001and uh commissioner cleavy hopefully and possibly commissioner hook um will have a better sense at the time we take roll call so in the meantime i'm going to call the meeting to order as i said 606 pm on december 14 my name is john mursky i'm chair of the ann arbor energy commission and as chair i'm calling this meeting to order i am participating from my home here in ann arbor in ward 2. welcome again to the december 14th meeting of the uh energy commission meeting um this is an electronic virtual meeting in order to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings commissioners during roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera just as
002you would be visible during in-person meetings also mute your microphones when not speaking public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call one of the following toll-free numbers 877-853-5247 or 888 and enter the meeting id number 6819 on your phone these numbers will remain the same for the entire year for energy commission meetings and this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 a t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn missy would you please read the land acknowledgement i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the industrial traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinaabe including the ottawa ojibwe and
003bodawatomi and wyandotte 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 this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you i just wanted to comment on that briefly because just a little over a month ago there was a study published online in the journal um science it was co-authored by a professor in seas and it it the analysis shows that um indigenous peoples in the united states have um lost
00498.9 of their historical land base since the european settlers first came to the united states and more than 40 percent of tribes um from those historical periods possess no federally recognized land and um in it's rel this is relevant also um in the context of this meeting because a top line finding of the study was that because of systematic land disposition dispossession um enforce migration that indigenous peoples here in the united states um have much higher vulnerabilities due to climate change and i just wanted to mention that um we read the land acknowledgement every meeting but we often don't really stop to recognize what the implications are for the people that have been displaced so um next on our agenda is um the land acknowledgement er excuse me we just did that um the roll
005call excellent let me just transition over just a reminder please state where you're calling from missy one thing um i just got a text from someone listening and it says the ctn um feed is glitching sounds like a fireworks factory underwater ctn is with us and i think they know okay okay very good yeah apologies for that is nothing i think any of us on this line can do same yes okay uh please uh state where you're calling in from chair mursky calling it john mursky present uh calling from my home in ann arbor commissioner hook um commissioner mccomber uh bridgette makumber calling from my home in ann arbor commissioner clevy let me just check really quick and make sure uh yeah he's not in yet okay he said he was going to try to
006dial in by phone okay well then i'll check i'll check that i'll need a separate minute to go and see if i see him commissioner sorry uh yes i am participating from my home in ann arbor vice chair colvin garcia uh president um calling in from ann arbor commissioner mccoy present um and i'm in state college pennsylvania thank you commissioner george present from lansing michigan i'm having some uh visual difficulties so i'm gonna see if i can work that out but that's why i'm off camera at this time thank you commissioner kerber president i'm in auburn washington you uh commissioner overpack i am present uh calling in from my home in ann arbor mr juno president arbor thank you commissioner stevenson uh councilmember rodina president here in ann arbor thank you councilmember briggs here in
007ann arbor okay great and then uh if we want to go on i'll check and see if commissioner cleavy's with us you have a quorum regardless uh just for all the other commissioner's knowledge um commissioner hook um indicated that he was traveling on business at this time and that's why he's not able to join us tonight so we have an agenda that's posted on legistar um and i'm i would appreciate it if we can have a motion to uh accept the agenda as posted and then a second can i get a motion to do so so moved by council member radina a second from someone from commissioner mccoy all those in favor say aye and raise your hand i all those opposed any abstentions passes unanimously um we also um have minutes that were posted
008from our last meeting those are also on legistar could i similarly have a motion to approve the minutes as posted and a second again moved by uh council member radina and seconded by commissioner mccoy all those in favor say aye bye all those opposed so we now move to public input as mentioned this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn call enter the 888-788-0099-487-853-5247 id 937-6751-6819 this information is also displayed in the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one by indicating the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated
009announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments caller ending in 660. hello uh my name is chris tebbins i'm calling from uh isilani um i'm calling uh in support of ann arbor effort or to look at the process of municipalization of the public uh of the utility um i'm a fan of municipalization i think it gives a better local control to the overall process of the uh of the power utility um it allows the power utility to be run by the local government and uh keeps that money uh invested in the community with the public power utility uh providing more
010local jobs in addition i don't think that the way that we are going to be getting out of any future climate crisis is going to be driven by dte dte is notoriously a dirty energy provider has a very strong mix of coal in there 59 of their energy coming from burning coal uh moving to municip to municipalization will allow ann arbor to select a cleaner fuel source for themselves relying more heavily on wind and solar and it will provide a driving force in the local area to help combat climate change so thank you very much and i hope that you support the efforts for municipalization thank you for your comments caller ending in 847 color ending in 847. you can now mute yourself press star 9. we will come back caller and i think it's
011star six to a new just color ending in six six two hello can you hear me hello yes we hear you thank you okay cool um my name's jack suber i'm a lifelong resident of ann arbor i'm calling from ann arbor and i'm also in support of municipalization and a municipalization survey that is not done by dte like the previous caller said dte produces a lot of dirty power you know 59 coal and also municipalizing uh the power like you said will bring more jobs to set up such infrastructure and keep money in the community as well as be likely more reliable on average municipal power takes less time to get back online when it's knocked out by extreme you know weather events which will be more likely due to climate change and also uh
012i had one other thing uh cte often uh up charges uh for has charged over 350 million dollars in uh over than what could be saved if we use uh you know more clean power as coal is becoming less and less economically viable and dtd is also an investor owned utility and it doesn't really represent you know the uh beliefs and desires of the people around our community so that's why i'm in support of municipalization thank you thank you for calling in caller ending in 847 let's try again moving on let's go to caller ending two two eight hello can you hear me yes hello can you hear me yes awesome my name is greg woodring i am the president of ann arbor for public power and i'm calling in as well as the other
013callers today asking for you to support the municipalization resolution to fund a uh to recommend a feasibility study i also hope that you will pass the recommended amendments that would more firmly define the feasibility study as well as at a provision that any such feasibility study should factor in a just transition i think it's extremely important and this is the belief of ann arbor for public power generally that we make sure that labor is thought of first and foremost among the people that will be affected in such a transition municipalization has a fantastic ability to help labor we can help to expand the labor of the unionization of the solar contracting industry through large bulk buy programs and larger installation contracts that if gone through the city would be would fall under responsible contracting law
014which would help give unions a much stronger chance to earn those contracts furthermore we firmly believe that municipalization is the most uh is really the only realistic path currently in front of us to reach 100 renewable power many of the other suggested pathways will certainly help the seu is a great idea that you know public power pulley supports it will help us in the time between when we are able to acquire the infrastructure uh to move more aggressively towards 100 renewable power however it is not capable of reaching 100 renewable power within the city when the 820 plan was drafted it was known that power purchase agreements were the only weeds of effectively reaching 100 renewable power that's why cca was called for if we currently cca is illegal in michigan and it is not
015likely to change anytime soon if we want to be able to reach 100 renewable power densitization is the only realistic pathway for us to be able to execute power purchase agreements within the city of ann arbor and so therefore we should move forward with this planning to take a dual strategy of getting as far as we can with the seo and using municipalization to fill in the gaps i really hope that you'll support this going forward over 100 people have signed a petition calling for the energy commission and council to fund such a study and so i really enjoy i really look forward to the rest of this meeting thank you thanks for your comments for calling in caller ending in 884 i'm sorry 844 caller ending in 844 hello can you hear me yes
016we do all right thanks my name is ian robinson i live at 3435 brentwood court in ann arbor i'm speaking tonight as a long-term resident of ann arbor but also as president of the huron valley area labor federation afl-cio represents about 18 000 union workers belonging to about fifty locals in four counties uh washington county being one of them and the one in which most of those uh members live and work i wanna speak in favor of the two friendly amendments that have been proposed by commissioners george and mccoy to the municipal utility feasibility study resolution that you'll be discussing later tonight we think that it's critical to undertake this study and that we want to make sure that the study is done in such a way that the municipal utility option is thoroughly explored
017and we can fully evaluate the pros and cons of that option and i did want to just uh you know part of one of those resolutions is specifically about ensuring that there's just transition uh language and and intent and uh in the uh rfp that comes out of this process and i just wanted to let folks know that uh huron valley area labor federation has created a just transition committee to work out the details of what exactly that concept of just transition means in particular instances because as i'm sure you're all well aware the devil is in the details in these sort of things and the folks that do the work in the front lines uh electricity and and other aspects of construction and building of these projects have a command of those details of
018sort that the rest of us really um do not have so it's going to be vital i think for us to develop proposals around how just transition can work in particular instances aspects of energy transition and to work closely with the city the county and other entities that are participating in making those changes so thank you very much thank you for your service and have a good evening thank you for calling in caller ending in six six one color ending in six six one all right color ending in three one three hi um can you hear me we do okay thank you um my name is carol mcfarland and i live at 304 montgomery avenue and i'm also calling tonight to ask the energy commission to pass the resolution from ann arbor for public power
019that recommends the city council do a feasibility study for municipal electrical utility um i would like to see a thorough feasibility study done for the city-owned electric that completely reple replaces dte other communities in michigan have already done this and i would urge the city to build ours 100 renewable thank you ending in o2 oh hi everyone my name is ally i'm calling from 920 civil in ward 4. um i am a social work student i'm a master's student i'm a member of geo um and i'm on their climate caucus um i'm really happy to be calling in today thank you all for the work that you're doing i also want to encourage you to support the two proposed amendments to the resolution um i would encourage you all to try to ensure that the
020feasibility study prioritizes the role of unionized labor um part of you know what we're doing with our climate efforts is trying to make our community safe and just for everyone and that really requires that we collaborate with unionized labor because i really think that part of the well-being of our community means that people have access to jobs that stay well and treat people with dignity and our climate efforts rely on this as well i also just want to reiterate that disassociating with cte is in the best interest of our community um i recently read a few articles that describe the immense amount of money that utility companies including dte have received from the taxpayers and pandemic bailouts um so nine companies i i'm reading from bailout watch nine companies receive tax bailouts totaling 1.12 billion
021dollars and it would have cost just 9.4 percent of that bailout money um to prevent every shutoff that was reported i i really don't think cte um as a company who is endlessly pursuing profits has our community's best interest in mind and it also angers me that my taxes are are going to a company like dte instead of helping my neighbors who maybe can't pay their utility bill or who are facing um shut off so i just wanted to um save those things uh yeah i think that's all thanks for thanks for all your work on that you for sharing your thoughts sorry trying to help commissioner cleavy uh bear with me for a second it was 847 that didn't make it no i have i have the list going don't worry i just different
022screens at different times um car ending in six three two hey there uh my name is amir i'm a um grad student and a union member geo um i think the recent blackouts that we've seen across the state show the urgent need for public power in ann arbor they do this in two ways both by demonstrating the looming threat of climate exchange and our responsibility to take action and also the failure of the private sector to make the investments needed to help keep our grid in good shape the day i'm calling to in to support both the feasibility study for municipalization and the amendments i proposed by commissioner mccoy um about the just transition so i think it's incredibly important to include language about a just transition for workers uh in anything about municipalization of
023power we're often presented with a false dichotomy between the interests of workers on the one hand and action to prevent or at least mitigate the effects of climate change on the other we need to put the two together and that's why i'm so glad to see uh commissioner mccoy's amendment truth is that workers will be put at far greater risk if we don't take action on climate change uh but to do that we need a plan that will make workers whole we can't save the planet on the backs of workers ann arbor is already a hard place to live for working people it's incredibly unaffordable municipalization taking the profit out of electricity a basic necessity will help make ann arbor a better place for working people to live that's part of the reason why geo
024supports municipalization and even more so a municipalization that prioritizes and protects the needs of organized labor we need the feasibility study we need to put people before profit and we need public power thanks very much thank you for calling in i think it's worth taking a moment to celebrate commissioner cleveley who's about to join us while you're saying that um i got a message about four five minutes ago saying it's still essentially impossible to listen on cpn so ctn um if there's anything you can do from your end um we hope you're successful with your magic excellent caller ending in two 4 5. call it ending in two four five you can unmute okay hello um good evening energy commissioners i am kathleen murphy i live at 315 in the vista street in ann arbor
025ward 5. i support ann arbor for public power app2 because it has well researched ideas for how our musical electric utility or muni could best meet an average ambitious goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. to do this we need a feasibility study to see if immunity would be possible a resolution to this effect was introduced at the energy commission meeting back in july but the resolution to be voted on tonight no longer has language about a feasibility study for a possible meaning in its resolved clauses i believe however that this can be changed tonight and it sounds like the two amendments that previous speakers have cited if adopted would solve this problem the current resolution does your kitchenaid action on the sustainability energy utility or seu work on the sau should proceed it is
026complementary to the work that a muni could do they could work together but an sdu is limited in what it can accomplish because of the limits on the number of roofs suited for microgrids and it can't initiate power purchase agreements because it doesn't own the polls and wires vte does ann arbor for public power wants to replace vte which many and other residents view as unreliable in responding to power outages like the one many of us experienced for 24 hours or more this past weekend and residents are critical of bte getting 70 of its power sources from fossil fuels at a time when the whole world is trying to use less fossil fuels vte does not have timely plans for scaling package use thus fossil fuels would continue to be the source of anabolic energy
027except for the seu's installation of microgrids and those homes that opt for this new service in summary we need a feasibility study for our munis so it can be fairly considered as an alternative to the investor-owned utility bce that we have now and so it can work together with the sau thank you uh caller ending in one seven one hello can you hear me all right thank you very much my name is susan priller i reside at 1356 ravenwood in ann arbor i am in ward 5. i have been a homeowner in ann arbor for approximately 20 years and i am calling in to support the ana ann arbor for public power um project that has been undertaken in our area i think really i can't add more to what other callers have already said
028so i'm going to get to the bottom line and the bottom line is that ete cares about their bottom line um i am highly dissatisfied with the outages that we've experienced um in fact the joke is you know i was i was completely um anticipating that we would lose power in the windstorm i was proven wrong but i do have to say that over my course of time in you know residing here that dt is not doing a satisfactory job and continuing to have them earning profits and in fact charging higher rates for the electric power that is above the national average uh this is this is getting tiresome um i want to also encourage the members uh to vote on the amendments that has been proposed and other callers have mentioned and i think
029that's all i have to say so thank you very much to the council for your time or to the committee for your time uh working on this project good evening thank you for calling in by the way i was just told by one of the council liaisons that they checked and the ctn youtube channel has clear audio so anyone who wants to watch um should log on to youtube and watch us on the youtube channel go ahead missy yep caller ending 511. hey can you hear me yes we do hello can you hear me yes okay uh my name is jake ingles i'm calling from ypsilanti um i'm an ant republican schools teacher an a member um and a member of puren valley uh dsa um i think it's in the city's best interest in
030order to get become carbon neutral by to cut dte and their pursuit of profit out of the picture um i also want to encourage the commission to support ann arbor public power's proposed amendments especially just transition for labor and that's all thank you thank you caller ending 820. hi can you hear me we do hi my name is phil bianco i am a resident of ward one in ann arbor i've lived here for um got i guess almost 10 years now and i'm calling in in support of municipalization in general and specifically in support of the two amendments the one for just transition for workers um and also the um the other one around the amendment to the feasibility study um that would make it a little bit more focused i think it makes the
031most sense to um you know have a focused feasibility study that doesn't necessarily go into every possible option but goes into the ones that we've been talking about a lot uh over the last you know several months and where you know there's also been a lot of public support shown for it such as you know municipalization and perhaps other options um so i hope that the amendments will go forward and that is all thanks for your time thanks for calling in caller ending in 235 your mute caller ending in 235 i'm not the only one that cannot hear them correct can you hear me okay cool i'm sorry i was talking um hi my name is eric mccleary my name is eric mccleary i'm with clean water action michigan i'm calling about the ann arbor
032feasibility study for the municipality there are two main issues that i want to emphasize with it the first one is equity the reason why muni is great is because it brings our whole community along together um on a journey that gets us away from corporate greed which is the second point um this is a fight that has to be had eventually no matter what i think ann arbor is in a good place to have it now and if we don't have it we're just looking at a bigger fight against dte who we would keep paying to back their shareholders and not the rate payers in this community so um that's why i think we should support these abilities to study thank you for taking the time thank you for calling in caller ending in two
033one eight hey there can you hear me you great um hi so my name is um david christensen i'm calling from 2137 excuse me medford road in arabia's third ward and i just quickly wanted to voice my support for the municipalization uh the feasibility study and in particular the two proposed um amendments to that study to both kind of like focus it and then also include the um just transition for the labor i think that those two amendments are really uh crucial and so that's all i had i think a lot of i think everyone else here has had great points and i just want to thank them and i also want to thank you for your time thank you for calling and sharing your thoughts color ending in 391 hi can you hear me
034yes we do hi my name is patrick dillon i'm a voter in ann arbor's ward 4. and i want to speak out in favor of the municipalization feasibility study as well as the two amendments focusing on a just transition and a um and making sure the scope of the study is is right so i'm a remote worker in ann arbor [Music] and we had a lot of problems with blackouts and over the summer especially um the fact is that's something with remote work kind of turned into the new normal for a lot of sectors if we don't have the infrastructure to support remote workers and if we don't have the infrastructure broadband energy to do that we're going to have a lot of trouble competing for the kind of talent it's going to take to
035that our universities and our schools do such a great job of producing it's tough having to call a boss in california and saying hey i can't make it to work today because ann arbor can't keep the lights on um furthermore dte uh they're an investor owned utility um we know they're going to be more expensive they're more expensive than the national average and that's because we're not just paying to keep the lights on in our own homes we're also paying a lot in the pocket to the shareholders and the folks at the top of dte who make a whole lot more than we do and finally dte it's bad for the planet they're we're not going to be able to hit our climate change goals if we keep relying on coal companies like dte as
036one of the folks before me said uh 59 there's what was it 59 of their energy mixes coal three times the national average if we want to get serious about tackling climate change we want to get serious about supporting unionized workers if we want to get serious about treating our ratepayers and remote workers right then we got to get off dte and we got to support uh municipalization uh thank you very much and that's all i got to say thanks for calling in our ending in two one seven sorry two and seven i talked to you there should be one meet again hello yes we hear you great hi my name is emily brode i am a third generation resident of ann arbor i've lived here my whole life uh and i am also calling
037in support of full public power holy city municipal owned utility that replaces dte um as well as the two amendments that have been mentioned earlier that clearly defined the scope of the feasibility study for the municipal utility and to support a just transition for workers um yeah i think everyone calling in it's been really heartening to hear so many other people in the community care as well particularly thinking about how my parents and grandparents have been affected by the power outages that those have been really hard for them and just thinking looking at this amendment that right now or this this resolution that is you know encouraging partial transition to city-owned power and competition well the interest of this city the interest of the people in the city and the interest of a for-profit company
038they're not the same so when we talk about competition between them dte isn't competing to provide the best quality service they are competing to corner the market and make the most money so to have you know the city competing with someone a company that's interested directly at odds with providing the best quality service in a way that is transparent and accountable and something that should be a right for everyone here to have clean and reliable power that just doesn't make sense to me so i hope you will move forward with this resolution i hope you will move forward with the two amendments that make clear what we are trying to do here and make clear that we are not leaving workers behind in this we're not leaving the people who are you know actually doing
039the work to get our power behind in this transition but that we can we can get this through because you know it's it would be great if ann arbor could be carbon neutral by 2030 it would be better if we could be carbon neutral before then and this is one place where it seems like we can make a really big difference and we need that feasibility study to know whether or not we actually can do so thank you we appreciate you sharing your thoughts caller ending in eight one eight hi can you hear me we do hi my name is chris lewis i live at 323 south seventh street um was also calling in to support the feasibility study resolution for municipal utility and for the efforts to clarify what that what that study would
040do um i think one area that i wanted to emphasize also is the potential for a municipal utility to contribute revenue to the city um i believe last year in lansing the public utility there contributed over 20 million dollars to the city budget and that in holland and traverse city there were also positive revenue contributions to those city budgets and i just wanted to make sure that the feasibility study looks into that possibility as well thank you for all your work on this thank you caller ending in 134 yeah thank you dr stalks and chair mursky this is ken garber 28 haverhill court i really appreciate the time and effort that's gone into the feasibility study resolution that's before you tonight but as i read it the resolution posted on legistar is not about a
041muni feasibility study as defined by other cities that have done them instead it calls for an options analysis there is a distinction immunity feasibility study sets out to answer the question how much will it cost to acquire the incumbent private utility and the question how much will municipalization benefit city taxpayers and ratepayers here's what happens engineers make site visits to all dte substations and also examine transformers and lines for asian condition they calculate average and peak system loads based on regulatory filings and city data economists apply ferc and mpsc filings to evaluation they model future coal gas and renewable prices and derive comparative cost and cash flow figures for dte and for the muni they identify the city's financing options finally they project future rates under both the muni and dte scenarios this is all
042very standard but as i read the resolution it's not asking for this except obliquely it calls on city council to quote authorize and fund a feasibility study to analyze and propose multiple potential pathways the city could take to meet its 820 energy related emissions reduction and clean energy goals end quote that's an options analysis and that's clearly what commission wants city council to authorize and fund but to me it's not a feasibility study maybe the intent is to do a standard muni feasibility study as part of this options analysis so this should be spelled out look i know there's ambivalence on this commission to the idea of immunity the concerns over protected litigation and opportunity costs are wholly legitimate i share those concerns but consider this my rough calculations show that dte is taking out
043at least 22 million dollars in annual profits from ann arbor just from its electricity customers what do budgets look like when the city captures that revenue will it exceed the cost of acquiring and operating the system and if so by how much this gets at the question mr lewis just asked the previous caller that's what a feasibility study will tell us 30 seconds an options analysis won't be worth much without that knowledge all right i'll sum up your resolution as posted calls for an options analysis not for a feasibility study as it's usually defined i suggest that you include a rigorous muni feasibility study in whatever resolution you pass tonight thank you for considering my comments and for your wonderful volunteer work on behalf of the city thanks for calling in caller ending in 661.
044hello hi can you hear me we do hi my name is gus teske i live at 313 montgomery thank you for the opportunity to speak and for your work to help make ann arbor carbon neutral by 2030. especially our source of electricity i'm representing ann arbor indivisible where one of the groups is formed to fight the trump agenda because it's a serious threat to our democracy but we also consider the climate emergency a serious threat and so we support the resolution from ann arbor from ann arbor for public power for a feasibility study for a municipal electric utility we voted to endorse the original resolution last january we're happy to see that you're bringing it to a vote tonight though with some changes uh we support the amendments submitted by commissioner mccoy that clarify the
045resolution uh for to clarify that the resolution is for a feasibility study for a municipal energy utility electric utility uh we endorsed it because we are amazed that the electric service is so unreliable so expensive so dirty and emits so much carbon you know we really want to take a close look at a municipal electric utility it uh if you look around the state other municipal utilities are more reliable have lower rates and we could make ours 100 renewable um chelsea pays 40 less than we do for electricity and they get better service you know we can have nice things too really um okay um we like the muni also because it totally replaces dte um our own utility utility will be accountable to us and that's a big step dte is a monopoly and
046doesn't have to listen to us and we also like that the muni includes almost all of the good things in the seo report they it excludes dte as i said before which is also important um ann arbor for public power collected has collected over 1 200 signatures on a petition in support of a feasibility study for immunity and uh this shows strong public interest to see what a qualified consultant would propose and its cost 30 seconds want to see that information and i imagine we would be an easy vote for that thing so in closing we support the two amendments submitted by commissioner mccoy because they clarify their resolution recommends a feasibility study for a municipal electric utility um thank you for your work on this good night thank you caller ending in 847 color
047and take an 847 you can unmute this is a the one we struggled with before i think that we might want to go on that was our last public commenter i cannot get them done oh there we go uh they're gone now so i don't know what happened uh collar ending in 194 mu we cannot hear you we just heard a click caller 194 i don't know if you can do something again he just muted let's try to unmute again i show them as unmuted obviously we're okay well i appreciate the heroic efforts of callers 194 but um i think we need to move on so um before we move on to the main agenda i just want to acknowledge as missy did briefly um commissioner cleavy joined us so for the purpose of the
048roll call he should be reflected as attending and um i assume mark you're attending from your home in anaheim correct yep very good thanks for your efforts as well as yours missy helped to get him in so we now are on to the two main agenda items um we have two resolutions for our consideration the first is the resolution recommending ann arbor city council authorized a municipal municipal utility feasibility study and before i open the discussion i'd like to share some remarks that i prepared in advance um about almost one year long journey that got us to this point um for i guess primarily the public's sake um first of all i'd like to start out by thanking ann arbor for public power or a2p2 for initiating the conversation on municipalization in late last year
049i and i'm sure the rest of the commission very much appreciate the presentations in our february and july meetings that e2 people representatives made and its proposed resolution calling for the city to authorize a feasibility study of municipalization through condemnation of dte's assets and that was circulated earlier in the year and was formally introduced in our july meeting and i also want to thank again all of the many well-reasoned uh public comments that were offered by residents and members of h2p2 or supporters of a2p2 and we've we've heard and listened to all of those comments basically to every meeting since february and we appreciate them very much in the meantime as a result of the commission's inquiry into possible pathways forward we've had a number of other insightful and illuminating presentations on related topics like
050the legal aspects related to municipalization community choice aggregation and the municipalization efforts of boulder colorado and winter park florida those presentations and other conversations spawn the idea of a municipal sustainable utility or seu a report on the concept was issued by osi in october and presented to the commission in november we now have a new draft resolution and proposed friendly amendments before us for our consideration this evening they are the outcome of a subgroup process that the commission authorized at our november meeting um for the rest of the commission's benefit the subgroup started with the status of the resolution at the end of the last meeting and the votes that were taken sorry about that i'm going to mute for a second i thought that was my heart monitor [Music] sorry about that that was
051a spam call um so so the subgroup started with the resolution at the end of um that meeting um and we created a google doc um people entered comments into the google doc we held two meetings exchanged multiple emails before settling on the draft posted on legistar under meeting details for tonight's meeting and we tried to stay true to the votes taken and the comments made in the november meeting thus far two friendly amendments have been submitted in writing as we've heard from many of the people calling in and they were distributed to commissioners this morning today together they are very close in content to the a2p2 initial resolution but include resolve clauses dealing with multiple possible pathways ranging from municipalization through condemnation to the possible formation of an scu i want to emphasize that
052we are considering and voting on the commission's own resolution whatever we approve assuming that is the case is likely to differ somewhat from a2p2's initial resolution i hope we reach a consensus in any case i'm confident it will reflect our collective ideas on what is best for the entire community in turn we must recognize that our resolution is only advisory and city council may approve a resolution that differs from ours as the saying goes that is how the sausage is made so let's get on to the task of finishing our sausage um missy i would appreciate it if you would uh post or share the draft resolution reflecting the worst the work completed by the subgroup and i hope that all of you have read it and the explanatory comments in the right hand column
053i would appreciate it if someone would make a resolution for the commission for us to consider it and for another commissioner to second the motion and once we head it up um then hopefully maybe we can get someone to make the requested hold on um i can't share and or share and do notes so can we can i see the vote on consideration really quick just get that in the notes please say that again sorry missy who motioned i'm sorry i missed a trial or stupid promotion to consider yeah travis charlene seconded yeah she's giving us she's just waiting a second yes are you able to share the the document missy in a minute digging it up thanks hello there we go so um i'm happy to run through the document quickly but only if
054commissioners feel that is appropriate both for our sake as well as for the sake of the public um is there anyone that feels that that's necessary um it's posted on legistar um this is um very similar to what we um had discussed in our last meeting um there are a few minor changes like using introducing the acronym scu i'm changing revision changes you can see there's lots and lots of various clauses that don't have any changes we made a few changes so that we use pathways consistently instead of ideas and other similar kinds of words um so is um can i see or can someone unmute if they want us to run through all of these um or if um from the two council members is there a need to actually go through this word
055by word i'm seeing knows from my place i mean i think everybody has has it ahead of time so i don't think we need to go through it all unless folks have questions yeah okay good um i i felt the same way this got out um probably two weeks ago um and um there are some changes to the resolve clauses um but they're not anything significant um the one thing that we have done is um as we discussed at the end of the last meeting we consolidated to resolve clauses and move some of that into some of the content into a resolved clause but that would that is right exactly right there um but that would potentially be changed by one of the two friendly amendments submitted in writing for our consideration so we have
056this then open for any other further discussion on any other further discussion before we go to the two amendments i i would like to just bring something up that we received uh a suggestion from a member of the public who has uh as resident in the city is considered a key stakeholder all voices are considered at this point and um would like to propose that we add more detail in the whereas statement number and that acknowledges that the original so the whereas statement number 12 says uh some members of the community have expressed interest in exploring the creation of a traditional municipal utility that would replace dte and i'd like to suggest that we add to that the following with its targeted benefits accruing to all ann arbor residents for one lower electricity rates two
057more reliable service three local accountability in government governance and four 100 renewable electricity distributed to the entire ann arbor electric grid those are 33 more words and um if this is something that would be um you know receptive to fellow commission i would like to propose that we add that do we have a motion to s so you're motioning that we add that carlene do we have a second second okay so that's open for discussion anybody want to comment on those editions commissioner cleavy yes um i you know i i i like the intent um i just want to say that there is no municipal utility in michigan or no utility in michigan other than dte and consumers and other investor-owned utilities that provide power to 100 percent of the customers in their area um
058and if ann arbor was a municipal utility with only green power they'd be the only one in the state and one of the few in the nation i don't know any other one that would do that so the you know the trying to do that um is really difficult and lastly all of the municipal utilities in michigan all of them provide primarily brown power with smaller renewable programs some growing and some not so the idea that somehow we're going to become this renewable energy guru and force green power onto people that don't want it it just doesn't make sense to me it's unrealistic nobody's ever done it the best we can hope for is we've reached carbon neutrality which is what we're trying to do here and so somehow it seems to me we get
059often these tangents that you know wanting to you know make people do things i want to get to carbon neutrality as fast as possible and i think we should stick to our knitting here rather than trying to micromanage and be prescriptive and so that we end up complicating this issue so much that people in the city's hands are tired when they come to opportunities to bring in new innovations etc to help us reach our one goal here which is carbon neutrality and that's the goal we're going after and i think we should focus on that and hand this over to people that are going to do the work giving them as much flexibility as possible and as limited minimum amount of micromanagement as possible thank you thanks mark councilmember radino thanks i i appreciate commissioner
060cleavy's sentiments there i i do want to express that i don't necessarily um have i don't necessarily share those concerns because of the content of this whereas one this is a whereas clause and it's just it's specifically step stipulating what some members of the community have expressed and and it's clarifying that further i guess um commissioner clovin colvin garcia without without having it in front of me was it was it language that uh stipulated that that was what they wanted or was it that it is those were the goals and i'm sorry i'm i'm trying to think back to the original language there um i don't necessarily have a problem with further expressing what what members of the community have expressed to us um i i just want to make sure that it's you know
061these are the goals that those members of the community have set out it's not necessarily tying the hands um of what the outcome is because as commissioner cleavy pointed out as i think we've learned throughout this process you know day one no matter what path we go down we're not going to have 100 renewable power um and so so i think setting realistic expectations up front because that that may take time uh so two things number one the um the this came from this is verbatim from from a request from a member of the community to present this to the commission and um i'm presenting it exactly as it was requested as far as that phrasing is concerned and then so it's in the context of the whereas clause which is stating the original context
062for bringing this before the commission this this um request for a feasibility study not just it was just some members of the community have expressed interest in exploring creation of traditional municipality it's adding uh more of the reasons behind why there is an interest why this this interest emerged that's the point it's not it's not instructing it's it's providing context thank you i i think that answers my second question as well thanks stacey uh is coleman can you please send me the text so i can share it with the group oh i was just gonna ask i think this language was sent to all of us right so uh from it is in all of our inboxes um and i would just say that um in in response to what commissioner cleavy is saying like
063i i too understand that you know the um we're not going to move to 100 renewable energy immediately i think when community members are referring to that though they're referring to ann arbor's stated goal of moving to 100 renewable energy so i think there's just obviously nuance within that but that that's just what people are referring to um chairman murphy i wonder if you could take a moment and respond to this issue of the commission setting a precedent by letting people send in resolutions and language to commissioners and them uh replace reading them verbatim but not taking responsibility for saying it's theirs the citizens have their right to call in voice their opinions and do those things i don't think it's appropriate that a citizen would text a a resolution requirement into a member of
064this commission and they would then interject it into our meetings without taking responsibility and saying exactly well this comes from somebody else and i'm just i'm just reading it i think that is really inappropriate and i'd like you to comment on this please so two things actually um i i wanted to say earlier i had received a recommendation from a commissioner um that we that i conduct the meeting in such a way that if someone is responding um to another commissioner's comments that i recognize that person before going on and recognizing other other people talking about other topics so i will try to do that um for the rest of the evening i apologize for not having done that earlier um so um i'll comment in two regards um while i have the floor regarding
065the suggested change so first of all the the requested change was uh introduced by a commissioner um and it was seconded by another commissioner so as far as i'm concerned um this it's appropriate for the commission to consider the request you know someone can call in someone can email us and um that they can um we can acknowledge that but we don't necessarily have to introduce that as as a friendly amendment in this particular case we had two commissioners that seconded um this um friendly amendment for all of our consideration and so in in my opinion it's appropriate um as to the specifics of the amendment itself um i actually responded um to a prompt um by probably the same individual that carlene is referring to um and um the person asked whether or not
066i would i would introduce this as a friendly amendment and i said that i wouldn't and i will now share my my feelings um why i said that i wouldn't and that is because i don't agree with it because it's in effect stating in a whereas clause in language that this is in a sense fact and indeed this is exactly why we are authorizing a feasibility study to understand exactly what a um not only this pathway but other pathways will offer for the city um and it only mentions all of the benefits of a municipal utility through condemnation it doesn't talk about the cost both the one-time upfront costs as well as the acquisition costs it doesn't talk about any of the risks it doesn't talk it doesn't evaluate any of those it only lists
067all of the benefits of a municipal utility i think we all recognize that there are likely benefits from that but that's exactly why we are requesting that city council authorize and pay for a feasibility study so we know exactly what the benefits will be what the risks will be what potentially the downsides are and therefore i personally um would not support this being introduced in the whereas clause because i think um this is something that will come out um in the wash so to speak as opposed to putting it into a rarest clause um with um essentially as a statement effect and maybe i misunderstood um the language it may have changed slightly um here we're going to see it yeah so it's the language you can see here with its okay it says it's
068targeted benefits accruing to all of the residents for lower electricity rates i mean that is to be determined um more reliable service i don't know that we can say that for a fact all the municipal utilities in in different towns are run by different mutant municipalities with different leadership local accountability and governance that is true i'll just say you know you can say the same thing about ann arbor roads and arbor roads should be wonderful if we ran it as a municipal utility but i think we recognize that that's not necessarily the case and as uh commissioner cleavy said um certainly we would aspire to 100 renewable electricity no matter what uh we do and through what what pathway um but at least this is my opinion that we shouldn't include this um i think
069the current whereas clause is sufficient that's that's my personal opinion and uh i'll end my comments there and recognize council member thanks sorry i just had one more clarifying question because i so i i got this language in email as well and uh just want to clarify because i thought i heard commissioner colvin garcia stated slightly differently but maybe i miss her um my understanding was that you were keeping the original text and adding a portion of this amendment to it at the end is that is that not accurate did you want to replace the entirety i proposed to add to the end of the existing whereas where we where we were essentially just expressing what the targeted benefits of those members of the community were as opposed to stating them as fact correct all
070right i just want to be clear this is the language that you sent me commissioner coleman garcia so i apologize i should have i should have like re-written it the way that i was i was proposing it let me let me do that okay okay i believe if i mean it obviously send it um my understanding was that first sentence of the proposed amendment should be cut out at dte like it should start with with its targeted benefits accruing coming at the end there i believe that's how you read it yes and i believe that was the request that was sent to all of us via email i apologize about that i just sent patent to include expressed interest and then um and then with the targeted benefits let me just pull the language directly
071from you and get that updated here council member briggs yeah and i i appreciate um you know this i don't think there's any problem with this coming forward and being considered um i would guess i would just um suggest that since the last commission meeting we've had a you know there was kind of that working group meeting and i know we have a couple other amendments to consider tonight i i often don't think whereas classes are particularly you know it's not particularly binding um but i actually do have you know to the degree that this um sets an expectation for the community about what would come i do recognize that this is this is aspirational but um i do think that some of the elements of this are um unrealistic for us to be able
072to achieve as others have have stated anytime in the near future so i don't know you thought thank you any other comments before we take a vote on this then we have two more to consider so seeing no other hands raised or verbal comments um all those in favor of um the new clause as highlighted in yellow on the screen um please raise your hand and say aye aye [Music] i think for the benefit of staff taking down we might want to do a roll call okay we'll do a roll call then thank you so much are you able to uh chair i can do the roll call based on who's on the screen yep so commissioner kerber and meet yourself please everybody's for the role so we go fast yes exactly no uh commissioner
07311. i would also vote no commissioner garcia yes mr mccoy no commissioner rodina no councilmember regina councilmember briggs no commissioner juno no commissioner no commissioner george no and i also vote no that is i didn't count how many four but two against how many votes was that four missy just so we have it on the record oh i'll have it in the record i have in the notes um two four and everybody else against ten it's ten against two four and against and two four okay thank you so now we have some two other uh amendments that have been referenced multiple times and i would appreciate it if those could be called up i just need a minute top two counts please yeah while missy's doing that um maybe i would ask first um that
074um commissioner um well first of all can we have a motion to consider um so we'll handle this one first this is in yellow um the munich um which you can see here can we have a kind of emotion um that we uh consider this amendment and then a second so i'd like to open things up for discussion um if you use the raise hand function or voice your intent to speak mr cleavy yes um i guess i i have similar comments on both of these amendments but i think and i thought we were dealing with the other one first so um let me just say for a moment that i've um i don't think it's the responsibility of the energy commission to micromanage the city of ann arbor's operations contacting process or procurement policies
075so if the city of ann arbor isn't capable of understanding and managing the elements of a feasibility study then we got bigger problems than putting trying to micromanage and and direct them through paragraphs on on things um and i don't think this is gonna help them implement this what it does is specify very directly what we what you know we think that they should be doing um if if it is appropriate for them to do this once they get into to the options and they look at this going forward then they will decide how much of this needs to be done um and how best to do that i don't think it's appropriate for us to be telling them that we are here to advise them on policy and advise them on things not advise
076them on how to do their jobs um and so i think that they will rightfully take umbrage with this and i recommend that we uh we don't adopt this one thank you councilmember briggs thank you um i i think commissioner cleavy you're you're absolutely correct in the sense that um our staff has um complete completely capable of of doing a feasibility study and having um you know put making sure all the elements are in there um that we need to have there i do think that in this case um and you're right you know when council when resolutions come before council there's there's a request by staff not to kind of put in all of the elements in it um because you know staff staff needs to be able to do their work i think
077in this case and this given this year long discussion um that the community has had i think there's a lot of interest and and just um concern about maybe what the next steps are and if this provides a greater um faith i guess from the community about what's going to come next you know that's from my perspective that's fine if we're for getting a sense of um the you know this is what's you know these are the traditional elements of a feasibility study i guess i would um you know just um give opportunity for um dr stoltz now to you know sit to weigh in and you know if there's any desire to to you know have this be more sort of loosely worded um that's certainly an opportunity but if um you know i
078think there's you know whatever comes in front of council might be different as well but um but but i i certainly you know if there's if there's there's anything you'd like to say at this moment dr stoltz that's that's fine happy to chime in and say these are elements of things that we would investigate and we have it unaware as clause above too which i know mission iroquois worked on it's honestly fairly agnostic i think the question yeah fairly agnostic at this point i think we're just ready to move on over here okay very good so hearing that you know i think if it gives um uh you know we've heard a lot of folks in the community asking for this this to be included as a in in the resolution tonight and i um
079you know think that while it's not typical for us to put this in here i think that there's you know desire from from the community to have it there and um i'm happy to to help move it forward thank you council member radina and commissioners george and mccoy actually mccoy first and then george thanks i i will be relatively brief in concurring with council member breaks i think i think this is perfectly i mean i plan on supporting this amendment i think it is fine to include i want to stress um that you know ultimately this is a recommendation coming from energy commission and i i think that recommendation can include this um it doesn't mean that you know that that this is exactly how the process is going to play out once once we
080get feedback from staff it could um but i i think the fact that you know we we have had as a body considerable discussion about this the recommendation from this body could be to follow this path i think that's reasonable um perhaps i hope not at the sake of over complicating and i apologize to commissioner mccoy because they did read this ahead of time for the sake of of consistency and maybe a little clarity to the public it's possible we might want to add after resolve that the energy come in our energy commission recommends um to make it clear that it's a recommendation and it would be consistent with all the other resolved clauses i hope that would be friendly and maybe clear up any confusion around expectation that this is exactly what's going to
081happen because this is a recommendation from the commission thank you mr mccoy yeah i also don't have much to add than what was already said so i wanted to keep this quick i just wanted to note that i also edited this a little bit um from the it's similar to a resolve clause that was sent to us by a community member but i intentionally edited some of the language to make it not as limiting um by changing like the words to such as and not just like including these elements in order um to add some flexibility there um but yeah all of these things are things that would be traditionally in an energy feasibility study which is which is where they came from commissioner george thank you mr chairman uh very briefly as some folks
082have already said this is just simply in my opinion a guardrail and a reassurance that uh you know one of the main driving forces of this effort is included even though i do believe as uh missy dr stoltz has stated uh before in the past that it would be included just that extra reassurance i think is uh no problemo to add into this resolution uh to make sure all parties feel comfortable moving forward with this and that there's confidence in the process and in the outcome and i think that is one of the main things that we're trying to achieve here so um that's philadelphia and thank you mr chairman thank you commissioner garcia i'm just going to piggyback on what um others have said so far with regards to um as far as our
083role as uh as energy commissioners and being an advisory body to city council there are things that we can emphasize and highlight that would just make sure that our voices are heard and i think that's what this resolve clause does represent not in a restrictive manner but more like we just want to make sure as a result clause in addition to it's yes it is you know there's there's some similarities with the whereas clause as well but just make sure that as far as the this part of our our uh resolution it's included that's all i wanted to make sure that it's we're doing our job here thank you you see i see you have your hand raised as well yeah just from a procedural standpoint i do think we have a sub motion that
084we have to decide if it's friendly to the body um that council member radina brockport that the group needs to decide on before we can vote so what i'll do is i'll i'll i'll ask for two votes then one for the edition and then one for the whole thing how's that great appreciate you pointing that out any other comments before we take a vote so i'm just going to comment briefly i'm going to actually reverse my opinion from what i had in the last meeting where i suggested we be less prescriptive given the sentiment in the community and given um we want to reassure um have a sense of assurance to everyone that these are the kinds of things that we want uh feasibility study to clear up uh i am going to vote in
085favor of this i think it makes sense um and um hopefully we get not only this information but a lot of other good information about the feasibility of municipalization through condemnation as well as potentially other pathways so if anybody else i see commissioner juno and commissioner kerber also want to weigh in before yes yes you know i think the the um discussion is an interesting one i think it is not necessarily true that there's the sentiment in the community is so behind everything here there's another sentiment that's kind of questioning what is going on here so i don't think that is necessary something that everybody should as some assume just because you have 1200 signatures that is not necessarily the whole community it's a very small segment that's very committed and that's wonderful but don't
086extend that to the whole community just for clarification my my point was that um this sentiment was that these are the elements that should be included in the feasibility study that the feasibility study is going to then definitively um ascertain what what the 1100 people from a2p do believe is is the right path forward that's something that's why we're commissioning the study so just to clarify my remarks thank you commissioner juno um i don't want to complicate things and i also would intend to vote in favor of this clause but i do think that the actually the previous version from the last resolution brought up in november um in my opinion does kind of a better job and i just wonder if there's any benefit in just going back to that one where it was
087um there was a a clause that simply stated um resolved ann arbor commission recommends that city council authorize and fund a study to determine the feasibility of establishing immunity including estimates of revenues cost of acquiring emphasizing costs to power utility with 100 renewable energy assessment of the quality along with all the annual operations maintenance costs debt servicing et cetera um yeah so that one i just wonder if there's you know i mean that one it seems like was already part of the resolution and maybe had been with us for a longer period of time i just wonder if um i guess it doesn't really make a huge difference but i do think that text may be um had more holistic and more thought put into it potentially so i just wanted to raise that as
088well thanks for raising that as a possibility um people can take that into consideration when they vote on this um i don't know that they're materially different um and um so we have this in front of us for a vote um the one the one request that i would have is very very minor is there's a capital a in in um in a direct engineering assessment i think that should be small case um i think other than that um it's it's all correct is anybody else as many other comments before we take a roll call vote on this so we're going to vote on this and if it were to be voted down then we can consider uh commissioner juno's option um if people feel that's necessary um so i'm going to do a roll
089call on whether it's just really quick i think first we're voting on um council member radina's proposed edition whole yeah and i think procedurally chairmerski you could ask if it were a friendly amendment and if no one objects it would be accepted as a friendly amendment okay um thanks for the hint uh so i'd like to know if this is accepted as a friendly amendment are there any objections to that yes okay so the the friendly amendment portion is that the ann arbor energy commission recommends so we have to do a roll call vote on both right okay so roll call vote on adding that the ann arbor energy commission recommends so um commissioner kerber um are you in uh which your vote on adding that the ann arbor energy commission recommends yes uh commissioner
090levin yes commissioner garcia colin garcia yes mr mccoy yes yes uh councilmember riggs yes commissioner juno yes commissioner overpeck yes mr mccomber yes mr kiwi no and commissioner george yes and i also vote yes that is i think 11 to 1. now we're going to take a vote on the entire text as we see it in front of us in yellow including the clause that we just approved and uh i'm going to go through the roll call again commissioner kerber yes mr levin yes commissioner colin garcia yes mr mccoy yes councilmember radina yes councilmember briggs yes councilmember juno yes council member peck yes councilmember mccamber yes councilmember cleavy no or commissioner cleavy sorry just promoted you thank you and commissioner george yes and i also vote yes so the friendly amendment passes and will be
091incorporated into the final resolution so we have one other resolve clause that we now see on our screen and um i'd like a motion that would be considered and a second motion from council member rodina second from someone else commissioner juno so we have a first and a second i'd like to open things up for discussion on this mr george thank you mr chairman uh i will make my comment very short uh the reason that commissioner mccoy and i wanted to move forward with this amendment is to ensure uh as the text reads uh that the uh overall feasibility study and generally the overall intent with this transition process is a equitable transition and i know that you uh had mentioned uh to us in regards to the value statement that is already in the
092oval arching document but we wanted to include this additional text here uh because of some of the recent actions that we've seen in the city that have shown that the city has not always held true to its values and that it is important that when we are making these big transmissions that we do not make the same mistakes that were made during the 90s and 2000s around uh offshoring and automation and that that workers really need to be prioritized in these conversations and that the growing inequality crisis in this country and in our county is properly addressed in city decision making and this language would attempt to start that conversation and make sure that it is a relevant point in any major decisions moving forward thank you mr cleavy um and i find my objections
093this are exactly uh in opposition to to commissioner george i think this is the wrong place to establish a precedent i'm really very very familiar with procurement law and rules and regulations from local government state government federal government levels specifically with this i'm concerned with the language stating that be considered core components in any decision relating to the meeting of energy needs of the city i say this because i think the resolution's not only way beyond the scope of the energy commission's responsibility but also because it's simply unsound public policy the way that it's being presented the resolution is asking us to endorse a major change and exception to ann arbor's procurement and contracting processes a change that will impact the purchase of light bulbs fax machines computers cars buses electric vehicles and yes solar
094panels it will cause the city to make an exception for energy needs treating it differently than any other item that is funded by with tax dollars and governed by procurement law in the city it will require the city to change this process for requests for proposals contracts and grants it will directly impact the city's internal cabinet improvements projects process and finally had major implications on ann arbor's human resources policies and operations i'm deeply concerned over any proposal resolution that is one outside the committee's commission's purview to advise the council on policy um that is so in my opinion so poorly considered um and finally his impact would be so disruptive and costly to our government and and if we want to make a statement about how ann arbor should deal with you know people who
095are disrupted due to technological innovation and other things i think we're we're stepping into an area with that we simply can't can't manage um i don't ever ever ever want to be put in a position where we can't adopt some uh innovation because um it's going to disrupt current jobs and we don't we have to take responsibility for for doing something about it i think this is the wrong words it's the wrong place it's the sets the wrong precedent if what we want is to address worker dislocation then let's do a separate thing on that and even if we do that i'm concerned that we'll be stopping way beyond our uh our areas of responsibility as the as the energy commission so i'm concerned about this i think it's bad precedent i don't think we
096should be doing it and i urge others to vote now thank you [Music] commissioner radina or council member and then commissioner mccoy thanks jim risky i just wanted to chime in i'm going to support this amendment um i i disagree with with commissioner cleavy um uh on in almost entirety there i i think i think um one the just transition pieces is referring to regularly throughout the a20 um document itself of the plan itself it talks about a just transition to carbon neutrality um and and i would actually argue that um based on based on the recent ordinance or chartered revision that was adopted by ann arbor voters this is this is in line with um with how we are moving toward contracting and procurement moving forward worker compensation and and training are going to
097be factors in how we how we hire workers and how we how we procure uh services so i'm going to support this i i want to thank commissioner george and commissioner mcquaid for bringing it forward thanks for the comments commissioner mccoy and then um commissioner cleavy you still have your hand up if you still want to talk after that i'll recognize you but if you want if that was from brief or you can take it down go ahead and commissioner mccoy thanks um yeah part of what i was going to say was what council member radina already covered um and i think the other part is that you know for me the entirety of this resolution is a recommendation to city council of a study that you know we we ultimately also don't know the
098results of and whether like what will come back around municipalization um is something we will support you know whenever it comes back so i think the intent for me was that this type of thing around just transition and workers is considered um as we get feedback about what municipalization might look like in anarchos so if we know whether or not we want to move forward with it and so um to me i don't i don't see it you know as restrictive in that way i think it's like getting a better understanding of what that could mean and in really showing that we value this trust transition um piece and like the labor piece i think one of the earlier commenters um you know mentioned how i think we really need to have in order to
099move forward in this climate movement in these transitions like we need to be prioritizing workers and the people who are actually doing the work and so i think that's really the intent behind this resolved clause thanks commissioner cleavy did you have another comment i just want to respond to admit to um councilman rodina's comment a20 is exactly where this sentiment should be and it is in the right place this particular resolution is talking about a feasibility study are we saying here that we want to make sure in the in the clause you just approved which again i disagree with i didn't see anything in that closet went through and told what a feasibility study was and then wax and wayne and what we should do and it was very very prescriptive it didn't say anything
100about worker training or these kinds of things so it seems to me that that i i would be stunned if the city of ann arbor did any feasibility study about a major energy project that was outside of the scope of a20 this is already in a20 so again i i really disagree with us being overly prescriptive and micromanaging stuff if if you really want this clause let's move it up to the one that you just approved and add this in there as well so we'll do these 10 things but we also want to do this as well if that's the main concern that's great commissioner george said he wanted to establish a precedent here that goes to all that can be done across the city um that's great i think that's a wonderful thing want
101to endorse that precedent let's do it the separate resolution do you want to do this then add it to the laundry list that you have on that on the thing that just got approved this is getting messy we're sticking in all these these little things here and there um i'm not saying we shouldn't do these things i'm saying i agree totally with a20 and that's the appropriate place where this should be addressed commissioner kerber and then commissioner levin there you need to underview sorry um i don't think this communicates directly i mean if the intent here is to require unionization of all jobs then say so um you know my concern is first this is about climate a climate emergency climate is what we're focusing on things that are associated with or supporting need to
102be addressed elsewhere i think we're talking about climate first and foremost and not let things like this get in the way commissioner now commissioner levin um yeah i'm a little bit concerned too about how this distracts a little bit and i have a sort of a question i'm not sure this is best directed to but is the intent of this resolved clause to mean that these considerations will be considered within the feasibility study or are we just saying going forward we want to ensure a just transition oh would you like me to that one stands for that go go ahead commissioner or george is that you yes it is sorry about that mr chairman um uh yeah to answer commissioner levin's uh question uh it's two points uh one uh yes it is to recognize
103just transition which is a key component of any general movement on clean energy is that you are creating jobs that did not exist before and ensuring that those jobs continue to support a middle-class income like the jobs that they are replacing is the heart of a just transition and so uh you know i would strongly rebut kind of the overall um a sentiment that some folks have expressed that it is a separate issue it is not a separate issue it is a part of the transition that we're all talking about that we all want to achieve because these are the people that are implementing the goals that we were talking about we're talking about reductions in carbon and we're talking about electrification all of these other items that we're talking about here these are the
104workers they're going to be doing it and so we need to make sure that they are receiving the same benefits and the positions that they will have that the folks that held the similar positions in the fossil fuel industry held before and it's really about continuing to make sure that we are an equitable community here in washington county on all parts from environmentalism to labor i guess just to clarify my question is just are you asking that these that you know that when we do the feasibility study we consider you know the costs and or whatever needs to be considered to you know hire workers you know in a just way i'm not against that i'm just wondering if there's a better if this is like a separate resolution because it or are we asking
105that this be considered as part of the feasibility study because the way it reads right now it doesn't seem like we're asking when the feasibility studies done that this specific uh factor be accounted for that was the intent that it would be included uh as an overall value or reinforcement of the value and something to be considered in the study to see uh to what degree there would be issues with uh displacement and what those types of jobs would include so it was kind of a melding of both uh what you're alluding to there and an overall reinforcement of the existing values okay thanks commissioner garcia and then commissioner mccoy and then commissioner juno and i'll weigh in at the end i'll share some comments that i shared the email um with commissioners mccoy and
106george at the end um and we can consider those two when we vote so go ahead commissioner calvin garcia i've pulled up my comments so i can read from those later on all right um so i i kind of interpreted this clause to be that the city would train local workers to for running the new the you know if if there's a decision to create you know and have a new immune municipally owned utility that local workers then would be trained and then compensated at the level that dte workers would be you know would have been paid uh so like a just transition for or you know full transition for local workers and um it it doesn't sound like that specifically is what what this this clause is can you please clarify that thanks commissioner
107mccoy do you want to address that maybe with um commissioner george afterwards since your hand was up i'll maybe allow you to comment on that and then let commissioner george weigh in before we go on to another commission sure um i was going to suggest which i i think this also relates um to responding to what um commissioner cleveland garcia was saying but i was going to suggest a long lines of what commissioner levin was saying as well that we could propose um language in i don't i don't have the full resolution in front of me but language in the earlier clause where we ask for um the economic legal and technical feasibility of each pathway like adding um a couple words in there saying economic legal and technical feasibility of each pathway and i
108can't think of the language right now but something like along including um workers and labors and just transition in there um to have it be incorporated in the feasibility study i think that would be a separate vote of an amendment but um you know just so that is incorporated in the feasibility study as well to address that question um the thing that i originally also raised my hand for um which i think this kind of just digresses a bit but i did want to respond to commissioner kirper's comments that i i do understand that what we're talking about now is of course climate but like i don't i think it's important that we recognize that climate is inextricably linked to things like labor affordability housing justice and so much more and in order for us
109to really get to where we need to be we need to recognize that those things are linked and cannot separate them um and so i think that's also part of you know this intent overall this you know literally what i do my research on so i i think it's like really important that you know we don't try to separate these things that are um very much linked and i think we see that throughout a20 as well that you know all these pieces come together um and we can't just say we're only talking about climate when it affects so much more so commissioner overpeck and then i'm going to weigh in with um and share the comments that i shared via email so go ahead uh pick yeah i think we're hearing some solutions uh your
110alternative solutions but i just want to move on because i and i'll vote in favor of this and the reason is it's in a20 it's a principle for what ann arbor sees is the future of its carbon neutrality all we're doing is reminding everybody of that and um we've already said in a20 that we're going to do it so we're just reminding everyone who's doing anything in respect with respect to these uh ideas um this feasibility study that that is part of what they have to include in their work in other words a value that must be included so it's it's just you could say it's redundant like mark did our commissioner uh levy but let's just get it over with it's not hurting anything having it in there so i i'm going to um
111share what i shared with commissioner george and uh commissioner mccon excuse me mccoy um so there is a already in our resolution a whereas clause that refers to um what we call criteria and principles for achieving ann arbor renewable energy goals and it refers specifically to that document it um has only one word in there that relates to one of those um criterias and that is as follows it says grounded in equity and justice the third criteria is about ensuring our strategy is grounded in procedural and distributed equity this means that the solution we find just a second i got to slide things over here sorry uh sorry ah sorry i'm can't slide my your my screen over smaller i'll do this in any case um europe they can do this okay so um this
112means that the solutions we find um to reducing energy consumption and powering our grid renewable energy should center low income and minority populations in both decision-making as well as in the benefits of solutions it also means piecing together different solutions that are respective of different capacities and lived experience as members our community and finding solutions that support fair and just compensation for those helping to create a renewable energy future so my comment was if that portion of the statement at the end finding solutions that support fair and just compensation for those helping to create a renewable energy future if that isn't sufficient in relation to this municipalization resolution and the various pathways in the feasibility study it's likely insufficient when applied to other potential policies programs and projects related to a20 and so one of
113the things that i would ask the commission to consider um is and and maybe this can be handled by council members i mean in principle i i would i mean i would vote for this but i just want to raise the point if it needs to be in this in every single resolution then maybe the language that we've outlined in these um criterion principles needs to somehow be strengthened um and then all we need to do is one time refer to this as as a general statement and as other people have said it's also included in the a20 plan i mean that doesn't preclude us from taking uh values that are particularly important to us and repeating them it's it just seems that it's it's a little bit messier of a way to do it
114so that was i just was referred to very early on by commissioner george that i had sent this email and that was the email that i sent to them are there any other comments before we take a vote okay no other comments so i'm gonna take a roll call vote um and i have one question missy could you scroll down to this again um the question that i have is does is should it appear here at the end um or should it appear earlier if it appears at the end then the punctuation has to change slightly um where we need to put an and at the end of scu um with a semicolon preceding that and then we need to put a period at the end of this the best of my knowledge there wasn't
115a recommendation on placement is that correct that's as far as i know there was not either just move it up yeah so if we move it up then we just put an and at the end of city and we move it up are we going to debate where we're putting it i would say it can be anywhere because it applies it actually applies to everything it applies also to the scu i suppose so maybe it should stay at the end that was the rationale how did i just change the just change the punctuation yeah so scu semicolon and no we don't need the answer we don't actually use it and proper in the resolutions if we wanted we can have it but we don't yeah okay so i'm gonna um mark did you have an
116additional comment or is this that was just my question are we gonna move this or not and do we need a motion to move it but if we're gonna keep it here then let's go that's just fun okay okay good so um i'm going to take the roll call um you appear on my screen a little bit differently um well yep so i'll go ahead through as i see you um commissioner kerber no is that correct yes this is correct no okay um commissioner levin yes commissioner garcia yes commissioner mccoy yes council member race yes commissioner juno yes commissioner mccumber yes councilman berdina yes commissioner cleavy yes commissioner george yes and i also vote yes so um i think we have um maybe one more vote um i don't know somebody help me here that
117we approve the entire resolution now as it stands does that make sense yes yep okay good um any other closing uh remarks by anybody before we take that vote seeing no hands um we already have a motion so i'm going to go ahead and take the roll call commissioner kerber are you in favor of voting for the entire document as it currently stands yes yes commissioner levin yes commissioner colin garcia yes mr mccoy yes councilmember race you should you know yes commissioner overpeck yes mr mccomber yes mr rodina yes mr cleavy yes mr george yes and i also vote yes we have unanimous vote thank you everybody for all of your work on this and all of your patience and thank you for everybody in the public that weighed in on this as well so
118we have um one other major agenda point uh my agenda here and that is a resolution recognizing the downtown development authority for its decarbonization and sustainability measures this is posted on legistar and this would be a first reading so if we can pull that up um while you're doing that i would like to just give a little bit of background on this this resolution was uh proposed by dave conkel um i think dave conkle is known to many of us um he was the former ann arbor energy office director and he is currently on the board of glrea and he calls himself a renewable energy mentor and um he met with uh commissioner cleve sumi commissioner calvin garcia and me late this summer um after he uh presented in one of our meetings and um
119he brought up the idea of recognizing the dda for all the work that it's done in relation to energy matters and sustainability matters transportation etc and um so he drafted this that you now see on your screen um i made some revisions i think commissioner calvin garcia did as well we discussed those he reviewed them as did staff and this is the resolution that we would like to have you consider um and um i um i hope that's that uh people have read through it and so i would like to have a motion on motion do we accept this resolution okay specifying commissioner do we have a second for discussion second from commissioner mccoy uh so um i since this is a first reading and it's a long meeting and we've endured many long meetings
120i i i don't plan to read through all of this um you can see what it does is it um basically starts out with some framing and then goes through step by step where with as clauses these are all chronological going back to 2006 and actions taken then then there may well have been actions before that but this these are the ones that um we were able to pull together starting again with dave konko's input and then adding a few other things um and missy if you can just scroll through this um so you can see that you know we're addressing everything from led lighting to solar at the farmers market um for funding providing money for energy efficiency grants um and then um doing things like uh at the end ev charging and um
121then also biking lanes that's something that's been done recently um and so uh what we did add in the end as you can see there's something that's struck through so this will be um proposed basically with the strikethrough with the minor modification here i'm saying basically their decarbonization environmental sustainability measures and i think one thing that we would also uh strike is this very last resolve class which we added but since then um council has already approved this and so um we i don't think need to encourage city council to support something that they've already supported and approved so that's that's the content of the resolution and uh again any anyone want to comment on this um we can uh either comment tonight or take comments uh a month from now well it actually would
122not be in our next meeting because it's a working session we'll get to that later it would be considered then for a second reading and vote in our february meeting commissioner clevee can we waive our voting of the commission february meeting and simply vote on this tonight can we waive that requirement and if so i motion that we weigh that requirement and vote on it now um that's fine with me i don't is this controversial from anybody's perspective not seeing any negative uh or affirmative head shapes that it's that it's controversial so um what what uh i would offer then as a friendly amendment is that we strike through what we currently see as blue highlighted and um missy's already made the change or we have the change where it says and and then a
123period at the end of the the last resolve clause that's now shown there um so any any other comments if not then we'll also take a roll call vote on this and get this um approved and um then maybe we can also have someone from the dda come in and recognize them at our next meeting nice great so i'm going to go through uh commissioner kerber yes commissioner levin yes mr mccoy councilmember riggs yes mr juno commissioner peck coverpick yes commissioner cumber yes mr cleavy yes commissioner colin garcia yes mr george yes and i also go yes so the resolution passes and again chairman mercier let's just like to say uh congratulations i think you and and uh vice chair garcia did a great job on this along with missy so good job this this
124is the kind of stuff we need to be doing more of right and uh you know i think to to take that a step further you know really this is in recognition of what the dda has done um the dda takes a lot of flack for a lot of things but the dda has also done some really good things when it comes to climate action and environmental sustainability more broadly so our thanks goes out to the dda i'd also like to thank um dave konkel for all his work that really um was a massive contributor to all of this as well indeed indeed thanks dave if he's listening so this now takes us to the next point on our agenda which is osi reports and news from commissioners so we'll start with osi mr murski
125uh as always a lot going on we are working on our newsletter for january and i think that'll be kind of the next big smattering i will tell you uh it's coming in at six to seven pages so just to give you a sense there's a five moving parts some exciting things to share uh i'm sure folks know on monday night last monday night uh council voted to put a community climate action millage on the ballot in november that'll be november 8th uh also uh last monday or this most recent monday which was just yesterday i don't understand time sometimes we had the kickoff to the budget presentation so we uh presented where we are 20 this is we do have a two-year budget process so 23 budget really is uh mostly baked we'll be
126making some modifications based on four pillars presented by our new city administrator mr duhoni and one of the pillars as a prioritization as presented by him was sustainability so it's really exciting to see that centered in the work we pitched a few potential projects including everything from bringing online our next few resilience hubs to making a down payment in the landfill solar project to have a low income offering where we could help residents actually immediately energy burden residents immediately start saving money by subscribing to that and then of course getting the credit which would further lower their bills so some exciting projects and i can send the commission uh details on the webinar that happened last night i also want to share we have out for public comment in january you'll have the opportunity uh
127to pursue via survey but also in public meetings about how the city should invest the american rescue plan funding about 24 million dollars coming in and one of the projects in the suite for consideration is solar at municipal facilities we've been designing with two installers uh at 19 different city sites solar rooftop solar ground mounted in carport solar it's over four megawatts of solar potential that could come online and that's one of the projects that we might uh the public has a chance to kind of weigh in on and see the benefit for i'll share for anyone who is listening one of the things we're excited about from that project not only does of course help us advance our clean energy and climate goals but it frees up recurring dollars in the general fund and
128other funds that can be invested in other things and that's something we don't regularly get often we kind of take on uh something and it has lots of values but it doesn't get recurring savings so that would be 25 years of recurring savings to invest in other community priorities that we have missing if the rsp the rfp for those issued already and are we waiting for responses or what's it we're in design no designs done for those that's how we know the pricing for them so now we're just trying to we're securing the funding whether we're going to do that through a ppa or whether we're going to do that through a direct buy which when we started the project or direct buy wasn't really possible but with american rescue plan funding it could be
129which is sort of an exciting exciting development that's happened um could you stop screen sharing so that i don't know that we need to review something there's too many moving parts going everywhere over here uh yeah for sure some other things going on uh we joined an electrification cohort we were just accepted into that through rmi formerly rocky mountain institute with some other cities around the country really exciting to see that take off we're stealing profusely from our peers in ithaca we have been in conversation with them in portland maine who's actually doing some really extraordinary work as well i'm sure some of you have seen some of the new york times pieces on ithaca don't worry i baffled them as soon as i saw this as well some really exciting stuff happening about walking
130private capital uh to help with building electrification uh so a few other things to flag i recognize there's a lot but there that's kind of what we do over here um last monday council also approved the purchase of our second electric refuse truck and the receiving of grants to support both the first and the second i'm going to do a special call out to semi bar and to matt kochanic the director of fleet and facilities they worked incredibly hard to secure these two grants one from the state one is a part of a coalition through the american lung association almost a million dollars in grant funding is going to come to help make those two trucks possible and to support the charging infrastructure for them so really hard work that often happens it took a
131lot of time to pull together but congratulations to that team uh once again no meeting is complete without recognizing julie roth who continues to rock the solarize program i just saw she came back on tonight she was recognized by the sierra club for her work um and she's tireless we just passed 2.3 megawatts through the solarize program and we are not slowing down in terms of the number of people that are signing up for events we're scheduled into february at this point if you know anyone that's interested in sharing their solar stories uh we continue to have a monthly event called the airbus stories in partnership with glrea and that is very successful i also want to recognize the team at osi and thank mr cleavy on the line uh thanks to i believe i
132don't know this is for sure but i think his support and advocacy the office was recognized with an exemplary project award for work on the sustainable energy utility so i want to thank everyone for their work support that last few updates uh it is true council approved a contract a few different contracts quite complicated but effectively the product is we're working with dda to get 80 more chargers in the downtown area we're really exciting that we connect to chargers we'll finally be able to do surge pricing which is really important we can't have cars sitting in a spot when they're fully charged eating up limited parking we have more technology available and 80 new chargers just to give perspective we have a total of 30. so we just massively increased the amount of charging infrastructure
133we're going to have in the downtown and we're kicking off uh in the new year we're an active recruitment a multi-family charging pilot because we know that's a tricky place to figure out how to do charging infrastructure so we've been in conversation thinking about uh everything from the right of way and where we put chargers of course on private property where you have a split incentive a property owner who may not be have an electric vehicle but tenants who might especially with so many renters if you know anyone that's interested struggling with this topic or perhaps thinking about purchasing an ev that needs their facility to have charging please let us know uh i think the last one i want to close with is my favorite you can't have favorites we can't have favorite children
134it's one i love maybe slightly more than others and it's our work in bryant and i want to share uh that that work continues to just cut at the heart of everything we do in the office we are about to submit a doe leap grant for technical assistance in that neighborhood just to kind of ground the commission and our members of the public this is a project uh that we've been working on for every year with community action network the bryant community center and the residents of the bryant neighborhood to make them the first decarbonized neighborhood in the midwest potentially in the us and it's really centering the needs of the residents their desires their aspirations sometimes that manifests in work we're doing on a food forest actually in the park and sometimes it manifests
135in home energy assessments which is what we're doing right now and uh that continues just to be a really deep meaningful project the goal is to do assessments and then to be able to scale the kinds of support that the neighborhoods need the neighbors need because the house housing stock is very very similar it's built by the same developer there really are only two styles of houses so we're able to extrapolate uh out through that and we yeah could you pause there it looks like uh we have two uh commissioners that have questions or comments about that specifically um commissioner colin garcia steve did you want to comment and then uh council member okay so i need to add my my little chip to your vote on favorite project sounds super cool very very exciting
136so what's the scope on the brian on the bryant project like how many houses how like how far 265 houses and uh i know we'll get to the future agenda items but it this is a project i'd love to bring the project partners in and give you a presentation all the money that we've raised stays in the neighborhood to hire residents to do this work and to support the residents in designing these projects and i'm just going to round out by saying we won a grant from the knight foundation we won in epa region 5 grant to support this this morning we just had a check-in with mcknight they asked us to resubmit for more funding uh so fingers crossed that materializes and then the doe grant we will be submitting tomorrow afternoon is to
137do the micro right assessment so if the seo takes off this is the first neighborhood that we want to do that work in we wanted 265 homes for the microgrid you named it and then all the energy efficiency and everything part of it yep part of it it would be so we call it reform um r e4 for eu stands for renewable energy energy efficiency energy storage uh electrification and the last one is equity movement so it's how you pair all of those things in a way that fix them fixes the market and it corrects what the market's not doing so we need to reform our system and this is what we're trying to do in bryant fantastic it's so exciting i would love to present and bring maybe derek and skye and crystal and
138others from the project and talk about that so uh i think i'll stop there a few things going on over here that's awesome missy great job congratulations to your team uh i'll move first to uh council members uh there were some great things that passed uh the last council meeting and then moved from there to comments from commissioners thanks i can jump in quick i was actually raising my hand to to comment on something um but i i do want it it was the perfect timing because as a resident of the bryant neighborhood the work that that osi is doing in the neighborhood is near and dear to my heart as well and so i am just very grateful and want to keep more praise onto the entire staff because um not just staff but
139also community members who have been rallying around osi and coming and doing the work here in the neighborhood um and it's really just great to see um in partnership with the community center as well um but i also just wanted to you know we we have wrapped up tonight some pretty monumental work and and just wanted to note that as well and everybody for their work on it um the resolution was obviously um a long process a very deliberative process um sometimes heated process and and so i just want to thank everybody for their continued work on it um i want to thank community members who weighed in and all of the staff for the time that they've invested into it and also just kind of set some expectations um yeah i don't expect that
140this will be on our next council meeting which is just a few days away um and so i think that's just important to note um that uh council member briggs and i will surely um call attention to the fact that this past and encourage our colleagues to read the resolution um and we will uh likely bring something forward together um early in the new year um to bring this before council but i just wanted to set that expectation for community members who are listening and for members of this body as well um that that obviously we want to get this moving but but we also have to have time to to get the the council resolution ready and bring it before the body um but we will definitely call attention at the next meeting um
141and and thanks again everybody for your work on this i know this has been a long time um with a lot of a lot of hours put into it so thank you everybody anything to add council member briggs okay great uh updates from commissioners yeah i thought so mark go ahead yeah i just wanted to take a moment and talk about the missy mentioned it um just want to briefly uh talk about that um the great lakes renewable energy association we are a statewide industry organization and we have members in every just about every every community in the in the state um and uh we do annual awards our annual meeting was december 6th and we do a series of awards each year um to identify the most meritorious project going on in the year
142but more importantly to identify projects that can be replicated in other communities and to look where we can can really shine light on meritorious projects in environmental justice women leaders etc this year we gave the meritorious award to missy for their work on the sustainability energy utility um it's it's she's hard worker it's a wonderful project but she she got the award because the seu is replicable across michigan and i as much as i agree with uh aapp then ann arbor certainly can afford to municipalize if that's the way we want to do it um but the municipalization is grossly out of reach for the vast majority of communities in the in the state um and the scu is a model that could be adopted with an ordinance by any community and indeed since missy's
143presentation at our meeting um we've got about 15 communities that have asked about it and our award was to shine a light on on her good work there so we gave her the leadership award this year um last year we actually gave galen hardy the award for the ambassador program which we also believe is a great way to embed sustainability deep into the fabric of the community and since then we've got five other communities working with glrea through their solarize program we're doing with julie on a statewide basis to include the ambassador program too so and i was doing great stuff we see it what's going on here but for i said we're looking at ann arbor and saying wow let's let's do this in sheboygan let's do this and you know uh in benzie
144county let's do it all over the place and and the good news is there's lots of interest um in that way so congratulations to missy and it was a pleasure to be able to recognize her uh councilmember briggs and then council commissioner overpeck after that yeah my apologies i i guess i'm getting groggy um i um dr stoltz uh mentioned the village moving forward um but i i don't think she mentioned um the fact that um energy commissions um low-carbon uh construction resolution was unanimously passed as well at the end of the night so um many thanks to energy commission for bringing that forward and also chair mursky for um helping to to make sure it got to council so um thanks for everybody's work on that in the community as well commissioner yes so
145i'm a climate scientist which you probably all know and i'm really into understanding positive feedbacks uh in some cases they accelerate bad things um such as we just learned this week maybe antarctic ice sheet disintegration but sometimes they accelerate good things and i'm on the governor's climate solutions council and we're getting close to our report that we delivered to the governor and then it'll be open for public uh comment and stuff like that and i urge everyone to pay attention but one thing that i've been harping on in very low-key way but nonetheless still harping is uh it would be nice if this plan had in it some positive feedbacks that would really help get the attention of colleagues across the country and identify you know essentially place us as a really up and coming
146carbon neutrality state and hopefully that would lead to more innovation more people wanting to move here who do that kind of thing industry and stuff that is clean tech and you can think of a whole bunch of reasons why this would be good but we have to start convincing our fellow citizens that we got to move fast and so we need some things that really demonstrate that we move fast so what i'd like to ask all of you particularly missy probably but i know there's some other real gurus here is what might we suggest to the governor's team uh that she could do they could do to uh really enhance our ability in order uh and i like um mark's comment you know gotta find out ways to um not just work in ann arbor
147but to be able to transfer our knowledge our successes throughout michigan what would be some things the governor could do that and the team that they have not yet done that they could do fairly easily um it may be hard you know but the big thing is what should be the goals to really so that we could accelerate what's happening in ann arbor and hopefully accelerate what's happening in other communities and really show the rest of the country that this is the happening place for carbon neutrality and i don't need the answer now because i know some people are groggy but i would love to have feedback on that and i will uh i'll push pretty hard for it uh i have a request could you send us a reminder and then maybe that's something
148we can consider in our work session and do some brainstorming um we're gonna have a work session in our january meeting that's on the 11th we'll talk about that later but um if is that is that acceptable from a timing perspective that we um think about that collectively and provide feedback or is that getting too late for some reason no i think uh i'm trying to think um i think it's okay i mean better late you know i mean yeah i think that'll be all right um it's a little late but you know don't worry about it well that doesn't prevent anybody from reaching out and passing on great ideas to uh you know it allows us to the other thing is if we all do it together and brainstorm i love that idea because
149i have to understand these things if i'm going to advocate for them and i'm i'm behind the eight ball compared to some of you um it would also there'll be public comment uh probably starting a little after that so we could really sort of gang up on them and you know i can work from uh the council and then members of this team could also work as you know public commenters [Music] mr cleavy i just i just i think i love that stuff uh dr taylor and i think that that's great i'd i'd encourage you to talk to missy because i know that uh there's some seu questions that uh we remain unanswered at the state level and uh you know having the governor embrace that um as a as a way to move the
150ball quickly into these communities i think would be a great thing so i encourage you to talk to her about that too yeah that's why i highlighted in the beginning i think missy is the the primary source and she's nodding which is makes my day or not as the case may be thank you any other comments i have a few but go ahead if anybody else any other raise your hand so just a few quick things from my side um the ann arbor lighting ordinance the group that worked on that along with the stark skies people have met twice with the university of michigan and planted some seeds that the university of michigan and hopefully adopt key elements that they already have in some regards but there's other areas where there could be improvements with
151their internal specifications and i think people know that the university doesn't have to follow um the universe the ann arbor's unified development code so um we're working on that um in um those and other meetings uh i learned that uh according to the recommendation in the presidential commission on carbon neutrality um the university is going to be starting a review of its campus planning activity and that is going to start to with some public engagement in the beginning of next year and i think maybe it's important for us also to think about what kinds of things are important from a climate perspective directly and indirectly that we might want to weigh in on possibly just individually by offering comments but possibly also collectively through a resolution um that might be a little bit more powerful
152and i think it might be good for us to to think about that going forward and then um one other thing i didn't clear this with missy but um i want to offer just a little teaser and that is a group of us have been meeting um with regards to energy concierge services and um we found a an online service that really we think is a great platform and it's very inexpensive offered by a non-profit that will at least offer online kinds of energy con share services and so maybe also for an agenda item next year once we have some things hammered down and we're going to have a full demo coming up here soon and it looks really promising we run into a bunch of dead ends either for cost or performance reasons but
153it's looking pretty interesting um i see carlene has um some comments and then go back to uh commissioner overpass too oh colleen did you have anything nope so it's i just wanted to give a quick update on what the transportation electrification committee is this a good time john just to throw out a couple of comments just be i'm saying that because you've also mentioned what's going on with the lighting ornaments go go ahead since you have i mean with the nexus workday not work group updates but i think um you have the floor already so let's go ahead and then we'll um continue with that after uh commissioner peck's uh right okay so you you mentioned john the uh chemistry university of the um the lighting ordinance and so part of along with that the
154city's engineering department is also working on updating with what's known as the orange book which is basically the design building and construction guidebook for the city on city properties and so part of what transportation electrification committee is doing is that we're offering recommendations for um um inclusion in this guidebook or what is necessary to install street side electric vehicle parking and or electrical charging infrastructure so that's something that we're um we're providing support for also we are we are providing support in uh for uh what um missy also talked about with um electric vehicle charging at multi-unit dwellings um giving uh resources to simi bar who's the lead on that and um i just wanted to just give you a quick update of some of the things that we're working on as far as the
155concierge service is concerned we're going to be hopefully helping to compile some resources to help folks when they are looking at installing electric vehicle charging on their properties as well that's it for my update yeah um i'd like if you could tell me john a little more about what you want the university to do um you know i don't understand this ordinance yet uh and we don't have to do that now uh but i can i can certainly maybe make some headway okay i'll get back with you we've met with um um drew horning and lydia and then we had a second meeting with andy berkey sugat and someone from governmental relations excellent and another meeting is planned and committed to not date wise but um in the late spring um around mark or around
156may okay okay i can sort of gin things up you know maybe with it within uh campus leadership all right it's always good to gin things up we're implementing also uh tomorrow as of like this week we're implementing a 25 million dollar revolving carbon neutrality fund for all units on campus so there's going to be some decent amount of money available to start doing things more aggressively and uh you didn't hear it from me and i could be completely wrong but i'm pretty sure uh the campus electric campus connector idea is is gaining steam again uh you know the that will connect the north campus with the main campus and maybe uh down to the athletic campus um and i think that's another good thing for missy to know because that means uh you got
157we got to be ready to figure out how it connects with the city's mass transit and i know quite a bit of thinking was done on that early on back when we were in the early days of the pccn but i don't know where it stands now but i just have this hunch that it's gonna be a you know it's gonna happen can i just share something with you and a concern that i have i don't know if there's anybody else that has any influence on the university i think many of you saw probably this announcement about the detroit center for innovation that was announced and um i know there's a number of concerns with gentrification and things like that but staying within the energy range i noticed that there was not a single mention
158of anything related to the building if you look at it there's a ton of glazing we all know blazing means high heat gain and heat losses it means it's not a very energy efficient envelope it doesn't didn't say anything about whether it's an all-electric building it didn't say anything about you know geothermal net zero ready there was nothing about any kinds of certifications and it's just concerning to me that the university continues to build lots of buildings and i know that there's new uh building standards that are being worked on um but i'm hoping that these new major construction projects are are taking into consideration the recommendations of the pccn another thing that's of concern to me is that the university continues to say they're going to tear down the fleming administration building there's a
159hell of a lot of embodied energy in that building it seems to me that somebody should be thinking about engaging students or somebody else to think about repurposing that building and renovating it instead of gutting the whole thing and sending it to landfill i mean that just doesn't make any sense to me um so if anybody has any influence with anybody within the university please uh on your leash a little bit or whatever it is that you can pull on i'll definitely i know people hate that building um and it's pretty universal it's not a fun building to be in at all and it's energy efficient because the windows are so teeny maybe um but all the buildings built i think the building is being built you know the netherlands that are being that were
160planned you know years ago like the new medical tower but the new ones going forward and i the medical tower is being you know upgraded in terms of what it will be able to do but it's still old school but there is geothermal going on one of the new buildings on north campus and the dci the detroit uh center for innovation i'm pretty sure it's going to be net zero great i mean with with the fleming administration building i mean that building could be gutted and you could still save a hell of a lot of embodied energy that's in it so but that's a discussion that's a rabbit i'm not sure i get your drafts there you can gut it and recycle it you mean or no repurpose it i mean what else could it
161what how else could it be i mean you could put an 8 dream down the middle i don't know what you could do but it seems to me you should turn a bunch of students loose on on what you could do so that no matter what you do whether it's tearing it down or whether it's repurposing it or using it for a completely different kind of purpose that uh that would be considered from that perspective so we have a computer center it's perfectly ideal to do house computers that's true for bitcoin although that's all done that's all done in the cloud these days but whatever the cloud yeah but the cloud has computers somewhere too i know yeah right it could be a service that's not that mysterious okay any other updates from anybody else
162uh so um we are now back at uh public input and um i'll just read my little spiel here this is an opportunity again for persons to speak up for up to three minutes if you're watching on ctn please call 888-788-0099 or and enter the meeting id 937-6751-6819 this information is also displayed in the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number two raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak plus star9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak um or actually i guess missy provides a verbal prompt and when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute anything that might be in
163the background and then finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments caller ending in 041 can you hear me yes hi my name is john higgins from ward 4. i wanted to express my appreciation for all of you folks on the energy commission uh for putting forward the resolution that was discussed in the beginning of the meeting i think uh moving towards the feasibility study for municipal utility and at seu are you know great positive things for the city um i wanted to uh give a couple points that i sort of hope the city uh council members uh in the group consider going forward um the first is that uh you know the cities in michigan that have municipalities have had them for you know largely over a century and
164have accrued a lot of revenue over the time and if for a municipal feasibility study there's a big difference between one that say looks over the scale of 20 years and one that looks over the scale of 10 years um you know i think that this idea is a change that could last a long time in ann arbor and would accrue a lot of revenue and value to the city over time but any feasibility study into it would have to take that sort of long-term view or perspective um i also wanted to sort of reflect on you know a lot of callers at the beginning of the meeting expressed that you know an su isn't really capable of getting to a hundred percent of our generation um in a previous meeting a um the report
165from google was cited um that basically said that uh solar production potential was of sort of upwards of 400 megawatts potentially in ann arbor um my background is someone that you know studied computer vision algorithms in grad school here in ann arbor i think whether it's the fact that that study doesn't really consider economic costs whether it's you know potential missing obstructions on roofs consideration of groups that are northward or eastward facing i think there are a lot of reasons to sort of be skeptical and consider that you know that sort of estimate of solar roof potential in the city may be a gross overestimate um i'd love for it to be true that you know another could get all of its power from just putting solar panels on rooftops but i don't see the
166evidence for that to be the case and i don't think uh that that study is sort of sufficient to suggest it which is why i think the municipalization and in particular the purchase power agreements and distribution um supplied by it are so important for the city thank you thank you caller ending in 245. color ending in two four five you can mute okay um hello um hi this is kathleen murphy again 315 linda vista street ann arbor and i'm just going to say that i want to thank you john mursky and all the commissioners for the seriousness with which you've taken on this issue and uh it's been great working with you i've learned a whole lot as we've gone through this these considerations for the last year and um i think this resolution really
167could take this forward fighting the climate crisis it's a little step forward for the planet so i thank you very much thanks for sticking with us that's all chairworks that's all okay great so that just uh leaves items for the next agenda and the german um our next meeting as i mentioned is on january 11th uh can anyone confirm that we're still meeting virtually yes you're 100 virtual yeah okay that's what i thought um so we have um agreed that it's going to be a work session i think we mentioned that before um but missy and carlene and i uh had a meeting about a week ago and and confirmed that we're going to do that and we're going to focus on the workings of the commission topics for the next year and in order
168to prepare for that the three of us worked on a survey that we will be sending out in roughly the next 24 hours it asks a little bit in in the rear view mirror what are your thoughts on what we've done in the past year and then it also asked several questions about what are priority topics for you going forward and things like that and um i'm going to ask that you respond to that within a week if you don't do it within a week you're we're probably not going to do it at all and then we're going to get really into the holidays and we don't want to be sending out 25 reminders because we gave you uh five weeks or four weeks to uh to answer so um please take a you know
169be on the watch for that um we'll maybe send out one reminder after a couple of days um just so it stays near the top of your end basket it's going to be an anonymous survey and we will compile and share those results with all of you of course when we are in the working session we hope that that prompts a lot of open discussion and of course at that time people can share their specific comments from the survey if they want to do so but they don't need to i think it'll be instructive hopefully for all of us um and then i'd just like to open things up for additional comments by carlene and missy and then for any other comments about items for um future agendas one thing that missy mentioned that i
170noted and she will certainly keep track of his presentation on bryant um but missy and carlene did you want to say anything else about the planning or the work session right now we'll be working on details of the the agenda and put some structure to it once we have the uh the survey results back i think just having please everyone just please answer the survey completely it would be great really valuable yep be frank with your your comments and assessments that'll help us all i think you know what we want to do is um help reach the goals of and uh a20 and help missy and her staff and to be you know as efficient and effective as they and we can be together and hopefully this will will help us do that did anybody
171else else want to bring up ideas for the work session or for future meeting topics that we should capture and be aware of going forward okay so i would suggest um we all take a copy that we probably printed out of the resolution that we passed tonight put a bow around it put it under your christmas tree and be glad that uh you got a bunch of new things that we can tackle going forward once the feasibility study results are back i'm sure we're going to have a lot of discussions again on the topic but that was i think certainly a present for all of us uh to to get through this and um it was a pleasure working with everybody on it and um i it's been a pleasure working with all of you
172over the past year i hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and get in some good r r and um i don't know if we're going to have a white christmas given temperatures are 30 degrees above normal but we'll we'll hope for that and i hope that uh you know like i said you all have a wonder time wonderful time and i look forward to seeing you all in the new year so with that the meeting is adjourned it is 8 56 or 15 need a motion to adjourn permeate you need a motion to adjourn oh i need a motion driver i move we adjourn ah good point thank you got a bunch of a bunch of seconds ember and uh council member radina um so do we take a vote on on adjournment
173no okay so we have plenty of seconds and therefore the meeting is adjourned thanks very much good night everybody good night