 10% recognizes that there is innovation and community leadership needed out there that, you know, the city cannot do it alone. And even inside these pathways, that's not the city doing it alone. That's also, you know, some really hard conversation as a community about where we want to invest our resources and what sorts of policies and programs we want to support. So this is what we showed Council in October saying, Okay, if you know you're serious about getting into these goals, we've laid out sort of, you know, some pathways of strategies, here they are on a calendar, here are the things that you know, our community through their elected leaders will need to be considering working on in the coming years in order to have a chance of implementing the policies that we'll get to towards those goals. In a moment, you can see the code on the bottom there that the orange ones correspond to stuff in the building space land uses purple Yeah, that has to do with our trash and recycling collection. That was a really heavy lift project. Throughout last year, first part of this year, the council did actually adopt a new policy that will go into effect in 2024. With single family homes and small apartment complexes, we'll have a single collection. Skinny on us that have come up for this group before. Obviously, there's different phases of land use.

Think the building performance standards is one and the energy coding probably one where this group could really spend some time leaning in, I think that would be led by the energy services group out of utilities department. But that is a hard conversation, because it's basically saying that, you know, we know that buildings are one of our top tier emitters. And for us to get really serious about our goals, we need to make sure that there are expected standards of proficiency in those buildings, both new construction and existing, we already have a better sort of runway towards new construction, because the codes are getting stronger and stronger every two years. But, but for existing buildings, what does that look like? What sort of, you know, Home Energy listings should be required when somebody puts their home up for rent or for sale, so that you people can really compare whether they're meeting those performance standards. So those could be some interesting, challenging conversations. And this roadmap does go a little bit further, it gets lighter as you get closer to 2030. But you can see that, you know, we do have to be really thinking ahead now, in order to, you know, help support our community and their elected leaders have these important conversations. So that's kind of the overview of OCF as, as a strategy for implementing policy, I'll just touch really briefly on how we are really centering and equity, these guiding principles are pulled from the plant, not word for word, but from the thematically to try and really set the tone for or how we implement with equity.

The one thing I'll underscore here is that really powerful concept to recognize that the root causes of injustice in environmental space, are the same as those that cause social distress and injustice across communities. And that is really the extraction and exploitation of resources and people. So it's a bit of a provocative statement, but it is, you know, what really resonated with people and help them engage more with the plan and recognize it wasn't just an engineering plan, how we get more solar panels, it's really how do we transform the way that we live in our in our community, so that it's a healthy, safe and sustainable place? I might just skip this slide for the sake of time. But Mark does participate in UCF core team. So last thing on equity, we really trying to emphasize that aspect of it's not just the city's work alone, right? Yes, there's large scale renewables, yes, we have to work with time, wherever. And they're things like running the buses that the city is always going to do. But those fall in the city lead category, right. And that's important, we need to be keeping this, our climate future lens on all of that. And then there's things that just the community is going to do over the community that that is already doing. And that maybe just needs a brighter light shined on it or to be able to scale up. And then there's this really interesting space of collaborative leadership, that CO lead model. So there's lots of different examples of this when you go into but I'll just very briefly highlight that. We are currently working on investing in all three of these areas. In the city led space, we are compensating people for their lived experience, through an application process where folks can be paired up with a project manager or city Lead Project and bring in that perspective from that community and then life. In the CO lead space. We are standing up committee this summer that's focused on environmental justice and Britain strong equity lens, to, to initially city network, but it could be to other projects, in order to make sure that, you know, we're not having too many blind spots, we're able to really deepen how we consider implementation and impact of our work. And then finally, there's a small grants program funded for the next two this year and next year, just to try and enhance capacity building just to try to help a small group that might want to turn into a nonprofit or might want to take more leadership in this space to try and help them grow. So those are some specific examples of our shared leadership community partnership, which you might have remembered as big move one in our climate future. Ultimately, if you go on the website, FC gov.com/ocf, for climate action, find it pretty easily. Hopefully, you'll get a look at the plan, or at least the summary documents. And the number one thing that jumps out at people is that this plan is not so silly. It's not super wonky, it's written and really approachable language. And we've had incredible response to that. And then people are really appreciative of that. That sort of wraps up my high level summary of OCF. And maybe I'll just pause for two questions before we talk sustainable revenue, be watching the chat?

You haven't heard Governor Dan to either when you guys have any questions. Okay, okay.

Yeah, no questions here. I thought that was a terrific overview of the program. And I have to say I am I am pretty impressed with the acknowledgments that go into that. A lot of time with those, those high lofty planning goals, I find either a lack of detail, or an ambiguity in the acknowledgement of sort of a reliance outside of the city government and city role, as well as a necessity of technological development to achieve those goals. And so I just recognize that, that you hit on a lot of those things. And so I appreciate that being part of the plan. So thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for this works. And hopefully, it strikes the right balance between high level and visionary enough to be sort of evergreen as a framework for organizing, but then also having that two year cycle of updating a more strategic next moves plan that allows it to stay tangible and in implementation. Speaking of implementation, you know, obviously, what we hear about all of those interwoven plans, right. I mean, our climate future is not separate and distinct from the housing strategic plan, or our active modes plan, right? It's a way of organizing describing, and when you go to those plans that are more concrete, that are price tags attached, it costs money to run buses and expand that system. And it costs money in general, investing in land bank programs, and increasing housing affordability. So that's where, you know, our council has been having a long conversation. They started in 2021, in the fall with a sub subcommittee of the council Finance Committee, and they started talking about, okay, what are those funding gaps. And so, the Parks and Rec master plan, recreate, you know, identified pretty substantial deferred maintenance gap. The transit master plan is looking at, you know, $14 million a year plus, and then, you know, that helps attract matching funds. So, in addition of the federal grants and things like that, to get to build out in full operation, so you can get past that chicken and the egg problem where people don't ride the buses, because they're not frequent enough. Well, they're not frequent enough, because they don't have enough, you know, connectivity and ridership. So so that's what the master plan for the transit identified housing strategic stat plan much the same, a lot of proven strategies, that could be scaled up with further investment. And then when the council said, okay, and we really know that there's a huge need to be accelerating and transforming our work in the climate space. What's the news there, we did our best to, you know, put a price tag on some of those near term investments. And we'll go into those in a bit more detail. But you can see it's a it's a pretty big, pretty big price tag for what's really needed to help advance and move the needle on this. So this jumps pretty quickly into a high level of detail. I'm not going to break each one of these down, but this is what the council will see tomorrow night in their discussion, and this is where it started. Or this was I guess, the refined list actually after a number of conversations on that subcommittee, and now three work sessions are done. This will be the third work session with the full council to a franchise fee up top is A Council action can be taken without voter approval. And he is allowed under our current contract with Excel to raise that from $1 a month to $3 a month. Or I'm sorry, from 1% to 3%. It would be around $1 A month extra per household. And so that would raise about a million dollars a year, which could be dedicated to the rest of them. The other four listed here with utility occupations truck would all have to go to voters for approval on the ballot in this November. So that's what they're really going to be getting clear about tomorrow. What would you like to see come forward for us to vote on in July? What would Council like to vote on to decide what ballot measures should actually go to our community? So substance tax you can imagine, sometimes called the sin tax could be imposed on alcohol, cannabis and or nicotine. Utility occupation tax, I'm not going to get into there wasn't a lot of support for that at this time. It could come up again, in a different fashion Boulder, recently approved something similar property tax, pretty straightforward, deciding whether it would be you know, three, four or five mils. And then sales tax. This is what Denver has done about two years ago, almost three years ago. Now. They their voters approved 63%. Yes, vote to impose a quarter cent sales tax that specifically dedicated to climate funding, they call it the Climate Protection Fund. And it has six allowable uses that are broad enough to allow flexibility but narrow enough to you know, expect results.

Yes, sir?

I'm also holding the microphone.

Yeah, I can hear all arrays. Terrific. Cassie, you're a little faint? I can it's just very quiet.

I've been using my funding. Okay,

so the question that I have is all this. Has this been broken down

in the community by impact by income as CCC? social, economic statuses, yes. Have you done that, when it comes to this, disproportionately affect

people of lower income, middle income brackets. So you can see the resident annual impact on the right there. And the level of granularity that they've done is basically representative there. So I wouldn't say that they've segmented by income level. They The council has been repeatedly clear that they favor less regressive taxes. That is very tricky to do, because by the nature patches tend to be progressive. But of course, you know, they've also talked about things like income, qualified assistance programs, things like that sales tax would exempt, you know, what is currently exempted food menstrual products. So the last one here is large intertops. That's been brought up. Throughout the time, it sort of went away when it was large on their feet and came back from our community tax that would apply to two entities only. And with generate that number is actually been adjusted downward by building something older. But it would be based on the reporting threshold of 25,000 metric tons of co2 equivalent every year. So it only affects brought on as a Bush who have adapted to reduce their emission shung emissions to a point where that would go away. Yet those in favor of it certainly say that, well, something's better for now. And it would help incentivize revenue decline and ensure that no one else came over.

We can get into that market.

So can I ask them or just do a clarification on that previous slide. So yeah, you're coming in City Council have been taken into account. That's one of the reasons we got rid of the utility occupation tax. It's because they were looking at trying to make things less regressive. They liked the sales tax because a lot of tourists, visitors, and so there is so much less progressive than some of the other stuff. But largely meta tats, questions around that revolve around

a couple of things. One

Broadcom just signed a contract with Apple to make chips there. So it's not clear how they did their plan. Increase. And then also as a potential $51 million per metric ton co2 is currently used by EPA, or they're looking at holding that closer to, like 100 or something. So that could have come from the large meta tag. So the other question I had, because I noticed, I've always heard that like F

parks is up there, but on the previous item said something about master plan projects, is that different than Parks and Rec, though those are the projects the city and recreate. Okay, and that's all. And actually, we've been talking about that too, about how it could affect and impact celebrating the Aquatics side of things. Yes, I'm sensing.

housings, like different choices, subsidies tax, which has been illustrated in the past, unfairly impact low income residents, the property tax that can pass on the renters, that sales tax, those things are turned on reps.

Throughout the year

I can just sit. Sir, I don't think you could

put a floor on. Passing.

As I say, the counselor shared those concerns. And I think it's a tricky spot because they're trying to police are and yet generate revenue, it is a bit, the irony is not lost, that you would increase property tax and potentially help house farmers projects, I don't know where the breakeven point is, in terms of, you know, I'm not an expert by any means. And would say, substance tax, I end up seeing all the support for that alongside of our committer. Partly because of those reasons that he raised. If I had to guess I would say from previous conversations, property tax and sales tax, probably the two that are most likely to be referred to the ballot. And I think there's definitely some interest in the franchise fee increase because they're relatively small increase opportunity to really potentially get some additional funding. I have another slide here that talks about utilities, energy services, investments in renewables and efficiency and better storage. That's part of their rate structure part of our utilities, they structured about four and a half million dollars a year funds all of this fantastic program. So you can imagine another $1 million interesting, we shall see. And then again, sorry to spoil the deal, this is what I think the current package as proposed by staff after all those different aspects or consider that you know, council support or change or say no, we know it, but this is what will be proposed on as far as I understand it.

I mean, I know that the people that are working on this literacy manual, they're pushing for Parks and Rec and to see that number just continually go up and up and up and now they want to use it but it was supposed to be originally was proposed for I thought operation and maintenance of current facilities and now they want to use it to add in additional facilities instead of you using that money for the clients realm and I, you know, I'd rather see the client

in terms of

these critical things, you I guess taxes, those are often a particularly good one to offload that

they can actually just raise a hotel fee or tax, what exactly as tall as part of the tourist, Master Plan conversation, I can't even remember the fall described by the court. And so they did. Hotels did vote to self impose an additional fee that could then be used for improvements. But none of that is all for these other priorities. And I hear that that's really what council have been trying to balance, recognizing the need to backfill for maintenance. Part of what's attractive people in this community is our music trail system, natural areas, parks, recreation, we have a pretty good filing system for our natural entities. The Parks has not been built around this federal funding source. And it often comes in and sort of backfill, rather something, you know, our smartphone will take on all the media and maintenance for the downtown, because they have to store your stuff for payments, and they just have suddenly been a challenge for our leadership.

Yeah, oh, the question was about attracting retaining employees in the Parks and Recreation Department. Yeah, that hasn't been an issue for us, you know, our community across the country really, for those entry level, jobs getting a little bit better now. But that might have closer breakdown on some of the specific strategies. This is not like a final list by any means. This was trying to give Council a taste of what that climate umbrella. So I'll just go back one slide. You can see that for sales tax, that 10 million approximate, based on a quarter cent increase, we generate 10 million, those two uses umbrella. Because you remember originally voted for transit, housing, Parks and Rec. And the council Finance Committee, my trademark kept saying why don't we see more on climate? Why don't we say more climate. And so this would be a climate umbrella fund. And what we tried to describe it as something that's inclusive of investments in transit, and housing. Now, of course $10 million a year does not equate to this $31 million a year. So there would have to be trade offs. And as it's currently proposed by our finance department, those funds coming in through sales tax would be utilized using our current two year budgeting process. That's not what city of Denver does. But But that's one way of doing it. And I think it does give some flexibility. So that one year there may be a need to use the whole kitten caboodle to create matching funds for transit say they're trying to get matching funds for extending the bus rapid transit to West Elizabeth or North College. Or maybe there's a year where $5 million is needed for a great opportunity for housing affordability for land bank, right. So some flexibility rather than giving 10% every year to 10 different programs. But that's still to be determined. It's been very hard for our leadership to get some clarity and just sources from councils through this process. And now that becoming better defined as month year, depending on what they asked to come forward. stronger focus on clarifying and defining those uses. This is my summary slide. I also have about eight more slides going into each one of these. The first half of the distinguished How would you like to proceed?

So again, I mean, I know there's one more more metric tomorrow.

Let's say decide to add something else tomorrow night is the final work session. July 21, would be a regular meeting where they would vote to decide which measures that is in order for that table review, in the month of August, we refer to devout time travelers. And if they do vote, yes, but any ballot measures is not after that July 25. meeting where staff and council Protocol Review no longer provide information for educational basis, but you can't do any sort of promotion.

So what's the so what's your feeling or whether what counts? What counts is going to finalize tomorrow versus whether there's a chance to enforce them before the regular meeting between workstations.

There's nothing finalized until the regular application at work sessions and council members can actually give direction. However, as staff, we're always trying to get a clear, you know, step forward. And in this case, the timing is so tight, that it's really important that you come away from our session RMA with our best estimate of what you know, they want to see come up for a vote on July. So there will still be time for boards to put their input. You know, since the rules will advocate and ultimately it will be much more regular final ballot measures. Okay, so,

I mean, I don't think we can get any kind of recommendation, or between today and tomorrow. But I mean, I had an alternative proposal for the funding, and other funding is to be distributed and what should be done. And I wasn't sure how best I had one council member telling me that input is better before the work sessions than the regular meetings because the decisions are excellent made of the workstations. And then during the meeting for tomorrow

formality. And so that's why I was asking

whether, you know, whatever they decide tomorrow could still extend to that.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that. All the decisions are made before session. Obviously, there's more, it's less formal. So there's more space that sort of have battled for as opposed to having other members on the Dyess and then all.

The sudden we're seeing came on, I wouldn't pull a search.

Okay. I think it's important to note that yes, decision are officially made at work sessions. But there are important discussions and staff do take great, you know, Mayor, they put a lot of weight in what they say, however, they don't give collective or individual in terms of influencing on the uses and your ideas for how funding can be used. I think that's actually very timely. And I would recommend, you know, sharing that with council members, they're probably going to have much time to discuss that on, I would hope that they would dive in a little bit, give us a sense of what they see. But I would say, sharing them talk to members, but also sharing on staff. Because we'll be the ones who are helping to put forward the language that would go into the ballot and help define how the funds could be used, as well as sort of the background info, suggesting and most impactful.

Okay, well, so I can share with you at some point, I don't know if you want to do it now or not what and what I came up with as an alternative seems to have been everything fairly well, depending on what was asked for. But it doesn't include this extra. Whenever for the aquatic centers, that kind of stuff or Parks and Rec.

It just clicked through the last few slides we got also informal. Let me just do this. I wanted to mention this one just to set the stage. I mentioned this earlier that you know four and a half $5 million a year for one river. Six and a half. Sorry for energy efficiency, customer billables with flexibility, etc. That's like built into the rate structure with us ongoing investments in the housing space, and then obviously some pretty big ongoing investments in transit. One thing to note in the utility space Is that without these investments since 2005, in less than 20 years, our electricity use 20% Higher. But because of all that efficiency, especially a compass hold steady despite population. So that sets the stage for how so far format. So this list those 13, big moves on the left hand side, and one way to sort of framing this couldn't be that these represent the allowable uses for that client umbrella and sales tax, because these are already representative of what we've heard from the community both in the archive proclaim about a future plan development, and also through all those many other documents, state plan, and transit master plan, housing, strategic planning. And so when you sort of break it down by big, you go, you come back to these pathways and strategies I mentioned that roll up into these bigger areas for investment. And so starting with foreign transit, you kind of can see some things on the left, that would be weird, it's against those to say, in the black box there, accelerate or scale on the left hand side, and then transform on the on the right hand side. There is 22, I'm not going to walk through each one in great detail, but you have these in your shared folder, until you can look at them. In the future. This has been 13 on electric vehicles. And down at the bottom is sort of what we've estimated. In the near term. There's obviously a lot of variability and flexibility. But recognizing there some specific early shovel ready projects, this would be increasing. While we're already doing utility space for efficiency, also helping to convert to electrification of space and water heating, that sort of stuff. There's a lot laid out in the app and modes plan, as you're probably familiar with leisure activity. And in the zero waste space, which is also, you know, key outcome goal area, our planning future. And there's more, but that's sort of what we presented to get a taste. All right, I just wanted you to kind of see, go back to that summary slide. I'd

love to hear your suggestions here. Your timing. I had a question about that. Both light paths to this one. Yeah. So you've got all those pieces there that, you know, show how much you can reduce the various. It looks like you have to start all of those right away in order to get those reduction that you're looking at that right? In other words, you've got to delay somebody because they're not fun to hear whatever inhibits your ability to reach that beta reduction in 2030. Is that right?

It varies depending on the specific elements, but some of them are more policy driven. Some of them might be more programmatic. So the investments needed might be stronger in one area than the other, of course, sooner is better. Talking about trying to make real progress, and we have to work with constraints of you know, how much business our city council can do, how many conversations our community is able to have once, for example, the land use code updates that was on there as 2022 items leading up to 20 way through, obviously, that struck a real important curb chord with our community has had to expand and slow down that process. So you know, we can't just come back and go, Okay, now let's talk about building performance standards. Right on top of that, another hard conversation. So I think it's, I think it's really astute that, you know, you have to start sooner. And you have to map it out on a pathway or on a roadmap, I should say that makes sense for the community.

It does seem to me that when you look at that list, that first two or three quarters is a total. That's pretty obvious where you should be emphasizing.

There's a lot in the electricity space that's directly tied to our influence as a part owner of Power Authority, converting to renewable energy closing down the coal plant, and their current Integrated Resource Plan does show getting to between 80 and 90% renewable electricity by 2030. So there's a lot there happening.

Right? And then if you were to add on to that, and this is where we get into, to the you know the community equality issues With buildings and electricity combined is finding ways to make it affordable for people to properly insulate and cooler housing in ways that don't require tremendous amounts of resources. For example, house whole house fans is air conditioning, having properly insulated and ventilated attic spaces and things like that. And this would go toward not new buildings, but existing buildings, which is obviously what 70% of the existing buildings. I mean, I look at that, and they say, that's where you focus your time, your money, your effort. And I think, given that, if you were to do that, that those percentages may be an underestimate. If you can get the community involved, if you can make it so that they want to do it part of the problem is, it's coming back to this communication scholars, you have to get people to want to do things and, and get them to feel like they can't. And that's the more important part. A lot of people want it. They don't feel like they can, how do we make them feel like they can, we can make those things

work.

And that maybe, maybe we're focusing, in some ways too much on the money, and not enough on the people on the human assets that we know, maybe that's down the road.

And you I had to great point, I really appreciate your perspective on that. And I think it has to be done concurrently, you have to be planning for the future, making sure you have the resources to invest, to accelerate to ultimately transform. But in the here and now you have to be working every day, to make people's lives better, to help them live in healthier, better air quality indoor air quality, to help them save money on bills. And I just flipped through this slide because it's just there's a whole bunch here that the energy services department updated their board the energy board on this month. And there's a lot of really specific really good work happening, not just out of energy services, but in partnership with, you know, healthy homes and for indoor air quality teams, right? The weatherization work of trying to implement on that EPA grabs and you know, we could go on and

on. It was a healthy homes initiative, as far as I'm concerned. I know. But I mean, I was just looking at this in the in the the only way we're going to achieve our goals is reduction. And therefore we need to get people, we need to be able to give people a reduction without impacting their lives. And they need to be able to buy into that. So throwing big money, numbers out there may not make them happy. Unless it's in ways that we can help them. Think about Mark's concerns about the Parks and Rec Department. And having talked to Mike runs it. He really is concerned about their budget exploding visibles and new projects being proposed. And but if people perceive this as something that is for them, neither one of them they don't well. But we do need to get people to want to use recognize the need to reduce and allows give them the ability. Because if you can heat your house to 68 for two thirds of the cost that you're paying now, it's no brainer they're going to do. We just need to make them feel or know that they can do it. So part of this money has to be outreach, it can't just be infrastructure. It can't just be purchasing equipment, and hiring people. It's also got to be getting people involved and going out to the community and saying you can do this. And here's how. Because it all comes down to self advocacy, people who don't think that they can do things. Next.

Yeah, well said. And I think that, you know, our colleagues in the communications and community engagement branches of the utilities department wholeheartedly agree and put a lot of time into trying to help our community understand the benefits of conservation and efficiency. And I think there is a certain amount of scaling up with more resources that can be done. That's some of the stuff we've identified. It goes on, right there's there's additional examples of where, you know, and you can see building performance standards beginning to show up here. Renewable Electricity program, these are, you know, some of these, you know, there's a lot of different programs around trying to get people to you know, sort of incentivize people to like reminders, behavior change campaigns, but ultimately it can come down to subsidizing the cost of converting to Heat Pump, right? And that's what we're seeing being done in Denver really successfully, for example, with their climate protection fund? Absolutely. The technology has improved. The question was about heat pumps and their efficacy in cold climates. It the technology has improved, immeasurably, tested so much in the last few years where now there's a combination of things between higher efficiency, heat pumps, but also heat strips that can be added to supplement for those sub zero climates. And so now it's really a question of getting the, the technical folks on board the H fac folks who, you know, maybe heard that they don't work fast. And so you're trying to like, drive more demand, but you're also trying to improve, you know, adoption among Exactly. Who don't tell you, Oh, that's a waste of your money. It is right now currently more expensive. I mean, at our house, we priced out natural gas furnaces, and you know, running between five and 10,000, depending on the quality and efficiency. And then when you get into the heat pump lamps 15,020 23,000. And that's tough. But that's where, to your point, if you can make it a no brainer that natural people would choose one of them.

No, I just, I mean, I wanted to get back to his comment about the communication issue. And I think that's, I mean, I keep plugging this but I think that's why the inflation Reduction Act helped, is because a lot of the money that maybe would have had to go to subsidies or various other things before and now it's coming from the federal government in the cities can focus more, I think, on getting the message out, and bringing all of the different parties together to try and implement the inflation Reduction Act. Because I mean, other places that have done this yet, there's been big problems with not having enough people trained on how to install a heat pump, or even, you know, what they mean and stuff. And even though the money is there, the people still have to have funds to pay up front, and then they get a rebate, or they get a tax return. So what can you do to provide that upfront financing? I mean, I know I suggested at one point, you know, the city set set up some kind of revolving fund to be able to handle that. But I guess that's the city doesn't like doing those kinds of things, the legal department in particular. And so but you know, something so that people don't have to bring the money out of pocket and then get paid back later.

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the big problems with rebate programs. When we really, just as an example, in our house, we're considering buying into solar farm are apparent. But I've seen too many times where those rebates disappear, and you have to have the money up front. I think Mark's absolutely right. We need to fold it in there so that people don't have to pay it back. But their costs are, what their costs are upfront.

You also need to have enough tax liability for a tax rebate to make sense, right? And

maybe we need it'll be on tax rebates, or other kinds of rebates. Tip for tax. Bill,

maybe it's yeah, you can see a couple of bullets on this slide under develop strategies for leveraging federal and state funds. doesn't mention the IRA by name, but that's of keen interest and very timely and important area of work, that we need to make sure we're aligned behind so that we're helping those dollars flow into our community. And actually, that that's, you know, one of the specific things we may be able to do with these funds is to help really focus on how we can use the you know, the available funds either through the franchise fee or sales tax or both to help attract more federal funds. Oh, no, now you're getting me out of my depth. I was just showing you these slides as an example. I don't actually know what grid interactive what it is.

I have some idea. Smart Water heaters. Yeah. Just I think they're just smart water heaters so that you can you can you know, they don't heat during high demand times and that kind of stuff.

Yeah. That's low to moderate income housing. Yeah, that does actually speak to the, you know, grid interactive. They call it the caliente.

Oh, I'm forgetting An

invisible power plant that's not virtual, what is it virtual virtual power plant? The idea that if you have enough, you know, grid interactive devices, and you know that they can actually reduce demand substantially from our peak loads, because they know when to turn themselves on and off. And that's

Well, thanks for walking through that in such detail, I really appreciate the feedback in the comments. And we'd love to hear more specificity around how the funds can be used, you know, both the staff and in on that level of detail around leveraging for grant funding or subsidizing you know, conversion of the, you know, water heating and cooling or anything like that. And then also, of course, to our city leaders so that they can be considered.

Did anybody online have any questions or comments? Gavin or Samantha? Or SAR, Gavin or Dan? I just picked up. Samantha and Kevin are still there. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. So I'm on to the next presentation and just a discussion, okay, let me get this

I'll get started. Oops, that is bad. Okay, I'll give a little bit of context while Marcus out of the room. Because I think he has most of it checked. But um, and then I'll turn it over to the Angele. Actually, after I give a little context, but we wanted to give you guys an update on an air toxics monitoring grant that you hadn't heard about in quite a while. This is one it's been like over a year since we applied. This was a half million dollar air toxics monitoring grant that came through the EPA. We partnered with Larimer County, CSU and this board actually wrote support letters for us as we did the application. We were notified last year and about April, no, sorry, October or November, that there was an intention to award that to us. From the EPA. We still do not have that final award letter in hand, like we've been doing some back and forth with the EPA, they took a while to get their contracting officer in place. And since then, we've been navigating some q&a and some finer details. We think we're getting closer, they have not threatened that they're taking this away or anything. And this is one where we're amongst this partnership, most of the work is happening through CSU. So there is an air toxics monitoring component. There's a community outreach component of this. So it's got a lot of different engagement things along with monitoring. So what we wanted to do for you guys, there's a specific element of this grant that is a city county partnership, and it's to pull together a regional air quality monitoring Advisory Committee. We know the grant hasn't been awarded, but we have DeAngelo onboard doing our outreach and engagement for air quality. So he started to do some thinking about this board, how it could come together, like so some preliminary thoughts. So that's what we thought we'd offer for you guys is just kind of an update and a check in on that. So you can hear directly from D'Angelo about what he's been planning. Yeah.

It's, um, so everything in the ground is stuff we proposed. So are they putting any conditions on it? No. Do they expect us to start forming it before they were the grant? No. Is there anything that keeps us from just exploring what that would take? Because, you know, we've been thinking about for a while, and we we think we need it anyways. Like, frankly, with or without the scrap. So no, not a no, this is a separate project from the infrared camera and that I could provide an update on that's when we're buying for the county. It was backordered for a while. So they finally just requested a demo from the supplier. So they have a camera in hand as of like last week. Totally separate workstream though,

which people from university are involved in?

Yeah, this is mostly Department of Atmospheric Science. That's Emily Fisher, Jeff Collette and then the Center for Environmental Justice at Mindy Hill and some other folks over there. People that rarely works with probably no

I just want to separate those ones with the folks From our house, yeah.

Okay. Okay, because like, any more questions, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So now the meat. That's just your context for like, yeah, so specific to this community advisory committee is what Danijela was going to provide some updates. Yeah. And

just some some context to some of the conversations that are going on. So tomorrow, there will be a meeting with the county and CSU to make sure that we're all kind of in alignment with, you know, how that would be put together. So that recruitment method, and then also who will make up that board, right. So currently, and this number isn't set in stone by any means, or we're hoping to have 14 members on that board. And then I have also been discussing having specific kind of subcommittees from that group, that are either technical experts and or community members who have, you know, maybe a background in environmental justice, who are truly out in the communities making sure that they're getting the feedback from the folks that we're wanting to engage with this grant work, right. And I hate that Andre left, because they're doing something similar with the climate team. But I don't I don't know if he shared any of that too. But okay, cool. So you all did see that on a slide. So it'd be something similar to that in the equity and environmental justice space, too. So there are some overlapping priorities between both teams, and we're hoping to kind of navigate that a little bit. But as Cassie mentioned, this is going to be outside of those grant funds that we are still waiting on. So we're hoping to go ahead and like prioritize this and make sure that we get this going to kind of help direct, you know, those funds when they're coming in, sorry, direct the priorities of our group, the team that we have built, to make sure that we're just getting the things that we have in our tasks accomplished. So I don't know if there are specific questions for that online or in the room, but

contextually, we're still waiting, I think, a couple of months. But frankly, we've had two rounds of q&a with the EPA. And each round, it's taking a little more than a month, they don't seem to be in a really big hurry, for some reason. Oh, my God. But they haven't indicated we don't think the funding award is threatened in any ways. We think it's just down to figuring out details. They're giving a lot of big awards. And like, so I think Colorado culminated, we get like five or six of these large EPA awards, and this is to the tune of a half million dollars. So it's a big one for us.

The schedule will change based on when it's awarded, but it is a three year grant. So we've got some flexibility. And then part of the context for what D'Angelo is talking about is, we've decided to form this advisory committee. Like it will inform the grant but we're not using any grant funds. So we want to also use this committee that, you know, this board sent a letter of recommendation about and many different environmental groups expressed their support. So we know there's an ask and a need for that. And that's the kind of thing that we think we can prioritize as the angel is talking about.

Any additional questions?

I think at this point, we're just making sure that we all got our ducks in a row and on the same page around how we're going to go about the process, right, we want to make a simple, smooth process. So

that's it. We want one more update. So we are working for CSG center for public deliberation also. So we have a lot of s coming in for community coordination. With oil and gas. We haven't asked for more engagement. But we know that's down in the weeds, like we have people who want to get their hands on code, not so much have that bigger conversation. We also haven't asked for people to just like, have a bigger conversation than oil and gas and that air quality. So more than just this board is doing. So we've talked a little bit about when we kick off this recruitment process or as we identify people, we might also want to have some kind of community event, like some kind of open house. So we're starting to talk about that. That would be something we'd want to bring you guys updates to and even help with like, what would you guys like to see out of a community event? What objectives how should we frame questions, those kind of things might be great to weigh in on. So we're just starting to think about that and we want to go it gets tricky because you can go really broad as you guys know, in the air quality cover association. So how do we keep it kind of focused on things that an advisory group could influence that will help guide our work.

With for that specific grant, it's air toxics and air toxics communicate, communication related, we plan to also use it for ozone related things because you can measure ozone precursors along with air toxics, just depending on the suite of like pollutants that you measure. But ozone is not the focus, not the primary focus, it's just going to be an add on for because it's a regional interest. So that's mostly focused on air toxics. But the bonus of this committee with the Angela's putting together, since we're doing it outside of the grant, it can inform the air toxics. So they can talk a lot more about what else is going on in the air monitoring world, like so it can go broader than the grant will be an advantage of it. But we kind of want to keep it focused on a monitoring and a pollution source conversation.

What do you foresee is the the function and goals of this committee.

So that's a that's a part of that conversation from tomorrow, I did draft a charter already for this group. And like pass mentioned, one of the big things is making sure that we're getting the correct feedback for the right feedback from community members that they're engaging with to determine where we would have some of these monitoring sites, right. There's a big environmental justice focus on this. And so the neighborhoods that we, the group will have to identify together when we're doing our engagement. But the areas where we're wanting these these monitors to go is going to be kind of that, that bigger focus for this group, I would say anything to that? community feedback, monitoring.

A big part of it is also she loved that she gets things with air toxics is how to communicate that information. Because yeah, something like benzene is everywhere. It's ubiquitous, right? So you see any level of that, and you have to communicate something about that. So how do we start doing health risk communication, as a city in a county organization? And how do we align that with state communication around these things? Because the state's doing a lot more in the air toxics conversation.

The soldiers feel a little in the dark as to what the air quality monitoring Advisory Committee will do. You know, are they going to draft mutations? Will they make suggestions for how to communicate or derive data from the community? Maybe it's feasible, lubricating grip on the confines of it, what it can do and can't do what it will do.

So I think there'll be the liaison liaisons and the Advisory Committee for the project team that will then enact the work that we're trying to do with this grant. Was that

so is this a standing committee? Or is it going to be one is a limited term?

That's so that would be a good question for the team that we meet with tomorrow.

You know, I mean, if you achieve your goals, will there be a need for it can be your purpose? It does seem that you're gonna want of course, community members, but I think you're also gonna want people from industry, people who are doing the missions being on there, so that they can hear.

Sure, absolutely.

I think part of being on the advisory committee is hearing those dissenting opinions that they don't want to hear well, tough. Need to my opinion. And so as you're going through constructing it, I would say that a certain proportion of it should be people who are being the mentors. You're going to be riding a horse, and the communities for these AirWatch.

How to give them I think one of the ways to do is go into the schools.

Because parents are kids, and you communicate the kids, kids talk to parents and the parents maybe want to get involved. That's one, maybe one avenue here and I've talked about this for quite a bit about the idea of opinion leaders, finding those people who are who others go to for information. I think that's gonna be the big job here, finding the ones who are actually more not expected but could you meet but among those who can help you represent you Being for lack of a better term attack. I don't know if

community champions are communities that are champions within their own communities, right smaller can be the pockets of communities. That is something that we're wanting to target with this advisory board, right? We don't want just your the typical folks that are having at the tables always having these conversations, there's, you want to make sure that there are those voices who, you know, are a part of the underrepresented groups here too, and those who tend to be the ones that are kind of like under fire in that space, right, we want to make sure that we are getting that feedback. And that that message is being shared, I don't know that I would say that this board will be the group that is sharing that message out to whoever it may be, I think that would be something that our teams internally would be doing with, with you all and with counsel when it comes to that, stuff like that. But this group will help kind of inform that feedback that we're providing,

we have members

of large corporations in the panel, both of the emitters, and they have employees that they can talk to that could be so they bring stuff to the table, but they will also hear board members have a say, and they can put their own people, communities, large corporations and such. I guess your difficulty that I see getting people has feminine exactly what you want. They don't know what you want from them, it's gonna be hard for them to walk here. So how did you get the skin out? I argue that what's important is having a kind of a bullet list for yourself. Okay, what do we want to accomplish? Specifically, things that are accomplishable, and that it can be articulated? Very clearly. And then that will help you to get people to volunteer. Because if they're not clear on it, they're not going to do it. And some ways also, they also, I would argue, they're gonna need to say, what's in it for me, even though there is a lot of altruism in there, that's what isn't meant for like my community. So that'll be part of it. It'll be important if you're going to generate beyond the usual suspects. Who right here. Does that mean, you guys have any ideas? Where

may I chime in? So I thought I'd start with noting a common theme that I keep hearing coming up with these various projects. And that's communication. Number one, to produce, you know, a sort of desire to to numerate the problem, then to motivate folks and empower folks to sort of internalize that of, oh, this is the direction that I want to go. And this is why, and I have the tools and the knowledge to move that direction. And that I mean, that's really ubiquitous, most of the conversations we've been having tonight. And that's obviously a very complicated thing. And, you know, there there obviously becomes a balance between using the funds of the project, to promote it, to communicate it, to conceptualize it, etc, etc. And on the other hand, not detracting the funds from the project to do the work the project was intended to do. So I just I recognize that sort of competing interests there. But in all these conversations, I see that coming back around, and with regard to the current conversation, either air toxics, in specific, I think, are a very complex and convoluted topic that a lot of people don't tend to understand very thoroughly. It can sound I mean, a people get turned off, because it's complex and difficult to understand. And also, it's scary. And so if you start saying words, they don't understand about something that can kill you. They shut down the, you know, they get ambivalent, they, they, they're turned off very quickly. And so, you know, again, on both sides of, of the folks who are most impacted by it, you know, may have an ambivalent ambivalence and sort of a shutdown mechanism, because they may be at a higher risk. And on the converse, those folks who may resist This change or feel antagonized by the change that is desired. You'll make made and take sort of a obtrusive attitude or like your don't tell me what to do. This is government overreach, etc, etc. So, hey, I just wanted to sort of mention that as an overarching theme, and and something that I noticed and that I have even personally sort of had to contend with of like, I want to do XYZ. Are there programs to help me how do I educate myself? What is a trustworthy source, etcetera, etcetera. So, I just want to note that I think the communications are a huge part of any success of any project. And again, to bring it back to the specificity of air toxics, I really think that qualified opinions can go a long way. community activists, environmental activists, you know, research literature, there's lots of voices out there that say, benzene is bad for you, or benzene comes from this source. And so I think we're less likely to get people saying, I don't care about benzene, but more likely to have people that, that want to hear more about how it's bad for them, or, you know, how it's produced and and transported, how it why I am disproportionately impacted, or why my dis consideration of ecological aptitude contributes disproportionately to the problem, right? So, you know, the city of Fort Collins saying something about it, our city council saying something about it, or the Sierra Club saying something about it, I feel like often falls on deaf ears. And so having a respiratory expert, or just a medical doctor, or, you know, I'm struggling to think of extra folks that are outside the medical profession. I'm an Air Quality meteorologist. So a lot of times people want to say, Oh, well, you know, about, you know, benzene and oil and gas emissions. And yeah, I know, the general things, but I'm not a doctor, I don't necessarily feel like I have that relationship with the direct public to say, this is why it's bad for you. And this is why you should care about that. I'm more like, when the wind blows, it disperses things. So again, I don't want to ramble too long here. But I think the communications are absolutely paramount to the initiative and the the outcomes of a project. And I think that providing people an opportunity to sort of demystify the problem, and having a qualified voice, a qualified opinion, to share that with them and relate to them and hear their concerns. And, you know, let that inform the project could be figured out a long way towards that communication and success.

I'll get off my soapbox.

What do you see, is this the role of this aircon advisor?

In terms

they're gonna be eyes, which is a recent project? Grant. But in what capacity? If you were to put the kids will what would you see over there? Who are using life? Outside of the advisory committee. So that's salary. So what do you see them? is communicating community private groups,

and this space was?

That's great. That's kind of what uses and validate. Because, you know, that's their, their role was to provide information to the grant receivers. The question is about the expertise, who has the need, and residents. Hiring managers.

I appreciate that. We've got some great folks on that team. So I think we've got a good start, especially with the Center for Environmental Justice and about connections across the community. So we've been doing some

free work for you know,

four together, so I'm excited to see what comes next. And I'm happy to provide updates to you all as we go. A restaurant for sure,

when not much better so.

Maybe understanding sound like this board is going to do more than just just buys about the EPA grant. It sounds like it might have a little bit broader scope or something on emissions that are covered by the grinders is that

I'm sorry, the board. So this, this committee will be advising the project team for the grant on what the priorities are and on air tosses. So

the city land claims the grant itself. And what the grant is supposed to be covering? Whenever. I mean, Catherine mentioned something earlier about the board, having a broader scope and make it cover things that maybe aren't covered by the grant. And that that sounds a little confused about, you know, when they're gonna know. You know, what advice they're giving us grant related and what advice they're giving, that maybe he's not covered by the grant. And

so we understand that. So we will be facilitating these conversations with board. Will, Cassie mentioned was that because of that, because we're creating this community, it's not tied down to grant funds at all, we can pretty much shade Powell that or arrest this, once we've got our priorities taken care of which are then following us about the community priorities. Now, outside of that, absolutely, they can have discussions with us and stuff like that. But that's going to be our primary focus. And because they don't have anything to deal with this leaves us a little bit more flexible with those priorities. So that just to the castle.

I would I just want to make sure that it's I mean, my my concern is that, I think, you know, the board members understand what their roles are, and that, you know, in certain circumstances, that they're providing advice about the grant and that kind of stuff. And in other situations, it may be other topics that are not necessarily covered by that. But that's a little confusing to me, I was as a board member of just going on with it unless I would explain what's explained pretty clearly, you know, those different roles,

and some of the community feedback we've heard so far about that is like, and why we might want to have a little bit of an extended focus, there's a lot of interest in monitoring. So we hear a lot of that. Now, we want to flush out like soil here, people come to us and put more of this or that out and we want to focus discussion, what are the objectives we're trying to reach? It's really hard and interpolate, just focus on air toxics objectives. So a lot of what we've talked about, I think, air toxics will inform the brand. But ozone is part of my discussion to precursors and part of it particulate matter as part of the mind discussion. So it's just we don't think we'll have to limit this board. But just as DeAngelo said, there will be some clear priorities tied to the grant. So clear things that we need to check off the box for objectives tied to the grant. That should tie in community objectives to but we're not limited. Yeah, so you're getting it right. But how we flushed it out, it's gonna evolve as we start fleshing out what those objectives are. And once we have objectives clearly identified, then we can really have a more focused discussion online, right?

Could you just remind me what is the grant limited only to certain species or,

more generally, air toxics with hiring toxics associated with oil and gas. That's what a lot of the community issues came from. We added to the grant application that we're not just going to focus on one source we want to have enough of a sweet America thinks that we can identify oil and gas contribution but also vehicles and also these other major sources in the area. But we do know community members were coming to us first with an interest in oil and gas.

Cassie is the grant specifically and exclusively for monitoring.

No monitoring is one part of it. Then communication and monitoring results is actually a big part of it, too. So how do you like what does that look like? That's something this committee could help inform. So okay, now you have data, do we create a real time website for that? Do we have monthly summary reports? You know, this is the kind of thing that would be a great back and forth with this committee, CSU will come to them and say, Hey, we have a prototype, can we talk through this or something like that? No, this is confusing, or that's amusing, or what we'd really like to see is this. So communication of results. And then there's a interesting piece that isn't fleshed out, we want to see how it works. It's an art installation. What is an art installation around air toxics or air monitoring in general, like, this is all an Emily fishing thing that she's driving, and it'll be fascinating to see how it comes together. But you get other stuff out there, we've heard a lot of cool ideas, that's a place this board might want to weigh in on that committee will be really key in driving, like, maybe the committee evaluates proposals from artists. So there's a lot of flexibility that will be in line with this. And hopefully, it's been like, I would love to hear from you guys. See, you're asking, how do you incentivize participation? There? Yeah, sorry. Is there rigidity

within the grant about what percentages needs to go to monitoring to communications to other things? Or is that really the sort of one of the purposes of this committee to decide that rigidity?

Yes, we've proposed a certain number of monitors for a certain amount of time. And then there's a separate line item in the budget for the art.

Yeah. Got it. So I have a question from someone relatively new to this advisory board, and maybe a little bit of a tough question. But presumably, when this grant was being proposed, there was an opportunity to use the air quality advisory board as the community stakeholder. And there's a decision to go either because of requirements or the makeup of the board and differences in mandate. I'm curious if you can comment a bit on why a second community organization is needed to advise the grant? And if it's because this board doesn't represent the community's needs for monitoring and measurement? Are there things that this committee should be doing better? Or are there things we can try to do in terms of the makeup of this committee, so that it better represents the people that we're most concerned about in terms of air quality needs, so I'm not trying to be a jerk. But I also want to be, you know, if we're not representing very well, or we're not, we don't know, a lot of the deeper needs within the community that people most affected and concerned by these air toxics. Like, I feel like that's a that's a problem we have is as a group and as a board. And I would encourage, maybe my positive side of this is if there are people on that committee that can be incorporated into this board, or if there's things that we can do to reduce the burden on people to participate in this board, whether it's childcare at home, they just don't have the time to come and participate. Whatever it is, I'd really like to encourage the city and as a group to try to figure out a way to make it so that five years down the road, you have a ready to go, you know, this represents, you know, the real community of Fort Collins, not just a subset of it that has maybe a passion for air quality, but like everybody, and so that's a mix of a question and a comment. But I'm kind of curious to hear thoughts there on what we can try to do to, to improve that and representative can do better.

Go for it, and I can I can pick up?

Say, Oh, that's not that tricky of a question, though, is a big concept. When this was originally imagined, the board came up as a stakeholder, but I will say we're trying to do something more regionally. Like a couple of things. You guys do not represent county wide, you represent the city, you also advise Council and you set your own priorities. This would be very driven by the grant and regional so it has different priorities. And they and you guys have like it's hard to fit everything into just your meetings. So could you guys focus as much as we needed on that? And could you be countywide representative? Probably not. But to your question about like, does that create some redundancies? What can we do better? What can they do better? I do see, one of the things I imagined was a direct connection to this board, whether it's somebody serving both are not like we hate to ask volunteers to just keep giving more. But that'll be something that we explore in membership. And as far as like this might be way future thinking but does a regional air quality advisory board make more sense than a city of Fort Collins advisory board? Do you guys reach out of city limits definitely to talk about regional things. But there might be more opportunity for him with more partnership with the county so I'll just throw those things out as why this board wasn't the perfect fit. But why I

forgot about the county park? That makes total sense. And I'm kind of assuming we will hear feedback from you guys, as the project goes of what what you're finding out from this other committee? Correct. I assume that's just going to be absolutely out of court. Great. Fantastic.

Thank you to see to see you a lot more as this project is going on. But yeah, Cassie, I mean, that's what I was gonna state was that it's more of a regional collaborative board than, you know, necessarily Fort Collins specific or tribe. And I'm doing my best to put it that way. Instead, I'm doing my best to not only focus on Fort Collins with this work. So yeah, that's, that's a big part. And then, so that, and this is me kind of being open and honest, just kind of spitballing here. But the representation on this board, it's, it's an issue that we're facing across multiple boards for the city of Fort Collins isn't necessarily representative. I know. And are we going to be able to do a better job at doing that with this other board? I don't, who knows? I'm not sure. But I think that because we have so many more folks who are able to influence the the people that are in that. But that's going to be a part of that could be a part of that, I think it makes it a little bit easier to make it a little bit more of a representative board. And you know, the conversation around collaborating with the climate team, for instance, their advisory committee that they're putting together there, they're going to be providing funds to those individuals to participate on their board, right. And so if there's any way that we can leverage the the engagement that they're getting through that board, because I mean, it's a climate focus, it's not just an our climate, future plan specific board, it's supposed to help us with environmental services just in general, if we can leverage some of that, I think that it can help us with getting a more kind of diverse perspective on some of the work that we're doing to so it's a it's a, we're really trying to make it, you know, as as great as we can for our community.

So, oh, sorry, go ahead, Dan. I may come in. And just

just quickly want to second or support the idea that this board can and should do what we can to help support this new committee. And I do our first I can't speak for the full board. But I do certainly hope that that that committee will also help to inform this board as well, I, I certainly hear all O'Casey's comments for the reasoning for the separation of those two entities. But clearly, there's a lot of overlap here. And there's no reason that we should not work together, we

have a lot of common goals.

And just want to say I was interested to hear Gammons comments, because I recently had a discussion with somebody that's on a different board about the community input on land development code. And his opinion was, well, you know, as board members, we represent the citizens of Fort Collins so we can speak without having you know, we don't need community input, we're here to speak for the community. And that was his opinion of his role on a board and I had the completely opposite opinion. I said no, I serve on a board to try and advise counsel and provide ideas where I can but I don't consider myself to be a representative of the Fort Collins community and what they want because I don't know what that is. And so it kind of gave me a different perspective on what different people think you know, the roles of the boards or their their their roles on the boards are after talking to that person so it's kind of interesting.

Sorry to interrupt, I may have lost audio. Can Dan, can you hear anything? Or am I the only one? What happened was that oh, there we go.

Got it now. Yeah.

The thing is that we can't just stop with communication. It's an it's a laudable goal, but we really want to be careful not fall into the trap of thinking that communication or educate Action is the equivalent of an outcome. Because the ultimate goal, obviously right is to make better error. Which means that our ultimate goal is to get somebody to do something. So as we think about the communication, you're talking about, how do we present the data to people? They don't give us not about data, the average person they want to know is, what do they need to do? And when? No, having the data out for data geeks, like me is wonderful. I love looking at graphs. But at the same time, I think for your average person with certainly less education than I have in front of all reasonable, but they're going to want to know, what does this mean, for what he's gonna do with it? So as we put together this advisory board, that provides advice to the grants, the grant receivers, recipients, they also have to be thinking, Okay, what is our ultimate goal? We do want to reduce his toxics. Absolutely. So we need to find out from the community, what did they think about this? And how can we go about it? Think goes the other way around course. And then the other question that wondering about is when and this is a big issue, when he talks about opinion research, a lot of times people don't have attitudes or opinions until you ask them. Maybe the part of the problem, we don't know what people want, is, they don't know that they need to want it until we asked them. And then we have to be careful, because then how we ask them, in some ways determines what detox has can be very tricky. So this is just something that popped in my head is, as we talked about, you know, going the other direction, we want to create action won't have an outcome. But we also can't assume that people have attitudes, which is what this board is supposed to do is try to communicate the community's perceptions is they don't have any we've done in the meantime, that may be the issue. I mean, if you have an average person who's to daycare jobs, groceries, and the fact that money is not worth what it used to be limited thinking about air toxics, that may not even be an issue. So how do we get around that there is going to be a good question.

I think, as they advise the people have just kind of a thought that popped in my head.

I mean, have you found that people really do understand what you're asking of them? Or not?

I could say, part of the reason we got so many community support letters for this grant at the time was we have a lot of advocacy groups, at least very interested in monitoring. But what is that representative of the general population? Like? We don't know, those are questions we're asking. And like I said, we're trying to get to objectives. Like they're very confusing conversations on both ends. Because we're asking what do you want? What's the outcome you're looking for? And they're saying, we want this huge half million dollar monitoring site, like, long that has like, Okay, what is Longmont getting? Yeah, so we don't have a lot from the general community at large. But we do know everybody, to some extent is concerned about like their hell all right. Yeah. That's the kind of note they can't see. Yeah, those kinds of things that are monitoring get you?

And that's the thing, I'm not surprised at your answers. Because people, you're talking to people who are involved in monitoring and things like that. So. But when it comes to air quality, it's everybody. And it's not just them. And so, I think it's kind of hard to know, honestly, what people really want. Because they don't, maybe they don't need, they don't know that they need to want.

I think that's something that we've learned from our indoor programs is that once you do, once you once you're in someone's home, having a conversation with them around how their indoor air quality is impacting their health, right, you start to realize or people start to realize how important those conversations are and how much information there is out there that then we have successfully been able to make a consumable thing for people who don't have a background in atmospheric science or air quality or anything like that. Right. And so I think, because we're so we're in our first steps with this specific project, whereas the other kind of projects been going on for a while. I'm hoping that we can get to that place to where we have the same relationships that they do with the indoor work, to be able to have these kinds of conversations. Morning work to write. And it's I think it's very like important topic now with the fires and stuff like that's going on and all the media and news that's taking place about that. I am optimistic that we will get more community involvement in this only once we start to have those kinds of conversations, just

a question of how to do without, I mean, it's very easy to decline indicate always you want to follow that, and you don't realize you're doing. It's a very tricky thing. When people need to have an opinion, and don't. And then we start talking to the very framing and re to ask the question can almost

be just the answer. That's not the sort of gap thing, it's a good place to start.

I think you're right, the indoor, the indoor air quality people are just, they're going out and saying, What do you need? That works, when you respond, you're going out to small groups, for something that hasn't been ideal. But I just I, it's I just want to get that data to people. But what people and for what purpose? And then again, you know, how do we know what they really need to know? In some ways, you always need the expertise to tell them what they need to know, to start to come see you in or not that you're breathing this kind of stuff. And here's the desert volume or not, why if so why? Not? Maybe it's just a, from my experience, and research is something we care for, as we put together this advisory committee, start getting that input. It's always a question to my mind. When you talk about getting to the community, you always have to ask, What purpose? That is a big conversation, which depends upon what people need. Around. Sorry, you

know, I almost lowered my hand because you guys are hitting on my exact thoughts of the complexity and the difficulty of people not knowing what they don't know. And if you can tell them what they don't know, then they can begin to formulate an opinion of what they want. And again, to sort of Kathy's point of the dichotomy of like, well, we want a better air monitoring network. Great. And then what what, what service? Is it to monitor the air if we're not going to then assess and, you know, sort of diagnose what the outcome of those air quality impacts are? And how do we solve those? And the hardest part is, how do we actually get them? Right, and that can come from this partnership and expert advisory boards and such can come from city legislation and regulation. But the action has to come from all sides. And obviously, you know, the individual plays a part in every piece of that puzzle. And so I think, I don't know if it's within the scope of this particular committee or the project, but to help inform what really produces the change what, what level of communication or expert advice or awareness or activism or financial support or tax incentives etc, etc, etc, there's all these these things that come into play. Which one of them or which combination of them actually produces the most tangible change in a positive direction and just identification of that to me, is a real step for.

Amplify because we're making Sandvik crazy

we can't hear your conversation.

We agree that we drive people crazy with the air quality conversation in the general public. It's a tricky one. So this is our attempt to try to simplify

right and that's where I'm I'm curious to hear that your conversation And as well as you know, what conversations go into to staffing this board, and what conversations they have with the public to tell us when we're talking up here, and they need it down here, or they already know this much, and don't give me the same three steps over and over again, give me You know, I, I work directly in the realm of informing the public about air quality and air quality concerns. And I still often find a lack of like, feedback. The voices I get in my ear are either I'm an asthmatic, and why is the air so terrible, or don't tell me what to do with my diesel truck. And neither of those is constructive or pragmatic. And so, to help inform, you know, I'm not a lawmaker, I'm not a regulator. I'm not a health practitioner. But to help inform all of that we all need this two way conversation that has to involve the public, because they're the only ones who have the power to really do anything about

it. Thanks, you guys. Thanks for coming in and given the update to

Yes, thank you. Let us know how we can support your efforts.

One more question. About the board.

The monitoring Advisory Committee create. One of the things that Gavin brings up is the idea of representing the community, is there a way that you can help do that? Or in other words, you can ask those advisory board members to be doing something or just talking to you,

I'd be happy to, I'm going to return and be sure to let you all know how that kind of conversation goes. So tomorrow, we have a conversation with the county and with CSU to make sure that we're approaching the recruitment process in an equitable way. So once we kind of get that going, and we start to think about who those individuals will be, I will definitely come back and I'll let you know how that process goes.

Yeah, it's just a question of how much you're asking. And having them go out and collect your information.

Until Okay, I'm gonna move this along here, because we got behind schedule very quickly there. We're way ahead and all of a sudden. And of course, I want to go watch the nuggets game. So let's move on to board member reports. I don't know if people have things to report at all. We'll start online since I always forget to look up there, Gavin or Dan, do you have anything to report in terms of activities or events or

it's hopefully appropriate, I have the project I'm involved with is a statewide indoor air quality and ventilation assessment and facility improvement project. And we are starting to run out of sites that have signed up for the program so I was going to ask Cassie are any people involved Americans send another note to Cassie here when she comes back but just kind of reaching out to the network to see if there are other facilities that might be interested in doing an indoor air quality assessment anywhere in the state. They have to be non residential that's the only requirement and if there is potentially some folks that could reach out to or some follow up I guess just by email would be great. But that's something I'm involved with in my day job but also I think relevant to the committee there are certainly opportunities for facilities in the city itself to participate a couple have mostly daycare centers but if there's any ideas or ways to get the word out certainly pass it along to me I don't really need to talk too much about it but I don't know if there's like a network of other air quality advisors within the cities or something like that Cassie are ways you can just see if there's other other folks that might be interested in having this done so they can get some ventilation advice as well as the status of resources for air purifiers and some of the things that can be added as a result of the assessment. So just want to don't want to see it go to waste. There's about 10 to 15 more facilities we have room to to look at

residential here with mixed use, like you know, residential above businesses or do they have to be completely non residential,

they have to be non residential so the it's just that's the pocket of money from CDC. But I like long like long term care facilities would be fine shelters, things like that or are in scope but a an actual residence where somebody's living full time is not unfortunately.

Gap Are you familiar with the ram, the regional air monitoring? And messaging group?

I am not. Can you throw that in the chat for me, Dan, and I will pass that to our CSU is doing more the assessments. We don't actually do the recruitment. But I said I would, I would pass along a message from the state. And so I can, I can direct that to the state person who's doing the enrollments of the facilities and, and that might be a great place for them to post I know they did. They did a bunch, like a year and a half ago, when the project started. I don't know if they use that website or email list as one of those outreach efforts. But I can I can talk, I'd appreciate that. Thank you.

Sure. Yeah, I'll chat my my work email, that's probably the best way that the RAM group. Again, it was sort of like a loose consortium, a work group of state, as well as local and county level, public health agencies just designed to like, coordinate with each other. And then it's sort of disbanded and fell apart a little bit. But it's starting to come back together again. And so a very least I could point, whoever the correct contact is to join one of those meetings once they do get going again. And that's just a great opportunity to sort of cast the line as you're doing and say, you know, network of 30 plus people that just know people who know people and see what happens. So I'll chat my work email, shoot me an email to remind me and I'd be happy to

put you in touch. Great, thank you. And yeah, I see your note as well. So I'll I'll direct them. I think they have a little one pager. So I'll I'll get them to, to send that to you, Cassie. Thank you.

Do you have anything from the Bicycle Advisory Committee? Oh, that's right. Nobody could go. Okay. All right. The only things I had to report is I did go to the super issues meeting, I think they called it, it discussed the sustainable funding thing. And it also went over land use code and some affordable housing stuff, but it was relatively I don't want to say use. But the people that were there spoke for so long, that they didn't give the audience much time to comment or, or ask questions. And so it was more of a sales job on what they wanted than then really a discussion. So I didn't find it very useful. And a lot of other people didn't either. I think Cassie mentioned that our board representative to Pignataro, or our council representatives can come talk to us, I ran into her and open streets and asked her if she wanted to do that. And my impression is that what she wants from us is kind of a she's running for reelection. And if she gets re elected, well, whoever gets elected, they'll have a council retreat beginning of next year where they discuss their priorities for their two year term. And so she wants to know from us what air quality priorities we would like to see Council adopt. So if we have ideas about pet ventures, something to think about before she comes to visit with this is where we might want to, you know, tell her Council she'd focus. And then I also did go to speak, before the council meeting last week trying to get them to put a greater emphasis on climate. And I explained to them some of the difficulties the city's going to have in reaching its 2030 goal, and how they suggesting they need to bring together a committee or a panel of some kind that brought in all the different players that might be involved in getting the inflation Reduction Act funding, distributed widely throughout the community, from financers, to evey dealers, to you know, installers of heat pumps, and that kind of stuff, and bringing them all together to come up with a massive citywide plan of how to deploy that. I don't know if they're going to do anything with it, but that was my suggestion to them. So now they don't, it's not a back and forth, you just go and give your three minutes of public comment. Then they move on to the next person. So that's, that's about it. I mean, if they really, you know, want to talk to you more, they can email you and you get that information when you sign up for public comment. I haven't heard anything. So yeah, that's about it. If we ever hear anything from wine okay.

Did email on say wouldn't make it tonight?

Okay. All right. So, now we can go on I guess next. Well, we kind of have an idea for sounds like our next meeting is going to be largely oil and gas setbacks as well as the operational standards as ever Oh,

yes, let me share the planning calendar real quick. But yeah, there was a request, Kirk wanted to come to speak about river setbacks. So we decided it'd be an easier conversation if we also added operational standards. Sorry to keep bringing oil and gas back council wants to keep exploring what the options are. And this is reversed setbacks was specifically separated from your previous conversations, because that's more about housing and less about oil and gas, operational standards, that's one that this board expressed interest in continuing to explore what the gaps and opportunities are for the city and not just relying on land use. So those are the two things that we're proposing to bring back in July. And you'll also have your two new members, you should be able to see this now. And, as Mark mentioned, I can invite somebody to just print some volunteer badges like right here. So for anybody who's able to attend in person, we can make use of badges. Otherwise, there are ways to get them through the websites and things like that, too. Or you could send on a photo, and I'll have it made here.

Yeah, so with their oil and gas, reverse setbacks, it's kind of unfortunate, it's going to first reading the day after our July meeting. So whether or not we have a chance to actually make a recommendation to council about that it would be really tight. I have been Kerch is meeting with a whole bunch of other groups to discuss the oil and gas setbacks environmental groups and various other people. I'd sit in on one of those meetings, and it was very, he had a presentation and some slides that he put up, but the discussion was really, really disorganized. And it would not work for this group. So I'm going to try and send him some instructions about how he might want to structure his presentation to us. Because there's all different kinds of wells that they were discussing. And you know, and then they got into the setbacks from each one now and how they might want to change those and other issues that were involved. And they kept jumping around from one type of well to another, and I was really having a hard time following conversation. And I didn't even realize there were so many different types of, of existing wells from operating ones to totally abandon to try wells to, I can't get into all of them. So. So I'm going to try and get him to maybe prepare some introductory materials that we can read ahead of the meeting. So just kind of keep an eye out for that, in order to facilitate the discussion so that we don't we don't have to go through something too, too disorganized. We'll come in with a little bit of a background. Yeah, so it looks like our our next oil and are that the operational standards are coming up before Council until September 12. It looks like Well, that's a work session. But the oil and gas, the reverse index is not going to have a work session, they're going straight to the first reading of the regulations the day after our July meeting. So I may if it looks like we might be able to make a recommendation, I may write some kind of draft with different options, and then we can vote on which option at that meeting, but we'll see. So there's not really much else coming up in the near future before Council. There's some interesting things that I wanted to get more information about that. I don't know that they relate to this, anything. The board here needs to worry about so. So did anybody have any questions or any comments on future items? No, okay. Well, did you guys have anything else online? Gavin or Dan? No. Okay, then. We actually journeying five minutes early. So I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 755 Thanks, everybody. Good nuggets.

Thank you all good nuggets. It's a secret to us

finishing early. Right. Just have a nuggets going on everybody. Take care.