Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 8/26/21

001on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807. knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of 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 thanks galen um do you want to proceed to the roll call sure okay uh commissioner graham commissioner graham commissioner needham council member dish and i'm gonna check uh uh wait a minute we got some people waiting to get in if it's okay i want to start over okay everyone said uh commissioner graham commissioner needham councilmember dish president from chicago okay um commissioner gibb randall president and ann arbor

002councilmember griswold president ann arbor commissioner khaliwar president ann arbor uh president uh brown uh president in ann arbor commissioner mursky president in our vice person uh mitchell president in ann arbor commissioner vanderbilt commissioner vandenbrook chris vandenbroe here in ann arbor sorry all right commissioner oriole commissioner oriol and commissioner zane carrying a number right we have a quorum all right well thank you thank you so let's move on to the approval of the agenda um are there any uh is there a motion to uh to consider the agenda okay from shannon uh seconded by kathy griswold um um discussion are there any amendments is anybody requesting any amendments raise your hands will speak up by hearing and seeing them um was the agenda accepted as originally written raise your hand say i i i always say

003no anybody who say no many abstentions hearing and seeing them um the agenda passes unanimously without a moment um so let's pass on to the approval of the minutes from our last july meeting um let's see um is there a motion to consider the minutes from our july 24th um i don't see one but and john mercy motion to accept the minutes and seconded by john callaway any uh discussion anybody any discussion okay hearing and seeing none um all who approve the minutes as written has submitted raise your hand or say i i think any opposed any extensions okay hearing and seeing then the the minutes are approved unanimously um let's pass on to public commentary um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call nine 1-888-788-0099 four

004eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and enter meeting id nine four zero zero four three eight four four two six this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate the desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the post is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds

005before a connection is established is there anybody on the line dealing there's no one on the line okay let's wait a few minutes though wait a few seconds i think that's 30 seconds anybody on the line yet there's no one on the line okay then uh this ends the public commentary period on the agenda so um i'll proceed to unfinished business so i just like to open by saying that um i think this is the perfect time for a review of our accomplishments from last year um what um and what we i can consider in terms of approve improving our work um i think um i think this is probably the best me the best time of year and the best time to approve it as opposed to the end of the year so but

006i'm open to any suggestions um so under unfinished business i've just listed the categories under which um we've been um either the themes that we're charged with in our bylaws such as solid waste water quality or quality and um we've asterisked the things that are kind of ongoing activities such as the gelman update uh the phosphorus discharge in the very river and the pfas and so i think this is a good time for us all to just discuss what we've done and i just want to reiterate my feeling that um our really our tangible work products are draft our ordinance droughts first of all like if we can help council and staff on draft ordinances to improve the environmental situation in the city here i think that is our uh that is our primary work

007product uh the second one would be resolutions in support of of actions by council and staff and the community considering members of the community and you know i i feel like this this forum is kind of is kind of the most logical forum for integrating input from both the community members you know through all of our connections and our networks within the community in general and with council and with city staff and to try to help improve city government and provide a forum for discussion and action so um so with that in mind um i'm just looking over what we've done for the last year uh we haven't really completed drafting any um you know any ordinances this year of course it's been a pandemic year um we have issued a number of resolutions particularly

008you know last fall we were occupied with the government boom since we were the court documents were opened and we did spend three meetings three full meetings on drafting a resolution that i was very happy with i think we we did a very good job in integrating information and uh coming up with proposals uh for um um you know suggestions for for solving this and uh things have been proceeding proceeding after many many years were men remembering that this plume was first discovered in 1984. a long time you know especially in a community community like this for something like this to have been um having to have been left to uh with its own devices so um so i'd like to open the floor just briefly for a discussion about what people uh think might

009uh what kind of policies and procedures we might think of implementing to improve our efficiency and our work product and our output so please raise your hand if you if you'd like to mention anything hi kathy you raising your hand okay sorry i was just getting a hair out of my eyes i am paying attention i did not want to be distracted that's all right that's right um okay so i would just like i would just hope that we can um we can improve you know our efficiencies and try to try to uh develop more things we have things on the table either we're going to discuss next in terms of these uh broad areas that are part of our you know that are part of our rematch from our bylaws but also ongoing projects

010that we have and i apologize if i've dropped anything but um i do think we've made significant progress in the last year um so i see some hands up now on the first is john mercy and then rita you have the floor john thanks steve uh i concur with your um general comments uh i particularly support the statement that we really add value um not so much with resolutions of support i mean that's nice um but i think we really add value when we work on something that eventually leads to a change in policy or programs or something like that and my sense is we do that best when working groups are focused on an issue like that and there is a core group and it meets regularly and it's really focused on that task

011and my belief is in my experiences not only on the environmental commission but also on the energy commission that that leads to the best outcomes the most quickly uh and that's evidenced by a number of different things that we've done i mean we're gonna probably talk later about um zero waste um it's not true of the lighting ordinance it's true of the eb charging ordinance it's true of some of the um energy benchmarking and disclosure ordinances that are going to be coming to council here soon um and my sense is is that we would be best served going forward and stephen iu and just for transparency for everybody else steve and i met yesterday and again today and just chatted a little bit my sense is that we would be best served as a commission

012if we really want to have out work that leads to tangible outcomes and benefits to the city that we organize around that principle and that we not juggle a bunch of other issues and talk about a lot of different things but really focus on on specific tasks like i said that focus on policy and programs um yeah i'll leave it at that thanks well everybody's quiet i think there is value in resolutions um because they they obviously do support changes in kinds of you know policies and programs um but um those are most just ad you know really advocacy they're they're really not adding a whole lot of value in my view i'm sorry i was muted um rita you have the floor and then lisa and then kathy um well i just want to

013make a kind of a suggestion that applies to myself as well that um as we get into our working groups that it's a good idea to set some time frames some target time frames to complete a task and even if it's not done it's better to at least have have a goal of a time uh and then to address what may ever may be a problem so um as i said i am speaking to myself on for example something we'll talk about later the chapter 40 kind of thing um and some some other tasks but but i think that's what would be something that that i would like us to see have have an expectation of ourselves to complete work yeah lisa you're on the floor yeah i wanted to just add a couple things

014first i wanted to say that um john callaward and i and jenny patoski um turned in with the support of the of osi a next cycle grant to research metrics for the circular economy and if that grant is successful there's a second round of funding for more money for a kind of boot camp for how to actually build this circular economy which would be great or i don't know build isn't really quite the right word but in any case um so we are doing those things and um then the white paper that you that i just sent to you all i'm sorry i i did not i'm i was in the car today and you know just didn't didn't um i didn't so i didn't see your email steve so i didn't realize that that

015you were depending on me to circulate it um so that white paper is the basis for a resolution and the zero waste working group has been working on that for a really long time and it takes a long time to get the language right and i think one of the keys for the work that we're doing in the zero waste working group is that we're working really closely with staff so that we're making sure that the stuff that we come up with aligns with priorities that staff really has and isn't taking us off in or isn't trying to steer staff off in directions that they don't have time or capacity for and so i mean i think things like the construction and demolition ordinance are a great example of exactly the kinds of things we

016should be working on because that is a priority of the solid waste resource management plan and it's something that i don't think staff has time to fully develop but developed with their close collaboration and guidance i think that kind of uh that's pretty productive and so um yeah so so i think that's all i can think of for accomplishments that i know of from that group so far oh thanks lisa kathy yeah before um yeah based on what you said as well as john mursky i think much of the work of the commission is perceived to be bringing about change bringing about improvement in the organization and i definitely support that but we need to make sure that we have a strong foundation so that staff doesn't have to choose between working on a new

017project and maintaining the existing operation and i think that's one of the reasons that the ordinance changed to chapter 40 has been so difficult it's because we really want to change the perception i was looking through some old a2 fix it tickets and a former council member who created a beautiful prairie area in his backyard that backs up to green road there were numerous tickets complaining about his backyard and how it hadn't been mowed and so how do we implement change and improvement in a smoother manner um and i don't have all the the answers but i definitely think that the focus needs to be on education not enforcement whenever possible um and again how can we strengthen the present um you probably remember i modified the plan to include the phrase develop strategies to

018manage flooding and since the last meeting we have had terrible destructive flooding in many areas and i've been standing out in people's backyards with my muck boots on and we really don't have the capacity within the organization to manage what's happening right now with the increase in rainfall this year let alone moving forward and so i i think that if it's not a matter of the commission passing resolutions it's it's some recognition that that we need to assist the organization to build a strong foundation now and as a commissioner i don't even know what that would be as a council member i know that we can pass policies and and approve budgets for additional work but it seems like there needs to be greater awareness within the commissions of that so and the last thing

019that i think has been really positive with my experience on the environmental commission is just the opportunity to work with commissioners on other commissions as well as other governmental entities it's been educational and i think that we've accomplished a significant amount such as gellman such as flooding where we we need to strengthen our relationship with the county uh working with evan pratt uh working with eagle representatives and i don't know that we need to formalize it but i think that we need to at least recognize that that's a positive so thanks okay thank you yeah um yeah i think this is worth uh this is worth an extended discussion about um staff time because um i agree with john that it's very important to get staff involved as early as possible and um however we

020don't want to make too many demands on their time and i'm just using this as an example i know that uh uh it was in our last meeting a month ago the orchard hills community uh we talked about we met we discussed briefly about the flooding in the orchard hills and about that there was never actually a fort a flood management plan done for orchard hills and that jen lawson was working on it but um so this would seem to be something that we should be developing a work group around but we need a commissioner we only need one commissioner to try to lead such a work group and maybe work with jen lawson and try to initiate something more strategic and and direct in terms of stormwater management um um galen and i before

021the meeting were just discussing that osi is going to have uh an ambassador program it will include like flooding and things like that is part of the resiliency strategy in terms of the a20 plan so it looks so i'm hoping that during the next year we'll find a commissioner that will step up and try to organize a work group around that you know i work with jim lawson and perhaps jerry hancock has been the other staff person that i'm familiar with uh that's spoken to us about uh you know about flooding issues so um so i'm hoping this this is something that we can develop but we need to have a commissioner that will step up and volunteer for that um and i will remind people we we are still missing two commissioners you know

022plus a representative from the parks commission so i'm hoping uh to recruit somebody who would be interested in importing in storm water and water quality issues to help the commission um you know with those topics um shannon yeah before i can unmute myself um i think i'm in a really good position to be able to do that in terms of my background um i've had kind of a rough year in terms of other stuff going on in my life and with how much time i have um but i feel like i'm in a good position just with my work professionally and things like that to be able to help with that um when we walk worked with other water things before it is tough to be able to to get the staff time sometimes that

023you need for this because some of this really may be uh in terms of understanding where those pinch points are and things like that um there just may be need to be some like studies done and things like that it's like that's tough right to be able to like run models or whatever um but i think that um you know it is definitely an issue and it's only going to get worse and there are limited things we can do i mean it's like like just as an example i mean allen creek system in the pipes was only sized to be a year and a half storm we get that you know many times a year and so there are certain things we can do and there are other things you can't do um so um

024but i think i probably have a decent idea of kind of where some of those issues are too and have some sense of a way to move through that system so i feel like i could probably work on that um i just need to be careful about um just some things in my personal life in terms of the amount of time that i could spend on it right now um but i do i would like to be involved in that and i feel like i could contribute to that okay well thanks shannon um i mean i i i'll just say and say that bob um you know bob has been interested as well and so i think he would assist you i i have to emphasize that um also i think everybody who's leading a

025working group um should feel like they should be able to delegate almost all the tasks to somebody else especially in a pinch so uh i'm just throwing that out there so kathy you have the floor and then john i i would be interested in being a member of that work group and and i just want to state how exceptional the employees are in that area but also i believe that we're they're working well beyond their capacity right now and so we need to recognize that the only reason things are going as well as they are is because of the extra effort of these exceptional employees agreed thanks cathy john i may be a broken record to some who've heard me speak on this issue before and but i i think we need to um think

026about our work the same way that business thinks about their work um in in terms of business businesses get paid by their customers for delivering positive outcomes to their customers and our customers are our residents and we should we should think about our efforts in not in terms of work done or intentions or hours spent or something else but what do we do that leads to for example a reduced number of flooding events in orchard hills and or a redu reduction in the impact all the work we might do in in terms of hours spent or talk or anything else is really not doing anything for the residents of orchard hills unless we do reduce the number of flooding events and and or we reduce their their severity and i think that that thinking is

027not not sufficiently strong in city government and and the work that i see being done and i think you know i i mentioned you know the ev charging ordinance i mean that will lead to specific tangible benefit outcomes in terms of the number of eb chargers that are going to be available to residents and visitors in ann arbor i mean there's a clear clear benefit and i think to get to those kinds of benefits we need a very specific and clear issue or task with a clear objective we need some a group a clear leader we need people that are willing to work with that leader and meet on a regular basis i mean i'm going to speak here i may be a little bit out of line because chris is not here um but

028thinking about natural features um we've done a lot of work but one of the reasons why we haven't reached an outcome is because we're we haven't been meeting on a regular basis and really pounding out the work done and so you need also a drum beat of meetings and um you know as you mentioned as somebody else mentioned we we we need a commitment i mean there's a lot of research that's been done in various settings that if a group gets together and says i commit to doing x by y versus just saying i commit to doing x but i really i promise that i will do x y y the likelihood that x will be done by y is substantially higher like double than just by a vague commitment saying we're going to do

029x and it's x is not very well defined and why the date is not even you know even mentioned and so i would ask that we as a group think about all of those things as being requirements for tasks that we take on that we have really something in mind that's going to delete lead to a direct benefit to our residents that we have you know a clear issue and an objective that we have a clear leader with people that are willing to work with that leader on a drum beat and that we have a clear deliverable we are going to do x y y and otherwise i really think we're wasting our time not wasting our time but we're not we're not being efficient and effective and i think we all want to be

030efficient and effective thanks for indulging me thanks john are there any more comments i mean i'll just um i i mean i agree with john on this point i think it's important but um i think this is where um just some basic things work on regular monthly meetings and i'm probably one of the worst with the construction and demolition ordinance i'm one of the worst here because i confess that i've not gotten much done over the last six months due to various various reasons but um i intend to reform and we'll have a meeting on um we'll have a meeting in september and get rolling uh but i think it's um we also have to remember that it's important in the beginning to spend some effort before we get to the stage where john's talking

031about where we actually define the problem appropriately and we we brainstormed what the possible causes are and that we have kind of a swot analysis done you know strengths weaknesses and opportunity of threats of the various approaches remediating it and then developing smart goals out of those with action points and regular monthly meetings i mean that's in my experience in business as well that's how things get done in an efficient manner and everybody feels good in the end because uh because we have a tangible product to show for our work for our time commitment so um so i'll get off my soapbox here too and um does anybody else wish to make a comment now i don't see any anybody uh talk uh so i think um i want to thank uh i want to

032thank shannon for stepping up here and um we'll support you as much as we can and uh and please um again i feel like um i think i think because we all have uh day jobs and other things on our plates i think it's also important to have a co-leader i think it's it's gonna it's it's rather difficult that one person is trying to pull all the strings and that there needs to be somebody who is following at the level following everything at the level that the leader is doing so that they can step in a fairly short notice and help out um so kathy you have your hand up you have the floor then i suggest that we find a new member who can fill that opening you know as you sort of alluded

033to some someone who has water expertise and uh i'll take the action item to to try to find someone and and maybe rita and i can look at the applicants that are out there right now but i mean unless anyone's opposed to that i think i think that we need a member that that has leadership ability and will meet all of john's requirements for quantitative work need i say more okay all right uh kev thanks kathy lisa you have the floor [Music] yeah i just wanted to say i think maybe we need to refresh the applicant pool yeah um i think the our recruitment efforts kind of hit a dead end not because we weren't we didn't read them through and recruit but that many people weren't really interested like it the pool seemed to

034have a lot of i don't know algae floating in it rather than fish and so um we probably want to recruit again and um and i and you are not algae chris far from yeah no no i agree i think um i think i think it would be good for all of us to you know recruit for our networks as well and encourage people that we think are appropriate to apply for the commission and part of this for me was also raising the visibility of the commission in the community and that's why i wanted to have a table at the green fair on october 1st and i'm really happy that three of us have stepped up to help with that i'm talking to missy about tabling maybe having a cloth you know for the commission

035and and we'll see how that goes and we'll have some materials to present on october 1st so um um yeah so let's try to encourage people to apply and then give it a month and then look over the applicant pool or maybe just a few weeks so this could be an action point for the meetings that people will encourage applicants to apply specifically that are introduced either interested in storm water management and water quality i'm not sure they need to be members of the ann arbor community i mean jen lawson has alluded to the fact that a lot of some of this is in the you know in the uh purview of the drink the county brain commissioner so um let's have a just let's some of you want to reach out to jen lawson

036and ask for her advice um about you know about uh about what kind of uh expertise we'd like to have on the commission to help her deal with uh these issues as well as maybe jerry hudson on the carry-out so uh john you have your hand up and then lisa it might be worth work reaching out to the pure river watershed council um those those people are connected with a lot of people who are interested in these kinds of issues water quality etc they have a lot of volunteers and um yeah i would um i think some of us um have contacts there so i would recommend that we think about that thanks thanks john lisa yeah i just wanted to say that i would be happy to table in the morning of october 1st

037um i won't be i have to leave town for the afternoon but i'd be happy to be at the green fair oh thanks lisa i don't think it starts till five or so i haven't seen it exactly but um we'll see okay but thank you for volunteering i'm chris and i'm chris vandenbrock has volunteered as well as lunia and um young women i believe has volunteered to help out with that as well so um so i'll key i'll put you on the list here um and uh so tell you what um i don't know who else has contacts on the iran river watershed council but i have dealt with a lot of the people there over teapots issues other such things so i i can take that on personally as i will try to get

038uh their advice their input on this over the next week okay so here's a smartphone yeah by this time next friday i will have a couple of i will i will get a couple of people applying uh to be a commissioner that are that are qualified you know that uh the herod river watershed council is recommended john you have your up the green fair runs from six to nine pm yeah [Music] the setup will start at five i think so um so that's it five to nine on friday october 1st and i think it's going to be on main street but i'm not sure i haven't seen the location from christine chopra uh my communications have been with christine um it will be on main street yeah okay all right so i'm hoping that i'm

039hoping showing up at this event tabling along with other uh organizations will help raise our profile and possibly lead to some more applicants and larger applicant pool all right so um i think that's a good discussion about water quality because i do think that that's been an area that's been chronically um under kind of underserved by the commission and so i think it'd be important to try to try to recruit somebody develop a working group and try to get a tangible work product on the next year kathy you have your hand up um council will be having a working session september 13th on the decision of whether we want to go forward with upgrading our existing water treatment facility which is staff's recommendation or explore connecting to the great lakes water authority and so anyone

040who's interested can look at the two attachments that are out on legistar right now what day is that kathy september 13th okay yeah that would be a significant step a significant uh change in order in our ability to manage our own you know well it has a lot of ramifications um kathy did you want did you have something no i apologize thanks rita you have the floor uh i just want to be sure that we get the document references from you kathy that you just alluded to um on the great lakes water on the water session okay okay yeah i think they're probably on legislator right kathy they're on legistar as uh support documents for the meeting on september 13th so they're they're easy to find and they're connected to the i think to the

041agenda okay yeah alrighty thanks so um [Music] so let's see uh what's the next topic people would like to discuss um let's see okay well i will i will uh let's move on to um natural features and pollinators and then solid waste so um um the zero uh the zero waste looking group has has uh has done a tremendous job lately and so uh lisa do you want to mention um what that work group has been doing and where you are yeah john do you want to start and talk about our work with jenny and then i'll talk about the zero waste working paper unless john mursky you want to talk about that working paper because you put a lot of energy into that as well yeah uh sure just a little bit more to

042add to what lisa shared earlier in the meeting but we've submitted a grant proposal to nexcycle to fund an intern to get us started with a circular economy metrics initiative we've also posted the internship opportunity through the city so that's all in the works for hopefully here in a couple of weeks about the the funding and simultaneously we're getting ready to submit the next stage of grant funding um to kind of continue the work through another funding opportunity the first one was a micros grant the second one will be i2p3 can't remember what the acronym stands for but it all relates to what we're trying to do around the circular economy initiative uh we so the first phase will be to work with an intern to help to define metrics and review literature and help

043kind of get us set and grounded the next days will be a project with a group of c's masters students and we've already reached out and got commitments from two faculty members probably one firm won a backup to kind of get us moving ahead and both are very excited and think there's a strong fit with what the students will be interested in that work won't start for a while yet but you can see we're kind of building things in stages we've also had a great meeting last month or earlier earlier this month with washington community college college about um kind of a boot camp for small businesses to get them connected to the work and thinking about what we're doing uh so lots of things going on so uh jenny lisa and i meet regularly

044we've got a trell award where we're trying to keep everything managed and moving along and it's just been really good good progress good partnerships i think we've got folks lined up from the university the city the county nonprofits that are involved in this so lots of good energy around the circular economy initiative yeah that's fabulous john you know it's been um i mean the the city had some goals and metrics back in 2008 and so um um you know it's it's it's wonderful to see this being revived in such a strong way and i can use your all's advice about moving forward with the construction and demolition my construction and demolition ordinance as well moving forward so you guys have done this really efficiently and effectively so um i would like to see this say

045something similar with the construction and demolition efforts um maybe i could subway into that um because um i've gathered you know what i've done is i've gathered a lot of information i've got a poor group of people i'm sorry john are you finished let's go say i thought john murski did you want to pick up with the no okay well okay the secret to our success with this other thing is that john besides being incredibly smart has remarkable organizational abilities and this this trello site is is amazing and then jenny is a task master talk about steady drum beat of meetings she's like okay when are we meeting next so that is one way of doing it and so then the other the other thing that the zero waste working group is working on um

046has finished now that a draft that it's happy with but for your review of a white paper on zero waste proposing a definition of zero waste which we went back and forth and haggled on a lot um and uh the the objective of the white paper is to make the argument that it is important for the city to reaffirm it's zero waste uh i guess it it did have a zero waste goal or i don't know zero waste was a commitment in a couple of other waste planning documents but it fell out of the sharp and so we're saying you need to reaffirm this principle you need to define it because without defining it that's silly and then uh there need to be a firm set of target goals because you never you don't say

047so we're going to hit zero waste and it'll be in five years great we're done it's it needs to be a gradual rollout and so we propose a coup a couple of different timelines which you'll see in the white paper and then we proposed in the white paper a number of strategies for reaching them in uh so i i think i got myself um distracted so that the point of the white paper is to argue that the city needs to reaffirm this principle define it and then align uh the the schwarmp and the a20 plan and the idea is that a zero waste goal is part of aligning the schwarp and the a20 plan and since it was left out of the schwarmp we need to get council to reaffirm it to actually bring those

048two things together and then it really is a permission for us and for solid waste the solid waste area to work on strategy five of a20 and of course it it will be easier to do all this kind of work when there is more funding but um in the meantime that's why we're working on these grants because at least we can get some outside funding and we can show the city that it actually makes a big difference to its carbon footprint and also we can show them that there's a lot of energy in the community for doing this zero waste work and when you connect the people who are doing that and when you recruit people whose primary business isn't zero waste but for example like the restaurants with those returnable containers that a piece

049of their business can participate in the circular economy that's how you create the circular economies you build these connections and you create the policy bridge and also you know the social media software and other kinds of things that enable people to find these services and so that's what we're working on and i think it's really exciting to bridge these two plans um and um and so i'm i'm sorry that i didn't disseminate the working paper in time but i look forward to either you know probably talking about it in september makes more sense lisa you want to talk briefly about the resolution too well yeah i mean right and so the the intent is that the white paper supports a resolution which i wrote one draft of but i've never written a resolution before so

050i sent it to john mursky and uh jenny and of course staff is going to have to work on this resolution but i wanted to draft something for them first and i think in this case a resolution is really the appropriate thing because it's not i don't we can't i mean there is an ordinance that i would like to have and that is an ordinance paralleling the ev charging for compost because right now we're not creating the infrastructure for composting um and i think that's problematic and shannon had raised that at a planning commission meeting but but i think at this moment what we're trying to get the city to do is integrate this work and put it on make it a priority for the city and make the circular economy a lens through which

051other things are considered just as we often invoke our carbon neutrality goals as a lens through which other things that we are allocating or building or approving are considered and so that's what we're trying to do is just push this up into and and so that we're not only focused on end of life strategies of recycling um and even composting although those are both very good but that we also need to be um taking advantage of you know all the work that our our residents are doing to not buy stuff and to give away their things that could be useful to someone else even if they aren't useful to them anymore so okay now thank you lisa um anybody else wish to make a comment on this topic okay i'm just going to add briefly

052that um the the local sierra club here on valley group is sponsoring a uh a trash talk tour it's going to be september 19th uh there's going to be a website coming online soon um there's about there are 14 stops on this tour they include you know the drop-off center the the we care facility for composting the old landfill um down there they also include several businesses such as by the pound the pto thrift shop there's a new company i wasn't even aware of called bring your own container you know that's offering for sale containers that are reusable for takeout and other things so that's going to be a stop on the tour as well as zingerman's black pearl and um and my blue mama and then we're going to end a common cycle and

053i'm leading the bicycle tour uh so if anybody wants to join me on a bike i hope the weather's going to be good but we're planning a bike tour but it's otherwise it's going to be self-directed uh there'll be a website um with some videos i think and um and anybody in the community can do this tour and so uh we're gonna this is uh you know designed for community education and uh try to make people more aware of how solid waste is handled in the city currently and what we could be doing better so i just want to mention this in this form and um um and the one thing and the only i'm going to schedule a meeting for the uh cnd group i do have a core group um i don't know

054who else might want to join i know john morsky has volunteered um i've kind of been slow at selecting other volunteers until i have other people in place i'm jenny petrovsky's been working with me and i agree she was a taskmaster about about doing a proper procedure i've become a little bit more familiar with the city's way of doing these things um and so but i do need some help more specifically um i'll be done in a second here um i do need some help specifically because it's clear now that uh to get to make this economical and to achieve the kinds of economies of scale that are required there are a couple of basic things first thing is that we do need to have a dedicated construction and demolition work this cannot be done

055within the current work however of your current uh raa site the old caliber facility on jackson road is ideally placed for it and there already is some construction and demolition recycling occurring there principally through the university of michigan's led building uh building campaigns and projects and um and i and theo egremont you know who's the county's solid waste um person is a part of this core group but to get the economies of scale this needs to be county-wide this needs to be organized on a county-wide basis so at least coordinated with the county not just the city so i would appreciate some people who might feel more politically adept than i am and more familiar with the political landscape to maybe step up and uh help out with that part of the project so you

056know and getting some coordination between town and city so this wouldn't be like a permanent person with a court group but just somebody who could feel questions that come off occasionally uh while we're working with each other because it's not clear to me how to do such a thing i know werma wormo was a process that where the staff worked with uh county staff on that and that was a long process though that took out some three or four years that says from my recollection uh so john you have your handout to your points and then going back to what lisa and john talked about um steve remember that uh doug selby um is um willing to at least join the group part-time representing uh home building contractors and i've met joe vig who's head

057of big construction that does a lot of large construction projects for the university of michigan and i'm happy to approach him to see if he might have a recommendation of someone perhaps in his firm or someone else that would be willing to join this effort because as we've recognized in some of the preliminary discussions that we've had this won't work if we impose something on contractors that they're not involved in formulating um as to what john and lisa talked about i just want to reinforce what i said earlier we had in both cases a clear task we had clear leaders um we should give credit to sam mcmullen who did a lot of work on this um zero waste framing i mean he really was the leader and established the drum beat and made sure

058we met and kept us on focus and on task and we had a really clear objective and as i said before if you have those kinds of things um you're much much more likely to be successful and this is just two more examples of that um the one thing that we never did for ourselves um which ended up not being an impediment but still is as we discussed the best practice is we never set ourselves a due date but we we had you know really committed people and we met regularly under clear leadership and focused on a task thanks yeah thanks john yeah doug selby is a member of this core group and you know also jan culbertson you know since she's an architect and she's involved in project 2030 so i've got a number

059of people covering construction i've reached out to the uh associations but i've not gotten uh any commitment from them as yet um so rita you have your hand up and then kathy rita sorry sorry sorry um this is a solid waste question and it's not it goes back more to um residence and education and um is there someone who's addressing the process of providing good guidance to the community in terms of our recycling efforts um in understanding what exactly can be recycled and to keep our recycling stream clean as clean as possible and i'll just really one tiny anecdote that i that um happened with me today as i went with a friend to um the drop buff station um we spent maybe um 10 or 15 not 10. up to 10 minutes talking with

060the person at the gate uh asking questions about what we could drop off for sure plastic bags yes styrofoam yes uh hard plastic of certain types no lids of plastic containers yes and so my this is just a suggestion i don't know who does it maybe it's me um to create some um displays of actual physical objects and say this is something that can go and this is something that cannot go into the stream so that's i don't know who takes it um but i feel like having the actual physical object available to view will help people in their decisions on putting the right things in the actual recycling okay thanks scott kathy you have your hand up and john and then chris um i was going to volunteer to handle political questions if that's

061exactly how you're framing it anyway i'm volunteering to help oh great thanks kathy um um anything else okay thank you very much uh john you have the floor uh to read this question by far the best resource is recycle ann arbor's a to z recycling guide um well it is the best resource that we have and it also has yeah the ability to provide comments so that if you're not happy with the information that it provides that you can suggest improvements and they're not always acted on immediately but they generally are acted on and um i would suggest that um if somebody has a better idea please step forward but my belief is that that is by far the best resource the second best resource which is not available widely is um simply having the

062right tags or labels or whatever you want to call them on the recycling carts um we we have them on our uh recycling carts at least on some they're not on on compost carts except for the couple of routes that were tagged during the more more carts more compost i think is what it was called um uh initiative but that was just on a couple of routes in route one and reward one um but i you know those those are the the two best things and if you go to the a to z recycling guide it it is structured such that it it can if properly filled out can provide the kind of information that i think you're looking for it's structured that way i have used it and i didn't feel like it answered

063my questions but i'll look at it again definitely yeah and then go to the bottom and then there is a suggestion form where you can say this is not providing um the information that i need or it's providing it in a way that's confusing thanks okay thanks chris you have the floor um so this is a subject that's very dear to my heart um the a to z guide i mean i agree with everything john mursky just said however the a to z guy drives me crazy if you go to plastic bags for instance there's 13 different kinds of plastic bags and i can't sort them out i'm working with brian weiner and who is responsible at recycle ann arbor for trying to find markets for all this stuff so part of the problem is

064what's recyclable is what he can sell to somebody who wants it and another part of the problem is that uh we don't know what the new murph can sort yet so for example jennifer patoski has a sorting game and she worked with dan ezekiel to make a little video and i sat next to her at a table at the farmer's market recently and uh i know you did julie said she so in this little game she states that well anything smaller than a fist can't be you know recycled because it's too small for the murph well we don't really know but that's the song that jennifer is singing right now um i'll give you a good technical example so if you look at the little triangle on the recycling and the plastics that you've got

065that got little numbers number one is p e t and it's recyclable but it's really recyclable if it's in the form of a bottle there's a slightly different formulation if it's in the form of a tub that you might buy lettuce in at a grocery store and if the number of tubs get if the percentage of tubs gets too large in the mix of bottles then the purchaser doesn't have as much interest in it so brian is walking a fine line and jennifer is saying for now let's throw out those big tubs which just drives me nuts because they're so nice and clean when i dump the lettuce out why can't i recycle that so i think part of the message is it's an evolving workscape we have to just kind of wait and be

066a little bit patient and i'm working with brian weiner to improve the r to z guide maybe with some general things in front of it like hey if it's real small throw it out it doesn't say that anywhere in the guide right now and so on and so on and so on so this really has to be i mean i just really really am eager to fix this so if you got more questions throw them on me and i'll brian weiner and i will work it out as we go on thanks yeah i think um some of the i mean i mean some of the things i'm most hopeful for in this realm were the extended producer responsibility bills uh there was one the state of maine and the state of oregon have just passed

067and the governor signed bills uh demanding extended producer responsibility and um if you look at waste dive occasionally you know this um weekly newsletter the daily newsletter waste time there are many initiatives to try to simplify plastic packaging to make it more recyclable so there is movement out there at the national level to help to help resolve this issue because it's just it's just a nightmare right so um i'm young when you have your hand up yeah i'm thinking about um the a to z guide and like information about recycling and composting i think that to promote diversity we should at least like um provide language assistance to people who don't speak english or include information that's like really important in different languages and um if like translating all information is really a big task

068we should at least like include a message at the bottom of like whatever message you're sending out that says we offer language assistant because like um promoting diversity in sustainability is really important and i think we should do that okay now that's a great point on when um tell you what i'll try to connect you with brian weiner and you can discuss that with him okay he's on the board of directors of recycling ann arbor and he's very passionate about recycling and i think he'd probably be the best person to answer to address your concerns and try to propose a solution think about solutions um anybody else wish to make a comment on this topic um i mean i participated in this um more compost more carts campaign and i think it was very successful

069and uh it's been difficult to get the city to try to run okay that was done in one of the 45 routes that the city has one out of the 45 routes it was it was done through a sustaining ann arbor together grant there was a ten thousand dollar grant that it was managed by the uh ictj and so uh and i thought it was very successful and these stickers were quite uh it involved what it involved just to let everybody knows it involved um every thursday morning for the month of may we ran around to the carts that were out on the street because you have to do it when they're on the street and we put notices there first saying this is going to happen and then the second one was another set

070of notices and then the third third and the fourth weeks we slapped the stickers on the cards and we had stickers for uh you know for the waste parts and for the compost parts and for the recycling parts and so it's a very easy thing to do so far the city has only had the uh had the time and the resources to put it on new cars so they have pledged that whenever new carts are requested by residents that they'll have those stickers on them but uh this is a complicated topic because as uh i participated in jenny's sorting game as well which is a big hit with children especially you know it uh it depends on what community you're in because the what's recyclable depends on the murph and who and what kind of

071contracts they have in place so uh this is one of the one of the situations that is really going to come under the purview of warmup you know for regionalization if we're going to regionalize waste processing and we have to uh we have to uh you know we have to make the messaging consistent so um um so let's see that's all i have to say i think uh and i've been trying for for years to try to get a group of volunteers together to go and do these parts of other to do a similar thing um through other routes in the city that haven't had a little traction on that um so far so john you have your hand up to use your um last example and build on comments from rita and chris this

072recycling thing is so freaking complicated it's a disaster i mean if you if you are in ann arbor and you're on aunt city of ann arbor property you can recycle glass if you cross over and go into university of michigan building you cannot recycle glass and if you go into a township um that you know for example you know you're in the in our public school system and your kids going they have a school system and maybe they're taught one thing but the township has a different murf what can be recycled there is different it is just so damn complicated if we make it it it's it's yeah what more can i say chris you know this better than probably the rest of us but it is it is a it is a disaster we're

073lucky that we have um a uh i forget what exactly the rate is called but about 10 of our recyclables are rejected 10 to 11 that's relatively clean compared to lots of municipalities um and um you know that's also include dirty recyclables as well as the things that that aren't recyclable we're actually pretty good at that rate but um you know for those of you are reading about what was going on with china and i forget they called the their their program to uh improve their their acceptance of recyclables um they were shooting i think for um cleanliness levels of below 0.5 so you know if we if we were just have been shipping our stuff to china directly for recycling it all would have been shipped back on a boat i mean that's how

074far we are from being able to to do this well and it's just in its you know industry and the point that steve made earlier about responsibility it's it's just made extremely difficult for consumers to be able to understand what can and can't be done and i work in this all the time and i'm completely perplexed a good portion of time as to what i what i myself can do amen um so chris would you want to talk about uh talk about this topic a little bit or uh do you have anything to add well i i just agree with everything john's saying i like to do it it's extremely complex and i i see my task as in an outreach sense it's got to be made simple enough for my neighbor my neighbor is

075happy to throw stuff in the recycling bin but he really doesn't care what number is on the plastic i mean i take the time to read it because i'm kind of a nerd and i say well this is number seven so we can't do that blah blah blah blah but i'm one out of a hundred so again i'm just agreeing with what john is saying and so i see now rita is interested she wants to know what can be recycled what most of my most people don't care they just store somewhere so it is very remarkable really and i think you're correct john that our rejection rate for recycled stuff is about 10 and overall the residential in the residential stream we recycle or we prevent let's say put this way we divert from the

076landfill about 50 of residential trash into the recycling stream which is really good we can get better and there are various outreach programs for that and i want to participate in them but i'm i'm just preaching to the choir here again i'll shut up i think i may have shared with you i i i lived with my daughter for two weeks and that was extremely enlightening to see how the average person even my own my own daughter you know what what their what their attitudes about recycling are and you know it's chris you've you're you've taken on a huge task i'm happy to help as best i can but well i'll work with brian and young nguyen and and whoever really it's it's uh it's really important so we'll do what we can yeah i

077mean yeah it's so i mean i've always relied on pre-cycling myself you know but you can't even buy spinach anymore with a rubber band around it you know against to come wash the triple washed in a plastic box so um i grow my own as much as i can but you just can't you know everybody's gone to this convenience thing of everything's sterilized in a plastic box so um but i do know that uh i knew that it's an action on the national level about this there's a plastic pollution bill it's in congress and there's also uh there's also a a plastic bottle mandate um that's on the uh you know for our recycling uh you know expanding the plastic recycling to or actually uh expanding bottle bills nationally uh a bottle bill for plastics

078that extends to all plastic containers feeding juices and water but who knows what the prospects of that getting cast in congress are and even if it does it'll probably be at least five years before uh before the deadline comes for industry also chris you have your handout well i don't want to take up too much time in this meeting for this subject because we could spend a whole meeting on it but just add in that on the trash talk tour that you mentioned steve i think one of the stops is on liberty where they advertise a refill station so you don't have to buy a new bottle of shampoo every time your bottle runs out you can take the old bottle of shampoo and go get it refilled which we ought to be aware of

079and dan ezekiel's trash talk tour is an effort one of the outreach efforts to get everybody in the city you know if you get a thousand people will be real happy to be aware of this kind of thing because not only does that help the recycling but it is a part of the path towards the zero waste or the circular economy that we're all talking about so yeah you know that and maybe uh i know uh i know the 820 program the uh the sustainability ambassadors program the galen runs um i know they have some some ambassadors that are working on solid waste issues so do you want to mention any uh anything that's going on galen right now um we'll be kicking off our second cohort of uh sustainability ambassadors that's going to be

080happening on september 15th um we uh currently have a cohort of about 20 residents right now who are ready to participate and you know take the journey with us okay and i heard that some of them were working on a project with multi-family housing is that correct for composting and um maybe recycling well there's a couple of groups um i think that the composting uh group or the group that was working with jenny uh slowed down a little bit due to the covet you know so um and that was ray and his wife and some others so um hopefully we can get that picked up or the second group will pick up where they left off that you know or hopefully they can combine their efforts okay all right thanks kalyn rita you have your

081hand off you're you're muted okay sorry um just a question for all of us um in terms of thinking about what we're working on and the a20 program and targeting thinking about our actions in terms of what it can do to reduce the carbon output which is what we really all want to do um so it's you know i don't have a solid thing to say about it right now but it seems to me that we should kind of um target and prioritize um those things that address the most impact that we can have on that plan okay thanks rita all right so uh shall we i think we've exhausted this topic unless anybody has anything more to say so uh let's move on to another one how about uh um yeah chris is not

082here for natural features so um i don't know if anybody wants to speak on his behalf um but we can move on to pollinators the friday you want to talk about what the pollinators work group is doing and uh what do you see your long-term goals as being and steve i can give a real quick update on natural features oh yeah okay john yeah natural features the group has been working on a number of different things um but i would say the most tangible undesired outcome is a change to the udc regarding um the protection of trees through expansion of um what's currently there to both to include both landmark and heritage trees with two separate lists and also to enhance um or add requirements return regarding grading permits and um chris and wendy carmen

083and i have been meeting as chris has been available which um hasn't been very frequent during the summer months it gets back to what i talked about earlier that you know really having a drum beat is really really important but we're getting pretty close to having a product because we're not meeting on a regular schedule i can't say that that pretty close will get across the finish line with something to present to the commission in six weeks or in another you know four months i i just don't know but um a lot of work has been put into that we've got we've gone through language now we're going through it the third time um so um we're getting pretty close um and of course there's there's other kinds of things like the seas project and

084things like that that have been presented i think to the commission that the natural features um uh working group has been has been working on rita what did i miss um am i okay uh you didn't miss but i'm glad you brought up this these projects because it is pretty exciting those students have completed their um field work and they'll be starting they're cleaning their data set so what they did was go out and identify some trees in specific areas um and identify their sizes their species etc get some basic information about them combining with some databases that are available from the university from fi the arb and the trees city tree database street tree database and they'll be using machine training to identify um kind of a flyover of the city to train train

085the system to identify these the trees in these areas and then look at the whole city to see what we can find out about our remaining native forest fragments that will help the the work that that john and and chris are doing and wendy are doing it's really really exciting um they they also included some information which i'm really happy about which has to do with identifying even invasives so they've they've figured out a method to deal with buckthorn thickets um yeah and um the um i talked with them a little bit about tree of heaven trying to get them to find some of those that to see if we're having any kind of really serious invasion um overall um just that kind of thing so um ideally what we'll have is a tool that

086we can use over and over in the city to look at what our tree canopy is what the quality is of it what the species are and track it over time um that should be a really helpful tool to all of us so just it's great okay um um so we die does anybody else want to mention anything about natural features okay let's move on to pollinators all right well i'll just say that the pollinators group is sort of spinning its wheels right now but um i do want to um thank galen for the ambassadors in particular when um um bill connett who has joined our pollinator team as a really strong member who's interested in working on improving um the education features which really means updating our website and getting some really good information

087available um some of the the things that we've talked about in the past have to do with building on work that's available already so when the environmental commission passed a resolution and then council subsequently did as well to um encourage use of integrated pest management and reduce use of pesticides there was really in my mind a need for an education component and so what i'm hoping to do as we move forward that we'll have information on plant types um resources in the community that of people and organizations that that do the kind of plantings that support pollinators um that'll be the kind of thing that will build into this um we'll see um and i'll we'll be working with city staff to get it updated there's already a really good pollinator website on the nav

088website but we'd like to really um push it a little bit farther so i'm really happy to have this resource and bill in addition brought in a young anthemologist who's going to help us with some um guiding information as well she has uh this is really exciting she works um has been working um with the smithsonian as a scholar and kind of a storyteller and so i believe that we'll be able to develop some materials that convey information that will be useful to people something that john has commented on many many times and i agree is is developing reach outreach to the community to reduce turf grass and i think what what i will be focusing on for the next few months um and ideally i'll put some deadlines on it um is working on

089um a plan to do something that um professor doug tell me one of the great entomologists or one of my my heroes is to shrink the lawn so i'd like to work with um parks and uh there are our allied groups that we identified as we went through and did some outreach this spring with some of our pollinator groups to um work with them on on their ideas on how do we get a major step forward with shrinking the law um and so i hope to have something more solid to report to you on that in the future thanks rita i'm have you had if you had any uh engagement with large landowners as yet you know i did once i did one small effort uh at a local church and it turned out to

090be it turns out that my assessment of this was that it wasn't really in the mind of of the person who was responsible for the property to do the kind of changes that i was going to suggest and so it was like kind of a bad cold call in a way so um i i want to um kind of have some rethought thinking of that and i certainly welcome any suggestions from anyone and john has given me a number of them uh to follow through um to make some progress in that way um well just to say to everyone else what we'd like to do is to find some large landowners who have a lot of green grass and ask them to change it i'd actually like to ask the schools when i was during

091the lights out period this month um i was sitting at pioneer high school and looking at their giant front green lawn that didn't have a wii speed that i could see um and i'd really like to change that you know um that would be a goal [Music] excellent hey john you have your you have the floor just to carry on the conversation very briefly with rita me to consider reaching out to the 2030 district and jan culbertson it's a little bit far afield from what they're generally doing um but they are also forming a house of worship group um that's going to focus on sustainability issues and so you know to get to the right people in the church that are interested in sustainability as opposed to the guy who's just in charge of mowing

092the lawn who may not really um share you know the same values to the same degree at least would be potentially really really powerful so yeah you have you must know jan right um you know i know her name from reading it but i have not met her and i haven't had a conversation so um if you can give me some contact that would be great yeah i'll be happy to connection okay yeah i could see that as a great cascading kind of thing you know if you establish it in the place of worship that the worshipers may take it home yeah i mean i'm enthusiastic about schools myself too because if you can if you can get something like this and then on a school property you know the kids are going to go

093home and talk to their parents about it yeah there are a lot of rain gardens and good good native plantings at schools but i was just looking at this giant lawn that's what i was really kind of astounded by you know and i just hadn't thought about it before certainly i've passed it many times um kathy you have your hand up and then channel one of the issues with the pioneer lawn is that it's used for football parking and so if we could come up with something other than a lawn that could also serve as a parking lot that would be fine okay julie noted uh shannon here before yeah i actually was gonna say something similar and we helped design that because there's a huge stormwater facility underneath it and it has to be

094able to support cars on top of it has all these layers of sand a very special seed mix on top of it to be able to make it all work so um there are surprisingly few places pioneer believe it or not um and they do have that great pioneer prairie i think something that um at this school is definitely there are areas that they could they can do less mowing um um i think some of the big uh rental companies that own lots of land like mckinley or things like that that just have big huge lawn areas around parking lots and they make decisions for lots of areas in town um it's it's the thing they've just been doing forever and so it's a big mental shift and it's not going to happen with the

095cold call like it just won't and so there's to be kind of a cultural shift and desire for that or pressure um and uh but they you know some of these big companies own lots of land with that you know so i think that the schools are one though that at least the schools do recreation on their lawns at least there's that um it also is a thing you have to take care of and it's a different kind of expertise and there's not a ton of it in terms of the capacity in ann arbor to the people that i know that do this are just booked solid for a long time and so so we need more people doing it in terms of the management the professionalized management of it which is really kind of

096what it comes down to so even building that capacity i think it would be an interesting thing to do because there aren't enough people that know how um so that could be a potential in the schools or wcc you know or other places yeah perhaps and i i would start in some ways with interviewing the people that do do it and and where you know what how that happened and yeah and and thinking about some of these larger landowners outside of the university and schools and things like that that are kind of the obvious ones um but it's a it's it's a whole different world of management and it's hard for people to take on a different world when you already have something very operationalized so yeah i mean shannon do you have an idea

097of what the relative costs are for like getting on a riding mower versus like reading yeah there's some good data on that out there that you can find um again it's it it's a very intense first couple of years and then you can start to back off but it takes a very intense first couple of years so um it's you you really have to kind of commit to it and want to do it and believe in it because it looks like crap for a couple of years this starts too long i know i've done that yeah i've done that before in my private property and it does require selective for a number of years you know yeah okay so i think it would help when you're talking to people like that they're basically business people

098i think it's good to just it's good to have some rough idea at least of what the cost yeah cost comparisons and things like that are and there's some good data out there you know for that rita you know that could be a pitch um so yeah there are there definitely is good data out there for some of that because people have saved money over time if they're doing high inputs if they're irrigating and doing fertilization and spraying and all that kind of thing and mowing then if they're doing high inputs then it is cheaper go this other route but if they're not then it's not so that's something that's tough so if you um can direct me to that kind of data that'd be great yeah let me make a note for myself that

099isn't something i've touched on yet okay okay and the term i like is ornamental turfgrass that's where it's not used for sports or anything else because i think that captures it perfectly because we don't we all don't think it's very ornamental anyway so let's call it so it has a bit of disparaging to it so i call it ornamental turf grass so um okay do you want um anything else on the pollinators [Music] thank you okay well i think that almost wraps it up um and so uh but there is one other thing i'd like to bring off and that is like local food this is something that you know is part of a20 it's part of it was part of the first sustainability plan that matt and i put together it was part of

100the sustainability metrics but it's something that always seems to fall through the cracks so i'm wondering um i'm wondering if uh during our recruitment effort if we can try to find somebody who's interested in local food and trying to see what can be done to support the a20 goals in that respect because though you know it's not going to be the energy commission um i'm not sure uh um i mean i've done a fair amount of research on it and i have a group together who's interested you know including the people at argus farmers market some of the local organic farmers associations things like that um you know the university and the uh the university's uh food program um project bro you know the people at uh and that uh you know amanda sweden who's

101at the uh at the saint joe's on the farm she runs the saint joseph so i think i already have a group of people together that could be a nucleus for a work group to work on that but i don't have time to deal with that i don't know anybody else who has the interest in maybe the background to participate in that so i'm hoping maybe we could we could consider recruiting somebody who's interested in that topic and promoting local food because if you look at project drawdown this is a substantial part of reducing carbon budgets improving resilience uh getting healthier diets plant plant-based diets going things like that so i just want to throw that out there and see what people think um shannon you have your hand up oh okay anybody okay again

102it seems to like uh drop off the back of the wagon okay all right well um does anybody want to bring up any other topics um i know i mentioned air quality there's not much we can do about that but it's in the back of my mind and i think um uh the phosphorous discharges and pfas are going to be topics of uh future um a future commission meeting soon um i'm working on both of those because that's some kind of things i'm working on i'm the uh team leader on a sierra club uh grassroots network national team working on ppos and i've been working with several other non-profits on those topics so um i think i can put together a program on fifa as it's impacting the city's operations and i just want to

103mention that uh the drinking water has kind of been dealt with at this point um we don't have any identified surface discharges but we will have requirements for our wastewater and our um hop iosolic discharges coming up really soon so that's all i want to say about fifa's at the time at this time so uh okay i see several hands up uh john callaway and kevin john morsky john yes just a quick update in terms of the search for the new resource recovery manager position for the city that that process is ongoing uh there's been a couple of interviews there's a couple more coming up so it's ongoing don't have any help yeah thanks so yeah john so you're involved in those um and there's a discussion yeah good good excellent thank you thanks for

104that update um anything else okay so kathy and then john mursky and then rita um just a reminder that the a.g dana nessl would like to be invited to our meeting regarding pfas and uh also when we look at air quality i think that we should look at air quality in southeast michigan looking at just ann arbor air quality can be misleading and we're not negatively impacted in the same way and if one of our goals is equity then i think it's important to look at the detroit and the down river population yeah kathy on that topic i'll just mention this briefly is uh um i've been i've been mentioning this in the local sierra club meetings uh there's actually in the ecology center here has done some things because now you can get some

105really cheap portable um monitors for both pm 2.5 pm 1.0 i'm nox and stocks pollutants and um i purchased a few myself from a company called purple air and i'm working with those and i thought it might be a good idea to try to include those in public schools that are near the interstate 94 corridor um i agree with you it's not it's not such a particular issue here in ann arbor and as as we start electrifying things and not burning any more natural gas our air quality will improve here but the major problem is diesel you know diesel traffic along interstate 94. if there's any schools nearby or communities i think it would be good to try to place those monitors in those locations and try to get some citizens some residents involved in

106moderating air quality and reporting his epa zone because i've looked into this and the epa you know their monitors are maybe 50 miles apart and not in very uh not in the places where you might expect them to be or we might want them to be so i think this is something we should all be mindful of but i'm not sure exactly what the city can do about it well i'm concerned that if we increase our reliance on electricity and dte burns more coal in the detroit and down river area it's going to negatively impact some people and i would hate to see that done because there's there's already a serious air quality issue as well as as toxins in the ground in many of those low-income neighborhoods yeah it's a problem all right but

107um i think dte i'm not sure how much more coal they're burning because they're already transitioning to natural gas um and um yeah okay i just want to be mindful of it sure yeah but i think for in terms of what ann arbor can do i think that's what we could do is try to try to increase the air monitoring locally here and provide some resources and education along the i-94 corridor and uh actually i was i wanted to reach this program through the hvg group into mexican township and excellent because their equality is much worse than ours for various reasons i'm john mursky and then rita mitchell to follow up on that um the 820 has a pilot neighborhood program in bryant and i'm pretty sure bryant is right there on 994. and maybe

108we could do some air quality measurements there because of all the logistics and truck traffic um and i shared this um with steve yesterday we discussed it together he is generally aware of it too i listened to a freakonomics podcast the other day and of all things um they covered uh cognitive decline exposure do you listen to it cassie not yet but i'm very interested listen to it cognitive decline due to exposure to pm 2.5 particles and not just long term there can be poor air quality on a given day and that will affect people's cognitive abilities on that day and um if you if you think about what the social cost of carbon is you know we talk about you know lung impacts and cardiovascular vascular impacts but if you also think that there

109is a cognitive decline um over the long term and also on individual days um especially also now with all the forest fires and things like that this is just one more huge negative impact of burning fossil fuels and climate change and everything else i i didn't realize that there's actually that kind of impact with cognitive ability due to pm 2.5 so it's a it's it's an episode within the last month so if anybody's interested in listening to it check it out that's it hey thanks john harita you have your hand up um well i just want to um uh kind of echo the concern about um kind of displacing our air problems to other areas um so if we electrify our cars that's great our local air is a little better but if it means

110that we're pumping out more um particles in another area of the state that's a real concern so i think we all need to work toward you know whatever that means we've got to keep that in mind so but back to me um and uh an issue of uh chapter 40 which i neglected to send out to you all last month um so i'm going to send a message to the entire mission and those who are interested in reviewing the document um i will appreciate that i will include a couple of versions and i'll explain them in an email to you and those who are interested i'll ask you to respond and i would like to possibly have be a little more responsible maybe have two meetings by zoom and a completion that perhaps we could

111um review by this body next month okay thanks rita um so um why don't we move on quickly i want to end this meeting at nine um so let's uh let's move on to reports from committees other commissions council and chair if there's no other comments on these topics okay i don't see anybody's hand up so um uh we've already kind of discussed the work groups on the committees um other commissions um how about shannon do you want to tell us about the planning commission activities okay lisa i'm looking at you too i think um things that relate directly to environmental commission um not not thinking of a lot of things that really really directly i don't know if you if something knows the infill development count at uh you know the one out by

112briarwood um because it's yeah right yeah so it's like one of the things that's really difficult in the city is to be able to once you're zoned a certain way um to be able to make it more dense over time and that's one of the ways that we are trying to figure out how to make things more efficient and have you know you're using current infrastructure um you're i mean there's just a lot of it's better to do that than it is to build in a corn field somewhere outside of town and so there was um an older uh condo association that's over near mary vestal park not too far from bryant school actually incidentally also very near the highway in fact one side of it borders the highway and uh they were able to

113zone it to be more dense and to have a green a former green space become a more stacked flats and part of this worked because it was already next to a huge park and so them having green space was a little redundant in terms of what was around them they're also on bus lines and you know things like that and so it made a lot of sense to be able to slip these um units in there i think um we have struggled with um our dual goals of being able to be both affordable and sustainable at the same time and i've kind of found that what we end up doing is sort of choosing one in terms of the theme of the of the project in front of us because it's difficult to achieve both

114it really is so um in this one i would say it ended up becoming more leaning towards the affordable side of it and going with the density and all of the environmental benefits that happened because of more density in that way though we did go round and round about the eb ordinance and trying to kind of right size and tune um what is possible what is appropriate to ask for in different um developments we have a pretty clunky way of being able to get people to rise to the occasion for sustainability we don't have a lot of um there's not a lot of agility that we have to be able to kind of fine-tune things because our ordinances are ordinances and it made me feel like boy it'd be nice to be able to really

115have a more nuanced approach project per project but it's really hard to do that in government that's sort of what i i feel like lisa i don't know if you have any other comments around that um no i was just so pleased to see an infill project because we see so few of those and this is a way that i think people are willing to accept density um and yeah i agree it was hard you know not to ask them to like remake the whole development while they're at it which made the project totally unsuccessful so it you know because our ordinances actually say that right right so we kind of struggle with that sometimes we did about how to yeah to find that that balancing act but i think that's kind of the the

116only thing i can think of that that really applies that would have any overlap with environment well other than the fact that when you all talked about the um downtown the um you know the housing that's going to go on the lot next to blake transit there was a lot of talk about how do you make this work given that there's going to be exhaust for some time until we illustrate that and from i listened to the meeting i was on vacation and um the the thing is is that the way it's going to happen is people aren't going to be able to open their windows and you know but of course if you live in manhattan you don't open your windows so you know it's a culture shift well then once we electrify if

117all the buses get electrified that's another thing and and that was part of where they were going with it but there are also a lot of concerns in the meantime you know right the fumes going up and everything like that and if it's affordable housing does that mean you're just like layering on you know or air quality on top of that and it's a great project in so many other ways because of all the nested uses and it's very difficult to develop at site with outside of this city i mean like it would be really tough for a developer to come up with the site plan for that thing that would have worked well with all of the city infrastructure around it in terms of the ata and things like that and so um yeah

118yeah it's tricky and um one of the things i would also just say that dovetails a little bit with what you were talking about before with the air quality piece it doesn't it's more of a comment on what we're talking about before rather than being planning commission but that vegetation can actually make a really big difference with that air quality at least in in the right season and um [Music] and that there's been uh studies done that really show like having a robust green buffer between the highway and the areas where people are it makes an enormous difference so um uh it would be kind of interesting actually that you can test that with some of your with some of the instruments that you have um stephen and the other school that i would recommend

119looking at would be forsythe and wines which are truly right on the highway whereas bryant is a little bit further back um so but yeah air quality is is it's a tricky business with um what we're talking about with the affordable housing downtown which is essentially on that that old y lot across from the library and of course that one just to make sure that it's clear that one is um it's affordable and it's market so it's being checked um yes given that there are buildings over um bus stations in many other communities as well as over freeways isn't there the technology to do air handling and purification oh absolutely yeah and it's not entirely covered either it's it's it's open on sides and things like that so maybe a little tricky to um be

120able to completely capture everything that's my memory of it lisa is that it was yeah right but entirely you know the best covered and sequestered so oh i didn't understand kathy's question but definitely the buildings are going to be designed with they're going to have super hvac systems and triple or double paned windows it's just that people will not be able to open their windows and you know for me when spring and summer are here i want my windows open except for the mosquitoes this year who just dive-bombed everything but you know so i think that is you know and as i said like if you live in manhattan you don't you you just take that for granted you're not gonna open your windows but i don't think people in ann arbor think that way

121and so it it might be seen as a disadvantage for this housing yeah sometimes with with lead buildings and things like that they they um people opening their windows makes it much more difficult to control how uh you know that all works too and so many times you can't anyway when you have a high performance building so not always but you know many times okay kathy you have your hand up and then john morsky well well my question was actually isn't there technology to handle the air that's being exhausted by the buses like under the awning area i realized we have many buses that are out in the street as well but and i didn't know if it was a limitation on the technology or a limitation on how much money aaata wanted to spend

122that i don't remember about whether um i i didn't know that there was definitely going to be error handling i don't know to what extent you know to how much they can i know for sure there's a lot of parking around it too and because it's not entirely covered you can't kind of control everything you know that's that's happening with that so it'd still be kind of bleeding out the sides and things like that so because it wasn't a truly enclosed system okay and i believe when the aaata station was rebuilt the expectation was that many of the buses would be down at the multimodal train station parking structure rather than at the current location and so i don't know if long term if wherever the new train station is located if that would divert

123some of the buses from that location i don't know if that's still the plan we didn't we didn't get into that at all so i have no idea and i think that you know clearly the um this was just our very first peak at the proposal and so it it still has a long way to go in the process and we brought up all these kinds of issues around air quality several commissioners did and so i think we're going to get a lot more information as it as it comes down the fight so okay thanks and i didn't mean to give you all the questions no that's okay it's important no i mean you know it's not just diesel versus electric i mean you probably get some improvement just with natural gas or propane you

124know and i know for some time you've been able to get buses that will burn propane with natural gas so you know but electric electrifying everything should help as long as we can do it on renewable sources right so okay i'm sorry john you have your hand up sorry to extend the conversation a bit but i think this is pretty important um the 820 plan is is pretty clear um step one is 100 clean and renewable energy and step two is electrify everything and my view is that we should be looking at this building in the context of the a20 plan this building is going to be there i mean let's be realistic it's going to be there 60 or 70 years and we we should be doing everything we can to talk to a

125triple a ta to push them to electrify and the city is doing everything it can to get to 100 clean and renewable energy and if we're going to meet our 2030 target we need to be doing both of those things and in my view the building should be designed recognizing that it's going to have a life of another 50 years after that point and shannon is absolutely correct i'm not an expert in these matters but i'm i'm aware of what she said that you know opening and closing of windows particularly in certain seasons can really throw off the hvac system but if when we're talking with the developers we in my view we should not plan this building based on the next nine years but based on the 51 years or the whatever 100 years

126after that recognizing that we have a climate crisis and we have policy at the federal and the state in the city level that says we we need to get rid of those diesel buses period um if i can parlay that into then an update on on the energy commission unless there's anything else to be said uh okay quickly that they have every intention of making this a sustainable high performance building well i mean also in terms of you know opening windows and things like that too no i get it but just just so you realize that it that it's not like that was not discussed they definitely want that to be part of things they want to be able to follow ages or just so you have a sense that that that was definitely part

127of the discussion as well right right okay all right thanks so quickly the energy commission is not meeting this month um we thought we would probably not be able to get a quorum um so we're not we're not meeting we're meeting in september the primary focus of december meetings are going to be two related topics and that's going to be energy benchmarking slash disclosure slash energy audits and disclosure where we're essentially trying to do the same thing to two different sectors the commercial multifamily is going to be governed by one ordinance which is energy disclosure that enables then benchmarking um peer-to-peer and then also obviously by the city because that information will be in the public domain and then there will be a second ordinance that is targeted to single-family residences requiring an energy audit

128that has to be disclosed when a house is um sold so that that information is known to the owner and to the buyer or the seller and the buyer and that hopefully will trigger um energy improvement upgrades um that are in support of 820. so that's the september meeting the october meeting is going to be focused on municipalization um we're going to have presentations by um boulder so we've um had two presentations by ann arbor public power one in february and one in july in july we had a first reading of a proposed resolution from a2p2 um the october meeting we're going to have representatives from boulder which had a failed municipalization effort the legal structure there was one complicating factor we don't have that same structure here but there are other elements in terms

129that are common in terms of um utility uh let's say resistance to the to the effort and what what the utilities did and um you know what they they looked at in terms of what other communities did so we hope to learn from them and then we're going to have representatives from winter park florida a smaller city 30 000 people so boulder just for comparison is 330 000 so it's two and a half times the size of ann arbor um the other city is smaller but it's significant because it's one of the few um successful municipalization efforts in the last decade and so we're going to have them also present at the meeting um with the idea that that will hopefully better inform the commission and the community at large as to the pros and

130cons related to municipalization since i have two council members that are here um i would urge that council not force the energy commission to vote on the feasibility study that is proposed by a2p2 in september in light of the october meeting which has been scheduled i understand that there's a sense of urgency but this is really a momentous decision the feasibility study will cost 120 000 roughly alone and that has to come from somewhere it's going to come from the reserve it's going to come from something else in the osi or in the city budget and so there is a let's call it an opportunity cost related to that and you know one of the things we have to understand is does that opportunity cost have any benefit in terms of the feasibility study leading

131to something that's going to be a tangible positive outcome for ann arbor or just lead us into a dead end because dte is gonna do everything they possibly can to um obstruct this um so there is um yeah um so we're gonna um and i from what i understand um there's gonna be some discussion at the council meeting about imposing a later date on the energy commission to take action on this possibly november or december i think personally that makes a lot more sense and then if the idea is is that we should pursue a feasibility study and i think there's a lot of arguments for doing that um then in my view it would make sense that council also um sets a timetable for when that rfp should go out when it should be

132processed when um the result should be in so that we act on this quickly because again you know this is important as far as the overall 820 plan so those are the two things really that the energy commission is focused on here in the coming next two months and i'm happy to take questions or comments john uh lisa you have your hand up and then kathy what's the date of that meeting john in october uh the october is on 10th or 14th i think it is i can't remember it's in it's in legistar um it's the second tuesday it's the second tuesday okay we meet at six o'clock and we can i mean i can just attend like a member oh absolutely yeah tuesday it's october 12th is the second tuesday okay yeah i have

133planning commission but maybe something can work out yeah okay kathy i just want to say that um i hope we can work in a cl a collaborative map way and i've struggled both as a council member and previously as a commissioner between when do you want the agenda to be driven by the commission and when do you want the agenda to be driven by council back to the commission and you always have to be aware of the cost in terms of staff resources so so it sounds like we've got a path that's that's going to work for for everyone and and minimize extra effort so thank you awesome okay thanks kathy um so let's see um so uh council is the next item on the agenda is council report i can't think of anything lisa

134yeah it's been so long since we had yeah sure okay i'm sorry i should have prepared yeah that's all right no chair uh i don't have anything to report either that i haven't said already so um um report from staff calen you're muted i've already uh reported it but um i just want to say again that uh we'll be kicking off our second cohort 820 ambassadors on september 15th we have about 20 uh residents involved right now and uh they'll be having orientation and greet that's going to be on september 13th at the farmers market and then also on uh september 23rd we'll be over at u of m participating in uh earth fest so we'll uh be over there table in a few of us okay all right thank you gatlin um so um

135items for next agenda the only one i remember off the top of my head is uh bob needham was inviting the um the huron valley humane society to talk about their their opinion about the deer call and uh we'll have a resolution that i'm sure we'll have other things on the agenda item but what i'm going to do is uh i'll circulate emails about that later okay so we can talk about what might be on the agenda there a lot of it's going to involve what staff time is available but we could talk about uh phosphorus or we could talk about pcos then so uh but i don't have a commitment yet from staff about what they can if they can attend we'll have the zero waste resolution and white paper that night too okay

136uh rita um so for me um i will do my best to bring back um chapter 40 for next time um and i do um just want to um make a comment to john is that i i i have been um following and been involved with the municipalization effort and i hope that you and the energy commission can see it as a point of ex of concern for the urgency of the climate crisis in terms of of the request that's been made of the energy commission that's really i think what's behind it um everybody's really concerned and we'd like to move forward um in a positive way i i think um yeah i don't want to speak for the commission and i haven't frankly made up my mind but um i think there is value

137added likely in in a feasibility study my sense is is that that if we do a feasibility study we should recognize that there's lots of different forms of municipalization there's lots of energy assets that a municipal utility can hold own everything from dte's grid assets to things like virtual assets like aggregating um demand response to even doing things like having um geothermal districts or wastewater districts and so i think if we do a feasibility analysis we should look at what the various options are what their pros and cons are with their um including costs and benefits and things like that and you know frankly i think also um you know we we want to apply public pressure to dte and you know anything that we're doing along these lines also applies pressure to dte because

138i don't think any of us are satisfied with what dte is doing um so there's points well taken i i totally agree with that and and i believe that a feasibility study would bring out those multitude of issues that you talked at least i would hope it would because that's the best way for us to go forward indeed okay kathy you have your hand up i just want to correct this statement i made previously that dana nessel is interested in attending a meeting regarding phosphorus well i would hire me with that yeah thanks kevin yeah and i i said pfas it didn't sound right when i said it but i didn't correct myself no no i i knew you meant phosphorus okay it's it's due to the air pollution that was recent that was recently

139done so i can remember that recent enough okay all right well thank you and um let's see so uh that looks like perhaps a full agenda already but uh i'll circulate ideas i like to have these um set up by topic and i like to do them like three months in advance so i'm gonna start circulating emails on all of us to uh get input early on before the meetings and the other thing is we're going to try i'm going to i'm going to try to enforce getting the agenda in place and everything the special presentations and everything a week before the scheduled meeting a whole week before the scheduled meeting because uh it's been just a nightmare lately and i think it's also going to be important in terms of you know in terms

140of other logistics about organizing meetings so well i'll send an email to everybody later about that um so i'd like everybody to be involved in setting the agenda and reviewing it but i'd like to have a deadline of a whole week before we to get it finally in place and post it up on registrar so um items uh so the next so the next item on the agenda is the next scheduled meeting which is september 23rd at 7 00 p.m that's the fourth thursday of the month uh so now we get to the second public commentary period uh this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 888-788-0099-4877-853-5247 and enter meeting id eight 940-0438-4 four two six this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed

141city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so we may hear you clearly please take your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established is there anybody on the line yet nope there's no one for comments okay so the meantime i'd like to thank everybody for being part of this working session i think it's it's

142good to have one of these at least once once once a year so that we can talk about general directions and strategy and processes and procedures um so um and i'm always eager for feedback positive or negative as long as it's constructive so um is there anybody on the line as yet nope okay well thank you galen and thanks everybody for your time and attention now see you all next month bye now i call this meeting adjourned at 9 17 p.m thank you bye-bye thanks everyone you