001you have a what that is an app is that an amanita mushroom on your google all right you all i am going to call it into order it's 704 and uh this is the april 2022 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor in effect to social to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covert 19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similar to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities which will be at the beginning and end of the meeting please call 1-888-788-0099 and meeting enter the meeting id which i'm going to say is i'm going
002to say those both again just to be sure it's the phone number is 888-788-0099 the meeting id is 989-2851-1637 the information is also published on the agenda in the public notice section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org watch w-a-t-c-h-c-t-n uh that introduction i will ask julie to read the land heritage statement certainly i acknowledge that the land of the city and our of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including ottawa ojibwe and botawami and wyandot peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of
003detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does 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 thank you julie and now would you read the roll call please commissioner needham people say things out loud right because i can't see you so absent okay uh commissioner dish here and commissioner graham i'm here and council member commissioner griswold here commissioner callaward here uh and i know chair brown is absent correct correct and vice chair mitchell president in ann arbor and commissioner vandenbrook here commissioner oriole i believe she will be absent had a message from her uh commissioner zhang also absent commissioner k randall you're in ann arbor commissioner
004marcin i'm here in ann arbor and commissioner gruber you're in ann arbor and commissioner nedrich and commissioner juno you're in ann arbor that's good i have no idea if that's a quorum i'm going to assume it is it is good we need we need at least eight yep thank you very much all right um so now i would like to um move to approve as for a motion to approve the agenda uh kathy griswald and second by chris graham um and i will now ask for a motion to approve our minutes from the march 24th meeting i think it was shannon gibrandall and a second reply commissioner juno thank you um all right so here we are we are um at a point for the public comment which isn't on the agenda that's a oh
005no i'm sorry we got the minutes we got yes here we are public comments um for a public comment that's nice um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter the meeting id of 989-2851-1637 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one by using the last three digits of their phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to applied area and mute any television or background noise so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and
006address at the beginning of your comments thank you julie do you have any other promise i do not see anybody having called in yeah okay well then um i think that we should move on and i'd love to hear um you as the next presenter on the sustainable energy utility well pleased to have you with us today absolutely and we'll close that okay so uh for those of you who don't know me i'm julie roth i'm senior energy analyst at the office of sustainability and innovations i was signed up to present the sdu to you this evening and uh galen is on the kitchen so i somehow got to do the whole thing which is like i said my first time doing this so thank you for bearing with me and um i'm going to
007go ahead and share my screen all right and we will [Music] there we go okay can you see my slides yes excellent we're good okay so i'm really excited to be here this evening um to uh be able to present uh the amber sustainability sustainable energy utility to you i want to provide a brief overview of what an scu is how it could operate in ann arbor and what our next steps are and there will be time for questions when we're done and i welcome them so um as a background i know many of you know this but for the public watching as well ann arbor has set an ambitious goal of achieving zero climate pollution by the year 2030. to understand how to achieve that goal it's important to understand where our climate pollution
008comes from locally 40 percent of our community-wide pollution or greenhouse gas emissions come from building electricity use and nearly two-thirds come from building electricity use plus natural gas that we use to heat and cool our buildings so that's two-thirds of our emissions coming from our buildings electricity and gas given this reality we know that solutions to reducing local climate pollution necessitate finding pathways to clean our electricity grid and support the transition away from fossil gas that we use to heat and cool to clean electricity this is a big task see here we go sorry about that okay so here is um dte's fuel mix right now um in 2020 and you can see that we're still heavily reliant on coal with dte um we have some nuclear power and a bunch of gas and an
009seu a potential seu if we are electrifying a good portion of our grid with solar could substantially change that grid mix so as we look for ways to improve the reliability and energy mix of our energy supply it's important to understand the landscape in michigan ann arbor has what is known as a pre-foot act franchise which means that dte has the right in perpetuity to provide power to the city um if you want to know more about the foot act i know a lot about it and why we ended up this way but this is where we are we have a uh in perpetuity um contract with dte but um foot act franchise franchises which we are are not exclusive and the michigan constitution does protect the right of cities and villages to create their
010own municipal utility and this can be done in one of two ways either you can via a taking which is a legal term which is a condemnation and buyout of an incumbent utility and they're all their infrastructure or via the creation of a supplemental utility and to date every community that has started their own municipal utility within michigan with the last one being zealand which was originally formed in 1902 did so by starting utility from scratch when service was not widespread like it is now and you can imagine why standing up a full set of poles and wires to directly compete with current polls and wires owned by the incumbent utility is expensive as is buying out their infrastructure through condemnation which means you acquire infrastructure that is often in poor condition which is what
011we have now um but what if we created a complementary community owned energy utility that provides electricity from local solar and battery storage systems installed on homes and businesses in our community what if that community owned utility provided 100 clean reliable locally built and affordable electricity built right here in our community this utility would give residents a choice for where they procure their energy a choice that we can't have today we don't have today and this parallel utility would not duplicate the traditional grid with all of its vulnerabilities but instead of focusing on long-distance um uh long-distance um trend uh what is the word i'm looking for transmission thank you to uh of power from distant power plants this utility would focus on local generation here in our footprint generating clean reliable and affordable power
012right now so this is what the city of ann arbor is looking to do by the creation of a sustainable energy utility as envisioned an seu would focus first on generating local clean energy energy that would feed directly into our homes and our businesses and our places of worship and community centers this clean energy would be paired with storage to help improve energy reliability and offered in conjunction with deep energy waste reduction programs that help our residents lower their energy cost and their energy usage all while improving the comfort of their homes the concept of an seu is grounded in choice providing ann arbor it's another way to procure a large portion of their energy one that's coming from clean local reliable and resilient sources the seo would enable a lot more people to get
013the benefit of solar by directly paying for installation on residential and business roofs carports and via ground mounted systems residents wouldn't be the owner of that solar system the public or the seo would own it residents would subscribe to purchase their energy at a rate that is based on costs and seu operational needs from the system on their or their neighbor's roof if all the residents power needs are met the excess generation from the solar system on their property flows into a battery system this means that residents could still have power if the big traditional grid goes down this is already possible today additionally the seo would not be limited by current utility restrictions that constrain the solar system sizes and the amount of solar allowed on the grid for example the one percent cap
014that we're getting very very close to hitting instead the se would seek to maximize solar installations leveraging all viable sunny roof space over time individual solar systems would be connected through a series of micro grant not dte's big grid the scu could also offer a series of robust energy waste reduction programs helping people lower energy demand and improve comfort these services will be available to anyone that participates in the seu kind of like current energy waste reduction offerings are available through our incumbent utility however we could offer a slew of additional opt-in services that individuals can use to improve comfort reduce bills and save energy these additional offerings can be financed through on-bill finance through on-bill finance the seo is able to pay the upfront cost of improvements for you such as energy efficiency or
015electrification upgrades and then the residents pay back the costs through their utility bills this allows the costs of the improvements to stay with the home as opposed to the resident and helps reduce the initial upfront cost needed to make these improvements this makes these types of investments much more accessible to all residents especially low-income individuals and renters individuals historically omitted from most utility programs the seo will also provide support for beneficial electrification ensuring we have safer more comfortable and cleaner homes and businesses and eventually offer community solar programs so that individuals without viable solar access can still reap the benefits of clean energy i know that was a lot to digest but let me reiterate the core of an scu an seu is a community owned utility that focuses on generating local clean reliable energy
016fast it's about leveraging existing technologies and practices such as solar and storage to reduce emissions quickly while improving reliability it's about ensuring that all anarborites have access to solutions to improve comfort reduce bills and reap the benefits the clean energy economy the seu as i mentioned before is about generating locally owned reliable clean affordable energy because we are generating it locally we don't need a large and vulnerable distribution network this also means we don't have to worry about buying a lot of poles and wires or about extreme weather events knocking the seu supplied power out instead we can focus on generating clean reliable local energy fast and reducing climate pollution rapidly so to close out i'd like to share a few examples of how the scu would work this isn't meant to be all inclusive
017but some examples for how some of the concepts that we've discussed could work in practice so let's start with the example of a homeowner or business owner who has good solar potential but doesn't have the capital or ability to install solar on their roof on their own in this case the individual would subscribe or enroll in the seo as a supplemental utility to dte the seo would work with that homeowner to conduct a needs assessment identifying potential energy waste reduction and electrification opportunities selected opportunities would be implemented and the homeowner would have the option of financing those through the seu's on bill finance program the se would strive to create a financing package where the electric bill is the same or ideally less than what is currently paid once those are paid off the residence
018reaps the full benefit of the improvements concurrent with the above the seo installs solar on their roof the resident pays their energy bill as they always have paying per kilowatt hour of usage generated from the on-site solar system any additional power they draw from dte is paid directly to dte in this way the resident has two bills the seu bill for the energy energy generated from the on-site solar system and then to dte for power drawn from the grid in this example a resident or business is interested in energy waste reduction and beneficial electrification offerings but cannot install solar perhaps because of beautiful trees that block solar excess or 50 000 dormers on their roof in this case the individual would receive an on-site assessment to identify energy waste reduction and beneficial electrification opportunities the
019individual would choose which options to move forward with and would have the option of financing them through the seo's on bill financing mechanism the individual could also register to to join the micro or nano grid thereby sharing power with residents that have better solar potential on their roofs once a critical number of neighbors sign up for the seu this individual would receive two energy bills one for the portion of improvements financed via on bill finance through the seu and the other one for the energy that they pull from dte third example is a resident who already owns their own solar on their home or business in this case the resident could still take advantage of all the energy waste reduction and beneficial electrification support offered through the sdu and leverage on bill financing to pay
020for those improvements like everybody else this resident could also enroll for an seu owned battery if they don't currently have one the resident can also enroll in the seo and sell their excess power to the sau so that it can be distributed through the local micro and nano grids are shared with their neighbors the rates for energy being sold to the seu still need to be determined but the intent is to get as close to net metering as possible in this way the resident is helping to provide power to the seo and to their neighbors fourth example is for a multi-family rental in this case the seo would work closely with landlords or property owners and tenants to customize solutions that meet individual needs rental units are eligible for all seu offerings energy waste reduction
021solar and storage installation beneficial electrification and eventually being tied to the local microgrid the city's work on green leases paired with on-bill financing tools offered through the seo help ensure the cost of the improvements again stay with the building and allow the cost of improvements to be spread over a longer period of time offering the opportunity for immediate health safety and comfort improvements at reasonable costs final example is of community solar in some cases individuals will not have access to on-site renewable energy generation in these cases off-site solar will be installed in common areas like parking lots or school rooftops or parks or other shared places individuals can subscribe to take a portion of this energy to help power their life and business in this way anyone in the community can participate in scu even
022if they don't own their own home or don't have viable solar potential on site individuals that subscribe to the community solar offering they kill pay per kilowatt hour of usage directly to the seo and pay dte for any power that they use from that utility these are just a few examples of how the proposed seou would work and to find out more we have a website at a2gov.org a2scu if you are interested in seeing the city move forward with an seu please register your interest by taking there's a short five question survey um located at that website and if you have any additional questions after this evening about the scu we are answering them every single day and you can send them into sustainability a2gov.org thank you for letting me share a little bit about
023the proposed ann arbor seu a clean reliable locally built and affordable way to power our community and that's what i got thanks julie i see a question from chris vandenbrook well that's just a wonderful presentation and i just love it um the whole concept i love but of course there's always some questions right so the seu would help finance the installation of solar panels and so on where does that money come from is this involving a new tax or how do we it sounds like this is going to be expensive um where where where's that come from and how close are you to realizing this financial structure great great question commissioner um so obviously this is going to require upfront costs to any any utility infrastructure would require upfront cost eventually the seo pays for
024itself just like any utility rate payers pay rates and that funds the operations of the utility but we need upfront costs to start so where that would come from we're actively pursuing the possibility of big doe funding because it fits very well into some of the very large infrastructure funding that's coming out of the biden administration um but it's probably going to be stacked funding right we're going to look at maybe we are bonding we are going to look at all you know any amount of grant funding that we can get at state or federal levels we have the climate millage coming up in november which could help fund some of the upfront costs of the infrastructure um and philanthropic funds so you name it um we're gonna and then one of the nice things
025about the seo is that if we have a small amount of funding we can start small and do a few neighborhoods right and if we have a large amount of funding to start up then we can go big and fast so great question thank you um shannon i've got two questions one is that um we put solar on our house and we're very disappointed to see that um we only get 65 cents on the dollar when we um our excess goes back to dte and if we had done it a year before it would have been 100 so like wow we missed that boat so i know you haven't set the rate but do you anticipate that it would be higher than what it is for dte which just seems kind of crazy to me
026so i'm just wondering if you that's a great question yeah great question commissioner i am in the exact same boat as you i missed out on true net metering so dte used to reimburse solar in a structure called net metering and what that meant was that when you have excess generation on your roof that that you're not using at that moment it has to go somewhere and where it goes is out into the grid and dte used to pay you full retail price for that because it was just flowing over to your neighbor who used it and they were charging them full retail for it so it was a one to one but they successfully lobbied and changed that and now are paying something like half of retail rate for what you generate and then
027your neighbor pays them the full rate um and i understand having to pay something for use of the grid i think that makes sense but it was a pretty dramatic drop in um in the reimbursement for your what you've um invested in on your roof so yes the idea and we're we have to work on rates and part of working on what our rates would be and rate design would would be how many people are interested in joining because obviously there are um uh you know the larger scale is going to push rates down right so um the office is working on that but the hope is that it's closer to net metering that it's it's certainly what dte would pay but hopefully decidedly better than what dte pays and we just have to kind
028of look at it and see happily you know on the one hand we have to invest in infrastructure on the other hand we don't have to um make investors money because we would not be an investor owned utility we would be a government a municipal utility great question yeah that's helpful um the other thing is that um i'm sure that other commissioners have heard about this whole idea of municipalization too with energy and um i'm just wondering if from your perspective you could give us a kind of pity list of pros and cons between those two different approaches yeah fantastic question so um what shannon's talking about is that so the office of sustainability has proposed this um sustainable energy utility which is a parallel utility to dtes as a way to meet our um
029very aggressive and fast carbon neutrality goals in the city um and at the same time that we were kind of coming up with this and and investigating these possibilities there was um a group in the public that was very committed and interested in full municipalization a takeover of dte's infrastructure so those are the two it can get kind of confusing because we're talking about two utilities uh one which would be a full takeover of dte's current infrastructure that we would just then own and one is this parallel or supplemental utility that we're proposing so there are definite pros and cons to both um i would say that one of the biggest pros to full municipalization is that um that you know you own it and you don't have to have um for some people not
030having dte uh provide energy anymore and we'd be able to make all of the decisions about all of our energy um is definitely a positive and the seu means that we are still we have the seu as our primary eventually utility and dte continues to provide supplemental power um so that's a pro of full municipalization we know that municipal utilities full municipal utilities that it currently exists do better than investor-owned utilities we know that they tend to be more affordable they tend to have less downtime when grid grids go out they come up more quickly because they're owned by the public and they don't have investors that that's not their primary goal is to their primary goal is to provide electricity there are downsides to trying to fully municipalize which involve according to the experts
031that we've talked to a very lengthy process of acquisition that likely involves up to 10 years battling it out in courts um in regards to essentially we have this legal right according to our constitution to do this but we also have to pay for it and what we think it's worth and what gte thinks it's worth are probably pretty far apart in addition we're not just buying their infrastructure we're buying their monopoly whatever that is worth we're buying their stranded assets we're buying um we're you know we're buying a lot and if we're successful which we're not always some some there's nobody that's done this in the last hundred years in michigan there are states like in florida there was a community that did this successfully and we've all heard about boulder who did it
032who has was not successful in municipalizing after 10 years of trying to trying to do it battle it out so even if we were successful then we've missed our goals because it's after 2030 most likely and we haven't even started to decarbonize now we just own what we have which is exactly the infrastructure that we see and now we have to modernize it we have to um update it we have to do load management we have to figure out how to decarbonize and shut down coal plants we have to do all the things that we're now just starting to do and because the office of sustainability has been tasked with carbon neutrality by 2030 by our city council that was there you know they declared a climate emergency this is what they told us to
033do we don't think full that going that route is gonna get us there um because it's too slow and it's very expensive um so i think there's other pros and cons but oh and i guess the other pro of the seo in this respect is its resilience it's a redundancy right um so now when the grid goes down the grid goes down there's nothing you can do about it and if we own the grid the grid goes down the grid goes down and we still have to it's the same thing whereas the seo i think of it really as sort of like the grid of the future where you have little micro grids and you don't have these big huge long transmission um poles and wires so that if the big grid goes down your
034microgrid can continue to support you there are going to be battery storage um associated with all of the solar that we that we install does that make sense yeah that's great thank you yeah thanks for the question um commissioner colivort just the question builds right off with us we were talking about with resiliency so i wonder if you could speak to that a little bit more particularly between the seu and the mini municipalization as i'm looking at the website with the graphics here it looks like it's a redundant system i think i hear you describing that as in a positive way but would the municipal system also carry that same redundancy and as anybody looked at kind of the efficiency of that approach you mean let me make sure i understand your question are you
035saying are you asking if we fully municipalize would that redundancy still exist well if we fully municipalize then from i believe that our efforts and our bandwidth would be on that on getting the infrastructure that currently exists and so then we'd have what we have but we'd own it so um i think there is theoretically a way that we can be doing the seu now and you know starting the seu and then a conversation about full municipalization can continue if the feasibility study that's been commissioned um finds that that's a good way to go i don't think they're necessarily mutually exclusive there are bandwidth questions and money questions but um is that is that kind of what you were getting at yes i guess so back to the seu is it is is it a
036dual system or is the seu utilizing the dte infrastructure excellent question from the graphic yeah thank you so much for trying for clarifying that the seo will have nothing to do with dt's infrastructure because there's no way that dte would allow us to so dt is not going to be thrilled most likely with us providing our own power because we're taking business away from dte right but dte has an exclusive franchise so they must supply power and continue to supply power to ann arbor so essentially if you and i we're neighbors and edie we're neighbors and we eat we were all enrolled in the seo we had solar on the parts of our three respective sunny roofs that could host it and we had battery storage and we micro gridded our three homes that would
037all be occurring underneath dte's grid it wouldn't ever flow back into dte's grid because as soon as we produce power and it flows into dte's grid then we're interconnected and we're using the grid and then we are um on like the current system i have solar my excess solar flows back into dte's grid and goes to my neighbor but um i have no control of it after that and i'm paying or and dte is paying me low rates for it i don't have a battery right now so that means that if my if the grid goes out my solar gets shut down too i don't have any backup resilience but with a battery you do so our little micro grid if the dte's grid goes down in a storm we would continue to be able
038to use our solar and our battery storage to keep the lights on thank you and just one other yes yes and very helpful and kind of leads into my last comment and this may be out of scope but maybe not um thinking about the seu and the uh energy security that as i'm understanding it it's going to provide um i think there's an opportunity in terms of the marketing and the communication around this as maybe it's a cheaper way to do it than all the generators that are popping up all over the place on my street there was been one generator there will soon be five just on our block and just the money people are pouring into those for you know it's basically the security it's it's you know on my street it's generally
039older folks that are worried about power being out and either health concerns related to that etc so i don't know that that is an angle that uh the city is exploring but i think trying to get ahead of mass generalization uh would be a good thing you're absolutely right it's one of the things that most excites me about the seo because um because it builds in that resilience and that backup power automatically for um for the folks enrolled in it and it's um it's a clean way to provide backup power as opposed to loud gas generators or propane generators or you know burning things right how much of those things cost five thousand dollars at least exactly and the and the beautiful thing i hope you caught it in the presentation but in order to
040have seu owned solar on your roof you're not paying upfront cost for that you're just paying for the energy it delivers commissioner marcin [Music] hi thanks for the presentation very interesting um i i think it's it's interesting in um the notion of a parallel um generation and transmission system even if it is micro micro transmission but um i'm [Music] i'm interested i'm kind of curious like how we're going to build support for this within the community because when i hear of a parallel system in redundancy i think well now you have two systems that need to be maintained so inevitably the costs are going to be more for that um and as a homeowner um managing two different electrical bills or like power bills um adds more complication in my life um and then and
041then sort of related to that is that if dte is still in the area and they're still running a um utility in in ann arbor um but if they're if we start you you know homeowners start using less electricity from dte but they still have the same infrastructure that they need to maintain aren't they just going to turn around and raise raise their rates because they still have to pay you know for the infrastructure that they have with less consumption and so how are we going to address that such good questions really really good questions um i might take the last one first then you may have to remind me of the first ones but uh oh yeah the first ones okay i'll remember the redundancy part of it it's another utility for sure and
042it's another bill because dte if we were if we were able to work with and cooperate with dte we could you know combine a bill we could do this with them but um there hasn't been appetite for that so um it is two bills and that is a downside um we already have multiple utilities we're used to getting our water bill and our you know storm water and our electricity and our gas and so it's it's another one so the idea like you said is that you'd be using much less of dte's energy and and more of the seu and our hope as we design our rates is that bills are either even or come down not that they're going to go up that's that's part of you know that's part of what we're looking
043at in in terms of costs um as far as the bigger picture question about dte so dte is already raising rates over and over and over again based on whatever it is that they have decided that that they need to continue to raise rates there's a it's an interesting uh situation with dte and consumers energy they have um a legal i'm not a lawyer and i don't fully understand the legal structure of what they have but they have a guarantee to their their investors the investors that own the utility to give back a certain rate of return so they are constantly coming to the mpsc which is the michigan public service commission to request increased rates so that their investors can get more and more increased that same level of return that they're guaranteed this
044is an awkward situation the mpsc is the regulatory agency for the big investor owned utilities but they have been limited in their ability i guess to curtail those um costs going up and up and up so i guess my answer to that would be they're already going up and up and up and also ann arbor is only a relatively small portion of dte's large territory um the mpsc would have to agree to any rate increases and they're not going to just you know give them rate increased um rates because in other words dte can't just decide ann arbor's um using less energy we need to increase rates without the mpsc doing a full and you know study and investigation of that if this process makes cte um want to work harder to provide clean energy
045faster then that would be a good thing if dte cleaned up their whole grid and got us to you know full renewable energy by 2030 then that would be good but they're not and we simply have limited number of choices on how to make it happen for ann arbor so the eventuality of what will happen it's a good question will gte will other communities follow which i hope um will dte get smaller will dte have to change the way that they are viewing procurement of energy and become more of a grid management system than a burning of things um yeah those are those are good questions and i don't know i don't know if i answered all of your thoughts will homeowners have a choice uh whether or not they need they need to consume
046energy from the seu absolutely it's a hundred percent opt-in it'll be opt-in yep it's an opt-in you do not have to you can stick with dte if you're happy there or you want to just watch and wait and see how other people do i think mostly it's from a cost perspective like if you know you feel like it's going to be more costly so it should be less costly our hope is same or less that is the way the rates are being designed but interestingly the survey that we have on the website right now asks three questions would you be interested in joining the seo as described if it provided cheaper energy yes or no would you be interested if the energy was the same cost is what you're currently paying and then would you
047be interested if the energy was up to 10 percent more because we want to know that and interestingly the majority of people are checking all of those that they would be interested in more people are checking the first two also interesting is we had people and and the results are not all done there's like over a thousand people who have responded so far we're hoping for several thousand but um there's another um area of the survey that is asking people to rank what is most important about their energy system cost is in there reliability resilience 100 clean locally generated all of these different thing uh principles and the number one so far in the thousand i can't see what percentages because i can't see the back end of it yet but is 100 clean and
048renewable number two right now is reliable number three is resilient number four is cost and then it kind of goes from there so our community is telling us what's important to them as well but it is very important from an equity and justice standpoint that we keep the costs low because we cannot with a clean energy transition that we are looking at having it being with whether we like it or not we cannot burden those who are most energy burdened already um and that's why we like this proposal because it gives us control over that rita i see you talking but you are i'm just gonna yeah i did meet myself sorry i think we should move forward to the next questions thanks um commissioner just a real quickie i know you're scrambling to construct
049a organizational structure and get financing and all that if you look in your crystal ball you could spit out a date when you might be able to rule out a part of the program and get this whole thing on the road holy cow you're putting me on the spot so some of this is up to council i'm looking at the two council members here but essentially what we've been tasked with right now in the office of sustainability is to do what we're doing this public outreach this meeting the survey that's online we sent out postcards we're trying to garner community interest and see if there is appetite for this and at the same time um we've we're issuing an rfp to look at both full municipalization as well as sort of what we call an
050options analysis so we're getting a third party to take a look at what we're what we're proposing um so those things have to be done then at some point it comes back to council and council uh once we are done with our sort of rate analysis and our public engagement process which we're doing right now council will decide what to do with that they could pass an ordinance to have us go ahead and get started with it and like i said before we can start small or we can start big depending on our funding um you know i don't have a crystal ball i would love to see something being built in the first half of 2023 but that's just me please don't write that down [Laughter] thank you sure and uh commissioner graham you
051went away or oh there you are but you're on mute sorry um so micro grid i'm interested in the technology a little bit here to understand it um i don't have a house that's oriented good pointed well for solar panels and i certainly have trees um and i certainly understand zoning permit prohibits me from putting panels on the ground does this mean that if i wanted to really genuinely participate in this i would need to orchestrate my neighbors to get them to install solar panels where the sun orientation is good and there aren't trees and then we connect each other with wires exactly it's sorry and that's what you're calling a microgrid so i'm and will we be able to use edison's poles or do we have to install completely new infrastructure how how does
052this technically work in my little neighborhood yep so there's two ways that you could participate one is if you have a neighbor or neighbors with big sunny roofs then and we can start or let's say you live next to a school or or nearby an area that we could put a large larger array then you can connect directly to that array and that's the micro grid with battery shared battery storage and the wires that would connect you and your neighbor and the battery depends very much on the location of of the individual site but we own the right of ways we could be burying very short lines that connect two houses that are neighbors you know you don't need a big pole and wire outside if you're close to your neighbor and you're sharing energy
053you can bury it pretty easily and and where the batteries would go initially in the initial stages we need to get solar and batteries out there so that we start building some density before or we can start micro gridding so that's the initial stages but eventually we also can see shared battery storage in larger battery closets almost like utility you know you have utility boxes in places well these could be shared batteries as well and we own the right of ways because we are the city so we can put some of the infrastructure there um and yeah and then the other way is if you don't have neighbors or your entire neighborhood is deeply shaded and there simply isn't then you can subscribe to true community solar because right now in michigan we are not
054allowed to have true community owned solar um because that's the way it is in michigan you have to participate do it with your utility so in other words we could take a um a big school or we could take a big car port or a park or some unused land and build a community you know i don't know several megawatts of solar energy and then you could subscribe to get your um your uh electricity from that you know helped it to sort of help fund that and then that's that's sort of what community solar is you wouldn't be into wired that would be an account exactly exactly you'd be cleaning something but not necessarily electrons that float into your house in that case so the capital expense you say the s eu would install the
055equipment for my little neighborhood is the capital expense to do that included in the bill that would come to me the bill that would come to you would be for the energy and then eventually it would pay off the capital expense that the city incurred so yes it is it has to be that's yeah you're paying for the whole thing you're paying for the infrastructure and also the operational costs the staff just like you pay your current water utilities you're paying now for all the infrastructure for your water utilities you're paying for the whole treatment plant and all the staff and all but the depreciation is 25 years and it goes with the property not the owner right it goes right okay yep very interesting yeah thank you commissioner yeah thank you i just wanted
056to you know someone asked the comparison between the two and from um being a part of a lot of these meetings on the energy commission i guess i just wanted to highlight i think from my perspective some of the things that really stood out is again that that operation for the microgrids and the resilience that's there as compared with the municipal utility um and really that being so important to future energy systems and yet not something that we could easily achieve on through the traditional muni route um i think the energy efficiency piece as well which we didn't discuss in a lot of detail today but the scu plan it's also quite interesting in that it provides a lot of options for reducing energy waste and building electrification and a lot of other aspects that
057are also outside the scope of a traditional municipalization effort um so i guess i just wanted to highlight those two as well thank you so much for highlighting those we don't talk a lot about that but they're just as important very important so what this to flush it out a little bit for you um let's say uh council member dish has a drafty old west side home i have no idea where you live but let's just pretend and uh this drafty old west side home would really take ten thousand dollars to get good insulation and air sealing in there and to in order to reduce how much energy she's actually using and let's say that council member does not have an extra ten thousand dollars lying around that is earmarked for this purpose um so
058what on bill financing can do is help by spreading that payment out over a very long period of time because we're not a bank and we don't need a four-year term we could have a 20-year term we can just set the terms right and pay it off over a very long period of time so that council member dishes energy savings that she's now paying less for her energy because her house is well sealed and the heat isn't just floating around outside now it's staying in her house so that her bill savings can possibly hopefully be close to the payment that she's making over time for the insulation that she did and at the same time her house is much more comfortable um so we can do this through on bill financing and then if council
059member dish does all this work and then two years later get decides to take a job in hawaii and when she sells her house the the stay with the meter so the next person who buys the house enjoys the updates that council member dish made and then and the more comfortable and energy efficient home and they continue to pay off the bill paid just like uh just like council member dish was i should have picked someone with a shorter name than councilmember did have picked joe so um the on bill financing is really exciting and and we can incentivize electrification and dte does not in fact the way that the current investor owned utilities are they are not allowed and i'm not entirely clear on who's disallowing it but they are not allowed to incentivize
060fuel switching which means going from gas to electricity they don't so for example dte gives rebates for let's say if you replace your gas furnace that's 85 efficient with a really new nice fancy gas furnace you'll get rebates from dte which is great but if you get a 400 percent efficient complicated but electric uh heat pumps are over 100 efficient they won't give you any rebate for that because it's fuel switching from gas to electricity this is crazy making for those of us who are trying to electrify our buildings because we can't keep burning things because the more that we burn things for our energy that the climate is well we all know so we can incentivize fuel switching if we are an seu because we own it we can do whatever we want which
061i like i hope that that fleshed that out a little bit thank you for that opportunity commissioners you know um councilmember griswold yeah i i really appreciate the enthusiasm i do have a few questions about technology and i mentioned that when we were at the university of michigan and the rapid changes in technology and i'm old enough to remember when the smallest computer was the size of a refrigerator and i don't mean a dorm refrigerator so things keep changing and so if you have a house with um that's totally electrified and two electric vehicles are you going to have any excess electricity to share and i'm thinking the the least expensive model would be to use all of your electricity or store it in your car batteries for later i realize we have to address
062equity issues through grants and and other means if we do that uh but i i hope that whatever plan we roll out that we get some engineering professors automotive engineering professors to collaborate and look for at least five years out because we're going to roll this out over time and so how do we uh make sure that whatever we're doing is out is not um outdated before we even get it implemented you know so uh really good question oh go ahead keep going we know that severe weather events are going to become more frequent frequent so also how do we address solar panels on roofs and their stability and i i don't know the answer to that maybe they're very very stable um so anyway i'm just looking forward to this and the last thing
063i'll say is i built up a passive solar house in 1983 my furnace didn't run today and it was 75 degrees but i didn't open the windows because i wanted to save that heat for tonight so i i hope we we look at all the different approaches so and and look at it over time and look at technology so thank you those are great comments um council member really good comments so one of the nice things about this is that it it's a little bit more flexible right dte look at dte and how inflexible it is we have this massive infrastructure changing that updating it to something that looks towards the future is really really hard whereas as we deploy these um solar and storage and micro grid technologies as the technology improves we just
064employ improved technology um it it allows for more flexibility i think as things grow there are microgrids all over the place now i mean they exist they're successfully operating in industrial settings in hospital settings in residential settings this isn't a new concept to micro grids um onville financing exists right weatherization and electrification exists what doesn't exist in the way that we're suggesting it is marrying all these things together into a utility that is municipal so it's not we're not totally reinventing the wheel and just coming up with this these there are excellent examples of all of the pieces of this working in holland michigan for example does a beautiful on build financing program and we meet with these other cities um to talk about what they like about what they're doing what they don't like
065about what they're doing what they wish they had done differently so that we're trying to learn but you are right we are going to have to hire engineers there is no doubt about that and i am not an engineer and as terms of your question about vulnerability with severe weather events you're right we know they're increasing we feel it already they're only going to get worse which is kind of terrifying um solar panels are probably some of the most resilient um technology uh they they're really really stable if a tree falls on your house your solar panel will be damaged there's no doubt about that but wind can't lift them hail doesn't hurt them you know i suppose if your house is crushed your solar panels are crushed but other than that it's a pretty
066it's a pretty resilient structure and if there was damage or if a battery went out or an inverter went out because these things will happen you know technology fails the number of folks that it affects is very small and then the seu which is a full service utility and will be deployed to go fix anything that is problematic is now dealing with a very small number of people who have an outage as opposed to an entire city like we see now so great questions i love this this is fun i can stay here all night i won't sorry uh yes um i think i would like to be the last right now because we do have another agenda item that i'd like us to spend some time on um but i really appreciate this um
067i do want to bring up something that is uh it has to do with the bigger picture of dte and the fact that they are currently using many fossil fuels and have a plan to continue until 2050. so how does that fit in with the scu and the hs0 goals of having 100 fossil fuel free or at least not zero um by 2030. how does that work thank you for asking that question it's a really good one and i there's so much to talk about and i just you know it's hard to know sort of which avenues to take it's an excellent question so um right now if our scu was as big as it could possibly be in other words we're using all the sunny space and even moderately sunny space on all the
068roofs in ann arbor this doesn't include things like carports and ground mounts because we can't really um model that so there's actually a little bit more available but if we used all the roof space we could generate almost all of our current energy use like 400 versus 440 i think something like that so we're a little bit short but we also know that we are going to be electrifying so our usage is going to go up of course we're also working on energy efficiency which brings us back down but with electrification especially of vehicles too we anticipate it's going to go up quite a bit so the seu alone wouldn't be enough to create all the clean energy so there's going to have to be off-site generation as well and so what that means is
069that we would be helping to build um clean energy wind maybe maybe solar to supply it to so the electrons wouldn't be coming to ann arbor homes right the electrons would be going somewhere else but it would be so it's rex because well renewable energy credits something like this but it would be new build it would be additional in other words we're not just trading on the market we're building new because that's part of the energy principles that the city council has um adopted which means speed is in there you know how fast can we do this and any new um new renewables on the grid must be additional not just kind of things that we're already going to be built that we're subscribing to that kind of thing and then that helps us meet
070our 2030 goal and then dte has a 20 50 goal apparently and hopefully they'll get quicker about that and they will continue to clean up so eventually our electrons will also be fully clean as dte cleans up but they're not fast enough they're not going fast enough so we're gonna have to do some off-site generation as well it does seem to me that there is a great potential for the muni and the su to work hand in hand in this way because the muni could be a source to be set up to source the funds the electrons from elsewhere um that's that's what i believe i'm not sure um but also i have another question about dte and that is the solar landfill how does that fit in with the scu yeah thank you who's
071the owner of that so right now dte is the owner of that the only way we could get it built was with dte as the owner so essentially what happened for those of you who don't know is the city intervened in the irp that dte um dte came with a a bunch of proposals we did not think that they were just and equitable or adequate and so we formally intervened in their irp and it went to mediation and in that mediation we got several things the city was successful we got a reduction in the cost of the migraine power program which is dte's renewable program which was is still in my opinion costly um but it's less than it was and we got this landfall solar project and the only way you know just like
072mediation of a divorce i suppose that you're gonna get you're not gonna get everything you want and what we got was dte will own it and and ann arbor will be the anchor tenant and what that means is that um the infrastructure is owned by dte we will never pay it off like if we owned it so that's the downside the upside is we also don't have to maintain it they do and it's on a landfill which is expensive and somewhat difficult land to build solar on it's um it's shifting and it's just it's more technically difficult so dte owns it they operate it we are the anchor tenant which means that if nobody subscribes to this community solar project then ann arbor will the city will offload all of it but we anticipate people
073will subscribe to that so it's another option but it won't be owned by the by the seo unless they ask you purchased it at some point right they wanted to sell it but i don't know that that would happen i don't know that's not in the current plan could ann arbor ostensibly use all of that energy oh yeah oh yeah absolutely it's only i forget how many megawatts it is are we at um at the mercy of dte's billing for that yeah i think it's going to be a program an offering like under the my green power program it is going to be at a premium and part of the reason it's going to be a premium meaning costs more just like their migraine power now is that we did go to out with competitive
074bids and we got a lot of bids and there was a lot of interest in helping to build that landfill solar but building on a landfill is not the cheapest way to build solar because it is more technically difficult and i can't explain all of why that is because i am not an engineer but landfills are one of the more expensive places to build solar on on the other hand it's a landfill and it's otherwise doing absolutely nothing other than being a landfill so it is a wasted space and a good place to use but the rates as they couldn't come in lower than um than like a migraine power kind of thing okay um i hope that everyone is feels um fairly well satisfied i think there can be many many many more questions
075that we could go over but i really feel like we should move on and i appreciate this discussion i feel like i've learned um thank you all for your time and listening i really appreciate it um but i think we should move on um we brought to council thanks again julie uh we brought you council tonight for just discussion um the city code so this is um something that's been a project for a long while and um i've been involved with it and i asked for some assistance from my colleagues chris graham and shannon gibb randall and a few others just to look this over um the chapter 40 is the management of trees and other vegetation in the city it's a city code that addresses mostly the property that is between your property line
076and the edge of the street um and so it is something that um i do think that what we've got in hand that has been largely um authored by chris uh is is a good model and i want to know first of all has have you all had a chance to look it over um and can we discuss tonight which i would very much like to do great let's do it um i did put together just a list of some things that to me i think are really important and i'll just say them out loud as opposed to showing on the screen i think we want to make sure that what we get out of this is something that supports our ecosystem services reduces our municipal water use um minimizes storm water runoff reduces turf
077grass ultimately or supports alternate vegetation in that particular property and supports but pedestrian vehicle safety those are really important things um it'll allow us to demonstrate care of vegetation that's different from traditional uh mode grass and it should when we get this done minimize the enforcement conflict points between a property owner and our city enforcement staff and provide education to the city so those are the things that i saw is really important um do i'll ask you all do you think that i should put this up on the screen for you to view do you want to just i see a nod okay here we go so julie help me please um and i'll get ready to show my screen oops recording in progress your screen oh my goodness uh all right here we go
078do you all see my screen okay um i will have to ask for assistance with anybody who has a question and but i do see that uh christian griswold has her hand up so let's go for it oh okay i just want to say that this is something that i have followed literally for two decades and i really appreciate all the work that has gone into this when it uh before it goes to council it's going to have to be reviewed by the administration especially the legal department and my experience with the new city attorney is that she is very thorough and so i i suspect that some of this is going to be in supporting documentation procedures not in the actual ordinance that doesn't make it any less important but i just wanted to
079explain that expectation because it's likely that the ordinance itself will be shorter and and there will be uh staff directions and procedures included so that's my comment kathy let me just ask you where does that documentation uh where is it stored and is it available to me it it would have to be an attachment to the ordnance somehow or on the um like the department web page be it community standards or maybe it would actually be indexed from a couple of departments i don't know exactly when i was on the school board we did a rewrite with a consultant of all of the policies and procedures for the school board and we had specific policies and then we had procedures that reference those policies so i i'm going to have to study this more unless
080someone on the commission understands what that structure is but it's definitely needed and previously chapter 40 actually had the paper copy of chapter 40 had a diagram of the sight distance triangle that was removed by the legal department more than a decade ago um so i would see things like those diagrams which are very very helpful being in some type of reference document that we would definitely want to have a link to from the actual ordinance i don't know shannon you're shaking your head is there anything like this already with policy with the planning documents i'm trying to remember that's what i was just trying to look up to see because one of the things first of all i really appreciate the work on this because i feel like it's in very good shape um
081and um i'm excited to see this happen um so thank you for all of your efforts on this um i uh i don't think we have diagrams but i could be wrong i would that's what i was trying to look up to see if it was easy for somebody to kind of type it in and get the diagrams because that's what you need to know if i live in a street that's 25 miles an hour what is it if i live in a street that's 35 miles an hour what is it and um and it's pretty straight forward for those different because it's all set up based on how like miles per hour and things like that so i think it would behoove us to have some simple diagrams that show something for your average
082homeowner to understand how tall it needs to be um because we only go up so high in this city and and very few residential uh uh driveways are on streets that go 45 miles an hour it's just not a lot of them um so uh it seems to me that we should have that in um in a kind of an online format that is because there are lots of things in the city where you can get the kind of pithy overview sheet that is a pdf that is available on the city's website and like it's whether it's like you know your fence permit or guidelines or things like that there's stuff there that is really straightforward that i feel like could be like a user-friendly way of being able to determine what your your your
083cone of vision needs to be and what that you know have some sort of simple diagram that shows that because i think that's what it references that which it needs to um but i think we need to make it easy for people to be able to do that so i think that that should live somewhere um i don't think it's in our orange book because that's really for engineers um not so much for homeowners and this would be more a kind of a homeowner thing right to my knowledge it's only in the orange book and when i tried to look it up the only way you could get access to the orange book was to pay 200 or go down to city hall exactly and so and a lot of the astro stuff too you
084have to pay for you know so i think that it would be helpful just to have a um like a page or two pdf that would demonstrate it for people that is something that is easy to get online okay great um is there any section of the draft here that anybody has any particular questions about uh i see yes john keller yeah a question i have it's on page 2 3 12. here we go um as i read this just as a homeowner i'm a little confused as to how this would be applied um you know particularly the last part of that paragraph take any action which may injure or destroy a street tree injure i mean what what are we injury to the point that would kill the tree what are we talking about
085because you can you know weed whack a tree and injure it um what's that what's the degree here and that that may be inappropriate for this but that's just something that you know oops i was confused about um i think weed whacking is a pretty important thing but i also think i'll just throw this out um lead racking and perhaps um the significant um uh what do you call volcanoes mulch volcanoes around trees and on streets that can seriously harm the lower bark but yeah it could be more specific perhaps is that i mean i think it would be injury to the point of killing it but i'll leave that to you know experts in terms of how that should be defined and i mean just another anecdote you know we've got two really nice
086trees in front of our house but the neighbors hired somebody to trim them back because they were blocking sun to their house and you know it's a city tree is that allowed that could have been injury you know i don't know and the arborist said no we can we're able to cut up to ten percent of the tree without checking with the city which sounded like crazy to me but i know um curious what do you think about that maybe maybe um shannon is fast um i saw some folks working in the front a very small front yard on north 4th down the hill from kerrytown this week they were digging up the whole small front yard and had soil piled up around a street tree up almost to the first branches and were operating
087a machine right next to it it would surprise me if that tree didn't come out of that process on injured which probably would mean bark stripped off soil disturbed in the root zone tree broken in parter and whole i would think injury would be obvious and serious in order to draw the attention of someone who would complain and therefore enforcement action so this is something the point of of this is to allow people to um lodge a complaint and have someone from the city take action um so yeah is that something like um that the reference kind of information that um council member griswold just mentioned could help with i'm confused a bit about the green brook i found on the city's website a whole compendium of specifications for roads in the city easily available
088there's a section called material and design standards it talks about site distances it talks about site triangles talks about plant substitution talks about trees in the public right away it talks about reeds and grass in the public way the language in there um isn't in code per se unless these specifications are code i think they're what the city calls the green book the language in there would need amending to some degree if we did these changes to chapter 40. there's also a section in the development code called landscaping and some pieces of that would need to be improved in order to blend with this these changes in chapter 40 but i don't know of any separate procedures apart from an ordinance that are in existence in the city diagrams are included in udc and certainly
089could be included right straight into this code and we've talked about doing that um okay maybe this is something to talk over with uh those uh staff over here um mr marsa yeah um page three uh down in the section three fourteen number four yes uh yeah down here towards the bottom cultivated herbaceous plants may be grown up to 36 inches in height if not fully opaque above 24 inches um and if they are not in a sight distance triangle safety area on the right away or on an on adjacent private property i guess i kind of coming at this also as a homeowner i read that and was like i don't know opaque a fully opaque plant 20 up to 24 inches i don't know i was just like what is this and what
090is the part about on adjacent private property fully opaque would mean you cannot see through it period so like a boxwood or a u you know what i'm saying so something that's like a shrub that's fully foliated okay um private property of course means if you come to an intersection and you have a you hedge right at the sidewalk at that intersection and the intersection is not controlled with a stop sign you wouldn't be able to have good sight distance so the private property violation would be there i guess okay so the some people do that yeah they on adjacent property private property is referring like so if it's adjacent to a limited site just if it's adjacent to an intersection let's say you're in at an intersection the cities right away and you have
091sidewalks the cities right away extends to about six inches inside your sidewalk and then your private property begins but on some intersections if you put a arborvitae hedge right on your property line right at the sidewalk you would not be able to see around the corner so you're saying that like so this is trying to point out that that even if that boxwood or whatever is less than if is it allowed if it's less than 24 inches yep it just can't be more than 24 inches and it can't be more than 24 or less than eight feet in other words there has to be a window through which you can see okay and it doesn't have to be 100 percent clear okay now you can see yeah reasonably so that that section may be i
092don't have any great suggestions for it at the moment but like we just had to have this conversation for me to understand that section so i would point it out as maybe needs to be worded a little bit better okay and then on the next page i noticed there was uh a line about sorry um number nine there the city shall endeavor as much as possible in number nine uh and i felt like that was that's kind of vague the city shall endeavor as much as possible um it's like either um when writing requirements uh things like this i feel like you have to you can sell and they well uh i guess to me like that's like uh the city's gonna say well we endeavored but sorry we didn't tell you like you know
093it was just like leave them a pretty big out for not having to inform you of uh work happening we could say it's absolutely required and it'd still be the way it happens i'm gonna leave the line out i guess i don't know i i just uh we're just i mean the language is intended to be a bit gentle on the city yeah but if it set a a cultural guideline that would be good i think most of the time they say when they're coming to do sidewalks they tell you there's going to be utility improvements in your neighborhood and i i don't think this is violated all the time in a terrible way here in ann arbor i think most of the time they're informing people yeah you know and i wonder like i
094can see where in an emergency situation that's where they don't have the adequate time to inform people what's going on and you know maybe saying like if it's not an emergency then you got to let people know and i mean if they're up to their discretion whether it's emergency or not i suppose but i think they do generally let people know it's just sometimes it's kind of irritating and a lot of people don't pay attention yeah yeah i i just felt like um so much i mean i in general i think this is um very well written and very um very specific i think that's nice it makes it really clear not a lot of wiggle room but the city shall endeavor just to me came across as i'm too vague so we should we
095can talk about that can't we chris maybe there's another way to talk about it oh yeah express that do what we can do okay i circled it on my copy so there's a lot in here about private property which you're not asking about it's more here on private property about private property than in the existing ordinance or anyplace else in the city code except perhaps landscape and screening in development projects and the idea i think fundamentally behind rita's effort here is to encourage and allow and and build on the idea that we want less grass and we want more um at least water absorbing ornamental gardens on people's property going forward if not native plantings and and the idea is to get both the safety thing to work on the right of way and to
096get the city to recognize these things more carefully my experience has been people who enforce against or in response to complaints know nothing about native plantings and about [Music] natural habitats which is why we added this whole section in here is to educate and identify and get the city to keep a registered list of places where people are trying to do something other than mold grass i'd like to move on because chris um vandenberg has his hand raising we're we're at 8 35 i want to make sure that we get up through this and um have a few more minutes yeah just a real quick comment i'm going back about five minutes about the word opaque i i was really happy to read that in this document because just just for example on first street
097uh just east of just south of liberty there's a median in the middle of the street that separates the bicycle lane from the car traffic and the city puts some grasses in there and the grasses are clearly higher than inches but they're not opaque there's absolutely no trouble looking through those grasses to see a biker or somebody in a wheelchair or something and i was struggling in the past to come up with some kind of verbiage because we have this mindset well it can only be so high you know so i i just want to it's just a good example of how that word opaque can play a role so that that was my comment um uh the comment in here about garbage is that already in another city ordinance i don't think so kathy
098i think this is where that part was in this ordinance oh okay and we just improved upon it a bit i think that didn't get that from another city i think well the whole segment we got from another city yep yeah but i think we do have a gosh let me look at the existing i would just say that from my perspective i would like this to be um useful for the staff as well as the homeowners you know that it that it really works both ways um and essentially helps communication and i appreciate those kind of questions that call out those things mr marsa in particular things okay and it'll be important for the legal department to take a look at this because i know that there was one property on the near west
099side where a neighbor complained and the city went to court because they alleged it was an unplanned natural area i think i have the the verbiage right the the city lost that case and it was on private property in the back of the home so we we need to make sure that anything we have in here and i think all this is very good but we need to make sure that it's legally defendable mr gruber i i'm sorry i don't have this document to look at on my own so i'm just looking at it as you go through it so i have a question about as i look so if you remind me if the plants are are opaque or you can if you can see through them and they're woody plants they can be
100above two feet but less than eight feet did i hear that right no and what's what's the herbaceous perennial rule then it can did i see that it couldn't be above three feet whether or not it's opaque uh generally yes you know okay if someone again it's fully opaque that causes the problem yeah regardless of the height and there's generally a rule that that can't happen between 24 inches and eight feet 12 feet over the roadway eight feet over a sidewalk okay so herbaceous perennials like goldenrod and joe pyle those that sometimes get bigger than 36 inches are those not okay they wouldn't be okay in any site triangle including a driveway aprons corners bus stops in median gardens except i guess we have to get along with huron parkway but they do mowing at
101the intersections there um [Music] and any pedestrian crosswalks so uh there has to be a site triangle where pedestrians are near the road and on curbs um on straight residential streets straight sections of residential streets um [Music] there shouldn't be a lot of complaining going on as long as they're not weights which generally means invasive species okay thank you but um it's kind of really specific but joe pyre would would be one that that personally i wouldn't recommend to put in that sidewalk buffer strips chris just because i think that's very likely to be four to five feet tall yeah there are a number of a number of great prairie plants that probably are too tall for the sidewalk puffer strip but not for my yards right exactly okay um is the idea that if
102you are going to have like a prairie on your property that you would have to register with the city to do that or is it optional the idea behind that stipulation was that the city would be informed as much as they can about what people are doing out there so that if there's a enforcement person that understands dumpsters and garbage and that sort of stuff they can do that if there's an enforcement person that understands natural features and natural areas and natural communities and natural plants they can be sent to deal with that complaint and if the city knows ahead of time that they're working with someone who's trying to do something different than mo graf there would be a chance of a better discussion and outcome with the property owner no it wouldn't be
103required for one second i think i think she may be getting at something different that you can do anything you want front yard in your backyard in your side yard as long as it's not taking people's views from their cars for pedestrian for bike safety so that's the thing you can do whatever you want but if you're in conflict with where you may be blocking people's views that's when it's a problem and so you can have the 12 foot tall joe pi weed sun yard you just can't have it in if you live in a corner you can't put it on the corner where you may be blocking a car from seeing a pedestrian come by okay chris graham is saying that you don't have to register with the city because you want to do
104a prairie in your front yard if you want to plant the right of word which is that strip between the sidewalk and the road i think that's what he's getting at is that if you are doing something in there that is tall you know that's where the problems are because that can block people's vision so easily does that clarify a little bit i guess i didn't understand that from the document that that section was with regards to the right of the city right away or the or the mohs strip or the sidewalk what do they call that rock cluster strip for calling it fluffy shirt that's right sorry i thought that was in the um section on you know what's going on on your own private property there is that let's see it applies there
105certainly it applies there only if you have a property that could potentially block again if you're on a corner and you could potentially be blocking from seeing somebody approach the corner uh like your part your private priority what is what is considered not part of the public right of way but you're on a corner and it could affect that's right and so maybe that more clear in the way we're setting this up from the very beginning um in terms of the areas we're actually talking about okay um because if you're asking that question then it probably wasn't clear enough yeah thank you thank you i do think it's intended to have give staff a kind of a an opportunity to say hey i know this house is different so they maybe receive a complaint but
106if they if if the city has accepted a person's registration then it's really less likely that they'll get a citation unless their sidewalk buffer strip can't succeed the heights that we're talking about well on private property the case that kathy was mentioning where someone was talking about an unmanaged native landscape or something someone who would register to have a prairie on their property is it is presenting likely to be presenting something very different than someone who lets weeds grow in the backyard especially noxiously so uh and there's a section in here that says you can't do that so i i um it's not just the right of way that's available for registering and getting on the city's radar um [Music] it's it's people who are doing something different again experience on a cul-de-sac in up
107off nixon road a new neighbor moved in next to a very famous botanist wife who had a wildflower garden knee-high the neighbor absolutely didn't like it and started raising holy hell and called the city and got a complaint about this sidewalk buffer strip there and made my client mow it down it had no weeds it had calf high wildflowers in bloom they were absolutely gorgeous it was a real genuine mistake on the part of the city enforcement officer but part of the intention here is to try to solve that problem and to stimulate the city to have someone in their employee who knows what they're doing um we are at 8 46 uh kathy um yes i think we learned a lesson from nomo may and we're going to have to make sure that there
108is a budget for education as we roll this out because it's very important uh and and that we stress and have staff stress that this is really about safety 99 of the time you know it's we don't want to interfere in what someone's doing on their own private property if there isn't a safety issue or if it's not an invasive species one of the the problems that i've come across many times is in areas where there isn't a sidewalk people will grow tall vegetation in even abravity right out and over the curve and that has become become a practice in the the area near king's school and so one neighbor does it and then another neighbor and now we probably have at least a dozen cases of that right up to uh school crossings um
109that are coming up out of their uh public walkways so i'm not sure how we're gonna address that but it's i think it's a major safety issue and the last thing i'll mention is the dda has been planning trees uh that are in violation of this ordinance one example is huron street at the city hall parking lot exit where i don't know what kind of tree it is but it it branches out at about three feet and goes up and so it blocks visibility it's definitely opaque when it's it's fully leafed out and so again it's a matter of agitating whoever is selecting the the trees for the dda because once they're planted people don't want to make a change just really quick i guess two things that come to mind in some of the
110pieces on trees and invasive species in several of these instances um i guess just wondering what type of capacity or if there's a realistic expectation i noted that there was language that says no invasive plants will be allowed in the right of way um or be allowed to reproduce i mean there's places where we have like vault so i just wonder is you know i mean is there is there going to be capacity for the city to take that on and the um urban forest department and and i don't know if that that could potentially be a little bit more specific i just feel like going through um looking for tree seedlings is kind of a large ask so just something on my mind i think again most of the provisions most of the stipulations
111in this ordinance would be enforced by complaint and my view of someone who was allowing invasive species in the right of way would be a whole sword of canada canada thistle in full flower and fruit right up next to the road first of all it's very prickly if somebody touches it secondly it's a very it's a wind-blown seed and terrible we need to eradicate um someone might come if i lived next door to someone who's doing that i'd probably complain um [Music] so i i some of these things are are here are suggested to give the city grounds to respond reasonably to a complaint they aren't here because the city has time or effort or interest in going out to to find everybody's got kind of pissed on the street long just won't yeah i
112do think that's a an opportunity that we could use for the education component um and and i know that certainly nap has done massive amounts of education of a lot of people over the years that um i'm one of them that now know more invasive plants than i ever thought i would know um and uh so an alertness helps um i think i'm gonna have to ask us to stop if that's okay and i want to apologize to um fisher ruber um and anyone else who didn't get the attachments i'm very sorry and i will work to correct that and i'll send you these documents to make sure that you happen to review um i think it would be good to if anybody has any additional comments to please send them to um to me
113and to chris and both continue on this uh it would be great if we can get this to a point where the environmental commission would say yes let's move it on to council that's a goal that i would like us to reach um so uh is it okay with everyone if we stop here um thank you and um i would like to see my agenda excuse me rita is is now the time to get staff input uh possibly so that we get staff input before the next environmental commission meeting um i don't know and are you talking about um which staff um i would just send it to the city attorney and the city administrator and say where we would like this reviewed before the next environmental commission meeting so that we can recommend it
114to council um forgive me kathy but i i i think we are not we are charged the environmental commission's charges make recommendations to the council it's the council's charge to ask staff to do something they don't work for us i agree but i've noticed the attorneys i'm trying to uh get this um implemented before the end of the summer so i'm just looking at it in terms of the number of months that it's it's going to take before it's actually you know voted on by council and then we're going to have to have a few weeks before it goes into effect i think the council is best equipped to press staff to respond not us okay uh but there are council liaisons on the environmental commission if you want to do the asking you can
115you and kathy oh okay i would just like to get it implemented so that the community can benefit from this i get to this season and we're we're gonna miss you let's get it done before you're out of here come to member dish unmute uh kathy yeah i think i mean council member griswold i think it's a great idea for this to be referred now to staff because it will have to be referred it can't be brought to council before it's been referred to staff so unless the environmental commission wants to continue to discuss it we should refer it to staff i think and if we decide we need to bring it back to the ec that's another thing um i'm wondering if commissioner dubrandal agrees with me that it should probably uh go past
116planning because planning deals with natural features or yeah okay so i don't know not really actually it's not really a planning commission okay so just then it's just legal and the city administrator who should always be in on everything so will that go to them through you and um council member are we gonna what's our process i think that's the way um i don't really think we can give them a deadline though um but it would go through the first or two though right i mean you would you would send it to tiffany to review to stephanie forrester oh right right right yes that's who you should get it yeah so probably um the best way is to um meet with mr dahoney and ask him if he would like us to proceed uh okay
117we think it needs to be reviewed by the city forester and the city attorneys and so the we in that case is is me and kathy thanks thanks and yeah we can talk about this offline okay thank you everyone thanks this was really helpful we do not have any additional business tonight um we uh we intended to have these two discussions and so um we are at 8 56 we can um ask the pleasure of the group do we want to do a quick review of and report outs of of um actions from various council members other um just from the parks commission i just had a couple of real quick updates if you want to hear them um yeah just uh um the city is going to be installing a monitoring well for the
118gelman plume in garden homes park um i think that work is gonna happen probably towards the middle to the end of the summer just wanted to bring everyone's attention if you walk in that park like i do um and then uh let's see what else this um i don't know if any of you are aware of the the nature playscape that's being built in leslie um leslie park at the leslie uh nature center but that is well underway and leslie is holding a fundraiser they call it mayfly it's an annual thing at the dinner um so if anybody is interested in supporting leslie and the great work that they do i just bring that up and it's an opportunity to actually check out the new nature playscape and um solar panels we talked about um
119the energy um here but um solar panels are slated to be um installed in number of a number of parks and they're hoping the city is hoping that that work will start later this summer um but a number of facilities that already have uh parks that already have facilities so they have buildings um the plan is to put panels on those buildings so places like um burns park the uh community center there the canoe liveries uh the swimming pools places like that and then the final thing is the note speaking of the no mo may that was alluded to earlier um i you will still see mowing in the city parks um for various reasons and if anybody wants more details i'm happy to talk i'm just going to try to keep this really brief
120but um it's it's very difficult to schedule the mowing for all of the parks particularly if you have a full month where the parks are not mowed so um the parks will continue to be mowed in the month of may this year i just want to report that the u of m workforce housing resolution that was unanimously approved by the environmental commission and energy commission was reviewed by a couple of members of the economic development corporation uh i was told that the economic development corporation's mission does not include this type of housing but we did want to get some of their expertise i shared it with the group in an email today and if there are any questions i'm willing to answer them i i looked at it again after sharing it and i do
121see that there are a couple of typos so i'll continue to try to refine it uh and also um it has the support of some student groups as well as i mentioned it to um one of the leaders of a state level union and they were interested in it as well so the i know i have a biased opinion but most of the feedback has been very positive and the ann arbor observer also has an article about this resolution as well as an anaca resolution it it somewhat intertwines the two resolutions um which is not 100 accurate but it's always good to get positive media coverage so i'm i'm thankful great thanks commissioner juno yeah i just wanted to give a really quick update from the energy commission on a presentation on the wheeler center
122solar park formerly or commonly referred to as the landfill solar project that the city is undertaking um julie can probably speak more to any of this folks have questions but this is the 20 megawatt installation that will be going into a landfill site um construction anticipated really 2023 and possibly generation by 2024 um some of the questions that came up uh is this truly additional and um again as julie mentioned earlier because this is a difficult site it's unlikely that it would have been built otherwise um so this is you know additional clean energy um and i guess that's most of it as as she mentioned as well um is a subscription-based service so folks can voluntarily opt in and if not enough people choose to opt in the city can take on that power
123to offset municipal energy um and it will be installed with pollinator habitat and fencing to to block the views so um and could be taken over in the case of the municipalization campaign could be taken over so that's the roundup there um and there was a resolution that was passed in support of that and now it's on right thank you chris graham i know what you're going to talk about so as many of you know the city contracted with the school of natural resources and environment last year not sure last year last spring i believe to do uh tree um remote sensing mapping and work for us they presented their final report this morning and it's exhilarating i i'm it's going to be so exciting to show you what they did um among other things
124it's very clear there are a lot of native forest fragments around the city some more important than others of course that aren't owned by the city and therefore some of the work we've been doing about upping our mitigation requirements and development on behalf of those woodlands is true and valid and important to carry on with the graphics that they will be providing to us in very complicated packages um will be incorporated into the natural features pages of the city's website um and we're working to make a lot of that available on handheld devices um the ability to understand trees across the city not just street trees as is now the case but the entire fabric of the city's force of its woodlands is very helpful including down to genus level in many instances something like
12555 of the city is identifiable in that way um they've done a very good job with the graphics that show where turf grass exists and of course it's in the back of our mind to try to persuade people to have a whole lot less of that around it's not active recreation land we're very excited it's going to take some time to get this gigantic set of files and materials into the city's systems and get it digested and up so you can see it and use it but it will come very exciting yeah i was lucky enough to see it today it was really great so thanks um mr kellert yeah i just emailed everybody the link to the circular economy initiative website uh that is now on the city website so thanks to city staff
126particularly jenny patosky and the interns that have been working with us for moving that forward um you'll see there's kind of placeholders there for some things that are coming we're working on a couple of videos to highlight different aspects of the circular economy um we're really focusing our work on three primary metrics for this this is based on the lit review that has been going on for the past couple of months but of course decarbonization in terms of the direct link with a20 um but also building this out uh it's most way of most value and relevance for municipalities focusing on resiliency and equity too as a part of defining the circular economy we've got a half day work session planned tomorrow with a group of c students that is working with us on this
127plus our interns to kind of make sure we've got our work planned out for the summer and we're making good progress with our partnership with the state through next cycle in terms of building all of this towards kind of public education and awareness campaign to make sure as many folks know about this and understand all the different dimensions as possible and take advantage of the wonderful um circular economy network that we're identifying and highlighting through this work so more to come excellent thank you um shannon you're next in my view would you like to talk about planning um the only thing i think the last month would be that we started looking again different sustainability initiatives that we have within our actual purview um which is frustratingly small in terms of commission um we ask
128a lot of questions to developers around which we really have uh technically no legal right to to press them on or to be able to enforce anything so we're trying to identify areas where we actually can have some sway um one of the things that we're considering right now is um people that have a lot of sustainability initiatives in their developments that maybe they would get reviewed first maybe they would jump to the front of the queue um in the city process um because time is money and if you can get people um some special timing makes a big difference it just doesn't so if you see you you keep getting pushed back and because you're not doing these things and maybe you'd have a little bit more motivation to be able to incorporate some
129of these initiatives into your planning so that's just one of the things we're batting around i'm hoping that there's some other things too i know we are hoping to revisit um solar panels in the front yard again because when that went through and got um declined by uh city council it was a different council then and i think there's a lot of shifts and changes since then so um there are definitely things out there that we're going to be working on uh people are very motivated to do that um uh i think especially around parking too and really trying to figure out how we can make us a more transit centered city um and helping to kind of support people to to rely on on um on cars less so those are the big things
130i think that we're working on right now great sounds really good um mr kruber would you like to talk a little bit about the pollinator group sure i'm putting you on the spot but yeah you can you're there you can fill in where i miss uh so we are trying we're working on educating and getting the word out about no moment and we have put together uh the the website on the city website is now available with information on the ordinance and how people can register or at least let the city know that they're participating so we can track how many people participate and where they live um we've included lots of resources there and we're going to host a sort of kickoff event next week one of our pollinator group members is a an
131entomologist so she's going gonna share some information for the to the community about why this is important and then we'll do some q a right rita answer questions that folks might have uh and then we hope that maybe we'll have a sort of closing out gathering maybe even in person if it works out at the end of may or in early june to sort of celebrate and then think about how we can get this off and running and maybe be more prepared for education next year right yes it was a really rush to get this going and so um uh commissioner martin i really appreciate your comment on the parks um because i um i feel bad because there are people you know it's kind of this push-pull that we hear in the community but
132i do want to tell you something that um that i found out from um lindsey stiltz yesterday i asked her to give me the um countdown registrations and we had 797 people sign up as of yesterday which i was really impressed about um and i see a lot of um i'll just pun buzz on online about people talking about it um in town on the next doors um sites and facebook things are people are talking about it and i am really happy to see that um and i'm hoping that this could be kind of the wedge where we start um encouraging people to reduce their mowed turf grass so that's really kind of what's behind it in my head along with the support for the the pollinators in general so and it's um yeah it's
133been great working with bridget and i'm looking forward to already next year um all right did i miss anybody that would like to report on anything um well i'm going the public commentary our next schedule meeting will be uh oh may 24th um i guess i would like to ask people if they would like to suggest any topics please send them in to me and to steve brown and oh staff oh yes 426 yeah 26th yes thank you calendar reading got to work on that um julie i know you're not a regular person did galen leave anything for for you to tell us in the report not necessarily i could tell you millions of things but um i i will not because it's late but i will tell you just a couple of fun things
134that this past weekend osi um held our of our free tree giveaway um sean reynolds has also been talking about the mapping project with a great enthusiasm and we can't i can't see it but we held another free tree giveaway at leslie science nature center on saturday and gave away over 600 trees these were beautiful trees they were three to four years old they were in good health it was really fun i enjoyed fully um participating in that and then the osi was also it was a busy weekend at leslie science center again on sunday for earth day celebrations there where there were just loads of people coming through having great conversations about all things um a20 and that was really um really fun to get into the community like that um we have a
135resident newsletter that is um coming out we're just finalizing it now and it will be full of all sorts of information about what's going on um we're doing another seo meeting for the general public tomorrow and also on may 4th um we are are hosting helping host a um forum on the latest ipcc report for folks that want to come and uh have a discussion about that there's um me look quickly that we're planning um and a very large hopefully electrification expo at the farmer's market in july on july 15th which i am really excited about with vendors there with heat pumps and i'm hoping electric mowers and you know anything we can think of it's home electrification as well as induction cooking demonstrations we've got live music food trucks it's going to be just
136really fun for all of us who are sort of energy nerds and that's how we have fun um we're going to be at the dexter ann arbor run and the taste of ann arbor um and we have a20 week coming up and so we're very busy knee deep in planning lots of community facing activities for eight to zero weeks so there's lots more but the newsletter is coming out and if you're not subscribed to it um okay please do so because it's full of full of good information okay thank you very much um i'm going to move on to our next public comment or closing public comment and now back to the statement this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter the meeting id which
137is one 989-28516 three seven um the information is also displayed on the agenda in the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of the phone number in order to electronically raise your hand and indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments so julie do we have any callers i do not see any colors you are currently the meeting host so i don't know if you can see any colors but i see that's
138a good question um i do not so with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn shannon and second i guess i'll take it from lucy um all right i want to just say thank you all this was for me this was really an enjoyable meeting and it was good to see you maybe sometimes i'll meet in person who knows um and uh thank you for all the work that you're doing for this city thank you rita good night