Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 2-24-22

001here at 7 11 p.m do you want to read the atlanta heritage statement and do the roll call all right uh the land heritage statement i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including ottawa ojibwe and bodhi wadmay 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 people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals and that's the

002land heritage statement and we'll kick it on into roll call okay all right uh commissioner needham commissioner needham council member dish here uh commissioner graham commissioner graham commissioner gibb randall you're in ann arbor griswold here uh commissioner kelly ward here uh uh president uh brown uh here in ann arbor uh vice chairperson mitchell here in ann arbor commissioner abandoned here okay uh commissioner morrison commissioner martin commissioner gruber you're in ann all arbor uh commissioner here in ann arbor all right we have a quorum great thank you galen so the next item on our on our agenda is the approval of the agenda are there any motions to accept it or to modify it now raise your hand please akirita then john john then kathy i have a small modification that i'd like to make to

003unfinished business to have a brief report on the gelman plume is there a second kathy seconds it john seconds it any objections okay hearing and seeing then we'll add that to the agenda okay john you're up next yeah seeing that looks like we have kind of a light agenda tonight i was wondering if we might spend some time talking about future meeting agendas and how we structure those in terms of last one we had a pretty heavy one um and just wondering if we could spend some time thinking about how we structure our meetings that's that basically yeah i think that would be excellent um so um let's see is there a part in the agenda where you like do you think that would be appropriate okay wherever you think that why don't we do

004it near the end of the meeting at items for next agenda do we need to run that past everybody else do or yeah we have a second for that suggestion at least a dish seconds um any opposed i hear in cnn so let's add that to the um next items for next agenda discussion um and then kathy you'd suggested a change to the agenda um actually that was incorrect i was talking about the minutes i apologize oh okay all righty so um do i have a motion to approve the agenda as amended kathy any second uh lisa um all who say i raise your hands and he knows raise your hands or abstentions i hear and see none so it was approved unanimously uh the next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes

005of our previous meeting on january 27th um do i have a motion kathy um do i have a second um shannon um let's open the floor for discussion i'm kathy um in the roll call section shannon is listed three times and i know she's a very valuable member of this commission but that might be excessive and uh also john mursky is listed and he's not a member of the commission anymore so i don't know how he uh he should be listed okay yep um i again apologize for missing that meeting um i that escaped my attention so galen would you um make those modifications i think the there's unanimous consent on those suggestions we strike john mursky and um just leave shannon as being here once in that thrice and i apologize for not catching

006that earlier or i would have just contacted galen i didn't see it until a few minutes ago well you're welcome and uh i don't think we any of us did cathy so all right so um um yeah either do i have a motion to approve the minutes as amended um kathy lisa any uh always say all to approve raise your hands or say aye any uh any uh objections any no objections no extensions while hearing and seeing then the minutes are approved as amended uh by galen so there's uh there's two items in the roll call um so let's see we'll move on to the next uh this starts our first public commentary period so um welcome to the february 24th 2022 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive

007orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covenant virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 337-9723 or 213-338-8477 or toll-free 888-788-009 and enter meeting id [Music] again the id of this meeting is 989-285-1637 this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices 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 ctn so public comment um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call other 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 989-2851-1637 [Music] this information

008is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the post is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so do we have anybody on the line yet galen uh no okay no one is waiting we'll wait 30 30 seconds there's

009no one on the line okay thank you galen so this ends the public the first public commentary period uh there will be another one near the end of this meeting um if you wish to make a public comment um so this so this moves us to the next item on the agenda which is unfinished business and so we have one uh agenda item here rita is really you have the floor thank you um i just wanted to report um since we talked about the ms4 um notice of violation last month um which is a 1-4 dioxane infiltration into the allen creek drain that is flowing through the west side of ann arbor through to west park area and at the last meeting we had a discussion about what our next next might be when i

010contacted evan pratt for follow-up he said that he had received a work plan which he mentioned last month from the gelman corporation uh and at this point he feels that or this message from him states that the attorney general agrees that follow-up on the in-pipe contamination is a part 201 issue and not an ms4 issue this might be something for us to talk about sarah um and the he says that they have proposed permanent monitoring wells um i did ask him what the status of the work plan is from gelman and i have not heard back so um since i just sent that message to him yesterday give him a little break on that so i just wanted to let the group know that we're still looking um to um address the issue of the

011infiltration in that area so um that's that's really what what i had intended to say and i did talk with council member griswold who had perhaps some comments to add from the scio township status okay um are there any questions for rita rita is um is that work plan available to look at i i expect that it will be but i haven't seen it myself yet so i will um ask again for a copy we had the prior one which i could forward to you and the whole group at least we would know that that higher one uh to look at and i don't know what what changes may have been made so i'm still looking for that um would that be of interest to you okay yeah and the the 201 versus ms4 issue

012was that something that you and evan talked about over the phone or did he send that to you in an email that you could forward um i'll send you the email yep okay cool okay yeah i'd like to look into that more yeah thank you um it has been an issue that that has confused i think members of this group and i'm really glad to see you here and and have the opportunity to talk about it with with someone with your background it's great yeah yeah i definitely know 201 ms4 i'm a little more murky so okay um but it'll be helpful to read and see what the attorney is actually saying helpful okay all right thank you sarah hey kathy you have your hand up yes i just wanted to ask sarah on i

013guess i should also mention this for bridget if they are familiar with one of our uh community advocates dan dicknell uh oh okay he is i i can send um one of his position papers we uh recognized him with an award and recommended that council recognize him dan was actually the one that discovered one for dioxane so i just want to mention that that he is a great asset and uh one of the issues with these documents whenever it's dealing with gelman is many of them go through the attorney staff so it takes a while for them to be reviewed before the public sees them even council members thank you kathy are there any other comments people wish to make on this topic okay i have actually i just okay uh this is a little

014bit of a diversion but next uh next week i'll tell you the date for sure next tuesday morning i believe is the next card meeting which is the citizens active for remediation of dioxane and that's at 10 a.m um so for council members or commissioners who are interested in that um you can send out information yeah i don't believe that's a public meeting that's what i was going to mention rita um so but i think some of us were on that um on that committee on that uh so um yeah i plan to attend it myself it's gonna be they have quarterly meetings where uh the representatives are there i guess i should pronounce an eagle but um so um this is going to be one of the more important meetings that they have i

015believe so we'll see what happens um rita you can give us a report um at the next meeting um kathy i'll double check because i think that anyone who's interested can we can request the zoom link and the fact that this is a quarterly meeting frequently uh congresswoman debbie dingle is there for at least part of the meeting oh okay all right thank you staff yeah thanks for that clarification kathy so rita um maybe you could um find out about that and then email yeah i will send that to the commission yep okay thank you um so if if we've exhausted this topic for now let's um move on to new business the first item in new business is a presentation of a u of m housing discussion uh based on a city council resolution

01622-0095 a resolution to begin discussions with the university of michigan for 2000 units of workforce housing on u of m's north campus an agreement on additional student and employee residential units commensurable with the university of michigan's growth so uh this was brought to the commission uh this this resolution was referred by council to several other commissions the energy commission has already looked at it the environmental commission is looking at it tonight i believe the transportation commission will probably be considering it or looking at it at their next meeting and i think there was another commission involved as well uh planning commission and the uh economic development corporation that's right so council has asked all these commissions to provide input and so this is our opportunity here so um kathy you are uh you're the member

017who's been um most involved in this so would you like you have the floor oh okay sure and galen would you mind uh screen sharing the second version of uh this resolution the one that's all marked up the only thing i can't do is uh screen share and then uh if i did it won't give me uh access to legislator oh i'm just gonna share it you know what can i tell you what i'll do that i can oh okay all right while you're doing this i just want to acknowledge the tremendous work that john mursky who was a member of the environmental commission and may have actually been here in january for the uh the minutes and uh i know that he was watching some of our meeting but he uh as energy chair

018went through uh my resolution that was really just quick and dirty because i thought staff was gonna work on it uh but it went out to the commission's first and so he made um extensive changes and improvements and he worked closely with misty stokes um and i know that um the u of m professor who used to be on the environmental commission also made some comments um he's now on the in energy commission uh rita do you know who i'm talking about i'm sorry say it again the um professor who used to be on the environmental commission and then moved over to energy jonathan overpeck yes yes jonathan oberpeck he had some comments and some of those have been included uh if it's okay with the body i'd like to just go over the resolved

019clauses unless uh there are commissioners who have any issues with uh the whereas clauses and and basically what john murski did is he broadened it from north campus housing to university of michigan housing on the ann arbor campus included net zero there are a number of footnotes with more updated statistics on student uh enrollment and u of m employment in the area um kathy can i interrupt you for a second hey katelyn you're gonna have to give me permission to share my stream okay i'm done okay um and there were some um additions such as whereas these employees commuting increases u of m's and the community scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions which is only partially reflected in both entities greenhouse gas emission inventories and uh for anyone not familiar with this scope 3 greenhouse gases

020has been sort of a hotly contested topic about whether we wanted to include them or not in our sustainability plan uh but that's something that i'm very concerned about because um i have a couple of volunteer positions at the michigan league and i know that the custodial staff drive in from outside of washtenaw county and so one actually drives in from detroit and so if we're looking at reducing miles driven we we need to take an into account u of m employees and how far they're traveling into the university and what the impact would be if we provide some housing in the ann arbor area for them so uh and then if there aren't any questions we can skip to the resolve clauses yeah i've been slowly scrolling through it oh okay does anybody wish

021to see the jurass clauses i've got a comment on some of the on one of the warehouse clauses um okay also a general issue to bring up kathy if for sure that's all right um so with one of the whereas clauses it's they're not numbered so it's so hard to figure out kind of where i am it's the one that um starts it talks about like mixed use um let's see it's before it's earlier i believe i think it's in the former page okay where mixed-use housing developments designed to create walkable and bikeable neighborhoods that one okay add into that um and just see what folks think about this whereas mixed-use housing developments designed to create walkable and bikeable neighborhoods which are integrated into the surrounding community um near public transit i would like to

022add that in um because we don't we don't ever sort of say that out loud in this we just kind of generally talk about affordable stuff and we talk about kind of bikeable and you know walkable but i think that's key um to be able to have uh and we may get some feedback from the transportation commission about this too but i think that's really important because some some of this north campus area and again i know it's being broadened um but you know some of it gets served by uh the blue buses that um uh deploys but some of it is also um served by the you know the triple ata too and i think it would be great if that were part of the consideration of where these things are placed because not

023only does it obviously help to have um people living here so they're driving less but if they don't have to drive then that's the ultimate you know thing that we want to get at so um i think some uh level of awareness in terms of uh where some of these because north campus is huge i mean it's huge and there definitely are areas that are served by the triple ata and that so i would like to add that in if if that's okay with other folks um oh thanks yeah that was part of my thought process and i was actually thinking about where the buses ran on north campus but it really needs to be specified and also given that the energy commission expanded it to all you have done property right yeah we can

024specify that at least once if not in other places that would be appropriate and then i think the other thing is is more of a kind of it's a bigger issue which i know on planning commission we struggle with a lot and as somebody who works on these projects designing them to is this tension between affordability and how much money you sink into um the development itself or the sustainability piece and um i think in some ways it would be and i know this is broad but it's it's we almost have to kind of think about or i don't know maybe we don't i just think it's worth discussing who we are targeting here um because if we're targeting and i know that that was one of the broad things that the energy commission came

025up with at the end about just continuing the discussion around what does affordable mean and things like that um but if we're targeting people that are making some of the lowest wages at u of m because they're driving the furthest that may be a set of sustainability investments than if we're targeting you know people who are agile collectors that make more you know so it's it's something that we need to think about i think in the way that we're um framing this and that it may be that this happens down the line you know with how that all this gets handled but um it's pretty hard to pull off affordable housing with with a lot of really intense sustainability measures um so that's one thing that i think is worth thinking about and then the

026other piece i want to bring up is that uvm property doesn't have to follow any of the city of ann arbor guidelines and so one of the things that's in this that could happen based on the way that it is which i think that we would all be horrified about is that um there are some really beautiful mature oak woods in north campus they could say okay let's cut down the oakwoods to put up our housing are we at peace with that so we have to kind of figure out what i mean i think that at the same time i think um would kind of walk at having to follow city of ann arbor standards so i don't know if we just address it here in terms of some sort of i don't know how

027we'd say it but i just think it's worth thinking about about what because there are plenty of areas in north campus too that have a bunch of like really low quality woods also and then there's some that are wonderful and um and again i know this is going across all campuses and things like that but maybe there could be some sort of nod towards maintaining um uh we can't really say old growth because that's not truly what we have here but uh maybe just saying something about like mature forests or something i think that's the biggest issue is our mature forests that we have here not uh you know area or you know things like that i don't think we're going for that here i didn't have that in any of these areas um but

028some sort of like maybe they're not necessarily following all the same tree mitigation you know requirements and things like that but that there should be some attention paid to kind of minimum disruption of um like high quality ecological features or something something along those lines in that because we have to walk a fine line here in terms of what um is willing to do and i feel like if we say hey and you also have to follow ann arbor standards i don't know if they do it um but i think that we still need to have some level of like where our values are around some of this too um so i just bring that up as a general thing for us to discuss within this since i know you know there's been a lot

029like there's a lot of legacy in the environmental commission around developing all those natural features standards you know that we have um and that they wouldn't be followed likely in this but is there some way for us to in some kind of broad way be able to acknowledge that we would like it to have minimum disruption on unhealthy you know ecosystem types or i don't know how we'd say it but it's just something i'd like to bring up to the group oh okay thanks and and rita has mentioned that to me and i know that they don't have to follow any of our local ordinances but we were quite effective when the university of michigan was going to move their transit their bus transit department to north campus and the surrounding neighbors organized and one

030of the comments from the former president of the university was that we can't be a world-class university without attracting world-class talent and if um we're having people come in and interview and i think he met with the deans and senior faculty who are not happy with the environment then we're we're not going to be able to recruit that world-class talent does that make sense that they they're just tangential you know i'm saying it's like i think that if if we and we just need to decide as a commission and it's it's too bad that you know chris isn't here tonight um but again sort of where we uh like how how we want to value that in this process oh yes i agree completely and we need a framework and i think rita has some

031ideas and so if we can agree uh with language to put in this resolution then it should be helpful in guiding staff discussions as well going forward yep all right thanks i see a lot of that natural shut up um yeah uh kathy do you want to recognize the people whose hands are up or shall i do that uh if you want to do that that's fine okay um let's see lisa you had your hand up first so um i think it would be wonderful if the university were willing to do this um i wanted to point out that in the second to last whereas clause um which is it's the one that has the footnote five yeah whereas at least 17 other u.s colleges and universities several of them world class are providing employee

032housing so i looked i followed that footnote and uh this comes back to the question that uh commissioner gabrando raised which was about who are we targeting this to so um the the resolution talks about workforce housing and it defines workforce as public school teachers uh firefighters and other people so without exception all of the colleges and universities that are listed in that footnote um only provide for their own staff but more typically faculty and there is the several of the programs are actually um loan or mortgage subsidy programs so it's financial assistance to buy a house a few of them do have a small amount of rental properties nyu and columbia and stanford have extensive faculty housing but they are in the most expensive housing markets in the country and they literally cannot attract

033faculty without providing them housing so i think it i i think it's i mean we are asking the university of michigan to do something that no other university does which is to provide housing essentially on the open market and so perhaps some acknowledgement of that like we would like the university to be a model we recognize that other universities don't do this and again to refine the targeting because um there's really no argument for providing this sort of housing for faculty members at the university because our salaries are commensurate with the housing markets in ann arbor and close in uh it's celante for example um but you know but i mean if if we are really concerned about the people who are commuting the furthest or farthest i'm not sure i think farthest is correct

034um then you know we really need to be specific about that because it's just not in line with what universities are typically willing to do they typically provide for their own so i i just don't i think that the the whereas clause is misleading because it suggests that 17 other universities do something like this and they don't um and it and we're not acknowledging um i think the thing that the university tends to say when we ask about this that they don't want to get into the business of real estate because they're not landlords and they don't want to be a landlord so we probably need a more compelling rationale for why we want them to be a model in addressing scope 3 and that whereas there are you know other universities like columbia that

035have a particular issue that they've addressed by providing you know near campus housing in this high rental market we have a different problem which is how much uh scope 3 emissions the university really does generate given you know given given the geography of michigan which is really different than the geography of new york so if we point to programs like that it's very easy for the university to say well we are not in manhattan and we are not in stanford and we are not in hawaii um and so i i think that the the resolution so far is a little bit incomplete on that line okay thanks yeah i i agree with what you're saying and if uh housing was provided on university of michigan land even if it was uh developed by a private

036entity which is similar to some dorms on north campus it would be exclusively for u of m employees although i know that is somewhat difficult to enforce with the uh the private dorm that they have on north campus right now uh and i think this is going to require more support i've talked to senator jeff irwin in to representative youssef robbie um because i don't think that you'll uh that university of michigan is going to do this willingly um i think that there's going to have to be some political pressure but i'm also optimistic regarding some of the younger our regents being more concerned about sustainability issues so lisa i will take a look at that uh the whereas clause and and revise it with john mursky and send it to you well i think

037also you might need to revise the definition of workforce housing because the implication is where is that definition does anybody remember near the beginning now there it is yeah i see it's crosstalk it was uh is defined as housing for public employees teachers police officers firefighters and others who are integral integral to a community yet who often cannot afford to live in the communities they serve i think that is needs to be corrected because we're not asking for that right we're asking for the university to provide for its lower earning employees or something yes you are correct i just got that off the internet when i was quickly putting this together knowing that it probably needed to be refined okay we'll find where it is and and make a note there okay um all good

038points um really have your hand up next and then lunia and john right thank you um i do think that the um possibly the very next whereas clause uh might address the definition a little better because it says something about housing for u of m employees with minimal disruption of the ann arbor community that might be a place to start for for that further definition um so i actually want to say thank you to shannon because she came up with the two things that were really prominent in my mind when i looked over this is protection of trees uh and using the um existing or whatever is modified for our transportation services in the future the opportunity for people living in in these places to use either university or the public transit is is a

039good opportunity and i think ideally these kinds of housing would be placed where people can access grocery stores at a minimum uh and possibly other amenity type places where they need goods and services or can obtain goods and services and as far as like the trees i think if we go back to the u of m carbon neutrality program report there was um some emphasis on the carbon sequestration of university-owned property perhaps that's a place to provide some protection for the trees that that shannon described i certainly would be very disturbed if this resulted in losing trees that we have additional trees that we have in town um the last thing that i would add is that this might seem like a small thing but i would hope that as we look forward in this

040kind of direction toward community support in general including the university that we think forward 50 to 100 years in terms of the quality of the structures um and and their surroundings so that we um maybe put in less turf grass when they get installed more native plants that require less maintenance that are provide some habitat um yeah that's it and the last thing i want to say is like do we need to address at this point how long would people be uh living in these spaces um in regular rental housing that in my concept or experience with it um you have a lease that lasts a period of time but possibly you could stay in a place for 20 years is that something that's going to be acceptable in this in this proposed approach um

041i envisioned it would and i also envisioned the possibility of co-op housing with ownership but on uh land and again owned by the cooperative okay thank you those are my comments okay thanks um any additional comments on that point i don't think so so thanks rita lunia you have your hand up next yes i had one small suggestion pertaining to the inclusion of additional student residential units uh through this resolution um i would suggest an addition of the recent approval by the regents of a project on north campus where there would be an additional 700 beds in new residential resident halls in the northwood three buildings and um they are designed to be carbon neutral and i think that could potentially bolster the argument in this resolution for um building sustainable housing okay so you're

042suggesting a whereas clause that actually acknowledges or commends the university of michigan for what they have done on north campus and the use of geothermal yes and yes probably in in on page two or three i'm not exactly sure because to me um the flow kind of jumps around between the mentioning student student housing and workforce housing okay and i know that you previously volunteered to work on this so uh maybe the two of us could could work on the flow and uh and improve it um and the other thing is i want to recognize the student groups who are out there advocating for sustainability um and i think that they may be effective in in advocating for this plan as well and so we we need to consider that so okay thanks all right

043thank you john you have your hand up yeah thanks steve a couple of things to share on this topic um first i think the whole notion of workforce housing is something very important i know in my own life going back 30 years ago when i lived in hyde park we lived in university of chicago owned apartments because my wife worked at the hospital so you know we lived that 30 years ago and then when i moved to a petition at loyola university in chicago they were advocating again 30 years ago and had a program for if you lived within walking proximity to public transportation you've got a lower uh you've got assistance with your down payment for your home so i think there's multiple ways that we can go at this beyond just the construction

044of housing and i think encourage us to kind of broaden our notion of not just building but what other mechanisms are we putting in place to support housing um next i work on a sustainability survey at the university that we've been running since 2012 and i'll just note as evidence to this topic of the need in 2012 50 percent of staff and i think it's important that we just really look at staff and not faculty 50 said they live in ann arbor and ypsilanti by 2018 that fell to 40 so 10 decreased just in six years as evidence of why i think we need to focus on staff faculty 86 percent said they live in ann arbor in ypsilanti so it really is a a staff issue um i struggle a bit with the the

045way this is framed because i don't see this solely as a university of michigan issue i see this as a community problem and i would be much more supportive of this approach if we were also talking about city of ann arbor employees or other large employees we know the u of m is the largest employer in the community but this isn't just a u of m issue and given what we know about how the university operates in terms of autonomy from local uh ordinances i just think i would i would approach this in a very different way of seeking to form a coalition we know that the university has to look at this topic if it's committed truly to carbon neutrality and scope 3 this has to be addressed but i read this it really

046feels like finger pointing at the university when we know that this is a wider community issue so i'd encourage us to kind of step back and think about a different way to approach this topic than the way it's currently framed thanks oh okay uh thank you john and i um i want to acknowledge that we definitely don't want a finger point and uh that john mursky is part of a larger organization the ann arbor land trust that's looking at all public land within uh the city limits and so maybe we need an introduction my thought here was that staff really can't work on this even though what city staff have told me is when they have the quarterly meetings with university staff they have these discussions they acknowledge the need but there's no direction to

047go forward and that direction has to come from the regions and so how do we get uh sort of a template for that and and i do see this is probably building a coalition if we include geo and and other student groups but maybe we can talk offline about other other groups that might be part of that coalition um i i i think that if we expanded it to say ann arbor public school property uh which is something that's been discussed that it would slow down the process however we might be able to use the document with the university of michigan as sort of a model to then address other entities so i don't know if that seems possible to you uh because all public land is a huge undertaking and i know people have

048tried for at least the last two decades so okay thanks anybody else thanks kathy um all i have a comment to make if nobody else has any that is um oh sarah nedrich has raised her hand um i i was uh i was curious about the 2000 number um where where that came from if you looked at you had data based off of you know u of m's um employees and who made under a certain amount or where that came from um i've been asked that and i actually wrote the initial resolution in probably 20 minutes one day thinking that it would go through various iterations by city staff before it came back to council um and so 2000 just sounded like a a realistic number and um you know i sort of divided it

049into multiple mid-rises and where i thought they could easily be put on north campus but i i don't have a strong opinion about the number it was just sort of a starting point do you think it should be higher or lower or you're just questioning it i was just curious um i think like once you define who you want to be in these units um more clearly than you know you could even download data from u of m all of their employees salaries are public actually look and see like how many employees they have under that certain threshold that might need housing and then i don't know if they have public data on where all their employees live probably by zip code okay so yeah you could even narrow in on what that number is

050like what the need is and then i have one other thought which is if you're including like geo and the like uh michigan uh graduate student body and getting this through um like rent prices are pretty outrageous for grad students so maybe extending it to include graduate students since they are technically also a lot of times employees that are in that lower wage learning bracket that that might be something to add to help get it supported internally oh okay and are most grad students considered staff if they're doing some teaching or teaching assistant position so i i thought most of them probably were in that category but but i can double check that and um we can look at what the need might be but i think the need is so great and uh the

051final resolve clause steve can you move down to the resolve clauses please the the final one is that uh city leaders will advocate that u of m establish a formula for new residential units in proportion to student and employee growth so i thought if we started with 2000 as a baseline and then negotiated some type of formula in the future that that it's not going to take care of all of the need but it at least would would sort of get control of what i consider sort of runaway increases in employees and in students without any recognition by the university of michigan of their housing needs yeah that's great okay thanks um shannon you have your hand up um you're muted sorry uh just a really quick thing in response to that i think graduate

052students um have access to the housing at the universe like think of all the family housing that's over on north campus a lot of those people are graduate students so i think that um i think that that part of that need is already covered by um i don't know like what the access is and who can get in and out and things like that but if we're going down that road we just might have to figure that out a little bit more carefully before adding it in um yeah i at least previously i lived in zion uh graduate housing and it really was dorm style um you know a two two bed unit with a shared bathroom to another two two bed unit uh and so there's probably some of that need but also the

053the family housing need and what i've been told is that the demand for family housing out on um north campus has decreased over the years and i don't know why but yeah more research definitely needs to be done okay thanks all right thanks shannon um lunia you have the floor yes i did want to quickly touch on um past points of those before me and mention that i did have a brief meeting with the graduate employee organization's uh housing caucus where we discussed a little bit about workforce housing and um through that conversation um it was very apparent that more housing is is paramount um and i i can't speak for um the internal designs of of northwood though i have heard that they are there are some dorms suitable for families but but nonetheless

054we need more housing especially for graduate students oh okay and thanks for reaching out that was great um do we want to read through the resolve clauses or are people pretty well sat with with the resolve clauses see john callaway and then chris i'll just i'll just say again to me it it it feels like this is right for a really great project to work on and to you know to dig into this and to figure things out it feels premature to set this up as a resolution with defined numbers and objectives um i just think we we've identified in this conversation you know a lot of questions that we have and i i i don't know i i understand the the pressure i mean that they're of moving the institution i i get that

055and so if it's decided by a majority that this is the way we want to um develop and and kind of push that that influence i understand that but my thinking this this is right for a lot of really great and interesting work but to say that we we want to move forward with this specific plan that feels premature to me um john how long would you think it would take to get to the kind of plan you're envisioning a year i mean if we would get like you know i the ideas that come to mind these are not the only ways to do it but there are wonderful kind of courses within the tauban school of architecture to you know to get a group of student teams to to look at this uh through

056the school for environment and sustainability i mean those are just ideas that maybe there's other ways to do that maybe people have this information but it feels like it needs to be to me to be grounded more in kind of you know understanding what who would what is it we're trying to create who are we trying to create it for and you know what will the benefits be from it oh okay i appreciate those comments and i thought some of that would be done as the resolution went through the commissions i'll also reach out to peter allen who is a member of that ann arbor land trust because he has taught classes and had student groups involved and the other group the school of social work i know uh students have been have been addressing

057some of these issues so i'll find out if anything exists right now i know the the goal and there's always trade-offs was to try to get something in place before the new uh university president is hired uh but i would see this sort of like a20 as a living document that could continue to be improved um i'm just afraid that that staff are not they're not going to do anything but talk about these issues unless there's direction from the regions and staff won't bring this need to the regions and the regions aren't going to move on this because it's really outside their scope unless there is political pressure from student groups and from the city to to make this happen so i'm i'm hearing what you're saying i'm just gonna i'm just trying to figure

058out what all the trade-offs are and how to to make the political ask of the regents to to start this process got it thank you okay um chris you have your hand up yeah this is an extremely interesting discussion i'm learning a lot but as i read through the simple question on the first resolve statement at the end of it it says thus furthering both our sustainability and place making initiatives so place making is was carefully inserted and i wonder what that is uh john mursky inserted that or someone from the energy commission and and maybe um shannon can better define place making maybe it needs to be somewhere i don't know yeah that that's getting at generally is that um [Music] and it's it's a very kind of broad way of saying it but

059it it's it's it's trying to make it so that it um the design is good you know what i'm saying like we can have like a sustainability thing and it's a concrete bunker that you know keeps all the heat in and has no windows and we and it's you know 100 stories tall right that doesn't do anything for this broader idea of place making which is that we want it to be something that feels like it integrates well with the community we're proud of it it feels like something that feels like it integrates well and um and is a positive um a positive force here so i don't think i think that's what it's getting at is that it's not just about sustainability it's about all these other dimensions of um it's a pretty vague

060concept you know place making but it's basically trying to get at the fact that they want it to be something that feels like um it's a positive net gain for the community on other levels besides sustainability is what i would say i could add a definition of place making somewhere in the resolution because i sort of think of it as pleasant little communities that people want to live in and usually have stores nearby in a bus line but yeah i get it i appreciate your answers shannon i don't know how you reduced your answer to two words so right for the uninitiated reader um you know maybe a short definition i don't know something yeah i'll i'll at least look at the definition and determine whether to include the definition or maybe there is you

061know seven or eight words that are going to describe it and we can use that instead of place making okay any other comments or suggestions uh bridget gruber has raised her hand you have a floor i'm just just on that note of place making and i know shannon and rita mentioned trying to keep healthy ecosystems intact i think those are related because there's a lot of really good evidence showing that people benefit health-wise and so there's a big social benefit associated with having green spaces reduction in crime and adhd and all kinds of really great stuff so i just wanted to make that comment that i think those things are really related and relevant okay thanks yes i've seen those statistics and that probably needs to be stated in here along with uh the language

062that rita is going to give me about trees because we can sort of assume well you know if it's consistent with our sustainability goals no one's going to cut down mature trees but it probably needs to be clearly stated and and the benefits so thanks thank you anybody else care to make a comment at this point okay if not i'm going to step in here oh rita okay rita you have the floor sorry i lowered my hand i changed my mind thank you okay um so i think i i agree with all these comments they're all great comments um i'm especially in agreement with uh john callaway on some of the points he made um i think first of all um these are different governmental entities trying to engage everybody and i'm happy with all

063these resolve clauses but we don't have anything in here the regents are not mentioned and they are the people who would have to make this decision i believe so do you want to respond to that particular um point kathy or i thought there was and oh the first resolve clause will uh and maybe it needs to be more clearly stated the city administrator will provide an opportunity for elected officials of the city and u of m to dialogue and explore opportunities uh we usually have a a dinner once a year and because of covid we haven't uh for at least three years and so uh i can strengthen that resolve and call out city council members university of michigan regents yeah because it's a bit ambiguous because elected officials because you know the only elected

064officials with the university are the regions but people might just you know kind of skip over that oh okay and um i'd like to suggest that we add uh u of m leaders we work closely with mike grain from community government relations uh sue got the city planner and and christoph kris kolb um so i could specify by title some of those people because the regents aren't going to make any decision without without talking to those staff members and they would probably be invited to any dinner we had anyway yeah i think um i think you would need to have um a project task force on this they would include people like chris cole and um some other people at the university yeah before the regents would be involved um but also in this context

065people mentioned geo but um the recent you know uh labor contract negotiations with leo specified one of this is a major item that the university needed to work on sustainable housing in the area so that was a specific ask in leo's recent contact with contract negotiations i believe um so um and these are all the whereas clauses are all good but you know they're multiplying rapidly and i think um the central point really is that the university needs to sit at the table with the city administrator and some of the other elected officials of the region and i don't see ypsilanti listed in here um but i know there's often comments on social media that you know if you want affordable housing that's what ypsilanti is for not ann arbor and i personally know a

066lot of several junior faculty members that live in ypsilanti now because there is not no affordable housing for families in ann arbor um for for even senior staff members and junior faculty members you know like non-tenured faculty so um um i think um i think you you need to get and i don't know who the official i i'm lunia probably knows a lot better i'm sure she knows a lot better than i do about this but there are other entities on within the university other stakeholder groups um like leo that should probably be brought to the table as well for for discussions about how to how to uh how to do this and in the city of ypsilanti as well because you know they're part of the metropolitan area and right a lot of people

067already see that as um as a place where housing can be more affordable so um i think they should be included in whatever um you know whatever group is assembled uh to to to you know to see where the land mines are and to address the stakeholder concerns because you know you just want to you want to assemble all the stakeholders and try to and figure out you know where the sticking points are try to work those out a little bit first before you approach the regents but that's just one okay well i have to admit that i've approached a number of regions to the point where uh recently when i approached somebody said we're not oh you're talking housing or anyway they brought it up so when they see me they they associate that

068with with this project so there is some awareness but yeah again it's just this trade-off of how much do you do before you sort of kick off this project and maybe we do need some type of ongoing working group that includes ipsy and a larger group to sort of shepherd this and and monitor it is is that what you're thinking stephen yeah that's what i'm thinking and i it's it's it's the proper role probably for the city administrator to initiate this oh okay and i will talk to him in the in the next few days about that okay okay that's all i have to say at this point um john keller you have your hand up yeah uh kathy just a suggestion of other folks to connect with at the university in addition to the

069folks that you've mentioned but the two contacts for the carbon neutrality efforts i just emailed them to you i think that is the strongest argument to kind of work in with what the university is doing and to leverage that for any type of efforts particularly around the scope 3 emissions um so yeah i sent i just sent that email to you oh okay i i really appreciate the conversation tonight i i think that the product was improved by the energy commission and it was further improved not only the document but a plan moving forward and establishing a working group i think that's important so thank you well and i personally want to thank you kathy for for uh creating some movement on this issue instead of just hot air so [Music] so let's see um

070are there any other comments on this or kathy do you have any other requests nope i'm just very appreciative and i think that we had a really healthy dialogue tonight and uh i wish we could do this at council as well well you know um i remind everybody that um you know we're empowered by our bylaws to set up a public hearing on specific topics so this is one thing we might think about is the one or several of the commissions could set up a public hearing specifically on this topic oh great idea and uh do you want me to coordinate that with with john mursky or shannon do you think it's more a planning commission hearing um i don't know we haven't discussed this yet i would say let's let's let planning commission discuss

071it before i sign them up for that yeah okay and i'm thinking you do so many public hearings as it is and i know that that the energy commission is very interested so maybe it could be like a joint energy uh environmental commission taking the lead yeah yeah i think that's a great idea yeah because we do and you know because it would have to probably be a separate thing um and we have a lot on our plate and we need things like that so i think that that's a great idea to do a combo between energy and environment um i think that's that's a good thing in there so okay thanks okay great all right kathy um so yeah i'm happy with that let's see let's see what develops over the next few months

072um so uh that's rita you have your hand up yeah i do this time i mean it um uh i did have a brief opportunity to exchange um comments with chris graham who supports this concept just to let you know um and uh kathy you mentioned me and and writing some language entries but i would definitely want to um talk with both kristen and shannon about that so i will run things by you all thanks okay thanks okay um so let's move on to the next item on the agenda which is um reports from committees other commissions council and chair in that order so uh does the zero waste um working group have um have any comments hey guy mitt lisa i was going to pass it off to you to give okay you did

073the lipstick at council meeting so i'll do i'll do the environmental commission um so lots going on with zero waste uh just to give folks kind of an overview of all the different things that are happening we have two interns working for us through the office of sustainability helping us advance both the work around metrics related to zero waste how do we measure it what do we want to measure what are different ways communities are doing and then also community outreach so the two interns are kind of working together but kind of dividing looking at literature and metrics and then starting some community outreach to help us understand what folks are already doing what do they need help with uh so that's ongoing uh we're still waiting to get the final word on the micros

074grant the ten thousand dollar grant that we submitted last fall we got encouraging word that it was being moved forward to the state recommended for funding but the check hasn't arrived yet or it's not even been put in the mail yet so we hope to get good news on that at some point soon we submitted another proposal in early january and surprisingly we got word on that almost within a month this was for the i2p 3 through next cycle the intergovernmental initiatives and public-private partnerships that is to take the work that we're doing and run it through almost like a boot camp to try to develop more economic development opportunities around the circular economy so we were selected for that so uh council member dish myself and jenny patosky from city staff will be working

075on you know participating in that and bringing that back to our group and then also we recently launched work with a student project with a seize project the school for environment sustainability a group of five masters students are working with us to help advance and move forward all the the projects um objectives so we've got a lot of things going on related to zero waste it's all really good stuff excited we just started adding some stuff to the city website we've got a really great group of stakeholders folks that have been supporting us along the way as we put together these proposals so very exciting to kind of have almost everything that we kind of hope might come together is is kind of coming together lisa i don't know if you want to add anything

076to that yeah that was great uh very succinct and yeah really the ball is rolling and i just wanted to say that um in the first week in february um osi partnered with a non-profit called livezero waste.org which is founded by two ann arbor natives lydia and samuel mcmullen and they had a zero waste challenge for a week and it was such a great success there were over 500 people participated in it attended webinars signed up to reduce their trash um in their recycling and learn how to do things like entertain without generating tons of uh detritus shall we say and there's going to be another one in june and so we are really really excited to and they um lydia and samuel won one of the sustaining ann arbor together grants and so they

077are working on that to continue this project and they are also helping us with um developing a map of uh of circular economy businesses and a um and an app for people to locate them so um yeah so there's really so much happening thank you lisa um anything more on zero waste nope okay um construction and demolition i will just mention that in this context that uh um the washington zero waste coalition is organizing a trash and another trash talk tour like the one that was held last may um it's scheduled for september 17th and 24th and part of it's going to be um a tour of the uh you know of the wet construction and demolition recycling is currently going on here in ann arbor uh at the caliber facility out on jackson road

078so we can all look forward to that and um we're continuing to work on on trying to develop a plan for us with the stakeholder group of uh trying to figure out exactly how uh cnd recycling could happen here um in in ann arbor in washington county um that's all i have to say about that um so pollinators work group rita yes uh the poundage work group is um having a really excellent collaboration with some members of the climate ambassadors and we are working with galen to prepare a presentation in march the target date is march 22nd to present information to neighborhood associations on installation of native plants in lawn extensions or whatever you want to call that space between the sidewalk and the road healthstrip is my favorite um and uh to engage people

079ideally in um doing that in their in their neighborhood spaces to create pollinator pathways so we have some excellent collaboration with the wildlands group with another local non-profit um that's i believe that we'll have we're going to be developing this kind of cementor relationships with people to do installations we're looking into the grant through osi to see if that might be something applicable to what we're doing to support people's planting options and that's that's our big thing um so the first is a presentation session next will be to see what what what we get from that in terms of uh neighborhood interest and action so um stay tuned there are things still developing and so i don't have um as much detail as i would like to provide you but we're moving forward and it's

080the right season okay uh chris you have your hand up yeah a short question to rita i when you talk about putting in plants and extensions and whatnot does this impinge on the chapter 40 rules about how high a plant can be in the extension of a yeah well yeah there need to be more work done on chapter 40 therefore so i don't think that i believe that we can move forward as we are at least that's the plan right now we're actually going to meet with um one of the transportation engineers uh next week to talk about chapter 40. um chris graham has spent an immense amount of time looking over chapter 40 and shannon has as well um but our plan is to continue to use the 36 inch height in to allow

081up to 36 inches of height of plants the the foliage of the plants um in the lawn extension with the exceptions being at corners and pedestrian crossings so there there will be some details to be ironed out for certain um and i think that it turns out that transportation was working on this at the same time so i think we're doing it at the right time you know that we can't like have these things converge and come out with a an answer that will work and i believe that what we'll be doing will be supported and believe me i won't move forward unless unless i'm confident okay kathy you have your hands off yeah chapter 40 is something that i discovered back in the 1990s and it's gone through a few different versions but my

082i really appreciate everything that rita has done my greatest um fear is that we will end up with a document that continues to be punitive and we really need ambassadors and people out there who can educate the public and so that that people willingly provide uh rain gardens and pollinator gardens and whatever but that's also safe and even the 36 inches is somewhat of um is a bit high when you think of the more uh energy efficient aerodynamic cars that are lower to the ground as opposed to all the suvs on the you know on the roadways that probably 42 would be adequate for sight distance so anyway after many decades i think we're going to have a great product and we're going to have the people in place to provide education and encouragement and

083not focus on enforcement so much right i actually um i'm hoping to include community standards people in talking with us and and showing them what we plan to do uh i've talked with them about data for um prior years and have information on the number of citations and what they do as their process and um i just feel like that will be a helpful thing you know for for them we can also provide them with the um addresses of people who proceed with this within our program so that they they know they already keep a list like that informally and so if we if we do that and we provide a kind of a mentoring that's really the goal that we we would kind of like catch people whose plants are getting like a little

084bit too uh high then we can we can work with them i hope that's that's my goal and i know that um please know that we're not starting big this is going to be a slow process sure well thanks rita um well i had one question how are you identifying and communicating with neighborhood associations we are working with galen galen who has the magic list of neighborhood associations and we'll be inviting neighborhoods um to attend the webinar that we're holding uh in march and so we'll start there and see what the turnout is see what our level of interest is and um i guess assess whether it's we feel like we have enough or more than enough than we can handle or if it looks like we need to make a pitch for for more

085people to be involved um we'll try that okay um um i just want to add that um i mean a lot of us have networks of other ngos and things like that yeah so galen if you have any gaps in your neighborhood association list please let us know what those might be and uh we can we can contact friends family neighbors and uh try to see if we can fill out that list for you if you feel like you have any gaps in it okay um kathy you have your hand i i looked at the neighborhood uh association list on the website and someone went through and updated it which is great but it only has about a third the number of associations now so i just want to suggest that we might want to

086consider the uh police block captains i'm trying to think of the technical name but neighborhood pardon me neighborhood watch uh yes i think it is it's organized through i think it's organized through the police department um because they tend to be more uh more aware and more likely to be sending emails out to their neighbors and it sort of morphed it really isn't about police activities so much as in some cases it's just topics of interest okay that's a great suggestion yeah yeah thanks kathy um okay let's move on to natural features chris is not here so i don't know if anybody else wants to speak on that working group's behalf i don't see any volunteers so we'll move on uh the next uh let's move on to commissions um shannon do you have anything

087about the planning commission any updates for us um i think i would just uh i'm not sure i know a bunch of people um were concerned about this last development that we reviewed at our last meeting um called sartorius that is out on um research park drive and steven sent me an email uh with some people that were concerned about things and um i was able to answer some questions about our own process and and uh what it was like during the meeting and so i think i'd just like to share that because there's a lot that we learned uh going through that too uh about um different needs of buildings and and the applicability of some different um uh metrics for sustainability so this is a huge research lab space with hundreds of hoods

088where people are going to be doing research that have a lot of uh health and safety standards with them in terms of the amount of exhaust and free-flowing air that needs to move through these spaces and so one of the main ways that a lot of net zero buildings work is kind of a combination of some solar and then also geothermal and geothermal is just a really different process it's not pushing hot air and cold air around and so what they need is air flowing and so they geothermal is more about kind of radiating heat and then having a really well insulated building and so this building actually needs flow through it so the thing that i was very pleasantly surprised by was that they actually did a ton of research and homework prior to

089this meeting where they hired people on that did a bunch of energy modeling for them it really looked at the feasibility of what it would mean to do geothermal and it just isn't feasible for the kind of use that they mainly have through it um you know at planning commission level the buildings are actually really not very fully baked it's the site that's fully baked for planning commission um it's a site plan submission not really a building plan submission and so they have a general sense of what the building's going to look like and they're kind of beholden to us on what the outside looks like and the massing and things like that but they're still very much in the thick of how they're working out all their internal spaces and they said that they

090would still they have a real um uh kind of goal that has been set by their their leadership in germany that they really want them looking at this hard and so they are continuing to look at it as it relates to some of the um the spaces that aren't research oriented that may be more office oriented but they don't even know really what the ratio is going to be between their office and research spaces yet so there's they they said that they were open and continuing to explore it in terms of the possibility for those areas but that for the research areas it just wasn't going to fly with what they needed for all of their health safety and welfare standards of the research part of it and this really is meant to be a

091big research facility so um they have some solar they also have a lot of venting needs and things like that we really i mean we've probably spent two hours on this with them and then the other thing to keep in mind is that we actually have no purview over this at all as planning commission so um they put up with us for a long time asking them a lot of pesky questions about this even though we really don't have any jurisdiction with this but again i think that a lot of us want to kind of keep the pressure on anyway even though we know we can't hold them to any standard um and uh i guess they they were much more of a willing partner than i was anticipating walking into that meeting i was

092surprised by that and also learned something you know about how these different systems work and and how it just may not be the best fit for everything so they have like maxed out all of their eb parking and things like that so there's there's a lot of things they are doing but um there are some things that just don't fit uh either so i came away from that feeling a little sad that like shoot it they seem like the kind of place that would really go for this kind of thing and they are in terms of their goals but for this particular building it just doesn't seem like the best fit to explore some of these other options so i just wanted to report out on that because i know there were a lot of

093emails circulating and things like that about people um being concerned about it and um and i think that we should be holding people's feet to the far to the extent that we can but um the place for planning commission to really have an impact on these things actually is more around where we're concentrating density in terms of needing to have a car in terms of being able to get around with transit being able to get around with biking and walking and looking at our parking standards try to discourage those things so that's really more of our scope in terms of what we can influence and so there was there are quite a few things that were brought up in um commission proposed business at the end to really think about ways that we could focus

094on some of those areas um and and double down on like there's we have a huge list of things that we want to work on but parking is coming up pretty fast and so uh that's one of the things that we're really going to be focusing on and um i think the thrust of it is going from parking minimums to parking maximums actually so we're limiting how much parking people can put on their sites instead of saying you have you need to have this many we're saying you you can't have more than um so uh those are the areas where we actually can do some something and have a big influence and so i think that we're going to be really trying to get at some of the ordinance changes that we want to make

095around that um and and also looking at trying to make um [Music] solar and things like that easier for people to be able to develop in terms of the code and we've definitely done a few things so far but there's some other changes that we think we could make as well so i wanted to report that out so because i know that a lot of people were curious about it and upset about it and so i wanted to let you all know all right well thank you shannon so we'll move on to parks advisory and uh anne marston is not here tonight so we will not get an update for parks advisory uh the next uh commissioner up here is for energy so it is juno is not here either so uh we'll uh we'll

096uh we'll look forward to a report next uh next month so we go on to council um see lisa and kathy lisa do you want to start or kathy kathy do you have a floor um the environmental commission passed a resolution i don't remember which month about recommending that we uh we being the city of ann arbor refurbished our redevelop our uh water treatment plant facility and at the last council meeting earlier this week we authorized a little over five million dollars to a professional service uh organization to start working on the design of that upgrade i'm not sure what the correct word is when you're talking about a water treatment facility but we are definitely going in that direction and we have abandoned any consideration of hooking up to the great lakes water supply

097so that's consistent with our resolution and so that's good news for the environmental commission all right well thank you kathy thank you lisa yeah i just wanted to report on uh kathy and i as as you all asked us to do did take a resolution to council about the deer call and we did not take the slice resolution that chris had written which was to restart paul um we developed a resolution about refunding the research the deer browse research and though we collaborated with staff extensively on this it turns out that staff decided that wasn't a great idea in in retrospect anyway anyway it was really um it was a horrible horrible evening on council frankly and um there was a huge campaign by the humane society to rope up opposition and opposition was whipped

098up and there was a lot of angry emailing and angry calling and angry constituents and it was very unproductive to air that kind of uh you know that kind of dialogue of the death um and where we stand now is uh and the resolution failed because there just isn't support on council there's definitely not support for restarting the call there wasn't support for the dear brow studies because they actually are expensive so um they they were 30 000 a year and there was a four year sequence of them and there was some sense that one would have to do four years of them anyway so um and staff feels that there is no point in funding a study for something that we know council is going to vote no for anyway and which actually makes

099a lot of sense to me so so we have got to educate council about this and build support and in order to do that we have to show them argument and counter argument and so there is some sense that this uh ecologist named oswald schmitz has refuted jacqueline corteau's studies i don't know to the extent that that's true i'm talking with uh another person tomorrow who may be able to shed some light on that so um i'm sorry to report that i feel like we're really just at a dead end right now and um it what we don't want to do is have more unproductive discussions where a lot of anger and passion get fomented um because it's just it's painful and so we need to figure out a calmer way and uh possibly through

100you know we could do an information session possibly i'm really not sure and i'm happy to take this conversation offline because i don't want to speculate you know you know and fantasize anyway so but that's just how it went in it and i'm so sorry i thought i thought that was such a safe thing to bring forward but man yeah so lisa yeah thanks for your efforts there um you're in kathy's but what um who was refuting whose data um this fellow named oswald schmitz who's an ecologist at yale and the humane society had had him in to do a presentation and it was i watched it um it was a very interesting presentation because it really was framed in terms of uh biodiversity and so it wasn't framed in terms of there was a

101part of it that was solely um focused on animal rights but but it didn't set up the unproductive thing that i think we sometimes get into which is people who love animals and people who love gardens it didn't set that up it really did center the value of biodiversity and dr schmitz spoke a lot about uh his belief that deer density doesn't correlate with forest damage okay well um and whose study was you're refuting specifically uh you know jacqueline corteau is the ecologist who's done the browsing studies for the city yeah okay good because we've heard a lot of testimony from several people there's quite a lot of data out there and uh and we deliberated on it when uh chris i know and uh bob needham invited the hero at the uh humane society

102of caroline valley to come and present their case and they they refused to do so um after the environmental commission submitted its resolution to council um they scheduled a you know uh an online webinar which was we were several of us i think everybody on the commission was invited to it um it was not possible to see who attended that um that's the reason i put it on the agenda before us just to discuss the results of that webinar because it was not a bit open to the public um you could not see who the attendants were the attendees were you could not you could see the chat function and i asked several questions in the chat which were not answered um basically i was not impressed with dr schmidt's arguments nor our professor schmidt

103i should say and and there was another gentleman who was brought in to make some comments but it's clear that they did not have any direct refutation of any of the information or the data that was presented to us it was very clear um and uh there was a very limited uh there was no discussion available in that meeting that was sponsored by the um humane society of uh valley so um you know i agree with you i mean it's it's it's basically um sentiment versus you know it's animals versus plants but you know i have to tell you i mean yeah yeah so i don't know where where to go with this and i'm not going to say anything more about this except that uh we are empowered to hold public hearings so maybe

104the environmental commissioning commission should schedule a public hearing so that you know to see what we can do about it uh before counts before wasting council's time okay so we'll let's think about this for the future um well thank you um is kathy you have your hand up um yeah i just want to say i've been tracking deer car collisions for over a decade and uh there was improvement after the call but i don't know that education is going to help and i don't mean to pick on anyone but i know that council member haner and mayor taylor have stated clearly they do not support a deer cold they do not support killing deer and so i just don't know how effective additional education is going to be even if we had one-on-one discussions because

105with with those two at least there's there's they've had plenty of time to be educated and to change their mind if they were going to and they're not and and i can't speak for other council members well no i agree kathy i mean it's not an educational problem it's a it's it's sentiment what we're talking about are people sentiments and so that's that's what we need to focus on so um well i'm open to any ideas or any public comment that people want to make about it but i don't think we have any more time here to discuss this okay let's not listen to a city council meeting on this one issue so um um if there are no other comments um i'd like to just end the discussion of that and um let's move

106on to staff reports from staff i'm not um i have nothing to report at this time okay um okay and as the chair i i'll just issue the chair report right now first of all i want to remind everybody that we have two youth commissioners whose terms are expiring on may 31st luna oriole has already agreed to to serve for the next year and young nguyen is considering she's positively disposed but she wants to wait a few days to to notify me but um otherwise i think we have a full commission right now so thanks everybody um and the other thing is um i just want to mention that in terms of uh working groups i think it's a distinct gap that we've had for a couple of years now is water quality and storm

107water so i'm really happy that uh that sarah nedrich has joined us as well as bridget gruber they have some background and expertise in this area so i'm happy to i think i would like to organize um a revival of the water quality and storm water commission so anybody who is eager to join such a working group please email me and i'll set up a meeting i'll set up a separate zoom meeting and we'll see about getting oriented and i'll get something started there okay so that's it for a chair report um so the next item on the agenda is items for the next agenda so um i think uh this is where uh john callaway suggested a change here um so john you have the floor about uh the topic of organizing meetings and

108i don't know if we want to do it tonight or if we want to put it on the agenda for the for the next meeting we're almost at nine o'clock i just had some simple ideas of you know if we can we set time goals for for different parts of the agenda and you know different strategies that we come up with to kind of move through things um i think and you know maybe a commitment that we only have you know maybe one or the most two presentations um at a meeting so like i said maybe it's something we can think about and talk more at the next meeting or yeah i don't know if we want to do it now since we're almost at nine yeah i'm trying as hard as i can to

109end the meetings at nine so i understand what you mean and uh i think it's possible that we can assign a time keeper normally what you do in a meeting like this is somebody volunteers to be a time keeper and we can rotate through that and then one to two presentations i think is is a good idea as well but let's uh let's add that as an agenda item for march our march 24th meeting okay so our next scheduled meeting is on march 24th so um um so uh this uh our next agenda item is public commentary so dave i think there's a couple of questions oh yeah yeah okay kathy and then um yeah i just wanted to add another agenda item and in i'm told back in 2015 or 2016 the environmental commission

110passed a resolution regarding an alternative to rock salt or using less of it and educating the public and the resolution didn't go to city council it didn't direct city councils to take any action and therefore council and staff didn't take any action so i'm wondering if we can resurrect that if anyone knows where it is and uh and we can discuss that okay great yep i'll look into that kathy okay oh okay thanks steve um i just wanted to mention that um i spoke with um tiffany giacobazzi who is our city forester after a recent report of tree poor survival of street trees that was uh in the news and i invited her to join our meeting in march she's planning to do that and um she will appreciate um questions coming to her beforehand

111if we can so um i'll be happy to field those questions and and put them together in a document if you want or i guess we could certainly send them to galen um to compile for the meeting so that we that she gets it beforehand and and is prepared to address questions maybe we can consolidate them um and a second one just timely um uh i believe that um chris graham will bring some um a speaker relating to deer management next month as well or would like to okay not to belabor that one but okay well since he's not here now i'll ask him about that okay thank you yeah thank you rita so um yeah so those are the items for next agenda as we're going to table a process discussion and we have

112the city forester um talking about trees in the public areas and um that's it for now and i'll talk to chris about that and i'll look into the rock salt resolution okay so um this starts this starts the second public comment period this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id number [Music] five 989-2851 one six three seven again that's number eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine meeting id nine eight nine two eight five one 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 using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire

113to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there's a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established um anybody on the line yet chris um no there's no one on the line okay so let's wait 30 seconds so while we're waiting i'll just send out an email um with the action points that i've noted to everybody at the end of the meeting i have a question do we want to talk about the status of the train station at the next meeting

114and the environmental impacts of the alternatives i'm not sure how prepared we would be um um but uh we'll we'll take that up you know in this context um you know one thing that the environmental community the energy commission has done and that i have been trying for years to do with the environmental commission as well because we'll have an action item tracker so okay so well it's a spreadsheet it's going to be a google spreadsheet because i can't find any other better alternative and we will uh so we can add action items to that and we can add topics for future meetings and things like that but that's a great idea uh we can talk about it um i'll add that to the list uh kathy and um we'll see how we'll see how

115it shakes out okay we had a staff report today which may be of interest to the commissioners okay would you send that to the commission members and uh let's look at that and uh we may not have time on march 24th but certainly you know april potentially and then thereafter okay okay thanks okay still nobody okay all right then this ends the public commentary period um so i declare this meeting adjourned at 903. you