Ann Arbor Energy Commission 7/13/21

001i'm uh participating from my home here in ann arbor and as chair of the energy commission i'm calling this meeting to order at uh 603 pm welcome to the july 13 2021 electronic meeting of the energy commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we will uh rent we will excuse me we'll conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings commissioners please remain on camera just as you would be visible during in-person meetings also mute your microphone speaking public comments will be via telephone only so i'm going to repeat this but i'll say it a couple times then now to speak during any time of the public comment opportunities please call into one of the following toll-free numbers 888 788 recording in progress zero zero nine

002nine or 877-853-5247 enter the meeting id which is 913-578345 and these numbers by the way remain the same throughout the year and this information along with two local dial-in numbers is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city's website which is called legistar or the city calendar on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 for a t channel 99 and online at att.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn you see could you kick us off by reading the land technology i'd be delighted too thank you i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinaabe including the ottawa ojibway and bordeawatomi and mandat peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states

003and lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807. knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all thank you very much could you also lead us through the roll call i would be so delighted to do that yeah okay uh commissioner hook um oh and can you please state where you're the county you're calling from commissioner hook um yeah chuck hook um reporting from my ann arbor office good evening commissioner mccomber just make sure no one's in the waiting room oh she's in the waiting room okay we'll

004we'll circle back to her in just a second uh commissioner cleavy present commissioner levin okay uh bear mursky co-chair colin garcia president um joining you from ann arbor thank you councilmember briggs here in ann arbor council member radina here in ann arbor thank you commissioner mccoy you're in ann arbor thank you commissioner george here commissioner kerber here auburn washington thank you commissioner mccomber here we know here in ann arbor great uh you have a quorum sure great and as i said i'm participating also from ann albert so um first point on the agenda is the approval of the last meeting minutes do we have a motion to approve those and then any discussion for a second in any discussion so move a second go ahead um eric councilmember riggs do you have any comment or

005just was that a second well i just wanted to it may just been me i just didn't see them maybe they were attached to the legistar agenda um if others have been able to read through them that's great so um let me double check but they are on the entry for the last month let's see make sure my apologies though yeah so the minutes are posted on legistar um on the last month and um yeah they're they're posted and they're there it's they're very very brief minutes um there's not a whole lot of content frankly so um if um we have uh a motion to approve and a second all in favor of approving the minutes say aye or raise your hand hi hi anyone opposed the minutes are approved so next point on the

006agenda is uh public input and this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes as i mentioned before you if you are watching on ctn please call 888 788-0099 or 877-853-525 and enter the meeting id 913-5783-4502 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand quote unquote by one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand indicate your desire to speak by pressing star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated message or announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet place and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly and then finally

007please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments so we'll wait 30 seconds or so do we have anyone already we do yeah uh caller ending in eight three six hi uh can you hear me yes we can uh so um this is ron suarez a former member of ann arbor city council i'm calling to express support for the group ann arbor for public power who is calling for a feasibility study to investigate uh public power uh in ann arbor um i also have the beginnings of a website at ann arbor microgrid.com and i'm concerned that in the 820 plan the 138-page document the word microgrid only appears uh two times and once on page 130 and once on page 136 on page 130 it says create micro grids and when i've

008asked about microgrids i've not been able to get any response and it looks like no one is taking this seriously climate change is a wicked problem that's going to require systemic change for us to deal with and we need to at least be entertaining the possibility of talking about how public power would work coincidentally this morning i heard a podcast the intercept with ryan grimm interviewing dennis kucinich dennis kucinich talking about when he was mayor of cleveland and the struggles that he faced with public power in in cleveland again i highly recommend google the intercept ryan grimm dennis kucinich and you can see all about electric power and political political power and i think it would help us to think about alternatives that we need to consider rather than just doing incremental changes relying on

009major gifts to thank you thank you um just you don't necessarily respond to others but i just wanted to mention that we will be having a presentation um about the status of the development viridian at county park and there will be a micro grid there on a pilot basis and there's also i think people know that there's been some legislation that has been introduced to permit microgrids at the state and um yeah finally by the way i read the interview that you talked about and if anybody it's called the division of light and power is the name of the book that kucinich wrote and it's definitely worth reading so thank you for your comments missy do we have other people yeah call our ending in 152. you are still muted there we go hello this

010is uh jeff irwin i'm a resident of ann arbor on the southeast side very close to that viridian development you just mentioned uh on bellwood over here i also happen to represent the community in the state senate and i'm here because when i well i'm here because i'm a supporter of the a20 plan i want to see it be successful and when i look around the state in the nation i see that areas that have municipal authorities tend to have greener and cheaper power and so i'm interested in whether or not that's an option or not what the cost benefit analysis might show on um you know that kind of plan here in ann arbor and so i'm particularly interested to be here today to hear the legal analysis um otherwise i just feel the

011obligation to add based on the previous comment that i'm a strong supporter of the microgrid legislation in lansing and you know also trying to promote clean energy legislation on a variety of fronts there i'd be happy to talk to the commission at any time about any of that thank you thank you for calling in and thanks for representing us uh caller ending in eight two zero oops that's right all right can you all hear me yes we do hi everyone my name is phil bianco i am a resident on the north side of ann arbor um and i'm also one of the co-chairs for the local chapter of democratic socialist of america um i'm calling today to speak in support of the aforementioned ann arbor for public power campaign and specifically the feasibility study i

012think for our organization and for me as a resident as well i think it's a no-brainer to bring our energy utility into public democratic ownership i think it will lead to the data we have shows that it will lead to better outcomes for consumers and will also just be a more democratic and efficient entity as well so i just wanted to speak in support of recommending a feasibility study i think it is more than worth it to look into all the aspects of what it would take to do this and i think with climate change across the globe many recent kind of incidents of extreme weather events in our country and across the globe as well point to the fact that we need to take bold and progressive action uh immediately to to do everything

013we can to stem the effects of climate change and i think we're doing a lot of things in ann arbor but i think a public utility uh ann arbor for public power will go a long way towards advancing those goals so i think a feasibility study should be pursued um we should look into all the aspects of that so that's just what i wanted to say thanks for your time thanks for letting me speak thank you for sharing your thoughts with us caller ending in 4 5 5. hello my name is lisa last name is patrel i'm speaking tonight as a citizen and resident of ward 5. i'm asking the commissioners to approve the money for the de r piece that builds up feasibility study that ann arbor public power is recommending der distributed energy

014resources is becoming the industry term for um municipal systems micro nano systems um i recommend also that you read gretchen bakke's book b-a-k-k-e-s the grid it's the points and summations bachi makes at a national level are already being mirrored at the state governance level one fact is that ders are the foundation for the grid in the future as a member of washington 350 i'm i have joined the governor's council on climate solutions i'm in the energy production transmission distribution and storage work group we have concluded phase one where various utilities private public co-op and municipals have presented since march of this year and ders the takeaway is that nearly all parties agree even our big public utilities when challenged during q and a agree that ders are the future and it will be the system

015that knits together all the micro nanos campus neighborhood municipal and larger systems across the state the work that ann arbor public power is doing to research establishing again a der in ann arbor should be embraced by the city and all departments without interference which could curtail findings or slow progress in fact the city should create synergy by funding the feasibility study that has been discussed in past meetings and that needs to move forward a set of bipartisan bills introduced into the michigan legislature 4715 and 4716 will ensure that ders can move forward at a state level there is energy at a state level to move forward with ders there was local citizen effort to move forward with ders there is a common understanding nationwide the ders are the way forward there is no benefit for

016ann arbor to act to the contrary in the spirit of measure twice cut one spend the money for the study or be redesigning in 20 seconds all the wasted staff man hours down the drain thank you thank you we have anyone else in the queue we don't chamersky um i wanted to mention and i just looked for it but couldn't find it we received an email from someone who is unable to call in and ask that it the comments be read into the record um i don't know i can't couldn't find the email i don't know i don't recall who else was copied i'm sorry um but what i will do is i will forward the email to all commissioners i think we already did we did okay i believe we did and um for

017utility we're working with the clerk's office to get e-comment as well set up for the commission so folks who can't join can submit comments it just wasn't possible to get it on for today's meeting so in the future we'll have it okay okay great great good has anybody else [Music] uh gotten the queue then missy or are we ready to move on to the rest of the agenda no one else in the queue you're ready okay so um the next point on the agenda is uh energy commission bylaws and um missy um why don't i let you introduce the subject um because it actually stems from correspondence between you and the attorney's office um it seems that the minutes that we've discussed or the bylaws i should say haven't been approved or there's no record

018of approval so i'll let missy take it from there yeah yeah so we were doing some cleanup on the bylaws trying to find the most updated version to post on the website and what we uncovered is that the body as a whole hasn't actually adopted the revised bylaws we made a lot of recommendations on the revisions and we worked through that process but then we never bought it brought it back for a formal vote um and have moved forward on the youth commissioner aspects but for cleanup purposes we do have to as a body formally adopt our bylaws and then they'll go to council for formal approval and at that point we'll have our revised bylaws that we had discussed i think before i kind of sat in on the commission so it's a while

019ago this discussion has happened so we're doing a little cleanup here [Music] uh missy is the intent then that we go through the bylaws and the changes there's a link in the agenda um you don't leave that to the will of the body cherimerski i know nothing has changed since when the group discussed it but it may not feel fresh so i'm not sure the will of the body whatever feels right so too for everybody's information uh you all recall that we did make um and discuss several a couple of changes to the bylaws one of which was the addition of youth commissioners indeed we've actually added those um but apparently uh as was indicated those bylaws were not officially approved so we were doing the cleanup that missy talked about i see chuck has

020his hand raised go ahead chuck you're recognized thanks uh missy if you look at item three in that um right up you'll see that it references our climate change um plan as well as the sustainability framework um are those two documents still existing or are they sunsetted now replaced by a20 and work moving forward i guess i just didn't want to reference something that's already out of date and maybe we could make a simple change yeah that's a great that's a great point so the sustainability framework definitely still exists but the climate action plan has been replaced with a20 but i i don't think it's false to say it's a climate action plan we just call it a20 so we could we could either name it or leave it as is in case a next

021generation comes around and it's not called h zero it's a two zero two point or well it's good thank you for the observation yep thank you i'm not looking at it right now is it in capital letters or is it in small case if it's in capitals then it's sort of a proper noun if it's in small case then we can just say that it's whatever the current iteration is capital is capital so maybe we should change it to a20 or maybe we should just refer to it as the current climate action plan what what's your recommendation was that direction i mean yeah sorry yeah um let me really quickly if we just say review and advise on the city's most up-to-date climate action plan perfect all right i'll take that down as a comment

022does anybody else have any comments if not uh can we get a motion to approve the bylaws as previously discussed and as posted we have a motion from commissioner cleavy give a second from someone and second from commissioner mccomber thank you any discussion other than what we just discussed it looks that we don't have any so um can we take a vote all in favor of adopting the bylaws please raise your hand or and or say yes anyone opposed no one opposed we did clean up very good thank you everybody so next on the agenda is uh proposed anti-republic power in our word for public power i should say resolution on municipalization um we're going to do a first reading of that as well as um have a presentation before that of some powerpoint slides

023giving us some additional background information we already discussed the topic once before but there's some new insights and missy i believe we're going to turn uh exactly um presenting privileges to um roshan and chris i can't remember in which order yeah and roshan you i know you guys are just popping in here roshan should i make you the presenter uh sure yeah that'd be great okay all right should be good so did you i know that we sent you the slides did you just want me to do it myself or it's up to you if you'd like i did merge them so i'm happy to do that it would that be better for you and me one second i can pull them up yeah it might actually be better for me um just because i

024have them as two separate documents yeah you got it and i'm confident that i messed up the last slide so don't don't hate me no worries thank you you just find it really quick okay all right you all are gonna know my like secret that i don't know how to use pdfs for presentation one let's see if i do either to be honest no it's here i just saw it oh it's just not loading because city computers are delightful all right hold on bear with me for one second i'm going to stop sharing and i'm going to reload it and see if that helps a little bit thank you all for your patience rashawn or chris do you want to use this time for any comments or remember um about the resolution or do we

025just wait for missing all right let's try again okay the slides are a good introduction okay there we go can you see it this is the kick here all right is that visible for folk yes perfect great all right all right rashaan just tell me when cool yeah thank you so much um yeah i want to start by thanking chairmaski and the energy commission uh for allowing us the time to speak today and for the continued dialogue we've had over over these past few months uh next slide uh just to give a little bit of context for those who might be watching the stream and don't know about our group my name is roshan krishnan i'm a member of a community organization called annabel for public power next slide we are a coalition of local

026residents and organizations um we have representation from uh sunrise the democratic socialists of america indivisible uh um's climate action movement washington 350 ann arbor beyond bernie and others and so our goal is a green and publicly owned energy feature we're committed to what we call the 4ds of energy democracy that is we seek to democratize decommodify decarbonize and decolonize our energy systems next slide please and so the problem we're facing is of course the dce isn't transitioning off of fossil fuels or onto renewables fast enough i'm not going to belabor this because we've covered it a lot before but just suffice to say that their current energy mix is very coal and fossil fuel heavy uh they're still actively investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and their net zero deadlines are late enough that they might

027as well not even be there um so um if we move to the next slide uh we know that there are a number of different approaches that we can take to try to speed up a transition to renewables and to pursue energy justice um there are a lot of groups working on community choice aggregation at the state level uh we've had some conversations about a sustainable energy utility to help with distributed energy pooler proliferation and efficiency and of course we believe that a municipal electric utility could be a powerful tool for equitable decarbonization and what's clear is we need to do this fast so we should be open to any approach possible i think i speak for all of us with acp2 when i say i'd love to see cca happen i certainly wouldn't be

028opposed to a sustainable energy utility but i think our goal here as community members together is to make sure that a municipal utility that public power gets a fair shake that we seriously investigate what it could do for just decarbonization in ann arbor next slide please so with that we have some clear benefits and also some open questions about how a municipal electric utility would work for ann arbor next slide please uh the benefits again are you know things we've talked about with you all previously so i'm not going to spend a ton of time on them but you know we think that a municipal utility could be transformative for reliability uh for affordability uh for energy democracy and public accountability all while pumping revenue into the community and separating a rapid community controlled transition

029to clean energy next slightly so what we do need to know in order to ensure a municipal utility makes sense for ann arbor mostly has to do with cost we need to know how much it would cost to establish a municipal utility how much revenue it would generate how that would compare to our other options things of that nature so on our next slide here those questions are obviously crucial ones and that's why we think a feasibility study is up the path forward slide please uh the so just in short what a feasibility study is is a rigorous realistic forward-looking and professional assessment of the net benefits of establishing a municipal electric utility typically you'll find these are conducted by professional engineering firms slide a feasibility study would look into a number of different things

030it would project ann arbor's future residential and commercial commercial electricity usage it would project dte's future revenues if we were to keep them as our energy provider it would estimate various different costs like the cost of acquiring dte's infrastructure project costs for power supply operations and maintenance and it would also identify financing sources for startup costs so basically in gathering all that information together it would allow us to make a direct comparison to the investor-owned utility model aka dte what we have now and determine feasibility so in other words feasibility would be you know what is the ability of the municipal utility after costs and debt service to supply reliable power at lower rates than dce while also providing a revenue stream for the city uh next slide please now in terms of cost our

031best estimate would be around 120 000 dollars this is based on cost for other feasibility studies conducted across the country we have examples from small towns like decorah iowa some mid-sized towns like pueblo colorado all the way up to huge cities like chicago and really we think this is a small price to pay in order to take a serious look at an option that could be of significant benefit to ann arbor's energy future next slide please uh so i'm going to close by emphasizing that we're not asking the energy commission to commit to supporting a municipal utility we are asking you to help us gather information to make the best decision for ann arbor currently we don't see a clear path to implementing a20 strategy one of powering our grade with 100 renewables and as

032we've seen over the past month or so from the flooding in detroit to the heat waves across the american west uh climate change is here we have to take an honest look at all of our options and make sure that we don't leave any stone unturned in terms of things that can get us off of fossil fuels as fast as possible while protecting and improving the quality of life of our most vulnerable communities and strengthening public accountability and participation so we believe that our resolution to recommend um that the city council fund the feasibility study is consistent with this approach in ensuring that we seriously consider a municipal utility uh you know ultimately we know that a municipal utility is a legal option it's one that we can pursue immediately it brings power into the

033hands of the people fuel pardon the pun and it's an option that could help us get to the 100 clean energy that we all know we need while reducing energy burden on residents and generating revenue for a city so we think it's worth really taking a serious look at that through a feasibility study next slide please so with that i thank you for your time and i'll turn it over to chris bisdock of olsen bizduck and howard who will provide more of the legal context around what this would look like chris leads the energy and climate practice group at olsen bizdok and howard he also served as an elected city commissioner and the mayor of traverse city and on the board of that city's municipal electric utility traverse city light and power so take it

034away chris thanks roshan and thanks to the energy commission for having me as a guest and as a good guest i will try not to overstay my welcome i have just a couple of slides to share with you we shared a a fairly extensive report that hopefully you've received which is uh partly a legal road map for the steps that would be involved in municipalization and also some comments on the the legality of doing so either becoming the sole provider of electric service in ann arbor through an eminent domain uh situation or uh as a parallel utility providing service in ann arbor um in competition with dt electric missy would you mind uh moving to the next slide which was merely introductory so we'll move on to the next one after that our conclusions which

035we can talk about in any level of detail that the commission wishes is that cities are authorized by both the michigan constitution and the home rule cities act to establish their own municipal electric companies there are some votes and some steps which are outlined in our report to do that cities have two primary options as i mentioned one is to acquire the incumbent investor-owned utility by eminent domain or to form their own utility to operate alongside the iou dte has a permanent franchise in the city of ann arbor as you all know under the foot act the old statute that precedes uh a couple iterations ago of the michigan constitution and so they have a contractual right to continue that franchise but it's not an exclusive franchise uh it's a it's a it's the city

036within the city limits could operate its own electric company um and could also acquire that franchise through eminent domain could i have the next slide we provided in the report a road map which begins with the feasibility study that roshan mentioned evaluation looking at the various options uh whether it's purchase or condemnation or whether it is um operating in parallel could i go to the next slide uh the financing alternatives for that project as well as the obtaining of a franchise from the city for that activity all of the details of this uh process and these steps are in our report our assessment of your city charter is that your city charter is also is already a fair way along uh in terms of its compatibility with establishing a muni you would still need to

037have the votes that are outlined in the report but there is a lot that's in your charter already that's compatible with engaging in this activity the next slide if i could in addition to the legal opinion the group asked me to comment a little bit on just my perspective on the economics of this situation part of my job is representing environmental organizations in cases at the michigan public service commission which concern the rates and charges of utilities i've been doing that since 2008 i've represented these organizations in at least 60 cases involving the rates and charges of dte electric alone so i spent a lot of time with their books essentially and so this is not a legal opinion this is just the observation of someone who's been doing this for a while and also

038someone who was responsible for the budget of a small midwestern city myself and a small midwestern municipal utility myself as an elected official generally speaking there are three reasons in my opinion that in addition to being more green a municipal electric utility is more economically and financially beneficial to a city than being the customer of an iou the first is taxes uh ious pass their taxes onto their customers that includes federal income tax it includes property taxes on assets those are all all flowed through to the customers via various formulas in the rates and charges and munis don't do that i don't need to do that return on equity is another one in the formula that's used to make rates for uh investor owned utilities they are entitled to an approved uh return on equity

039or profit on their entire rate base uh dt's rate base at the as of the last case i think is 17 billion dollars uh and they they uh earn a a 50 weighted rate of return on that which is 9.9 percent so it's a lot of money that goes towards uh shareholder profits executive salaries and executive bonuses municipalities don't do that they don't need to do that they borrow at municipal bond rates they have a very uh affordable cost of capital and they don't earn an roe many municipalities make payments to the cities that own them and we give a couple examples of that in the appendix to the report traverse city light in power pays five percent of its gross revenues to the city of traverse city just as a contribution to the general

040fund it adds up to a lot of money because it includes all of uh the gross revenues of that utility the holland board of public works does it on a net basis they grant 50 percent of the net income of their uh board of public works back to the city of holland and a variety of other uh municipal electric utilities do that in a variety of ways so in addition to lower cost there's also a revenue benefit to um to the city uh of doing so i knew an old um salty uh lawyer who died recently at the age of i think 97 years old and he once said to me you know we give away meaning we the government we give away all the profitable enterprises and we only keep the stuff that doesn't

041make money and municipal electric utilities if you keep them or if you re-establishment of them are an exception uh to that rule the other place that i wanted to highlight was the embedded costs of legacy generation the old plant that is in the utilities rate base old power plants retired power plants uh investments in pollution control technology on old uh fossil generated power plants all are in the rate base they stay in the rate base or they get securitized long after those assets are retired so if you're the customer of a you so for example uh ann arbor participated recently in a voluntary green pricing case that was a successful settlement and ann arbor played a key role missy had excellent testimony in that case uh the the the advocacy by your lawyer valerie brader

042was excellent in that case i was in that case on behalf of nrdc and the michigan environmental council and there was a good settlement in that case and it lowered it cut among other things the premium that's paid for green energy by customers who choose to opt in but customers who choose to opt in and pay that pr premium are still paying for all the old fossil generation because it's embedded in the costs uh it's inescapable with the investor owned utility and that's not true of i mean it's a pull utility especially a new one they don't need to take on those legacy costs um and they they they can move solely with new uh sources of generation and renewable sources and other mechanisms that i heard about from some of the public commenters tonight

043if i could go to the last slide this is illustrative and i don't offer it in place of roshan's 14 percent number this is kind of like my bottle cap collection we sort of went around and found a few interesting things from the published rage of municipal utilities put them in a drawer to examine further later so this is not a scientific or systematic study it's simply an illustration that um of the reality that because of the reasons i mentioned the economics of a municipal electric utility are more favorable uh than the economics of being the customer of an investor owned utility or an iou so that's my last slide um and i'm happy to discuss anything further if you like but that's those are all my comments that i prepared thank you chris and

044roshan um yeah happy to take that one i i have a proposal if i may and that is uh we have a resolution um and it's proposed to be introduced and what i recommend that we do is do that um see if we get a first and a second uh motion to consider the resolution and then open things up for discussion including of the resolution and the slides and presented by roshan and chris and then have a good lively discussion on that basis is that agreeable to everyone so what i would ask you to do missy is to open the resolution and ember i believe you are going to introduce the resolution exactly um in a minute we need to coordinate with ctn because i think it's cut out so i need to be able

045to use if you could give me just a minute to introduce okay if anyone else hears that ctn's still down please let me know via email and i'll try to pick that one all right let me bring this up here is that correct you just want to bring up the resolution yes john what do you what do i need to do in order to introduce it do you just want me to describe where we're coming from with introducing this um i would suggest that maybe it went stuff on the screen it's not too terribly long so i thought maybe you could read through it and everybody can digest it i don't know that everybody's done that and you know this pretty important and significant decision so i think it's worthwhile um reading through it and

046then we'll open it up if we like i said we'll ask for emotion to consider it and then we can dive into both this as well as the content of the two presentations does that sound good to everybody okay amber go ahead and and read it to us okay um okay so this is the uh the title says draft energy commission resolution to recommend that city council authorizes a feasibility study for a municipal utility so whereas fossil fuel combustion procurement and transportation produce significant greenhouse gas emissions that raise global temperatures which are already at harmful levels leading to extreme weather events droughts massive flooding and resultant death and displacement of thousands of people worldwide whereas city council on november 4th approved a resolution declaring a climate emergency and set a target date of 2030 to

047achieve city-wide carbon neutrality whereas city council as its june at june 1st 2020 meeting approved the living a20 ann arbor carbon neutrality plan incorporating the 2030 target whereas the generation of electricity accounts for roughly 40 percent of ann arbor's 1.8 million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions whereas the vast majority of this electricity is purchased from gte energy whose monopoly service area includes ann arbor whereas in 2020 dte generated 80 of its electricity by burning fossil fuels mainly coal whereas dte is currently building a 1.1 billion 1 100 megawatt gas fired power plant in saint clair county with an estimated useful life of at least 40 years whereas dte's continued long-term reliance on fossil fuel combustion to generate electricity is incompatible with ann arbor's fossil fuel carbon neutrality goals whereas michigan law authorizes municipal

048electric utilities and at least 41 michigan jurisdictions currently operate municipal communities including the city of lansing holland wyandot traverse city and chelsea whereas the ann arbor city charter section 15.1 states that the city shall have all the powers granted by law to acquire construct own operate improve enlarge extend repair and maintain publicly fill these including electric light and power whereas municipal electric utilities can freely can freely obtain electricity including clean energy on the open market and can generate and distribute their own clean energy whereas cities typically authorize and fund feasibility studies by a qualified consultant to determine the short and long term benefits and costs of establishing a municipal electric utility whereas recent feasibility studies by the city of chicago illinois and pueblo colorado colorado cost these cities approximately 120 000 each resolved that the

049ann arbor energy commission recommends that the ann arbor city council authorize and fund a study to determine the feasibility of establishing a municipal electric utility and resolve that the study be conducted by a qualified consulting firm using industry best practices thank you very much do we have a motion to consider this resolution and a second motion from commissioner mccomber and a second from council member briggs so um we um have uh both the presentation and the resolution itself in front of us for consideration and i'd like to open it up for discussion and comments and bridgette uh you want to start thanks um so i have um a friendly suggestion on the resolution which is perhaps in the very last line provide a timeline uh for by which we want to see this happen um

050i'm in favor of it overall but i'm curious um if these feasibility studies uh include the legal costs that are often entailed in cities pursuing this route does anybody know if that's the case with these feasibility studies or if they're simply about logistics and technical matters does anybody want to address that question directly what i would offer is is that one thing we would want to do with something like this is obviously there would be an rfp that would go out and the rfp would have to define the scope of the study and the scope of the study could specifically address your concern so john that's right on point and historically i've been i've worked on a number of municipal studies the cost that was quoted would not include any kind of a legal fee

051because at this juncture we're not taking any legal action we're simply looking at the technical economic legalistic boundary conditions i guess i'll say that a consulting engineer would typically look at it an engineering firm is not a legal authority but that would be the next step you know if the economic technical side of a feasibility study suggests that it did go to the next level um and it sounds like the the legal firm that was just talking on this matter have done a fair amount of work i've i've seen their work before and it sounds like they've investigated it and didn't find any what i'll say smoking guns or dead ends or showstoppers so you know at this juncture the technical economic component would be the most important to lead the effort and then look

052at the legalistic issues secondarily thanks chuck um by the way i i understand the concern and i think that was a big element of costs um in the case of municipalization in boulder um but um that would be something that would hopefully be identified in the visibility study um and you know as i said we could uh i identify that in the scope larry i think you were second um and then um amber um and chuck if you're if you still want to talk leave your hand up if not take it down go ahead larry well i i think it's fair to say that the the legal aspects could be very very very costly clearly and very hard to predict that i suspect that dt will go to the mat with this one for sure

053this is in many ways the loss of the grip that they have on power here in the state of michigan but that's not the reason i wanted to talk there's another approach to this which i didn't see actually outlined and that is what is referred to as structural separation so when you talk when chuck did the excellent presentation talking about transmission distribution and supplies those are three legs to the power supply of of utility energy transmission and distribution are natural monopolies you don't really need two sets of wires going to a house two sets of wires going across the state you really want to have certain monopolies supply has no such requirement supply as a monopoly is even worse so a lot of the bad behaviors that we see and attribute to dte i think

054are the result of that monopoly control of both distribution and supply it doesn't have to be that way it takes legislation to break it it's called structural separation so that the supply and delivery is separate in fact in history of michigan transmission used to be all controlled by the same utilities and that was basically broken out and it's now a monopoly run by mostly by another company called itc most people don't even know about them but they're out there so a lot of this i think is something that could also have been considered in fact there was someone by the name of gary glenn who is promoting something called energy choice which was basically allowing people the choice of their energy supply so that we no longer have a monopoly in the state of michigan

055right now that monopoly allows 90 control of all the electricity in dte's area and it leads to very bad behavior in my opinion it doesn't lead to lower costs it doesn't lead to better reliability it has a lot more to do with the power of a monopoly and the problem with a monopoly isn't just that it's bureaucratic and not responsive to the market but it is also in some ways corrupting and so this is why i i really think that that's also a part of what could have been considered in addition to municipalization um because of the nature of dte and the size of dt it's not just a monopoly it's a for-profit monopoly and it is conflicted because it's been in the entire supply chain of fossil fuels it isn't just that they burn

056it but they trade it and they transport it it's they are a classic conflict of interest and it's allowed to go on for all this time and i just don't understand why so i would wonder and my question would be to um to chris have you given any consideration to the idea of structural separation as it relates to community aggregation and also to the sustainable energy utilities because once you have the ability to make your own choice then you suddenly put the monopoly on their heels and um you know potentially we can end the monopoly completely which is what we really need we need a monopoly for transmission we got one we need a monopoly for distribution we got one we don't need one for supply that's my position so chris what can you comment

057on this certainly commissioner kerber i agree with many of your observations uh relative to the history of transmission in michigan and relative to the importance of energy choice and generation choice there are states where um the distribution the investor owned utilities operate as distribution monopolies and sometimes transmission monopolies but the generation is all done by choice ohio runs like that um they have a whole set of mischief of their own in terms of affiliate relationships and um bags of money apparently at the legislature so i mean that that so i'm being a little bit of a smart aleck there in in in that that wasn't a side that was not your main to the point but the so i agree with you that generation choice as a general matter is a good thing uh and

058i agree with you that that a system in michigan that had generation choice that was unlimited right now there's a very small fraction and it's not for residential customers it's only for uh commercial and primary customers and primarily being the the ones who take service off the transmission and there's a 10 cap on that and that cap is always fully subscribed those customers are driven by cost considerations more so than renewable but the same way it would work the same way with renewables so that is a system that has greater opportunities it has other potential downsides as ohio shows you end up bailing out the generation uh in other ways um but the you know the generally the fact is that that would require a sea change at the legislature and a sea change that

059would be directly adverse to uh the investor owned utilities in michigan and you know i'm not a lobbyist and i'm not a a politician at least not anymore but you know that that that's not something you know if you want to do something in ann arbor and you want to do something that is practical and direct and has a series of steps that you can undertake under existing law municipalization is the thing if you want to look at programmatic change across the state then i would agree with all of your observations you know our our our requested task was to look at could this be road mapped uh to to to some kind of a conclusion under existing law and the answer is that you could you could go you could create the public power

060company in ann arbor the only other point i would notice that you know i i agree with you that there are some natural monopolies i would also note that you know distribution is not necessarily a natural monopoly and there are cities in michigan that have both you know a muni operating and also um also have an iou operating in my alley uh at my house i have you know on the one side of the alley are the tclp uh poles and on the other side of the alley are the consumers polls headed up to the hospital providing service there so it's not the end of the world to have um you know more than one set of distribution lines either so that's just more of an editorial comment than a legal response but i agree

061with all your premises i agree with you about um you know programmatic change at the state level our job was to you know i just work here so to speak and our job was to provide a specific roadmap under existing law which municipalization definitely is thank you thank you um can i interrupt for a second missy wants to jump in and make a public service announcement about yes public service announcement power is down at ctn so if you know of anyone that's trying to watch right now they're not going to be able to get the live stream but they can watch on youtube the youtube channel i don't know the magic of why that's possible but direct people towards ctn ann arbor youtube channel and that's where folks can join so sorry for the inconvenience

062they can also just uh call in and listen and write yeah i mean they won't be able to see any presentations or anything like that but um larry did you have anything to follow up on or can we move on to the next person um no i just wonder if it's something that could be considered or at least as part of this whole discussion i'm concerned that you know leaving it out is something that um again i mean there i think there's gonna be politics no matter what you do i you know um i i understand that municipalization might have a clear path maybe i'm not sure let's um circle back and and have a discussion on on scope and alternatives and things like that and you know we're probably not going to vote we're

063not planning on voting this tonight um but we could vote on it as early as next month or you know whatever we we decide in terms of other perspectives that we want to gain and we we do have some speakers lined up from other cities that have tried municipalization so we'll discuss that as the evening goes on i think ember you were next and then chuck again and then robert sure um i just have a couple things one quick thing is i think chris has mentioned a couple times this road map report that he produced for ann arbor for public power so i don't think we shared that um ahead of time as one of the one of the things that were included so if people are interested in reading that um we can also

064share it with the commission or go up to on legislature just as a housekeeping note the other the other quick thing that i was going to say is just that the holland michigan board of public works recently announced this summer that they're actually lowering um their rates um and i just thought that was interesting to learn um i i have a little quote pulled from an article that just was it said as a community non-profi not-for-profit entity holland bpw turns each dollars our customers spend into the services provided for them when we are able to experience lower costs we pass that on through reduction we pass on the reduction through in the reform of rate decreases um so i just think that that's like especially as we talk finances like for me a big interest

065that i have in um municipalizing our electric utility is thinking about things um like that where we have a model that is meant to serve um you know our residents instead of being an investor in utility that's model you know by definition is to benefit um shareholders and so i think that's really i don't know i just thought it was cool to see when when do you hear about a utility lowering rates right and so just a cool example from michigan um another briefing i just wanted to add is that i think like we can continually discuss now like whether or not we think municipalization is the best option or we could discuss like when it hasn't or has worked in circumstances in different states across the country but i think for this resolution it

066was intentionally just to like focus on supporting a feasibility study because we're really not going to know um you know what what is best for ann arbor until we get the numbers kind of as truck alluded to earlier like the first debate is really like an economic technical one that you know by doing a feasibility study we can see the costs at hand for ann arbor and then that's a future discussion about whether we want to pursue that board when we have the numbers on the table of what specifically it would cost as an estimate for the city of ann arbor and so i think that's just what i want to focus on too is that we're really just asking for a support of a feasibility study not for support unanimously of a that you

067support municipalization so it's very possible that you could still be skeptical of whether or not you support municipal utility but you might still be interested in knowing exactly what the numbers would be you know it's theoretically possible that the numbers come back and even ann arbor for public power is like yeah this this is not going to work here um i just wanted to throw that out there commissioner i will be brief because i could speak on this topic for a long time um the things i wanted to point out one comparison was comparing dte or consumer's energy to a municipality it's important to understand when you hold up your hand that like dt covers a big chunk of the thumb it covers this little city called detroit a lot of the suburbs and you're

068comparing dt's service territory to a city like lansing or a city like traverse a city like holland different scale different structure different issues pop up and the requirement that the utilities supply electricity to all those customers across in the case of et or consumers a large geographical area relatively speaking is difficult it's not simple so it's really difficult when you're looking at comparing um structurally how these entities serve the util serve the people that they are the customers the ratepayers a little bit different story and i i could draw that up a little bit later um i gave everybody on this call at least our our team on the commission a slide that shows how lansing is served and in the power requirements to serve that city relative to the renewable peace that it currently

069has and how difficult it is to move from the structure they've got now and in lansing board of water and light has a strong renewable energy goal but they recognize how difficult it is to move that way quickly without burdening their customers so there's a fine balance between reliability cost and how to make this happen um and we all know that boulder pretty much gave up and and chose not to go down the municipality route a lot of lessons to be learned there how they were able to move excel to to deliver what they really desired might be a candidate to look at and compare to so i'll just i'll just say that the other piece of it is if we do move toward a study i would really like for this commission and osi

070to work together to make that happen in terms of what's the scope schedule cost what's considered what's not i think there's a lot of of important information that could be gleaned from the members that i'm talking about to make that happen and i just want to ensure that that is something going forward if we take this on so thank you thank you chuck um by the way people are allowed to speak twice so if any anyone that has spoken desires to speak again i see mary's raise his hand again um that you're certainly encouraged to do that so uh commissioner george then commissioner regina then commissioner kerber uh two quick questions um amber i was just curious and i guess about any of the other public power folks on here um you know chuck alluded

071to you know the scope and you know you know overall cost and what exactly this feasibility study would be looking like uh you know i read a little bit about the feasibility study in chicago and the feasibility study they did in pueblo um i was just curious is there going to be a need for another follow-up feasibility study is it going to be you know a two-step approach here i mean have you thought that far out or is it going to be one big feasibility study um just as an idea of like what we're dealing with here as we're discussing what is immediately in front of us so i can actually speak to that um basically yeah there would need to be more stuff if the first one goes well so you know if we

072have the first study and we say oh wow you know this ends up looking like it could be a really good idea it could really work for ann arbor then yes naturally you will need to sort of look more into the more of the details the operational things and potentially contract out more to um figure that out but that's kind of it's down the road all depending on what the results of the the initial study are i think to chuck's point too that like the more coordinated the first one is like the more information we're likely to glean from it like if if we're really careful about the process and what the request for proposals is and you know it's something that's a collaborative effort to make sure we have the ass we want to

073have in the first one that could limit what is needed in the second one um i also know like for example we've talked to decora iowa which has had a feasibility study and i know that they had two but it was because the first one um was funded um and created by like through um fundraising campaign from residents but um when then the city wanted to do their own even though they ended up commissioning the same company and it ended up having similar results and so that was also a strategy here is try to like first have it in the cities control just the first o round so there wouldn't need to be unnecessary spending um and time spent by having it you know have two very similar studies conducted [Music] real quickly and that

074is at one time i know that a2p2 had a timetable in mind and we've been talking about possible iterative approach um is how how important is is timing in all of this or is that something for consideration and discussion later i think some of the consideration of timetable is knowing that like the feasibilities take a significant amount of time to conduct um and so we need to like consider the fact that it could be three to six months if not longer before we get back the results of a feasibility study especially if it is one that is um thorough and ultimately um at some point in the line of creating municipal utility the public needs to vote on the measure so if it's also worth considering the timing of a um of like when the

075public can vote on things okay um my second question there and that same kind of timeline uh that you mentioned uh cherymerski um i was just curious um you know what uh the conversations i i presume there have been if there haven't been you know that'd be good to know too uh with a with an arbor for public power or ember or anybody uh with that with you know with mayor taylor and you know council leadership i'm sure uh the two council members might be able to get into this a little bit but where you know this would fit both in within the current city budget you know where they're going to pull out 120 000 as well as additionally where this fits in with the political goals that the council has in the short

076run i was just curious if any of those conversations had happened yet uh does the either the council members care to comment or missing any comments from your side or have those have those discussions even taking place you can give us a hint my my questions were along similar lines um so i think that's something that that still needs to be discussed um you are next in line anyhow so why don't you uh and you know commissioner george do you have anything else to say or again oh that that was just my uh my my thoughts on it i i just know that as someone that's been involved with a lot of big labor campaigns and so forth that you know when you're trying to do something that's transformational you know that earliest buy-in from

077local elected officials can be very it can get you very far in getting it uh accomplished so uh you know that is just a a small piece of advice i would uh hope that you guys might be able to pick up on thanks um if you take your hand down and put it back up if you have another question that'd be great uh councilmember rodina go ahead with comments or questions yeah thanks jim mursky and my my questions i guess follow up pretty your comments maybe even um follow up pretty closely to commissioner george's um and and i don't want to put missy on the spot either i don't know that she would have an answer to the questions but some of it i think would result in council members making a decision but knowing

078that um that this wasn't budgeted for this year and we do have a structural deficit we're contending with one of the things that i'm already thinking about in my head is how to pay for even i would say if it's 120 000 i think that's probably on the more modest end of what this might end up costing if i'm kind of looking at some of the other places and additional studies and if we want it to be more comprehensive so that there aren't multiple that need to go one right after another it might be on the higher end somebody already mentioned kind of a legal um feasibility study also which i i looked at pueblo and i think that they had an additional 250 000 wrapped up in to that if i'm not mistaken and

079so i guess i'm thinking missy historically this is where i'm still going to play the newness card my newness to council um uh doesn't necessarily lend itself to it when we do these things generally throughout the year i i wouldn't want this necessarily to pull resources out of your existing budget and and cut from the work that you're already doing and so i guess i'm wondering to the extent that that that's something that you would anticipate happening or is that truly just a decision of counsel to figure out where this money would come from uh yeah thank you for the question so we because of the structural deficit in the way that we did our budget we tapped into reserve funding so something like this might traditionally be a contention like to go to the

080reserves but as you know we're dipping into that right now so i that could be something council were to consider but it is not something that i have modeled in terms of like what we would not do if it came from osi's budget and if we if we do pass this i anticipate we're going to be asked to look at that as long as as well as some other folks so i think that would likely be a council decision it would be a mid-year budget adjustment um so i it you know it's not a simple straight vote um i think it's an eight vote item thank you um councilmember dean i assume that's you're done right yes thank you okay um larry yes um thanks john um so one of the things that i was

081wondering about when you talk about stranded assets uh the older assets that are both utility both consumers and and dt have plenty plenty of and of course as we walk away from those costs someone else has more of those costs and we are part of a community of not only cities but other rural areas and so forth so doing this i mean one of the reasons why this probably would be a very scary thing for the utilities is because it could precipitate a lot of people moving away from these costs in addition to just the city of ann arbor so i'm happy if we could have taken the 1.1 billion dollar plant that they're building in sinclair and stuck that on the dte shareholders and not on their ratepayers unfortunately that's not what happens in

082the state of michigan so i think it's an important question and i really direct this to chris and any of the other advocates what do we do when everybody else says how come ann arbor has just done this and stiffed us and left us with all the old equipment chris so i guess i have a couple answers those uh questions commissioner kerber one is that um in setting the formulas for utility rates a loss of customers and a loss of load without any corresponding reduction in embedded costs is going to drive higher rates for the customers who remain it's also going to eliminate the it's going to reduce the demonstrated capacity need for certain expensive assets as well right dt has one two three coal plants one one retired uh last month a month and

083a half ago uh uh two are scheduled to retire a couple years from now and then and then another one is uh slated for 2030 2031 time frame and then monroe for 2040. so when you take that when you take down the load and the demand that the utility has because it has uh taken on a loss of load through a loss of customers the utility is going to have a harder time justifying continued uh maintenance of some of those assets in the rate base and is going to have to retire some more uh is committed to securitizing a couple of those plants which will be a lower cost of debt moving forward so i guess i guess that's a that's maybe getting down in the details in the weeds but the the point i

084think is that um you're going to have an amount of fixed costs which are going to be spread over a large a smaller number of customers but you're also going to have an obligation by the utility to take some of these assets out of rate base to account for the fact that the load is lower staying in a bad uh relationship because it might cost somebody else more money is uh you know that's a policy decision that um each community would have to make for itself um you know i i can't tell you there wouldn't be a financial impact on the residual customer base but i also would say there would be an affirmative obligation on the utility and the regulators would be looking at and the interveners would be looking at they really need

085to retire more of those assets and the first ones that could come off would be the dirtiest ones so in some ways by taking load off the system you're going to force some additional fossil retirements so you'll have a you'll have something of a clean benefit on the rest for the rest of the customer base as well theoretically all other things being equal and all those other qualifiers that you have to make thank you larry any follow-up no that's great thank you appreciate it um by the way um i think this is somewhat relevant to the discussion and someone correct me if i'm wrong but i think there was just a ruling from the california public service commission um cpc actually have these in any case i'm related to ccas and they have agreed to

086apply something like a surcharge for two communities that are using ccas specifically to address the question that you raised larry actually the mention of it included a mention of paul fenn who presented to us about ccas and that he was disappointed obviously with the ruling um but it was based somewhat on the same concerns that you're raising larry about what is the impact on the remaining customer base and equity issues and things like that um i mean i don't know if that would be relevant at some point here but in any case since it's we've also discussed ccas i thought i'd bring it up commissioner briggs yeah thank you uh this is a exciting topic and it hasn't fascinating presentation and discussion um i did want to ask a couple of questions um and then

087also and we've got two other resolutions that we're considering tonight so this is first reading so i just wanted to point to that time issue um but um so my questions um i guess one is for um missy in terms of her understanding of kind of what might come after obviously it entirely depends on what would be included in an rfp like this but in terms of sort of the previous presentations we received if i recall correctly there's there certainly is um usually a a follow-up and much more expensive study that occurs following a feasibility study and that the costs associated with implementing um this type of program would be more a part of that second phase is that is that correct and could you talk a little bit more about that from how you

088understand it yeah yeah and i also want to thank chris for the presentation because i think it very much i don't know about you but it mirrors almost identically what valerie brader told us in her presentation about the process um and so understanding all of that is the question about legality is pretty much resolved the question about cost is not and so the technical study seems like it would give us direction um a direction on cost and then we would have to do the much much much more detailed analysis if we decide to go that we'll really get into are we standing up parallel infrastructure or are we going to do imminent domain and take the infrastructure and that it's true it's sort of like a gateway process that we'd have to go through like

089a 120 000 investment doesn't get it on the ballot right like we have other things we have to do due diligence for sure um which is what we would want to do you know obviously understand that infrastructure and make an informed decision and you didn't ask this but just wanted to this up to in october boulder is coming and we're trying to have winter park florida come as well to talk about those other elements so not necessarily the first phase but like what is the process actually like from their experience like from stuff to the nuts right um thinking through that so that that's on october unfortunately was the first time that holder was free to join us no actually that was going to be kind of part of my next set of comments so

090um since we have some presentations in the fall um one of the pieces that's you know certainly in my mind and in terms of moving this sort of study forward as one if we were to bring this to council um before the next next budget cycle it would require eight votes um as a budgetary amendment um we are dealing with really challenging budgets right now so um as it should be there's a lot of scrutiny around those um and so i would think that there would be desire from folks to really see that we've done as much work as we can on this on this piece i think another question that council might have um prior to november we'll see what happens but i know that there's a desire to to um and i i

091guess um figuring out um you know if voters are interested in supporting um funding for climate action in ann arbor and so understanding kind of what the resources are that we're working with in our community i think is also a is a question that many would have so just a couple of thoughts on on maybe when we might want to consider how that that relates to us considering this kind of a second reading thank you other commissioners um i have a few thoughts that i would like to share if i may i'll try to keep it brief as mentioned we've got some other topics to cover um first of all um i would encourage commissioners to take this issue seriously and study it we obviously plan on doing that in commission meetings but if we

092were to do something like this um it's not just 120 000 that we're talking about it's the direction that we would recommend to city council that the city might take and so this is an important decision and i think all of you probably have a good sense of all the different other issues that city council considers and so the position that we take will carry obviously some weight because the rest of the council is not going to have the time to invest into this so this is an important decision for us um just a couple of thoughts that i wanted to share with you um it just so happens that my son lives in decorah iowa and indeed i put and spoke twice with the person that headed up the initiative there and put the

093a2p2 people in touch with with him and it's instructive to um study cases like that there was that actually went to a vote they lost they're pursuing it again they think their chances are actually very good at least that was this about two or three months ago um but one of the things that i think we need to consider and contend with is when this happened the first time the consultant for this group in decorah estimated that purchasing the grid assets from the local utility um alliance would cost seven million dollars alliant um engaged their own consultants and they estimated that the value of the uh grid assets was 50 million dollars and there was an estimate from the one group that it would be a 30 reduction and the the other people said it

094was going to be a 30 increase so one of the things that we have to think about this is uh conflicting information um also in the case of decorah the utility spent five times as much money as the group that was leading the initiative um so there's a whole lot of different uh things that we need to take into consideration and one that's on top of the things that we've been talking about 120 000 there's an opportunity cost if we were to do that somewhere else in the city budget or taking on you know going into the reserve so we have a lot of things to to consider and we'll have an opportunity to talk um um in missile maybe i ask you to talk more a little bit more about that and we talked

095maybe for a few minutes about timeline and if there's any commissioners have any concerns about that um so um one of the things that i would hope that we would do is if we do proceed with a study that part of the scope include what are alternatives to municipalization the number of people have brought those up including commissioner kerber and what are the risks and opportunities associated with those in those various pathways so that's what i wanted to mention and i'll turn it over to commissioner mccoy when he has some last words for us other than maybe just talking about the timeline going forward yeah i just quickly because boulder was mentioned a few times i know that we had asked um chris bisdock to like look into a little bit of like the legal

096challenges of boulder and how they may or not maybe similar may not be similar to ann arbor so i was wondering if since we have him here today if he could briefly talk about that if he's still on so i'm still here and we did cover that in an appendix to our report i did not um i'm not as familiar with that because somebody else did that and so i would just suggest that we release that at least that appendix uh and provide that so we we did look into that we do think there are substantial differences um but i would be less comfortable because i did not do that original research there is some good online material that describes the whole history of the boulder municipalization effort and it was marred or burdened if

097you will maybe um by a lot of legal questions um so it was not just something where it's more clear-cut like like ann arbor but as missy said um you know that we think that there probably are lessons learned um you know to be applied to ann arbor and you know obviously we would like to learn those before we um we proceed missy anything else to add for your side and when we might have a sense of when we might be able to get additional presentations and um if anybody that's on participating in the discussion including roshan and chris and ember whether that timetable is um is suitable or is appropriate um including also obviously all the other commissioners go ahead yeah on the presentation we had reached out to a handful of places that

098have successfully municipalized and not to try to kind of see process and unfortunately the first available we got was october so we offer we even offered this meeting to try to get on calendars as soon as possible and so october 12th we've got boulder and q and even during this meeting i slightly multitasked and re-sent the invitation to winter park florida to try to get them on so if folks have other recommendations on folks you'd like to bring in to hear from please let me know because we do have a little bit of a window to try to get in but october 12th we're planning to have it be a focused conversation on the topic uh any thoughts or comments now and you're not limited to making them now i mean we're all available to

099discuss this afterwards or you can reach us via email there was some emails completing this meeting where we had originally talked about considering this later but there was some strong pushback from um anti-republic power and we moved this forward and you know we could potentially uh juggle juggle things going forward again should we close the subject and move on does anybody have any additional final comments okay so thank you very much um both to roshan chris and as well as the ember um thanks for all your work on this uh i will make sure that um everybody um does have uh access to the report missy is this report something that we could potentially put on legistar even if that's okay with amber i don't have it i don't think yeah i can send it

100after the meeting okay it would be great because we referred to it several times that'd be great great thanks again and roshan you're welcome to stay on um um you might find the other topics interesting but we know that you're juggling other priorities as well including family and dinner probably thank you so much okay so um the next point on our agenda is um the benchmarking resolution um so um i think missy someone from osi is going to present on this correct i think thea is with us if she wants to jump in and i can pull up the screen um while she's popping in here just the friendly room hi thea we had talked about this at the last meeting um theo is here to answer any questions on the benchmarking ordinance itself and

101then uh the draft resolution is just a resolution of support as this moves uh forward hopefully uh very near term for final legal review and then council consideration sophia do you want to share anything um i'm happy to share the resolution there's been a few minor adjustments of the resolution that was shared before so i'm not sure if we got put in the recent agenda or not but it's things like just revising like the purpose of the um of the ordinance it hasn't been like um actual structural change but just just flagging that yeah and building on that for folks just want to share the the purpose really is tight in that it's about consumer protection pretty explicitly and making sure that people have the information to make informed decisions when they go to rent

102whether they're a small business whether they are a individual that's renting an apartment et cetera and again this may be extraneous information that someone does not care about but it is a consumer protection you have the right to know how efficient a place is or is not if that's an important factor in your decision making so that's the language she's talking about but the process of what the ordinance does has not changed so i think we had a pretty robust presentation and discussion on this um and i think we've all had a chance to look at it missy i don't know if you want to pull it up just in case um but i'm wondering while you're doing that if we can at least get a motion in a second to consider it and we

103can discuss it and if there's no discussion then we can vote on it so so moved by mark levy and a second from commissioner george thank you so um this is a relatively short uh resolution um you can see it all right here and as has already been stated this is really um you know to raise awareness and to protect consumer rights here so um any discussion from anyone any questions of thea yes councilmember briggs yeah thanks um and i'm sorry this i don't have my notes from our previous meeting in front of me where we discussed this so um i could just be forgetting this is there a stakeholder group um that's the the city's consulting with in terms of how this might um be implemented practically with with different um sort of landlords

104around the community and what that means um yeah we met with a stakeholder task force of building owners energy service providers um dte affordable housing representatives um we had i think six meetings with them so we they developed um or we co-created the ordinance recommendations um we took that back internally and refined it based on what was feasible brought it back one last time to the stakeholder task force and got like a final uh wrap up there so yes there has been stakeholder engagement engagement process that's great um and the only reason i bring this up is you know i think i fully support this i think it's great to be moving forward consumer protections um this is you know great progress forward for the community i think um we've been um we're in the

105process of of of of doing some some um ordinance revisions around early um our leasing ordinance and we've done some other um changes that have impacted that that sort of community and i think they're on edge a little bit more and a little bit more organized um as as each sort of ordinance moves forward and so um i guess i would just the more more engagement we do with them while this is kind of in legal getting reviewed i think um the better so that there's not just a lashing out against it would be helpful thea correct me if i'm wrong but there was a fairly diverse group of people that were involved in the drafting of the ordinance as well it wasn't just the focus groups including i recall correctly um jam corporation i

106think was involved within the 2030 district and the 2030 district represents a pretty broad group of property owners in the multi-family and commercial areas so there really was a good engagement process that osi employed is that correct yeah that's correct i also had a pretty diverse group of property managers and building owners um and just kind of aside we got a lot of recommendations on the ordinance itself that's included in there but we also heard a lot of kind of more software recommendations of what people wanted to see implementation-wise to really reduce the burden um and so that was like one of the more important information that we pulled from that was how do we make this as easy as possible so there's both the ordinance itself legally what it looks like and then also

107how do we make this you know a benefit and not another thing to do just two other points on that to share we also put the ordinance the draft language out for full public comment and advertise that to try to get more stakeholders not just the task force for sure to share input and then to this point we are we anticipate some serious handholding at the beginning to try to make this really easy for folk i mean that's part of what we're budgeting uh as we as we roll this out it's not just drop this and expect people to perform we anticipate having some some interns who are helping pull data and getting it into the system and trying to build an api and figuring out how to do this so i just want to

108applaud you and back for their work on this trying to figure out how to not just build an ordinance but really build a program that's wildly successful and i'd like to remind everybody that we have a second ordinance in the works that addresses the other sectors that are not impacted by this ordinance so if the combination of the two in effect equally uh address on all sectors we have um this energy uh audit disclosure ordinance um that's been in the works and we would have considered that tonight but we had a relatively full agenda so missy i think we bumped that to our next meeting correct yeah so um any further discussion can we uh before we take a vote any any other comments or questions for thea or for each other so um all

109those in favor of approving the resolution as was just presented uh please raise your hand or say i i all those opposed passes unanimously work well done thea thank you very much take that back to the rest of the team and tell them you got uh maybe not quite standing ovation on zoom but uh close close as you can get to that on zoom thank you all thank you good so um the next point we have on our agenda is another resolution that we considered in our last meeting and that is the resolution on low carbon materials in construction or embodied carbon resolution as we refer to it in the agenda and missy i believe we have um alex reese waiting in the uh the peanut gallery he's joining us as we speak yeah waiting

110to present a couple of slides to update us on a couple of things related to the resolution before we consider it welcome alex well and meet you here in a second there we are hello hi so i i wanted to also pass on uh regrets from jan culbertson um and she would have liked to have been here tonight but she had a conflict and alex is representing um both himself he was on the meeting last time as well as um luca um henry and so take it away alex we have a slides a short slide dick that we're going to present missy if you can pull that up that would be yeah alex do you want a present or do you want me to present um i don't have it up right now so if

111you do that would be great thank you go ahead alex awesome uh okay so um this is a similar presentation to what you all saw last week but pretty much we just tried to trim it down a little bit for a reminder so um yeah this is uh the low embody carbon material construction resolution um my name is alexander reese and luca and jan are also a part of this um so the goals of this resolution um there's three of them and i'll go through them one at a time so first we want to highlight the importance of embodied emissions if you want to go to the next slide there are two different kind of sectors of emissions in the building sector in general one of which is embodied carbon and one of which is

112operational carbon embodied carbon represents kind of manufacturing transporting and installing buildings and construction materials whereas operational carbon is the carbon associated with the running of the building so the lights the heating the cooling stuff like that next slide this is a breakdown of the emissions from various sectors in the economy you can see the building and operation emissions there are in yellow and about a third of the emissions in this sector come from the actual embodied emissions and the embodied emissions represent about 11 percent of overall emissions and in the next slide you'll see that transitioning to 2050 embodied carbon will be about half of all new emissions from a life cycle perspective in the building sector next slide thank you uh and so the the second point here is now we know embodied emissions

113are a problem so we want to develop local expertise uh in a way to try to create low embodied carbon materials um and so the next couple slides will go over kind of how we started that um so the ann arbor 2030 district which uh gen represents and the low embodied carbon concrete task force uh worked together to create um these uh these three kind of specifications for what we wanted to do the first of which was to develop recommendations for concrete that will lower embodied carbon in concrete and can be implemented in southeastern michigan and then we wanted to come up with um some recommendations based on feedback from professionals and industry members on how we could potentially implement that and then finally discuss policies and find ways to promote these sorts of materials

114so there's a link to the task force presentation if any of you are interested there which goes into a bit more detail on this um here's kind of just a list of everybody who participated in this um and yeah so on the next slide this is kind of what we found the breakdown to be for ghd emissions in concrete you can see cement is about 13 of concrete by mass but it accounts for about 80 percent of overall emissions so cement is a large focus in trying to reduce the overall emissions embodied in concrete um so on the next slide you'll see that um so we'll go over a couple of different ways in which reducing emissions is possible the first of which is probably the most broadly used around industry which is plc or

115portland limestone cement pretty much that's just taking a clinker which is a product which becomes cement and we replace some of it with limestone which pretty much decreases the ghd emissions from cement in general and so these are this is one method that is very effective at lowering the ghd emissions from concrete another method on the next slide is well-graded aggregate this is a method in which you can use kind of a scale of aggregates to more thoroughly fill in the holes inside of concrete and um this then reduces the cement content you can see on the bottom there these gray squares kind of show how much cement is being used in each of these concrete mixes and so the more we fill in with this well-graded aggregate the the the less cement we use

116per kind of cubic meter of concrete and thereby can dramatically lower the emissions associated with it another method we can do on the next slide is supplementary supplementary cementitious materials which i can never say right in the first time and and these are just ways of replacing concrete with some other material which can actually end up improving the performance and uh creates a nice synergy with some as we trans transition out of fossil fuels there there's lots of uh waste and byproducts from these processes and these are great options for use in concrete which then lower the overall ghg emissions of concrete by using less cement while also creating a way in which we can take care of a product which otherwise would have just been landfilled so one of these is fly ash from

117coal combustion another is slag from steel production and on the next slide you can see pozollons are also an option here specifically ground ground glass pozolon is one that uh we've been testing and all of these can make large strides in reducing the overall and body divisions of concrete um so on the next slide you'll see uh here is kind of a breakdown of the various mixes that the task force ended up trying so on the left there you can see is this just a standard mix normal everything one to the right is a 40 slag replacement so that's taking 40 percent of the cement content and replacing it with slag and then there's ground glass paslon 40 uh over one more is plc which is that limestone cement mentioned earlier which is replacing some

118of the cement with a limestone which lowers the ghd and then the plc with 40 slag in the plc with 40 ggp um so to summarize pretty much the task force found that by using these various methods we can reduce the overall emissions of concrete by about which in the future hopefully with increased improvements we can get that up to 50 which is a massive reduction given that a globally concrete is responsible for about seven percent of overall emissions so um this is really an exciting opportunity um here is an example of a port we actually just did on friday so uh this is over in the tri-delta sorority their driveway needed a re-upping of their concrete so we decided to use one of these mixes and port it and the construction workers said they

119really enjoyed using it and uh everything went really well so it seems very promising that this will be a great option for ann arbor in the future uh just to kind of give a scale for how how much emissions can be you know reduced through using these various types of concrete if we were to create a 10 story building um and use a 40 uh or i guess 37 um ghd reduction concrete on it that would be equivalent to powering a midsize city so roughly ann arbor for about 11 hours which is i don't know it seems like a lot to me and next slide so finally we want to communicate methods uh additionally we communicate methods to reduce the embodied emissions so we know it's an issue and we've come up with some different

120ways in which we can help mitigate that issue and so now we want to create a method in which people can take advantage of those ways we came up with so this is where a lot of the work i've done on the project comes in and also luca who couldn't make it today but we've been working on creating a resource guide which there's a little detail on the next slide and that goes into [Music] various ways where we can calculate embodied emissions so whether that's kind of collecting various uh life life cycle analysis also called epds which are environmental product declarations um it's kind of like a nutrition label for a product uh but instead of you know calorie count it gives you the global warming potential and so there's ways in which you can

121collect those and compare them or create them for new mixes and new materials so we've given some options there in the resource guide we've also gone through several different techniques for how we can reduce the global warming global warming potential of concrete cement and this is by no means an exhaustive list either on here or on the resource guide but it does provide a lot of good good resources for people to reach out to and and take advantage of and then finally we want to highlight the local projects like that poor that just happened on friday as well as research and various contexts in the area to help people take advantage of all of this and then we also go over a couple of other local policies at the city and state levels across the

122country and how they're implementing similar techniques and how we can kind of base what we do off of that as well so that was just kind of a brief rundown of everything um i'm happy to take any questions or i can see the floor to john and we can talk about the resolution and the changes that were made would you mind going back to the presentation quickly and going to the task force slide and while you're doing that just a few comments first of all i want to say i appreciate comments offered in the last meeting um in particular from council member briggs as well as um outside the meeting um by uh two commissioners commissioner cleavy and commissioner hook um who both provided recommendations um and i wanna also apologize maybe's uh appropriate word

123for um the way this was developed this came relatively late to the commission in the overall process admittedly this went back in march two osi staff goes shared with others at the city and it wasn't something that i mentioned unfortunately in meetings but i do want to demonstrate here through this list of participants that it was a broad-based group of people that worked on this um and um you can see there's you know people from all different kinds of interests including from the michigan concrete association as you can see in the lower left dan degraff was actually present at the poor that alex mentioned at the tridel association we there was also a poor the day before on thursday on south industrial highway where there's some being repairs being made um they're using also a

124low embodied concrete uh energy concrete so um i i first of all just in terms of process um a commitment to try to do this better in terms of informing commissioners of an opportunity to contribute to this but i hope that the final product um is indeed a good one and as i said we did get a lot of good comments so um missy what i'd like you to do is bring up the resolution it's a rather long one and what i thought i would do is have it on the screen but summarize uh the the major changes um and um missy i'm going to get with you there's a few minor um spelling or grammar kinds of mistakes like um capitalization like changing um a word some words in the jurass statement um so

125if we just if we slowly scroll down so people can um see it again in the fifth whereas statement starting with the city of ann arbor um for example that should be a capital city i think with a c and then later um as it says the a2 um zero or the a2 plan we'll change that to the a20 carbon neutrality plan that's the formal name of the plan if you keep on scrolling down so people can see it i just needed a second to cap to capture the notes for the changes yeah i i i can send you these obviously okay so that's whatever i made a few minor changes um so other than capitalizations um you can scroll down there's two places um where commissioner key cleavy made comments that we incorporated about

126innovation and the office of sustainability in innovation has a responsibility to encourage enable and unleash the power of innovation and that's what we're trying to do with this this uh resolution and so we address that um and then i think the other substantive change um uh commissioner chris um hook em suggested a bunch of um what i'll say is relatively minor changes they're all in in the text here which is opposed to the legistar um but the one thing that i wanted to discuss was the second or the third let's see the third resolved um and go to the next page yes so this was a concern that commissioner excuse me councilmember briggs raised and so we hope that this language addresses your concern um so we say here at the bottom of the page

127and then the top of the next one um so we're asking council and the city to engage in working with the city planning commission or department in commission to urge owners developers and property users to reuse or repurpose existing buildings of meaningful size as a means of minifi minimizing total net carbon footprint of construction while not obstructing new development with significant social or total life cycle environmental benefits so what we're trying to do here is say we recognize that it's important to um utilize embodied carbon where we have it and where it can justifiably be reused and by the way i think i mentioned where there's work being done on what's called a construction and demolition ordinance that would hopefully divert more of those materials from landfill but what we're talking here is in in

128some cases it may make sense to re use a repurposed um part of an existing building a basement or a foundation or whatever the case may be but we do not want to obstruct new development where if we look at the total social benefits or the total life cycle benefits considering things like the reduction in vehicle miles traveled and things like that that this is not being used the statement is not being or the old statement and this resolution is not being used to obstruct um them where maybe a single-family home is being replaced by um you know 50 units of housing that has a lot of other benefits so this is the way that we've addressed that and what i ask then at this point is if we can get motions to consider the

129resolution open up the discussion and then take a vote we have a motion from commissioner cleavy do we have a second from commissioner briggs i'd like to open the floor then for discussion anybody have any comments or questions yes commissioner councilmember briggs and then commissioner i only comment with just um thanks for for making those changes that definitely um those revisions were very much in line with my thinking thanks very much and thanks for raising the concern commissioner um good afternoon or evening or night i don't know what it is it's getting dark in my neck of the woods but i'll be brief and that is thank you for the efforts here i think it's great that we're looking at embodied carbon um unfortunately because of the building code we can't enforce much here you

130know we're going to recommend that we adopt things like this in our in our practice of permitting buildings but reality is we can't enforce anyone to do this work um i would hope that we would take the measure to start moving in that direction some of our codes are moving in that direction as you know john and team that wrote this um the architecture 230 movement all those are pushing for a change to the michigan building code those kinds of things need to be in there not just the hvac changes and other areas of energy but actually embody carbon i don't know how to make that happen but i just wanted to raise that is this is a nice start but we are nowhere near being closed to the end of getting this adopted thank

131you and thank you and i see some nodding mounting heads there um real briefly we had planned actually a presentation for tonight on proposed changes to the state energy code there was a conflict or family emergency that prevented that from happening so indeed we will cover that as soon as we can hopefully next month and what we hope to do is get behind the proposed changes um i i think uh potentially we'll have a number of speakers addressing that um and we as chuck as you point out that that's really important and what's important to realize for everybody and this will be definitely address um when we present it is that um we're we'll have an opportunity with the new with the new code in the appendices to essentially um as a municipality uh be

132able to implement the zero code um here in ann arbor so um we can talk more about that missy i don't know if you want to say more yeah i i do it's really time sensitive and i'm sorry that charlotte jameson couldn't join us you really did want to join us but this is actually super time sensitive because comments are due for laura the state um licensure office by the 16th which is friday uh on the code and so there are two codes that are open for consideration it's the energy code and the residential code right now so we are as an office working with other municipalities to try to get in comment and then there's a public meeting on the 20th of in lansing where we can share feedback what's exciting um there's many

133exciting things that are going on but one is that they're starting from the 2021 code which is great because we're on the 2015 code right now and there is a 2018 code so we're kind of starting from the right place and the goal is to keep us there not to move us backwards and so there's the code and then there's the zero code appendix that john just mentioned and so we want the code we want the zero code appendix and to chuck's point we want it to go slightly further and be considering embodying carbon as well so there is a lot that is happening right now at this moment it is furious but if you are interested please let myself or zach west smith know and we can loop you into what we're doing chuck

134i see you and you are in um yeah we're we're running we're running at this one yeah this is a huge opportunity um we're currently based on ashrae standard and by revision upward revision of the code there's pretty substantial energy savings opportunities so hopefully in the next meeting we will address exactly chuck's points and parallel obviously to what is going on at the state level any other comments or questions so what i would ask is then we'll take a vote on on approving the resolution uh all those in favor of approval raise your hand or say aye aye anyone opposed passes unanimously very good we're making good progress so um we now are up to reports and updates um in the final round of public input uh missy you want to kick us off with

135um an update from the energy office and then we'll open up to commissioners and then committee updates yeah thank you so much chairmerski i'm coming off vacations the cobwebs still exist a little bit so i'm going to shake them out to give kind of a quick update on a few things uh one is we have a few new commissioners that might be joining us at our next meeting so i just wanted to share the logo before council on the 20th so we have three folks that were recommending and i just wanted to let you all know you might have noticed i'm not sure if i've communicated this and apologies if i haven't josh mcdonald is no longer with the city he's moved on uh to new opportunities so that is a loss for us but

136also an opportunity to really recalibrate and think about where we have you know strategic opportunities because staffing is one of the most important things that we have available to us so uh for the time being forgive me for slowness and response but please let me know if you need anything administratively i'm going to try to step into those shoes but i do apologize in advance for perhaps the responses i just wanted to share that update and then uh kind of fun things happening as i try to find where this is my notes the uh projects we've talked about previously just quick updates the landfill solar project is an environmental assessment they'll be out tomorrow doing some of the first wetland delineation and sampling that we need to do to clarify and move that project forward

137we're working on the rfp language which hopefully um it will go live uh as soon as the environmental assessment is cleared um barring anything really tragic happening uh there the rfps uh for our rooftop solar we've selected two vendors and we're working through contracting with them at the moment uh where we'll do final site design final final site design because um we had some beautiful friendly internal competition where people started saying oh you're gonna do carports i want to do carport and so we sort of expanded more solar than what we started with which i'm personally very excited about after you are too so we'll get to final design and then we'll go to build which is great met with the housing commission today on their rfp for solar projects and similar initiative we're adding

138three more sites in so it's just growing which is really really exciting to see that momentum take place we have four ev chargers that are sitting in ann arbor in a parking spot in our garage they're fast chargers super excited to get them in the ground we're just waiting on our electrician to have a little break in their schedule to come out and we'll do the trenching and then those will be up which is great we have placed our order for our first electric refuse truck and we are working on the second round of funding with the state looking at other vehicles uh we are in discussions with madison wisconsin which is the first electric fire truck and we're understanding how that's operating and thinking about that as one of the things we'll be applying

139for next for funding to cover the delta for um chief kennedy is excited i'm slightly nervous but very very fun stuff happening there um and i'm sure i'm forgetting billions of things but you heard about benchmarking time of marketing or the head the home energy disclosure ordinance is coming shortly the green rental task force we've had initial hearing kind of uh discussion with some tenants doing the same thing with some landlords and then we'll bring them together to talk about what we can do in the rental landscape um very exciting stuff so um and um if and when the commission might be able to um possibly take a a a stand or a position on support of the millage and so on and so forth what what can you inform us about that it was

140obviously the article in them live it was covered briefly in in the last council meeting um anything you or either council members can update us on in that regard sure and that just shows how distracted we are with work that i completely and totally forgot to mention the millage so thank you very much uh yes so a proposal has been brought forward to look at a military fund climate action and that is uh something the mayor is working through the youth resolution my understanding is it'll be presented both uh if it's decided to move forward it'll be presented both as the proposed ballot language and then an intention of use resolution that outlines specifically what the resources would be allocated towards i highly anticipate it will be a20 initiatives very focused on things like getting

141towards the circular economy and really investing in our zero waste initiatives which includes local job creation because we don't really have all the local markets that we need in that landscape um very much centering kind of equity and local trades in this work and i mean both of those things are both of those ways thinking about how we correct where we don't have services and programs and where we enhance things that are working like our aging place efficiently program and scaling that um so we're sort of waiting on the final use resolution that'll be the direction for for where where we head and as soon as we get that we will share and then i imagine we would come back to the commission for consideration of support or non-support of that effort any questions of

142missy before we open it up to other commissioners i just have a quick question did you say that um the three new appointments are on this monday's agenda or for the pencil i had a hard time finding them but i was told by the clerk's office that they were on for first read the last meeting and they're up for second read this meeting that that is correct they are separated out because one of them requires a higher vote threshold thank you carlene did i see your hand yes um i'd like a little bit more information about this the the solar um installations you said there's there's a couple that are being added for the city or this is at the beginning of your update you're telling me yeah i actually know which one you're talking

143about um so there's two sort of additions that are happening one we put an rfp out for 13 facilities we are now at 16 facilities that are just city of ann arbor and we put it out mostly thinking it would be rooftop solar but it's expanded to also being ground mount and carports at a number of sites not all sites ev charging is a part of many of them as well as we're working through kind of uh thinking about this and we're not in final design yet that's kind of where we're heading once we get the contract signed which is really great um it's an opportunity to i'll use the example of the farmers market where we have modest demand but we have more roof space so we can't over generate but if we put

144ev chargers in which we know we want now we can maximize so how do we you know that's the kind of customization we're trying to do missy versions we we have a um so that's something we'll be working with the different installers each site's a little bit different in terms of what we're looking for we are asking for each site to be solar i'm sorry storage ready so all the electrical is done um i do anticipate at some point we will do storage in all the sites you could imagine uh something like the water treatment plant storage is key because we're peak shaving right like that's really what we're going to be doing there to make that a viable um initiative versus something like argo cascades where the demand profile is like all summary and

145so storage is perhaps later add-on so we're trying to really customize i can't even do that on the spot um i i know for sure the senior center is one and then we looked at a number of the different uh park sites but we'll get i'm happy to have an update as soon as we have it on the final designs where we have preliminary designs we have to now do the work to get to the final design phase thank you updates from other commissioners and from city council as well seeing none i think the next thing on the agenda is committee updates uh any committee updates carlene can you admit just very briefly what's going on i think we have a meeting from transportation electrification we had a little bit of a pause and i

146think we have a meeting scheduled for the 20th but that's really probably just about it right that's it yup um and maybe i can comment real quickly last night a group of us um met on consiere services and we shared our feedback garnered through interviews with a number of other entities municipal entities that have similar programs vancouver uh boulder bay area they have nine counties that have all joined together um i'm blanking on a couple others roughly half a dozen we raised another number of questions we've put together an outline of some issues to be resolved um we sort of have a target of having a clear sort of action plan and timetable in the september or so time frame um so we're starting to make some movement there it took a couple of or

147several weeks to get all those interviews in but i think we're looking forward to getting that off the ground and being able to engage with uh residents and actually say you know you're interested in a20 now we can help you realize your project and give you good advice so that's moving forward any other reports from any other uh subgroups or anyone else anything come to mind if not then i think we go to public comment so i think i need to read my spiel again there's my spiel just a second sorry here we are so this is an opportunity for a person to speak up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn if or if you're just listening in please call nine 888-788-0099 or eight seven seven eight five three five two four

148seven that's eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine four eight seven seven eight five three two and enter the meeting id 913-5783-4502 this information is also displayed in the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one at using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak plus please press star 9 on your phone and you will hear an automatic announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background noise so that we may hear you clearly and then finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments speaker ending in two to eight

149hello can you hear me yes awesome my name is greg woodring i am a member of ann arbor for public power and i'm calling in to express my uh gratitude for hearing out this presentation and for considering this idea though i am concerned about the speed with which it is being discussed to vote on this resolution um as roshan i believe did an excellent job laying out ahmed ember also repeated uh this resolution is not asking anybody to commit to the idea of municipalizing right away it's simply asking that we do our due diligence in investigating whether this is the right option as chuck hook um commissioner hook um pointed out uh you know it seems that we've got a pretty clear answer on whether it's legal it is uh it's absolutely a legal path

150forward and well certainly dp would put up a fight against it they would not have solid grounds to fight on um it's something that we could win and it's something that uh would be a major benefit to the rest of the state in terms of providing a pathway forward on how to get out from under the grip of dte we've uh you know had plenty of time to see the benefits of municipalization it's a major cash cow for the city it um reduces people's rates it's far more reliable an issue that you know we saw just tonight with ctn going on to ctn going out due to a power outage uh you know these things are only going to get more severe we just saw some of the worst flooding that i've seen probably ever

151in my lifetime and these natural disasters are just ramping up climate change is here we can't afford to wait any longer we need to start taking action and so i really hope that the council will move forward with speed on considering these questions because you know this is just one step along the way we can't get bogged down debating the entire question before we get the data in front of us i certainly do encourage the commission to uh talk to these other cities that have tried it uh winter park boulder um playable colorado fort collins colorado also have excellent munis there's plenty of great munis in the state uh holland lansing traverse city you just heard from chris bisdock former mayor nick there's plenty of good information to go around but all of that information

152is not going to be directly applicable to ann arbor a feasibility study will so if we're really going to make an informed decision on what would be the right path forward we're going to need those numbers and i think that uh it would be the wrong perspective to take to think that by recommending that the city council go forward with this feasibility study that you are advocating for a path forward nobody is saying that you should advocate for a path forward before you have the data in front of you but i really hope that you'll move forward uh to investigate this and get that data in front of you so that we can all as a city make the best decision for all of us thank you thank you for your comments we have anyone

153else missing yeah color ending in 920. hello can you hear me yes hi there my name is sam limerick i am a resident of ward 3 i am also a member of the climate action movement at um which is a member of ann arbor for public power um i a lot of what i have to say echoes uh what greg just said but i'll go i'll go forward um i i do recognize that council has raised a lot of questions about how this application would look like both you know how we do it and how it operates and however both today as well as in all the past meetings we've been having this discourse and yeah there are certainly many unknowns and a lot of outstanding questions uh as we've seen in our presentations however

154there there is only one clear passport to really understanding what um what the path forward looks like and again we aren't this this resolution is not about um directing the city's path it's ensuring that we can see the past that we have that we have before us and this is too big of an issue and too you know concerning of a crisis to not completely consider all these paths um i mean like a couple of the callers both at the beginning and just there with craig i'm alarmed at some of the recent climate extremes we've seen including what we seem to be increasingly common and widespread reports of emergency ass by utilities to the customers to significantly significantly curtail their energy use in order to preserve just the basic integrity of the grid and as

155we rise to confront this you know generational and dare i say existential challenge and look to grow in our resilience to the crisis of the future we really just can't leave any options on the table um i'd like to see the energy efficient adopted bias for action as it relates to voting on this proposed resolution like greg i think that we're moving a little bit too slow october may be too late we can talk all we want about um what may have gone wrong in boulder uh or any other place but yeah like greg said these are completely distinct legal landscapes and it's it's clear now that um here in ann arbor we won't necessarily face those same barriers although yes of course ut will fight us um and yes my final point really is

156just uh just to reiterate the point that acp has asked this commission is is really quite narrow we are certainly not asking this commission to support initialization uh this is yeah this is a big issue uh but we are asking the commission to take the first logical step in evaluating the most realistic option to achieve the first e20 goal that is an electrical grid powered by 100 renewable sources we know that that isn't going to happen with uh with dt and their timelines um 120k that cut the estimated cost of me kind of uh quoted um in the presentation is less than a dollar per resident of ann arbor um it seems like a no-brainer to make that investment to find out all the details we need to know to do that due diligence and

157um after the legal portion of today's presentation can we afford not to further investigate this route and potentially secure new tremendous revenue streams for the city uh thanks so much for your time thank you for your comments color ending in nine nine hold on sorry color ending in 661. sorry yes we hear you okay great hi my name is gasteski i live at 313 montgomery in ann arbor i'm part of ann arbor indivisible we had a chance to look at this resolution recently and we voted to endorse it we're not really sure about unions at this point but we definitely want a feasibility study the what we know about them is very good it looked like an excellent alternative and we urged the uh the energy commission to approve this resolution move this along and

158get the information um let's see it uh we were impressed by not only you know the zero carbon and the control of that energy but it's cheaper and more reliable and separate from dte and most of all there's a clear path listening to the lawyer i thought was very instructive and i gotta believe that the city will like a revenue stream these are these are all very powerful reasons to do this the alternatives don't seem as compelling to us all right um so we hope you will approve the resolution thank you very much bye-bye thanks for calling anyone else busy yeah call our ending in 998 hi can you hear me terrific um hello everybody um uh my name is zachariah farham and i'm the student body vice president for the college of lsa at

159the university of michigan ann arbor and i'm calling tonight to speak in favor of this resolution to speak in favor of a feasibility study um you know i was trying to log on earlier today so to see the entirety of this meeting unfortunately i was having problems uh because i i had a power outage at my home and i lost the internet and i noticed that uh once i walked across campus to try to uh to watch the meeting it looks like the ctn network completely failed because of a dte power outage i think that really stresses the importance of uh of exploring this option in its entirety now in lsa student government we we discussed the possibility of um of of municipalization and we discussed a resolution which we passed overwhelmingly in support of

160municipalization in support of replacing dte's corporate-backed dirty electricity with public power and uh so we passed that as i said overwhelmingly and we urge the energy commissioners and the city council to explore this option completely and and answer the questions that we all have about um public power and the way that we do that is to fund a feasibility study so i really hope that you will take steps forward concrete steps to fund this feasibility study like was said many times we are running on a very short time table here young people like me really live in a constant state of crisis with a constant feeling of dread because we know that the smartest people in our society are telling us we need to have ambitious bold action to defeat climate change to ensure that

161we as young people have a future not necessarily just a better future but a future period so i i very much urge you and the strongest words i can use to please fund this feasibility study to explore this option in its entirety because while the 8-0 plan was a bright glimmer of hope for young people like me a young and arborite like me i was extremely concerned that we have one plan to uh to eliminate a large percentage of our emissions and no backup plan that is cca now cca sounds terrific but if we don't have a backup plan and cca doesn't pass young people like me are really screwed excuse my language but we don't have anything to do you know the 8-0 plan will fail and i and nobody wants that least of

162all a young student like like myself and the last thing i'd like to say is as a student here in ann arbor um reliability is extremely important and like i said i've had multiple power outages uh not only just today but throughout the past two semesters and as a student i really need to have reliable internet and unfortunately at extremely important times throughout my education um i've had power outages which have impacted my my education i wasn't able to log on to class and um at times actually one point that lasted for three days during a school week so i had i couldn't have any access to my classes that i'm paying tens of thousands of dollars for now thank you for your comments your time is up um thank you very much okay thank

163you thanks for sharing your thoughts in your past missy anyone else we don't care i just wanted to take this opportunity just to kind of name that the statement that we don't have a backup to cca is false and so i look forward to hopefully having follow-up conversations about that because we've heard that a few times which is not a true narrative great okay so uh the last point on the agenda uh is agenda items for our next meeting um first of all missy maybe um if i don't have it in front of me but i know we have you don't have it either in front of you what's up it's likely to be the home energy audit disclosure resolution or ordinance and a consideration of a resolution on that correct um i think we're

164going to try to get um charlotte back to do a presentation on the energy um the state state um energy code um carlene or missy do you remember what else is up for our next meeting i might have it here just a second let's see is there any news john whether we'll meet in person or not is that a possibility and the year missy i understood correct yeah we're staying remote for the for the future um and then i i think we're waiting to hear what makes sense for folks the one thing that is absolutely certain is we can't do a split um we don't have the tech i mean we're going to do it for council but we won't be able to do some in person some not so we'll have to decide i

165think it's a body at some point how we want to proceed i think obviously the delta variant and students coming back to town and everything probably will weigh in on how we go forward but obviously that'll be something that that council probably um decides um go ahead robert i'm sorry john just before you move on on that um i was just curious is that directive going to come from us or is that something this body makes as a decision as as a whole or is this going to come from counsel just to be clear good good question and our counselors and i'm not sure if council is going to do this i think it might be an administrative decision or unless council wants to weigh in on it um i i did not see necessarily

166the the directive from the city one of my one of my commissions did have a debate on whether or not they wanted to return to in person at this point which made me think that there may have been some indication from staff that they could um they chose not to um we are following the county's emergency order which will allow us to continue immediate meeting remotely through the end of the calendar year the indication i have had from county colleagues is that they do not intend to rescind that so that folks have that flexibility it is likely that council may return before commissions even um i know that there's also been some discussion of allowing for increased flexibility for commissions in perpetuity because um there's been some evidence suggesting that we've had higher participation rates

167and and more uh presence of quorum and things like that as folks have been able to join from wherever they are so i know that those are all factors in the decision at this point thank you uh any suggestions for our next meeting uh you're not tied to what you say tonight you're certainly welcome to make proposals and we had a number of comments tonight about uh this issue about municipalization and timing of a second reading and vote on that so we'll talk about that as well anything else that anybody wants to offer up at this time i just wanted to clarify our next meeting is august and we are having an august meeting i think at the last meeting we said we were going to discuss that at this meeting we i think you're

168right um and i do remember we had uh meeting carlene and i and missy about all the potential topics and we had certainly enough material i know a few commissioners have indicated potentially or a likelihood that they won't be able to participate actually there's a chance i may not either so i don't know how do people feel about meeting in august do you want to leave it up to us or does people have strong feelings one way or another it's it's this it's currently listed in legislation i would state that i have a little bit of a challenge i will do my best to to be there because your mccoy yes yeah i know i'm not going to be there as well so i think just depending on how many people we know are going

169to be there and what especially whether or not if the new uh commissioners are not going to be on board it'd be good to know in advance it sounds like we might not even have quorum if three people might have challenges being there make sure you are uh you know uh ember uh commissioner mccoy just raised a very good point um i would be that i didn't even think about until just now i would be very much in favor of post or cancelling the august meeting and just doing it in september considering the you know attentively the second reading of the resolution would be coming up and that would be a lot for new people to take on without a proper onboarding process and i know that uh you know just from my experience with

170commissions and so forth i don't know what experience these people will have coming into the commission but you know to really make sure that there is time for sit down if like in person if possible or you know virtual for sure but uh discussion about all the different things you know what's currently on the agenda what to expect i think that would be that should take precedence because considering there's three of them that's a huge uh addition to the commission that is that's true um and we we do do onboarding uh we did started doing that a year ago i think it was a year ago yeah a year ago and we would plan on doing that obviously or most likely that would take place um using um some type of virtual meeting but yeah

171we definitely plan on doing that once those new commissioners are on board and you're right there are some important things um what do people feel about um sending out something like a poll whether it's a doodle poll or whatever and and just having everybody check their schedules and indicating whether or not they're likely to be there we can i can do that you know the next day or two and if we get people to respond we'll get even get a sense of whether we're going to have a forum john john it doesn't sound like we're voting on anything how about turning it into a workshop that's kind of voluntary and i did find the proposed agenda and we don't have anything pressing um minus the first like potential read of the head ordinance but we

172could circulate that for commissioners to review in advance for sure sounds like people deserve a summer break how about um missy maybe you karlene and i have a discussion not we typically do that a week before the meeting how about if we do it in the next couple of days and make a decision and we'll either send out a notice one way or where we will send out a notice one way or another that would either be no we're not going to do this or we would like to have a poll to be able to make a final decision but we will get something out soon does that sound sit well with everybody good okay good yes there was one last logistics thing but thank you carlene for naming this via email um we will

173need to do an election for chair and vice chair for our officers so um when we do convene the next time be prepared to self nominate nominate someone else but be ready that will be on our agenda right so chair vice chair and liaison to the environmental commission those are the three positions okay great any anything else anybody going once going twice meeting is adjourned 8 37 pm enjoy the rest of your evening you