I can call this meeting of the second party Executive Committee to order. Let's begin by standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to
the flag of the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
And before we get started with today's agenda, I would like to welcome our new county delegates and alternates to the executive committee, and I'm going to ask each of you, I'm going to call your name, and I'm going to ask you to stand up and tell us a little bit about yourself and who you represent. So let's start with Do we have anybody here from St Clair County? I know there a new person. There are two people, Lisa Peden and joy Torello. Neither of them are here from Wayne County. We have Commissioner Jonathan kinmon, I represent Wayne County Commission.
District two. You're in Wayne County Commission District Two, looking forward to serve you all, serving with you all. I've been on the county commission Since 2021 Thank
you. Next we have Commissioner Cara Clementi, are you here?
I say that right. It's Cara. Cara. Hi, Cara Clemente. I represent District Four, which is four cities, Lincoln Park, lavidale, East first River Rouge and Carville, Detroit, right next to Jonathan's district. And I've been on the campus my second term on the commission. There was a state rep before that, very happy to be here and serving with all of you. And a fun fact,
I'd like to talk nice. Thank you. And then next up, we have Melissa dobb, and some of us thought you were all ready. Hi, Melissa. Hi, I'm Melissa Dodd
Wayne, county commission, district 10, which is all of Camden
Township, city of Plymouth, and
a small portion of Plymouth Township. Some people may have thought of already on some pop board, but I've been involved with some positive Commissioner. I went on various committees. Then
last
but not least, from Oakland County. We have Robert smiley, hi, there
you go. I'm a borrower from the 14th district. In Oakland County, it's wigston Wall Lake, part of Novi, that department and a little bit powers before that, I was a city councilman wigston For nine years so far. So don't pay me for
that. You we
also have a new member community. This time we're up to 185 communities, which is awesome. Our newest member is Osceola Township. It's located in Livingston County, just east of Powell, and they have a population of just over 14,200 Do we have the folks from Osceola township here today? I do look forward to welcoming supervisor Sean Dunleavy and Trustee Michael Young Shaw at the March General
Assembly, grown
so next up, we have approval of today's agenda. Is there a motion to approve? We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye opposed. Motion carries the agenda has been approved. Please also note that today's meeting agenda is available electronically and can be found on the QR code on the slide up here. This is also included on your name badge. Sound cog is really encouraging us to go paperless wherever we have so you can use QR code, and if you would like a paper copy of the agenda, they're available at the credenza over there. All right. Now, on to public comment. Is there anyone from the public who would. Here to address us today, if so, you need to fill out a card and give it to one of our staff members. Turned in. Is there anyone from the public who would like to make a comment at this time, seeing no one, I will close public comment. And next up, then we have the before we move on to the approval of the consent resolution, we're going to take a moment to ensure that all voting keypads are online with the voting system, and we're going to conduct a test, and I'm going to ask Executive Director Amy O'Leary to conduct that test.
Alright, thanks, everybody. So we're going to test the keypad so make sure that they are turned on, and so you're going to just press yes or no on the question I ask. And of course, I wait for the last minute, and I thought of one. Do you think that Valentine's Day is a real holiday. Vote, yes.
One fact, my husband dumped me the first time we were dating on Valentine's Day, so I don't
think it's a holiday. That's
this question by our chair. All right, we'll see the results. It
seems like it took, you know, 25 people exposing we
just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary. So I or
consent agenda. Are there any requests to pull any items from the consent agenda?
Thank you. Chair, I would like to call item four, Washington proctor.
All right, so we will pull that
my move forward
with the consent
resolution. Okay, during that we will go ahead and vote on the rest of the consent agenda, unless anybody has another item
they want to have the
board. All right, all in favor of the motion. Say, aye, opposed and little opening.
And then moving on to my report, I have a few things to report today. First of all, we'll be hosting a semcog 101 workshop in February, February, right here at the semcog offices. This orientation session is designed for newly elected officials and Anybody wishing to become more engaged with semcog, attendees will get a comprehensive overview of some kind resources and services available to members. This session will also be a great opportunity to network with your peers from around the region, with some kind of leadership and staff and that QR code to register. There's also a registration link in the follow up to today's meeting. That's a really great training session to go through. We are also excited to announce that in early 2025 semcog is going to host member outreach meetings in each of the seven Southeast Michigan counties. Key meeting components will include election executive committee delegates and alternates, and information exchange and updates on some kind of resources. So this is different than the way we've done it in the most recent years, where we all went together. We're going to do it at each of the counties, and we look forward to seeing you at your county. So please come, bring your friends and associates and make it a good session, and please note that the executive committee elections for our intermediate school district and community college representatives will still continue. To be held at the March General Assembly. So we encourage our Education members to attend the outreach meetings anyway in their respective communities. Any questions about that? Next up, I'm pleased to announce that the Todd one community company is once again sponsoring two fellowships to Harvard University's program for senior executives in state and local government. Several people in this room have been to this in the past. All elected officials who are interested in being considered for the Taubman fellowship should contact some tax membership manager, Amy malmer, and today, we have our 2024 Todman fellows with us, Joe larusa, Mayor of Farmington and Mike Lesch, Mayor of Frazier. Gentlemen. Would you like to share any thoughts or encouragement for officials in the room who may be considering applying, and please use the mics at your table, and for those of you, when you want to speak, just use the mic. Make sure the green light is
on. My distinguished colleague from Frazier,
you always like the last word. Anyway, I'm Mike less. I'm Mike less. Itch Mayor Frazier and I applied for the Taubman fellowship, I think, four times, and finally figured out what I wanted to do as mayor, and the committee agreed to send me. I didn't know what to expect. What I can tell you is one of the best professional development experiences of my life. I met a high caliber, diverse group of people from all over the country and from Australia, Ireland and Brazil. Each of them brought a perspective that I didn't may not have had they and we, but we all found common ground on mutual problems. It was thought provoking, and it really made me look at what I wanted to do as a leader, sort out some garbage that you accumulate over years as an elected official, and figure out, how do I move on? And it really was a great experience. And I would recommend anybody that can afford three weeks away to go there, and it was, was a 10. Thank you very much.
I would echo a lot of the comments of Mayor lessage. And on top of that, I would say the experience took a lot of what I knew intuitively and put it in the context and frameworks that you need to be an effective public servant. You know, it's one thing to win an election, it's another thing to govern effectively. And the tools, the discussions, the project, work that we did, the fact that you could spend concentrated time helping other elected and appointed officials solve real problems in their communities, that was a very enriching aspect of the experience for me, to be able to know that I'm contributing to economic development in Savannah, Georgia, or helping people and not having skin in the game or a stake in the outcome, to be able to just share expertise in a neutral venue, that was something that was unexpected and at the same time very rewarding. Anyone who is remotely interested, I think you should absolutely do your homework on the program, put your name in the hat. It's a transformational experience, both professionally and personally, because to be in that space and to talk to all of these super smart people it you come away with more than just nuts and bolts of how to do this work better. You lead with a network of people that you can call upon when you are having trouble or you need expertise, and to have that asset is really invaluable. So good luck to those who will apply this year and looking forward to sharing your memories from your time at Harvard. Thank you. Do
as you can see on the slide, the deadline is February 11, and Amy malmer Is your expert. If
you get more questions,
okay, next up, suncog will soon be kicking off nominations for this year's regional showcase awards. The application webpage will open in February, and applications will be due in March. Awards will be presented at the June General Assembly and will be featured in sen COVID produced videos. I encourage you to submit a project from your community again. See Amy malmer For more information, just real quickly, some projects that we have awarded in the past years, the Ford Fairlane estate fishery project, which was last year, the Nine Mile redesign in Oak Park, sustainable investments preserve natural areas in Washtenaw County, the. In the river water resource recovery facility in Oakland County and so on. So these are really great awards to showcase big projects that we're doing regionally.
We are also seeking nominations for this year's regional ambassador. Awards, again, the nomination web page will be open in February, and applications will be due in March. Awards will be presented in June. Typically, one award goes to an elected official and a second award goes to a partner organization. I look forward to seeing the nominations for people and organizations that are doing great work in the region, and for more membership information, for more information again, see Amy Muller, she's going to be
and as you may recall, at our October General Assembly, we announced Simcox, brand new location analysis and visitation tool, which provides detailed analysis and reports to committees for understanding visitation and foot traffic for Parks and Recreation, downtown and commercial corridors and community events and festivals. So for each of these areas, sencock can provide communities with several different types of analysis. For example, if you want to know how many people visited your downtown major park or recent community wide festival, we have data along with where visitors came from, trends over time and much more.
And then great news. Over the last couple of months, we've directly assisted 23 communities covering over 50 individual locations or events. And on the right are examples of some of the specific types of projects that these reports include. So real help in understanding where your visitors are coming from and how successful your outreach
efforts are. If
you or your community are interested in utilizing this new tool and analysis, please scan the QR code to submit a request or reach out to some kind of GIS analyst, Taylor Abdul Hadi. Is Taylor here.
Okay, sometimes Healthy Climate task force continues to move forward with developing the region's comprehensive climate action plan. And earlier this week, there were two focus group meetings with local government stakeholders and subject area experts to discuss implementation strategies for reducing emissions from transportation and industry. Next week, there will be another focus group on buildings, and we encourage anyone from your communities to attend. The results of these discussions will be brought to the task force to review at their next meeting in mid February. That's the Healthy Climate Task Force. And next up, we have the report from the nominating committee.
Thank you, Chair Harper and good afternoon, everybody. Before I present our recommendations, let me introduce the members of our nominating committee. We have new Baltimore Mayor Tom Simon and Reto county clerk Mike said, lack township block Mike happens to be, I think is they don't feed each other, races,
school, ground, college trustee Dylan green education block, military here and myself, county block chair in making our recommendations fulfill the two VICE CHAIRPERSON positions, we consider factors such as level government, diversity and geography of our region and engagement with sempro as a background, we have two officer vacancies because Mandy brewa And Michelle Nard are no longer in office in accordance with the sempoc bylaws, we will fill two VICE CHAIRPERSON positions. One is a temporary, temporary extra vice chair position as the first vice chair position will remain vacant until we have the full set of officers to be elected on June General Assembly. The committee had an excellent group of nominees to review, which made our work really difficult. I'm pleased to recommend that you elect Farmington Mayor Joe larusa and Macomb township supervisor Frank vividiano to fill these vacancies. All terms will end in June of 2025
so moved second. Work. Hold on,
Mr. Barnett is jumping again. We thank all those who submitted the nominations. It's a sign of the strong organization that we have here, and we have so many leaders willing to serve. At this point, I'll ask if there's any nominations from the floor? So we have, we have two nominations. Are there any nominations from the floor for either the Vice Chair versus City or alright? Hearing done. I will move the election, Joe La Russa and Frank Viviano. Is there a support
turn the meeting over
to chair Marvin to conduct the election? Thank you.
All right, so all in favor of the nominations. Oh, we're going to keep hands. Okay. All right, so insurance on we
had a motion, we had support, and we're going to switch over and ask if you would concur with the two vice chairs of Frank Viviano and COVID, yes, all Right, we can see myself. Motion carries.
Thank you. Applause, so
in the thank you to Amy and Phil for conducting that vote, and congratulations to our newest executive committee members, Frank Viviano and Joe laruss.
Vice Chairs, right?
Vice Chairs, yes. I chairs, yes. Okay, so next up we have our future presentation, I'd like to introduce Daniel Mahoney, corporate and government affairs director from DTE. Mr. Mahoney is here today to talk about how DTE is working with local governments to increase reliability and make system upgrades and reduce response times. Need an energy transition process and the timing of the process for infrastructure projects and align work such as tree trimming with other utility work and talk about how DTE is supporting local and regional economic development activities. So please join me and welcome in welcoming Mr. Mahoney.
Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you members of the simcog executive committee. As introduced, my name is Daniel Mahoney. I'm the Director of Policy and Regional Affairs for DT energy, which means that local government affairs is what my responsibility is. I lead a team of regional managers. You may know some of them they are matrixed across our electric and gas communities, and they are here to serve you, to help you solve problems in your communities, to help you serve your constituents and to be a resource on behalf of the company for you and your fellow local elected officials. Today, I am going to cover a few key topics, improving reliability. First and foremost, talk a little bit about delivering the clean and cheap future that Michigan needs. And then, last but certainly not least, describe what we're doing to maintain affordability for all customers, but most importantly, most vulnerable customers here in southeast Michigan. As you as you may already know about DTE, we operate electric and gas utilities. We cover 450 communities across Southeast Michigan, West Michigan, Northern Michigan and the up the communities here in southeastern Michigan are especially near and dear to DTE Hart, right our country, our company's roots are here for the past 100 years, the vast majority of our customers both electric and gas. Us are here in southeast Michigan, and we know that our electric service is what defines how people feel about and that's one of the things I want to portray you today. So let's, let's dive in here. Sorry, on the slide behind. All right. I
Our charge so we put this to global, reliable, clean and affordable energy. This is a charge we take seriously when we strive to get better each and every day, balancing these three items, reliable, clean and affordable, is a challenge, but it's not a suckers back, right? This is a possible achievement. We can do this. The slide behind me showcases some of the highlights of our recent performance. We'll go through each of these today with balance of my time. So why don't we just jump right in? The availability of DTS electric grid has historically been good. Benchmarking against industry standards shows that we're not far off what's from what's considered best in class. If you look at the chart here, industry standard, best in class reliability. How available is your grid? 99.97% of the time. As you can see over the past four or five years, six years with the data, we're close. We're not there yet, but we're close. Weather is a big factor right the storm to 2021 and 2023 had a tremendous impact on our customers, and we're still working in some places to recover the trust from our customers and our communities, but we are on a path forward that is going to deliver a best in class board. The weather is a real challenge. This is data from across the country in the number of billion dollar weather events, right? The trend is obvious. I apologize. I know this chart drops off in 2021 but I can tell you the data for 2223 and 24 follows a similar trend up into the way. In 2023 there were 30 events across the country that were billion dollar weather events, 2024, 27 and here in Michigan, we know that this weather is impacting our customers, our communities as well. Right, wind storms that were once in a generation are now every couple of years, this puts the utility industry as a whole across the country in an interesting position. We are all fighting for the same resources to invest in our grids at a record pace and a record scale, the same labor, both skilled and professional, the same supply chain, the same raw materials, right? The same working capital from investors across the state, both debt and equity, right? We're all competing against each other for these resources at DTE. We saw this trend begin in 2017 we saw this wind begin to pick up and affect our communities and our customers and our service. So we began to rent right today, we are well underway with what we call a Four Point Plan of improved electric reliability for operating let me walk you through each of these pillars quickly. Here automation. This is actually the newest component of our Four Point Plan, right? This is about installing remote devices all across our electric grids that allow us to remotely shrink in the size of an average instantaneous in reality, this has been a journey that we've been on for a number of years now. If you remember when we began to roll out automated electric AMI meters, that was the first piece of the puzzle. More recently, DT had reinvented our command center at forward headquarters, where we can now remotely control the grid. The state of the art technology, if anyone is ever interested in coming down to headquarters and touring our ESOP, please let me know. I'm happy to schedule time and walk you through it. Our goal is to fully automate our grid by the end of the decade. This would be 10,000 devices spread out our electric service territory. Where, at a moment's notice, from our remote location, we could hit a button and reroute power instantaneously. A true game changer when it comes to running a modern grid. Our second pillar is what we call Pull Top maintenance. If you were to think about standard utility pole, next time you see one in the field, look up. If you see a wooden cross arm, we haven't been there yet, but we're going to get there soon. If you see a fiberglass cross arm, we have been there recently. Fiberglass cross arms and other newer, more modern equipment is simply more resilient to the water that we're seeing today. If you recall the storm that came through this past summer and impacted the city of lonely. There was that tragic asset vaccinate, where the young child's life was lost, right? We can see data from that storm that shows where those tornadoes came in contact with old infrastructure, neuroaters, but wherein came in contact with new, more modern infrastructure, there were no outages. So we're making progress, and we know what works here, right? Our third pillar is simply rebuilding large portions of the world. To be honest, there are still elements of dt system that date back to the early 1900s when Detroit was first electrified. This stuff is old and it needs to come down, but there is a ton of it out there, right? We're building new substations. We're converting whole circuits. We're switching out poles, right? We're stringing poles with stronger, more resilient wire that can hit that can handle the electric loading feature, right? And last, but not least, we're still trim and trees right this was the first thing we really launched back in 2017 was to ramp our tree trim program to a five year cycle for our entire service territory. Our next phase that we're entering right now is to innovate how often we come in trim trees based on species, based on growth and based on location as well. So this is our Four Point Plan for reliability. Our commitment to our customers and to each of you is to cut outages in half, cut, sorry excuse me, cut the frequency of outages by 30% and cut the outages that do happen from integration standpoint in half in the next four years, this plan will get us there. The other good news here is that everyone can now see where dt has done work or is planning to do work in the next couple of years. Earlier this summer, we rolled out power improvement map, which is a personal project I worked on, so I have a little bit of pride in it, but this is an online tool, Vanity URL, right there, dt, energy Comm, slash, Power Map to use an S it's not going to get you there, so no less. But this is a resource that's available to everyone now. You can simply go in and search your county, your city, your zip code, even your exact address. And this map will zoom in and show you exactly what investments we have made in your neighborhood, in your community, right? It will also show you progress that we're making on the work that we're doing. Are we 50% done? Are we 60% done? Right? This map has a three year look back and a two year, two year look forward. So as we sit here today, right now, our engineering team is re racking our capital plan for the next 12 months. You will see some change to the data here you look at the next 1218, 24, months in the next couple of weeks. Here, the other thing we're going to do with this tool is show, begin to show a comparison, a year over year comparison, on how we are performing from a liability standpoint. What's not shown in the image here, but it's below the fold on the web. Page is a feature where you can put in your zip code, and it will show you exactly how many hours your power was on last year, and exactly how many hours your power was interrupted last year, both from storm and intentional outages. When we do work. Currently, the data on the map will be for 2023 we're going through a process to validate our 2024 performance data, and it will be up there in short order with this comparison. This is part of our commitment to simply be more transparent about the work we're doing and the dollars we're spending and the results of that strike. All told, DTEs plan for the electric grid unlocks tremendous value for the state of Michigan and the region here as well, right? The image behind me is from a tool that the what's it called Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory out of California, produced a tool, right? And this is an analysis that is our Four Point Plan, and what closing that gap between desk and class means DTE performance in 2024 99.91% available. 2024 was a good year. We did not have a ton of weapon, but closing that gap to 99.9 97% available, unlocks, conservatively, 15 to $20 billion of economic opportunity for our state and region. This plan is working. We're going to continue to work for it. This is why we are persistently pursuing investment in our electric
distribution
system. I'm having a transition clean energy journey. Right? This image behind me showcases DTE journey to net zero carbon emissions. We are laser focused on transforming our generation fleet and meeting not only our goals to be net zero by 2050 but the state of Michigan's new goals that were enacted in 2023 when it comes to clean energy and renewables, just this coming year, we will begin the project of converting our Bell River Power Plant in Saint Clair County, which has been a coal fired power plant, to a natural gas peaking unit. Peaking is an industry term that means that it's not going to run 24/7, it is a resource there when we have our highest demand days, the hottest days in the summer, the coldest days. It's an insurance policy. Piece of our generation food, right? We're also building 15,000 megawatts of renewable energy. That's enough energy to power 4 million missions. Energy storage is the third plank of our planet. We're investing in battery technology for the first time ever. We're exceedingly proud of our industry leading project in shredding at the site of our old coal fired cloud power plant. We are actively pursuing the siting of more batteries around our region, and this will be a big part of our clean energy transition moving forward. Similarly, on the natural gas side, I would hate to not talk about our natural gas utility for just a minute. We have a goal to be net zero carbon emissions from our operations as well. Many of you know that for about a decade now, we've been placing old, cast iron, steel gas main pipes that run through your communities with newer, more modern plastic interior books that are more durable, safer, more consistent, right? 1800 miles of replacement work has been done today. We're going to continue this work because it's the right thing to do for a product that's going to be around for decades to come. In addition, we're also offering gas customers voluntary programs, so if they choose to go farther in reducing their own emissions, they can through the use of renewable natural gas or carbon offsets, they can contribute their own personal income to fulfilling their own personal desires when it comes to reducing emissions. Sorry,
are all told, right? DTE is going to invest $25 billion in capital in the state of Michigan the next five years, and we double that over the next 10 years. This makes DTE Energy The single largest capital investor in the state of Michigan, right? What we're more impressed with is that we're doing it with this massive in state supply chain. Okay? Last year alone, we spent $3.3 billion of our capital program with in state suppliers. Our program dates back to 2010 $24 billion over $24 billion billion dollars on the state investment and massive economic engine for our state. Finally, I want to talk about touch on affordability, because, to be frank, we have actually a really neat story to tell you.
Okay, our
our investment plan for our distribution grid, for our power generation fleet, for our natural gas system, needs to be met with a parallel program to maintain affordability for our customers, and that's what we're doing at DTE right the chart behind me shows how our bills benchmark against our peers across the country. Okay, a lot of people like to talk about utility rates. We find it more impactful to measure what our customers actually pay, which is utility so as you can see here, DTS residential electric bill lags the US average. What's more important in this time of record capital spending is that the growth of our bills is one of the leading lowest in the country. I know the colors change. A little bit right on this chart, I'll go back one second. We are the teal. On this chart, the balance of our peers in the Great Lakes states are the teal and DT energy is the other right? So this is phenomenal progress for our customers. This gets to how we are controlling costs, how we are managing our operation to be as efficient as possible. In fact, back in November, DT energy made an announcement that we were crediting customers $300 million over the next 12 months, what we call the power supply credit. This credit is derived from our power plants running a very high efficiency rate. This is an ability for us to give relief back to our customers when we are making massive investments in the grid during our clean energy transition. More importantly, for our low income customers, we are laser focused on providing them incremental resources whenever possible. Just this past December in Lansing, when most other legislative proposals were not succeeding, there was a group of community leaders and Human Service Agency organizations that rallied with DTE passport bill package that increased funding and access to the Michigan Energy Assistance Program. What we've done is we've taken a program that was $50 million and over the next three or four years will grow to $100 million what we've also done is we've raised the ability for people to participate normally. This program is only eligible for folks who qualify 150% from federal poverty level. Now, moving forward, that bar has been raised to 200% this is a lesson we learned from the pandemic that Michigan is working for needed more help paying their utility bills, right? But they're just not ready to raise their hand and ask for assistance. This type of program, this type of partnership with our community partners, is a huge win for our state and our region and our customers. There's other things on this list that we need to get to federal appropriations in Washington, other reforms to these utility assistance programs that do exist. This is a passion project for us, and we're going to keep active, right? I want to close today by talking a little bit about DTE business model. Right? Each and every year, because of this record capital that we are investing each and every year, DTE is spending more cash than we ever need. We are financing these investments on behalf of our customers in the distribution grid, in our clean energy transitions and power fleet, in the gas distribution system with working capital. I mentioned up front competitiveness of our industry right now, specifically when it comes to working capital, but I can assure you that everything we do, every dollar we generate, every chance we get to reinvest in our business, reinvest in our in our strategic plans to improve reliability and deliver clean energy in an affordable way, is our, is our standard. Last, but certainly not least, your opinion matters to us. A couple years ago, we launched what we call the community sentimental conservative this you may have received this from me or my colleagues. Comes out twice a year, and it asks local officials from across our service territories their opinion at DTV how we are doing. It is your report card back to us, and I ask that you consider completing it when it comes out this spring, we've had good success to date with participation. We're beginning to see that our plans are showing up in your minds, in your responses, but we want to keep after it. We want to keep getting better. So personal favor would be to take the survey and help me continue to make our company serve your communities. Thank you for the time. Today, if there are any questions, I'd be happy to entertain a couple. Mayor Ross clarity, second,
it one of the questions. I don't know if you guys ever done a study. My community actually has a lot of issues. When you have like high wind, green storm, you have a lot of rank. Is, you know, they have, sometimes the power is out for sometimes days, sometimes over a week. Have you guys done a study? So I've seen some of the flights that you make branches, so I know you guys are always around trying to take branches down. Is there a study that, or are you guys looking into possibly taking the whole trees, some area, bad areas, taking the whole tree down, or maybe relocating trees. Obviously, some people have a problem with taking trees down, but we planting. I mean, you guys, do we planting as well. So like my community, my city, has a lot of issues with older trees, and always, always, always power out because it feeds,
yeah, yeah. I mean trees in our right of way and outside of our right away that come in contact with our power lines is the number one driver of allergens, by far and away when we can trend the trees on a circuit, effectively, right? There's a dramatic increase, 4050, 60% increase in the market. I personally have this work done in my house. I live in downtown Plymouth, a small city. Lot lines in the back, right? And we are going to do everything we can to trends as efficiently and effectively as possible. There are instances where homeowners whose permission we need ask us not to turn and that can have an effect on their neighbors. I don't have a good solution to that. There's there's no silver bullet. Yet we work with residents. We work with our customers as best we can, to explain to them the benefits to increase, but we also respect their wishes. We're in this together, you know, and that's a it's a challenge.
We have time for one more question. That's Anne Marie,
thank you. Couple of things, we're having a lot of electric vehicle chargers being put in, and we're having a hard time getting DTE to get the lines there. But on the second, like you just talked about trees, have you ever thought of starting a fund that we can apply for because we want to bury the lines. It's like $2 million so if you start a fund for us? Yeah, you apply for grants. It won't cost us $2 million to buy a line, every line, which we can't do. That would be
amazing.
Amy and I had lunch last week and we talked about this exact issue. I don't mean to delegate to my colleagues from Midwest, but you've all heard our response, which is undergrounding utility infrastructure, right? Is a challenge for us, simply because the balance of our for our customers would need to pick up those costs. It is the nature of our consumer. So I'm interested in creating a fund. I'm interested in solving your unique problems, but it's going to have to come from the state of Michigan or on some other third party. It simply cannot come from the utility business. No, I mean, I appreciate the creative idea, but it's worth being quite clear on this point. The DT Energy Foundation is a fantastic resource, but there are strict, and I mean strict, tax laws that prevent us from self dealing. So I think we can put a little little SWAT team together, put our heads together. We can put a ask in to the legislature and the governor, because this is important, right? I mean, I live in downtown Plymouth, and I lived there for eight or nine years, and I picked it because it's got to break downtown. It's a cute community, right? It's a place where my kids can run around and they can go to the coffee shop or the ice cream chef when they walk to school, Halloween, sprayed all this kind of stuff, right? But it's all driven by the downtown experience, and so place making is an important part of the conversation. Having driving communities from Michigan is important part of the conversation. We just gotta we just think it'll help. So I'm happy to continue
with Thank you, Dan, that's all the time. We have
presentation today, but it was very informative. I see Commissioner Rodney has question too, but
just ask my question and then you can answer it later. My power was out three times this about this time last year, monthly, I had my monthly power outage that I called it during that time, you guys made $20 million in profits for your shareholders. And I would like to know from you, genuinely like, is that an. Acceptable scenario for you?
Well, one I disagree with the premise of your question now is a power outage. Is a power outage acceptable? Absolutely, absolutely. We are investing in our grid and pace and scale. Never seen to solve this very problem. But the reality of making these topics, and I apologize, I meant to say this earlier, next week, DTE will report our 2024, financial performance. I don't know the numbers, the controllers, they don't tell me this thing, right? But I'm sure we'll post this wrong result, right? But here's the here's the thing, right, and here's the difference of opinion. Is that DTE making up, making a profit, is a good thing, because our financial performance drives our ability to attract that next round of working capital. We are again, we are spending more cash every year in what we're going to for one reason, to serve our customers and our communities better. So whether it be pay a debt to a shareholder or pay a debt to a bond holder, we're we made a deal with these folks to help us invest in the communities that we serve, and it's working, it's producing good results. So I'm sorry for your outages. I feel bad when those things happen, but it
just feels weird when you're taking my money, my power is not working, you're taking my money and you're giving it to people on Wall Street. That's all. I mean, that doesn't seem right, I'm
sure, sorry, I'll keep going, but you know, it's okay. You
while you're transitioning Madam Chair, I would just offer having visited the ESOC myself, I would definitely encourage any of my colleagues to take up the offer to go see that it is impressive, and it was really educational to see how they managed. So in the interim, I would definitely take them up on that offer. It's a nice visit. Thank you.
Okay, so moving on. We have asked our lobbyists at Midwest to join us today to facilitate a discussion on suncog state legislative priorities for the 2025 2026 session.
Yeah, so I want to introduce Mike campanioni and Adam Wright, and the floor is yours.
Well, thank you everyone. I'm Mike COVID, and I'm joined here today by my colleague, Adam Wright from Midwest Strategy Group some of you had the opportunity to speak to before, and we're looking forward to a new legislative session in Lansing, and what we'll be seeing coming out of policy there. We do have a new House Republican majority up until this past election cycle. The legislature this past two years was dominated by Democrats. They had a trifecta. They controlled the House, Senate and governorship. That has changed now with the last election, and now there's a House Republican majority led by Speaker Hall. So we have divided government, which we had in 2018 and 2020 so we're definitely getting into a little bit new, a newer environment. The House majority is more conservative. They definitely have a focus on things like infrastructure, roads, oversight and appropriations. They've instituted some new policies on how money will be spent in the remarks, they've definitely talked a lot about changing the committee structure. We have new legislative committees that were just released in the last 24 hours with a much stronger oversight function and rules function as legislators. In fact, our oversight committee, the house down as subpoena powers, which is we're also seeing a returning Senate, Democratic majority. They've been in office now two years. Their terms are four years long, so they're halfway through. Senate Majority Leader Renee Briggs has been at the helm there. They have a little bit more of a focus on economic development. They passed the first two bills of the year on the freedom Information Act, which would subject the legislature and governor to FOIA, one of the few states that don't do that. We also have a big focus on the environment. That's been kind of a hallmark of some of the things that they've worked on to date, jumping into sort of how, you know. The rubber COVID meets the road. Want to talk a little bit about infrastructure priorities, and then take a little bit of input. We've got our four primary areas we're going to talk about in the six more room. So I know we're probably going to move a little bit quickly through them. We're somewhat early on time. But that being said, infrastructure is one of the areas that I focus on a lot with my work in the West, and we're seeing the house, Republican majority in particular, Speaker Hall, talk a lot about the renewed road funding plan, potentially even revamped to public act 51 which is out the way that we fund our roads and other infrastructure in the state. So those are priorities. There's sort of behind the scenes discussions going on with the governor right now, with the leadership between the Chamber's on road funding, Speaker Hall has been very transparent about the fact that he wants to get there, mostly through existing funds, by reallocating dollars,
by moving things
around, by eliminating certain tax credits. That is how they want to get there. And they have a roughly $3 billion number the we're also focused on stormwater utility. That Bill saw actually movement from the session. Hopefully, as we do, we can potentially get across the finish line this session and move just across the board, infrastructure is going to be a really big topic for this legislature. So with that, I know you will have the documents in front of you, the policy plan that has been put together. And we've had a bunch of meetings about discussion about, if anyone has specific input or discussion, I want to maybe open it up for a minute on that I don't. Do you want to wait till the end? Or do you want to do one at a time? Or I defer to further the chairman, do the
if you are excited
part of the presentation, sure
if you want to jump in, Adam covers a couple other areas. He has a lot of
expertise, but Well, good afternoon. It's good to be here again. Obviously, with community some of these, we always like to focus on our revenue sharing, and so as we change some of the formulas for road funding, it can impact us in other places. So protecting revenue sharing is critical for us, and we tried very hard last year to get a revenue sharing Trust Fund passed. It did not pass. So that becomes another priority for local governments in Michigan, and we'll see another go protecting local controls always important so there's no local preemption. You'll undoubtedly see more bills in regards to aggregates. We'll see more bills in regards to short term rentals. We try to take a run at short term rentals from an aggressive standpoint and being positive for local governments. Weren't able to get that done, but now we may have to be on the defensive, and so we have to watch to make sure that local government, local control, is more from everyone in Michigan, and the last one on this slide is to engage with statewide coalitions to educate voters on the importance of local property taxes and the revenues that you get and how it impacts every community. As you know, last year, there was an accident tax effort to get enough signatures to put on the ballot to eliminate property taxes and put other revenues in and divert revenues for income tax and sales tax to help fund local government, and so we just need to make sure that we're doing the best job possible educating voters and why profit taxes are important to communities. Next is economy and workforce priorities. We're talking about supporting resources for community development so that we can help attract the diversity of business investment, quality places and strengthen communities. Some of the things that we're talking about here are wrap grants, so the revitalization replacement grants. These are for real estate rehabilitation, infrastructure development, public space improvements. These are important things that I know a lot of communities utilize to help improve their communities. And as we've seen as part of a proposal for roads, this is something that have been proposed to be eliminated. It's $50 million on an annual basis that can utilize for communities. And this is something that could be on the chopping block, that's important to ever speak up and let our legislators know that this is important to communities nicer support initiatives that grow the scope of the workforce in Southeast Michigan. So a lot of programs like Pro
which are
training, developing and retaining current and newly hired employees. There's also apprenticeship programs and the Michigan Skills Fund that I know are priorities throughout the state. And finally, on this slide, is to ensure our K 12 school funding system adequate adequately reflects the additional cost of educating students. You know, there's a couple things worth. Have to look at, one is the federal government and the actions that they take the federal government, and how that flows down. If there are going to be block grants that come to the States, and the states have to decide how those are spent. It's going to be important that we work with our educators, our school districts, to figure out how that's going to happen. The other thing is to look at categorical funding in the state of Michigan. The gentleman that was just appointed as the K 12 Budget Chair has had this role in the past, and he has always advocated getting rid of categorical funding role in developing the poor people allotment and just let the school district spend that as they work. So that's an important conversation, I think, that we're going to have as we get into the budget process, and we expect that over kick up next week with the governor's budget presentation.
Adam tends to do a little bit of our work as it relates to communities, local governments and education. I tend to do a lot of our infrastructure work, so we're splitting up the presentation a little bit for me to wrap up with natural assets, probably our last big bucket that we're talking about here. Really, more than anything I know stormwa, utilities and infrastructure. It also falls a little bit in this category with flooding events. I know that for my drive down today on I 75 from Oakland County, but that is an ongoing issue that we try to address regionally, and we have some bills. We're also going to try to have a little bit more discussion on some goals we saw last session related to hazardous materials and T norm waste, that's been a hot topic in their landfill, they're receiving waste from out of state, and it seems to be a perennial issue in Michigan, just based on our tipping views on the other things that are out there that allow Michigan to, frankly, be a place to top state traction is a little bit easier to make it to, just from a financial perspective. And then lastly, we're going to talk a little bit about air quality standards and sort of where the federal government being going on some of these items as well. That's an issue that interprets things with that. That is a crash course in the advocacy that we've done. We'll be happy to take some discussion on it and answer any questions you have, or try to address the bills. We'll be here after the presentation too.
So okay, so
does anybody have any questions for our folks? They are our voice in Lansing.
Thank you. This is for Adam. So what's the next step in the revenue sharing? Now that it failed, I know there was big advocacy on some COVID half as well as the Michigan musable League. So just perhaps your insight, what you think Next up, should be sure
those votes started in the House last year and were sponsored by Representative aglis O'Neill as well as Representative Mark Tisdale. The good news is representative Tisdale, in the majority, is now Chair of the Finance Committee, where we expected these bills to go. We think that both representatives will reintroduce the bills, and we think there's a good chance we could get them through the house again. I mean, I get you get past like 100 or six votes last time, the problem wasn't necessarily the Senate. I think the Senate will reform it, some of the concerns over the governor's office and how much the overall number was and the cost for the program, and so I think it's going to be important for us to just continue to advocate to the governor and to the Senate how important this is for communities, and while we realize it takes money off their balance sheet to be able to play with. It's critical for communities that they have this so they can count on it, regardless of what happens in the budget process.
So what are our options and the possibilities for reducing our reliance on the gas tax as we look towards the increase in number of EVs what are some of the options that we
might be anticipating?
Adam and I are going to play Rocket procedures up here to answer this question, because this is one of the longest running questions and answering about what do we do over time as gas tax revenues decrease? There are a lot of different options out there. There's been discussions on user fees. There's been discussions on reallocating dollars. As many of you may know, the six cents sales tax you pay on gasoline doesn't actually go to road infrastructure. It goes into the sales tax program. It primarily helps schools, and to a certain extent, local governments you've got to share. Speaker Paul has suggested reallocating those dollars and spending them all on roads, so the sales tax would go solely to roads on fuel. The trade off for that is you're taking a pretty big chunk out of school funding and also revenue sharing. So there isn't really a right answer on this, but understand that the legislature will need to negotiate through whatever process that looks like to determine where the money ultimately ends up on that. So that's kind of one of the hot topics right now. One of the other ones is, where does the money go in the PA 51 distribution and formula? So there's a flow chart that you're forced in arise if you work in transportation areas, about where all our dollars go for roads. If you go to the bottom of the flow chart, that's actually the road agencies. So your local governments, your county roads, and mdot, there's a bunch of stuff at the top that funds things like comprehensive transit, ports, busses, things that aren't what you would consider roads, but they all fall into this idea of transportation, where the money enters into the formula has also been part of that discussion. So there's a lot of options out there. You could probably teach a graduate level class on this, but the one thing I will say, when you look at that P 51 flow chart, the numbers haven't changed much in the last 15 or 20 years overall, especially given inflation.
Let me just add to that. I think in this topic on roads, it's a very complicated issue. As we've all known for years, we are getting ourselves ready as staff could be at the table and have the data and information to be as helpful as we can when this came up years ago, and we did end up with an increase. You know, we as an organization, held strong that we did not want to see education heard as a result of this. And I think, you know, we would have many of those same messages, yet we really do need know that we need to focus on the fact that we need to increase growth funding. What I've already heard from a lot of different organizations, and you know, I don't necessarily blame people, and it's also in our platform, is, oh, if this is what has the attention, you should also fund water infrastructure. Now with that money, you should fund transit, you should fund broadband, all these things kind of like what happened in ij, that's where we have to be careful and understand we have a platform that supports investment in all of those areas, but we also know we've had an underfunded growth system for yet decades at this point, and we split the fact so much does anything end up moving forward. So I do think there's a lot of policy conversations, and I started those with some of our counties and locals on it, but I really think over the next few months, it'll become a pretty big initiative, and they'll be a big
part of it.
You'll hear more about it, for sure. We have time for one more
question. You had your hand up pretty quickly back here. Thank you very much. I'm with Wayne green, and there is a national conference going on this coming, this weekend, with education. And I'm wondering to what extent you have been engaged with and working in collaboration with the Michigan Association school board.
So I think it really depends on the issue.
But we
with some COVID other clients that we have, we work collaboratively with the school boards quite often, and so we'll have conversations with anybody. But, I mean, I don't know that we necessarily engage them. I know Jeff Smith at the Chief Association for school boards, and we're happy to work with them on anything that makes sense to
collaborate, I guess. Thank you chair. Appreciate it. Thank you both. Lot of respect for Midwest. You guys do wonderful work. The proposal for the roads plan that hall put out there. There's parts that I disagree with you guys know, I'm a strong Democrat, very excited about his ideas around sunsetting some of the corporate handouts, and I hope that we can be at the table for making sure that that money gets invested in our region and our public infrastructure. And that is, I'm very much looking forward to that, hope that we can continue to push for those public dollars to be invested in public infrastructure.
Thanks. So for all of you, as we engage with some PAC to support these legislative priorities in the new discussion, please utilize some tax advocacy resources web page, and this web page includes links to our maps, data reports and regional plans relevant to the platforms issue areas. I know I use maps all the time. I'm sure most of you do too. There's just so much and other data. There's so much there for us, and with the new legislature, we need to make sure our arguments are well honed. So
okay, at the
bottom of the page are a set of advocacy tools that will be helpful for engaging your legislative This is on the website. The tools include up to date
tracking
for all legislation we're following and engaged in by our legislative dockets, monthly written legislative updates from our lobbyists in Lansing and Washington and county commission, state and federal legislative district maps with key information on the elected representatives, and then links to the Michigan legislature. So that website is full of all the information we need to for our latest legislature, and we're continuing to look to improve these resources. So please let us know what works and what doesn't and what's missing. And this is a tool for you to use, so please make use of it and communicate with
and then, starting in 2025 we'll be hosting quarterly legislative round tables. These virtual discussions will help some cog provide updates on our advocacy efforts and gather input from members on their policy priorities and positions, and you can see the dates of the quarterly round tables on the slide. I think those will be really interesting. The first is March 7, and again, scan the QR code to register or share this info with the policy staff and lobbyists that work with your communities. We look forward to these discussions, and if you have any questions about the round tables, please see government Affairs Manager Mike Spence over here.
Just a second.
Okay, next up, we have our report from our transportation Coordinating Council, led by Mike wessage Aaron Frazier,
thank you, Chairperson. Mark Markham, and good afternoon, I have two items for your consideration this afternoon. Number one is approval of the transportation performance management targets, TPM targets for pavement condition, bridge condition and national highway system reliability. Second item is approval of federally required transportation performance management targets for safety, starting with the next slide, all right, starting with bridge and pavement targets, federal transportation legislation established a performance based planning framework, performance measures and target setting requirements for states and regions. These measures were put in place to create some uniformity for measuring performance on the national highway system, set COVID in coordination with MDOT, must review performance targets for the factors listed shown on the slide here. Those include interstate pavement condition, non interstate NHS pavement condition, national highway system, bridge condition and system reliability on the national freight performance program, we have NHS freight reliability targets as well, typically the next slide, typically semcog and TCC recommend acceptance of the performance measures By mdot, because the interstate system is controlled by the state and regionally, we have similar trends for both interstate and non interstate pavement. Shown in this table are the performance condition pavement condition targets revised based on the data reviews. The green arrows represent whether an increase or decrease in the value is a positive trend. The green arrow represents, I already read that. Just a note that Miu, with this graphic represents missing, invalid and unresolved data that was due to approximately 10% of the interstate system under constructions and data was made unable to be collected. Take a look at that. All right, the committee also dated updated the region's bridges in poor condition. Target analysis predicts 9.5% NHS poor condition by deck area at the end of 2020, Five and therefore adjusted the poor target to 10% All right, the next slide frequent the system reliability. Targets are intended to measure how reliable the system is for users. These targets remain unchanged based on statewide data reviews. All right action requested. Chairperson Markham, I resolve. I move the resolution as shown on the screen to approve transportation performance management, TPM, target for pavement condition, bridge condition and national highway system reliability, Madam, Chair support rock a mood on
those performance measures. Yes.
One for yes instead? Or do we press
yes for yes?
Yes for yes instead?
The population weighted vote Motion carries,
Okay, anybody have any questions?
Yes, all right. Next, Next, our safety performance measures. Next, I will be requesting executive committee approval of our regional traffic safety targets, which are also part of Simcox performance based planning process and required by federal transportation regulations, the five safety performance measures are shown in the table. They include number of fatalities, rate of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, number of serious injuries, rate of serious injuries per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, and number of non motorized fatalities and non motorized serious injuries. As with other performance targets or measures, semcog must either support the statewide targets or establish regional targets. As you may recall in 2023 based on discussion and recommendations from the TCC and executive committee, semcog adopted regional safety targets for the first time that more accurate, accurately reflected our region's needs. The targets were aspirational, but still data driven, with the ultimate goal of reaching zero for all five targets, by 2050, that's called for by the RTP and the Southeast Michigan Transportation Safety Plan. Today, we are again recommending to adapt regional safety targets as opposed to following the statewide targets, using our fatality measures as an example. Here's the data we looked at to establish the regional targets. This chart shows the historical number of fatalities in Southeast Michigan and red and the five year rolling average shown on the blue line. Data from the previous five years were used to determine realistic reductions for 24 and 25 for fatalities. The selected reduction is one fewer fatality per year, which is a reasonable short term goal, send it since it has been achieved in the recent past. After 2025 a consistent year over year, percent decrease in the number of fatalities was calculated. This non linear target is shown in green, the
we use the same methodology to identify the baseline and target for the other four performance measures. A detailed description is available in your meeting handouts. Shown here is a summary of the five proposed safety targets for the Southeast Michigan as you can see, all of the targets we are aiming for are lower than their baseline, except for the non motorized fatalities and serious injuries. For this target, there were no reductions in the last five years, so we are proposing no change to our baseline number. This target setting methodology was used the last two years and previously approved by the TCC and executive committee semcog annual targets are a minimal reduction from the baseline but gradually increased to reach the regional goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries by 2050 semcog continues to work towards achieving greater annual reductions and reaching the zero goal as soon as possible for. Example, semcog has implemented a regional safety regional road safety audit program has worked with the federal aid committees to incorporate safety into the tip project selection process, and continues to expand the Safe Streets public education campaign. Chairperson Markham I make a motion to approve the resolution to establish regional safety targets for 2025 vote.
All right, go ahead and vote bush. Yes. Yes. And go Bucha Yes to accept our safety targets.
All right, we're gonna see the results and the population weighted vote and the motion carries. Thank you.
Thank you very much every weekend.
Okay, thank you. And I think it's time to
alright.
Good afternoon. Everybody. Great to see you. So we're going to add that agenda item that was taken up a consent. If we can vote on that, we're going to pass the memo around to all of you. If you received the if you received the electronic version, the memo was in there. Apologies that in the printed version. Well, it was in my printed version also. So we made copies just to make sure that everybody's thought. What we're asking for your vote today is to accept into the budget work program some sponsorships to help offset the costs of some of our major events, largely our general assemblies. When it comes to doing this, really, the cost of putting on some of those large events has skyrocketed when we want to be able to highlight some of the regional assets we have in the region. Some of those regional assets are pretty expensive, so we're looking to offset some of the costs. We will be doing limited outreach so that you know to who those sponsors could be, to our delegates at large, our semcog partners, or our engineering and planning firms that we work with. Are there any questions? Or I would look for
motion move
to approve as presented and served on this board for many years as former chair. I think this is a great idea. It's created, and I've seen firsthand the cost Absolutely. I think it's a great idea. I support it only and I move agenda.
Support discussion. Supported by
discussion. So just being new Councilman Scott Benson city of Detroit, just why is this one controversial? Why do we need the resolution for staff to solicit sponsorship, and this is for events only? Correct?
I don't know that it's for me. It's it's not, it's just that we haven't, had never really done it in the last few years. So we thought to be transparent. We should let people know that we feel it's prudent to be able to do that to offset some of our costs when we talk to our peers and once here across the country, she was very helpful in putting together the package. It is something that our peers do to help offset the cost of major events, the microphone.
Mike, what? Microphone and so, and this is for this year only, and then it will cut. You'll come back and request another one. Will there ever be a request for just the ability to do that in perpetuity? Moving forward, knowing that this is the cost of doing business, yeah, moving
forward, it's something that would be on the budget, that finance and budget would review and then move forward. As part of that to all of you, it's just the timing didn't work out with how high the costs have gotten recently.
So there should be a correction on the motion it says for the fiscal year 2024,
Okay, 25 it should be 2526
No, that's for 2425 is for program and budget that we're in right now.
I just sense it came up. The reason I asked for this to be pulled, I will be voting. No, clearly, my opinion hasn't been the most popular today, but that's okay, you know, popularity contest. I am of the firm believer that government is not the same as NASCAR, and I don't think that we need to solicit sponsorships. You know, governments should not be sponsored by corporate interests. And I don't necessarily think that some COVID is a government organization. And it would be weird for to say, Welcome to Washtenaw County brought to you by a CVS Pharmacy. So I think it would be weird to have some COVID Meeting sponsored by different corporate interests. So I'll be voting,
though. I You gotta push the actual not that part. Thank you.
Should $1 amount be included, or are we just this is open ended as much as we want?
Well, I'm using our judgment of not gathering more dollars than what we need to be able to offset the Event price. And it's different. Every facility is different.
Okay, when you say not more than offsetting the event falls, you're talking about the monies spent on staff to go solicit sponsorship.
No, I'm talking about the facility charges. Okay, thank you.
Maybe it quantified a different way. Do we know what the potential gap is between what we have in the work plan and what the costs are coming in at for the COVID facilities that we're planning to host? Do we have that idea or
the issue is, is that we put a we put one number for the whole year, versus we have many events throughout the year. And sometimes we add events because we think they're important. So for example, we are likely to be adding a green Summit, which we didn't necessarily budget for. So we try to manage all of those budgets in that way. I will say that the train station came back very high and adding chairs and other things that we want you to be able to have to sit down at trash cans. Other
questions. In the past, we've had General Assembly, we've had contractors and consultants at with booths of tables at each of those those functions, Is this similar type of sponsorship that would that, I would call that sponsoring. Isn't that just what you're talking about here, but at a larger scale? I mean, it's not true that we haven't had sponsors in the past because we've had any number of engineers come to our meetings. Is that different?
I would say most of the boosts that we've had in my time recently had been some kind of internal boost. Now, sometimes, if we're working with a consulting firm, we've brought them in to help answer questions, because they're under contract to work on a project with us, and we want to be able to have them help. But I don't remember doing that.
I I just say one more time, I'm on the National Association of Regional Council board as well as the United States Conference of Mayors. And this is common practice. And those are all government entities, you know. And I think we, we trusted the staff and our director to obviously extend sponsorship opportunities to appropriate sponsors. They don't own us. It's the opportunity for them to get information in front of us. If we so choose, we don't have to interact with them either. But again, I think this is creative and allows us to put more money the work that we're trying to do, instead of mostly the divest. The events are important, the meetings are important, but it allows us to keep more of our treasure for the important planning work that we do in the region. I don't think this is controversy at all, in my
opinion. Thank you. Yeah, so maybe, okay, so I think we're ready for a vote. Let's do yes, we had a motion and we had a second Barnett and Okay, so all of those in favor, yes, those opposed. No,
okay, we can see the results and the population weighted vote the motion carries. Thank you. Moving on to my report today, one I want to thank the speakers. We had a lot of good content today, and I think we all learned a lot. We'll see if people are interested in a tour, sometimes, maybe that's something to help with as well. So we're going to talk first about the state. There's many opportunities that we have to share our priorities that we just talked about. One is at the Governor's State of the State Address on February 26 a number of us as staff and our officers will be going with Midwest to be able to talk before and after the event, to share those priorities. Here's also, we're in the early stages of planning a legislative reception in Lansing on april 15, if you remember, we do that every at the beginning of every session as well. And one of the things we might be reaching out to some of you individually, because it's nice to get coverage right. Like our officers don't necessarily cover the entire breadth of the region. So keep an eye out for that in the consent agenda. As we mentioned, you did approve, again, us working in things like the acts my tax and educating about that issue. I also wanted to mention the Governor's speech at the Auto Show. I know a few of you were there as well. I thought that that was very timely, and the issues that she brought up are the issues largely a lot of times that we have things like the importance of place making and certain economic development activities, transit and roads funding. And we talked a lot about that already. At the federal level, there's been a few things going on. One is, I just wanted to let you know that I traveled down to Atlanta and met with the fellow executive directors of the major organizations of the major cities across the country to be able to talk about opportunities, looking at the federal initiatives going On, and also with three design the recertification and the need for us to reauthorize our federal transportation program, so an opportunity for us to all get on the same page. And it really was worthwhile. I think it really set the stage for the fact that we, as some of our staff, as well as the officers, will be going to the National Conference in February, visiting with our congressional delegates to have some conversations about our priorities there, but also being able to work with our peers. And an example of that is, I think there's no better time than now to talk about how important regions are across the country, and very grateful that Trevor Layton last minute has agreed to join us and be the head of our communications and work with other communication staff from across the country to be able to help put that message forward. So one of the things I wanted to mention on the next slide was just to give you an idea, and not to go into detail, but to show you the amount of work and items that we've been reviewing over the last week or so, and you know, just to show you, these are the ones that are really more impacting some COVID the organization, you know, and there's more that's impacting our view, as well as local governments. I would say the primary one impacting us is the executive order on unleashing American energy, which specifically was talking about funds that were in the infrastructure and jobs act as well as the inflation Reduction Act. And we were happy to see the memorandum that came out the next day that clarified things a little bit not as much as I think we'd like, but basically said that you can move forward with certain reimbursements of funding under those programs. The things that we will not be reimbursing in our fold are things that are climate related, largely and so that does impact a number of our projects. We are doing the Healthy Climate Plan for the region just kicked off, and you accepted those pro tax funds to be able to do that flooding study. And we also have dollars under inflation reduction to put in green infrastructure. It's called The under the GLRI environmental justice fund. So there's a lot of things that impact us, but not largely as much as we originally thought. So what we have done as organization is paused our funds when it came to the spending of those dollars for our contractors. We've asked our contractors to pause working on those projects for right now. Out, as you know, in the meantime, there were other memorandums that came out that talked about impacting funds beyond, beyond that, basically, most federal funds to be reviewed, and what was the impact of that? And that memo has since been rescinded. Well, the rescission of the memo was good for a lot of people to be able to move forward. We are still under that original issue, so we're still moving as forward as planned. We have received, and I would encourage you to keep an eye out for things like memorandums and guidance coming out of the federal administration. We've received 2d O T memos and orders that talk specifically about some of the programs and definitions and words that they want to see. So we're going to be working on that. We're taking a prudent approach, I think, and I think our staff is doing an amazing job and inadaptable. Any questions? If not, we'll move forward to the next slide that just talks about Interestingly, though, we had a very successful recertification of our federal transportation program, and the report is out. We had a number of commendations and a few recommendations, so I'll briefly go over those. So some of the combinations were about how we did our long range transportation plan, really one of the bread and butters of the work. So that's awesome to hear. And also our tip our Transportation Improvement Program, which is a little unique in this region, and how we do it with our fed related committees. So that's very good to see as well. They also like things like our flood risk tool, our building footprints and all of the direct technical assistance that we are giving to the communities. We also received a commendation on our equity work and our civil rights work, and also on things like that multimodal tool, and as you all are familiar with in our safety work, that we take that safe systems approach, we have a few recommendations, and I think they're pretty nuanced about you know, when it comes to some of our public participation, we have a pretty quick public comment period of the tip at times when we need it, because we need to turn Those projects around quickly, and they want us to monitor that, and they want us to integrate RTA into our work a little bit more, which is something we definitely want to do. And then finally, I think we need to develop an ADA transition plan for our offices here, which we know we're ADA compliant, but we need to actually write it down and submit that, and that actually will likely come in front of this committee. And when is that? In July. In July, in July. So for regional review, we just had it. That was an exciting meeting. Many of you are here. You approved $110 million in projects. It included C back carbon reduction, a couple of transportation alternatives program and some regional safety audits. I would say what's a little different is we have really successfully picked up pictures in here of, uh, giving out of doing check presentations to try to show, like, when we should have these formula funds, there's real benefit to them. And they've been, we've done a couple of them. They've done very well. So as you all get awards, we might be doing more of that. We are putting a little caveat on the distribution, at least award notices, to just let them know that there's a number of things going on right now federally, including things that I just talked about, but also the whole program, you know, does end at some point. And you know, usually it doesn't, it ends, but it gets reauthorized, or you have continuing resolutions, but we do need to put some caveats, so we're working with our our lawyers about what to what to put on those but the decisions haven't decided by regional review. So one of the things we try to say is, what does the data say every meeting? Because you guys love our data, and tomorrow is national Wetlands Day, which is awesome. You know, I love Love me some wetlands. So one of the things that we worked at was a new wetland story map that tells the story about the importance of wetlands. But even cooler, I think, is this a wetland mapper, and you can see a little screenshot of the wetland map. And what's neat about it is it talks about, you know, not just the location of the wetland, but how it functions. What does it function for Is it, is it functioning for ecological value, for flooding, for other things. And I think that's really helpful for all of us to know. So we're doing a press release. At the end of the day today announcing this. Oh, now it's already out.
So anyway, I wanted to just say that if this is something you're interested in, Bailey's here. Bailey did an awesome job putting this all together, and she works in our environment and infrastructure group. So thanks to Bailey for that. And we have some new awesome staff. We like to make sure everybody sees and they are already hitting the ground and running. One is Hannah King. She's going to be working communications, leading our visual media. So you might be seeing a little bit of different looks on some of the work that we do, which I'm excited. I think it'll be pretty cool. And Monica Bauer is working behind the scenes, but on very important work we all know when it comes to the needs of our accounting and financial resources and all of the grants here at semputh. And then finally, you, if you haven't met Nikki, you will. Nikki Hartley is going to be working with Mike Spence on all of the government affairs work, so our legislative advocacy and government operations work. We're super busy in that so she's already saying that, all right, and then just to end is kind of hard to read, but there's a lot going on. You have a handout about what's next? I would really encourage you to come to those outreach meetings in each county. You need to register to come to the meeting, but you also need to submit your name. If you're interested in being nominated, you can self nominate to be on the executive committee. So we're doing those elections at those out county meetings, which is different. So we want to make sure that that's my report. Thank you and
Okay, excuse
me. Next. Up we have our upcoming meetings
the next, excuse me. Just a
second, our next executive committee meeting will be right here in the senpac offices on February 28 Friday, and our next General Assembly will be Thursday, March 20, at the Michigan Central Station, which is awesome. And then the that event will spotlight significant regional and national economic development projects and foster meaningful discussion on regional cooperation and innovation. The business meeting will feature presentations from Heather Brandon at the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority, and Colin Byrd, the Consul General of Canada in Detroit, on the economic and transportation impacts of the Gordie Howe International Bridge Project. And attendees will then hear from a panel of regional experts on major redevelopment projects and innovative repurposing of buildings and land, which is very appropriate
in the train station.
Watch for more details in the regional update and in the follow up to this to today's meeting,
and if there are
there any other items that need to come before this committee today, If there are none, I call this meeting adjourned. Yes.
