001stay here you know so you know I'll have to make a long commute maybe go to Lansing a little bit but you know it's good to be back no one why don't we get started [Music] um so um it's 701 um Welcome to the September 20 5th uh September 22nd 2022 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covid-19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comments opportunities please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID 915 -8343-9176 so again please call number 888-788 zero zero nine nine and enter meeting
002ID 915-8343-9176 [Music] and this information is also available on the published agenda um however I uh the published agenda was wrong so uh so it was misprinted so um I will uh I'll know I'll I'll give everybody the same information at the beginning of public comment both of the public comment periods um so I'll call this meaning to order uh Galen do you want to read the last Heritage statement sure okay all righty I acknowledge that the land the city of Ann Arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary land of the anishinabe including the Ottawa Ojibwe and Boulder white me and Wyandotte peoples I further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in in the United States on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people to take another's land was
003formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807 doing where we work live work going where we live work study and recreate let's not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals and that is the land here it is a statement well thank you Galen um so let's move on to the Roll Call okay all righty just one second right on it to pop up okay um commissioner Needham commissioner Needham council member dish here commissioner Grant commissioner Graham council member Griswold here commissioner Cal award here all right uh chairperson Brown um here in Ann Arbor the mission I need them I mean excuse me commissioner mursky here calling in for my
004home in Ann Arbor Vice chairperson Mitchell you're in Ann Arbor okay commissioner Vandenberg commissioner Vandenberg well he he resigned oh yes right take his name off okay uh commissioner oriel here in Ann Arbor okay commissioner Gibb Randall here in Ann Arbor commissioner Marcy I'm here in Ann Arbor commissioner Gruber here in Ann Arbor commissioner Edwards here in Ann Arbor all right we have a corn great thank you Galen uh so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda um I'm just going to make a remark at first that we have three uh presentations here outside uh the normal body of our work and so um I'd like this to take up an hour so I would urge everybody to try to keep um keep to that to to a time limit
005of around 20 minutes uh just try to move things along and uh and preserve plenty and plenty of time for discussion um so uh do I have a motion to approve the agenda uh Kathy Griswold seconded by John calward um all who approve the agenda as submitted raise their hand or say hello say hello say hi hi all those any opposed any abstentions I hear none don't see none so it passes unanimously so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the August minute of August minutes so do I have a motion to so moved approved on the minutes as written John mursky um second hi Shannon give Randall is there any discussion I hear an UNC none so um so all who approve of the match has submitted or raise your hand
006or say hello hey thanks bye okay passes in any uh any any no votes any extensions stating sorry you're abstaining again okay because I wasn't at the meeting yeah so and Marson abstained uh otherwise it uh it passes unanimously so um so the next item on the agenda are public commentaries so this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID number -8343 -7176 this information is uh is contrary to that displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed perhaps on the video feed which I can observe um so again is there some confusion I will repeat this please call 788-0099 and enter meeting ID 915 eight three four three nine one seven six City staff will select callers that have raised their hand
007one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star nine on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so Galen is anybody on the line yet I see how Paul is online so we'll wait 30 seconds let's see foreign since I'll be giving the first presentation here there's no one on a line okay let's see can people see
008my screen there's something new happening okay so um um so just as a reminder um um this was a surprise to me about a year and a half ago in July of 2021 uh there was a uh there was a report that the city of Ann Arbor had signed a consent agreement about some nutrient pollution which is mostly phosphorus into the Huron River from the wastewater treatment plant as as contributing to harmful algal blooms that were occurring regularly every summer in Ford Lake especially and also in Belleville like Downstream of Ann Arbor um so uh so um it was timely to do another review of this topic um if you remember the city has to come up with an action plan within a year and uh the full compliance doesn't have isn't mandated by the
009consent to free until 2048. when uh some of us may not be here anymore so um so it's a long Horizon but uh one thing I want to emphasize from the front from up right up front is that there has been a lot of research over the last 25 years there's finally been a lot of money spent on time now and uh [Music] I'm trying to figure out what the contributors are to harmful algorithms and there are uh however there has the remediation newer remediation Technologies and methods have not kept up so I think there is a good reason to wait until this is to consider some newer Technologies before making a commitment making a financial commitment to doing something that may be out of date by the time by the time it's implemented foreign
010so um so here's a picture of what harmful algal bloom is like but nobody's seen them before here on the left we see that uh we have we have a typical appearance of an algal bloom you have these um you have these algal mats that develop on the surface of the water uh the water column gets anoxic meaning that the all the oxygen is depleted in the bottom of the lake and um it's causing a lot of organisms to die including fish uh they fall to the bottom of the lake and create more enoxate and multiply the enoxic conditions so you'll see here in the middle there's a picture of the kind of slime that you'll pick up from these blue-green algae they're called algae algal blooms but these are technically speaking of bacteria a
011blue-green algae these are the organisms that first they created all the oxygen we breathe on the planet now because originally there was no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere and um over uh eventually life figured out how to deal with oxygen and actually uh and so it detoxify it so um so organisms the blue green algae that are still with us multiplied and over a billion years or so I've created the oxygen and all of the oxygen in our atmosphere um and then I'll go right here you'll see um a picture of a satellite picture of Lake Erie so most of the most of the algal blooms in Lake Erie are caused from agricultural runoff so we don't have so much of a issue here in on the Huron River with agricultural runoff there is agricultural
012lands but uh not as much as you find in Lenawee County um you know Monroe County south of us and most of the pollution actually comes from um by Ohio Western Ohio so the problem here is that uh phosphorus is is commonly the limiting nutrient for photosynthesis in most water bodies on nitrogen you know you have uh if you buy a bag of fertilizer you'll see near these numbers for n p and K N is nitrogen uh that can be limiting um for for growth of organisms P is for phosphorus um that can be limiting um both on land and in water and K is potassium but that's rarely limiting nutrient um in in water bodies um most of the problems with these algal wounds come from excess phosphorus excess nitrogen can also play a
013role but more so in oceans and in Oceanic algal blooms not so much in fresh water and so our local soils contain relatively high levels of phosphorus generally they're sufficient to support plant growth so there's very little reason to be adding phosphorus to agricultural land here or to uh or to you know your Lawns and Gardens and any additional phosphorus that comes from surface waters for ground Waters that are above these Baseline levels will contribute to harmful algal worms that are toxic because these blue-green algae when they die they secrete various toxins that are liver toxins and neurotoxins they're called Microsystems are the ones that are best characterized but there is a whole Suite of toxins that are not so well characterized but microsystem is the one that is fairly prominent in most harmful algal
014wounds and they uh um and and they do cause um uh sickness in people and pets um one thing that needs to be remembered is past contaminations are banked on the settlements that means that the Huron River already has lots of phosphorus in the bottom in the bottom settlements and so this is what creates a major problem is because um without removing those sediments they can be remobilized by organisms in the river so um so it's certainly important to cut whatever um punch whatever excess phosphorus is being released to the river this practice needs to stop um if we're going to get the river back to a healthy state um but uh but the other thing to think about is that there are these past contaminations that are still there and it's really economically infeasible
015in order to be dredging uh the river to get these sediments out and back on the land uh Kathy you have a question um yes I raised my hand before you said that but I was just wondering when dredging is done and I know they did it uh down at Gallup Park once does that actually disturb the phosphorus and even though some of the sediments are taken out their they're releasing more into the water I believe in most cases it will but um you know as a scientist I cannot say because nobody measured that um and I'm not aware of any observations like excessive algal wounds that were seen afterwards um that's something that has to be studied on independently oh okay and I was just thinking that sometimes neighborhoods get together that that live
016on small lakes that that then flow into our Watershed and and you know just do the dredging themselves so okay okay so [Music] um so I'll go through this fairly quickly so uh this is just a slide that shows you where you can find information and Report some EPA is a very extensive website up here um eglov has um has a website that you can find at this uh URL more specifically there's a report that was issued in November of 2019 specifically about Ford and Belleville lights so anybody can go with this um URL and read this report and the city of Ann Arbor website has a good website where they point to these information resources and also talk about actions that the city has done historically um to reduce phosphorus pollutions in the river
017um now um and uh recently the government accountability office the federal office issued a report to Congress the agencies and communities um basically the interagency working group that was formed in 1998 to study harmful algal blooms um Congress designated both NOAA and EPA as co-chairs it's been a failure so far and that neither Milestones nor performance measures neither the original Milestones nor the uh nor performance measures were really um were really instituted and part of the problem is that this interagency working group was not a funding body so I never was able to provide any funding by itself what it was we're more like voluntary contributions from from EPA and the NOAA and other government agencies um so um another another there's been initiatives of a great number of um of governmental bodies on harmful
018algal rooms and blooms in the Great Lake Great Lakes um the Great Lakes Commission hav collaborative is one of the major ones but you'll see the several others um from almost any environmental or governmental organization that deals with water quality and the Great Lakes has has a has a has a body as a committee that does work on harmful algorithms now what's happened since 1998 well there's been a fair amount of money invested in uh in setting up data collection and um the informational resources and that's about it um there's the the data collection website part of EPA is the cyanobacteria assessment Network and it's about the only deliverable that's happened so far from from this initiative that's been going for uh 25 years now almost 25 years so the the only question I want
019to bring up here is that are the plastic remedies adequate so there are chemical remedies and biological remedies that were proposed for many for many decades um but um but a lot of but there's many uncertainties in a lot of these calculations and results uh for example the total maximum daily load that's what tmdl that's part of the Clean Water Act as um we have to estimate what the total maximum tolerable daily load is for phosphus simulator so there was a re-evaluation that was completed in the Siegler report in 2019 but it's really Rife with crew destinations and you know suffers from propagation of errors um well the recommendation is that it should be based on a watershed management plan any action that's taken to reduce phosphorus loading and to meet those tmdls requirements um
020is really inadequate to the total goal here and I don't mean to be dismissive about this what I mean is that it's a valuable watershed management plan that was developed through the Carolina River Watership Council in 2020 there's a lot of valuable work done there but the the question in my mind is that the linkage between whatever actions we make and whatever improvements might happen uh in in the downstream lakes board lakes and Belleville lights um is not really clear cesaria clear it's a good goal to reduce our phosphorus emissions but the only question is is will that be enough to really prevent harmful alcoholic influence from getting worse because especially when you couple this with climate change because historically for example um you know Northern Lights have not been so vulnerable to harmful algal
021blooms but in the last couple of years there have even been harmful algal wounds in Lake Superior well Lake Superior and so um the current plan um you know uh is taken from that November and this November 2020 Eagle document which is right here there's an appendix and Professor Lehman at the University of Michigan has critiqued it uh publicly um but I think this but I think what really we need to do is invite Professor Lehman and some other people later on to come and do the do a presentation we'll have a broader discussion of this at some future environmental commission meeting uh my only goal today is just to inform everybody of these of these information resources and the conclusions I've come to some extent yeah please ask any questions as we go along
022um and uh and I'm not gonna because of time limitations I'm not going to collaborate on any of these but uh there are some 36 member remedies for harmful levels for reducing phosphorus that have been suggested uh there's this there's a website on the state of Connecticut has put up a website you know which is the easiest to navigate on that on that topic so what about our wastewater treatment plant settlement agreement um it's in three phases tier one is um is from last October to next October so in other words October of 2023 we have um whatever we do is based on the EEG status quo anti which is basically uh 0.8 milligrams of phosphorus per liter of water coming out of the wastewater treatment plant um and tier two I'm starting in um
023in October of 2023 to October of 2048. um the waste load allocations of WLA are benchmarked to the 2019 tmdl that was determined or for those calculated this is not a measurement it's a calculation based on a lot of assumptions as I mentioned before um it's confusing though because this is expressed as pounds per day not makes per liter so it's not really clear you know you know how that Maps uh maps on to the ultimate Bowl which is here in tier three which is after October of 2048 we're supposed to be we're supposed to not release any more than 25 pounds per day but um as you can see on the left hand and which is stated as being equivalent to 0.2 mix per liter which of course um really just relates to how
024much water comes out of the wastewater treatment plant so we have to remember that if we're gonna you know we can either dilute it by one way of meeting this goal is just by pumping more water through the wastewater treatment plant um and see this just illustrates and this is somewhat confusing too because these are the these are the phosphorus allegations in this consent agreement um to the tmdl and as our fun as these are these are assumed to be what are relative contributions are um to phosphorus into the river and you see it's kind of peculiar because in October through March we're at 0.86 belated which if you see in the previous slide our goal is 0.2 mixed part later ultimately and um and and these numbers differ by month and I have no
025idea why April has doubled basically or more than double tripled even compared to these other ones of the summer um all I can say is that you know we're experiencing Lake Erie where research has been done in Lake Erie is um um what will maximize algal blooms is generally having a lot of rainfall in the springtime and around drought in the summer because this is a general weather pattern that will enhance harmful algal bones as if you have flooding in in the spring but drought in the summer so and uh and this is just showing that uh part of this is that they're various estimates um they're not measurements they're really estimates in various communities indicate that potentially maybe half roughly half of the phosphorus that the city of Ann Arbor emits to the heroin
026River comes from it's a storm water runoff so the other half comes from the wastewater treatment plant that's a general that's General across many communities in the United States where it's been estimated I'm not sure exactly what the contribution is here I'm not going to stand by any numbers that I've read um so far but it's roughly again and again it comes up to roughly half and half and so these are this is what you can find and the city is our website for the recommended green streets um bmps there's our best management practices uh and this is based on the Ann Arbor stormwater model I think we've talked about the green streets initiative here before and so this is just uh recommending what um what measures can be taken for these different uh uh
027you know at these different locations and how much it would cost to implement so again you can look at the city's website um it's much for more information about that so what are the critical questions here well the first one is where where what are the relevant sources of phosphorus it's not just the wastewater treatment plant so um so this is one of the criticisms that Professor Layman made on this uh on this uh on this Igloo report for 2020 is that they only consider development sources or basically run off on a notorious surfaces not whatever the embedded sources which are sources that are already present in the sediments of the soil that can be mobilized under different conditions and what are the cost benefit ratios for the numerous numerous remedy options and what are
028the collateral benefits I think this needs to be part of any City study that's done and reported you know I think it's it's really necessary to identify the cost benefit ratios for various remedies that the city might propose and also take account of what collateral benefits might be um and then of course what remedies are politically possible um and Ann Arbor's current existing effluent quality that's this EEG number that it's the foundation of everything um it's current um eeq is 0.8 makes per liter the total phosphorus um and several sources indicate that really reducing that to half a Meg or 0.5 milligrams per liter or 0.5 PTM is of total T it should be achievable and economical you know based on current current uh Technologies however you know that you see that our 24 day
029Target is 0.2 minutes per leader so this is definitely going to be a stretch you know using the current uh using current remediation methods and so I'm just going to dip into a little science here um so cyanobacterial competitive advantages um this just lists what their competitive advantages are and so uh I'm not going to cover this uh well I'll be happy to answer questions about it later um after people have had time to review it uh just email me and I will we can have a brief discussion about all these but they have competitive advantages and uh now that these competitive advantages have been researched and and are known in better and better known um there are newer technologies that are being promoted for reducing harmful algorithms wow but basically you'll see the healthy
030Lakes have an oxygen-rich environment they have a productive biodiverse food web and they achieve nutrient clearance from the aquatic ecosystem that means that the biological organisms in the river itself will help clear out the phosphorus um and and what's causing the cyanobacteria is a lack of oxygen in the bottom that's what minoxic environment means and under constrained food webinos lacks diversity so improving the river's Health overall is going to be a good thing and nutrient recycling that supports algal and cyanobacterial dominance of the nutrient webtake so um there are ways to uh to try to engineer the Ecology of the river itself to try to make to try to approve the clearance of phosphus and reduce the severity and and uh duration of harmful algal blooms so there's just this um so most chemical treatments
031are temporary because they're really ineffective in the long term well that's been something that's been noticed I I'm not sure if it's a consensus but it's definitely a pattern a trend and so prevention and Remediation are needed so I would encourage the city staff to look into some of these more novel prevention and Remediation strategies um so um so I'm going to skip over all the details here you can read it on your own but some of these methods have been successful in several lakes in the United States now the one that's best documented in the uh on the Internet is a Peak Skill light in New York so there's a lake in New York that suffered from harmful algal blooms and some of these newer methods um it's uh to try to do what's
032called a generally multi-level mitigation approach some have worked in these in these situations so um and finally I just want to mention that um you know anything that is done should have key performance indicators and so um and part of what um part of what has been done so far is that it's not clear what the relative rules are of the Huron River Watershed Council and the City Planning Department uh and so this mother this might be somewhat the accountability so here we have a project that's going to continue until 2048 and how are we gonna how is the account how is the accountability going to be managed you know with cities with City staff turnover what city council turnover are we going to make sure that we're meeting our responsibilities here uh with this
033consent to group um and also what are the relevant contributions from Wastewater versus stormwater and maybe that the storm water discharges um maybe a bigger contribution and so money might be better spent uh doing uh doing storm water rather than Wastewater remediation we need to have a strength weaknesses opportunities and threats analysis of these overall remediation and prevention strategies before we invest a lot of money through this project and uh can you know what are the recommended stormwater best practices um these are based on our ms4 permit which is my understanding and then what are the recommended worth it as a city or what are the recommended Wastewater dnp strategies what are the processes that City staff and uh um and the council are going to do to evaluate these to deliberate on these various
034on all these uh on all these options so and with messaging and education I just put this in here because um you'll hear often that it's the kfo manure that needs to be uh that's causing these harmful algal blooms it's not so much of a problem here in the Huron River but it's all it's the major problem with Lake Erie it's not defined as a waste so many of these capable operations some of them are in Lenawee County um some they are contaminating the Raisin River and the water supply of Adrian Michigan um okay um in many of these capable operations they generate as much maneuver as the city of Antarctica is a mid-sized City wherever they're not because under the law some of this manure is not defined as a waste product so I'm
035just defining it as a waste product would be the simplest way of having it treated properly on site one of these on these papers are not spread on agricultural land so recklessly um if you're interested in uh where harmful lateral blooms are showing up this is part of uh this is part of the informational resources that have been provided so far um so you can go to that website and see where there are current and historical harmful level booms over the state of Michigan for example this summer there was a serious one on Ford Lake Belleville Lake cut off relatively easy um any messaging in education currently because scientists have been driving this so far in in the EPA most of most of the messaging and education is based on 11th rate uh level of
036understanding and it needs to be dropped down to a fifth grade level at the beginning when you're communicating when you're trying to do messaging about this powerful and it's clear that Houston Community involvement makes a big difference and in outcomes um so finally I mean I'll just uh leave this these are advice to landowners so what can land owners what can property owners in Ann Arbor do to help our government our Collective government deal with this problem well first of all don't use a lot of fertilizers with phosphate uh this is something the city acted on in the late 70s or early 80s but my understanding is you can still buy one fertilizers in Ann Arbor at big box stores and things like that to that you know soluble phosphate in it by reducing turf
037grass by planting normal native species on areas of native plants and trees and shrubs this is another goal of the environmental commission so this is one of these collateral benefits that could be plant rain Gardens disconnect dance folks or redirect them into yards or rain barrels well in the rain Garden installing permeable pavement the city's done some experiments in this regard but the payment is not stood up to traffic so uh so uh and picking up head waste of course which is a common practice here and there was not a practice when I moved here from North Carolina and oftentimes I've heard this come up with Council about breaking your dead leaves into the street and having the city um pick them up but uh um a better solution is to rake your Dead Leaves
038away from the street and put them on your on your garden beds put them on your flower beds remember um not on your turf grass but uh on your native plant garden and um and keeping keeping this yard waste debris out of the storm water drains will help reduce the phosphorus by going into the river in the city realizes that so they've done more sweetened street sweeping lightly than they have in the past so this is just uh um there is an online meeting that you can you can that didn't show up in here but I think it shows up in the electronic copy that you can you can look at this for uh this meeting or this recent meeting for a general discussion well you know about harmful lot of opens so that's um
039that's all I want to say at this point and just to reiterate that I would like to um devote a meeting of the environmental commission later um sometime this winter possibly and invite some outside speakers who can explain some of these things in more detail now Kathy you have your hand off um yeah I want to thank you for having this I think it's very important that Community experts and policy makers take the lead on this just like they need to take the lead on the Gelman plume because when we leave it up to the attorneys much of the information becomes privileged and confidential and this is just my opinion but it becomes more adversarial rather than problem solving and the first time I met Dana nessel and said I was from Ann Arbor she
040started asking me about the algae blooms and uh it was like what you know why would she be asking me about that I knew there was a problem in Fort late but it's something that she's very interested in thanks again all right thanks Kathy I'm Bridget yeah I have a question I might have missed it when you were talking about the targets the wastewater treatment targets of point I think you said 0.5 milligrams per liter is doable um and achievable are there targets yeah that we went too far just a couple slides up are there targets set for storm water or is that just too challenging to to do some non-point Source um this consent agreement was uh specifically with the wastewater treatment plan so I'm not aware of what and you know what's you
041know and that's under our npdes permit but I'm not sure what's in our ms4 limit for stormwater okay so we don't know what what I have not come across this information myself okay thank you um Roger you have the floor yeah I was going to ask to make a couple points at the beginning of my presentation relating to what you just covered but first of all for anybody that's watching on CTN or on Zoom um CTN uses a the regular Zoom view which overlays the people on top of part of your presentation so I think CTN should use and anybody else watching on Zoom go up to your view in the upper right corner if you're on a computer and do this side by side gallery view that way you can see the full presentation
042as well as as many people as you want to open up and see so that that's for anybody that's watching online either on CTN and CTN can change their View I think on the Fly even and I think my my presentations won't get overlaid and the other thing is the regarding elbow brooms I'm not sure if little lake has that but it certainly has changed in the 20 29 years I've been watching what's going on with the Gelman thing and the discharge from gallman may be contributing to uh what's happened to Little Lake and what's happened to Little Lake is likely what's going to happen to the first sister Lake if government is allowed to discharge their partially treated dioxane into one of Ann Arbor's only two natural lakes in the city limits first sister
043Lake could end up looking like little Lake does now and uh and sometime later you can look at the Google Earth views of little Lake over time and see what's happened with that well that's all I have to say in that thing okay so so has the discharge been measured for Fosters well in the early days they were dumping everything into the in their treatment bonds and some of that overflowed into this into the marsh area which leads into the the tributary of Honey Creek that um empties into the Huron River Upstream from where Ann Arbor it gets 85 of its water and in fact the video behind me on the screen there that's Honey Creek behind my house uh video I took a couple years ago in the height of kovid and the normal
044flow that's pretty much uh all of Honey Creek emptying through a third of a mile Upstream from the mouth of the Honey Creek so there's yeah there's all that stuff in there in the early days there was a lot of other other stuff it's well anyway okay about that right yeah thank you Roger uh John you have your handbook yes thanks a couple of questions about the settlement agreement uh first of all my understanding is I skimmed it it's legally binding correct I think so I imagine so yeah so the second question is what teeth does it have what are the consequences if we don't meet the 2048 Target because I missed that it was that if that was that does anybody know if that was in there um nothing that was publicly disclosed I
045mean I I assume that there will be negative consequences for the city if um we don't meet the Target and uh third is I just make a statement I assume also that this is not some Target that we can meet by flipping the switch in 2048 it's something that we're going to have to address step by step over the next roughly 25 years and that means we need to really have um as you pointed out leading indicators that we we are monitoring and a clear action plan step by step that takes us down you know Point whatever it is milligrams per per liter you know per per year or whatever if we don't do that we're going to be in a heap of trouble in 2048 is that a reasonable assumption foreign but you know
046you know time will tell I mean there's plenty of examples of uh you know um problems with this duration where they're just kicked down the road continually um Kathy you have your hand up and then yeah some people ask questions kick down the road is a good phrase to apply to this okay all right well thank you everybody I'm going to stop sharing and we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the Gelman dioxane plume update so um I think we have we have a um some slides and Roger rail is the first speaker on the agenda yeah let me share my screen here I'm looking for oh that's weird Galen Kaelyn if maybe you could help I think we need to allow permission to share well I have a share
047but it doesn't okay to Mike it doesn't uh get to my second screen where all my stuff is queued up so I'll just uh I'll just go directly to what I was going to go to in fact to switch to another view I'll do it later so I think this is not it so you're a co-host now usually I get I get a chance to share screen one or screen two and that's not showing up for some reason so let's see if I can go to this one this is uh my presentation uh in Google format so let me go up here this is going to be a quick view a very cursory view because these are going to be two-dimensional Maps I'm going to show you where the plume is um from 1992 to
0482021 so let me go to View full screen mode are you seeing the full screen of the title side yes we are okay good so here's the plume in 1992. this is uh from Gilman's own Maps um colorized and overlaid onto Google Earth so we can see it in relation to all the real things that we have to deal with and then 93 and went back and got caught up on all this I think this would be a good time to to point out that citizen involvement has been key on the Gilman issue when I got involved Pat Ryan Pat Ryan the citizen of Ann Arbor was the expert citizen expert on this and she got me up to speed and hit the ground running when I got involved unfortunately Pat died last month her
049obituary hasn't been posted yet but I'm working with uh different people to try to give her full credit for her early work on this I just wanted to interject that so that's 1992 plume map here's what it is in 2021 from the latest Gelman blue Maps except for the light yellow areas is the area they didn't bother to map that I've added where the dioxin has been at one part per billion their deductible level so after nine years of cleanup this this is basically what we're left with I'm going to go to the next slide to give you some other views because you've probably read about Scio townships sampling and I've added that in here these are the locations in the white are the ones who are non-detect locations here in the yellow are where
050there's detect uh from Silo Silo Township's own sampling this is not the complete list the latest round has not been shared yet via the Via eagle and I'm waiting for those to be updated so I can add those to the maps the rest of these areas are areas where Gelman is doing their own sampling or in these yellow squares is where the state is contract with the with the county health department to do sampling for the state but with all the sampling they somehow missed all of these detection levels up here mostly because the method of detecting the company and the state used up until recently could only detect onto one part Pavilion which is three times the cleanup standard that some states use but since Michigan has a very LAX cleanup standard of 7.2
051um you know the the the state and the company have been able to get by with not really detecting where the dioxin was in our Waters of the state but where it was at One Park pavilion or more so most of these were in uh 0.2 to one part Pavilion there's one here that was at one part per billion so even with the state and the company's old analysis method that would have been detected this northernmost one here is only a thousand feet from the river only a thousand feet now that's about a mile farther north than what anybody expected so this is what's coming now this these tend to be at the deeper layers and we can talk about that in more detail when we have more time I only have a few minutes
052here so I'm gonna just re go to the next slide which is the again looking at the 1992 plume map and after 29 years of cleanup we have this plume and it's still expanding and of course this doesn't even show the size of sampling that so when people say it's a mile wide and four miles long it's really more like uh two and a half miles wide and more than four miles long and growing so uh I just want people to be aware of that now I'm going to turn it over to Jack Eaton and he's going to talk about this latest appeals court ruling that overturn the judge's order local judge order from last year that got some of the cleanup moving and he can go over some of that so I'm going to
053stop my share unless there's any questions that um you might as well leave it off Roger hi it's John Lewis Jack wants to have something else out on the screen okay well just leave it up Roger so um Google Earth instead so it can zoom in more so go ahead go ahead Jack thank you I'm Jackie and I'm the executive director of card um I'm a lawyer but I've never practiced environmental law so even though I'm going to discuss the court case this is not my area of expertise in fact the environmental commission may want to invite the City attorney to visit one of your meetings and um give you their point of view um excuse me so to understand the current legal status Gelman plume I need to provide some background the state's oversight
054of the Gelman plume is governed by a consent judgment agreement on the first version of a consent judgment was reached in 1992 nearly 30 years ago subsequent amendments were made to the consent judgment as conditions in law change regarding the claim in 2006 the city sued Gelman independent of the state's case against the polluter that case was settled on less than favorable terms which may in fact impact the uh cities standing um in the coming months in 2016 the state adapted new exposure standards for one for the axing and drinking water necessitating changes to the consent judgment the allowable levels of 14 dioxin was reduced from 48 parts per billion to 7.2 parts per billion that's a dramatic change um in that same year congresswoman Dingle urged the city to seek EPA involvement in addressing
055the plume problem the city just declined congresswoman's suggestion at least in part because of concerns about property values oh excuse me I've lost my place here um the state and gentlemen reached agreement on modifications to the third consent judgment which will um talk about in a minute um in 2017 but also on that year the city the county South Township and the Huron River Valley Huron River Watershed Council saw intervener status in the state's case against skelman the trial court granted that request to intervene that gave us a place at the table during the negotiations the interveners were allowed to join the negotiations for modification of the consent judgment those negotiations dragged down for about three years the interveners lawyers insist that the version of the consent judgment that was negotiated with input from the
056interveners was an improvement over the agreement reached between the state and gallery the elected bodies for the city county and Township rejected the proposed consent judgment there were fundamental and fatal flaws in the agreement that I won't get into at this point in time after the interveners rejected the proposed consent judgment the trial court held a hearing and ordered the polluter to implement the terms of the proposed fourth amended CJ and to engage in quarterly meetings to improve the remedial plan gentleman appealed that order to the you know initiating Court of Appeals while the appeal was pending the polluter refused to keep the interveners apprised of what efforts it was making uh to implement the Court's order interveners filed a motion to compel the polluter to create a timeline for implementation importantly the polluter argued
057that if the consent judgment did not include a deadline for an activity it could not be compelled to do those activities within any particular time frame this was one of the fundamental flaws to to the consent judgment that was proposed the trial court denied the interveners motion finding that it could take no action while the appeal was pending in July of this year the court of appeals held a hearing on gentleman's appeal those of us who watched the hearing noted that it didn't go well for the interveners on September 15th the court of appeals issued its opinion the court opinion starts with four pages of history of the plume including the fact that the discharge of 1-4 daxan began under a permit issued by the state of Michigan in recounting the litigation history the court
058noted that initially the trial court dismissed many of the state's claims against the polluter that was back in 1888. it notes that the consent judgment expressly provides the polluter has not admitted any fault and has reserved its rights to assert defenses um should the matter be litigated so there's a dichotomy here you can either negotiate a consent judgment or you can fully litigate the dispute and in the past they've negotiated consent judgments um the Court held that Joe government could not be required to accept changes to the consent judgment absent agreement of the state and government um and the court also found that the interveners cannot further participate in this dispute unless and until they file complaints filing complaints makes the interveners partied the case but it also allows the polluter the ability to raise
059any defense against those claims that it may have thank you the court of appeals was very critical of Judge Connors they found he aired by holding the hearing and amending the CJ it found that he conducted that hearing as if it were an open mic night and then the court vacated the June first order remanded the case back to the trial court and reinstated the third amended consent judgment the most notable difference between the third and the proposed fourth consent judgment is the level of toxin that's excelled the third consent judgment allows them to um have amounts up to 48 parts per billion um we need to negotiate an agreement that brings it back down to 7.2 um the court noted in that quote the state and Gelman are free to negotiate a fourth amended
060consent judgment as they see fit which they may present to the trial court for entry as a new consent judgment is to parties find it necessary they may see quick trial Court's involvement as permitted in consent judgment unless Gelman or the state seek the trial Court's involvement the their third amendment consent judgment remains in effect and the trial court should play no role in their negotiation of a possible fourth amended agreement Henry manned the trial court shall require interveners to either file complaints or to be dismissed from this case so at this part point in this litigation the parties and the interveners will have to decide whether to appeal from the court of appeals to the Michigan Supreme Court or just allow the matter to return to their trial court if it returns to the
061trial court the interveners only have standing to participate if they file their complaints we won't have any status at the negotiation table if the interveners file complaints that will allow the polluter to to answer those complaints raise all of its defenses and more importantly to appeal whatever the the court may decide through lengthy appeal processes which they've always done in the past their methodology is to drag their feet to delay and to appeal everything so for me the takeaway from all of the the state court um activity is that the city council did the right thing by asking the EPA to come in the epa's in town they're studying um possible listing of this site is a Superfund Site and um that's currently where we are um the interveners will have to decide their next
062steps that while they're making those decisions uh the EPA is hard at work studying the site for um possible placement on the Superfund Site I'm happy that you invited Roger and me um to your meeting tonight and I want to reciprocate by inviting all of you to our current meetings um we hold our card meetings the first Tuesday of each month our next meeting is October 4th at 6 PM we conduct our meetings by Zoom everyone's welcome thank you all right thank you Jack are there any questions for Jack Kathy you have your hand up um Jeff can you just estimate how much uh either Ann Arbor or all the communities have spent on legal fees uh fighting with Gelman well the city um uh has authorized approximately 920 000 as of February of this
063year I'm not sure if they have spent that last portion but it it's coming up on a million dollars um the other parties have spent similar amounts of money um Although our outside Council takes the lead on an office um they consult with all of the attorneys and they're all working to understand what works being done so a ton of money has been spent on this litigation okay and I want to say that I did attend the appeals court hearing and uh while I have been harsh about our attorneys uh Nathan Dukes who is a lead attorney uh provided an excellent argument at the appeals court hearing but it was obvious that uh it was not in our favor Gelman has unlimited resources they actually presented themselves as the underdog who continuously did everything that
064was reasonable and Beyond and the interveners were just insatiable um and I also want to mention that less than four years ago when I mentioned the EPA and it was in MLive I was chastised for even mentioning the EPA because it's only been in the last couple of years that we've been able to have a dual path process and talk about litigation as well as the EPA lastly I think this decision actually was positive because it was very definitive and it's easy to I think come to the conclusion that we must pursue the EPA at this time and and hopefully they will agree to take this site thanks Jack and Roger so I I wanted to follow up on Kathy's remarks um an important thing to remember about the state litigation is that it's been
065going on for 30 years and in that time the plume is spread in the manner that Roger was displayed on and that the fourth amended consent judgment does not substantially change what the state will do with regard to the plume and so the next 30 Years will look much like this as the plume continues to spread pretty much unabated um even as some dachshund is is removed from the ground so rather than spending our millions of dollars on litigation we should ask the EPA to use their staff attorneys and they're accustomed to going up against um uh large multinational corporations and and their lawyers so that would be my bottom line okay are there any other questions for Roger or Jack okay I have one uh Jack um I mean what about the torque system
066I mean there are a lot of property owners that have been denied their property rights of using their ground wire so actually I'm going to let Roger speak to that because he's familiar with the short cases that have been um filed in the past and I I'm less so so okay yeah the um the people across the street from Gomen they were originally contaminated their their homes their Wells were originally contaminated as well as um a lot of businesses including gelman's own Supply Wells so they were contaminated we don't have all the data for that we just have a couple indications that there was double and triple parts per billion in their own Supply Wells uh but the people across the street in the Westover area here um their Wells were contaminated up to I
067think there was one that was four thousand parts per billion not right away but eventually uh several hundred parts per billion they sued and they lost in court because there was a big enough sample and the the ailments they were suing about uh could have happened from something else a lot of the ailments could have happened from Yemen spray irrigation which wafted across the street you know when they when they couldn't treat in their treatment ponds uh good enough they tried spraying it in the air on their lawns which with the sun and the bacteria in the soil would supposedly break it down with some of that ran off into the third sister Lake which is where the dioxin was first discovered by Dan Bicknell back in 1984. but some of that uh Mist would
068waft across the roads into people's yards where the kids that played outside seemed to have more health problems than the kids that played inside and that was wasn't a big enough sample and of course they didn't have good enough lawyers like government had and they lost the case and then they appealed and they lost an appeal and in fact I think uh Gelman was awarded that they had to pay the government court costs and government never asked for it because there's a good way to keep everybody quiet over there you know well anyway so that's that's a little bit of the history similarly in the Evergreen area that used to be Scio Township um that that area uh was contaminated and uh they were talking about this area up here uh it wasn't this bad
069at the time but in that let me go back to the 92 flu map you can see what it was um well Roger we don't have much time to go through a lot of these details I know and it's it this this site really we really should have now after 30 some years we really should have a teach in on this that'll be a multi-day teacher where all the people that are still around can relate what happened in the early days so the next Generations can take over in this because this contamination is going to last longer than any of us are alive okay well I'll note that um part of our bylaws are that we're um we have the right uh we have the privilege of doing extraordinary public hearings so I think the
070commission can consider doing public hearings on this topic from an ordinary public hearing we've had rafts of ordinary public hearings and uh one of the reasons I like to be able to keep this uh map up on the screen is that a lot of the decision makers especially judges have not seen these mashups I've done for to to help card with this decision making this this doesn't make it into the lawyer's kit when they walk into court because you know that's that's like open mic night right yeah yeah okay um well thank you Roger so let's um let's think about what might be an appropriate um public engagement tool when I say public hearing I'm thinking about her teaching yeah it's got to be something ongoing it can't just be a one-off right right okay
071I've been working with the school of information uh we're giving them some ideas for ongoing graduate level uh courses to help uh do some of the stuff that I've been doing and uh you know keep that going forward because after pat died Pat Ryan died it kind of hit me in the head like okay what if what's going to happen to all this stuff if I'm right okay okay so we've got to move on um John mursky has a question now I uh have a 50 000 foot question it seems to me that we are playing a game of whack-a-mole uh given that we have we're operating under Tasca the toxic Substances Act um where if you look at what we're doing here with one for dioxane if you look what's going on with pfas
072if you look what's going on with other toxic chemicals um from a policy advisory perspective which is our responsibility as a commission it seems to me that it would be worthwhile having and I think I may have brought this up briefly before but we've never done it is dedicating an agenda item to contrast the Tasker legislation in the United States with reach legislation in Europe and how the reach legislation is proactive uh and prevents uh the kinds of new chemicals being released all the time and then 10 years five decades down the road we realize we have a disaster on our hand and we're going to have the next Gilman plume or the next pfas issue or whatever else and it seems to me that it's worth at least one agenda item to contrast those
073two different policy approaches and how under Tasco we're doomed to talking about these things forever in the here in the United States is that a correct assessment Steve and is that something worthwhile or is this simply outside of our sphere of of influence even and therefore not worthwhile well um the legal Authority is with the federal government but um I think it's important to build public awareness and um especially with elected officials like in Congress that this is something that we really need to do we need to reform on the way you know synthetic chemicals are treated within the legal system that's definitely true and reach is a very good model um yeah with the European Union um so you can you can look up uh if you look them up on the internet and
074see what's happened there um Sarah you have your hand up John I love your your idea yeah like if this did go to EPA um you know kind of looking at how the federal law compares to other other places like Europe um that would be a really useful thing for us to go over um I also just um wanted to chime in um you know the thought about npl and super fund listing um you know there is this small probability that it doesn't get listed as a federal site um so just thinking you know worst case scenario um to Advocate to continue to have other parallel Pathways going forward um so I know like Eagle's gonna continue to negotiate with Gelman on the side um so continuing to represent the city's voice to Eagle and
075what we're hoping to see out of that knowing that they have continued negotiations going on between them and Gelman um and then also you know advocating for on the state level level polluter pay legislation um so the polluter pay law will help um prevent this prohibition Zone from being a remedy um which is what's continuing to allow the plume to spread um so those are you know just a couple different ideas to throw out in addition to MPL listing you know in the case that that doesn't go through all right thank you Sarah are there any other questions or comments all right okay let's move on to the next item which is uh find a new business um John mursky has submitted a draft resolution um entitled uh resolution to improve city of Ann Arbor's
076performance transparency so this will be a first reading I I assume so are we anticipating a vote or um a discussion on a vote John or I would say that depends on the commission if it's non-controversial then potentially we have a vote um and if there's agreement it's not then uh we would potentially have a second reading okay so let's put it up um I think I can maybe I'll try to share my screen again and put put up the document while we're talking [Music] um so you want me to introduce to introduce the topic yeah please do okay so um coincidentally today I read an article about something completely unrelated to this and it included the quotation old saying or adage In God We Trust all others bring data and I thought that was
077relative relevant to what we're talking about here uh as many of you know I moved to Ann Arbor back to Ann Arbor in 2015. um and I've served on the energy commission and the environmental commission since about 2016 first on the energy and then also concurrently on the environmental commission was a period of about a year and a half or so when I wasn't on the environmental commission it's my perception that during that six plus year period that the transparency of city of Ann Arbor performance has declined and I'll that's addressed in the whereas Clauses here but I will summarize some of those in just some opening remarks um as is stated in uh the mid well actually from about 2013 on the city had a sustainability dashboard it was one location on the city's
078website there were um 16 goals and I believe there were 38 or so 30 some metrics so you could go to one place on the city website and at least theoretically get an idea of how the city was performing against its major strategic goals and and Targets in 2019 um that was taken down it was replaced by another web page called performance measures um that is still up on the city's website um the quality of that website is as bad if not worse than the sustainability dashboard if you go to it now you will find in most cases that almost all the data is dating back to 2018. I'm only a handful of City departments have any information posted there in many cases it is Snapshot data so there is no information about Trends there
079is no information about goals there is no information about pure City performance where we could identify Benchmark data that would give us an idea if our goals and our performance is acceptable or not and would give us a sense of what our priorities should be and how we should be allocating our resources um I worked closely with two City administrators Howard Lazarus and Tom Crawford on this as some of you know I was the so-called executive policy advisor for sustainability under Howard Lazarus that was terminated under Tom Crawford but I continued to meet with him regularly to push this the current city administrator I sent a copy of a slide deck promoting performance transparency and proper use of metrics I did that in December I reached out again to him in March and in April
080um I I sent because of the lack of progress I drafted uh this resolution sent it to him as I said in March and in April um he asked that I delay action on this until September so here we are in September um I've checked the city's websites and there's really basically no change in status and so after discussion with a number of people including um Steve Brown who looked at an early version of this I'm also council member Griswald also Rita Mitchell we agreed that I would introduce it I'm here in the environmental commission for consideration and my plan is unless something changes tonight is to also introduce this um at the energy commission which I chair so that's how we got to where we are and um let me see if I had
081anything yeah I maybe just I'll give one example that I think is is particularly telling so I would say the cities most significant asset is our public streets and and rights away um there's certainly from a a value probably the greatest asset that the city has um also in terms of visibility it's highly visible um the city has a website with a lot of information about Street condition but there's no place where you can go to to look at the performance of the city over time on what so-called pays on its paiser ratings you can find a lot of different reports um they're in presentations to council there are in individual documents they're in submissions to the state but there's no place that a decision maker a commissioner who's advising on policy a resident can
082go and see what is the trend on PESA ratings over time how was the city performing against targets that it has set itself and communicated to the community and as I said to the state and um if if it's not doing it in that case um it you know that's that's really I think important to the the residents of the city you can contrast that with some really excellent performance if you will in transparency for example on water quality drinking water quality where we get regular reports um those are Benchmark against all kinds of standards um that is uh you know the contrast that we see and really what we want to set in my view is an expectation that all performance is treated the same way it is uh easily accessible to everyone in
083the city uh and that that information is used um in order to do a better job of a pre um achieving our targets and doing a better job of allocating City resources so that's my general pitch um and I hope that many of you had a chance to read through this but basically what I'm asking in the whereas Clauses and maybe you can skim down to those Steve and then we can go back up is that um and by the way um as the top of the page so it says here there's a lot of municipalities that do an excellent job with dashboards including the ones that I've listed here and what I'm proposing through this resolution is that the city administrator insurer that all of the city's smart goals and kpis are linked first
084to this webpage I had proposed doing that uh in by the end of this year um given that there will be a time frame to approve this not only by us but if it goes to council by Council the proposed date may not be realistic anymore may need to be pushed out for example a quarter this is just simply linking what's available to this webpage and then secondly that the city administrator with the input of boards and commissions staff obviously Council Etc ensure that that all of our strategic goals have smart goals associated with them and that those are all posted not just what we tracked today but all of those are posted to this webpage and that it's done so um in a consistent format so that everybody can interpret them the same so
085if I look at one chart and I'm looking at another chart it's not completely different with different kinds of indicators and and um um keys if you will you know what what means what on the chart um that that'll all be done uniformly and that that be done by the end of the year um and that the city administrator provide a work plan with a timeline to achieve that uh because I think without planning and doing that we're going to find ourselves um whatever that due date is where we miss the due date and then finally what all of this is for is frankly that we kick off uh the use of those that performance information so that we do what is called in in many circles a plan do check act or adjust continuous
086Improvement cycle so you plan by defining your street teaching goals in the associated smart smart goals and targets you develop plans that's also planning obviously you do you execute those plans you check against your performance that you that is now transparent to all and then after checking your that checking that then you act or adjust your plans so that you ensure that you're going to meet your longer term targets or that you address things um for example through escalation through additional resources through training through reprioritization and so on and so forth and unless you have transparency of your performance for everyone and unless you review that on a regular basis we will in my view not be the kind of city that we want to be and we will not be stewards of taxpayer dollars
087and do the kinds of things that we want to do for them so that is my few minutes field all right thank you John um let's see Kathy you have your hand up and then John Callaway um yes I support this concept uh I saw how effective it was in the corporate world um one suggestion is that we remove a few of the negative whereas Clauses um I think it's critical that we have this discussion at the council table we will have five new council members in November uh there is a reason why transparency has decreased in the last six years and just to be brutally honest the political machine that controls Ann Arbor uh has the money to control the city control the elected officials not only at the city level but to a
088certain extent that will happen on the school board and it will happen uh in Washtenaw County and so we need to convince our elected leaders that this is valuable because we don't have to convince City administrators they understand it but they're not going to go against what the the will of the political machine in this community um John you have your hand up and then and yeah thanks Steve um John a couple of questions so you mentioned the city administrator asked you to hold off until September have you had any other conversations with them and part of the reason I asked is I know OSI is doing a lot of work right now on creating a dashboard that would have many of these features so my concern with a a resolution like this is it
089seems detached from what the city is actually doing I fully support kind of the overall objective but I'm I'm worried that this we are we going to have two different conversations going on so I mean I'd like to to maybe hear a little bit more about what the city is doing and where they're going because like I said I know OSI is very focused on you know developing a dashboard to address um priorities out of their area but but the last thing I'll say is you know I worry that we've got different sectors within the city and everybody yes should have key performance indicators or defined goals but it's it's really hard to get something at a level that you're going to have similar kind of like metrics across all those areas and maybe that's
090not what you're saying but I worry that it's going to be kind of too generalized to to be effective so let me try to address your comments um first of all I don't personally see this as political at all this is just as far as I'm concerned effective um management um secondly uh I sent an email uh about two weeks ago to the city administrator um asking um if anything had changed um and requested feedback um basically five working days later um I did not hear anything back um I did not follow up again I I it's it's not my job to follow up with him or him to respond to me I I just told him that I wanted to proceed with this and I wanted to know if anything had changed and um
091if there was any concerns that he had and I did not hear anything back and I copied also his administrator so it wasn't I presumably just he that had a chance to see it but also um his Administrative Assistant um as far as what OSI is doing um I applaud what OSI is doing um I told you I think there are is exemplary behavior in uh portions of city government in terms of how this is done and managed and how it's How what kind of transparency there is um and there is a lot of room for improvement um in even in those areas um for example uh in let's take the case of um oh greenhouse gas emissions um we are approaching the end of September and we still are looking in the rear view
092mirror at greenhouse gas inventory with 2020 data in the middle of the pandemic we still do not even know what our greenhouse gas emissions were in 2021 if you look at the energy commission meeting um that was held in I think July or June which was a report on the status of a20 at two um as I mentioned there's no greenhouse gas inventory and there was basically no information on performance of goals even though the A200 plan has indicators of success and it has a timeline for every single action item so there are there are due dates in in the plan that would be the basis for on performance as well as targets of doing X by such you know X number of Whatever by such and such a date and that was not in
093the report so what is planned and what might be done in certain Corners that we would say is exemplary I think is still um could be improved upon and I think that the same standard should be set not just for one or two departments but across the board so I hope I addressed those points um and you have your hand up yeah so it's uh so it's my understanding that um like the from what you're saying that the administrators the city administrators uh with whom you've spoken they haven't necessarily given you reasons why they haven't done this kind of reporting voluntarily that's that's the difficult question to ask our answer um I I just feel that um there is potentially going to be this is just my perception there's going to be pushback from staff
094um my experience working in industry is that when you do this uh there's always the comment that um you're going to take time away from and some and and devote it to reporting and you're going to therefore have less time to be able to work on Improvement actions and and frankly um in every case that I've seen in working in multiple different divisions and working in lots of different areas in in all cases the better the quality of information the better the quality of performance and Improvement actions and so on and so forth so it was recognized I mean I can say in in in one-on-one in the city administrator's office in in both cases with Tom Crawford and with Howard Lazarus both indicated that this is something that needed to be done um but
095it's it's five four three whatever years later and still we see no no improvement I mean you look at look at the performance webpage okay yeah no I did look at it um have you estimated what the the cost of this kind of resolution would would be for the city I have a few questions about this actually I'm curious about the cost um curious about um like the um the goals you know there needs to be like usually a timeline associated with you know with how long you state your goals over what period of time do those goals apply because with um elections every two years is it um goals change and so um there would be obviously updates that would need to be made to this kind of a you know dashboards in the
096various Department City departments and then um you know and then my third question here is that is um how would this uh this sort of resolution be enforceable so I know the city is working on a redesign of its website I have no idea or insight into what the scope of that is and what it entails and it includes um a an improved dashboard um even if it does I don't see why this resolution would be something that we shouldn't push um as to cost um you can see here that I mean I've listed larger cities um that are better known um but there are small cities smaller than Ann Arbor that do a very good job of this and if you'd like me to I could um list um provide those so I don't
097think um cost is an issue and frankly we're spending you know hundreds of millions of dollars a year you know if you look at not just the general fund but if you look at all the expenditures for millage on um streets on uh Wastewater on drinking water Etc there's we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year and to be able to understand your performance uh on how those resources are being spent how they're being effectively spent um the cost here in my you is really shouldn't come into consideration um I don't know if I caught and answered all your questions and okay Kathy you have your hand up yes I know that congresswoman song frequently refers to the city of Durham North Carolina uh so John I suggest that you talk to her I
098think we talked about that already um I would also suggest that you talk to our mayor Christopher Taylor if you haven't already done that um I've been involved in a number of projects like this in the corporate world and in order for them to succeed and you probably know this you have to have support from the leadership and you have to have buy-in if employees don't see where it's going to benefit them it probably won't be successful um and it will benefit them because it's almost a cultural or management style so it's not like you're gonna pay for this unless you hire a consultant to do it for you and then you have an integrated into the organization so it's not going to succeed anyway it needs to be integrated again uh I know that
099Lisa dish had her hand up a minute ago and I don't know if if she put it down or or if something happened from uh there she is okay okay from a technological standpoint uh again I I just think that if we can be a little more positive in how this is presented I think we can all agree that transparency has declined but I don't know that that that's going to help sell this concept okay um Lisa we have the floor oh thank you yeah no I'm still here thank you yeah sorry I I got kicked out that happens about three times leaving it seems so yeah John I think that um this is all really important stuff for civic engagement and participation and especially you know we're looking forward to a new sustainability millage
100and of course that's not the only area where we want to see clear benchmarks but you know but there are others as well um I uh I think however I I very much agree with you I think that there's been some really great feedback um on on this draft and uh I I very much agree with Kathy's suggestion to make it more positive um or to remove sort of the the negative things um I don't I I can very much understand why the city administrator may not have gotten back to you within five working days um and just to clarify this is not just the city Administration this is the head of the city who you whom you reached out to I think um just so you know my requested due date or for feedback
101was September 9th well it's it's basically there's there's lots of transpired since then yep there's a lot going on he's he's not an unbusy man and there's um and I think that there is a I wish we I wish that we really had a process for for Resolutions because if we if I could say that then it would be easy for me to say here are some steps it would be good to take but I think it's a great step to bring it to this Commission to look at and and provide feedback and um and I think that uh um you know I'm gonna meet with I have we have monthly meetings with the city administrator I'm meeting with him on Wednesday of next week I can ask him what he thinks of this and
102raise the question that commissioner caloric raised which is is this something that's already in the works and so does this resolution [Music] um is this resolution going to spark a course of action or is it is it kind of preaching to the choir and how you know what what if if if you know if a if a resolution is desired um what form would it need to take um so I respond to that at one point you can respond to everything yeah I I love I love everything you've set up to now um except not accept I would um frame the uh I would frame this resolution differently I would say if this is intended by the administrator and if city council which sets policy for the city endorses this it strengthens his hand in
103in doing this this is an outcoming boiling up if you will through commissions going to city council debated in city council and this is something that city council is saying this is something that our residents deserve this is something that we need as policy advisors as policy makers as pal as decision makers and this is something that you City Administration and staff as recognized by the city administrator this is something that you need we all need to do your jobs well so I I think this reinforces his position at the time I wrote to him he said that um his he was just going from temporary status to permanent status he had three department heads that he was replacing he said he had a lot on his plate and he asked that I wait until
104September I'm sure that some of those things have been addressed and that he has a lot of other new things on his plate I've been frankly I've been in positions like his and so I the people at this level are always busy and there's always going to be busy but this is really something that will strengthen his hand and it will strengthen in my view the um the performance quote unquote of the entire city including everyone that's engaged as a as a resident and citizen they will have a much better understanding of what's going on and one thing that I want to address I think I am talked about earlier about changing goals this is exactly why you do this and this is exactly why you have reviews where you review all of your reviews
105because what happens as I've seen in the city and what I've seen happen in many other cases is that because leadership changes because Representatives get elected what happens is you just pile strategic goal on type of strategic goal and type of strategic goal and you don't reassess priorities and you don't reassess your allocation of resources and so it's it's absolutely necessary I mean I can speak from personal personal experience it's really important to sit down and look at the whole slate of strategic initiatives and strategic goals in the real the allocation of resources and I know that city council does that but I would say it does it um in uh with what I would call insufficient information there's a lot of information in packets that are provided to um the city council in the
106December meetings over years and your strategy sessions I've looked at those almost every single year um and by having those kinds of meetings and having good information then you can reassess is this is this goal the right goal anymore what has changed what's the Benchmark from from our uh from Pure pure cities um do we need to change our priorities do we need to change our goals do we need to change our resources this this this transparency of performance is absolutely fundamental to running a an efficient entity whether it's a non-profit whether it's government whether it's business it really doesn't make any difference in my view go ahead Steve you can okay yeah you have your hand up and then Rita yeah just just one more comment about it like I think these these kinds
107of dashboards these efforts at enumerating strategic goals and measuring against them are um always like a better results when it's very obvious what the benefit is to the people who are tasked with maintaining them and so um wording the resolution to I to Echo what Kathy and um Lisa said that in a more positive light as to how this will uh benefit the city employees um who are who are the ones that will have to maintain this um is is very important to last Warehouse Claus it says whereas complete transparent easily accessible information about government operations and performance is essential to city council policy makers administrative leadership staffs boards commissions citizens oversight and Democratic processes included absolutely as a part of that yeah I was I would lead with staff because they're the ones that
108are going to have to maintain these like they should be the number one benefactor of this and the rest of us should be collateral that's all I have to say thanks yeah um I'll read it you have your hand up oh Andrew thank you I'll say um thanks for this discussion I think it's really good and I am a strong proponent of using these I think we would use the staff input as our professionals they're in their own businesses uh you know each in a tiny Silo and ideally knit together um and that that's that they would be the leaders on this I think um and but we knew do need this to in the context of how the public views the actions that we're taking so that we um that that the public can
109trust what's being done in their name with the actions that the city are doing and so I I I feel very strongly that that we can make this be something that's a good and usable tool um that that people will come that you know ideally people would become more engaged in their city if they knew and could feel that they understand the measures that people are using so that's that's my thing thank you okay um I don't see anybody else's hand up so uh just as uh well Kathy's here I just want to end on a positive note because I think that we've been tough on John but it's because we want him to be successful me too yeah yeah no I feel the same way Kathy and you know um I mean there is
110a fair amount of frustration that comes through in this document but I think uh it's something that we all agree with I think we've all worked in institutions where these kind of implementing these kind of processes and procedures actually approves dramatically the efficiency of the organization as a whole and it minimizes wasted time and effort and money so um and it's been you know decades decades decades used in most organizations where the bottom line is um you know there's a continuity and what the bottom line is I want the goals of the organization are so um I think John what I hear is that um maybe we should soften it you should consider softening the tone a little bit and then for example and then the result Clauses um it might be um better to
111ask for a commitment by the city administrator and the Council on personally I'm not sure if there are any kind of retreats are there any like one day or two day Retreats that Council has with the city Administration and Senior staff we where you look over um long-term issues and perform review problems there will probably be in December uh in the last few years it has been more of a presentation to us I mean I remember one where we simply talked about good techniques of campaigning so it was more let's get to know each other then let's talk about the management of the city but that is something that we could suggest I I won't be there in December uh but uh Lisa dish will and and I would think that this if if we're
112going to move forward with this this would be a perfect format to have that discussion in December yeah but this sort of that's I've been involved in um these sorts of cultural shifts and several corporations and um there's usually a consultant that has a has a basic uh that's a neutral Observer that will um set up a it's kind of a rotation Matrix if you want to get really mathematical about it where you know here are the lines of authority and here are the policies and procedures and we're just going to rotate it we're not going to we're not wiping Everything clean we're not doing anything else but here is defining a pathway about how we will get to this kind of Performance Management model because really [Music] um I think I've heard a lot
113of I've heard from city council members that uh that this is something that the staff my a lot of the staff might welcome but what they need is a plan um to to to a pathway that's planned out and managed and managed I think so so what I heard from you Kathy is that yeah the council meets informally and talks about their concerns but then there's the uh but I'm not sure the staff is involved in campaigning yeah it was a team building exercise that was very bizarre yeah yeah okay well John you have your hand up two things first of all I would welcome it if uh council member dish would bring this up with the city administrator and um at the time that he and I exchanged this in April he did not
114make any specific recommendations about the text he just asked that I um and I had already revised it um somewhat by that time I didn't mention well I think I mentioned that I um shared it with a number of different people but I would I would welcome any any input in terms of revisions as well as due dates um so that this is constructive and and I would only um like to offer an anecdote um about my personal experience in using this and I absolutely agree that this is absolutely essential and crucial for staff um and for you know every level frankly um so early or Midway through my career when I was responsible for a product line and a plan um every single morning I would go in for a seven o'clock morning meeting
115with people from My Level all the way down to set up people from each individual group of machines and they would report on their metrics what how how they were performing what they were deducing from that what actions they were going to be taking what support they needed from their Engineers all the way up to people from meepa like that from me and then later when plants reported to me I would go at least quarterly to every plant we would spend four hours in a conference room reviewing every single key metric getting into action items supporting action items what was on schedule what was not on schedule was the bed budget sufficient was the resources sufficient and then we would go to the shop floor in the afternoon and spend another four hours interfacing with
116shop floor teams talking with them about what's going on at the shop floor level how are they using their metrics are they meeting their goals what what support they needed from me what problems they were having and so on and so forth this is absolutely positively interactive it's up and down and across the organization and that's why leadership is needed and that's why it's not just vertically but it's horizontally because in many cases these are not goals that are achieved based on one Department you know OSI alone is not going to enable the city to meet its a20 goals it's going to need support from other department managers and so when you have these kinds of meetings where people are involved from the individual staff members with no leadership responsibility whatsoever all the way up
117to top leadership with other department managers this is how you solve problems and it's different in business because you're looking at dollars and we're not looking at dollars and cents the same way but in it's exactly the same in the sense that that organizations such strategic goals and they're they're things that are dear to them and important to them and they want to see that those things get done efficiently and effectively and that is certainly true of the city as much as as it is for any other organization I've ever been involved in that's why all of us are doing this on a voluntary basis yes okay um so let's see now um I get the sense that um um council member Edition will uh discuss this we'll schedule some time with the city administrator
118to discuss um this this topic and get some feedback from him and um we will revisit this we'll just table this until our next meeting and this will be on the agenda for our next meeting in October okay and um we should we should try to maintain some uh momentum on this I know it's been a concern that's been bounced around for years about Performance Management and metrics and things like this um I will I will um propose some draft changes to this and get it to you um before your meeting on Wednesday okay and then um I also I'm mindful that we'll have a new Council in a couple of months and so I think this could become a matter of discussion among all the candidates but they're already really elected they were elected
119last August so um I would I would think we we should all feel like I'm approaching um our our current candidates for uh for city council and um and brushing this issue with them and see just initiate a discussion uh just an informative discussion with the new council members on I think that's something we can all commit to um privately so um well thank you John for bringing this formally up to the commission and we'll uh we'll put it on the agenda for uh next month is there any does anybody else wish to make any closing comments at this time no I very much appreciate everybody's comments and probing questions they will make this is a better resolution okay Bill thank you John all right so um let's move on to the next item on
120the agenda are reports from committees and other commission's Council and chair so why don't we um Chris isn't here so um let's um in in later the time it's already 902 uh so let's um uh let's skip over natural features unless somebody has something um they would like to inform the rest of the commission on this work group uh the next one is zero waste uh John is there anything you'd like to mention right now sure just quickly we'll be having a presentation at the October meeting thanks to Steve and others for getting that on the agenda from the group of C students who are working on this and some other things that are going on uh before that time uh we'll be presenting at a Statewide recycling event about our work actually making a
121pitch and kind of competing uh to try to maybe get some additional funding for the work that we're excited about that and then the last thing is today we receive notification that we received another grant for this work I think this is number three uh from the U.S sustainability directors Network to help us build Community Trust around circular economy and expand it across all uh communities particularly those who may have been marginalized or left out of some other Economic Development opportunities in the past so we're excited that that work is going to move forward and that was a twenty thousand dollar grant that we just got here oh great thank you John uh pollinators were approved yeah and then Rita can chime in if I miss anything we um just created drafted our mission and
122what I think John are some smart goals and some actions underneath those goals one of which is the leave the leaves campaign we're gonna We partnered with OSI um we're in conversations right now with Sean Reynolds and we're gonna work with them to use their communication channels to get information out about leave the leaves and educate community members and perhaps some signage we'll see if if that can happen and then we'll start thinking about no moment again as we get through fall um Rita did I miss anything um well no that it was really great um but you could also say that we have our newsletter coming out really soon and that Bridget wrote It's really good again and um I just to the tiny bit of education is leave the leaves it's about saving
123the pollinator eggs pupae larvae Chrysalis uh Chrysalis and uh and adult forms from going into the compost and not coming back out as adults in their next year their next phase of life so that's why we feel this is really important to continue supporting providing an environmental enhancement for those um invertebrates that support a lot of life to all right all right thank you Richard and Rita Planning Commission Shannon yeah um I would say the the biggest thing to report over the last month is um continuing on this kind of all-electric push that we keep um trying to go for with various developers and we've had mixed success but we have had some recent success so that feels really good um I think even though again it's not our technically our jurisdiction I think because
124we just keep speaking up about things um the word is getting through the grapevine and we just had um we had a project come through this last time that is an all-electric uh project uh for I think it's 79 units it's over on um the on Maple Road near where the roundabout is near Skyline High School so that was exciting to see we didn't have to drag anybody through the mud or try to chase people down which is kind of what we feel like we've had to do I think um and so it feels good to have at least a couple respond uh respond to this call um The Village was another one that is a huge project that they said that they would um do the houses is all around all electric but not
125necessarily the multi-family units and so but there was some interesting discussion at the end that they might be interested in talking more with some other folks from the community about possibilities for that so um we'll see how that one all plays out um and uh and it'll be interesting to watch that one move on to city council so hopefully those conversations will have taken place before it hit city council um and uh yeah Lisa I'm seeing that you want to chime in am I right about that yes they say you have a floor yeah just just a tiny bit I want to chime in which is that um the reasoning for providing making the houses all electric but not the rental units is that they think it will put them at a disadvantage on the
126rental market given the price of electricity and um whether or not that's true and I think there are debates about that um it really points up the importance of us not negotiating electrification project by project but oh I bet I'm frozen it it seems I may be frozen but anyway we can hear you fine oh good that's great all right um so you know it would just really be great if we can figure out where um in city regulations that are Universal if not the building code maybe the UDC or someplace else who knows where we might be able to put an electrification requirement because it's really critical and we're just in such a precarious position when we try to do it uh when when we have a reluctant developer and we try to negotiate
127project by project because you know it's we just you know you're not necessarily consistent when you do things project by project it's better when you have a blanket roll so I'm really hoping we'll see some movement on that and I'm sure everyone here would be delighted if we were able to figure out a way to get some movement on that okay yeah thank you uh thank you Shannon and Lisa um next up is energy John the last energy commission was devoted entirely to this subject uh-huh I sent a link to a tape of the meeting to this commission as well as planning as well as a bunch of other uh let's say concerned citizens and various bodies including people at the University of Michigan um I encourage you to watch at least the latter half
128of that which is uh presenting both anecdotal as well as data from the state of Pennsylvania showing that indeed construction can be done affordably and sustainably granted some of the conditions have changed recently in terms of basic construction costs so that makes this different difficult but if if a if a a developer is going ahead with the project there is there is indeed widespread experience and data that shows that they can be all electric energy efficient and therefore a win for the developer for residents for the environment Etc so that was our entire meeting and if you're interested in the topic uh go to YouTube put it on the highest playback speed that you can still understand our our our talk and zip through it and I think um you'll find that you'll learn a
129lot about this topic right yeah thanks John and by the way we're hoping um and I'll reinforce it here that we have a joint meeting um at some point with Planning Commission um with obviously staff that we can tackle exactly this problem um and it is a difficult problem but we should be in my view in the midst of a climate emergency be using every lever that we have and I am not convinced that we are doing that but I will leave that for another another time okay um um Council uh Kathy first and then Lisa chapter 40 that was a vegetation ordinance was approved by the environmental commission it was sent to staff uh it's been quite a while but uh a number of meetings have occurred uh so I think progress is being
130made in two different areas the legal department and then also Missy Stoltz has had a meeting in his work with the engineering staff um I never thought it was going to be this complicated but I can tell you that staff is focusing on it and if if we don't get something before the next environmental commission I will draft a simple resolution and bring it back to the environmental commission uh we really need to be able to consistently enforce site distance on intersections and make sure that our sidewalks are clear I see Shannon nodding her head yes and the way it is now where one neighbor complains about another neighbor and Community standards only goes out and looks at that individual property uh is is very troubling for everyone involved so I think that the staff
131other council members everyone has agreed that we need to make a change but the complexity of it is making it difficult to move forward that's a shame uh but I I am going to apply all of the um okay methodology methodology that John mentioned tonight to make sure that we realize our goal okay good uh Lisa would you like to add anything oh okay um no all right so um next up is chairperson so I'm just going to mention that the trash talk tour was last Sunday September 18th and uh it was a success it was the second annual trash talk tour um I led the bicycle ride so we had 17 people instead of seven the year before so well that part is growing and the weather was good and uh a revelation for
132me was going out to the new Kiwanis site you know the Kiwanis uh moved out there to Jackson Road I had not been out there but they have 10 times as much space they do a lot of repair and resell and they work with a lot of the social services agencies in the county um to to get to get these products into the hands of people uh so there it's a vital part of our circular local circular economy um that we should all go visit um sometime um if we if we want to buy something um then the second thing is um I just want to remind everybody that there's uh we still have an open position um Chris vandenbrock resigned last month so I would encourage people to ask others especially if they're interested
133in solid waste issues to uh to apply for this Commission uh because we you won't be nominated unless you've applied for it um and so uh the last thing I want to mention is that it's uh this will be galen's last meeting you know um he's moving on to the working in Detroit for the Michigan environmental Council and so yeah he's been great and uh sorry to see him go but I'm sure we'll run into him from time to time um and so um the next step is uh Galen report from staff well thank you for such a you know warm warm warm departure greeting or whatever you know I I've been so emotional about leaving you know it's been like it's like I'm leaving my family and all of you are part of that
134family and unfortunately my webcam isn't working but you know from the heart you know it's been fun you know um we've been through ups and downs we've been through covid and you know we still here doing the work um I also want to welcome Hannah Loftus you know she'll be uh my replacement you know please have patience you know because legendstar isn't you know we don't use it every day so you know um please you know uh lean on Sarah Alanis in the clerk's office you know and um I left some good instructions for you so also I want to let you know that our 820 ambassadors application will be closing on September 30th and I want to encourage you to you know if you got bandwidth or what not to apply you know we
135have several ambassadors you know who've gone through the course right here on the commission and they've served on other commissions and I think it's really worthwhile you know and just another way to inner nature something to work that's happened on the ground so thank you Steve you know you know thank you all you know uh Rita you know we've had fun and you know just thank you all best wishes yep and bless you and uh don't be a stranger yes thank you all thank you all I'm over here Misty okay yeah that's true so um the next item on the agenda is the items for the next agenda so John um has a chunk of time on it and also uh you know uh John mursky's initiative and John calibert's um discussion on how much
136time do you do would you like to have John caliber half hour 30 minutes okay well then John um let's uh let's do another 40 minutes for you okay uh five minutes okay I'm I'm hopeful okay so no more talking at this point not next month okay good um so then um in the next scheduled meeting is October 27th at 7 pm it's gonna still be online I'm not sure when we might be transitioning in person but I imagine that will happen someday but uh so this uh so the next uh item on the agenda is public commentary so this is your second opportunity for uh persons to speak for up to three minutes so please call 888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID 915-8343-9176 [Music] City staff will select callers that have raised their hand one
137by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly and state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so Galen is there anybody on the line right now foreign [Music] there's no one on the line okay so we'll wait another 30 minutes or 30 seconds so in the meantime I want to thank everybody I think the discussion went well
138and uh let's see what happens with um you know at John's initiative foreign there is no one on the line okay well thank you so I declare this meeting adjourned at uh 9 19 pm thanks everybody