Ann Arbor Energy Commission 2/8/22

001welcome to the february 8th 2022 electronic meeting of the energy commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings we hardly remember what those are like commissioners during roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera just as you would during in-person meetings also mute your microphone when not speaking public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities at the beginning and end of the meeting please call one of the following toll-free numbers four 877-853-5247 or eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine and enter the meeting id number nine three seven six seven five one six eight one nine on your

002phone this information is also available on the published agenda and in the public uh notices section of the city's website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 or att channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn missy would you get us going by reading the land acknowledgement absolutely i acknowledge the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe and wind out 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 detroit in 1807. knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of

003this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you very much so next is a roll call and as i mentioned we have two commissioners that are unable to attend council member radina has a work conflict as does commissioner george they both let us know in advance but missy if you'd go through the roll call and we'll know who else is here and who else is missing thanks absolutely and if you could just state where you're calling in from and give me a second to type that into notes that would be great uh commissioner hookum uh chuckle come in my not so warm office michigan commissioner mcgomber here uh and calling in from my house in ann arbor commissioner clevy here calling

004from my solar house in hanover commissioner levin you're from my home in ann arbor and tara mursky i know you're giving my home in ann arbor thank you vice chair coleman garcia i'm uh here in uh my home in ann arbor councilmember briggs here in my messy house in ann arbor commissioner mccoy here in ann arbor uh commissioner kerber here and in my house in ann arbor uh commissioner peck you're in my um dog ridden house in ann arbor i love these descriptors everyone uh commissioner juno here am i home in ann arbor commissioner stevenson thank you very much so uh next time the agenda is the approval of the agenda can i get a motion to approve the agenda so moved by council member riggs and seconded by uh council or commissioner hookum all

005those in favor say i and raise your hand hi anyone opposed any abstentions very good approved thank you very much and then uh we also have to approve the minutes of our last meeting which was a work session uh by the way we had some problem with the legistar site hopefully people had a chance to review them i did and i didn't see any issue with them hopefully others did as well can i get the motion to approve the minutes council member breaks and seconded by commissioner stevenson thank you so now we uh have public input here we do have to do a vote on that oh we do sorry you're right thank you uh all those in in favor of uh approval of the minutes say i and raise your hand any opposed the

006abstentions motion carries thank you so now we move on to public input this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes i'll repeat what i said before if you're watching on ctn please call 888 788-0099 or 877-853-5247 [Music] and enter the meeting id six seven five one six eight one nine of course that also works if you're dialing on your phone this information is also on the meeting agenda and on the video feed 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 and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please

007move to a quiet area and mute any background noise so that we may hear you clearly and then finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments all right caller ending in six five zero good evening members of the commission my name is wayne appleyard and i was on the energy commission for about 26 years first i would like to say how great the brian community program you will see a presentation on this evening is osi should really be applauded for developing a comprehensive and innovative program that will hopefully reduce the energy use in up to 260 homes in that neighborhood while i was commissioner i was one of the early drafters of what was tom time of marketing then head home energy assessment disclosure then help home energy labeling program

008and now herd home energy rating disclosure this ordinance would simply require that the home energy score assessment be conducted and made available to all prospective home buyers when the home was put on the market giving the buyers more information on how much it would cost to heat and cool their home as well as improvements that they could make enroll into their mortgage the number of acronyms gives you an indication as to how long this has been worked on it was first proposed in 2011 when the commission including myself was working on the climate action plan it was also part of the climate funding proposal promoted by the interclimate partnership before funding became available through the county millage in 2018. the energy commission had a committee that over the course of about a year in 2018

009research what other cities including austin and portland have done met with our local realtors and drafted the ordinance there had been hope that this ordinance would be have been acted in 2019 there's been a series of reasons put forth as to why this hasn't been the case including the desire to enact it as a package with the commercial disclosure and the green and rental housing initiatives since the commission commercial and multi-family disclosure ordinance was enacted in october of last year something else seems to have happened although the additional conversation with realtors was supposed to have taken place last summer or before they seem to have only started this month the current draft of the ordinance is virtually the same as it was in 2018 with only minor wording and organizational changes it is now not

010planned to be passed in 2000 until 2023 according to the presentation to be shown tonight 1200 homes are sold in ann arbor each year uh would be evaluated in 250 homes or so would be retrofitted homes only come on the market over periods of time and each year that goes by without this ordinance being passed those homes may not get to be evaluated until sometime in the 2030s the additional co2 put into the atmosphere due to the loss of these improvements will stay in the atmosphere for at least seven generations i strongly earn the commission to pass resolution recommending that this council enact this ordinance immediately it's ready to go don't let another 1200 homes be missed thank you i think we lost missy for a second she was frozen so we're going to have

011to wait a second until she's able to rejoin to tell us if there's other callers here she comes john yes while we're waiting tonight um wayne mentioned a resolution is he asking us to create a resolution in support of it or has there been resolution already put forth that we're um going to be considering or should have considered so i i don't know for sure to my knowledge no resolution has been prepared i don't think so that's something we would have to talk about as a commission later in the meeting if um that's necessary desirable um et cetera so that's right thank you okay thank you mark welcome back i'm back i hate internet i apologize everyone um and thanks public speaker we have one more hand up caller ending in one three four thank

012you dr stultz and chair mursky this is ken garber 28 haverhill court i share mr appleyard's dismay at the herd ordinance delays the heat pump discussion got me thinking about thermal dynamics indulge me here the second law of thermodynamics states that the total disorder or entropy of the universe is constantly increasing and that someday everything will come to a complete stop but it's not total futility the law implies that any system not in equilibrium not at maximum entropy can be made to do useful work two centuries ago the french physicist savi carno imagined a heat engine that could harness the flow of heat from a hot chamber to a cold chamber it's not heat that drives the heat engine but the difference in temperature between two chambers which is converted to work that's how steam

013engines worked in carnos day they didn't just push a piston with hot air heat engines can never be 100 efficient because you can't convert all the heat energy to mechanical energy but just as you can use a heat difference from hot to cold to drive work the second law says you can use work to move heat from cold to hot this is the principle of a refrigerator or a heat pump they're the same thing amazingly carno's theorem shows that a heat pump can be more than 100 efficient much more a modern heat pump coefficient of performance is between two and four or two hundred percent to 400 percent more heat energy created than electrical energy expended we don't violate the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy can't be created or destroyed we're just

014taking the heat energy in the cold space and by adding work you move it to a hot space making it hotter the work in this case employs electricity to compress a gas which raises its temperature the refrigerator was invented in 1899 but it took a while before someone used a backwards car no heat engine to heat a living space in 1948 robert weber made a heat pump and replaced his coal furnace with it so heat pumps exploit the second law just as a system out of equilibrium can drive work through entropy we can use work to temporarily reverse the process gas furnaces on the other hand use a chemical reaction to heat air very thermodynamically inefficient you don't gain energy from burning fossil fuels you're just using the solar energy stored in ancient plant matter

015which we call oil gas and coal breaking their chemical bonds releases heat because fossil fuels are abundant and have a high energy density doing this is relatively cheap but it's overwhelming the earth's systems for cycling carbon that's second law too once the polar ice disappears the ice caps melt the permafrost releases all its carbon and we're finally done with fossil fuels the climate will reach a new equilibrium mission rover pack can tell you what that world will look like our task is to shift that future equilibrium to the left as far as possible it's beyond urgent so let's start by applying the second law make heat pumps universal thank you mr garber you see do we have anybody else we don't tramerski very good great so um that has a lot quicker than what it

016has been on many occasions last year so we are now uh pleased to be able to go to the main part of our agenda and first on the agenda is as was already mentioned um by wayne appleyard a presentation about the bryant neighborhood and its um decarbonization project along with a lot of other benefits so missy may i turn things over to you and let you introduce it absolutely well thank you all so much for the opportunity to be here today and tell you a little bit about the bryant project you are not going to have to hear me talk which is i guess a gift i'm sure for all of you instead we have madison case who is an americorps vista with community action network one of our important community engagement partners and derek

017miller's not with us tonight but i want to acknowledge community action network which is really our strategic uh cbo community-based organization helping to move this project forward so uh surprise john very was very generous our legislative system went down uh actually across all boards and commissions but that presented an opportunity to perhaps redo this presentation so in the attachments to the agenda you're going to see two slides one is kind of the more standard slide deck for osi we're not going to present that tonight i'm happy to answer questions about it madison is going to present this project from community action network's perspective so madison welcome to the energy commission it's a pleasure to have you and i'm going to turn it over to you now thank you so much missy the pleasure is all

018mine i assure you um so i did not have a virtual base job during the pandemic so bear with me on my screen sharing abilities let me pull that up for you all right does that look good for everyone awesome thank you so much well as missy said my name is madison case i'm an americorps vista for the community action network um previous to can i worked in the corporate retail industry so um i have an operations background in the food industry as well so this this work um is incredibly important to me and always has been and it's been a delight to move back into more community-based work and get to work on this project i'm going to go over a couple different things my presentation first just the basic project goal um you

019know why canada's involved why bryant is an important community to be recognized some of the efforts we're going through i'm going to focus on three different topics community outreach climate change and resilience public health as i might make a typo on that one and human services next steps and questions i didn't feel the need to parse out any challenges along the way as well i'll talk about those as i go through each one of the slides i don't think any challenges should be removed from the ability to move forward in any of our work either so just let me know if you have questions along the way but i did take some time at the very end so first and foremost the project goal is to create the first decarbonized existing neighborhood in our um

020we want to make sure that it's a replicable model throughout the rest of the area but also ensuring that we're meeting people where they're at with sustainability that means ensuring that all of our goals our aspirations and our strengths are coming from the residents themselves sustainability is something that means something different for everyone and that's something we've really seen is trying to move forward with with this project some of us like those of you here think sustainability is something that um is more maybe of an academic point of view or professional point of view but as we start to trickle down into different communities that may mean something different for everyone um and at the end of the day we want to ensure that we're using the residents and their strengths whether or not it's

021personal it's their community outreach abilities or just their general interest and excitement about this moving forward to garner them nonprofits like us and other government organizations like osi working together to create a healthy environment and neighborhood but on top of that first and foremost we want to ensure that we are combining both the climate change crisis social justice to create our climate justice along the way so why the bryant neighborhood um the bryant neighborhood is a frontline neighborhood which means that at first and foremost it's going to bear the forced climate consequences as we go through the climate change crisis um neighborhoods that are historically underserved or under resourced are going to be hit the hardest and you know bearing that name or don't have the resources to move forward and make the changes that

022might make them more sustainable so starting where it's most needed is incredibly important when it comes to this work um the a couple different demographics about the bryant neighborhood here um about 50 of our neighborhood is of color um we have 75 percent of our residents are low income the bryant neighborhood was actually the first i want to say the first affordable housing area not necessarily as um you know apartment-style living but as housing style living in ann arbor uh with about 260 homes built in the 1970s um they're 50 50 split and breath with renter occupied but we do have a very energy burdened neighborhood um and we want to ensure that while um you know we're taking that burden off of our neighborhood that we're doing in a way that can be replicated

023across the rest of ann arbor as well so again why can why is it important that we work with community action network when we're coming to the bryant neighborhood we have an incredibly long standing relationship with the community this um the brian community center as its own has been around since around the 1980s but it's been owned and operated by cans since the 2000s and one thing that we see is incredibly important when working with our communities is having long-standing resources there not just within just having the community center but also having staff that is there for a really long time with the amount of change that happens in some of these neighborhoods and communities we want to ensure that we are a very reliable um source of trust of resources and anything that goes

024along with having someone that you um no one understand in our neighborhood um here i have pictured skye who is our community center director he's been with us for over a decade at the bryant community center so you can imagine the amount of um not just access he has to the community but the amount of trust and just availability and understand and love for the community there um you know when you're there for a decade and you work with students and with kids and with families you see your families flourish and you know you have someone from kindergarten through their entire way through high school i mean there's a lot of of trusted compatibility that you have with someone there that long and i think a really great side tangent story is that that's crystal

025our community outreach specialist that works for community action network but skye is actually the godfather for her child so if that shows you how important our relationships were are with the community and crystal lives in the bryant neighborhood it's just it's incredibly important and we see that our three pillars of service are educational enrichment food food assistance and housing security so we do act as a human resource basket in a way for the neighborhood we help them communicate with dte we help them communicate with any other bill payments they have and not in a way to make sure that we're solving all of any solving any issues or helping them work to it we want to ensure that we are not canceling the problem out and helping them thrive you know and work on their

026own and stand on their own as well our food assistance programs are are through our food pantry and we're actually the largest food pantry in washington county we tend to have around 600 clients per week throughout the pandemic we allow people to come more than once per week or whenever it was needed because we saw the need was that high but even now with families just coming once per week we're still seeing around the same amount of demand which just shows you how much it's needed in the area and as far as educational enrichment goes we have our programs that are after school program summer program but it's all year round um it's a it's a year-round curriculum so they have a theme every year next year it's environmental um sustainability so we're really excited

027to bring a lot of the work that we're doing in this project trickle down from not only just parents and families but down to the kids um let's see going on so one of the things that we have been working on specifically are you know one of our three topics is community outreach which obviously for a project like this is going to be key not only in creating a base of that trust for you know my work in the neighborhood crystals work in the neighborhood but also just us you know getting a basis of understanding of where people are at with sustainability as well um we have um me and crystal doing mailers and monthly events um in the neighborhood we started out with door knocking though um and and you know i know all

028of you are familiar in some capacity with the policy world um and you know any world of community outreach but that has really been our most successful form of outreach so far because that face-to-face interaction really has created a amount of trust and understanding with us because while crystal's lived in the neighborhood for her entire life she grew up there she still doesn't know all of the residents and i know none of the residents and i want to ensure that my face uh triggers trust and understanding or at least just an interest in the program and wanting to ask questions because they they don't need to trust me right away they don't need to trust crystal but they at least we're hoping that they want to ask questions and be more interested in the program

029um some of the monthly events that we've been also to have been able to have face-to-face conversations with residents through are our community clean up every year we bring about three 30-yard dumpsters into the neighborhood and allow residents to come down throw if they need to away and then come to the community center afterwards for food and so then we were able to capture quite a few residents in an initial survey that we did trying to engage the demographics of the neighborhood their interest in being a part of our our surveys our you know just email lists and other parts of our just general outreach program but we're also able to get a lot of dte information from residents there as well which is going to help us gain a lot more information about their

030actual energy use in their homes so the community cleanup was great next year we're actually working with missy and osi to ensure that we do it in a more sustainable way so we're not only going to get our open tops but we're also going to bring in a few more um uh waste diversion friendly open tops in to ensure that we're making sure the electronics are going to the right place our um uh you know plastics whatever so on so forth and that's actually what i did in my recent ch my past job for um this with kroger so i'm really excited about that in the future uh we also did a tree planting in the fall as well and that was incredibly successful with the neighborhood it's also again a face-to-face interaction with a

031staff member of osi we have other volunteers in the city of ann arbor um and some of those were 82-0 ambassadors and we were excited to have those ambassadors there as well um but outside of that they're also helping us with a couple other projects along the way i'm actually an ambassador too so outside of my time at can i've been with i know snaps for that time with osi but um it's been really exciting to get to know other people that have a passion for sustainability in ann arbor but then also bring other professionals that have a very specified interest and sustainability into this project so with the rank uh the brian project we have the availability now to you know work with one of our team architects work with um people that have

032interest in the school systems and about you know that very type of sustainability interest that um not only was part of the tree planting but that going forward are going to be a part of a bunch of different facets of this project but specifically more in our home assessments which i'll get to later um we hosted a master gardening class at the bryant community center not just for residents but osi did their training there too so using the center really is an area for people to see as a community structure not just for the brine community but that the city sees it as a very valid space to be used in the area as well and i think that helps garner productivity not just for thinking the community center is a space for people who

033have need but also have an interest that's one of our challenges that we've seen going forward is that people see the community center as a very you know low income you know we don't we don't want to use this space because we don't have an income based need or you know food we're not food insecure those types of area so we're wanting to ensure people see bcc is an area that everyone is welcome and that everyone has a valid reason to go there so that was one of the pieces that we use that for and then we have an upcoming valentine's day event with small themes like love your home love your planet um that we're going to use as sustainability like and with the theme of sustainability um you know not just with our

034families but also introduce it with the kids and start start moving forward with the with the thematic curriculum for the year um we've also done some mailers uh my next slide is just some of those examples uh you can see me and crystal doing some door knocking over there um on the left side these are just the front pages of both of these as well so they're not in full in full form um but we did have em live come out and do an article about the area too or we were fortunate enough that m live was interested enough to do an article about our work um so they came out and took some professional pictures which have been really great for us as far as our outreach has gone because we have you know

035we're involved in more of an official capacity and then we can link people to um a more official sign up in an area that people can trust too because mli obviously is an incredibly trustworthy source for a lot of michiganders when they read their news and then in the middle i have our newsletter here that has events coming up our you know our overview of our project the um contact information if they want to learn more but on the back it has um summaries of events that we've had in the past and some sort of um educational component just to kind of walk people through um a sustained uh a sustainable understanding of what like what verbiage we're using when we're talking to i don't want to talk about weatherization and electrification if no one

036knows what i'm talking about um and that's been a part of the challenges of understanding where people are at with sustainability as well is we might not use the same words for similar things um and then also we went to the green fair and had a booth there this year and then the one on the far right for event outreach is what we use there all right so moving on to climate change and resilience i do have a photo here of our community cleanup that was um everyone that came out for the community there um but one of the first things i want to talk about is bcc as a resilience hub we do have our north side community center at community action network already outfitted for solar panels and is a resilience hub for

037the city of ann arbor already so um we're excited to bring bcc in as another one of those for our company and already have had you know the experience of going through that edge as well so it really lends it as an easier task and with bryan community center being the largest food pantry in washington county it really opens up not just food security stabilization for our community but also the rest of ann arbor and washington county as i stated but you know when we're looking at food security and other things that create sustainable environments for people to help them thrive we should be looking outside of bryant anyway but we're excited to be able to service our neighborhood and a couple other things are that we've seen that come with their own challenges that

038are part of our home evaluations our weatherization electrification which would be the end game opportunities for us to be able to address when it comes to our home assessment so i'm going to go a bit out of order here but right now one of our biggest things that we're working on is home energy evaluations we have two different options for residents we first have a virtual self-evaluation option that's completed with a staff member from can elevate or the a20 ambassadors or osi we have quite a plethora of people that are getting trained to do this which we're very excited about um and we love just having that again a very different and diverse professional background interest of sustainability the resident is paid with a 50 visa gift card and this is all done over the

039phone um and we've done a couple practice rounds and also have a tr a training video already made because we did a virtual out of crystal stewards our outreach specialist home so if anyone has any questions that's a part of something that we can default to in the process and also allows residents to see how it's done you know gives them again a little bit more trust in the program and what we're doing and it's a little less invasive one of the challenges that we've seen with our in person as i'll get to comprehensive evaluations is that they are inside of their homes about two hour long two hour long services you're not paid for them up front although they are valued around 300 um but residents do find that a little bit invasive um

040we've seen in the area that residents are worried about you know that the state of their home um you know whether that's cleanliness or need to have updates on their homes um or they're you know we've been home ridden as a society for two and a half years at this point i think we all have things that we are a little bit worried about when it comes to how we're living right now um but obviously that's very accentuated in um under-resourced communities so some of the things that we're looking for going back to weatherization electrification when we go into our homes is um you know do we need to make any basic repairs on these homes you know is there a hole in the roof and that's why someone's not interested in sustainability i mean

041i um that's one of the very specific examples that has really hit home for us is that you know we want to go in and talk about you know changing their stows and you know getting into like different discussions of um you know electrifying their house so they can get solar panels someday but that's not important to someone who has really basic needs like getting their getting their roof fixed getting installation fixed up and obviously those things all lend themselves to sustainability so we want to ensure that we're making homes comfortable for everyone as well we've really we started you know a part of that too as our language towards these evaluations is there we want to say their home energy evaluations for comfort and then in addition sustainability we even started out using the

042word audit and that was not a fan favorite so we've moved on from that too um no one's interested in audits you know i'm not i don't think most people are so um that's been an interesting understanding for this as well so big picture when we go into people's homes is that we can gather data and then connect them with additional resources that might be available um so using our home assessments results we can um you know re reduce the energy used by creating um you know using weatherization tools like i stated there's some other programs that we're able to connect them with that can help with those big repairs on my um you know in their roofs and their insulation any big things that they might need windows any things like that um we're

043using thermal imaging tools when we go into the homes for those more comprehensive evaluations the home assessments that we're doing that are self-evaluations do have a little bit of wiggle room with what um what materials and electronics that we can bring in um but for the most part that's something that you really need a professional to come and do the imaging tools are um different i think we can get some of those in the future but as far as um you know assessing how much air is leaving your home through your window we do have a lot more like comprehensive tools that we're using for the in-person ones um and our end game for this too is obviously electrifying the homes to encrypt that make them more efficient um we you know we spent about

04490 percent of our time indoors and electric stoves um versus a gas stove i'm at about 50 to our gas stove emits about 50 to 400 percent more nitrogen than a get an electric stove would so it's far more healthy for our families to be inside their homes if we were to make a change like that but also doing in the math scale allows us to you know possibly get buyer discounts and really make physical changes to someone's home which will increase the trust tenfold in a project like this and one thing that we are using is wanting to use um like an improvement guide for the homes too so if we go into a home and they have x problem we want to ensure that we link them with the correct like resource in

045michigan that might help them whether or not it's a weatherization tool but um just kind of being a human services hub as we are at bcc but ensuring that if we're going to a home we're addressing issues as we see them because nothing's worse than seeing a problem and walking right by it that decreases trust in an instant and they never want to be a part of this project so um that's something that we're working on right now as well just to kind of have a you know someone like me or someone i'm training in the future especially it can look at the guide and say oh they have a hole in the roof or they have issues with their windows go to this resource and we can help find them funding all right and

046then our third one here is public health and human services like i said we want to be able to connect them with other resources in ann arbor or michigan that might already be doing work like this because we're not you know while this going fully decarbonized in a neighborhood is a very novel idea helping residents with issues in their home is not so some of the things already being offered in the city of ann arbor are aging in place and that requires a home evaluation for sustainability so we would already be doing part of that initial assessment to get older folks in our neighborhood which is a pretty decent amount of our neighborhood connected with a resource that would help make those market changes um to their homes and help them feel more comfortable and

047then i as i already spoke out we have weatherization as an option as well for people that has already you know already happening so we want to ensure that we're not remaking the wheel in a way that it doesn't need to happen we want to ensure that we're also being collaborative with our work too um we work with our residents on communication with dte and other providers just to ensure that they can make their bills they're not being evicted they never get any of their resources turned off during the winter during the summer you know always we want to ensure that they're as comfortable as possible and their needs are being met that's something we're already doing but once we get more of this information we'll be able to do that tenfold i have an

048example of some of the information we're able to get at the bottom but what we can get in a residence um uh like online profile in dt is pretty comprehensive um and we have um quite a compilation of their work too so we can see what the whole neighborhood is using as well which helps us a lot in our data collection um also helping renters negotiate changes with landlords because we do have a 50 50 split with our neighborhood while some of them own that some residents own their homes and are you know obviously able to make the decision to be a part of this program maybe not able to you know have the resources to do so but landlords are very um or have been a little bit hesitant to do some of the

049evaluations to remember or to make changes because they may not be able to to the neighborhood while our home assessments don't change anything in their homes they're not trying to sell you anything those are just for information basis or on an information basis um we do want to ensure that landlords know about all of that and we can help renters get this evaluation done and then negotiate with their landlords to you know either provide incentives for them to make these changes but also ensure that their renters being treated fairly as well but we also have a lot of ecological benefits for the neighborhood health but going forward with this project it's not just about electrifying our homes our tree ten thousand trees initiative through ann arbor has also benefited brian as i said earlier in

050our tree planting um this allows our community to get free trees um you know throughout the entirety of this program and it takes away invasive species and it also just allows our neighborhood to feel more comfortable and more like a community um and one of the things that has been historically an issue the bryant neighborhood is flooding um and some of the things that we've been working on um are rain gardens we have one in front of bcc but the master gardening class that was held was actually specific to rain gardens um so that gives our residents the knowledge that they need to um create a rain garden in their home or in their neighborhood wherever they see fit to allow them to have some sort of like personal representation um in uh moving forward

051with that um but then some of our next steps that we have are creating um a very specific communication strategy with the neighborhood so it can be easily replicated in the rest of the neighborhoods that can can influence which again is another huge bonus for canned working on this project is bryant is just one of six community centers we have seven ones in a school but we have six community centers that um influence their own sets of communities brian's the only one that doesn't work specifically with the ann arbor housing commission a lot of the other ones are a lot of our other community centers are inside specific units in the neighborhoods they might be influencing 16 to 30 families but that's still 16 to 30 families in the city of ann arbor and while

052brian might be on the biggest scale it's going to be way easier to replicate in neighborhoods that we have more influence over um so create a communication strategy because you know i'm not going to be here forever crystal's not going to be here forever so we want to ensure that all of our other employees and other people that hop in on this project from any other area are able to go forward with this um we're working on itemized rosters for community interest um so you know while we have resources to do home assessments we need to ensure that we have people signed up for them or on a waiting list to go forward as well and have their availability um and we are saying too as we find more funding opportunities that a lot of

053the funders will come in and ask if we have interest already and are waiting for it so we don't want to have a situation where we get funding and don't have the people in line in order to take part in any of the any of the initiatives um we do have two families waiting on solar fitting for their houses right now too while i mentioned solar and queen to interest which is very very exciting um but still some apprehension from the neighborhood so you know while again i would jump at any opportunity to get solar for my home i think it's very different for everyone what they feel comfortable with so we're really excited that we were able to move forward with that too some of our current funding opportunities that we're working with or

054that are you know lines in the fire are the mcknight foundation which we have gotten money from in this past year but it ends i want to say in about a month but we've already reapplied for that foundation so we should be seeing um we already feel like we have a very positive feedback with them because it's a continued grant um but we get our formal it responds here soon we're working with solar moonshot the trowbridge foundation the j40 fund the j40 fund is specific to energy work in underserved neighborhoods um that work with a government enterprise and a non-profit so we are a very good fit for this so i have my fingers crossed for them as well an epa grant to deal with doe weatherization and leap so we have a lot of

055opportunities here going forward for funding not just for community resources but also hoping to get someone here on full-time employment or at least part-time employment um so then someone like me or someone like crystal can have the the ability to stay here longer on a different basis because my best year is only one year but the hope would be that i would stay on to the project longer or that crystal would be able to take on you know greater responsibilities like i stated earlier it's great to have a lot of people involved but having the same people creates a lot more trust for the neighborhood all right but that's all i have so if you have any questions feel free to jump in but thank you so much for having me um i have a

056question from mark cleavy so i have uh two questions um one of them i i very much appreciate the messaging difficulties between audit and assessment but i also um having run a lot of these programs myself at the state and local levels know that um using a standardized audit methodology is is essential to getting funding from michigan saves and and so those so i guess my question is not so much concern what you're calling it but you know are you using a standardized methodology industry accepted methodology that you know reputable financial institutions would would recognize like michigan saves because their loans require that the assessment either solar assessment or energy efficiency upgrade assessment that assessment be included in the loan packaging um so are you are you using a standardized methodology for these assessments well

057i think part of the messaging that we like what we're focused on is just ensuring that the residents are more um like gauging how a resident will respond to the wording if we have any funder that needs it to be out like you know uh what's the word i'm looking for um worded in a specific way we still call them audits amongst ourselves um or assessments you know here and there sometimes it's evaluation we really have focused on evaluation for the area um as far as residents go because that has seemed to work the best and we get the most responses um but in our like cool conversations between like me and osi we've been using assessment but like to answer your question point blank if someone needs it to be called something else as

058long as the structure is there and it looks like what they need it to be as far as what an audit includes or the assessment includes we are our verbiage stands is whatever the funder would need okay yeah mark can i pick up that really quick because there's new ones here i think one is that all of the the assessments whether it's virtual or of course if we have a home energy you know auditor coming in they actually do meet the home energy score requirements but it's plus it's and there's so much more that the neighbors have identified and second a lot of these households are not going to be eligible for machine safes products which michigan saves is one of our collaborators they are economically out of the lending space version so we're trying

059to fix that with a lot of the grants workers doing okay so great uh second thing is this issue that's come up between the environmental commission and the energy commission since since i've been at it has to do with tree planting so i love the 10 000 tree planting um my question is given the fact that you're trying to do solar and some of the people in the neighborhood have obviously wanted to do solar and i've done solar assessments in that neighborhood myself as well as larry and others is the decision being made every time someone plants a tree is that siding is that uh solar access being taken into consideration because we can you know do an awful lot of damage uh you know what basically if you want to do solar when we

060throw people in into the lap of dte is their only option by covering up their roof with a tree um i think you know we're shooting ourselves in the foot so is that happening is that um somebody making a decision yes we're going to plan tree and we're going to plant here instead of there solar access is it being protected i'll put that question to missy because i'm not personally involved in the 10 000 trees initiative yeah it's a really good question and i'll say that we haven't approached it yet because we we've only done the tree planting we did is uh the 10 000 trees you're familiar with we have the free tree giveaway this is the community tree planting and which these are big trees you know like 150 300 sized trees so

061we only planted 20 of them in the neighborhood and i don't think any of the placements because i was on site doing tree planting would interfere with solar access based on like we planted far off to the side as opposed to like impacting southern exposure but i think your point is a good one that we need to integrate that as we do more of these events so when i raised this point um you know six or seven years ago at the beginning and several times other the answer i've gotten back um from previously from matt naught and others um on the energy environmental commission is well it's not something we have to worry about because we can just do community solar and as of today i checked there's no consumer community solar law passed in

062michigan um and i is doubtful we will have one so this issue of uh you know being sure that we're not disrupting uh distributed generation isn't just philosophy it's not just a nice thing it is we have an opportunity to expand our tax dollars to in the words of chairman mursky optimize the impact we make on climate change um and so i think we need to you know be sure that we're not shooting hurting ourselves doing doing something i'm all for tree planting i love the idea but i'm also also want to see the sustainable energy utility work and if we start covering up roofs um we're not going to be doing ourselves any favors and bryant neighborhood is an ideal candidate for a community solar project underneath a sustainable energy utility so thank you

063i apologize for the background racket here at the office but um thanks for the presentation madison well done um i also a big supporter of bryant in fact i have two children that went to bryant elementary i did probably one of the first energy audits of the school didn't have very good results i remember that and getting into the dispute with the school board a little bit on that but um i just wanted to say you know the goals look great i just hope that you're documenting things as you know the greenhouse gas emission inventory the baseline that you start with from a decarbonization point of view needs to be very carefully built so that you have some place to go from and i trust you're working really hard on getting the boundary conditions laid

064out um if there's anything we can do at the energy commission level to help in that front um there's some of us that have been in that space and can help you in that world i'm sure osi's involved very greatly as well and anything we can do to help is good just kind of curious what your timeline is you mentioned you want to be the first decarbonized community have you defined what that means and what the timeline is to achieve that yeah i think our goal is five years missy can jump in on this one too um i know that it's uh five years is our main goal for that but as far as um itemizing what things we get done in each of those years i think there's work still to be done and

065what that looks like but it's also very fluid with our interest in how we get out in the community as well but i'll let missy continue that if there's more specifics that i um can't answer madison's right 2027 is the aspirational goal that we have okay a lot of heavy lifting let us know what we can do to help absolutely thank you so much any other questions i i have a very quick one hopefully could you give us um maybe a one or two minute overview of the community action network um i heard the organization but that is it and maybe there's others on the call too that are as still informed as i am yeah no problem um so we are a conglomeration we are quite we're lit we're named quite aptly um we

066are a conglomeration of community centers across ann arbor um we have seven community centers that are standalone um or six clinics community centers that are standalone seven including the one that we have in brick elementary we span across washtenaw county because brick is in ypsilanti um we have the bryan community center is the only one that is based in the community that is of homes that are not covered by the ann arbor housing commission but then our others are um housing covered by the housing commission um and then also we are just very much so centered in that community inside of um different units that they might have we offer all three of those main pillars of work in all of our community centers we have food distributions even in our brick elementary to all

067of our residents they come in different days depending on the community center and the need in the community as well also based on different types of delivery methods if we can deliver to the neighborhoods um and so that one is so that's our food security station like i said bryan community cyber covers all of washington county and operates five days per week um so we see quite a few more residents and community members there um that is connected to food gatherers um that is our main form of food distribution um from them as well and we work on tonnage so the amount of residents they get determines the amount of food that we get from them our educational enrichment um is all-year-thematic curriculum we work with students in after school program and in summer camp

068we bring in vistas like me to work in our all year after school program but also bring in our very shortened amount of three-month um summer camp asb staff as well they're through americorps vista or through um university of michigan we get quite a few um pas from them we have a lot of social work students that come in and work at our centers and then additionally we have our um housing and human services so um housing security obviously in the centers that are covered by the commission is covered a little bit differently as it might at bryan community center um but those are our main things um we have one more pillar which is sustainability at the very end too and this project really covers that sustainability sustainable pillar we're working on that very

069specifically with our diversity and inclusion um programs that we're trying to not trying obviously very much so enforcing in our inclusion going forward too but we saw a need to ensure that we're not just helping communities we're trying to get people out of housing commission homes and standing on their own and being able to strive in their neighborhood and strive where they are and thrive so um we uh so that's one big thing though one of the big things that we're working on that we've recently included in one of our goals in our mission um but really those those four pillows are our biggest ones thank you very much missy go ahead you have something you have to say yeah yeah i just wanted to add one additional element of this project and of course

070we've focused and madison's fabulous job on the sustainability elements but it's not lost i think on many people on the line that when we're successful there will be a demand for the neighborhood and so part of what we're focusing on is how we directly confront gentrification and how we focus on intergenerational wealth accumulation and neighborhood stabilization so there are other elements of this project that are very much related to the goals that we have but it's things like if we are able to lower bills how are we helping people with financial literacy to make some investments uh to put that money aside so that they can pass that home on or how are we working with households uh to make sure they have a will so the house actually passes you know to next of

071kin which we sadly had a case that that didn't happen in the neighborhood and so there are other things here that we didn't necessarily talk about but i wanted to name it because it is no one has done this number one and every effort that we have seen that's made really great sustainability progress has led to some gentrification so i just i think it's worthwhile to name it thanks very much uh does anybody else have any questions for madison or missy madison thanks very much we appreciate your passion and your enthusiasm and all the great that your great work that you're doing and everybody on your team go back and tell them that uh we we're really um excited about this initiative and certainly the energy commission um as a commission but also individually and

072the community is there to help support you where where it's necessary and appropriate thank you so much thank you for having me today missy was there anything else on the topic or do we move now on to zach's presentation of her yeah madison would you mind stopping screen sharing that's okay no worries and then we'll move on to herd and i just wanted to share with the commission that we're working on a standardized format to update you on projects and initiatives and brian will be a recurring thing so if you want to join us for a one-off event a public engagement event or if you want to have more sustained engagement we're going to start offering that because i i think after this meeting it sounds like the commission might be interested in joining us

073in that work so more soon uh and with that zach can you please tell us a little bit about what's going on with the home energy rating disclosure program yeah i'd be happy to uh thank you missy thank you chairman commissioners and council members for having me um for those who i haven't met yet my name is zach i prefer him i am a community engagement specialist in the office of sustainability and i'm happy to be here tonight to present on the home energy rating disclosure let me get my screen share going is that coming through thumbs up great um so uh yeah during my time working on this initiative um it was previously known as uh the home energy audit disclosure but given the conversation we just had with madison we up too agreed

074that audit is not a very keen word when it comes to messaging so we changed it to help which is what another community has used is the home energy labeling program turns out that is trademarked however so that's why we landed on home energy rating disclosure so there's some good reason for the name changes um and what we're we're aiming to do with this um let's see there we go um so throughout this presentation we'll cover some of the whys and hows of the program but we'll start with what this program is intended to accomplish in ann arbor um and let's see my computer suddenly got persnickety just moments before i begin sharing so i don't know what you're seeing at this point you see slide two slide two fantastic thank you um we'll try

075to keep on top of that um and so what we want to accomplish with this um is first help prospective home buyers have access to information about home energy's consumption homes energy consumption before they're committed to buying it and this of course gives them a couple of different benefits but the overall goal is that we hope this will ultimately drive a market push that values um energy efficiency so while a home energy rating disclosure like this um uh this initiative officially lies within strategy three which is to transition our homes and businesses to more to being more energy efficient it also helps inform strategy 2 which is focused on electrification a little bit so this is part of a suite of initiatives that we're working on and some of these you might have already heard

076the commercial benchmarking ordinance was passed unanimously by council and that is a reporting program for buildings with 20 000 square feet or more we're also working on a green rental housing program that just wrapped up a task force which put together some policy recommendations for a rental focused policy the home energy rating disclosure will cover um non-rented buildings um and then there could likely be something similar for buildings that are smaller than twenty 000 square feet but that are commercial so this is where the herd rating falls and essentially it covers all single dwelling units either ones that sit on their own lots or what ones that are attached and so why do we need this program well um it's partly because we need let's start at the beginning and i believe most of you

077are so familiar with h zero plan and so that's the strategy two and three that i mentioned in here um and that's that's ultimately why we're starting down this path um because it's it's mentioned there um but it's also part of it these suite of ordinances that i mentioned um but more than that there is some uh drive for this from um the real estate community on paper when they are were assessed by the national association of realtors uh many midwest realtors found energy efficiency to be something that was valuable and certainly something that was important to home buyers when it comes to the operational costs of their homes at the same time there aren't very many realtors that are super comfortable talking about this and so focusing on home energy rating disclosure and supporting

078the real estate community would the intent is to address both of these to bring forward the information that the home buyers would like to see while also helping the realtors to feel informed and know how to educate home buyers on this um so who benefits from something like a herd initiative um well a lot of us uh increased consumer literacy uh when when more home buyers understand um what they're buying generally that can lead to increased consumer action so it informs them about what sort of performance and energy costs and cost-effective energy improvements they could make on their homes uh it also drives economic development there will be job creation and local investment of energy savings um as we start to see the demand for energy efficiency unfold and there's also um community development by

079uh instituting something like the herd initiative it clarifies and addresses some of the energy burden risk especially for low to moderate income households by giving them a more total cost of their living situation there are insights from open data that can drive innovation and inform future policies and finally it's a consumer protection for home buyers uh it it informs major purchasing decisions and the ongoing cost of home ownership so to take a closer look at some of those from the home buyers standpoint it gives them access to energy cost information before they purchase and then it gives them more cost effective energy efficiency recommendations um it lowers the energy costs which uh ideally if the action is taken which supports lower income households and then once somebody owns the house and is looking to sell

080it it increases their opportunity to showcase their cost-effective efficiency upgrades um so what we can see sometimes are increased values uh associated with homes that have high energy scores um and what what's key to that is that it doesn't devalue homes that have lower energy scores so similarly to something like the benchmarking ordinance it's an additive value in the real estate community homes with energy scores tend to sell faster and so that's that's helpful for real estate agents who rely on the sale of homes for their income it also allows real estate agents to provide a better service to their customers because home buyers will feel more secure in their huge investment and it also sort of standardizes a method of discussing energy performance with clients uh kind of creates a more of a comfortable

081space for those conversations to happen uh and then the community also benefits because of course the continued reduction of carbon emissions from buildings uh promotes a healthier safer and more comfortable community and it increases the quality of the housing stock as well um so i believe that most of you are somewhat familiar perhaps with a home energy score um but just to give you a quick overview of how how that works the home energy score is uh established by the us department of energy so this is a pretty standardized means of giving a metric to a home's energy performance there are often parallels drawn between a home energy score and say the miles per gallon rating of a of a standard internal combustion engine um and it just sort of standardizes the language so that

082when there is a number associated with it you know what it means and in a similar way that you wouldn't buy a car an internal combustion engine car anyway without knowing what kind of gas mileage it got it gets we we intend to bring that around into the home realm why would you buy a home without knowing what kind of energy efficiency rating it has and so it's a one to ten scale with five being average uh generally or using more more than 50 of of the homes um so for homeowners and sellers um the way it works to get a home energy score is that you would have a doe a department of energy certified home energy assessor come evaluate your homes total energy use and then put that assessment into a report and

083the home energy score report includes information um of course it's got the home energy score um and the data that's used to calculate that home energy score but it also uh includes home energy use um energy estimates for uh improvement recommendations that have a 10 year or less payback rate and if you're selling that the home energy store is included in your home's energy listing ideally under the proposed herd initiative and then that report is given to the buyer when you go to sell your home when we look at what kind of herd what kind of impact heard would have we we hope that it is huge ideally it will have a big impact um it we want it to be educating the home buyers and um helping realtors uh inform and educate folks and

084kind of drive that market so um the home energy score is intended to recommend certain energy efficiency upgrades that homeowners can make in their home which not only lowers their energy use and their energy costs but uh is a stronger selling point for them [Music] it makes their home more comfortable to live in if they do the upgrades there are things such as dte rebates that you can be eligible for for certain upgrades and those upgrades will be outlined in the home energy score some impacts that we've seen across the country are that the home sell quicker so in chicago for instance they spent fewer days on the market than those that didn't have um a home energy assessment and in in portland uh it informed a lot of respondents on what they might invest

085in in the first year uh we found that the first the projects that are chosen within the um sorry the most projects that are uh decided upon for new homeowners is are made within the first year those decisions are made pretty early on and so when you have a home energy score that's available to them when they buy the home it helps inform those decisions early on and in austin texas 12 of those actually acted upon that information um so the ac triple e which is the american council for an energy efficient economy ah got it just released a report that reveals um that moderately and severely energy burned residents increased pretty drastically in 2020 it's probably covered related um but it was already on the climb and um when i say energy burdened that

086means if you're moderately energy burdened that's you're spending 30 or more of your income on energy costs or severely is 50 or more of your income on energy costs um and that that um obviously is is a concern for many residents um particularly those who are low income because chances are good that they're paying more of their income towards their energy costs uh and so something like a herd initiative would help reveal more of that total cost of living sometimes you'll see that denoted as tcl in certain reports and it makes home ownership a little bit more accessible if you're getting a more complete picture out of the gate from the get-go um so there is a bit of a catch uh with with the herd and um that is that we have found that

087there has been some lack of expressed interest anyway from homeowners um or home buyers rather when we have we've met with a number of different agents in ann arbor and uh they have all said that um that uh there is not a lot of interest from home buyers um and they'll say that they want it but when it comes down to choosing between an energy efficient home or not usually the energy efficiency loses out um and we we believe that it's mostly because that cost benefit um of spending a little bit more money up front to get the energy efficiency uh in exchange for lower operating costs is kind of lost in translation fat communication is not clear at this point we don't believe um and and we've got this information because we've met with

088several agents representing like reinhardt realtors and keller williams and berkshire hathaway and howard hanna um some of the largest agencies in ann arbor uh and and i specifically chose agents who have pursued certain designations like eco broker is one designation since ecobroker was established the national association of realtors released a green designation is what they call it now and so i've met with both eco brokers and green designated realtors um because they i chose them for their understanding of the topic um and they say that while home buyers want energy efficiency they're not quite yet willing to prioritize it um and homeowners are uncertain of the benefits um [Music] and and they'll end up choosing other amenities if you will over energy efficiency i don't believe uh i don't like to refer to energy efficiency

089as an amenity but that's that's how it's seen pretty pretty wide pretty widely and we don't yet have a local example of success um for a similar ordinance so ann arbor area realtors are a little hesitant to be the first to make that move um and um for for instance in when portland passed theirs we saw a lot of other municipalities follow suit pretty shortly after hillsborough oregon bend eugene milwaukee but but in michigan there aren't any yet they have quite this ordinance so ann arbor would be one of the first and there's a lot of hesitancy when we talk among a lot of the agents and one thing that a lot of them mention is that though a home energy score costs roughly 150 dollars that generally isn't the final determinant for home buyers

090um they find that uh it there's a lot of process that's added and that is where there's a lot of hesitancy so that said um we used all of that information to sort of to inform a program uh and and how how we want to develop it um let's see here um so this is kind of a timeline for what we're working with uh starting from now this this timeline dates back a little bit to when we first started working on it and at that time we worked hard to build upon the work that was already done by this commission in the past and we also began engaging with real estate agents throughout ann arbor and we've had a number of discussions with them to date simultaneously to that we began seeking out additional resources

091such as national cohorts of other municipalities who were exploring similar initiatives and and work with them to kind of learn together what everyone is experiencing there has also been similar ordinances across the country that have been passed and um there are there is a lot to learn from those examples and so we've been meeting with several of those municipalities to hear about their experiences as well additionally we participated in a working group with rmi who had completed a lot of research and analysis of these other municipalities and as well as certain different policy pathways they analyzed both the successes and some of the challenges that a lot of these municipalities have faced and so as we grounded ourselves last year in the best practices research we also gained a better understanding of the perspectives held

092by agents here in ann arbor and by our own city's leaders and we decided to take a closer look at our approach to this work and to this initiative and based on what we have learned we decided to take a blend of a voluntary approach and a pilot and i'll talk about those a little bit more here in just a moment but those are currently in this timeline are things that we're working on fleshing out and developing and we are focusing on strategic stakeholder engagement and building some partnerships with organizations who can help us do these home energy scores and support the market that that would drive once we um have that developed and ready to go we'll we'll go ahead and launch that pilot program and and get that implemented uh later this year

093and we'll gather the information that we can from that pilot and do some program assessment we'll make any adjustments as necessary and then open it up for public input so that we can we can hear from the public about what they think um and what their desires are or get some feedback on the policy as it was presented uh and then move it forward to legal review and and get the ordinance um approved um and so according to this timeline we're aiming for early next year for that to have all been completed so let's take a little closer look at um sort of the program development that we've um landed on um there are similarities between the the soft launch and the phase-in of the benchmarking policy so um if for those who are familiar

094with the benchmarking policy or for those who aren't rather we're starting with the largest square footage buildings and we're phasing them in and we're lowering that square footage threshold so that more and more buildings are included in the policy or in the requirement year after year but that's not to stop anyone from benchmarking um right now and so that's what this voluntary soft launch would be is that we will do education and outreach to inform realtors of what they can do right now and encourage them to start getting home energy scores on homes immediately um [Music] meanwhile while we're doing that we'll do a dedicated pilot we've already identified some realtors who are interested in pursuing this that would sort of champion um taking this on and and through that process we can i identify

095certain hiccups and um that that might arise but more so we we believe that it will demonstrate the ease of use how simple it is to get a home energy score for homes um and and really get the word out there about the intent and they we have we're building some partnerships right now that i'll talk about in just a moment that could be offering some free or reduced assessments through through um this pilot program um and actually let's just go ahead and jump to those so walker miller is a um [Music] is a detroit based company they focus on lower income energy services they are a private entity that can set their own program qualifications and so that sets them apart from federal programs that have a qualification maximum of 200 percent the poverty

096level but walker miller can set whatever they want um they have a full-time auditor on staff who and and they intend to expand um and they they focus a lot on workforce development it's a core competitive competency of walker miller and so um we think that walker miller could help us educate and inform the market in terms of the home energy scores and realtor engagement there's also the green home institute they um are have a lot of expertise in issuing certificates through the green home professional um institute and home uh home energy score assessing lead accreditation they've got a ton of different certifications that they certify for and they can also help meet the demand as needed for home energy score assessors um we're also working um with the ecology center who has a a

097lot of experience with climate action especially when it comes to um uh policies there they've got a strong advocacy network and we believe that they could help as well uh with some of the promotion of the the work and we've already began um the communication with them and finally michigan saves uh to kind of complete the picture we want to make sure that once we have given home energy scores and informed homeowners of their their energy demand we want to connect them with funding opportunities and competent contractors who can help them do the work that they have identified in their homes um so on that note i think i'll i'll wrap it up here and see what kind of questions that we have but otherwise thank you so much for having me thank you zach

098uh questions for zach mark commissioner this is a question for i guess zach and and missy um i know that the sustainable energy utility unlike the detroit edison consumers energy um actually has an incentive to have their customers be more energy efficient so i would assume uh preferred from missy that energy efficiency services and and uh programs and stuff would be very important to seu so my question is missy is is the herd the tool that the seu would use to evaluate homes and would the you know standardization of the herd used across the board and for homes that receive staff city dollars and help under an seu model i heard would be it and will be at some point a powerful tool i think for the seo and whatever we're doing because it's giving

099us strategic information and really customized information on how we can help homeowners new homeowners make improvements in their homes that improve comfort and accessibility and then the seou if it exists is the vehicle by which we can help them make those improvements finance those improvements which is pretty exciting i'm going to take that though mark and go one additional step further that zach didn't talk about you which is we had explored with the department of energy can we pay as a city for people to get certified as home energy score raiders and the answer is no okay we're very clear that we uh you have to go through other training to get that this is an add-on and so that's sort of stymied us but here's something we can do we could eventually hire a

100city person that does them yeah yeah yeah right but i guess that's something right so but i guess is this the methodology in other words if you know let's say we have a a home that wants to use this solar program put solar on their house but the city's gonna going to go and do that the amount of energy that the city the homeowner uses and potentially wastes reduces the value of the investment of the city putting on so there has to be some kind of a a standard um and a you know a scale based on btus or or watts per square foot of the house it has to has have an energy performance standard i guess it looks to me like heard is that standard that the city's adopting is that you know

101we we're gonna end up with two different systems here or is the seo is that is it your expectation the sedu you and the city will both use heard yeah to clarify heard would be about information uh it is not a building performance standard so the yeah i thought the home energy standard the doe enter h home versus building performance standard would say if you don't score a certain level like you have to hit a certain mark within that system right right right right that's the distinction i imagine that they're i i think you're raising a really good point and we would have to get to that structure figuring out what's the goal within the seo to get to a certain home energy store and where are we making investments right there's a prioritization sort

102of factor in there so we haven't gotten there so if the energy commission were to support herd are we you know helping the seu or or not or just you know you are helping the community you are not hurting any other path that we might take okay thanks remember breaks thanks um so if i'm understanding correctly uh this is sort of it's kind of at the phase of beginning to pilot this and the hope is that you might be able to move relatively move through that and by next this time next year that we would be looking at um but potentially an ordinance that city council would look at adopting is that right do i get that timeline right yeah and so i'm curious what the time frame is for some of the other communities

103that have adopted ordinances like this if it's um if the housing market was different because i can imagine that one of the reasons that this isn't particularly uh um a big interest of folks is that they're trying to find any house that they can afford as opposed to you know whatever the energy audit might say so i'm curious how does the the time frame for some of the success and the data that was captured in those other cities like what do you have do you have any sense of what the housing market looked like there i mean austin obviously is a very it's a growing city with affordable you know some of the communities that were mentioned or not affordable communities so just curious yeah that's a great question a lot of the communities um

104passed theirs at differing times than um what we're seeing now so with in this post-pandemic world the housing market has kind of gone a little haywire so i'm not sure exactly what parallels at this time in this market we could draw between uh what existed when those were passed but um i mean we're talking about the likes of portland that also has a very hot housing market um so i don't think i don't feel like i answered your question there it sounds like it was you know it's varied and there are some things that are comparable here i guess my my concern is a little bit just um the reality of folks that are trying to kind of buy a house in the ann arbor market and it's people are very different sort of um

105just it really varies but i'm wondering i mean it seems like the real benefit of putting this in ordinance forum is really the educate the information that the city is going to get in terms of how these houses rank and then the ability to potentially approach a whole bunch of homeowners new homeowners at the same time and try to figure out kind of efficiencies of scale in some ways because i can imagine folks are feeling a little house poor at that moment in time um and so i'm curious kind of how how because it is hard you know like that that when you're first in a home to sort of um prioritize making those investments um before you kind of lose that report and that information curious how you're kind of thinking about that yeah

106um one thing i heard you uh mention about the city collecting data i want to make sure that it's clear that this isn't about the city collecting data the primary goal here is to inform home buyers and we want home buyers to have the information and in fact in the draft furnace there is no [Music] requirement that the city uh that the information be provided to the city the city will verify whether or not that information is um being shared on the uh home listing for instance and um and and will enforce making sure that it is is is there um ultimately when once this is in full implementation um and to that note i also just want to point out that this is one pathway that we've developed um based on some of the

107best practices that we've learned from rmi and some other existing ordinances that are in place in other cities there that this this timeline is is based on that really strategic stakeholder engagement which is something that we learned from rmi was pretty critical in a lot of other municipalities almost all of the municipalities that we talked to in oregon for instance are uh were had a hard time with with the realtors and it's uh it's they're a well-organized community and rightly so this is where they make their income so you i cannot fully understand i wouldn't want somebody else coming in and disrupting my workflow um if it if my income uh depended on it but um i think that's where the careful education and outreach comes in is because as we do careful um engagement

108to make sure that they are properly informed on what this is intended to do i think it would um it it could behoove us to do that but i mean yeah no i absolutely i agree they are um they're definitely you know an influential organization the um and you know it makes sense to to engage them early and and often in terms of crafting the program and figuring out what you know what pieces they think would actually be beneficial in terms of um making this of you know seeing this as something of value to the folks that they're trying to sell homes to because if if what they know is that the reality is that this is something that people you know say they want to prioritize they don't really come you know they don't

109really and they're really do that are there ways that we can craft the program so that it becomes something that then does demonstrate value and i i guess i wonder why i mean i'm definitely on the spectrum of being comfortable with data being shared with government so maybe not everybody is maybe that is not something that everybody welcomes but um i i would think that actually us receiving that information then allows um the city to kind of go out as we have with the solarize program in some ways and be able to then offer cost savings for residents and so that would seem to be a bigger selling point but i'm kind of curious why is it crafted that we wouldn't get that data um well uh i suppose there's no reason we couldn't uh

110at that in i think at this juncture the the reason it wasn't is because most other municipalities are not requiring that um because the focus is more on homeowner or home buyer information access to information than it is about the anything else but uh i'm i'm happy to explore that yeah i need something to explore i don't know if it's you know it worth asking others i i you know if i may weigh in on in that particular point um so i was also involved in the early efforts behind the ordinance and um we had multiple conversations with portland and a service provider that was helping portland and everything that zach said is correct as far as the primary objective um but portland specifically mentioned that a byproduct if you will or an additional benefit

111was exactly what you're getting at um this information because it's in appearing in the mls is therefore in the public domain and they were able to look at that data and it's fairly randomized because you're having home sales all over the place so um obviously not initially but over time you're starting to get a pretty good understanding statistically of what are the home energy scores in various neighborhoods and what kinds of things are potentially identified as needs in those neighborhoods so that is indeed a secondary benefit um at one that might then help us further down the road um with the seo and with electrification and other things like that so um at least portland mentioned that i don't recall other cities mentioning it that doesn't mean that that wasn't a benefit elsewhere if i'm

112in japan i wanted to elevate something that zach said and i want to cushion it in the sense of i can understand that there's likely a lot of frustration that this hasn't kind of moved forward yet and i don't know if folks caught it that zach was talking about this collaboration that he's a part of with other vanguard cities that are doing this work and there was some look forward and a lot of look back on what they wish they would have done and i think that's the recommendation that's being brought forward is taking those lessons and thinking about how to craft this i i recognize we could choose brute force you know and move this forward we're trying to present something though that actually has in perhaps an idealistic sense i want the realtors

113with us like i want to get to a point where a home energy score comes onto the market and realtors often work with their clients and gift them something at point of sale what if that gift is actually an a20 packet and information or the beginning of an audit or or some sort of improvement like how do we this is information how do we get to change right like how do we create a culture and an ecosystem that fundamentally moves from a home energy score to transformational practices in the home that improve comfort health and safety so i i really want to applaud zach i know this is super super frustrating but he is trying to think about a program and i i just i think that's really that's frustrating that's hard work but thank

114you zach yeah thanks from others or zach did you want to say something or somebody else i was just going to say thanks to missy for that that phrasing that that's exactly what we're doing um you know i by and large it's in place um if the commission chose to do otherwise we theoretically could um but or no not but and at the same time there's there's information on on how other others have done i i feel optimistic because um the likes of hillsborough oregon for instance and another uh municipality that is escaping me in what might have been minneapolis have some great success stories with uh winning over their local board of realtors and it created a really strong bond they found that their realtors turned into their greatest advocates for the program and

115now they have a pretty successful and high um compliance rate so um that we're you know we're trying to use the information available to us to to craft this as best we could anyone else if not then um i'm going to speak up and this is probably going to be um of no surprise to zach and missy because i communicated with them over the weekend and posed a number of questions so um i want to go on record at least personally that um i would like to see us move as quickly as possible in implementing the herd program in the ordinance um as was mentioned um this is something that has been roughly three and a half to four years in the works um and we to to use the words of miss appleyard who

116called in earlier um the area under the emissions over time curve is extremely important and my my belief is that and this goes back i participated in two meetings with um the three members of the executive board of the uh realtors uh so-called the the board of realtors um the issues that are of concern today were the same issues that they had when we spoke with them two years ago they haven't changed um and they won't change in my view um in the next nine months um there is clearly a tension between ramming something down someone's throat and quick asking but my my concern is that we with climate action are going to be confronted with this in nearly everything that we do and maybe this is not a good analogy but we're going to

117have a climate uh millage on the ballot and if 60 or 51 approve the millage then there's going to be a lot of other people that aren't happy about it and that's going to be true with just about anything that we do there's going to be individuals and constituencies that fight this but i think we have to be driven by the crisis um it was declared an emergency by council but i think a lot of people would say that we're in a climate crisis and therefore um you know our job is to advise council my belief is that we should move forward as quickly as possible and that will be something that council determines in talking with staff and maybe inside conversations with members of the commission but i feel very strongly that there is

118a while there's benefits to waiting there is a significant opportunity cost roughly a thousand twelve hundred homes are sold in ann arbor as homes and condominiums every year so we're losing that number of data points um every year and uh you know i'm going to just bring up one other point when this was first posted on the presentation was dated in september and now we're in february and um you know we're losing time so every single one of the actions that we take i think it's really important that commission and staff and council think what are the trade-offs what are the opportunity costs what are the benefits and i'll just finish by saying one more time let's move quickly commissioner over back yeah i think i have to just weigh in briefly i totally agree

119with john you know if we have a decarbonisate you know a net zero by 2030 which i believe council you know has spoken on right um that's going to be impossible unless we do everything we can to move it ahead fast um you know we don't have any time to waste so i think we just have to give this a shot and if we get resistance we have to listen to that resistance and work out a an alternate solution but the sooner we push it through or recommend it the sooner we hopefully will have this kind of ordinance it makes total sense we're just not i mean if to decarbonize all the homes and buildings in ann arbor we have to do this um so that's my two cents thanks commissioner just a comment another

120question um you were talking about the uh talking with the real estate association and their position hasn't changed nothing's changed in two years um when i was the we took this to the state legislature in 2008 when i was managing the better business buildings program for the state and and have the same conversations and you know it hasn't changed in lansing either since then so i couldn't agree with you more that um you know all pollution is local so we better deal with this now so um so my question is this john if we can we put i know that we have a lag of a month so if we get a resolution you know put on the books today then we vote on it at the next meeting um do you have ver words

121verbiage you'd like to use it to propose for a resolution and if you do i'll be happy to say so moved and get this thing moving um if you got verbiage let's get it going otherwise i'll just say i you know propose we craft a resolution and somebody can second it but whatever whatever your privilege i think we should do it as oh well to answer that off the cuff because the idea i hadn't thought of before until um it came up uh tonight um i don't know that frankly we have to do a resolution um it's a formality i think one option we could do is have a show of hands um who who thinks we should move forward as quickly as possible um and the other is that um we basically follow the

122timeline and um simply osi and council would take that into advisement that's all we can do anyhow so i don't know that we need to craft a bunch of whereas statements and have a first reading and a second reading and everything else there may be benefit in that and i will yield the floor to council member briggs she had her hand up before that but she may want to comment on that yeah thanks sounds like piano practice or piano banging has begun in my side room um but i understand the desire to move quickly on this i understand the frustration of seeing something that's been sitting that feels like it's been sitting for a long period of time and seeing the resistance that happened a couple of years ago and feeling like it's still there

123i will say from my vantage point it is a heck of a lot easier to to move an ordinance forward and get support for it at the council table if in addition to the voices of folks that are opposing it there are voices of folks that support it and so this pilot program that's moving forward is building support from the real from folks that work as realtors and so and can speak to the success of it or um speak to the benefits of it and so i would prefer to at least see i mean as quickly as we can move forward i would think means helping to learn how this can work and be supported in our community and and be successful and honestly get just getting that getting the scores isn't enough we have

124to have people who are doing something with those scores right and so we want them to we want the realtors to be excited about it and talking about it in a positive way and there's taking a little bit of time to get that part right can build success for the program in the long term and so you know if we can't get there um after our pilot program then maybe we abandoned that idea but i would at least since staff seems to be working on this um i'd like to give them that opportunity to to build some support and to build some ideas for how we roll this out in the most successful way that's possible in our community any other comments so i'll weigh in again um you know that that overlaps with osi's

125position um i still feel strongly that we're going to with this pilot be working with realtors that are already inclined to support this um and certainly it will help to have voices in the realtor community that are supportive of this i just think that um what we're going to be confronted with every step of the way going back to commissioner overpeck's uh statement is every time that we do something with climate because because there is no social cost of of of of carbon in any of the calculations there are going to be people that are going to be um lined up against what we're doing so i think we just have to be cognizant of speed and one of the uh things that we talked about when we talked about these renewable energy criteria and

126principles is the principle of speed and i think we have to to really members remember that and there's going to be resistance um against this and there will clearly be in this case um but i think at least i'm belaboring the point you know where i stand i encourage others to speak up before we leave this topic and move on to the next one any other so commissioner levine sorry uh yeah i mean i'm kind of torn on this topic it does seem like something we talked about maybe three four years ago so it does seem like the idea has been around for a long time um on the other hand i do like the idea of getting more support behind it because the realtors are the ones that are ultimately going to be very

127involved in the program um my concern with the pilot and i don't fully know if there's a great way to fix this is that the benefit of this program as i see it is you can compare multiple properties that you're looking at whereas in a pilot i don't know how many people are going to be involved so a homeowner comes along and wants to look at some houses they're not going to have a lot of choices of ones that have these scores so i guess that's that's my biggest concern i guess is how are we gonna make a pilot that is gonna be be uh effective in showing how well this is going to work mr cover yes um i i fully support the concept and moving quickly but i also have to step back

128a bit because there are a lot of things that are on the plate all of which will need some attention and some support within the community i don't think you can assume that that support within the community is unbounded i think there is a limit and so because of that i think you really need to prioritize all the top things that you need to accomplish to get to the 20 30 goal i'm concerned that if i had to prioritize this this would not be in my top five but i'm just wondering what other people think i'm concerned that the population of the city does not have an unlimited amount of interest in doing all the things that we are lining up thank you any other comments before we leave the topic commissioner colin garcia thank

129you john i'm curious about the the pilot and how much of it has been designed so far if you could elaborate on that that'd be great zach certainly that's a great question um so the pilot right now is still program development um but some of the preliminary conversations that we've had with interested realtors would be getting dedication from the realtors who um would commit to all of their homes that they sell complying with what would be the the herd ordinance um and then using leveraging some of the collaborations that we've built with say walker miller who we've already begun discussion with who's putting together a format for how they could meet the demand for a pilot and or for an expanded full-fledged program [Music] to who could offer free home energy assessments and um the

130pilot i ideally would be free so that it would um show just how simple the process can be and just kind of remove any mental barriers for a lot of the realtors and and home buyers and just and show that it's really just a house visit um prior to the sale and the idea then is that once we have done that a number of times with through the pilot it will give us an opportunity to talk through any hiccups that the realtors have experienced during that time and make adjustments as necessary but also to just show how simple it is and once we have some realtors who uh have gone through the process and understand truly how easy and straightforward it is that that their word among their peers would be um i think that

131would be a strong leveraging tool how far before the sale is this um what's like what is the window of time prior to the sale is there like a limit of time um that's a really good question and where uh the legality or the likelihood of lawsuits gets gets really tricky of course we would want it as close to time of listing as possible um the through some assessments that uh that we've done with uh some legal review it appears that the closer we get to a time of sale i'm sorry a time of marketing requirement the higher the likelihood is that there will be some legal pushback uh from the community um and so the the goal is to balance that to find a timeline um that would reduce the the amount of legal

132um pushback with the um efficacy of having it at time of listing that's that's really the most effective time to have it available um but as we've seen it with some other um policies and legislation in the state of michigan our our current legislature tends to put a ban on things that they don't like outright and so we don't want to the reason we want to avoid any sort of legal intervention is because it could turn this whole thing on its head and we might not be able to enforce it at all which isn't a position any of us want to be in um so there isn't a firm timeline yet um but as the the program developed uh fleshes out we would we would work with different timelines and that's the idea of using

133a pilot is to to to find that process flow and what works easiest for realtors and home buyers during the process do you have a range of number of participating buildings that you would like to include as far as a successful pilot um in my last conversation with walker miller um we we decided that we would try to secure home energy assessments for a hundred buildings which would get us through a couple of months perhaps of of home sales um uh particularly especially if not all realtors are are participating that would get us through more time than that but we don't intend to extend the pilot program much longer than that we don't want the pilot to take a long time are you targeting brokers or are you targeting targeting individual realtors um a little

134bit above um and there's more to come on that yet but the conversations that we've had right now are um with individual realtors who are looking to champion it at their um at their brokerage among their agency um and there is i mean just before this meeting i got information from one of those realtors about others who he would like to recruit to help participate in this pilot so there's there's some certainly some growing interest in um unfolding and unfolding unleashing a unveiling a pilot program um and [Music] again again it's all it's happening as we speak um uh piecing that together so um i guess we're talking about it for you right now sorry go ahead no i'm just you know i'm listening to everything that you've been saying so far and then this

135additional detail that you're providing us and i'm listening for perhaps opportunities to compress the timeline in some way uh to you know minimize the you know the cost of of not having something like this in place for the city but thank you so much for providing this information really appreciate it it helps me understand better um in just a quick note of clarification for my benefit yeah you mentioned compress the timeline there were a couple of different timelines that i mentioned i want to make sure that you're talking about the timeline to implementation of a full-fledged program right okay thank you thank you um i i guess i think in your uh slide sack you highlighted as one of the primary concerns it seems like the realtors not being able to translate what they perceive

136as interest into commitment and follow-through is that kind of a correct way to describe it yeah um it it's it's i think even more than a simple perception of interest um realtors the realtors who i've talked to will say that many of their um the home buyers their clients that they work with will say i'm interested in this if they're asked generally speaking many of the realtors say that this isn't something that's brought up by home buyers i i think there's maybe a chicken and an egg situation going on here is it not being brought up because it's not part of the home buying process yet or is it not part of the home buying product you know what i'm saying um that that perhaps um if once heard is in place it become it

137introduces that as a talking point among these conversations but that the interest wanes once they start getting down to the details of buying a house um yeah i guess i'd love to understand it maybe not at this time but um in the future what are some of those details that might um you know cause them to wane if it's cost or if it's another factor but i guess my other um thought as you're going through the pilot is um are i imagine that the primary goal is really more about the homeowner the home buyer and the benefits that they can just receive related to efficiency um is the pilot gonna be able to kind of quantify or translate that into you know be able to collect and give examples of how much uh home buyers

138might be saving or or other ways that we can kind of really make this a little bit more of an appealing and clear connection for folks i mean is that something that's already covered um yeah in terms of the cost to the homeowner uh cost savings for energy efficiency um a lot of that information is would be included in a home energy score so once that's attained by an assessor they have information um on where to leverage their dollars and what would give them the quickest payback and roughly how much those would cost ideally some specifics of the report are regulated by the doe so it has to include certain information there are some participating assessors who will go above and beyond and include some additional information in there and sometimes that includes certain costs

139but sometimes that's it varies based on location in the country thank you yeah that's helpful i'm just just trying to think through like if there's like a testimonial or something because it seems like that there might just be a a disconnect between like you know the payoff and the benefits the system could provide but thank you so much for that certainly thanks for your questions yeah i just wanted to comment i mean something you said zach made me think about how i i feel like it's very normal when looking for apartments to ask like the landlord or current tenants what the um current like utility bills are and that to me feels something that's like very normalized in in a renting search process um and so like i i do think you know you had

140said like oh it's hard to know if this is a chicken or the egg problem and people don't know to ask if people would be interested once it becomes normalized i think that is true um so i think for me that's something like i would be interested in because that's something i'm used to asking now when i'm seeking um housing and so i think it is something that maybe once it's normalized it'll become normal it will become more common and something interested and i wonder if part of the framing for people could be like i know you know when people are looking at purchasing homes you get like oh this would be approximately your monthly payment right that includes your mortgage your interest and your taxes right like you know this is about how much

141it would cost if the framing could be like okay add you know based on this home energy audit score like add to your monthly payment for this home right um and so then i would be thinking about oh my place will cost twelve hundred dollars a month instead of one thousand dollars a month compared to this home right and if it's framed and how it will impact your monthly payment if that would help convince people commissioner cleavy you're muted mark god um we have a patent guild neighborhood association that i'm a part of one of actually one of the founders and stuff and we've been looking at this issue as part of our solarize patent gout project looking at the issue of um you know high performing homes basically homes that have a high energy

142score um and solar and those that have high energy scores what what difference that makes um and in terms of real estate and you know to the extent that the the association and the neighborhood can position itself as a as a preferred place for a real estate um uh things like that anyway um this led me to hook up with the national realtors association and they in 2021 they published a report this is the national social education of realtors they um published a report called realtors and sustainability report i urge people to take a look at that um there's three i three really important i think findings from that report that might lend themselves to this discussion um first is they quote found that most real estate agents unfortunately don't realize that high performing features

143actually increase a home's value second of all agents aren't able to recognize high-performing homes and subsequently value it improperly and third most most sellers don't know that high performing features such as home insulation and air sealing are what produces lower cost comfort and warmth in their homes so you know i think that this i appreciate the fact that we're gonna we're gonna go out and try and educate the realtors here we're gonna do a pilot program and all that stuff but ultimately um we we have to get this done so i think you know let's let's uh uh communicate to the city council that we strongly endorse the office of sustainability innovations work in this area and that it is our strong opinion that the city commission city council should um expedite this process as

144soon as possible and get us to an ordinance um and do what's necessary to get that done and and otherwise we're going to sit here and say oh well we'll just business as usual and sit back and not do anything i appreciate we'd like to have a in some more data but honestly folks there's a ton of data out there including the national real estate association we don't need more data we don't need more stuff we need to push the envelope and if you know the energy commission's uh stating this in public that we think you know energy efficient homes are a good thing you know um well let's do it let's get out there and let's do it so john i support the thing i if you were to put that forward i would

145certainly vote yes that this should be communicated in whatever form makes sense to the city commission as quickly as possible [Music] um in the interest of time we have one other subject to take up that i'm going to try to deal with quickly um and but i think maybe um it's worth moving on um i don't know that a vote is gonna change a whole lot so i don't think i'm gonna bother to do that i'll just reiterate my point using language of paraphrasing um michael mann and in effect also saul griffith i mean we have arrows in our quiver and we need to be using those arrows this one has been in our air in our quiver for a year and my sense is is that instead of a pilot maybe another thing that

146we should think about is really deep education and engagement with the realtors because i don't think the pilot's going to tell us a whole lot more but that's just my personal opinion and i leave it to council member briggs and uh missy and others to um hammer this out and to see what we can do i think we we know what what the thoughts are of everybody and now the is how do we move forward as efficiently as possible possible taking into account also things like what commissioner kerber mentioned so um if no one has any objections i'm going to close this topic and move on to the next one which is a resolution that was referred by city council to four commissions if i'm not mistaken and councilmember riggs correct me if i'm wrong

147it's energy environment transportation and planning so this is a resolution that was penned by council member griswold and co-sponsored by council member haner and um council deferred action uh and asked that uh the four commissions that i mentioned weigh in on this and so um what i thought we would do tonight and not have a long debate on this is at least in a sense read this into the record um and so everybody can have a chance to look at it maybe have a brief discussion of it i sent out a version with um some comments that i had and so um what i would ask missy maybe is to put the original version up and if we can get a vote um or a motion to consider the resolution in a second then we

148can open it up for discussion and possibly move quickly to my friendly amendments have some quick discussion and then uh potentially vote on it and finalize this at our next meeting but i'm of course open to everybody else's input on the matter council member breaks i realized i probably should open it up for just get into the discussion and then i can say something so for those who haven't read it um basically the resolution name effectively describes um what's um being asked is that it's asking the city to basically engage with the university of michigan and encourage the university of michigan to look into constructing developing 2000 units of workforce housing specifically in this case on north campus and also doing some other things in terms of agreeing on as student population increases together with

149employment population that there we are moving to the resolve clauses um if there be some kind of formula that the university in the city would try to reach some kind of understanding on that the university would implement so here are the resolved clauses and i'm not going to read these what i'd like first is council member briggs to comment and then i'm going to ask for someone to make a motion with a possible second if people feel comfortable and then open it up go ahead council member breaks yeah so um it's pretty unusual for us to have a commit a resolution that comes to council and then get referred to for four different commissions for feedback so i just kind of want to note that um and it wasn't really necessarily specified at the commission

150table um what's feedback would be helpful for the sponsors in terms of thinking about how to move this forward there was some some general discussion at the council table about um about some of the you know some of the pieces around this resolved claw some of those elements that are in this kind of our ability to you know how are we coming up with the specific number you know um and some different elements and some of the different pieces that we're asking within the resolve clause but i i guess um you know it's in terms of thinking about the basic premise here is that we're facing an affordable affordability crisis um housing crisis in the city of ann arbor um and we are trying to figure out what we can do on the city's end

151to um change our housing policies to expedite housing in our community and this is a thought of um you know this is from the from the sponsors this is an idea that you know our partner university of michigan might consider thinking about housing outside of student housing um thinking about workforce housing and how that might play into their um into their goals currently it's important to know that university of michigan doesn't you know like many universities doesn't have this as as part of their um kind of set of goals that they would provide help workforce housing um i think probably there are some some limitations obviously from a private perspective about how we might be able the energy efficiency and what we can require out of that obviously the university has the ability to to

152really um do a lot more if they were to build housing and to build workforce housing and so um it may be helpful i mean to to go away from this discussion and think about it for a month or something like that and provide some notes and and that even just sending those in to the sponsors of this might be helpful but maybe there's some very specific thoughts that can come out of this as as general feedback from the energy commission as well as to um on this on this matter so that's my basic overview this is not my resolution that i bought for thank you um what i would like to do before we get um additional comments um commissioner peck um is get a motion to at least consider this and possibly a

153second um if there is no um intention to doing that then of course um we would drop the matter but um can can we get a motion in a second or okay we'll consider it okay okay from commissioner peck and a second from commissioner calvin garcia and i think i saw another hand um so we'll open up for discussion and i'll start with you commissioner overpay yeah um it's funny i would be interested in in knowing why council's being a little tentative here i can imagine that there's a long tradition of uh sort of town and gown difficulty i'm not sure um but i think this could fly uh i think it needs to be strengthened and at least let's consider we shouldn't be building more housing unless it's net um and the university shouldn't

154be building anything unless it's net zero so um and they know that and they're committed to that already in their carbon neutrality plan they being us so i think we could add that and you could add it in a nice way um i mean it's just this whole thing is just like uh aspirational um but i do think uh the university of michigan is considering some some very visionary changes on our north campus including trying to create some communities of the future and it makes total sense uh in our carbon neutrality plan as well to consider workforce housing um and to re for the same reasons you you know that you have in this resolution which is to reduce the commuting i i think the university is also um thinking of ways uh and what

155i'm pushing for anyhow is to be more integrated with ann arbor and this is a great way to do that um because it's not just the students it's like you said it's the workforce but it would be students and workforce together um hopefully faculty included were part of the workforce um and i you know i think this will be an easier thing for the university of michigan to uh consider and to embrace than than anyone might be thinking that said uh there's a new president being hired now and just announced today is that process to to try and hire that new pros uh president by summer i think it'd be really smart to have this thing done and already communicated at university of michigan before this summer so that the new president would have would

156be thinking about this when she or he uh was thinking about whether to come to michigan you know all of us have to really be a little worried that the new president might not be as embracing of carbon neutrality as the previous president was he was very embracing um and we really want to make sure that whoever we hire you know hire for the new president given the size of an uh university of michigan and the importance to ann arbor in terms of everything square footage and carbon neutrality um that that person is up for what we're asking thank you thanks for those insights um other comments missy would you mind showing the version that i sent to everyone and um i won't belabor each and every point um but i'd like to at least

157call out a couple of points while you're doing that um so these are some suggested changes that i made and i think uh commissioner peck um made a couple of other good suggestions that we would want to consider when we then vote on this i would like to point out that both the a20 plan and the pccn's recommendations called for additional housing to be built in ann arbor in the case of uofm on its periphery which would then apply to north campus so if you can scroll down so there's a few um updated um statistics um in here and i've um footnoted those so you might want to take a look at those um so um some of these are are correct but some of these were a little bit understated so you can see

158employment is up over 6 000 jobs um i tried to get a in the next clause where it talks about 118 private companies have been launched um 31 in fiscal year 20. the number of jobs um i went to spark and they were unable to provide me a number but hopefully i can get that from the university um this clause here come 39 that comes directly from the university of michigan and their website um so what this is basically telling us um and um there's some other slides that i can show either tonight or tomorrow is what we we clearly are seeing is vehicle miles traveled um are increasing the emissions go up with those uh as is reflected in this in this other statement i added and that means also if you're looking at

159impact on individual in individuals and family units that means those people are spending more time in their car and their transportation costs are higher because they can't afford to live in the city and there isn't there isn't frankly enough supply to meet demand um so there's some other things in here that you can read yourself i will send to everyone rather than us looking at them tonight two slides of that back up the two statements that are in the middle of the uh the page there showing that ownership is down in these income ranges weight ranges and not only that um the percentage of or the the percentage or proportion of renters um particularly everybody earning less than 50 000 in almost every range below that has also decreased so that not only are they

160not able to buy a home but there aren't also not able to afford to rent a home um in the city of ann arbor and so missy go ahead and scan down i'm not going to go through i don't think a whole lot more i didn't do a whole lot to change to the resolve clauses um those might be something that we consider but i just wanted people to um see the kinds of things that i added and um i'll open it up for a quick discussion and um otherwise then uh what i'd like to do is essentially record in the minutes that we've had our first reading or review of the uh resolution and that we would then take into account people's uh potential changes um and vote on it in the next meeting

161um commissioner peck were you did you have anything else to say or is your hand just up for before okay so commissioner cleavy um i just was wondering if you could add before you send it out add the piece commissioner said i you know whether it's net zero or perhaps be more specific lead standard um you know we all know you can do a net zero in a whole bunch of ways you know add a few more bicycle racks and and we got net zero so you know let's make sure this housing has insulation in the walls um you know energy efficient stuff it's a meets the electrical code that we're trying to do and hopefully it's positioned so if it's not solar on it at least it's solar ready and so if we're gonna

162put houses in green space let's make sure they face south and you know some things like that so um you know that's let's add that to what you're going to send out because i i agree totally we should okay we're going to do this let's do it right uh commissioner uh so in our uh carbon neutrality work we didn't i don't think we specified a uh a building you know lead uh or anything like that i mean i think we came to conclusion leed isn't really appropriate for this um but i don't i'm not an expert in that space and i don't remember what i know there were some other ideas discussed there were there's a recommendation of seven categories of building and the university is set establishing building standards i know that they're in

163the process of being reviewed i don't know what they what the recommendations were there were recommendations and i don't remember exactly what they were for um residential units but i think something to the effect of net zero makes sense because the university and the city are both pledged to net zero though that's what i would say something compatible with ann arbor's commitment and the university of michigan's commitment to net zero yeah that would work but that would work yes and the other thing is i don't you know i i like distributed solar personally very much and i don't really want to dilute that but i think you know we don't want to be seen as telling university of michigan how to do it you know because their plan right now is to do ground source

164heat pumps and utility scales solar and wind i you know i think there's a good chance mark that they would would like to put solar on top of some things uh but so far i haven't seen any anything in that direction you know so it this could be a community project we agree it's the thing to do but it's not the cheapest thing to do so what i would recommend is we um i'll try to work something in there and i think one thing we can be cognizant of is a not being overly prescriptive and b considering do we put it in a whereas clause or do we put it in a resolved clause um so and the resolve clauses already are basically just that the city consults with the university and is not making

165you know specific demands and maybe the number is something that we should also talk about whether we think 2000 is appropriate number or whether we weigh in and say it should be higher or lower or not specific so maybe those are kinds of things that all of us think about here in the next month and there's no problem in my mind for us to say something like um you know we recommend exploration of uh you know a uh making this a a demonstration development including uh distributed energy on location or something like that but say it in a way that we recommend or something you know not don't get too pushy because i just know some there's still some people at um who just hate anyone telling them what to do you know it's like

166this arrogance or something i don't know what it is so we just have to be a little you know in all leadership is all changing so that's probably going to change but we probably all myself that's all i'm saying right i'm not trying to say be total you know pull all punches commissioner just really quickly um i noticed that there's a lot of capitalized words in there that aren't defined like what is workplace housing i could interpret that a lot of ways i could you inserted the word affordable with a capital i don't know what that means i could define that 100 different ways probably so the sponsors of the resolution should probably look at it in the way of people that don't know better and please define words that are capitalized thank you any

167other comments seeing none uh we will close this topic and take it up in our next meeting and go back to our agenda which is uh reports from osi and news from the commission and commissioners missy you want to start us out sir you bet let me just get out of my notes here great discussion uh sorry before we close that chair mercury should i just send you the notes and you'll do a work up on proposed edits and then we'll circulate it and that's okay you can reflect that in the minutes too okay and if anybody if anybody has any specific comments or wants to collaborate with me as we did on the feasibility study that would not be in the case of a quorum um feel free to reach out to me and

168i'll make sure that we do that in a small group so that we're not violating open meeting act related issues so i'll do it on my own unless i hear from anybody and yes councilmember briggs and i would just i guess to save folks time i think that ultimately that the end resolution here is going to look really different and so it's probably not worth your time really thinking through like do this this exact where as clause makes sense or this resolved clause but um if there are just some general principles or ideas that the energy commission finds to be valuable that would we would you know there's support of this of this idea and then if if we were presenting something that this would be a key statement that might be included in that

169i think i mean it's i certainly i'm sure that the sponsors of this welcome additional edits as well to the resolution but um a general principle might also be helpful thanks for that guidance okay thank you um yeah for the update and some of the things going on just to share the last few weeks have been pretty busy as we prep for the next budget cycle for those who may not be as familiar uh which i also am constantly learning as i'm only in year three and a half the city has a two-year budget process so we're the second year of a of a two-year budget so it's really tweaks and modifications but we have a newest city administrator and so we're learning a process together and their priorities as well uh so that's been

170pretty heavy on our plate uh kind of reframing recrafting and of course prepping for a potential millage and the budget there which i look forward to the body but we've started to really spend a lot of time moving that strategy forward and of course working with counterparts like legal to understand where the lines are uh in terms of how we can allocate those resources and i'm pretty excited about some of them i don't think they're pretty excited i'm pretty excited about some of the ways that we're pushing uh what's possible with uh that potential resource i also wanted to share we're gearing up we'll be filing paperwork shortly to intervene in the dt every resource plan uh filing that i'm sorry the rate case that just came out so we are we're prepping uh for

171that we will unequivocally be intervening uh for those who haven't seen it it's uh it's not great news it's a pretty significant increase in streetlight rates residential rates commercial rates um and we're we're not we're not pleased so we'll be spending a lot of time doing discovery and uh working in that landscape and i know we'll be coming to the commission with our overview but we have 1200 1400 pages uh to get through in that intervention so it'll take us a little bit of time on the opposite side i want to share good news which is the landlord spoiler project is coming soon we are prepping to come to the body hopefully in april uh we would like to come to the energy commission and share with you the project and preview the pricing and

172then the next week go to council uh with the the pricing and the special contract so we can decide if we want to move forward in that so uh we're in my understanding of zt's and final negotiation with the preferred vendor to get to final pricing so we can have that available uh just to kind of fill you in where we go from there is once uh city council considers if they decide to move forward with a special contract that special contract then goes to the michigan public service commission and once blessed by the public service commission the project moves forward so shovels could be in the ground uh as early as the fall if everything moves forward so it's pretty exciting project moving forward um and then i will be coming to you in

173a very near near term talking about the potential for the ppa and some options that we have there so just wanted to tee that up uh this is actually a side project we got approved in our last vgp filing the voluntary green pricing program where we got the landfill solar to be a community solar offering we also asked for the utility to consider a vpa with the city and the judge approved that and so now we're trying to understand for the options analysis what that would actually look like and i'd like to bring that to the body and get your thoughts and reactions on it before we decide how we want to move that forward for those who don't know we are in i have no idea what day it is it's tuesday we're in

174day three of the zero waste challenge here at the city and i certainly related as we think about the circular economy encourage everyone to participate in that we will also be running the zero waste challenge during 820 week and we are working with students at the university of michigan to run a zero-waste challenge in the fall so join any time it is uh really accessible i i appreciate our collaborators and partners uh there's a lot of other things we are working on a written update that i would like to send to the commission in advance kind of following what the transportation commission does so that way you can kind of see the suite of things that are happening we've started a template we're just a little bit a little bit slow to finish that template

175as we've been doing some pretty sweet work uh the last thing i just wanted to share this is for anyone who might be listening on the line and also for our commissioners right now public comment is open on arpa the american rescue plan act spending please cast your vote for the kinds of projects that you'd like to see supported and if you don't see a project that you like and not hopper please let us know it's really really important that we get feedback ultimately council will make the decision but we want to make sure that all of us are hearing from you and there are some sustainability projects but it's your choice you get to vote thanks missy appreciate that update update from and news from commissioners um so i'll hello oh go ahead council

176member riggs um sorry it's debating whether or not this is an update for the energy commission or not um it's on my mind today and we've just talked about u of m so i'll update it um anyway so if uh for folks who are following the um council meeting last night um council opted to move forward with a widening of east medical center drive bridge lifting sort of conditions on that widening um which it will have sort of expanded non-motorized connections on the eastern side of the bridge which is the side kind of closest to north campus but the sidewalk on the west side will be reduced from ten and a half feet to eight feet um and um i am disappointed about um us having not more conditions on that um i'm expressing more

177viewpoints of my own than i probably should at this point but um uh it's sort of uh maybe relevant for this discussion because this was kind of a little bit of a wrestling between university of michigan and the city of ann arbor about what that project should look like and and what what values were important to move forward in that project i appreciate that insight in that news uh so um i will recognize other commissioners but the next point on the agenda is working group updates and i'll ask if there's any updates from working groups and if so if anybody else comes up with another idea i'll recognize them does anybody want to provide a working group update there's a very small update for the transportation energy or transportation electrification group on the electric vehicle

178readiness ordinance that passed early last year there's some changes that are being made i think i mentioned it at our last meeting and that's proceeding um the is going to be going before the planning commission in the next month or so the uh the changes that are being considered um which i will be giving you more of an update at that time they are haven't been solidified yet thank you carlene anyone else seeing no hands uh we'll move now to uh the closing few end items the first is public input so this is another opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes uh if you are watching on ctn please call 888 788 or 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 937-6751 six eight one nine this information is also displayed on the agenda and

179the video feed staff will select callers that have raised their hands 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 plus please press star 9 on your phone and you will then hear an automated announcement that the post is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background noises so that we may hear you and finally please state your name and address at the beginning of the comments if i was smart i would record that and press playback so do we have any caller ending in five three four good evening my name is tom stahlberg i live in lowertown in ann arbor and i want to talk about i could talk about

180a lot of things from this meeting but i want to talk about that last bit the housing resolution um i am very encouraged by the direction that you were taking this in uh i think we have a really interesting uh pro and con a monstrous pro and con with the university of michigan it's like swinging for a home run and you're either gonna strike out or you're gonna get it we can't make the university do much of anything but if they do go along with this they can do so much with this when the university gets something right they really do get it right and then this here's an opportunity if we give them as much encouragement as we can and go ahead and push the limit they'll throttle back i suppose if they want

181to um like i said you're not going to make them do anything they don't want to do but the encouragement and the opportunity are just enormous here and i'm hopeful that one of the things that the university can do is do things that the private marketplace cannot do in the private marketplace there's a lot of things that we are hoping developers will do but we can't well our current ordinances don't necessarily make them do it and sometimes we offer incentives and premiums and we have ordinance trade-offs we might give them oh 30 more height if they add in some sustainability measures or affordable housing but these are options and but the university if they decide to do something they'll do it they'll put in the sustainability measures uh and it's done so we don't have

182to you know on a on a parcel by parcel in the private marketplace hope that we get it and nudge people along so i really think this is a wonderful opportunity um by the way i am a real estate professional i've been one for over 30 years now i'm currently a broker so i have a little insight into some of the other things you're talking about but i want to mention the university of michigan added uh i think about 8 000 new students over the last decade and they put in they have the monkey dorm they took up maybe a thousand beds and the private marketplace let's say approximately four thousand bets we're still short on the number of beds needed just to house these new students that the universities brought in so on the

183one hand they're a wonderful uh partner to engage with this opportunity on the other hand there are we should make them feel a little obligated they brought these numbers up here and because those beds aren't met in terms of supply and demand the you know that's pushed over into the rest of our town and impact and we're also talking about other additional employees that have been brought in uh that number of students requires x number of employees at the university as well so i'm really hopeful that we can get somewhere with this and i'm glad that a couple council members just got the ball rolling and go ahead and take it the next step and i think this is a really good commission to be pushing this uh you are dr stahl's office is called

184the office of sustainability and innovation well just the right department and then the right commission to to push this a little bit you know go ahead and push the envelope on this one it's my encouragement to you thank you very much thanks for sticking with us and thanks for your comments missing anyone else that's all too risky okay so um we are down to uh items for the next agenda and what i'd like to preface any discussion of that with is first of all um when we had our working session in january we voted on topics um those are reflected in the meeting minutes and um we covered one of those topics today and that's an update on the bryant neighborhood that was one of the top vote getters um i want to point out

185and this is something that carlene and missy and i will talk about um with the climate millage um that is something where we're gonna have to have somebody probably come from the outside and talk at the appropriate time when when they're ready um staff is not able to um weigh in on you know the the millage and um they they can certainly ask questions but it it's probably unlikely that we're going to ask staff um to do that just fyi i'm a little bit connected in i um drafted an faq with some previous input that was provided and that's gone back to the brain trust or the that's been working on this so hopefully that's something that we can um hear about relatively soon that's near the top of our agenda but um i just

186wanted to to mention that we're cognizant of what we talked about last time and trying to handle items according to that force ranking that we did so anything else about that list or something that's missing or something that's come up any other input seeing none uh carlene and missy and i will put our hips together as far as the next meeting and missy's already mentioned a couple things that we want to have updates on maybe not next month but soon um and don't hesitate to reach out to any of us in the middle of the month uh missy go ahead i'm sorry i forgot this in the updates but before we adjourn i wanted to share that on thursday night rmi formerly the rocky mountain institute is doing a special webinar on energy options available

187to ann arbor they've customized it for us looking at kind of michigan energy policy what others are doing it's a really nice overview and if you know anyone i'm sure the commission doesn't need this but if you know anyone that might be interested please help us share the word uh about that webinar it'll be six o'clock and you can find all the details on the website uh when you say on the website and uh um both on the city's website if you go to the main site and go to calendar it's listed for thursday night but also at the osi site on sustainability we have an events tab and you can find it there too okay good thanks great tip and i encourage everybody to share that with your networks um i think that's it

188so it is 8 41 and i declare this meeting adjourned thanks everybody for hanging in there and i appreciate the great discussion tonight have a good one you