if you want to commissioner graham absent Commissioner Sutton I mean Hutton Commissioner Skinner mr. Needham here councilmember Smith absent Commissioner Slovak absent Commissioner up hell absent Commissioner gay Brandel here commissioner councilmember Bannister here commissioner callewaert chair Brown here commissioner over back here and Commissioner Murphy absent I think I'd like to welcome professor Jonathan over Peck to the environment Commission I think this is the first time you've been here yeah would you like to say anything or introduce yourself to the group hadn't prepared anything but I'm really happy to be here I apologize that uh life's challenges kept me from coming earlier I'm a professor and Dean at the University of Michigan School of for environment and natural and sustainability and I'm really eager I'm a citizen obviously of the Ann Arbor and I'm really looking forward to working with everybody both on general and Arbor environmental issues but also and hopefully in ways that we can get better coordination between the University and the city that's one of my goals I can't promise any magic wand don't I'm not that high up in the chain of command but eager to help wherever I can thank you and I'm a climate scientist so I have a lot of expertise there too okay so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the August 22nd meeting is there any discussion no all right ties or a motion to approve them okay all in favor say aye all right okay the motion passes unanimously so okay the next item is public commentary does anybody wish to so you know in terms of approval of minutes on the minutes from the I guess we already did the minutes I think so I think we're doing the agenda now okay well all right so sir is there a motion to any discussion about the agenda any suggested changes so is there a motion to approve the agenda for the minutes okay second all approve the agenda of the organ of the okay so now it's the time for public commentary is there anybody who wishes to come forward please come up and state your name why should we declare a state of climate emergency is it just a meaningless resolution that has no teeth aren't we making plans and budgets to reach Net Zero Carbon as soon as possible what's the point this is about how we as humans respond to threats by either entering emergency mode or by mere remaining in neutral mode and it's highly contagious imagine the fire alarm goes off in the office building how seriously should you take it how do you know if it's a drill or a real fire those questions will be answered by the actions and communications of the people around you particularly the people who are designated as leaders if they are chatting and taking their time exiting the building you will assume this is a real if people are moving with haste faces Stern and focused communicating urgency and gravity you will assume that there's real danger and exit as quickly as possible to evaluate whether we are currently in a climate crisis the public will look to each other and particularly to leaders are they calling it an emergency does it tone of their writing and statements convey alarm and a passionate desire for massive action to avert immediate crisis are they themselves in emergency mode if the answer to these questions is no the individual will conclude that there must not be an emergency or that emergency action is hopeless because if leaders are apparently unwilling to coordinate emergency action this suggests that those who communicate with euphemism and advocate kerbin gradualism are actually preventing the public from understanding that we are in a climate emergency we need to join the thousands of local governments in 19 countries that have declared a climate emergency so please add it to the agenda for October 24 thank you thank you is there anybody else can Garber 2387 Hilldale like Robin I'm with the local grassroots group climate mobilization I'm supposed to be in a family reunion but this was too important as great a tune Berg pointed out last week at the UN according to the IPCC we have a remaining global carbon budget of about 350 Giga ton co2 that's for a sixty-seven percent chance of keeping global warming and 1.5 degrees centigrade the IPCC's threshold for unacceptable climate risks and irreversible feedback loops that budget will be exhausted in less than nine years at current emissions so the industrialized world needs to reduce emissions by 15 to 20 percent a year starting now that will give underdeveloped nations more time to reach that zero this global equity principle is central to the Paris agreement my generation the baby boomers has completely failed great attune verb and Robin who just spoke we've stolen their future I know it's we're not supposed to talk about intergenerational responsibilities and global equity because that turns people off but I'm tired of speaking in half-truths tonight we're asking you to pass a climate emergency resolution with a net zero citywide target of 2020 in at December 31st 2025 now you to your credit you passed a climate emergency resolution last December with a 2040 target thank you that was never taken up by City Council because of the new IPCC assessment and global reality we've set this new far more aggressive target why because it's what we need to do now I know the big elephant in the room is is the end of 2025 doable we are not naive we realize what this will take it means converting fifty thousand housing units from natural gas to air source or geothermal heat pumps doing the same for 12 million square feet of commercial industrial space generating electricity for 100% worth with 100% renewable energy not only to meet existing needs but to power those extra heat pumps this despite a local utility whose corporate motto seems to be business as usual also grounding 70,000 vehicles with internal combustion engines building rail and bus systems for the tens of thousands of people who commute daily to and from Ann Arbor making the shift to local fuel system excuse me food systems drawing down carbon with green roofs and biochar and drastically cutting scope 3 emissions like flying I won't even bring up the university all these things are necessary but no one is talking about them because that's too uncomfortable instead we keep pushing back the timeline now we're at a cliff so we need a whole new approach and that starts with new more honest targets adopting 2025 will not serve to get the city off the hook just the opposite Ann Arbor writes not just the usual suspects will take personal action will demand action on the part of city government we will help mobilize them in just a few weeks we've collected 551 city signatures of city residents in support of our new climate emergency resolution and the December 2025 target we can get the public behind a broad effort to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions here not by 2040 or 2050 but in the next decade that is what is required we have to change the terms of the conversation greater train berg said to world leaders last week quote these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is unquote she was right but I think we in this room are better than that so we hope to see our resolution on your October 24th meeting agenda that will give us a chance to make our case I think we deserve it I'm going to ask the Commission to put these petitions into the record and I'll pass them on to you to take a look thank you Thank You mr.
good morning column today is September 30th 2019 it is the 28th day of school this is WDSU news I am absent man Lully today for lunch there will be shown chill jeez pigs eat chips cauliflower there cherry tomatoes good salad and milk 12 for breakfast I repeat muffin dried cherries applesauce and milk we have some fans celebrating birthdays Jack W no Jaden hey hey Jonathan and Vivian H please go to the office to pick out your please to figure out your birthday book issues from that question was if you one run one mile in eight minutes how many miles where you go in 32 minutes the answer is for the winner is Jonathan three merit come to the office to pick out your prize today's fun fact question is in October for a white heritage church is celebrated remember to write your answer in aliens we have some a special announcement a lucky one the lucky winners Friday lunch which at the picnic table this week are the Natalie to hustle Caden and then to ready Kennedy Toole Axl can access it by like three Marit Marit Destiny's economy Mitchell Michael E we have three buck Boyd Boyd Boyd Quinn hey ten forehead is Preston for Pete amnesia for cleanup spot we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month the Spanish word of the day is classic is the day is prostitutes which means thank you and and de nada British means you're welcome and it now please stand by I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all remember kindest counts every day everywhere thanks for watching oh yeah
Garber does anybody else wish to make a public comment okay there will be a second time for public comment at near the end of the meeting tonight so the next item on the agenda is unfinished business an update on the s WR in P process so at the August 22nd meeting we had a presentation by both representatives from optimum and city staff on the SW RMP recommendations which were in word during which there were two resolutions that were tabled city staff is not available to come tonight for up to four QA so we will have to take this up I think that our October 24th meeting my understanding is that staff is still working on I'm still drafting recommendations to submit to Council that they will be presented to the environmental Commission before they do come before council so all indications right now or that this will happen at the outer 24th meeting so we'll wait until then to take this matter up again is there any discussion does anybody wish to add anything just say what are you define it for the viewing audience yeah this regards the solid waste strategic plan for the city for the next number of years this will define the direction of what how the city will collect trash recycling and compostables and and how they will how they will measure and and what kind of how they will measure diversion rates and how things will will be calculated so this will involve this has been a long issue a long process it's gone on for over a year so far the city hired a consultant afternoon consultants to draft a plan which comes to 247 pages people haven't had on the commission most commissioners haven't had enough time to digest all the information here so there was a the first resolution was from city staff just to adopt the recommendations as they were but there were some 23 recommendations it was difficult to tell what the priority was and what what direction the city would take so these are being drafted right now and they will come up for our consideration again on October 24th so I have a three-part update from mr.
Hubie staff are currently working to collect review and address comments from City Council regarding the master plan once these comments have been addressed staff plan to come back to the environmental Commission in October to share their proposed revisions the city received two responses for restarting the MuRF which materials recovery facility those proposals will be reviewed and the goal is to go to Council with a recommendation by the end of October and this is something that you all have been interested in for a long time and offer has been made for a new solid waste manager this person has accepted but is still working their way through the new hire process the hope is that they will be on board in October how can this person be identified at this time I don't even know their name okay any other comments so just so I understand at the October meeting we will be asked to consider a revised version of the plan that we saw earlier that will hopefully incorporate some of our concerns and that's my understanding and they should be provided to the Commission at least three days before a meeting so we have some time to review them any other oh yes i am not sure i I'm not sure when the when she's going to come on board or he or she are going to be on board okay I guess we'll close discussion on that topic so we move on to new business Josh McDonald is going to present on the sustainability offices calculation of the Ann Arbor's greenhouse gas inventories so Josh update to the inventory I think probably close to three years now so we figured it was due another update so let's go ahead and get right into it as far as the overview of what we're gonna be covering first portion is going to be looking at the data so we'll be looking at some of the data sources some of the limitations of the data as well as I've included a kind of section on the scope and what scope we have what's kind of included in this greenhouse gas emissions now we'll be looking at the greenhouse gas numbers so we analyzed 2015 to 2018 we'll be going through an analysis of some of the variations that we're seeing with those numbers between 2015 18 and then after that we'll be looking at some projected changes so what kind of things do we know now that could influence our greenhouse gas emissions in the future and finally takeaways so be kind of wrapped up with a major points so first section data so this is something I included in this version of the presentation because I think it's important to kind of get a sense of the scope there's three different scopes as you see one's kind of city found scopes so stationary fuel combustion things like natural gas burning in stove tops things like furnaces you also have inbound transportations all the transportation that's within the city we also have industrial production so we don't really have a big industrial sector but since it is Ann Arbor we like to think that we produce a lot of intelligent children and kids and students so that's where we kind of include the University of Michigan in our greenhouse gas inventory and then scope 3 which kind of includes everything that's going outside of the city so waste that's leaving a lot of times it's landfills in other cities and then some of the transmission losses so for this time around we actually included transmission losses which include fugitive emissions and some other things we're not out of bound transportation as well so highway travel things like that when people are commuting in and out of out of the city and then finally scope to which is electricity from the grid so everything that we're getting from DTE so do two sources for natural gas I guess you can kind of break down everything we just talked about into four main sources natural gas electricity we get a lot of that information from DTE Energy they give us kind of a community-wide number and then we also have numbers from the office of campus sustainability so it worked very closely with the University of Michigan solid waste some of those numbers come internally from us as well as from the county transportation we get SEMCOG and watts which are kind of regional transportation authorities as well as and it doesn't come out that well but the ride for kind of public transportation so details of the data this is kind of where we go over what's changed from the last inventory and just some of the I guess the nitty gritty about about the data itself so the University of Michigan had to be disentangled from the data that we got from DTE we worked very closely with the University of Michigan to disentangle that data but I think it really speaks to the fact that the University and this are you know just in everyday kind of operations there is kind of that blurring of the line I mean there's a lot of stuff that is shared between the two institutions and the institution and the city another point that choice gas isn't really being captured outside of the University of Michigan so the state of Michigan has choice natural gas which basically means you can purchase your natural gas from someone outside of DTE we worked with the University of Michigan to figure out how much they were purchasing but when it comes to for example the commercial sector it might be that they're purchasing natural gas and we're not really able to capture that because there's so many options as far as natural gas in those sectors that it's not really captured by this by this inventory and then finally distribution losses and fugitive emissions so we've included distribution losses so every time that electricity you know kind of flows there's some efficiency losses and then fugitive emissions from methane so natural gas pipes and methane leaks have also been included in this inventory so getting straight into the numbers I was kind of looks at the sector breakout so for 2018 we have a two point one six million metric tons of co2 II broken out there you see residential commercial industrial so residential is about twenty three percent commercial industrials twenty two percent University of Michigan makes a largest portion at 32 percent transportation at 17 percent solid waste at three percent and then again those production losses looking at fugitive emissions at around another three percent this is what the missions look like if we do two thousand and including 2015 and the three new years at 20 16 17 18 and you can kind of see so we implemented some of this information that we now have from the data we updated all the numbers throughout so we were consistent throughout to make sure that whatever information we now have we're doing we're kind of backtracking and making sure all the data aligns and you can see from 2000 to 2015 six 17 there's a decline and then in 2018 there is a slight uptick so analyzing 2015 to 18 what what kind of accounts for that uptick what what kind of accounts for a decline so we look at the stationary sector you see residential you kind of see a similar thing so from 2015 16 17 you see a decline 2018 you see an uptick to the same thing in the commercial industrial sector there's a just in case you guys were wondering about that 2000 baseline and that dropped to 2015 in the 2015 inventory presentation that we did that's a lot of its attributed to the NCRC so North Campus Research Center moving from Pfizer which was community over to the University of Michigan and a lot of the energy commissioners joke that we just have to sell all of our property to the University of Michigan to meet our targets but that then accounts for that drop and then finally in the University of Michigan you don't see the same kind of pattern but that's that's there as well so some of the drop can probably be attributed to DTU fuel mix so as you see coal makes up a large portion of DTS fuel mix there is a slight decrease between 2016 2017 nuclear pretty much stayed the same renewables pretty much stayed the same there's a slight increase in natural gas and oil as far as their fuel mix or whatever they're they're using their plants are to be able to produce electricity we also looked at population growth to see if that was attributing it it doesn't look like I mean there is a steady increase but it's very minimal so we don't think that that's really attributing much to this the changes in the numbers and then finally the weather pattern so this is where we took the 30 year average and we took total degree days which is heating degree days and cooling degree days how much you need to heat your house or cool your house to be able to get to that 65 degrees is usually the average that's used and we kind of see a similar pattern you see 2015 and those percentages are all from the 30-year average so it's 0% then you have 3% and sixteen 2017 6% and then this kind of jump about 12 percent between 2017 2018 I should point out that this is mostly for illustrative purposes and the slide after this we actually weather normalized and there's a lot more that goes into weather normalization there's a weighted process that happens that you know because if you think about it trying to heat your house a lot of times from 10 degrees which sometimes we reach here in Ann Arbor is going to be a lot more energy use than trying to cool it from 90 degrees you know the hottest day so there's everything's kind of weighted and there's there's things that go into this but it's just to show that there is when we weather normalize that you do see that it kind of levels out for that 16 17 and 18 year greenhouse gas emissions so we're pretty we're pretty confident that that's playing a role in these greenhouse gas emissions so this kind of gets me to kind of a larger point which is these climate feedback loops and there's a lot of them that you know we can kind of point to but I think the one that becomes most relevant for looking at some of the changes that we're seeing in this greenhouse gas inventory are this kind of weather-related feedback loop where you get climate change that produces extreme weather that extreme weather then makes us basically use more energy to get to kind of a place where we can cope with the extreme weather that produces more greenhouse gas emissions and that kind of feeds back into climate change there's a graph here on the right which I really like this is actually from the UK this summer they actually had one of the hottest summers on record and you can kind of see how temperature and carbon use that's actually carbon use intensity are kind of masking each other so that's as the temperature continues to increase for these period of days so does the carbon use intensity so we kind of looked at some of the things that that you know looking backwards to 2018 up to 2018 what kind of things can we expect going into the future one of the things that were anxiously waiting for president schlissel announced February 2019 they use putting together a commission carbon neutrality that the as you can see there the commission will be addressing a lot of different topics but the final recommendations aren't going to come out until fall of 2020 so we didn't really have anything that we could factor into our emissions but the next update that we'll be doing with a greenhouse gas inventory will make sure to include anything that's that's been announced from the University of Michigan another thing that we can get a factor in to the future of our greenhouse gas emissions is our offices five-year work plan so as you see there's different sectors their residential sector commercial sector electric vehicles those are all programs that are targeting those different sectors and we used similar programs elsewhere applied it to the city of Ann Arbor and use some proxies to be able to get estimates as far as what we could expect to see for reductions given these programs you see about a hundred and thirty eight thousand metric tons of co2 we reduced in residential sector commercial is a hundred and one thousand reduced from these programs and then the electric vehicle with the e V readiness so if we kind of just graphed that out what you'll see is that from 2018 where we're at there's about a 12% decrease from the base and then you'll see about a 22% decrease by a 2025 I kind of just faded out the bar just to show that it was in the future but if you can see the the residential that's the dark blue commercial industrials a light blue transportations that gray solid waste is that light gray and then the University of Michigan makes the rest of it so the the five-year plan were to be implemented this is what we could see as far as reductions the other major thing that that influences our emissions is the fuel mix like we had talked about earlier DTU recently came out with an integrated resource plan the integrated resource plan had targets to be able to basically green their fuel mix and those targets in 2023 33% reduction 20 30 50 percent reduction 2040 80 percent reduction and a lot of these reductions are coming from the a man of coal plants so the coal plants are coming to the end of their life and they're being replaced by other things so by 2023 st.
Clair and River Rouge are both being retired and they're being replaced with things like natural gas so 1,100 megawatts of natural gas 11 megawatts of solar 693 megawatts of wind and you might ask why you know 693 megawatts of wind versus 11 megawatts of solar you know why of the disparity part of it has to do with financial reasons it based off of the the finances of wind but the other part of is the DTE is heavily relying on a volunteer green program so they have they're between four hundred and sixty-five to seven hundred and fifteen megawatts based off of a volunteer green program so if you guys have ever paid a little extra to get renewable green energy that's kind of what what they're trying to target I'm at 1.75 percent from energy efficiency from 2040 they're returning to more coal plants but things get a little bit more speculative as far as what they're gonna replace it with so it's kind of a mix between natural gas and solar and this graph actually summarizes it quite nicely as you see the coal continues to go down until 2040 when we don't see coal anymore but in particular you see kind of an increase in gas and a little bit of an increase in renewables from 2018 to 2024 but as soon as you get into 2030 there's this kind of question as to how much is going to be made up of natural gas how much of its going to be made up of of renewables and then by 2040 it becomes a very big question as to how much that that make up is to be able to make the targets yes Josh these are great thank you so much you're pulling all this data together these are really great what I'm seeing here though it when when we're being asked by Greta - Bergen and our local youth and such or younger generations to go to Net Zero by 2025 or when we even look at the county's recent resolution September 18 about 2035 for net zero emissions and look matching it up with what DTE is doing and what you're reporting on here it's it's sort of a really an emergency crisis radical change yeah yeah and we'll get a little bit so there's a section at the very end that kind of summarizes everything oh it's okay maybe we can talk a little bit yes how do we is it just we raise our hand and we can talk yeah yeah I really appreciate what you're doing - I just want to point out DTE came out with another announcement today okay so they're gonna go Net Zero by 2050 oh so I don't know if you follow what they're doing yeah but it's a lie quite a lot of corporations and unfortunately not enough utilities yes but they keep ratcheting and they're ratcheting like every year okay you know because it's becoming more and more clear how the price point of renewable energy in particular is going to go down yeah and also how public pressure is going to go but it's just interesting to know yeah that's where we might get our hope more for 2035 is more probably realistic but we should be talking about it all yeah yeah it goes to show how outdated these things how quickly they literally just today but anyway so if we look at the impact of the DT fuel mix specifically so it breaks out into electricity which is that dark blue natural gas gas which is that kind of grey transportation which is a lighter blue always kind of lists latish the lighter the ledges of the Blues I think and then the gray on top of the losses for the most part you know we're looking at 2018 again everything that's kind of lighter is out into the future and you kind of see this pretty significant reduction specifically and actually only in that dark blue so everything was held constant outside of the electricity because the fuel mix is only going to be really impacting the electricity side of things and so you see that coming down until 2040 where you see natural gas and transportation still making up a very large portion of of those emissions and I guess I mean if we're talking about reaching that zero even sooner that little blue part that little blue part of the graph on 2040 maybe I'd even be there so kind of a summary of everything that we talked about you know climate change creates feedback loops in particular I think we're starting to see the beginnings of this kind of extreme changes in climate and how that's making us basically use more electricity to be able to normalize our situation you know electricity a natural gas and how that ultimately creates a feedback loop where you're using more greenhouse gases to be able to cope projected changes so University of Michigan 2020 plans that something we'll be including in an update for this the OSI plan so that graph on the right actually includes everything that's the OSI plan including the current DTE fuel mix you see the targets there in red and with the OSI plan and the fuel mix we actually do make our target in 2025 but we miss our target significantly in 2050 and again that's mostly made up of transportation and natural gas if we assume that things stay constant those two sectors and then finally yeah that kind of that last takeaway I think summarizes at all so how do we target these how do we target natural gas how do we target transportation to be able to really reduce our emissions and 2050 you know and I think to council Bannister's point you know are these targets even I mean should they be more aggressive this is something that we have to revise and I think that's definitely a very valid question yes how do you estimate transportation we're gonna see a disruptive electrification of and it'll probably proceed pretty quickly here in Michigan yeah starting next decade yeah how do you estimate yeah so originally we use some coggan watts to be able to get kind of regional averages you know I think that they would agree in saying that in some ways it's more of an art and they do kind of estimates in certain locations and they try to generalize it based off the region they do bring it in both highway as well as localized but more so to your point you know in the original greenhouse gas inventory that we did for 2015 I had cafe standards in there and it was one of those things that as soon as the federal government changed you know their cafe standards and what their goals were that portion kind of got dropped out I think it could be something that we try to reflect in here if there's electric vehicles that we have numbers that were pretty certain could be coming in the near future but it's one of those things where I wanted to make sure that whatever we were using in these predictions were things that have been kind of already announced or had already been planned but yeah I mean I think that that would make sense so we'll bring that number way down and so if we bring that number down let's say everything's electric yeah and therefore renewably sourced by 2050 how would that change your well so this is my nursing thing in large part our office is looking at that 2015 number and trying to figure out how to electrify the last two remaining sectors so natural gas and electric vehicles but that actually puts more of a load on the electric side and so this is where you know if you if you're basically it's a balancing act or anything you're basically putting everything that would normally be run by natural gas and even with transportation you know gasoline over to what would normally be the grid and so one of the things that we were thinking about you know could you go ahead and pair electric vehicles but for example solar panels you know for homes is there some way that we could market that a lot of Titans we talk about the payback of solar panels and we see the payback almost I think it was something like five or six years when you pair an electric vehicle with solar panels so is that something that we could do to kind of offset some of the that extra load of demand that we're going to put exactly yeah and so I'm not at all saying that we want to do this by 2050 yeah but at the same time I'm saying DTE is is 100% renewable or low-carbon by 2050 I and we'll definitely be electric cars by then and all mobility will be electric and they'll be and that's one of the incentives actually for DTE and other you is to get into renewable energy because they're gonna make up the money lost sure by not selling gas and coal fired by getting more cars and trucks and buses and stuff yeah but I'm just saying so for at that point where are we in 2050 are you I'm just trying to understand your numbers if you say we're now at zero for all transportation uh-huh because I think that's pretty much a guarantee yes I think you would still have some of that come over to the grid side I don't know how much DG is there will be no gas at that point right and they'll certainly be no coal right just but it would be going over to DT so and I'm not sure if DT is accounted for that as far as that load that you'd be putting on their grid well I think the commitment they made today is to be Net Zero period yeah so by 2050 I think we are you know tomorrow I'll be talking you know R I'm on the Commission at U of M okay and we'll be talking one of the other people on the Commission is from DTE yeah and he's gonna present more numbers so I'll really understand it but I think that they're really talking about zero yeah so they're accounting for that zero on the grid zero transport you know and at all and I'm just saying it'll all be electric by then so yeah I mean if that's the case and you know on this graph anything that you see that it's transportation would basically again be gone and then that'd probably be factored over on the electricity sign if it is renewable if they're going at zero then you're basically taking out so we just have that little et BT blue thing down at the bottom yes which means at least Net Zero by 2050 is for this second city is like really easy yes so then the question is how do we do better yeah I still think so the the natural gas side though I mean I think that there's still a question as far as like VRS systems heat pumps on that side where I think that there has to be more of a push for electrification I know that a lot of the equipment you know you got geothermal for a long time it was a viable option at this where we're at but you know I think the vrf of technology is starting to get to the point where it can start to handle our climate and so I'm wondering if once we reach that where the technology is there with vrf systems whether there's you subject programs or something that we can do to make sure that people are electrifying and not staying on the natural gas side of things yeah by then and their winter won't be so cold but you know this is the biggest problem for U of M too because we have this huge heating bill and energy consumption and steam is our way we do it and that whole thing has to get replaced by electricity or geothermal right and the city has to do that too yeah and that's a huge amount of infrastructure it's not just city infrastructure it's residential infrastructure you know how do you get all the citizens to do it how to get all the businesses to do it at least at you Oh mmm you know we can make a decision and do it yeah yeah I think it's gonna be hairy yeah yeah but I don't want to go to knowledge isn't that's a question about the fugitive emission calculation yes you said it was about 3% was that like a calculation that you came up with are you applying estimate cuz so the duty for natural gas that can really range yeah system DT actually has to report its usual emissions to the MPS C so we just use the number that they reported I mean it could be the number I know there's some debate as to help us to calculate it but just because you really said 3% we said yeah so basically based off of transportation losses and then you add in fugitive emissions from methane gas leaks that's what they were reporting to the supply chain it was bigger than that bigger yeah yeah so that's a number that could definitely go up I guess depending on how it's calculated yeah and we're going through that process - okay and we're trying to do numbers that are independent of DTE yeah we're and we're also very interested in what DT says but we're and I think there in the end by having them on the Commission there's going to be an agreement yeah and the agreements gonna be that the PhD research team yeah it's probably done it right okay yeah so we'll have some better numbers for you that you guys have better numbers definitely looking at improving sorry I didn't mean to overstep I was also curious and of what you were saying about DTE it's my understanding that they have a proposal before the MPSC right now to create another natural gas plant and if they are moving toward carbon neutrality by 2050 I'm wondering how that yeah how that would chip the balance yeah so I think this graph in particular kind of shows that I know there was I know there one of the options of going to natural gas plant by 2040 if you see here there's a pretty heavy you know amount that would be natural gas and again if there's fugitive emissions that's coming from that and you have more natural gas plans so that means those fusion emissions are only going to increase exponentially it also means a long-term infrastructure investment and yeah so I mean there there is a lot that kind of pivots on the way the DT decides to go yeah we have the same darn problem because I don't know how many years ago but not that long ago someone made the decision U of M to build a new combined cycle gas plant and combined cycle is the magic word because we need the heat as much as we need the electricity and they weren't ready to invest the much bigger number in doing away with the whole heating system and replacing it but we're pretty sure that that plant will be you know it'll be finished in 21 and it will be paid off by eight years later and so beyond that it's you know it's feasible to tear it down you can tear it down before that - and probably what's going to happen our best guess now and we haven't made a decision and nothing's final it's just that the by eight years from now the price of renewable energy will be so much lower than gas and we'll have storage that's affordable it'll it'll be like what's happening at coal now so some of my colleagues who work and more the finance side of things sort of use words like natural gas will be crushed by the late 20s you know that doesn't help us get to 2025 but I mean this is getting into the world of really what might happen yeah and be easy is actually kind of on par in some ways with something calculation it is now yeah absolutely but we don't have a storage now so that's why we still what these guys are all going to gas is because they cannot afford to have blackouts and stuff like that yes I see how the shift goes from the commercial industrial with with the NCRC shift but I don't see an increase in the University of Michigan so I wondered what happened there so if you see the the 2000 2015 there is actually a little bit of a shift that's all yeah yeah so yeah and it's it's I mean there's things that kind of it's more baked into it this doesn't make a lot of people happy who are complaining about too many emissions but U of M has been growing I mean if you ever look at that campus and I'm sure it was that way before I arrived two years ago with cranes they're everywhere they're growing dramatically and they're doing it without increasing the emissions because they're more fuel efficient energy efficient buildings and doing a lot of other small things because previous president right I think I've committed the University of reducing carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2025 so it looks as though you know we pretty much are there with the exception that this new revelation that they're these supply chain gasoline methane gas leaks which we were hoping to be there by 2020 and now of a sudden it might take until 2025 but the point being is that Michigan has actually been trying pretty hard to at least reduce things or at least keep the energy consumption flat or carbon emissions flat while growing substantially so I think you know we get this huge Pfizer facility and that someone deserves a pat on the back you know we just absorbed it and didn't increase our carbon that was great a couple years ago it's no longer in the good category yeah yeah there was a few things actually specifically on this point that we had to work with Michigan on because I think the baseline included NCRC so they've backtracked I mean they purchased it in 2010/11 around that timeframe but they had backtracked and put it into their initial baseline so there are rabbit holes there and that's one thing our commission is trying to do is make sure there are no okay budgies stuff yep so I've heard that in terms of electrification of Transportation I mean the biggest bang for your buck would be to put up solar panels to charge the EVs where they are during the day so that would be in putting them up at wherever the commuters are parked yeah burn at their workplace yeah so have you checked into the possibilities of that yeah yeah we're actually working with a couple of groups that are looking at kind of all inclusive you know you can basically charge two vehicles that comes with a solar roof so you can go and do carport style and so we're talking about that I mean I think again I think this was raised a little earlier the Holy Grail is always battery storage because it just gives you so much more flexibility so I think that's something that they're thinking about integrating into some of these car ports and yeah I mean it's it's interesting the talks are definitely happening and even for residential I mean there's that question as to what do you do if you're not at home during the peak right when the Sun is out brightest that's areas where you really need battery storage to make sense like if you're saying residential right because people aren't home until you know five or six o'clock and so this is where you know looking at the commercial any kind of parking lots where we could go ahead and pair something like solar panels I think it makes a lot of sense yes did you do how did you categorize the Ana Republic schools just it seems like there's some synergy there with when people are there when the Sun is out big flat buildings and never shaded by trees yeah I mean it just seems like there's al a lot of possibilities in there but I don't see an easy category for where they fit so yeah a lot of real estate yeah we do actually have the anti Republic schools coming and speaking to the Energy Commission and we would love to I mean I don't know if the environmental commission would be interested as well but we could definitely get you guys in touch with as far as your question where they fit really the the residential sector is very well defined commercial industrials where you're gonna find things like nonprofits and you know even the city you know infrastructure things of that nature where um so where solar I love the idea of the schools and you see that how didn't Arizona all right look you know where there's a little more Sun they've really exploiting that and the schools are getting a lot of financial savings by doing that we're not quite at that point where it's cheap enough given our lower Sun radiation or whatever but in terms of price points I think you're right residential solar is still good deal more expensive than gas whereas utility scale is getting almost parity now and will just keep falling so it would be really worth are talking about how to get a lot more charging at the place of work you know and and doing it with utilities scale yeah you know every time I Drive by the old landfill here I'm like wow wouldn't that be me charge every car in Ann Arbor and then probably a lot of the houses too yeah there was actually Dave Connell I know if you guys spent Dave he was a the energy coordinator to past but basically he was working with a DDA to look at parking structures and I had a bit of a sale effect I think that was the major issue that they were facing you know you get kind of gusts up at higher elevation a lot of times if you put the solar panels in a certain angle it could actually cause the solar panel to I guess fly away so that's that's something that they were trying to engineer and I think they found a few different options but it's you can definitely do it again you got to Arizona and they're everywhere I think if you go up to that other University in Lansing yeah they're doing it yeah you know so that's a great option yeah and people park under them in there yeah it's kind of I think it's also ballasting I think there was something about creating infrastructure within the actual parking structure it so maybe that's it the parking structures are too so but yeah I know it's things that we're definitely talking about yeah that's cool siding cool broken out here now do you as we go forward are you gonna break out anything for like conservation of trees and their carbon sequestration and then getting breaking down residential into like lifestyle issues like I would've hurt mr.
Garber mentioned the scope three flats a great question vegetarian diets and and then my last one about this question about you know we used to think that tall high-rises made out of concrete and steel densely in the core was gonna be the secret but now we're saying Oh he'd island of fact the concrete is a horrible greenhouse gas emission emitter to create some of those that menu I like that fit into the inventory it's a great question yeah so we tried to stick with that GPC they have kind of a protocol that they use for municipalities in port because it's easy to get the data I work at least easier to get the data and a lot of times even though we have to go through a very long process to clean the data and make sure that it's accurate a lot of times it can be harder the further away you get from those kind of protocols with that said I think that it's something that we are exploring I think especially from the lifecycle it's harder to think you know if you're talking about purchasing a lifecycle of an item it's harder to think how we'd get at what's being purchased in the city I'm just because it's such a it's it's kind of you're trying to get a lot of data and there's probably privacy issues if there's a lot of things that you can't have to contend with with that said we are thinking about you know are there ways to kind of expand what we have now to maybe include other things like maybe like you're saying trees or I know another one that some and I can't remember what city had attempted it's somewhere out in the West Coast of course but looking at aviation so planes flying overhead and trying to capture something like that so it's something we are we're exploring but it becomes a lot more difficult when you don't have you know those kind of the kind of data that that falls into these categories yes and of course on slide 18 about the electric vehicles the first part is is that the city fleet or is that everything oh that's community so one of the things one of the things that we we looked at when we looked at transportation it is you know I again I think SEMCOG and Watts would say it is a bit more of an art but we looked at both including community so transportation within the city but because we have such a large commuting population that goes in and out of the city we also included highway miles beyond a certain border to make sure that we were capturing some of that transportation in and out of the city so we attempted to yeah but that number in particular the the evie readiness that's referring to community-wide no I'm gonna look your peoples there are so we do some calculations based off of other places that have done similar programs and try to get estimates that way and they're just one last part at that yes how do you balance that with the fact that the fuel mix is primarily cool oh you talk about with electric vehicles yes so it's a great point a lot of times people see electric vehicles as a great alternative but as it stands now with the fuel mix that we have you know it's gonna be some time before it starts becoming greener than for example the alternative diesel with that said I think as time goes on and DT comes out with these announcements which seems like almost every day now you know it's great because then we can start saying okay you know a certain point there's going to be a break-even and I think actually as of right now it's pretty close to parity but it will definitely be in the coming years break even we're hooking up to the grid is going to be a lot greener so it's one of those questions of you know can we start the ball rolling now and make sure that that's being adopted yes you got to stop me no someone else oh yeah and you can go just thinking about the question of parity between the grid for EVs and coal generation and use of gas my understanding is that pretty much most places in the u.s.
it's already cleaner to use v's given current fuel mixes the detail is mostly here though oh do you do a little different I mean I ran some calculations to see the parity based off the fuel mix I think we're starting to get to that point we're getting a lectric vehicle does make more sense from just even the clean side as far as the grid compared to but again I mean it's one of those things where it's just a matter of time that it's gonna become significantly I mean it won't even be a question it's gonna be significantly greener you mentioned this choice gas thing which I never knew about is a choice electricity thing there is but it is a very small pool so I think we have all of 10 accounts that are choice electric and it's there's a very long wait list it was something was created by the MPSC and has been shrinking ever since in part because large utilities generally like to have more customers and so that's yeah there is a choice electric but it's very I mean it's almost insignificant if we were to say on a large utility scale solar somewhere on our land U of M Ann Arbor and generate your own powers or anything to stop us from doing that and the way we would do it is we would hire a company to do it so they get the tax credit since neither of us pay taxes yeah well we should talk about this is that doable there are things that are in the works we're talking about now but yeah talk offline about it all right yes I thought of another thing that perhaps Commissioner Ricky Brando might want to elaborate um that we've been learning at council but work of the Planning Commission and a couple things that they have been talking about lately as as we're bringing on or looking at how to zone the new recreational marijuana facilities and whatnot they it was recommended that because they're going to be consuming a lot of electricity apparently um that the magic number was determined to be 10% of their energy use it may need to come from solar yes I'm very familiar with that for that percentage growing it in our city limits I believe it's growing yes please yeah um so with the new legislation that happened last year we're putting together kind of a package of how to be able to deal with the fact that is moving from medical to recreational and many communities are opting out of being part of that system and so it's for a smaller community doesn't have official planning staff it's cumbersome to come up with all the regulations and things like that and Ann Arbor has really been leading the way and it's been very on top of it and so a lot of the smaller rural communities are saying no we don't want to deal with it and an hour we're saying yes and we're we're coming up with rules and ordinances and regulations around how to handle it so as part of that the people that are the growers which is basically an indoor endeavor at this point have an enormous footprint in terms of their energy use it's it was very sobering to look at all the statistics for that and and at the beginning we were thinking cover the whole thing with solar will really knock out a big chunk of their energy use and it's like they can cover the entire thing with solar and it's gonna be a fraction of their energy is so-so the growers are really only allowed in the manufacturing districts which we don't have a ton of you know but but often big open flat-roofed kinds of situations where it seems like a real potential to be able to develop solar they're not in skinny little high-rises at the tiny roof on top you know they're there in other areas and we don't have a whole lot of manufacturing here but we we made get more this happens because it's a very been very successful let's put it that way in terms of you know it's a market that's growing rapidly and not everybody wants to deal with it so people are coming here and so we at this point have more and we don't have a lot of growing facilities right now it's been more medical marijuana dispensaries but that's all changing in terms of the mix of the how all that is happening and we're hoping to be able to require this 10% another thing that I would really like to do is to and I don't know whether our code allows us to mandate this or not is that to mandate where they get their energy from in terms of some of the green Curren programs and things like that so that they have to be getting if they if they can't cover it all with what they're generating that the energy that they're buying has to be of whatever the most rigorous possibility is for buying into a system that has renewables as it being part of the portfolio so I don't know what our what we can actually do with that in terms of legally you know there's there's a lot of things to explore with that but right now I know for sure we're moving forward with the 10% is what's on the table it hasn't been approved yet by all the different governing bodies but it's really in the works because there's a lot of deadlines that are coming up that we need to be able to kind of get over and through and so that's what's happening right now with with that I was going to talk about it during the Planning Commission update anyway so here's my chance to be able to talk about that so it's exciting that that we're mandating this solar thing I think that that's really cool because they are know they're able to do it they they've been it's a lot of people are trying to jump on this for a reason it's it's a it's a very lucrative business and so it seems like a kind of an alignment of the stars in some ways to be able to ask these people that are getting in on it to be able to have to reduce their their energy footprint at the same time so that's where things stand right now I bet anything that the city can prevent growers from being in the city just as we could prevent right retail so we have the upper hand I suspect to ask them to if they want to be able to grow in the city they got to source all their energy renewably and I'm almost sure the dte will do that it has the capacity to do that with their wind to make it a hundred four hundred percent because otherwise we're just gonna oh I know it's gonna battle we have to fight later yeah and gonna change these graphs and we have the upper hand exactly and so I think that's that's the idea but there are a lot of filters we have to get through to make sure that we can actually mandate something like that through our code you know whether it's legal for us to do that that's what I would like to do because if they can I think we still want the the the solar piece of it because I think it's important in a lot of other ways to in terms of what people are doing and and it's just the perfect physical setup to mandate that because they're kind of pull barn type situations you know that are big and wide and open and and so that just seems like you know it's not a leafy neighborhood where you're dealing with trees and you know all those kinds of things that inhibiting Harbor will be on the cover of green times there you go Green and we're going away and it's not like nobody else is doing this state but there are many communities that are opting out because it's it's cumbersome and you have to figure out how you're gonna deal with it and it takes staff time josh has been involved in it I mean it it's it's it's a big thing to enter into so I think and always been a real leader with developing ordinances and regulations around this and you know Josh and many other staff they've been working really diligently on this to try to move this through really quickly this has been like lightning speed compared to other ordinances because we're coming up on deadlines in which we need to decide whether we're optimistic regulatory system around somebody and you're consulting with Colorado towns yes you know out there I mean I spent a lot of time there you don't see growers in cities you know I'm sure they're in Denver and places where yeah they're in the industrial areas not in these smaller towns no right but they're utterly transforming the industrial districts in Denver and changing the the economics of it big-time it's making their there what I learned at a different conferences that they're just making other manufacturing and industrial very difficult because they're raising the rent on everything in these areas that were pretty reasonable where they can afford it exact let's make a paper so it's it's um it's it's it's a tricky business it's a lot of change really fast and I can just say that the this city has been very diligent about looking at other examples in other places and learning from the mistakes of other places to try to integrate those things into our code here yeah and I can also say you know I was looking a little bit at the energy used to which was yeah sobering as I came out and you know one of the great things I think is kind of a something that even the the fuel mix could better friend you know DTE a lot of times those green purchasing programs are driven by demand yeah and so if you have these very high energy intensive areas in these kind of industries that are demanding this green power I can only see what that would do as far as driving DTE to continue to kind of build out these green purchasing so I think it's more than one way I think it'd be really yeah that gives us a positive feedback to DT exactly yeah it might speed up the lowering of wind and she costs in the state yeah and for the other communities that are opting in I think Ann Arbor has been very forward-thinking about a lot of these things and because we're developing the code it makes it easier for other places that are opting in to say oh well this let's look at what they're doing let's copy what they're doing and I think that that's a real opportunity for us as well to be able to influence other communities that are opting in because there were not the only ones I just know a lot of opting out so I wonder if it's a marketing thing for them to I mean totally you walk into the head shop like hey you know that's better than organic right thank you so much thanks Josh this is a lot more fun than I thought so the next item on the agenda is ethics presentation by Kelly Beattie oops I spoke too soon great hello thank you all for having us here my name it's Kelly Beattie I work in the City Clerk's office I have a rather unique job in city government and that is trying to encourage compliance with state and local legislation and policies and procedures for boards and commissions now I don't do this by myself there's around 20 different staff liaisons that do a lot of the like work for this including Emily with you here today Josh have just presented and Chris who's gonna be joining me up here in just a moment who works with the local officers Compensation Commission now why did I just put a big high-level view of how many boards and commissions we have and sort of what their role is in city government to start us out here today you hear a lot of different numbers that how many commissions exist heard numbers in the 80s the 90s I'm here to tell you none of that's true looked at this number made sure to count it counted it twice we have 61 different groups in the city that the City Council appoints members to now that is a high number for a city our side but if you start to pull away some of these groups such as the internal council committee so the council Rules Committee the council administration committee or outside age is that the City Council appoints members do you like to hear on River watershed council we're actually down to only about 35 groups now to staff all of these positions on all these different groups we keep track of four hundred and ten different seats but again once you start to peel away things like the council committee assignments or staff assignments to some of these different boards and commissions such as the city correct role on the Election Commission we're down to only about 278 appointments every year a large number of these appointments expire some of your appointments will expire next year some of your appointments expired a few months after you were first appointed such as commissioner over back here but next year we're looking at 75 terms that are gonna expire throughout the entire city these are staggered appointments so no full board will ever expire at the same time the environmental commission you have three-year terms but some other groups such as the El DFA have four-year terms the Building Authority have five year terms so the seventy-five number is never consistent throughout the city now we do also have about thirty vacant seats on boards and commissions so there's a lot of work to do with filling all these roles with people just like yourselves throughout the city now that means we have to start this process pretty early terms expire May 31st but we're really looking at January for a start time so if any of your terms expire next year you're gonna get a notification in January to start to consider if you would like to reapply or if you're thinking of taking your time on the Commission appreciating what you had here and quietly exiting now if you are hoping to be reappointed we're really looking to start to get applications for that at the start of March you will get a automated email from our roster tracking software it looks a little suspicious when you get it so it's okay to be a little bit nervous but if you ask Emily to check and make sure it's on the up-and-up I'm sure she'd be willing to help you out with that now we are looking at the end of March March 31st to get any applications from anyone that is hoping to be reappointed or from anyone else in the community that's hoping to be a real to be a point to fill any of those vacancies now our appointments are due at the start of May the first council meeting in May of 2020 so that is May 4th we do need a couple weeks lead time and that is why that March 31st deadlines in place as City Council packets get put together it's a tremendous volume of information I know you absorbed a lot from Josh's presentation a few minutes ago and with many of your other presentations throughout the year but our city council packets exceed 27 thousand pages per year so when you start to break that down even into three meetings a month you're looking at over 700 pages of documents they go into each meeting so again please try to have these in by March 31st if you're hoping to be reappointed now our application process is totally online now so anyone that does apply or any of you that happen to reapply will have their information share with all members of the City Council who do have a login to look at your information so though the council members serving on this commission nominate members the environmental commission the entire City Council will have a chance to look at those so maybe if they don't know you so well they can get to know you through your application and ask some good questions now that's one of the most fun exciting parts of my job is dealing with this application process but one of the other fun parts is dealing with the scheduling for all of your Commission meetings now I said that we have 61 different groups that meet and that means that we have a lot of meetings here in the city in 2018 there were 455 meetings of boards commissions and committees now you didn't make a large contribution to that but you certainly contributed this year in 2019 we've had 343 meetings already with a hundred thirty-nine meetings to go before the end of the calendar year which means we're going up by about 30 meeting this year - 482 so that's a lot of meetings if you start to break that down by how many workdays are available when people can meet it's about two meetings a day so I tell you this because in a moment Chris Frost is getting over your bylaws with you talk about some provisions for how to call a special meeting asking you to please be nice family she's gonna be the one that's booking meeting spaces for you so realizing that you're sharing resources with a lot of other groups hosting a lot of other meetings so although your bylaws may give you an 18 hour notice to call a special meeting realize that in practice it's gonna be really hard to find a place to meet and schedule something like a CTN coverage for that in that amount of time now I did just want to wrap up here with my portion of this presentation with a good note so last year was the first year that we had a boarding commissions thank you event in many many years it's actually at the behest of Commissioner Mirsky we had a resolution for many years ago they had fallen off the table no one had been paying much attention to it but we're gonna bring that back again next year and we're gonna take it out of January so we had very unfortunate weather some of you are nodding because you made it through the blizzard to make it to that so lesson learned we apologize for this year next year's gonna be in warm weather in spring so right now I'm gonna bring Chris Frost up he's gonna dazzle you with some information about the Michigan Freedom of Information Act the Michigan Open Meetings Act and your very own bylaws so everyone Chris frost we have some questions absolutely well I get a question um that was great Kelly thinks you won't i'm the system where we keep all the applications that Granicus yes thing have we ever considered making that doing away with that and having it just like a PDF that more folks could more transparency on the actual applications you know one of the reasons I ask is that council members you know you were mentioning what we have to read almost 800 pages if we wanted to get ready for any one meeting and having to log find your login to Granicus to go in and read people's resumes it would just be a lot more efficient if they were in the email when when we're saying so-and-so's being a nominated instead of just their name if we had if more folks it was it was easier sure it feels easier to do it that way we can certainly look into that looking at a good way to do that and share the information better I like just have a further conversation with you walk through some of the software and find a good way to do it and then there may be privacy concerns for the applicant correct but if there isn't too much of that there would be ways to streamline it so that more of us could see that more easily yeah I'm all for transparency and finding better ways to have access to the information that's there so we can certainly look at better ways to do that thanks for a great job thank you a couple of questions um you mentioned the reappointment process that starts and helpful to get that going soon there was some discussion in council I think about limiting the number of terms for Commission members as that moved forward at all I haven't seen any ordinance amendments with that there are some checked there are some groups that are affected by a charter provision for term limits okay we had also voted a couple of months ago to add a youth member and I was wondering where that is okay yeah and then thank you sorry for the questions the last one was do you do any type of onboarding process so when I started I got nothing it says a lot to kind of swim through which said two years ago just with a orientation program that starts after the May 31st appointments again where the bulk of our appointments have happened so last year in fact Commissioner overpack attended this so yes we have said that we've also added a training manual on the City Clerk's website I'm sure Emily can get you the link to okay I don't you might want to go back because that maybe I wasn't the only one that was miss the process in terms of a recent appointment absolutely Thanks okay but I wanted to build on one there's a follow-up question on your recognition event at Michigan theatre yes and I remember when between Denver's we found that old thing and we found out that the theater actually would allow us as part of our contract with them they have up to ten such a meetings a year and my knowledge we only had the one in January and so I know you just said all of the 455 meetings and all but he has there been any thought of using the theater more often for for more recognition events for volunteers I know there has been some discussion about that through the city administrator's office the assistant city administrator would be the best person to answer those questions thank you and I can also just China and that we are actually hoping to use the theater in November for a climate screening we're trying to staff knows about this and is trying to you know take advantage okay thanks thank you now we're gonna get to the real inspirational portion of the meeting which is administration procedures Chris Frost I'm in the attorney's office I advise boards and commissions in the city and I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of the legal structures that you all operate within and the procedures this is information that I had developed for some new Commission's that had started up and we're starting to go back through existing Commission's to again try to get people up to speed who may not have had this information before so I'm gonna talk about Open Meetings Act issues and and records retention and also go through some of the salient parts of the bylaws and certainly you can ask questions at any time so forth and commissions in the city operate under the Open Meetings Act provisions which basically means that all meetings are open to the public the public can come and speak and there's public notice of it so what this means practically for you all is that the communication you have outside of these public meetings is circumscribed in a specific way and basically what it means is you cannot have a quorum of this body discussing deliberating or coming to a session on an issue outside of a public meeting and some of you might say well gee that sounds like an inefficient way to get things done and it is it's not designed for efficiency still that doesn't mean that you can't get things done outside of a meeting most boards and commissions when they have things it's too hard to get all the you need to get done during a meeting so most ports and commissions when they have things that need to be done they will have a sign a couple or three members to kind of go out and do the research develop the recommendation or something like that and bring it back to the body for consideration and that's fine that smaller group that sub quorum can communicate as much as they want about and then it comes back to the Commission and then it's fully discussed so that way the public has access to that deliberative process it's just something that it's sort of people aren't used to most people are used to coming from an environment where they work with maximum collaboration so everybody's copied on everything there's a lot of email traffic going back and forth so you just need to be very careful that you do not copy a quorum of the body when you are communicating about things also when it comes to email emails you generate about your business here our city records and therefore they need to be retained so the simplest way to do that is to copy your staff liaison on all emails that you send in that way she will have a record of it and you don't have to worry about tracking it yourself if you do not do that then you will be responsible for maintaining those communications and producing them if requested if we for example get a Freedom of Information Act request for those communications we would ask you to produce them it doesn't happen that often but it does happen and so I would recommend that you keep them in a location that they can be easily accessed and and searched and again there are there are a lot of nuances to this let me just say that and so if you have a question about it please feel free to contact me in my office and we can advise you on that because I know it gets a little sticky when you actually get down to nuts and bolts in different factual situations so we are available to help with that any questions about that yeah so just to make sure I got it right if we are emailing amongst all of us or even a subset that's bigger than a quorum as long as we don't make decisions on those emails we're fine I would recommend you not do it just to avoid the possibility because it's very easy for an email chain to change from simply sharing information to a discussion and not everyone even so we got to keep away from just all discussions yeah if you want to communicate something to the entire group the best way to do it is to send it to your staff liaison and ask her to provide the information to the group and that way it can be provided without sort of a degenerating the back and forth discussion still a problem yeah so that's why it it's important to keep you know these communications to a small group as possible you know only what you need and you just have to be vigilant and always be thinking I don't want a quorum of the body to hear this you know because then that can do even even if you even if the people are not participating if they're just copied on it in the discussion it can still be a problem there is case law that has found that that is a violation as well we don't want that kind of controversy I think you're the only climate chair of the commission yeah yeah let it be my responsibility it's best that works of cops it's best all right so if there's no more questions than that I'll move to the bylaws there so just going through them a lot of this is standard terms that apply to all boards and commissions article 3 here provides your specific purposes objectives and duties and that's taken from the ordinance that created you some Commission's are created by resolution some by ordinance this is an ordinance created body so that is taken almost verbatim from there one issue we encounter sometimes is Commission's want to sometimes go beyond what their purposes are authorized by council or more commonly their role may have changed as the Commission's are created at a certain time period years go by the purview chain changes climate change was probably not not the major issue people were thinking about when say the Energy Commission or even this body was created now it's a much more important aspect if you feel like the body needs to be in a different area or have different powers or duties or scope that's something to recommend to council you can do it through a resolution and I believe some Commission's have already done that and I can't remember if this commission did but just like when you asked you're asking council to add a youth the youth commissioner members it's the same process for changing your purpose I know that we ever changed this clause to that we're looking at on the screen a couple of times the Leslie Science Center advisory board doesn't exist yes this doesn't seem like it's the most current version of our bylaws yeah I'm not sure this I think this is the most current version and that may be just residual in the ordinance itself so that may be something that City Council may look at removing from the ordinance we can go back through email because I know that we've changed it okay yeah this is the last version I found it I really just I know that these bylaws are still gonna be need to be changed tickly one Youth Commissioner comes through so um there may be some things in here that are not current but overall this is gonna be the general templates what I'm kind of using it just this okay the general here so then the next section that tends to cause confusion is article 5 which is ethics and conflicts of interest so I'm just going to kind of go through these briefly and talk about kind of what they mean the main purpose of this section is to promote public confidence in the body and primarily that's to avoid conflicts or perceived conflicts of interests or at least to daylight them so that people are aware of them so section 1 provides that general guidance which is that a Membership stain from discussion if there's a conflict or apparent conflict and that the important thing here is that it's a case-by-case evaluation every every conflict is different I've never encountered one that's exactly the same the ones that are easy are easy it's you own some you say you own a property and the Commission's making a recommendation on you know or some kind of financial benefit that's that's an easy one and then there's gray area all the way from there so again this is an area that if you have a question about if you think it might be conflict feel free to contact us and we can advise on it section 5 2 again is fairly fairly straightforward don't don't take bribes [Laughter] section 5 3 is kind of extension of that we just don't put yourself in a position where you're gonna benefit from something so don't take a maybe a financial position in a company or something that that's gonna come before the Commission at a future time section 5 point 4 talks about disclosure so if something like this comes up again you feel free to call us but the general practice is to disclose it to the Commission so you say hey I work for such-and-such a company they are related to this decision we're making in this way I think it's a conflict I'd like to be recused or I don't think it's a conflict but I wanted to disclose it to the body and usually that's a relatively straightforward thing if there gets to be a concern about it or dispute or debate it can move to the Commission to take a vote too as to whether that person should be recused or not that is section five point six section five point seven is another section that often gets overlooked and this is to complete an annual disclosure of affiliations doesn't have to be everything you're affiliated with but things that might bear on your role is environmental commissioner if you belong to environmental organizations nonprofits professional organizations anything that might conceivably present a conflict and again it's just really to sort of get you thinking about possible conflicts and the commands to preempt a question that we don't have a forum for it but it really just is can be a bullet point list it doesn't have to be anything complicated and you can provide that to your staff liaison section five point eight is also one that that comes up relatively frequently being on the Commission conveyed to notes a certain authority and we want to be very careful that when you speak and you all have jobs where you probably interact or speak as an expert in your area probably related to environmental matters you want to make sure that you make it clear that you're speaking on your own behalf unless the Commission has adopted a formal resolution or you've got some other authority from the Commission to represent them and it's fine to say I'm a member of the environmental commission but then you want to follow it that up was saying I'm speaking on my own behalf here I have been told times when we have been approached by press because they have questions about things that are before city council and I've been told in those situations that we should be considered as city officials how does that relate to this clause I'm not sure what context that would be in so perhaps this is a discussion we need to have more thoroughly offline it's almost always with solid waste issues okay nice things yeah yeah I think I would need more information I wouldn't want to give you an answer right here that doesn't have the full information so but we can talk about that for certain section five point nine is sort of related to that this doesn't apply so much to this body but four bodies that make decisions regularly on properties or you know decisions that have binding effect but it could it could also be implicated here which is not to speak on behalf of a petitioner or be a petition before the Commission so say for example there was a solid waste contract or policy that the Commission was weighing in on and you wanted to stand up and say you know I want to speak on behalf of you know this this company that's going to possibly provide a service that's something you want to avoid because you don't want to have that influence or appearance of influence on the other commissioners when you're actually gonna be voting yeah well I just had a question about what's the definition of a petitioner yeah and that's sort of a term of art basically it would be anybody who's gonna be subject to a decision of the Commission in your case it's likely gonna be a recommendation or a recommended set of policies so if say you were saying we recommend that X company they have have this contract or something like that that would be somebody who I guess would fall out of the term petitioner in this and perhaps that's a good point that that word might maybe should be modified so that it's more broadly applicable in a zoning context for example you somebody applying for something that's more clear but here it really means anybody who's who's subject to a decision that may possibly or negatively section 510 is and again a lot of these provisions are written in response to problems that have arisen in the past so this is just to remind commissioners that the city has an administrative staff and that the Commission is an advisory body and that it's best you keep your communications going through that staff person so that they are aware of everything that's going on they are your channel to the city they have the knowledge of where to send inquiries if you have them and they are responsible for complying with city policies and practices so talk to them if you have a question about anything it just makes everything easier when it's one point of contact and then section 11 the last one again it's always in response to a problem be nice to people be understanding have differences of opinion civilly it's it this is a you are representing the city here and I know opinions can get can be strong and arguments can get heated and you're dealing with important issues but we just want to remind everybody that it's a it's a place for civil discourse in civil disagreement any question in the ethics section and I just can't remember but I because I do so many of these things it seems but disclosure you automatically will ask us every year there'll be a forum or something that we'll do our disclosures on yeah like I said there's no forum but an email list you know solar said it well that would come from the staff liaison so I actually didn't realize if I did it before which I don't think I did it's like you know so I'm a member of the Sierra Club I got to disclose that and that kind of thing yeah yeah yeah it's a process we're always working to improve the processes and get every kind of in order and Kelly has been a great help with that so going forward we hope that this will all be much more regular most of the rest of this is sort of self explanatory talking about the officers the meetings Kelly mentioned special meetings you can call them if you need to or notice is better everyone has busy schedules getting a quorum can be difficult so just bear that in mind if you want to go that route moving down to the committee section this is also an area that is a source a lot of confusion sometimes committees of the City of City bodies when you create them they're also subject the Open Meetings Act so they have to schedule meetings find a room half times notice all of that sort of thing I would submit you that not every issue warrants creating a committee as I said before two or three people in a workgroup can often do the work just as well committees should be reserved for things that require a lot of public input or deliberation and even then those committees are coming back to the full body to make a recommendation if you're doing a research you know researching the texts the literature on something and bringing back a report probably don't need a committee for that you can have that public engagement at the full meeting when you when you bring that back so just bear in mind the committee's do entail a lot of administrative overhead and to use them sparingly and when they're warranted committees can include non-members as well so if you need some expertise from outside the Commission you can do that as well and of course you're always welcome to work with people not on the Commission if you've got one of those work group assignments that you need some additional help lifting on I'm sorry can I have some clarification didn't it be appointed by the chair and provides Commission I was told it we had to go through City Council is that not the case that is not the case no great and again section 9.3 if you look at it it's good - it's good would you do create a committee to give them a Charter give them a purpose give them a deliverable and so that when that's done that they are done because otherwise you can have this sort of spawning of committees that kind of go on perpetually and it's it's not an efficient way to do business for the most part so it's always a good idea to give them a good direct clear purpose moving on down to the parliamentary Authority which I'm going to touch on a little bit more detail but Robert's Rules is kind of the the old standard that everyone uses it's a terrible terrible book for bodies like this it's designed for meetings of large societies in the 19th century and it's that thick and it doesn't need to be probably many procedure should be pretty simple for a body like this it should be for efficiency get to your get to your topic have the discussion and then take your vote make your recommendation and so the bylaws reference Robert's Rules as a guide if you come into the thorny problem you can refer to it I don't really recommend it if you have a question about that feel free to give us a call we've dealt with Robert's Rules more than we would care to admit but it shouldn't the Parliament procedure should not be something should be something that promotes efficiency not something that hamstrings a commission and that's pretty much it like I say the rest of it should be pretty self-explanatory if you do have any questions after this that you think of feel free to contact me I'm happy to provide guidance on that I was looking I don't know which document it was I was looking through it earlier today and there was something in one of these documents it said that we should consider having a separate email address for the Commission yes it's a very good question thank you for bringing it up generally if there is a boy a request Freedom of Information Act request for emails the email address that you use will be disclosed so if you have a private email address that you want to keep private I would suggest creating one specifically for your Commission business that also may be an easy way to separate those emails if you need to track them down later to produce them it is possible it is again it fairly there is some administrative overhead to that so it has traditionally not been given out to most Commission members also there are certain IT policies once you have that email address you're in the city system then you would have to sign on understanding of so that's not my decision to make if you want to inquire about that I would send it through your staff liaison and she can route it to the proper person but yeah historically that has not been that has not been done if we just copy our staff anything we do though is that kind of sufficient yeah because I'm never gonna check like I'm saying yeah then you wouldn't need to retain it cuz everyone come yeah it's just a question if I happen to delete something from the Commission it's still in record format somewhere right you should talk to IT about that thank you they do keep backups of above most things yeah for a period of time yeah I guess I hadn't fully are internalized that commissioners would be subject to FOIA awesome and so that means theoretically that if they're me emailing anyone about environmental issues some private citizen could submit to you a FOIA request for everything that said commissioner said to random other private citizens retro actively for a year to like like council experiences well it would it would have to be related to the Commission business so like I say I'm sure everybody here emails about environmental things all the time if it's not related to the Commission business it wouldn't it wouldn't be a city record better now in council work though it was not related to business functions of the city some of our FOIA requests have been related to citizens what did this council member say to that citizen irregardless of mm-hmm content yeah I mean it's the question of whether it's a city related to city businesses again sort of a case-by-case thing so it would have to be you have to look at the individual the individual emails to determine that well and okay so just yes if we're looking if it's all sort of case-by-case that's sort of a gray area then where commissioners this is the problem with with with this whole area is that it puts a chilling effect potentially on people's desire to communicate in email if it's done on a case-by-case basis whether that particular whether there email would be subject to public scrutiny yeah and again these the open meetings laws the FOIA laws are not designed for maximum efficiency of the people involved they're designed for public disclosure and so we kind of have to take them as they are and live with them myself just as a hypothetical say a person had been on a commission for about 10 years and hadn't heard this rule before I have no idea how much email I've sent over the last many many many years yeah and we can certainly have that conversation if you have like when we have the conversation about the other so when we on board yes we should definitely tell people this yes and again that's first time I've heard it what we're trying to do here yeah go back and pick up the pieces we may have and they do now I'm bored so I've gone through all of this once but I've also gone through foyers as a sign I'm at scientists before and I think the best rule of thumb I think is most important for us any email you send imagine it on the front page of the newspaper okay and if you like that wouldn't look good don't send it yeah any other questions on the so the last piece is this brief guide to probably many procedure and for chairs and vice chairs I recommend looking at it and me in some detail and if you have questions to ask me for the rest of you you can take a quick run through it's just kind of reiterates what I said before which is that parliamentary procedure is for efficiency and promoting an effective action of the board is not for dickering over points of order and that sort of thing so this guide has attached a shortened version version of the rules of order called Rosenberg's which are consistent generally with Robert's Rules they're much shorter I think they're even too long for a body like this and there's a description in there of kind of what I think you can look at and what you can ignore it as well so that's something you can peruse at your leisure and again if you have any questions you can contact me okay Chris yeah um I did not go through such an onboarding process so I just want to make sure that these four documents here represent the onboarding training process that you're currently using so Kelly also referenced the website we have which has a more complete guide this is the guidance that I provide that other guy will give you much more information about all of the other workings of the boards and commissions in the city so you should get that link to from Emily and Kelly can can tell you as well okay thanks to everybody okay well any questions all right well thanks Chris thank you okay so so we'll turn to reports from committees other Commission's Council and chair so let's start with a Planning Commission is there anything else you'd like a and our Energy Commission liaison is John mirskiy he's not here now so I don't know if there's any anybody else here who would have anything to say about that yeah okay so and the water will see the parks Advisory Commission I think Mike do you have anything an update yeah and the last meeting we voted to replace the gates Gettys dam they were severely worn but now that these are classified by the city as recreational dams all of this expense Falls to parks to be able to maintain so that was going to be a 1.1 million dollar project that went up to a 1.2 million dollar project to repair instead of replace these 60 year old steel gates we also had what is it called the parks fairness fund so when the city budget increases by a certain percentage the parks administrative budget also must increase by a certain percentage or by that same percentage so that gave parks three hundred and eighty nine thousand dollars to be able to allocate the interesting thing that I'll mention that has to do with sort of environmental stuff is the hundred thousand dollars that we voted to allocate toward the skate park lighting which we had a first reading on but for the second reading we wanted to encourage that hundred thousand dollars to go towards some sort of sustainability improvements with that lighting whether it be dark sky lighting some sort of solar offset that would go with that lighting so to really try to use this feature that Ann Arbor is becoming nationally known for the skate park as something that can also highlight our sustainability ethos if you will so yeah that's okay all right thanks Mike so let's move on to the subcommittee's now the natural feature subcommittee with skate park are you all thinking about doing solar there is a way to to generate power for the Lightning out there is that like the main thing that you're thinking about it or is that I mean that's what we kicked around just but that will come up again so we we could more you know we could call out solar that's what we would want this that money on it one thing I would love to see there is that you have a gravel parking lot as part of that that serves that skate park which is really dirty runoff when that stuff comes out of there filled with sediment if you had solar like carport kind of idea there you could capture it because it's super clean if it comes out with solar panels and then feed it into the stormwater system that you already have there with all the different rain gardens and things like that there just be great to not have to deal with all the sediment coming off of that parking lot so it could be a win-win between energy and stormwater so just something to put out there Thanks okay then the natural features subcommittee I guess Chris yes we have been working hard I would see one of our members Rita Mitchell is with us today we are meeting tomorrow from 12:00 to 2:00 here in City Hall we are really taking a real close look at conservation of our existing natural features including our heritage trees we've been looking at ordinances from a Tiffany our Forester I'm not going to try to pronounce Garibaldi's she she came from Novi so she had a good ordinance there that she shared with the committee we also got another good ordinance from Rochester Michigan so we are synthesizing these and working on an improved more protection for our heritage trees and more conservation of them and we're you know looking at things like phyto remediation where the trees will absorb a pollution from the ground for us in addition to sequestration in the air and all the good things they do for the stormwater and then also we were concerned about the the birds I think we all heard that the bird species have declined I think 30% and so our birds and our chimney Swifts are coming to our trees and if our trees are here we're contributing to that problem with the birds so again we're meeting tomorrow and again for another two-hour meeting and we are making progress and I think that's everything unless on on that natural features committee that's our main focus right now is trees okay all right thanks Ann any questions or comments okay so I just like to chime in one thing that I think is kind of sorely lacking from natural features right now is the notion of connectivity between various natural areas we've got 160 parks in town and we have less the natural features ordinance that we have is really geared toward preservation of existing natural or open spaces and I am Not sure that that necessarily reflects the reality of our city as it moves forward a lot of places are already developed you know we have a natural features ordinance that you know specifies what not to do in wetlands this natural features ordinance doesn't necessarily talk about how we take some of the fragmented landscape that we've got and look at the future for how that's better pieced together I'll be coming to the meeting tomorrow and I'd like to try to help us think about this because I think it's something that this committee is particularly well suited to do since there are people in parks on this committee and also people in planning on this committee and it's a it's a it's a bigger bigger issue than just natural features but when natural features was first brought up as a committee here of the environmental Commission it was to review this over 15-year old master plan have now for the city that still is not it's not yet updated so we've had a lot of conversations about big trees we've had a lot of conversations about pesticides we haven't necessarily had a lot of talk about the sort of connectivity that might be able to make all of our natural systems more resilient for the future so I look forward to speaking about that more as we fabulous okay yeah yeah we'll we'll be having our discussion about areas of emphasis for next year pretty soon so we'll keep that in mind so so the solid waste subcommittee does not mean it has not met since our last meeting but we will by next meeting so water subcommittee sorry okay there's no report there so counsel I've already started interspersed it in what we've been working on we've been working on all of these topics from solid waste to the solar power forth at our most recent working session to trees to to the emergency plan and tonight's meeting has been helpful with regards to whether the City Council how to what degree we can mirror what the county did for net zero emissions and and then just one other question of our comment that from the Planning Commission there will be next Tuesday night a public hearing about a possible new zoning called t1 for transit so that would focus on density and pedestrians and non-motorized be goals and there's also a couple more Greenbelt meetings coming up on September 30 and October 3rd and I think unless another Commissioner can help me out here I think that there was am I missing anything that significant related to the environment that the that the council has rose met on since we last met I can't think of it okay yes yeah okay thanks Sam so go the chair I just have a few things I want to mention that one of the attachments you got was a process for City Commission involvement and the selection of a reform responding to an RFP now this has come up in connection with the MuRF restart so the MuRF as you know there was an RFP issued some time ago a few months ago it's let's see the number is C its RFP 19 - 28 so if this RFP can be found it's publicly posted I think it's still up there it was about a month ago and so the city has has graciously invited a member of the Commission to go attend the evaluation of the proposals so in this attachment here that's come with the minutes on city commissioners underscore RFP evaluation draft CAS indicates the rules that the city staff would like whoever the volunteers from the Commission to follow so let's see I will be on vacation starting tomorrow morning so I'm hoping that some member of the Commission will volunteer to to help city staff review the proposals for the MuRF the meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday October 1st from 9 a.m.
to 3 p.m. so it's a large time commitment so I mean Commissioner murski is another person who's familiar with these issues and he is on vacation but I think he may be back but I have not heard from him since I'm notifying him of this opportunity today so if anybody would like to volunteer please raise their hand otherwise home we'll wait and see what Commissioner mirskiy has to say ok ok and then I only had one other thing to mention and that is that that you know as you know the city's composting is contracted through we care organics they have their composting facility is off plat road on the road from Platt Road to the transfer station and the and the MuRF and they do their doing tours so if anybody's interested in doing a tour of the composting facility it's very entertaining and don butinsky is the manager there and he can be in the tours are scheduled for October 9th and November 6th 6th October 9th and November 6th at noon around noon so if you'd like to attend please call mr.
buchinsky at 7:30 for four eight nine four five one eight or you can email him at d butinsky that's about d b ut Y n s ki at we care organics comm so I just like to make that announcement so that's all I'm like one other announcement do with a stream stabilization project at here on Hills Golf Course there'll be a public meeting on that on October 1st at the curent Hills Clubhouse from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. but there's a project to take what is essentially a ditch and turning it into a lovely little stream with all sorts of stormwater improvements on here on Hills Golf Course no I just wanted yeah well the period of mentioning public meetings mm-hmm are there any other announcements anybody would like to make okay so move on to the report from staff great I have a pretty short report today exciting news is that we're moving forward with the solar on the fire house volunteer installation it's looking at October 17th and 18th if it's open to um students is open to anybody in the community who would like to get up on a flattop roof and help actually install solar for our first firehouse that's gonna get solar so if you're interested feel free to get ahold of Josh it was here earlier or me and we can get you with write people other exciting news is that we oh s I the office of sustainability and innovations had a new permanent staff members start and his name is Galen hardy he's a community organizer from Detroit and we are thrilled to have him his role as community engagement so he wasn't able to make it tonight but he's gonna come to a future meeting and introduce himself we're working hard on Earth Day events it's the 50th anniversary of Earth Day so we're really trying to have a week of celebration so please do let us know if there are any Earth Day events that you were part of that you would like to collaborate with us thank you ok thanks Emily D is there a date established now for the solar panel installation yeah Joe our 17th 3ds okay and it's fire station six down on Eisenhower Road yeah okay all right thank you so items for next agenda we've already heard about climate emergency to do it to just further look into that if other commissioners are willing to do that I know we just covered a lot of it tonight but if there's more to cover I think we might be able to find more to cover yeah I think certainly we could discuss it for five or ten minutes now have you distribute the resolution I've seen an earlier one I'm not sure if it's the same one that they were talking about tonight I haven't seen one I have not seen their draft either okay what they sent to us was the Washington County draft okay from September 18 okay and so what were they clicking signatures on what's the petition language if you'd like me to read it it's relatively uh-huh resolution endorsing the declaration of a climate emergency to restore a safe climate we citizens of Ann Arbor are calling on the mayor and city council to pass a citywide resolution declaring a climate emergency resolved that Ann Arbor declares that we face an existential climate emergency that threatens our city regions state nation civilization the natural world and humanity resolved that Ann Arbor officially commits to leading an emergency mobilization effort that with appropriate financial and regulatory assistance from state and federal authorities end citywide net greenhouse gas emissions by ER before December 31st to 2025 and immediately initiates an effort to safely draw down carbon from the atmosphere resolved that Ann Arbor commits to educating our citizens about the climate aversion and the broader ecological crisis and working tirelessly to catalyze a climate emergency mobilization at the local state national and global levels to protect our citizens as well as all the people and species of the world resolve that Ann Arbor commits to a stable source of adequate funding to support climate action at the local level into the sharing of lessons learned with peers from around the nation in world well thank you um does anybody have any comments about this before I weigh in discussions yeah there are certainly it's pretty broad and uh and uh personally I mean I think that I I mean I appreciate the sentiment and I think many of us share that but I think short of having like actionable goals and a plan and some kind of cost attached to it so that people know what they're committing to I think it's going to be difficult I'm not sure exactly what on a climate emergency would do coming from the environmental commission or what the council would would be able to do about it I mean there's yeah there's a history of this Psalm and so I think and so I'm not saying that it's not useful to do this but I think that it's better to reserve the energy and the passion for actually generating the information that's required and the kind of pathways that are available to get there and what kind of sacrifices we might be asking for the city not just for the city budget but the city residents as well you know we have examples in the town here Matt grow cough as retrofitted a 1910 belt house to be carbon neutral and so I think the means are here but I think we need to think about how we would present this to the to the citizens of the town I'm not you know that's my opinion how would you handle we have saw their staff who can do things but one of the things you could do is you're absolutely right about the resolution that we were given is would you take quite a bit of work to determine feasibility or alternative paths of action you know timeline 2025 is you know I think it's just totally impossible for the city unless everyone in the city turns to bank robbery or something but there might be a way we can do something better than what we have now I don't know I think it would be in the interest of Ann Arbor to be more in sync with University of Michigan because you know we're we're doing a very deliberate and careful analysis of what's feasible and getting a timeline and but there is also the aspirational part of declaring a climate emergency and I don't I haven't looked into it myself and I wonder if we could or should there are all these communities across the planet that have declared climate emergencies and it might be in a way good for us to be in solidarity and aspirational in some way as they step and just at least declaring our yeah well we really understand what you're saying and something has to be done and then we have to not commit to 2025 perhaps because that we just don't know if that's feasible and we certainly know where the money is to do that but we could commit to a process now University of Michigan try that the president we convinced him to go for carbon neutrality and he said yes which in my book compared to where I've been in before at academia was like wow you know like we're on it we're the biggest university in the country and it's gonna be the hardest for our university and he committed but he gets unrelenting blowback from the students because all he did was commit and there is no timeline there no specifics but they had he has this commission working on that so we don't want it we might want to be we're falling into that same trap where we say we declare our climate emergency and we have this process and council you know doubles down and the citizens say what the hell is going on here you know it's just a bait-and-switch er it's you know there's where's the accountability okay so I don't know what you do you've been in a lot maybe you have cost so much money and what's happening with renewable energies the costs are going down down down down so at some point in the future probably after 2025 it is literally going to be cheaper to be on renewable energy than fossil fuels and everybody will switch but to do it now and you'd be done by 2025 means we've spent a whole lot of money that if we do it five years later we don't have to spend now I know firsthand that there are a lot of climate implications of waiting five years so I just don't know what we do is a commission I don't either I mean it might be worth reaching out to the people who are circulating this petition and seeing if there's some way that we can collaborate with them to come with something that we would feel comfortable supporting and that we do find useful I would not support that right now I'm just because I feel like we've passed so many things and if we're going to have any authority at all we need to pass things that we stand behind it you know does anybody else have an opinion they want a voice about this or okay could we could we do something like or just think about it like what we're doing at U of M is we're asking students and faculty and staff to give us ideas solutions and not just like you know pie in the sky stuff but like with real numbers behind it and real research behind it and then we're also contracting you know we're we did an RFP and we're going to hire a company to give us alternative estimates on how to reduce our energy you know so we're looking at it from multiple angles so it's like a really sincere and comprehensive analysis that will be a lot more texture than what we heard from Josh and it should allow us within a year and I don't know when it'll be but hopefully soon we'll have it we'll be able to sit back and say okay what's our timeline gonna be and it'll be a timeline that we really that we match with resources or at least we'll be realistic with respect to real resources and we'll get it done you know so that's somewhere closer to what they want yeah and well probably what we all want which is it's it's so hard to take there and there may be it might be really hard to take there a resolution because we know it's you know there's no accountability but what we're doing is we're taking their passion and we're we're trying to work with them to come up with something that will work you know and the neat thing is that the least you of em with 30% of our emissions will have something in the air but I'm gonna guess and I can't really say I feel like I can't speak for my fellow university commissioners but I'm gonna guess it's gonna be close to what the IPCC is suggested which is 50 percent by 2030 and all the way by not 2050 which is what IPCC said but maybe 2040 2030 yeah 24 you you know I don't know when about what it'll be my own guess and I can guess and I think a lot of us who are in the world and the business think by 2040 it'll be totally done no matter what we do yeah you know but we got it you know be cheap I would be very interested in reaching out to these this group just to tell them I mean Emily and Missy and Josh worked very hard on coming up with proposals that City Council approved and that we need to execute and implement I mean that's our affordable housing all of the programs that run there they're not done yet you know we can still use people's energy and enthusiasm and passion to get those done and to help us do those things so I think the you know we may be partway there to maybe some kind of compromise that is also really effective and useful yeah they've got to be real things yeah they got to be really serious things about how to what what programs are doable how much they would cost where there would be money to do them and I mean that seems to me the sensible place yeah and the universities brought a lot of resources to bear on this I so the question is I mean how can the city staff and the Commission's and council provide enough time and talent to do the similar kind of analysis for the city and there are some things that really that we really need to do together you know transportation you know and think of all our students living in all the houses you know so there are a lot of us who feel like we got it I'm gonna give that and out which is really hard but maybe we can do it more easily together and you and you know once you of em teams have all done their thing there a lot of those people are citizens here we'll have a lot of a lot of resources in terms of ideas that's I mean they've been sitting at the farmers market for weeks yeah I agree and then is there a way we can somehow I have I mean you already have a resolution for a climate emergency that's yeah meaning council okay but I mean maybe we need you know something that says we're gonna our game we really you know and it's not just us it's like the council and the mayor you know I think that would help a lot it might help galvanize the whole city and you know just by stating this there are a number of cities doing this in Michigan and in the nation it also helps propel us forward mm-hmm as a human civilization or something okay so I just have one last thing to say and that is that um I mean people talk about spending money to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions but an idea that was floated in 1974 or by Amory Lovins and Stuart brand was voluntary poverty I mean how many people turn their thermostat down to 62 in the winter we're up to 78 in the summer how many people just don't you know when they have to get in when they're getting into their car how many people just say is this trip really necessary can I ride my bike can I walk can I can i bundle my errands together to minimize the amount of travel so there's a lot of that that can be done as well but it's hard to say how to promote those kind of behaviors but in if you're in California and you're an anti or you know a municipality and yeah in California it's a lot easier or University it's a lot easier to do this stuff because the state's doing it and the same would be true if the federal government was you know all in so part of what we're doing is if we are serious as we're making trying to make this a priority for everyone not only in the individual actions at home but in the officials they elect okay well I look forward to talking about this the next meeting so there any any other items for the next agenda should we ask the staff for anything I mean I honestly don't know how we work but Missy has lots ideas and things well josh has precise plan for for a budget that they have a five-year plan and a budget that he talks about how many how much reduction he get they're anticipating and greenhouse gas emissions based on the programs that they've designed that's right you showed us today yeah there's that one slide yeah just that one slide but there's a more detailed plan behind it that would be great yeah okay any item other items for the next agenda was our big item will also be the food gatherers meeting and the discussion of food waste and methane gas and ways that we might be able to assist this food gathers more as a as a group and as a city with the good work that they do because even though they collect and redistribute all this food they even themselves have like a third or a quarter waste ultimately so we'll learn more about that on the 24th also mm-hmm okay and then we have the s.w.r.a.p update okay all right public commentary we come up to the second opportunity for public commentary is there anybody who would like to come and I wanted to say I'm encouraged by the discussion I heard just now and this the ideas that I heard the that gonna bring together issues relating to the climate for example the talk about solar panels in the skate park seems like a good idea and I hope that all future budget items for the city have a component that addresses the climate impact for each item so that it's in application and that it also provides opportunities for people in the community to participate as well in community solar community do you know thermal things that need to be integrated into projects that are big public service projects that I hope that you'll be able to direct and I also want to say I as someone who's been a part of the community and part of the university for a while I hope that the plans for the university are including not only the central campus and the North Campus but the medical campus and the athletic campus which also have great opportunities for improvements in their use of power I was at Mary Sue Coleman presentation when she started the sustainability issues and the focus at that time was on the general central campus and excluded athletic and medical from all of the activities so I hope that I hope that you it includes everything including Flint indeed board you're born super and I don't think we'll have a concrete plan for Flint and Dearborn and by the end of next you know the end of the time other than to say here's the process I said just my guess because it's just a gigantic job and you got to involve people from those two campuses and we're only talking to them now for the first time but it'll certainly on our campus it'll be everything it'll be medical it'll be athletics that's reassuring yeah the president was very clear that it should be everything okay and if you know when you start thinking about it you're like really yeah well one other thing though I guess and that is when we talk about the the use of the the types of fuel and the the future where I saw that trend line with coal dropping and that's really good but if natural gas is considered you know something that's going to expand I have a real concern with that because of the methane involved and I know that you know the risks of methane so you know we have to get out of gas really we have to yeah we will I think but not by 2020 Thanks all right thanks um any other anybody else okay so so do we have a motion to adjourn we have a second all we say all who I okay all right thanks everybody you
good morning they huh today is October 1st 2019 it is the 29th day of school this is WB AG news I am Anna beam and I'm Stella today for lunch there will be cheeseburger onion rings baked baked beans mandarine oranges and milk tomorrow for breakfast there will be many donuts graham crackers fresh apples orange juice and though we have some friends celebrating birthday Ashlyn sounder dream Jaden Paras Gwen's a woodland s yesterday's fun fact question was an October 1 heritage is celebrated the answer is Hispanic heritage the winner is proud to cap create to the beat she come to the office to pick out your prize today's fun fact question is what is the most famous Mexican food rhymer to write your own journey and include your name in class we have a special announcement we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month the Spanish word of the day is Lowe's in tech Oh which means I'm sorry yeah the special guest today welcome it's disease hi this week's good citizen topic is one you have heard of since you were very small it is saying please thank you and you're welcome many of you have been taught to do this and it is it has become a very good part very good habit for you by saying please thank you and you're welcome you show respect towards other people you say please when you ask for anything always let people know that you appreciate what was done for you by saying thank you or thank you very much when someone says thank you to you you should always respond by saying you're welcome think how you feel towards other people who say please thank you and you're welcome to you you respect those people and think more of them see how many times you remember to say these words today and throughout the week there are many times during the school day when you need help or want something remind yourself that and to say please and thank you and now observe a brief period of silence to reflect on the anticipated activities of the day please stand for the public for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have a terrific Tuesday and remember kindness counts every day everywhere thanks for watching I guess
good morning people today is October 2nd 2019 it is the 30th day of school this is the beauty news I'm Angie and I'm looking today for watch there will be it pancakes and sausage bites cucumbers hash browns orange juice and notes come on through breakfast there will be fuel for you graham crackers orange house orange juice and milk we have some friends celebrating birthdays Trey and Leah please go to the office to pick out your birthday book yes Unni fun fair question was what was what is the most famous Mexican food the answer is a Chilean and so the winner is Alonzo to cast enter come to the office to pick out your prize today's funk flag questions is that what cleaning tool does a which used to apply remember you're right your answer me please include your name in class we have a special announcement we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month that the Spanish word of the day is it me gusta megusta and then no and no me gustan me which means that I like and I don't like the starbursts for the the starburst winners for the first trimester our second grade at the VG Gwendolyn s Smith the Colt MK Russell Jacob Jacob and Lancaster Amelia K stop it Kylie see Paul Jeremiah and but Cass better Alexis as Alex some axelsson Katie Kendall what kit Jay reading at Avery s third for hair greatly Matthew and dettweiler Sydney be may hard G Glover marli Peden 1s commonly in the dome for fourth grade summers Hannah Jones for woods hey Lee K Strickler radiant I'm Colette Colette Oh Matthew D VIN yeah Thalia and sister Lily Napa College Sienna enters in it for a price James P we thank you and good morning yesterday you were talking a little bit about saying please thank you and you're welcome today I would like to remind everybody to say excuse me please Hardin be pleased and I'm sorry you say please pardon me or excuse me please when ever you disturb another person in any way for example if you can't get past two people without walking between them say excuse me please or hardened me please if you accidentally drop something or make a noise from someone or bothers Center someone in any way say I'm sorry or please pardon me whenever you must leave a meal before others do always ask may I please be excused you should say you're sorry whenever you have hurt another person if you do something that causes another person to feel sad have the kindness and the courage to go to them and tell them you are sorry remember to notice other students who say pardon me please excuse me and I'm sorry for the pledge of allegiance States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and remember kindness counts every day everywhere yes
morning big Hollow today is October 3rd it is a 30 first day of school this is Bevi Beiteinu I'm saw and I am Abby today for lunch there will be a pizza diverse steamed broccoli carrot sticks strawberries and though tomorrow for breakfast nairobi french toast breakfast sandwich paris for nobles and milk well but you don't have any ones all over any birthdays today if we must roars happy birthday please go to the office to pick out your birthday yesterday's but that question was what cleaning told is a which used apply the answer in a broom the water is Sydney fourth mister please come to the office to pick out your prize today sometimes my question is arachnophobia is the fear of what animal remember to write your answer neatly and include your name in class we have a special announcement we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month the Spanish word of the day is Mayo which means my name is and now we will exert a brief period of silence to reflect on the anticipated activities of the day please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have a pressing Thursday I'd remember Pyrus pounds every day everywhere thanks for watching adios
good morning they have up three days I'm talking for 2019 it is the 32nd day of school this is WB AG news I am welcome and I imagine today folks there will be chicken strips food potato cauliflower goobers cookies and milk tomorrow for breakfast there will be at mini french toast yogurt fresh grapes that orange juice and milk we have some French celebrating birthdays Alan do arosa celebrating birthdays this weekend Alexis and in kg please come to the office to pick out your birthday but yesterday's from fact question was arachnophobia is the fear of what animal the answer is spiders the answer the winner is dick marette three moretz come down to the office to pick up your price today's from that question is what is the name of a ship that has eight sides remember to write your answer neatly and include your name in class we have a special announcement we are selling celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month today the Spanish word is como estas listen which means how are you and now we will observe a brief period of silence to reflect on it I'm anticipated activities of the day please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have a fantastic Friday and remember Congress counts every day everywhere thanks for watching adios
[Music] pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and it is all with liberty and justice for all okay we are seeing our entire war tonight and the first thing on our agenda is a student spotlight with Western middle school good evening I'm doing the end of the principle of whiskey and middle school that I'm very excited tonight for a student spotlight to spotlight one of our programs called unified theatre at this time I would like our to advise us to come on up mrs.
Kelly and Miss McGovern they're gonna just get ready to introduce the students have a little bit of to talk about the program itself and then what their specific roles as leaders are this is another program we've done what they say about 2007-2008 so we've been doing this a long time recently we started Unified sports which is they're also very exciting but I'm gonna let them take a shot hello so we are the new advisors for unified theatre oh it's a student-led program and here are five out of seven of our leaders and they're gonna be here to explain what they do and whether our charter [Music] you know I'm doing the mouth hello I am Dylan I am the director this year I work with the producer to keep everyone on task and I walk around I make sure everyone's on task and doing their job so this way we can make our deadline [Music] hello my name is Hannah and I am the producer of unified theater I am the co-director producer director so um to help make sure people are meeting the deadlines and final days and we are also hoping to have a holiday hello I am the tech support for union leader shining I also work with the problem gene and sound effects hi I'm hunter and I'm a designer of unified theatre I'm ever on creating fliers to copy the Bears as I our shirts hi my name is Giovanna an involution my theater is included and mint on my pillow with I introduce other people to new people and immediately people hi I'm Emily nama leader in training and next year I would be a fantastic leader we do have two leaders that weren't able to come tonight Peter and Grayson Grayson actually does backstage he helps get the profs ready and on show night he is has the props all in boxes organized he keeps the backstage organized and together where everybody's not scrambling and Peter is the scheduler he comes up with what we do and he helps plan the time range say we are working with groups for 20 minutes icebreaker which is a game that we may do for 15 minutes and then say vocal warm-ups or something our performance dates are made the 28th of February and the 29th and snow dates are March 6 and 7 also our theme for this year is future so we try to focus and make skits on future last year it was adventure and the year before I don't really remember [Music] so thank you for listening to our leaders and just to UM reiterate this really is a completely student-led program so Bob Rio the advisors they're really in charge of getting everyone together getting all the groups all planning everything so we're really just watching them succeed in all of this and we're really happy to be doing it thank you so much I can't wait to see your production on February 28th then it must be a leap year next year if it's February 29th right yes thank you so much thanks everyone okay next we have public comment just a reminder for public comment that there's three minutes allotted per speaker and board actions and concerns you definitely be spoken about but individual personnel and board members are not appropriate and first on our list we have Irene Correa you could please just speak name and address for the record Irene Correa of 45 West whiskey nur Road I'm here to discuss two topics special education budgeting and anonymous alerts so for special education budgeting at this time of year under the past you've always said bring your concerns for the next budget year of 2020 21 I'm in certain about the comments that the BOE made last week at the Board of Finance meetings regarding lowering special education budget budgets because the new teams in place with better handle on needs just personal experience two years ago my mother I know casually came up to me and said that she received my child's IEP she asked if I received her child's and I did not somehow two or more copies of my child's report were mailed out and three years ago I received a report that described my child's progress as I read through the report I realized the report started talking about goals that were out of scope of my child's IEP as I read further realized the progress report was for another child I believe teacher did not save the file properly and mailed me a mixed student report I think the Department is running on bare bones the staff is overloaded with students these are in the past but I do not want to know the students personal information being sent to the wrong parent I know the BOE it's hard enough to prevent active attempts to breach a child's privacy I'm sure the district we want to be diligent and prevent further inadvertent violations the special education budget needs more teachers and additional administrative support it'd be unwise to over budgets and they Clara the team has a handle on it until the district has a full successful year behind it another thing I went up with an anonymous alerts and I did some research on my own and over the past few years I witnessed increased evidence of climate issues in the work field schools younger children in huckleberry and the world issues of more focused on improper adult behavior and around the school's frequent volunteers and substitutes talking at activities outside the school one time especially need a substitute talked about a special needs student and how they were really disrupted that day and I've heard other substitutes say oh that kid - chair thrower that kids a runner and I I'm really taken aback by that I was a scene tear to clear adult speak harshly to school personnel I even spoke to an affected school person at one time and she said there's nothing I can do and I will not go through their Union rap to fight inadequate behavior of school volunteers they said there's really nothing they can do the climate for teachers and huckleberry is needs improvement several huckleberry teachers I privately encouraged me to bring these concerns forwards to the board although this is now in middle school and we have run up against issues as a kids depending on situations things get worse anybody who's had a middle schooler they've included inappropriate pictures online they've been cutting bullying including children telling other children they could be better off dead and all these instances oh my concern is to protect your children on the other side a parent would be absent make excuses or reach a reaching out which makes the situation worse we've all experienced what phones and social apps can do these things these technologies are not going away you just have to learn to work with them going forward I think the adults in school ministration can provide guidance and one thing I looked up to looked into was an awning anonymous alerts their local towns that have these on newtown Monroe Wallingford Somers have it it's a two-way anonymous reporting app that it's integrated into a school-wide system and the apps can be loaded on phones it allows anybody to report an issue from bullying today being cutting suicidal thoughts substance abuse or threats to the campus the apps can warn and manage false reports and a lot of like I went to Monroe's site and Monroe's site specifically said like false reports will be fully you know the law will like you just can't make stuff up if we lose the stigma of snitching for kids and allows parents the peace of mind that they don't have to act to avoid retaliation against their child the thing with the app is you will get the most um you will get a lot of data and you can catch issues or lures earlier it doesn't escalate and the administration learns feedback on topics too you can get this alerts and you can see what they are and then you could talk to these talk to the kids you know as assemblies about it I think things like normal size and she added ease right wrap it up in a little bit ok ok I will little pause if she matter presentations are very important to have varying levels of effectiveness I think adopting an app like this would you know change the culture here and if you go this one website I know the man who invented this came out of nine you know 9/11 and he said this quote on the website from the new towns public schools director of security we have a significant drop in both bad behavior and safety concerns creating a more positive school climate thank you so that's my thing consider it for next year's budget thank you thank you I did want to make one correction usually we don't respond to written correspondence but there was misunderstanding at the Board of Finance meeting by a Board of Finance member that the special education budget was lowered that's absolutely not the case the discussion there was on why we ended up under running our budget more than was anticipated and the reason that we gave was that the special education team was better able to go on target with their estimates so we didn't have to add so much of a conservative cost that is absolutely not true that the special education budget was lowered yes no that's that's not the case at all there was a Board of Finance member that kind of add that question and it was addressed then thank you though alright next on a list we have excuse me if I not quite ring this Alexandra Pattinson isn't do we have someone else signed up for public comment [Music] No okay is there anyone else not signed up that would like to speak okay moving on then we have student representative actually I'd like to introduce Miriam Kaiser who was inform on Z so it looks like she just got back from soccer okay so Marian thank you for being here in - the floor is yours hi everyone I'm Miriam Kaiser I'm dubious just student rep um currently in brookfield high school we are in the midst of our spirit week so yesterday was our first day and we had us a day today was costume day I dressed up as scooby-doo tomorrow is pattern day and each grade has a different pattern that they have to dress up with and Friday is blue and gold day Friday is the last day of spirit week it's when we have our pep rally um it's gonna consist of seniors from different fall sports teams playing games against each other and we're gonna come together as a school and really um you know represent Brookfield with each other we had our homecoming dance last Saturday and it was a huge hit we had the most attendance ever seen in the past few years 250 people I've been talking to mr. Burlando recently about with student council to bring up mr.
BHS again we know that there's been obviously difficulties in the past but we've been trying to change it to MX BHS MX is for gender neutrality so both boys and girls can participate in the show and we're working on that I guess yeah for shooting Council we want to try to do another spring pep rally like the fall pep rally and yeah that's BHS for you thank you where is Liam where is the homecoming dance Al Michaels at the Grove oh right that 250 that's impressive yeah any other questions for me thank you for jumping in thanks man all right well next we have written correspondence okay so we have Jill rope yak two requests for records Andy Korea regarding a discussion of values and valuation with the Board of Ed and a complaint endorsed Coleman regarding the new school project thank you all right approval of Board minutes recommend a motion that the board approve the minutes listed below is recommended the regular meeting on September 18th 2019 second any young corrections edits concerns all in favor aye opposed okay next we have the superintendent's update thank you mrs.
sir so I have a couple of agenda items the first one I'd like to briefly talk about is surveys just a brief mention from carrying over from our last meeting grades 7 through 12 between the last week in October in the first two weeks in November we have a window where grades 7 through 12 mr. Rendon mr. B'Elanna and mrs. Y gan eich have teamed up with Brookfield cares in every couple of years we give a developmental assets inventory survey on student behaviors and risk factors and so that sir we came out in that two to three week window depending on the school and how their schedule works in addition to that and we'll talk about this in much more detail later but I did want to mention another survey and Rosa will be taking the reins under new business when we talk about the healthy school start time surveys just want to let everybody know that we will have a parent survey a student survey grade 7 through 12 and a staff survey regarding again behaviors around homework and sleep time and work hours and all kinds of things to really get at how start times can impact decisions that we might make as a committee so those are the surveys that will be out there in the coming month and a half I would say and then the other pieces I had a communication last week regarding the Triple E virus it's been a lot of signs on 84 and a lot of concern around that some schools especially on the eastern side of the state have reduced their after dusk activities i've continued to be in contact with dr.
Sullivan he continues to say that the human cases are actually waning and there hasn't been any in this particular area that brings anything from from his perspective to the level of concern where we would need to reduce our activities after dusk at this point so we're going to remain on schedule at this time if something changes of course we'd all be in communication in in addition to that with our 90 degree weather today and it supposed to drop below 60 I guess or even 50 tomorrow after the rain storm comes through tonight is that time of year where I'll be putting out the inclement weather letter can't believe that one as a reminder in terms of delays and cancellations and hourly dismissals to remind everybody of the procedures and to prepare their households for those emergency plans that they might have in childcare etc the next thing I'd like to do is we put out an announcement last week we're excited to have a extremely high caliber administrator joining us to lead our pre-k to five special education department as our new special education supervisor and that is mrs.
Melissa Baldwin Melissa can you stand and maybe come over to the podium and say hello Melissa come on up welcome and Melissa asked her just to say a few words and introduce yourself so please good evening everyone commissioners chair madam chair dr. Borel dr. Ruby student representatives and friends and family I just like to take the opportunity to say thank you for entrusting me with your with your students who are our neediest our special ed children and I look forward to starting in a couple of weeks thank you so much welcome thank you thank you very much and then finally Kaylee O'Connor and Girl Scout Troop five zero seven seven seven seven seven actually three sevens are going to come to the podium and update us on their wonderful hand sanitizer project so Kaylee come on up [Music] hi we are from we're the Brookfield Girl Scout Troop five zero seven seven I'm Kaylee O'Connor this is Mary cereal Oh Charlotte good sell Caitlin's as a in grace good sell tonight Rebecca Roger couldn't make it but she's part of our group so for our Silver Award Project Girl Scout troop zero five zero seven seven decided that we wanted to improve the health of our community starting in to Brookfield schools before even deciding what we wanted to do we had discussed several other ideas but came to the conclusion that this one would be the best we started by researching the benefits of hand sanitizer why would be a good idea to install them in the schools and how much it would cost once we had gathered all the information we contacted some companies to see if they would be interested in donating supplies [Music] after we had all the necessary supplies needed we contacted the Board of Education who pushed us to further our research and confirm a few more items before our project was approved one of the things the Board of Education brought up to us was the concern about students using hand sanitizer and it dangerous and in proper way to address this we placed bright yellow caution stickers on the devices saying that the hand sanitizers for hand use only and they also included our contact information if a device breaks are needed to be refilled not only have we put caution stickers on them we are in the process of putting an informational QR code anyone can scan and learn about the benefits of hand sanitizer and destroying germs when we had finally sealed all the cracks our projects went back to the Facilities Committee and we were granted permission to begin putting hand sanitizer in all four schools we figured with our budget we would be able to maintain repair and refill devices for for two years after that we would no longer be responsible for them currently we have installed them and we will be raising money to take care of them this project was very influential in fluent shil and a good experience for the future we learned how to create well written letters how to plan long term project and how to present in front of official people you know that the absences will go down in brookfield and sickness in brookfield will be reduced and this simple thing that will hopefully have a lasting change on everyone around us and maybe influence other towns to do the same and improve the health of people in Connecticut thank you yeah I have a statement I just cannot believe how proud I am of you girls you have taken a a concern that is a public concern germs you have thought out the process you came to the Facilities Committee you took our suggestion seriously like just it is amazing and it just makes my heart feel so good to have such great students in our school that care about others so thank you I just wanted to add I've seen tremendous growth in you just from the very first meeting when you came and sort of pitched the idea to us to you know all the way to today it's amazing how much you've learned and grown in the process so congratulations well done reach I was just wondering if we could because you mentioned you want to see absences or sicknesses go down I wonder if there's a way to look at the data to compare year-to-year it might be an interesting way for you guys to follow up to see what what did it actually have an impact and then you know be a way to sort of see in sort of numbers what can we do keep that data and our health offices that might be a good way for you guys to to look to see you know did a certain percentage go down and that might be a good way to validate your work sounds good to me we definitely can do that thank you so much great job ladies and I'd just like to say for the for the for the board for the public I mean Justin I see Miriam here and the unified theatre group and our Girl Scouts a perfect example of celebrating student voice in student leadership you know and what goes on in our schools every single day and our teachers and our certainly our parents and our teachers paraprofessionals and our administrators that are our principals and leaders that are here tonight get to witness every single day so kudos to all of you we really are proud of you great job I actually have a brief comment if you're a done doctor for I am about cares I just I guess I wanted to remind everyone how lucky we are in Brookville to help or feel hairs it has been here for years mr.
Jaffee came last month and he gave us a wonderful booklet I took it home and I read it and as you all know my daughter is in grad school and she's interning in Middle School in high school right now and she has a cohort of students she works with and they were talking about substance abuse and different things that the school school should be doing and they had no idea what she was talking about and she said well in my town they came in they gave a survey they gave a presentation they made a swear of what the different substances would do and it just were really unique and you know Thank You mr. Jaffe thank you for Phil cares because it's something I think that we take for granted that other towns don't do so and you just yeah thank you [Music] all set thank you close okay so we can move on to subcommittee reports first we have Cape we had our meeting on September 17th and what we were presented on are the k24 standards align report cards and this has been work that the district has been moving towards for a number of years and it really is about moving away from the way in which we receive report cards as kids where you could you know on a zero to 100 scale and maybe you got a 70 on a test and then you got a 90 and then you got an 80 and you got an 82 and so you got an 80 on your report card but it didn't really tell you anything just it was the sort of mishmash or average of numbers and the standards align report card what that really does is it targets specific feedback and so what parents are going to be able to see is the simple explanation of what a standard is and where their child is on a continuum and what that does is what our you know are 80% didn't give to us when we were kids it tells you where you are on a skill where are you doing well and then what skills do you have to work on so it's a really this idea of very targeted specific feedback and the really sort of interesting exciting part is is that the way that teachers measure it is very specific so there will be different items that they'll use to give kids whether it's a an exit ticket or through conferencing or you know some other different smaller tasks that they'll specifically be measuring where a student is on that continuum of a skill so we were heard a great presentation on that and what Deb Farias is doing is putting together a presentation that will go to parents so they can understand it because it's new it's not what we grew up with it's not what we're used to but it's really really where your education is going in terms of assessment and reporting and so Deb's work is really to communicate that clearly to pair so that they'll understand our second part of our meeting we talked about an idea that dr.