Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 1/28/21

001of the ann arbor city environmental commission i call this meeting to order at 7 02 pm um galen do you want to do the roll call mm-hmm one second okay okay uh commissioner graham i'm here commissioner uh skinner she shouldn't be on here okay commissioner needham here councilmember dish here commissioner apple let me check the uh technically these on okay uh commissioner uh gibb randall here council member griswold here commissioner kylie ward here chairman brown president commissioner overpack yeah commissioner mursky here vice chairman here commissioner bonilla here commissioner ferris yeah all right we have a quorum all right thanks galen um so do you want to uh uh do you want to give us the land heritage statement sure okay uh this is can i interrupt for one second do we have introductions to do

002or have i just missed something um introductions um of who lily ferris are you new this time or were you here last time and i just missed you oh yes i was here last time yeah oh okay sorry about that lily's are you one of our youth commissioners yes she wasn't able to join us until um that the december third meeting got it and i missed that one so sorry about missing that but welcome sorry all right okay galen do you want to proceed with the land heritage statement alrighty the land heritage statement i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including odawa ojibwe bodhiwadmi and wyandot peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united

003states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals this is our land you statement hey thank you caitlyn so um let's see so next item on the agenda is approval of the agenda um are there any um is there are there any motions to amend the agenda you're muted thanks we have a motion to approve okay and uh do we have a second i second okay um and uh any discussion anybody wish to amend it okay all

004who uh approve it as written say aye hi hi hi any any days okay passes unanimously so let's move on to the special presentations the first um the first press special presentation is um from the office of sustainability and innovation energy principles discussion that's either missy or fang um yeah i'll take that one today i think we're gonna let fog have some family time great to see you commissioners thank you so much for your continued service this is a continuation of a discussion that we had last year where we introduced some draft energy principles to guide some of the decision making that's happening in the office of sustainability and innovations and per protocol of the commission that was an introduction we've got some feedback and we are coming back now uh seeking direction and potentially

005formal adoption of those principles so a little bit of a history i'm not going to go through extensive slides i can if you want i figured if you're at all like me your day job is uh powerpoint and zoom overload so i figured we might actually just talk and look for a second but i'm happy to pull outside that that is easier for everyone uh just to kind of reconvene we have draft criteria and principles this was a shift that was made where we've got the criteria being things that are essential um and those would be things that we would have to be uh looking to to emphasize in any decision made around energy investments so some high level things before i kind of go through that again for everyone's kind of as a refresher

006one is this really is centered on energy but most of these principles are transferable to almost anything in a20 and so this is a strategic way to make sure we have alignment but there are some nuances within the energy sector and because the energy sector is the largest source of emissions for us uh we felt it was really important to start there and really align our work across the entire city so that's why we came forward we certainly heard some feedback about the need to expand this for all a20 and i think that's absolutely right but again we contextualize the energy system here the second is we heard uh feedback uh very appropriately to align this with the prioritization framework that we use to develop a20 so i just we also heard this from council

007so we talked to you we've talked to the energy commission we've spoken with council um and gotten some feedback and we are working on uh that developing the framework for evaluation as we speak what we've basically done is taken the existing prioritization framework we have and i would say if i had to quantify it 80 85 of it makes sense within the framework of these criteria and principles there are some nuance that we need to add to that to make it more robust evaluation but that's a great sign from where i sit that means we have really strong alignment with the way we developed a20 and the way we're evaluating the actions that go into a20 so we've got a draft of that prioritization framework that operationalize the criteria and principles that are before you

008today for consideration i just wanted to kind of obligate fate that because it was something that we talked about in the in a previous session so what we've got before you then are broken into these two categories criteria and principles criteria are pretty immovable they're the things that have to be centered in the work principles are the things that we want to maximize but that may be intention and they may be in tension with each other or even with the criteria that are listed so the objective is to evaluate based on all of these and then be able to come forward with recommendations where we can uh compare and contrast and really uh present options forward that are grounded in these various elements so the core criteria proposed i'm sure you have this before you

009but for those who don't or anyone who's listening they are uh the three are reducing greenhouse gas emissions which is central j20 of course we want our investments to be additional to what would have already been generated without our investment and then grounded in equity injustice especially procedural and distributive justice the principles there's five of them these are the things we want to maximize to the fullest extent possible are enhancing the resilience of our entire system certainly our people our community and our natural systems and making investments starting local and we had some discussion with council about what local means and we are landing on at this point that feedback is somewhere around southeastern michigan and definitely a preference for michigan where we can speed uh scientifically of course we need to reduce emissions and

010we need to produce them fast the fourth is finding solutions that are scalable and transferable to other places so that we don't just find a solution that works for ann arbor but no one else could benefit from it and the last is of course uh critical which is cost effective solutions so those are the principles and the criteria before you our hope is that we'll be able to go to city council in february i believe we're on the docket for the second meeting in february to ask council to approve these criteria and principles so that we can then start bringing solutions to them or options before them for adoption that align with these criterion principles and at a minimum we can start using them to evaluate things as we're preparing to bring the council so

011that's what i wanted to share i'm happy to answer any questions or concerns you have any feedback okay are there any questions for missy i can't see everybody here so there we go i'll raise your hand if you have a question for missy um breeda hi missy thanks for the information and the presentation um so i do have some questions um and uh i'll just go through march through what i have if that's okay um you had mentioned in the reducing greenhouse gas emissions um a number of fairly specific things the solar photovoltaic hydroelectric turbines and i wondered why one of the types of things that we can do geothermal wasn't included in that or is that considered an hvac no geothermal could be considered depending on the technology we didn't make it an all-inclusive

012exclusive you know list of recommendations it was more illustrative of the kinds of things that were okay okay all right um and you mentioned biodigesters and you kind of define them as what they're not but what is the what what would they actually be that we would consider yeah like a biodigester at the wastewater treatment plant for example is something that we would consider okay thanks because i agree with the things that you excluded those are really good um and um on the virtual power reductions is that actually cca no no so this is a brand new mechanism we are only one of four states that uh we think can legally allow this this is something we're exploring uh there's been some papers written by former energy folks at the state and what this would

013be is uh we could make investments in energy efficiency locally for sure and that that is a really really important thing but we might also be able to make investments in energy efficiency in other places and receive renewable energy credits for those based on the emissions that are not emitted so we might be able to for example make an investment in uh schools in highland park or investment in river rouge and we could be making that investment they reap the benefit but we get the renewable energy credit from it so this is a brand new mechanism that we're attempting to actually develop okay all right because i didn't try to seek out some information it didn't sound like that so that's very interesting and kind of along the lines that you and i have talked

014um before um and then in terms of um can you just explain the thing about the fair and just compensation in the the equity and justice section yeah we want to make sure that across the labor market people are compensated appropriately for the work that they're doing and so we can't require uh you probably know this and if not we can't require union labor and that's not what we're trying to do we are trying to make sure that the kind of benefits that people get being a part of the union to be compensated appropriately and trained appropriately are moving through the entire marketplace got it good thanks all right i think that's all for now thank you great question thank you thank you any other questions for missy not seeing any um thank you thank

015you missy um we'll discuss your resolution further on in the program thank you i'm after um under old business um okay the next special presentation is um it's from eileen naples about solid waste topics hey aileen do you want to introduce yourself and i'd be happy to hi everyone my name is eileen naples i'm ann arbor's resource recovery manager in the public works department i think the last time i saw you it was spring the department has been very busy since then but i haven't seen you in the interim because i took a few months off for maternity leave so i was busy too just in a different way but i'm glad to be back and i wanted to take a moment to talk to this group a lot about mostly about the solid waste

016resource management plan which i think some of you are familiar with certainly council members and those on the solid waste working group including john and steve and and other and john calhoun who i see here so i'll i wanted to give you some just some details into what it is at a very fundamental basic level and then how we're proceeding in the city to implement some of the recommendations and then just talk to you a little bit about the future which is developing as we speak so the solid waste resource management plan this is the 2019-2023 plan despite its name just passed with council who had a number of great questions and recommendations over the course of its development and ended up passing council in september of 2020. this plan started off as council directing

017the city to take a look at operational needs but over the course of its life and even a little bit in its inception it was designed to take into account um zero waste goals and organic schools that the city had previously developed so that was the inception but the overtime development was that um as as we were developing the solid waste resource management plan the city started undertaking its a20 carbon neutrality effort as well so we um attempted where possible to to merge those two and so you'll see overlap between the two initiatives and that's intentional so the plan ended up addressing both operational needs as well as the city's sustainability goals [Music] so ultimately the goal of the entire plan is to both create more diversion opportunities in the city for recycling and for

018organics and to create more better improved service and more efficiency within the city so with that said we are there's a number of elements to the plan it's quite extensive but we're starting um [Music] with a few objectives this this year um with the idea of addressing both of those two goals both operational efficiency and sustainability so you all are probably familiar with the the murph the city's murph that was one of the elements of the plan we actually um council approved of the the mirth revitalization this summer in july of the summer so that is underway right now um raa is making uh design plans with um machine x which is a canadian company and they hope to have the murph up and running in late 2021 until then they're translating the city's material

019to rossock in southfield michigan we're also taking a look at residential recycling collection the city and council passed a residential customer recycling approved a residential recycling contract with raa recycle anna arbor in august of this past year um and so we are still working out the details of that contract with recycle ann arbor that we are hopeful to have it signed soon i'm happy to answer any questions on that we're also hopeful that one of the purposes of [Music] reorienting the city's recycling services to separate resident residential recycling was that we hoped it would create more of a funding stream for other services including potentially year-round residential compost which is one of the elements envisioned in the solid waste resource management plan and also mentioned in a20 so it remains to be seen we don't

020have a signed contract yet so it remains to be seen whether we will realize those savings and while this was all happening of course we've had a global pandemic and market disruption and so there are just unanticipated elements like truck prices that have the market has gone up and down since then mostly up i think in that in that sense so to be seen whether there's those savings that we had hoped for um but we are you know we will use them wisely and of course seek input from the community on any next steps um with those savings one of the other elements of the plan that we're very excited about and that we're um going full force towards right now is to take a look at downtown service for a long time area associations

021business leaders and i think just those of us who enjoy going downtown and seeing it as a great place to be have realized that we need some improved services there there's a lot of operational efficiency crowded alleyways we don't have weekend service there's there's a lot of opportunities for improvements and the the solid waste resource management plan in fact held a focus group with a lot of those downtown stakeholders so we have an initial set of plans thanks to that focus group that address those operational efficiencies we're doing we plan to create a distinct downtown service where we've got one hauler one group taking care of the trash recycling and compost for the downtown which is because it is its own entity and we think that'll be most efficient we're also both from a customer

022service point of view and because we think it will create more space hopefully to do things like introduce a right now we're envisioning a an optional commercial compost collection so this would be subscription based so you'd have to opt in rather than opting out so that's one of the things we're hoping to to do with both the new rfp that we're developing for downtown services and hopefully the new the new space that we develop as a result of this rfp right now it is looking like we do have we're in talks with the downtown stakeholder group it is looking like that rfp won't be out on the street until a little bit later this year which means the service the rfp likely or the contract likely wouldn't start until july 2022 rather than as we'd

023initially hoped which was this year and as i'm going through um i'd be happy to take questions about any one of these elements i've already mentioned two two or three so i'm just going to pause here see if anyone wants to ask questions any questions um lisa dish thanks um so i wanted to follow up on the on prioritizing what this city would begin to do or what new programs the city would uh would introduce and i wanted to ask um whether a for example non-subscription based compost service for downtown would be more efficient in getting us to our a20 goals than year-round compost collection for residences i think i think that's a great question i as we envision downtown services and subscription-based compost that's going to be a commercial subscription base as we were

024doing our stakeholder engagement for this what we were closely in touch with the business leaders and area associations who represent the the food establishments and bars that would be subject that would have the opportunity to take advantage of this commercial compost collection and what we heard from them is that the increase in fees that it would take to have a mandated compost or organics recycling collection and i think in that case they would prefer an opportunity to be subscription based instead rather than have something mandated and have the increased fees levying on them that would be associated with that um so that was something that we're we're taking into consideration the year-round compost collection as as the shrimp envisioned that as we were um is as a residential program not as much a commercial collection

025program the savings associated with the residential collection the new contract are so are small so they would allow for you know maybe the limited amount of resources it would take to say to do a one compost tip a month per per address for residential recycling it wouldn't be substantial enough to realize an entire commercial program or even a broader extension to other types of residences okay and when do you anticipate um six or seven day collect waste and recycling collections for the downtown district is that something that will be able to happen with when the new contract gets implemented or i was going to say not soon enough right but um yes we envisioned that it would be when the new con contract is implemented that's when we would start weekend service yeah okay yeah

026yeah i got a question too um so with the um i sit on the the dd partners group also and so i've been hearing about the the alleyways for a long time um so basically you're with with if if i'm a downtown restaurant and want to do this to to to do the compost i would have to pay extra to be able to participate is that what you're saying okay even though and i get it it's a separate operation but it's really the same amount of waste correct or it's not the same amount of waste it's less waste and more resource because it goes to our composting facility is there any way to consider incentivizing it for people because um i think that uh you know somehow making it the an opportunity for them or

027that there's some sort of even if it's even if it's not a um a monetary thing that they get some sort of uh sustainable whatever on their door for their customers to see that they are opting in to this thing because they are doing the right thing for the environment i think there'd be even if it's they're having to pay more we need to somehow give them a carrot i think in terms of um letting them know because people in ann arbor care about this people that go to their restaurants care about this and i think we need to do more than just like the ceremony once a year where they get the little plaque or something like that but really to let their customers know um either through social media and or through some

028sort of you walk in the door and you see that they they are participating that they're doing the right thing to be able to really make it attractive for them to want to pay extra to be able to do this so i just think it would be great to think outside of the box a little bit if they are going to be paying more that they also get some other kind of public recognition so that um people in ann arbor know who is choosing to do this great thing that they're you know so if there's some way to kind of be creative about that i think that um that would really help to try to make the program more um attractive for them to participate rather than oh we just have to pay more to

029do the right thing right but we get to we get some other kind of um some other kind of benefit which they should absolutely i think shannon i think that's a great comment um we absolutely recognize that um this is a service these these commercial establishments would be voluntarily engaging in on behalf of the community and and honestly i'd love it if as an ann arbor resident i would i could expect that of my um the restaurants i frequent um right now on doordash okay right that's right so we have the with the solid waste resource management plan one of the elements i haven't spoken about yet is the education and outreach component and so right now that's a very broad tent we were hoping to kind of see as these um various programs and

030changes unfold where the most pressing education outreach needs are and develop messaging and programs accordingly so i think what you're saying would be exactly in line with that we have been talking to galen and missy about including this as part of the green business program in some capacity but i think you're exactly right that if this is going to be voluntary it needs to be incentivized in some way yeah it would also be cool to have it be part of a larger effort for um sustainability in terms of waste there's a huge range in the restaurants in ann arbor and like some of them have all compostable um takeout i mean we're all noticing this right now a lot right as we're doing more takeout and some are just in the same old same old

031styrofoam stuff and it would be cool if like you know you could the five dimensions to whatever being a sustainable partner in ann arbor that you're kind of ticking off these these pieces that like when you achieve all of them you're like the superstar you know so if there's some way to be able to um you know since this is all part of solid waste to be able to to give restaurants resources um uh contacts for how to be able to like what are the best things to be able to purchase and things like that so that they can make good choices around these things and that it may be part of a kind of a larger effort of getting our restaurants to really up the game of uh being able to really fully participate

032in the 820 plan and just really match the values of what our city is all about absolutely uh okay rita and then john mursky um i just want to echo what what wendy said shannon just said right now sorry because my uh experience with restaurants is that it would be great to know that the materials that they use for their takeout or their take home are ones that i can reliably compost i still feel uncomfortable even with the ones that look great but there's this little coding that you know it's like do we really use put that in or not even though the the sign the label on it says it's okay so um whatever guidance and help we can do on that it'll be great and also uh i keep thinking about the reduced

033side of the equation and wherever we approach that i i don't have a solid thing to say to you right now but but i feel like reduce is something that's that's a big thing that that would be great to think about i appreciate that i think there's a lot of directions we could take that including when post-covered reusable containers yeah or can you bring your own you know or have the restaurant have their own branded take-home containers that you keep bringing back to them yep exactly have some sort of that could be a program for um customers too mm-hmm thank you rita did you have any other thoughts thank you okay um john i i would like to third shannon's comments and look at them possibly from a different perspective um in terms of the

034ability to finance expansion of some services that are important i've been in a number of different forums where people have suggested going to every other week residential garbage meaning waste to landfill collection i'm probably not necessarily uh a good um typical resident in the sense of what most people are doing right now but i think i'm probably a good example of what most people could do it's just my wife and me but we put out our garbage cart probably once every three weeks or something like that we compost either in our backyard or through the compost cart we use you know we recycle everything that we possibly can and we collect some things and take them to the raa facility for for some of the the things that can't go in any of the carts

035um and i think that's that's a message that we want to send to people and i would encourage um the city overall including council to consider um sending a signal that we're moving in this direction and we're going to um save money that way we're going to reduce greenhouse gases that way because we're not going to have garbage trucks driving all around town and making noises and stuff like that early in the morning all the way into the evening it's just it seems to me the right thing to do and especially if we want to drive thinking like zero waste and circular economy um this is the kind of thing that we should be moving to and that i'm sure would save a lot of money and that would be like i said a few

036minutes ago that would enable us to be able to expand services like the ones that shannon suggested as opposed to having to charge a fee for it saying we have enough revenue in in the whole program as a whole to be able to enable things like that i'm curious how other commissioners feel about that um let's see uh kathy has her hand up and then chris um yeah i don't disagree with anything that's been said but i would like to play the devil's advocate in terms of we have these downtown businesses that are struggling the ones that are still in business and so i think that we need to our first priority needs to be to support these businesses to keep them in business and to encourage them to move in this direction i get

037a bit uncomfortable when in ann arbor we're all highly educated we're very confident individuals and we have a solution for every problem and i i think that we just need to step back and and i agree with all the goals and we need to get there but our approach needs to be one of support and nurturing and encouraging these businesses that are terribly terribly stressed at this moment okay thanks kathy chris eileen i think i heard you say the mrf is back up at the end of next year does that mean that there's a serious overhaul of that facility coming and it comes up to more or less state of the art rather than being 25 years old absolutely sort of maintain yes absolutely and i think uh brian eukena ceo of recycle ann arbor

038could give way more technical details than i because he's been on the ground with machine x a country i'm sorry a company out of canada that's expert in designing merfs and they've been in the facility recently to look at optical sorters new line configuration they're going to revamp the entire thing they're using a hand a few pieces of equipment that the city sold to them from the old murph configuration and otherwise it's going to be reconfigured to be a new local murph the regional part of a regional hub it's quite exciting um do you know whether recycle ann arbor's found another location that can work for their reuse center i do not know the answer to that unfortunately i i do know i can't speak to recycle ann arbor but i do know that in

039the 820 plan reuse and repair hubs and supporting those types of local institutions um and and networks are our priority in the materials management piece it's a big hole in the community although we have habitat for humanity out there and a couple other things we haven't had in the past but that one was there a long time it's missed um are there any other questions at this point for eileen uh bob um not a question for eileen but i did just want to uh support the uh ideas that commissioner good brandel and commissioner mursky put forth um i i do think that uh going to every other week uh waste collection is a a really good potential source of revenue and you know it sort of normalizes putting things into the compost and the recycling

040carts first um and i think that would be you know it would save money and also go a long way toward culture change i think that's a great idea um lisa you're muted um i just wanted to uh this is something that i support as well there are two issues that emerge when we contemplate that change and one is the effect on jobs especially union jobs so and so i'm thinking that definitely the expansion of residential composting would help offset some of the job loss but i'd love to know how much of it i mean what exactly would we need to do to make sure that we weren't cutting union jobs and the other thing is that i uh that if we were to do something like this and i think that it would be

041a wonderful thing to do offer people more composting and less trash pickup but that would need to be accompanied by a pretty enormous education effort so that people understood you know so don't throw your extra trash in your recycling bin we want you to sort your stuff better and make use of compost and i wondered um as you are drawing up these rfps um what are you uh uh what are you in how are you setting them up so that you can tell what um what the waste hauler would be willing to do in the by way of education because the a couple of the the things that i've read about other cities that are doing this is actually takes a fair amount of door-to-door canvassing and it takes a program of trash ambassadors like

042we have climate ambassadors and i would like to see us do all these things but i know that your budget and your personnel are both constrained and so um i'd love to hear um your i don't know if you guys have done an assessment yet on what you would need to do to offset the job loss if we went to every other week trash collection and yeah you probably haven't because and then just what what is your philosophy behind how you would accomplish the the massive amount of public education that that we would want to accompany this well i i thank you lisa for that question for both of those questions um and we have not done the uh we've not done the accounting to give us a give me certainly an informed um [Music]

043opinion or any sort of informed answer on on what the the job equivalent would be if we were to move to every other wheat compost i would just say as a general observation that these um changes don't tend to have one-on-one impacts they have you know it's it's how big is the route what is that route servicing single-family homes or you know multi-family homes um what type of truck is needed to service that route and who are things like that but there's just a few hairy comp operational details um not that's not to say we can't work those out we just haven't i don't know i would like to just lay the prep the ground to say it's not a one-to-one comparison for those types of services um but a great question to ask nonetheless

044if that's something that the community is interested in for your second question inspiring question about how to which is important regardless of how to educate our community on what we can compost what's possible i think we learned through through the solid waste resource management plan we did extensive polling and interviewing the survey with the community we interviewed hundreds of community members and i think one of the things that we learned is people just don't know what goes in the compost cart even if it's available to them so we know that that's a huge opportunity for us to educate and then there's this commercial piece as well right now we have downtown education opportunities jenny patosky who many of you are familiar with she's out in the alleys every week and she works directly with the

045restaurants and bars to make sure that their staff knows what goes in the recycling and how to recycle it because as we all know a clean recycling stream is of utmost importance to get the benefit of that material and she's also out there she could be out there talking about organics as well but of course we want to build a more robust campaign so that's partially what we were envisioning using the education outreach funding for the shrimp for which i guess takes me to one of my last bullets that we're working on right now is that right now we have two educational contracts with the ecology center the subsidiary the parent arm of recycle ann arbor one of them was focused on murph tours but that ended when the old mers shut down so now

046it's more of a an events based affair and then we also have a school k through 12 i believe education kind of i'm sorry my words are gone i'm a new parent but k through 12 education modules that's the words i was looking for um and so but that contract is ending council extended it for a year to june 30th of this year but that contract is ending so what we're looking to do is re-envision what that money could be used for we have a lot of local expertise here in terms of educational groups in the ecology center and others so how do we leverage this knowledge and passion to get out the educational messages about compost and diversion um that we have here so but i say the second piece to that we have

047money we can spend on education and outreach and then we also have a very passionate and active community base so the shrimp and i think just amongst staff we envision designing some sort of volunteer program right now we've been channeling our efforts through jenny and her one woman outreach ambassador through the sustainability ambassadors program but we would love to expand that thank you um see first john mursky and then chris i'm hoping this can lead to something that is um actionable and what i'm wondering um what you would think eileen as well as other council people about a resolution something to the effect that the commission and then eventually maybe city council would ask staff to evaluate this i frankly don't care too much about the deadline um it could be a year from now

048but at least there would be a deadline and the kinds of things that we've been talking about what would be the impact on our our unionized workforce um what would be the requirements in terms of education um what would be necessary for example maybe you know for certain family sizes or whatever and it might be i don't know how it would be judged but maybe we give out an additional trash cart um so that if they only put it out every other week they they still you know if they're a family of six we're we're not disadvantaging them um but at least that now that this discussion that we've had actually leads to action as opposed to us revisiting this a year from now or three years from now and say well why didn't we

049take some action and actually analyze what it would take to actually do this so i'm i'm willing to draft a resolution if that's appropriate it doesn't have to be very long i don't think um is that something that people feel would be appropriate yep okay you can put it in the minutes okay i mean um chris one thing to think about and it's a very difficult one and that's how to keep plastics and especially micro plastics out of the out of the compost stream have used the city's compost to build garden soils with for years and i use it also in vegetable gardens it's a wonder how it does without using organic fertilizers but if it if it has a lot of microplastic in it then my whole value for that material declines significantly um

050a lot of the so-called compostable coffee cups for example have a plastic coating on the inside of them i think rita was just talking about that a lot of those carryaway packages have a plastic coating um i.e it's a problem john mursky do you put your recycle bin out more often than your trash bin yes recycle bin generally goes out um just about every week yeah okay thank you and by the way i agree with you i've i've ordered compost and it's appalling how much plastic is in commercial compost the large pieces have never bothered me okay i picked those out and cleaned them out and and uh deal with them it's the little stuff and the stuff i can't see that really makes me uncomfortable okay we already on this team uh talk about

051pfas and how that gets concentrated in compost yeah i was gonna bring that up you're the expert so uh take it away but i mean that's that's really kind of scared me i don't wanna put that in my garden well as the chair i'm reserving my time for the end so we have gabby buendia has her hand up and then kathy griswold hi um thank you eileen and sorry that my internet's lagging so i'm not on camera but i'm wondering what i guess obstacles and opportunities there are for composting and multi-family units is that is expanding to including multi-family units [Music] a priority in any way or is there any talks of including those kinds of buildings in city composting gabby that is thank you for that question it's one that's close to my heart

052um just until recently i lived in multi-family units where i would either drag my compost to work back when we were working in a building or to friends homes that had backyard compost because i wasn't available to me at the multi-family unit where i lived um but in terms of from certainly from a priority perspective i think it's close to staff's heart and from a honestly a equity perspective as well i think for a number of these issues we can sit here all we want and talk about what we would do as this group represented here on this call but it's um for me also pressing question about what people who aren't represented on the call are um are doing with their materials and and have the option to do so i think about this

053a lot and one of the issues and constraints that we're up against is the resource requirements of of staffing multi-family compost collection that would require new truck drivers and routes and i think i would turn that question as a city staff i would love to have funding for that and i would turn that question to council and others about how to prioritize it and how to make those funds available okay okay kathy and then rita uh i just want to reinforce what john murski said um i think everyone is aware that there are some growing pains on council right now to put it mildly and anything we can do to reinforce our role as policy makers and and lisa reminds us of that appropriately so um council sets policy the commissions are advisory and staff

054implements and that is not real clear right now and we have a lot of policy making being driven by staff and commissions and i think that's due to a void on council and so we need to do everything to empower council to assume that role because we're going to be more efficient and effective if we do that and we're going to make our limited dollars go much further so anyway that's my soapbox but thanks john i totally agree and thanks lisa for continuing to remind us of council's role and i guess the other thing is with a resolution we can speak with one voice and and move forward and that's important also so thanks um rita hi uh my suggestion is just to add the issue of the multi-family resources required to the study that

055john suggested just to be sure it's there because it sounds great um any other questions at this point for eileen uh shannon just i think that if if that does become a reality then i think that's something that we would also want to move into code in terms of new design to make sure that as part of the waste management design that happens with site plan review that there would be space both externally around the building and accommodations within the building to be able to get compost to where it needs to go sometimes they have shoots and things like that and so that there would need to be some sort of design kind of just expectations for that so i think it's fabulous if we're going to go there and i would just say let's

056let's look at it in terms of its viability and if it does go there then that's another layer of um of the dominoes falling that we need to make sure it gets captured so that new projects incorporate the possibility to be able to have that be a robust part of their design process and not an afterthought um any other comment any other questions or comments pryline okay well i'm gonna i'm gonna say i guess before you say that i was just thinking about um you know gabby's question stuck with me it's something i think about all the time um as how do we expand these services and particularly to those who haven't had the opportunity to take advantage of them before and i would just say that one of the things i hope to take

057advantage of is the eagle grants that were available this past year for infrastructure whether it's applied to multi-family compost if the timing is right or other projects like the dos we're always looking for opportunities to leverage that money so it's not just a question of can city council find a help us find a way to get the resources how can we best take advantage of all of the resources available to us yeah yeah so i did want to add that also to multi-family multi-family housing seems to be an orphan in a lot of state planning there's commercial and then there's residential and uh but most of the residential that has spoken of a single family um and the multi-family is sometimes thought of within the city staff in one category and sometimes in another i've

058come to understand and so it is um it is a bit of a gray area and it seems important to be able to come up with a strategic plan for how to deal with it that might include a lot of the um code changes as shannon suggested um so and then um there's there is money available from uh i think from you know from uh from the state and from the county yeah to do a study on multi-family and just see what and and see and see what could be incorporated what the benefits are and how it could be what the pathway to maybe a zero waste vision for multi-family housing would be um and i'm sure the university of course has dealt with this with their dormitories and all to some extent i'm sure

059but i'm sure there's some information out there in other communities as well so we wouldn't be starting off with a blank slate [Music] so um i would just encourage i would just like to know um i mean what does staff think about multi-family housing at this point in terms of proceeding i guess i could give you a personal answer which i think i've i've conveyed and then right now our priorities are the ones that we've discussed in the solid waste resource management plan those were the you know i think marching orders both from an operational urgency perspective for the downtown rfp that we're working to develop right now and then we've got the last operational piece i i didn't touch on was student move move in move out it's a service that we offer we've

060offered for years we used to offer it through a contract with recycle ann arbor where they were able to divert it's offered biannually spring and fall move-in move out for students rea would meet downtown and then for a period of i think two weeks each each season would offer services where they available to students and to student apartment associations where they would divert material students were bringing in where possible and then the rest would go some of it would go to the dos some of it would go to like kiwanis and the rest would be landfilled that was they're all thrown into disarray thanks to kovid and then ra's contract expired i don't think they were interested in extending it there's a lot of operational concerns about that program so now the city is looking

061into as you know an urgent need because this happens twice a year how to replace that and different options to replace that service so i think this is all to say steve a very complex circuitous way of saying that we have you know three staff members right now on solid waste and a lot of urgent plans so i don't want to at all convey that multi-family issues aren't a priority i would just say that they weren't considered in the the shrimp i would say probably more from a resource constraint i wasn't there during the development but i would guess that was more of a resource constraint issue than an interest issue and then because of the path the shrimp lays forward we have marching orders for quite some time so i would i would put

062that out there not to say that anything's impossible or that um community action and interest can't generate change but just to give you some perspective into how we're operating right now no that's all very understandable yeah the only other the other thing i wanted to mention was pfas that commissioner overpack brought up and as you know there's a uh there was a bill introduced in the state legislature last year fairly late like september i think i forget who the sponsors were in the co-sponsors but uh i think it was senate bill 1072 something like that which is to get the state of michigan to ban the pfas and food packaging and other persistent chemicals and um there are about five states that have already done so i mean washington state was the first and so

063um this will go a long way to helping maintain the value the commercial value and the usefulness of our compass so the municipal broadcast so i think the city needs to be needs to make an effort with their state lobbyists to try to move that legislation forward because as you know the city tested its compost for pfas compounds um in i think it was october of 2019 and um and they were found in the compost um but there are in the scientific literature there are publications that indicate that ann arbor's compost is somewhere around the middle of what's found in composts and other municipalities um it's quite a bit worse than when you look at backyard compost and all of that pfas is coming from food wrappers probably fast food wrappers and um and uh

064and um and containers even coffee cups so um potentially the worst the worst um um examples were from uh microwave popcorn bags but there are many others um and a lot and some of the takeout containers that are offered by the supermarkets and by some of the uh restaurants in town it's not clear whether those are pfos free either so i think in terms of this municipal city solid waste program i think it's really important that they also do an education effort with the local vendors with the supermarkets and the uh you know and the restaurants to try to do what they can with their suppliers to make sure that their containers are phosphate this is not to say they're free of micro plastics because many of these coatings are alternative pfas coatings are microplastics

065so um that's another problem as well so it's something that we should pay attention to because at some point it's going to reduce the in the cities compost you know for resale and its acceptability um [Music] okay are there any other questions for eileen or eileen did you want to cover any more topics like you talked about bulk collections or the student move-in move out i know part of the short was bulk pickups so um thanks steve i yeah i actually covered um i think between the murph the residential compost the downtown consolidated collection we've touched on commercial and multi-family issues great conversation thank you student move-in move out and education those are our priorities right now that's where our focus is on implementing a lot of these broad changes there's a lot of really

066juicy operational details to them which is if anyone wants to you know grab a virtual beer i'm happy to tell you more um but that's occupying like all of our minds and even some of my middle of the night thoughts right now um so that's a lot of fun work right now but then we have this whole set of other um projects we'd like to consider that the shrimp envisioned and part of them was from this group and the advisory committee i know some of you participated in that so we've got a lot of recommendations and meet there to take a look at but then a lot of some of the suggestions a lot of the suggestions that are in the shrimp came from those hundreds of community surveys that we did the phone calls

067to people who have never thought about solid waste in their lives other than to roll a cart up to the curb we wanted to see what their thoughts and needs and educational outreach gaps were so to that end steve mentioned bulky waste pickup and textiles uh as well as i'd say hazardous waste and electronics fall into that category as well so that seemed to be um those seem to be the services that the people that we just picked up the phone and called for these surveys seemed to be the services that they were interested in i know this group i've heard from some members that they have a different perspective on those services i would just say we haven't made a plan to move forward one way or another with those services i'm happy to

068keep this group updated as we are able to envision whether and how to roll out with those elements of the plan but for now i want to leave this group particularly with the question of bulky waste pickup which the shrimp envisioned as a fee service where you could call and say like i want my my xyz for me it was my um and like an ancient mattress last week i don't have a truck i don't have a friend with the truck so i had to call 1800 got junk and pay them 100 bucks in this case it would be 25 fee or whatever the you know market rate is to call and schedule that service through the city that something to be something that people were really interested in um as was textile pickup i

069like donating and you know facebook marketplace or you know the free the facebook for free from your neighbors myself but i not everyone wants to go that route so um they seem to be interested in textile pickup as well and electronics and hazardous waste enhancements too as for the i think the advisor committee and for impact that overlaps with our a20 plan we also envision a c d or a construction pardon me construction and demolition debris ordinance i mean that's a massive amount of our waste stream embodied energy um so we i think the shrimp envisioned kind of like a an exploration of what that ordinance would look like permitting associated with it etc and then moving forward with the ordinance from there um the shrimp envisioned expanding the dos or honestly moving the dos

070the drop-off station which is on an old landfill and is subsiding gradually it's it's safe to be there right now the city has inspected at regular intervals but it is subsiding and so it's not a long-term solution for this community so that's a priority as well as is fat oil and grease downtown to help clean up the alleys but first we wanted to implement the downtown um hauler the consolidated haulers that we can get those alleys cleaned up and prepped for something like a fog ordinance did i throw the whole kitchen sink at you there's a lot in there it's a lot in there so these are um i'd say that's like our first tier what we talked about first was our first tier um programs that we're looking and changes we're looking to implement

071and then um the next ones were kind of second tier but also close to our heart john mursky you have your hand up yes i have a 30 000 foot question um related to solid waste but not to anything that we've discussed so far and we've spent a lot of time in the environmental commission on these two topics going back 18 months even three years ago and that is diversion rate and our solid waste reserve fund and looking at the balance between expenses and revenues and the fourth quarter report from your office showed that we had the highest diversion rate that we've had in years um i think it was i i looked earlier this evening i think it was 33 the highest other rate that we had was around 30 point something percent and

072for the first time in years we had higher revenues than we had expands to expenses so the question that i have is what did we do right and what can we do to stay on that trend line as opposed to falling back to our old habits well eileen do you want to answer that or i was just riding high on what john said and double checking i think it was a 42 diversion but john i would just um i would caution the the percent that i gave was overall including um both commercial and residential yes so and i would say that in um one of the things i wanted to mention about that diversion rate is that we're trying to move away from the the consolidated diversion rate and we have a methodology we're applying

073to try to separate out commercial from residential because as we know the residential is this high and the commercial is this rate so we're really trying to expand that potential universe but we weren't able to do that for this past report because we transitioned the city scale one of the other big solid waste projects is that we have a new city scale open and in the transition between the old scale and the new scale we have some data issues that we're just working out so that's just a side note on on this particular report it's the fourth quarter report it says residential diversion rate was approximately this is i think your point 52 while commercial was approximately 10 percent presidential is my recollection up substantially commercial was in the past around 11 to 12 so

074it was down um and i guess you know just repeat my my broad question um what do we what did we do right and maybe what did we do wrong and how do we reinforce the things that we did right and how do we avoid doing the wrong things again and maybe maybe that's not something you can answer tonight but i think it's something that we all would like to be able to understand so that we can help you and help our our neighbors do the right things i think that's a great question um i don't know if this is the answer but i'd like to give a lot of props to jenny patosky our outreach coordinator she and i feel the a lot of questions and i've been we've been trying to carve out

075timing your schedules good to go do trainings and as many public forum training opportunities as she can as well as outreach to commercial businesses downtown i would question i don't know the answer to this john i'm going to ponder your 30 000 foot question because i mean why i'm here i like thinking about these issues but i would be interested in seeing how much of an impact particularly given the residential recycling increase um how much of that has to do with the fact that we're all home right now i i don't i don't know the answer to that but it could have something to do with it dude was that you know that's a fiscal year that's a fist because it was the fourth quarter report that's a fiscal year so we have roughly three

076months probably three months of the pandemic included in there but i thought this thing that may appear i mean i i'd rather give all the credit to jenny but i i have a sneaking suspicion there's more to the story yeah say um rita you have your hand up yeah thanks i'm not sure how to ask this question but i think it has to do with like a denominator when you talk about a diversion rate and um so if people are getting a lot of amazon deliveries they'll there potentially is more cardboard to go in but if people instead went to get their own things in a hot bag and brought it back there would be less recycling and that's actually a good thing in terms of like the reduced side so i don't know how

077do you capture the reduced side we rita you hit the nail on the head we talk about jenny and i spend a lot of time talking about this is you know our goal here is not to just increase recycling yeah is to increase um reuse and and not using in the first place actually right so we we're very much it's very much top of mind that our metrics don't measure that um so we're putting some thought into that i wish i had a better answer for you um then we're pretty join you in the question thank you and if you have any um insights or thoughts or even questions because sometimes that can lead to insights please let me know we are thinking about this okay um are there any other questions or comments for

078eileen okay well thank you eileen thanks for your time thank you everyone for your great questions and passion and engagement really appreciate it okay have a good evening you too so let's see the next uh agenda the next agenda item is public commentary um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 or eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and enter meeting id oh i think it's um i think it's um hey galen do you know what our meeting id is yes hang on one second should be on the agenda right yeah i don't see it oh okay the meeting id is all these screens keep popping up on me okay i have it here on ledgestar oh it's a two 973-18416621 okay thank

079you thank you thank you so please please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id number 973 this information is also displayed normally on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so galen do we

080already have people on the phone uh we have one person but their hand isn't up any indicating that they would like to uh speak then we just had another person okay uh caller 701 go ahead and speak caller 701 caller 701 go ahead and speak i think they have to unmute their phone please a mutual phone is it star 6 i think star six or star nine i think yeah it's probably star six show mutes oh i see somebody popping up um which is muted go ahead can you hear me now uh-huh yes thank you thank you sorry about that hello my name is brian yuke and i'm the ceo at recycle ann arbor and i appreciate the opportunity here to comment recycle ann arbor would like to encourage the city to focus its resources

081to support zero waste and to move away from traditional integrated waste management or or traditional solid waste management methods that are stagnating a significant improvement that we could make using zero waste policies simply put zero waste is the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production consumption reuse and recovery of products packaging and material without burning and without discharging to the land the water or the air that threaten our environment and our human health that's the definition that's been adopted internationally and that's the the definition that meets our city goals in terms of our climate objectives while supporting local economic development i i i can speak to a lot of the the advantages to zero waste but i'll just focus on uh jobs creation but so you can see the dramatic differences our investments

082would create if they were directed toward key zero waste initiatives our country could create 1.1 million jobs by recycling and composting 75 percent of our discards say that again 1.1 million jobs with the 75 of composting and recycling and these are the kind of jobs we want in our communities these are the kind of jobs we're creating at the murph in other places they're they're because they're they have a low um barrier to entry and they provide wages that are well above more than double above the federal minimum wages so just for uh a comparison a stunning comparison i think for every single one single job that's created in landfilling or incinerating we could create 35 jobs by recycling we could create 296 jobs for every job if for every job if we land filled

083or incinerated if we reused and you there were several points i think tonight about reuse and that's there's some real opportunity there and zero waste is a cost effective it's a very cost effective method it's very well accepted internationally and it mitigates climate change right now more than 40 percent of the climate impact in the us comes from what we consume in products and food it's called our consumption emissions we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by more than 400 million metric tons of co2 per year the equivalent of taking 20 percent one to 20 percent of our coal-fired plants off the grid by using local zero waste initiatives that that we would advocate for there's a group called local governments for sustainability and in their recycling and composting emissions protocol they call out specifically

084recycling and composting as some of the most effective and cost effective actions local governments can take to reduce community uh greenhouse gas emissions and there are like i said there are many many more benefits to zero waste approach but uh we'll i'll save my comments for others that might want to speak but i'll just close by saying i was very heartened by tonight's discussion and and i want to know i want you to know that recycle ann arbor uh shares your enthusiasm and we want to work with this group and other zero way and others in uh zero waste planning and endeavors in our community thank you for the time well thank you mr eukana um anybody else on the line galen yes we have caller zero two four caller zero two four go ahead

085and speak can everybody hear me okay go ahead yes okay hi um so i am anya dale i am a resident and i also work at the university of michigan in waste reduction in education so um i just want to sort of offer that perspective um you know really i feel like i've again very heartened by what was what's in the shrimp i think there's a lot of wonderful things um i really feel like the priorities as we're looking at what to implement have to be on commercial recycling with enforcement um multi-family recycling and then commercial composting uh to me it's it's pretty plain that those are sort of areas where we have the greatest opportunity for eliminating waste within the city and should be the major focus of efforts um with multi-family and commercial

086recycling we the university has a lot of staff that we're trying to work with that are actually staffed in not on campus you know many of them are actually in commercial spaces that are rental areas around the downtown area and we just hear constantly from staff that there's there's no recycling infrastructure provided to their building um and it's it's just it's it's very obvious that this is a big gap um and so i think that it just it really needs to be a priority you know if you've got a 30 recycling or diversion rate and there's just whole segments that are not participating to me that seems like a very easy win um to start engaging them and likewise multi-family in our cases it's often you know it's students and some of these areas but

087they have a difficult time um even recycling off of campus income and sometimes in some ways and then commercial composting um you know i i love that there's something in here for people to opt in i kind of i personally wish it was just required and then made free or very very cheap um but either way i feel like it's really important expectation and that there's some sort of carrot or incentive as some of the commissioners have mentioned um you know maybe it can be offset by trash fees being decreased they might not know exactly what that pay structure is like for restaurants but you know i i presume that more than fifty percent of their waste by weight is at least is um this compostable food waste so you know presumably their their trash

088at least could go down quite a bit if they're doing that and could that offset the cost or could some of the costs from that be offset from you know like some other folks mentioned switching to reduced residential trash pickup service to me getting getting the commercial restaurant on board and composting their food waste is probably the best thing we could do when it relates to waste and it has pretty no close ties to emission reductions too um and i think that that needs to be the focus more so than providing necessarily even year-round compost service to residents i i love my compost bin we use it all the time but you know my family we can if we're smart about it we can get it full keep it full and by spring it's ready

089to get picked up i would love a couple pickups in between but um i really think the commercial composting is the most important um and i in either way having the education or consistency um with like downtown restaurants specifically so that you know it's they're not using things that they think are compostable but are not you know having consistency that everything that is being used for takeout or packaging is compostable and meets you know free standards and stuff like that would make everybody's program better and make the university's program better because people are not hopefully bringing stuff in that's you know outside containers that are not compostable i think it would be so much easier from the education standpoint and um and to into that last point i think education is just critical and i

090think recycle ann arbor has played an invaluable role in educating the community about recycling i just hope that continues to be our priority for everybody all right that's all for me um is anybody else on the line galen yes um go ahead call her three two eight call it three two eight go ahead and speak you're on line hi this is jan wright can you hear me yes okay great um i'm i'm here as as a part of interfaith council for peace and justice uh among other things i was part of the advisory committee for the solid waste uh resources management plan and i am i was really appalled actually at the end of that to get the impression that that the uh the plan was based only or primarily on customer satisfaction and cost

091and i am so delighted to hear that that is not the way it's being looked at at this point and it's not the way it's being handled um i think it's wonderful that a20 and the sustainability goals are being considered i think that's absolutely crucial so that is really good news for me to hear tonight um i i really support probably almost everything that's been said i won't try to cover all of it you've heard it from other people but i certainly would strongly support john mursky's idea of a resolution to study less frequent trash pickup and especially i think it's very important to include monte family to look at multi-family dwellings because um if i know that one of the strengths for me of a20 is to look at everything with an equity lens

092and although there are plenty of people with plenty of money living in multi-family dwellings obviously there's more tendency for people with somewhat less money to live there um i know personally from a number of people who have spoken to me who would really really like to compost and live in apartments and can't do it or can't do it without doing the kind of thing that some of us do which is schlep our uh our our food waste to somebody else's trash or any compost bin or uh feed somebody's chickens so um i guess the only other couple of other things i would like to say i i also appreciate very much the effort uh the the emphasis on the part of several people to say to talk about consumption because consumption is sort of the

093basic place to start if you don't cut consumption it doesn't really it's not that great to just keep recycling things and even composting things uh cutting waste would be huge before we go to the the way we divert waste also i think education is very important as everybody knows and i hope that we can do some creative thinking and perhaps access some funds from other places to do some of the kinds of things that are being talked about here because they're very very important and hopefully there will be a source of either government money or public-private partnerships or something that can can bring some of this into being sooner rather than later thank you very much for the opportunity to comment thank you miss right anybody else scaling there are no other other callers right

094now okay well let's move on to the next item on the agenda which is the approval of the minutes um our last meeting was december 3rd 2020. um [Music] uh let's see it i hope everybody's had a chance to examine the minutes i know my memory was a little hazy by now so um um is there a is there a motion to approve the minutes as written so i moved is there a second um john keller um is there any discussion raise your hand nope okay um uh all who approve of the minutes has written please say hi hi hi raise your hand any uh any opposed i don't see any hands so uh the minutes are approved unanimously so let's move on to old business um the next item on the agenda here are

095the uh recommendations for chapter 40. as you recall at our last meeting in december um there was a discussion of this item that was brought on from council through kathy griswold and um kathy and i and other commissioners drafted a letter to council which is one of the action points from the last meeting and it was sent out to the commissioners i think one of us should actually put it up on the screen i think i have it right here just so the public has an opportunity to see it [Music] here let me um let me see about sharing my screen okay well the host is disabled participant screen sharing uh check it out okay galen would you want to put do you have it available do you want to put it up on your

096screen or if i put it up i can't take notes on legister the actions on it all right well i'll put it up then okay here we go so it's a very simple letter um during our discussion um it was clear that there are both transportation disability and environmental concerns so uh the letter was sent to city council and also the transportation commission and the commission on disabilities and the environmental commission was copied so um let's see kathy do you has there any been action any been any action on city council on this matter to my knowledge there hasn't been any action and i apologize i miss the december environmental commission meeting it followed a closed session on gelman and i had action items as a result of that closed session but i will follow

097up on it next monday unless i don't know if if lisa dish has has taken any action i don't want to duplicate anything she may have done um i didn't because um i i felt that you understood it better and it was your initiative so i didn't want to steal your work oh okay no that's the one and again yeah i i apologize for missing that meeting i think we can all agree that the dioxane plume is a higher priority at this moment but i i will follow up okay thank you kathy thank you but that is uh and we'll wait to hear what council decides to do about this matter okay are there any comments or discussion i don't see any so we'll move on to the next item which is the energy principles

098resolution this was a resolution that was presented to the commission several months ago and uh this is missy uh received our input and other input from other parties and she revised her draft resolution and uh and submitted it for uh for our consideration um so is there uh do i have a motion for um discussing or for considering this resolution uh from rob detum a second uh john mursky um all right so let's see let's shall we put it up on the screen i can do that again hmm steve the resolution itself is at the bottom there we are right there so steve you're muted okay um so um um i don't does anybody um wish to make a comment about this no uh bob needham i i think that you know they've done a

099good job putting this together at the office of sustainability and innovation they took our uh input from the last time and incorporated it nicely and um i'd be in favor of moving this resolution forward as it's written great okay any other comments no seeing none um do we have a motion to uh all those who accept the resolution and um want to pass it on to council for their consideration say aye hi hi lose your hands um any opposed any abstentions okay the the resolution passes unanimously so galen uh we should we should send this report to council so the next item on the agenda is our report to council which i've been struggling with for the last couple of months i'll put it back up on the screen here i think uh you know

100i had created a shared document and then passed it around i had comments from several commissioners it's a bit of a as you as you uh as you know our bylaws this is written into our bylaws that we're supposed to have a report to counsel um annually um my understanding is that this was originally uh written in uh in 2010 or so when matt naught and city staff had started the dashboard about that we've seen in the past couple of years that's fallen by the wayside after the a20 initiative took off so [Music] first of all i want to make sure that this so so this um action in our bylaws is a bit stale and so i think i think revisiting the purpose of the document would be the first thing um so i'm

101hoping that some of our council members may be able to give us some guidance about what kind of information or report would be useful to counsel for council's consideration um let's see if i can put this up are you asking for that tonight are you asking for us to go to council and ask um i think i think it would be good just to start um with uh if kathy if you or lisa if you or kathy have any comments i think we'd all i'd appreciate hearing them um otherwise we can table it and think about it more i would recommend that we table it or postpone it but i can take an action item to look at what the transportation commission did as a model okay and and i believe just for clarification this

102is separate from the list of legislative advocacy items that this commission would want is that true that's correct yes okay because there was yeah um the way it seems to have been envisioned was it was an annual report to both to counsel about what progress had been made on the metrics that were written down in the dashboard in 2010 for the first sustainability plan that the city engaged in i think we should defer to john mursky because of the word metrics well um i've had um i've had some discussion with missy about this because a20 of course is putting together their own metrics for their own goals so my concern was that um the goals in 2010 um were around issues that are not really uh part of the a20 plan such as clean air

103clean water natural features and so i think it would be and these are still of interest to the community i think and to this body in making sure that we're making some progress in these areas we're in clean air you know clean water and natural features at least potentially local food whatever has fallen outside the purview of a20 so um so let's see are there any uh anybody wish to make any comments or observations kathy well just i'll repeat i'll take a look at what the transportation commission did and then if if lisa is willing the two of us can can maybe talk about it before the next environmental commission meeting does that seem reasonable yeah okay you know that seems reasonable to me because i i don't this would be a useless exercise unless

104council really finds it valuable so i think if you all can can just provide some initial guidance you know not anything final but initial guidance about what what council might find useful in this report okay um any other comments um lisa yeah i just wanted to say that uh from the meeting where we did discuss this um i came away feeling like it was sort of an enormous amount of data gathering that we were kind of imposing on ourselves and i'm not sure that that's the best use of this mission's time given that we have a lot of um you know you're working on the construction and demolition ordinance there are other features of things we want to do and so i i would rather not see the commission being obligated to perform you know

105something that's something like an inventory or something like that it just it just doesn't seem it doesn't seem it seems like a distraction from the work um so i think if i'd be happy to to put my head together with kathy's and figure out what this report to make it a little bit less burdensome because probably this data exists in other city reports and why we should have a research project to gather it i'm not sure so speaking like the professor i am that's appreciated um okay well that's the first step um um yeah and so um sorry are there any further comments or discussion um seeing none um we'll move on to the new business um let's see commissioner mitchell has submitted a resolution for notice of violation of government sciences um let's see

106rita do you want to discuss this resolution yes hi um i um you should first i'm sorry we should first have a motion to um to discuss to bring this up um kathy and lisa okay remember first in a second so uh all right let's proceed with the discussion rita all right thanks um this item has actually been discussed and passed by city council as acknowledged in in what i wrote up um and i did have a chance to talk with um lisa and kathy about it briefly so i'm submitting it to council um kind of has a i call it a belt and suspenders approach in that council acknowledged that um that there is one four dioxin that has been found in the municipal storm sewer system um that leads to west park and

107has initiated a move to support the water resources commissioner in taking action on that based on a permit that he's responsible for and so this is just to say the environmental commission agrees and so we add our voices to city council that's the the rationale for bringing it forward it basically uses the same language that city council did and the only thing that i really added in addition was acknowledgement of the original passage by city council and um a second resolve that says let's pass this information onward to um responsible parties in the city and elsewhere okay well let's see why don't i try sharing my screen with this um so people can review it [Music] so um since council has already acted on this um we're just concurring with council and the resolve clause

108seems to this seems to be what the resolve clause is saying right so um okay so um any um the floor is open for discussion please um raise your hand if you would like to make a comment uh cathy uh yes the history of this is that card the coalition for the remediation of dioxane remediation of dioxane yes it's getting late um was discussing this and has discussed it and there was some question about whether um who had responsibility for filing the violation and so we decided rita and i had talked about it actually earlier in the day i think rita is the one that recommended the resolution uh but we passed a resolution at card to sort of give evan pratt more support in doing this and so we've got the card resolution which

109is a very detailed technical document and so i worked with abigail elias to really streamline it and to take out all of the technical information and then it passed uh at council at our last meeting and so i i think it's definitely appropriate again if the environmental commission is functioning in an advisory capacity to provide this advice and support to council it would have been better to do it before council voted but it was a timing issue so now is good too great yeah thank you kathy let's see um i can't see everybody so speak up if you wish to make another comment hearing none uh discussion is closed um see do i have a motion to vote on this from kathy a second from lisa um all who approve of of this resolution notice

110a violation of government sciences please raise your hand or say hi any opposed none um any abstentions i hear none okay so um this resolution passes unanimously um so galen would you please have this forwarded to city council okay thank you so the next item on the agenda are reports from committees um let's start off with um with the solid waste committee um let's see i will say that uh we have two working groups i'll remind people of this i'm working on a construction and demolition ordinance i've identified a broad stakeholder group and i've been having more informational interviews i think where i am right now is that um i think there are two things necessary at this point one is to up we need some basic data um basic marketing data so i'm working

111to write a a grant proposal uh with uh to to help fund gathering of data this is basic marketing data uh in other words what uh how much construction and demolition debris is created in the community and uh and there's been some experience with led construction because led um one of their criteria is his diversion of uh construction and demolition debris so recycle ann arbor has had some experience with this over the last several years um at their caliber uh facility on jackson road and so i think um the idea is to basically just get um some basic data on the scope of the issue on the scope of the challenges and then um review this with a stakeholder group in a in a meeting and um begin begin writing up an ordinance for the

112cons for a bandage and construction and demolition here in ann arbor it's likely that we'll have to i will have to include the county as a whole to reach those volumes that are uh and reach the kinds of economies of scale that we're looking for so i'm in conversations with theo egermont at the washington county about this as well so this is where the construction and demolition ordinance stands at this point um let's see um lisa dish do you want to talk about the zero waste working group yeah very briefly maybe if you um aren't sharing your screen we can see each other again oh my gosh yeah so the zero waste working group which might be up for a name change just to have consistency um with the a20 plan um but we'll talk

113about that at our next meeting um we are going to work a little bit differently than than some working groups work in that we're going to have members of the public in the working group so not necessarily restricted to members of the environmental commission and between steve and me we have both uh we both recruited a number of people and uh i spoke to someone today i spoke to sam today that you and he has social media expertise web design so we could we could be part of what ms naples was talking about when she was here about the volunteer effort for education and outreach and i am really hoping that we could do a pilot for multi-family recycling and or compost probably recycling or recycling and compost not andor um and i'd also like

114to see if we could get funds to scale up the effort that jan wright did and jan wright and a group of large group of volunteers did in the old west side putting out flyers and stickers on people's compost bins so they knew what could go in them because that was very successful and in my opinion there's a lot of folks who don't know how much can go in their compost bin and so um if we're talking about you know if if it does end up that we decide to um extend residential composting throughout the winter it would be great for people to have a really good idea of how much stuff they can put in those bins um particularly if we want to link that to possibly a reduction of trash pickup so um

115so this group is going to take a fair amount of direction from staff around what priorities would be helpful to them given what staff priorities are but i think we also want to do what we can what actually ends up to be manageable in terms of pushing to the things that have been raised by several of the people who called in and several of the people in this group have raised issues of consumption really the broad principle of sustainable consumption came up several times at this meeting and that would involve reuse you know buying less and then also um you know then the basic thing of just putting less in your trash and putting more new recycling and composting so this group has a has a lot of energy and a big agenda so we'll

116see um where we get ourselves and i think we would also be looking for grant writing expertise and i would be looking for people to teach me how to do that i write other things but not grants so um because i think there is money to do this and i think that anything that we wanted to do as a pilot um we would it would be we would be much easier it would be much easier for us to realize it if we could raise some money so um and uh gabby is yeah gabby's still here we should talk about if you want to be on this to represent to help represent the multi-family um voice or if you can point me to some folks who might want to do that and lilly happy to have

117you weigh in there as well i just picked on gabby because she mentioned it when eileen was here so did i forget anything no no i don't think so um let's move on to natural features chris hi steve thanks um uh the group meets tomorrow at noon um and three things around the table that are pretty good um version 10 of the first batch of amendments to the udc are there for review tomorrow we've finally really matured our thinking about how to make the changes that we're making um it's uh we we have invented as many wheels as we invented in 2000 one two and three in terms of the language and approach and as i said to you at that time we were concentrating on vacant land in the city we still had a

118great deal of it and the whole not the whole but a very substantial portion of what we've been doing is converting our thinking to the entire city and its developed landscape as well as vacant land and building in terminology and perspectives that will help educate people about sustainable landscape second thing on the table tomorrow is a summary of the important changes a draft version of that that we're suggesting in this step one and then the third thing on the table is the latest revision of the landmark inheritance tree list so next time i see you uh you may um have some of these documents in your hands to be again to give us feedback about i'm hoping anyway i'm sorry that there's a long delay with holidays and uh small bumps on shoulders and things

119like that but uh we're getting through it finally pretty happy camper about it okay thank you chris um [Music] how about the pollinators work group oh yeah um i can speak on that um so far we've just established like a mission and a general timeline we're building on the work and allies that were established by the pollinator subcommittee in 2018 so a lot of our work is about educating residents about native plant species and the value of pollinator biodiversity we're considering potential citizen science programs and just looking at different ways to get out meaningful information about pollinators we're also looking at developing verbiage supporting pollinators and habitats to be included in uh nap's five-year plan or their five-year goals um that they're renewing this year um and at the moment yeah we're just in the

120early stages we're reaching out to our allies and looking for projects we can support i think we have a meeting set up with nav and adoptive park um yeah and we'd like to schedule a meeting with galen to talk about potential support from a20 ambassadors okay thank you lily let's see how about water let's see i think um i think this is something that um is still on the back burner but um i think microplastics is something that might be worth following up on so um i think otherwise um you don't have any actions going on in that regard um let's see do does any did bob do you want to say anything about it no i don't haven't had a chance to do anything yeah it's been busy it's been a busy few months

121for sure okay so um so other commissions um let's start with planning shannon yeah in terms of what is relevant to this group um i think the biggest thing is that we're i'm going to get into kind of zoning speak here but um our our former planned project um category is shifting and we're trying to streamline the way that people can move buildings around sites um to have some flexibility and one of the things that we are going to be allowing people to do is if they have a very sustainable building then they get some more flexibility basically they get some flexibility with height and they also get some flexibility with um with um uh with parking um so uh the the the big thing that they would have to do is to be able

122to have 60 of their roof covered in solar and they have to have the capacity and the infrastructure on their site to have their building be 100 electric notice that they didn't say you have to actually make it all electric but you have to have the capacity there one of the things that we are realizing is that there's a there's a lot of different ways uh to heat buildings and that um that there seems to be different systems for different arrangements and types of buildings and that there are we're still educating ourselves a lot on on what those systems are and i think frankly the whole field is in flux and developing very quickly and so um planning staff felt like it wasn't appropriate at this stage to me to mandate that they have to

123be all electric um but that they need to have the capacity to be that way in other words their electrical panel is set up that way all their conduit is set up that way um uh and that if they felt like it's important to get this out the door so that we can make sure this didn't happen and that we can change it if we need to but that um that's where things that's where things are going we just noticed like with a project that came through on main street called near north that they did mostly electric in terms of the the this was a bunch of attached um condos and all the ones on the inside they could get to work but the ones in the corners they couldn't and so it's it's giving

124some them some flexibility to be able to try to um to make this thing work over time uh so that's kind of where things are the other premium they're not premium but the other um so you either get uh flexibility with with the sustainability piece or with affordability and so those are the two big objectives that we're going for um but i felt like it was important for this group to hear about what the what the sustainability piece was with that so that uh language has been approved and it is heading towards city council um and then uh the other piece uh commissioner apple isn't here tonight and we approved um a new piece of parkland that is across from gallup park across gettys road the ruthvin area and nature area and that's where um

125miller's creek comes through um and so the city's purchased that and it's going to be adding that to their their park system um and then we went over like this the um the cip and stuff like that so those are all things that you know obviously have an impact on on um on environmental issues as well in that when you are doing your capital improvements planning um they sustainability is a big chunk of how they filter and prioritize projects and so the a20 that whole effort has really had an effect on how they they have it go through their whole filtration system of how they prioritize things so um to that end you know it affects this group to a certain extent and but we approve that and that's heading towards city council and city

126council has all of its work cut out for itself between now and may to figure out how to review all that and make sure that all that all that happens and gets done in time for our for our fiscal planning i guess the only other thing i would add is that it's not immediately relevant to this group it's something i just feel like is really important to um to pass around is that there was a group from the university of michigan that did a presentation on racially restrictive covenant mapping and what that means is that um i know when i bought my house which is just west of west park in the deed it said right there in black and white that you cannot have negroes as part of this neighborhood and you can enforce

127that now there's been all kinds of legislation but it's sitting there written written into our deed and this group uh through the law department and the um architecture department are mapping all of the neighborhoods in ann arbor that have those restrictive covenants on them so that we can start to face the the discrimination that is part of you know liberal ann arbor um because that went on for years and years and years and um so uh it's a really interesting effort and i guess i talk about it here because i think in the next several months there's going to be outreach to be able to get people to be able to report what their deeds say so that we can just start to get a better sense of how what that really looks like spatially

128across ann arbor and where this history is and i think it's going to be important for people to participate and so i want to put it out there as a way for people to be able to really dig out that file folder to look at your deed and see if it's in there because they they are going to be taking information and trying to map that um so i just wanted to put that out there also as something as we are trying to um be much more aware of equity issues and things like that and and part of part of that is looking at our own past um and and that's definitely a very real thing that happened in natabra for a long time so i guess i'll end there okay thank you shannon um

129so let's see mike is absent um so we won't talk about parks thanks for uh mentioning that ruthman purchase and uh so energy john yes if i may i'd like to comment briefly on some of the other reports first of all i'd like to plant a seed to natural features and pollinators we've talked before about recognition as a tool in getting people to do things also obviously education and one of the things that's done in the historic preservation area um is that the city has a an award um they make awards every year for historic um preservations and renovations and i would like to see and i don't know who would take this up maybe it's this commission that's why i wanted to plant the seed that we think about a similar reward for renovations

130of properties um so that if people renovate their property and replace turfgrass and plant trees and put in natural prairie and things like that that they get an award and if there's a new development that goes in that there be a similar award and we give those awards every year hopefully they get some coverage and hopefully they then also get other people in their neighborhood and across the city to adopt similar practices so i don't know where um does anybody have an idea would would that start with us or with um who would who would take up something like that as an idea any volunteers oh we'll add it to the list john for me we'll add it to the list okay good we can talk about it tomorrow i like those ideas okay good

131ones yep um i'm shannon to um your comments i have one um process question so it sounds like um planning commission took um action on something that's a pretty significant energy measure in terms of new buildings and all electric i'm not aware of any communication between planning department planning commission and the energy commission on this matter the concern that i have is it sounds like it's a step in the right direction the question is whether it's a little tiny baby step and we take that baby step and we don't take maybe a bigger step because i think we have to realize that particularly for larger developments once um you know significant investment is made you know even in home appliances you know those appliances are going to be in that building for 10 to 15

132years if somebody's not going to replace those in certainly not in a rental unit um same thing with you know a boiler in the basement or big hvac units on the roof those are going to be there for 20 years so by taking what we think is a nice little step in the right direction we're still creating a huge loophole for capital investments that are going to go in and they're going to stay there for 20 years and so i would ask that maybe council think about um consulting you know i don't know there's a few people on commission or former commissioners like wayne appleyard that are fairly familiar with this but i would ask that maybe council defer action on this and look into whether there's something between a full requirement which i agree

133potentially has an impact on affordability not so much for the developer but in terms of operational costs but something between the two extremes of a little baby step and the step of mandating all electric so i wanted to um to share that as far as energy commission first of all i wanted to thank council and inform the rest of the commission that um at the last meeting the um ev parking ordinance was passed um and so um that will be going into effect um thank you very much and um we want that obviously to be something that um is successful um and so we're working on a part on a developer's guide for that to make that easier not that there's a lot of complaints about just throwing out an ordinance and you know having

134it impossible in terms of permitting and interfaces with dte so um we will be working on that and by the way an interesting announcement um today general motors announced it will be carbon neutral by 2040 and it will stop making internal combustion vehicles by 2035. so some people might say well you know that could be earlier but i think what's clear is now in 2021 the writing is on the wall so in terms of any developer or anybody that's thinking of putting in massive investments in fossil fuels and things like that um they the the writing is on the wall that they need to re you know reconsider what they're doing um as far as other things that the commission is doing we had a presentation on energy delivery from a commissioner that works for

135consumers um showing how the grid works um where the different parties are in the grid and also showing the degree to which fossil fuels really are dominant not only in terms of electrical supply but if you look at all energy sources including you know for vehicles including for industry um it's it's you know eye-opening how um really we are completely um what's the right word um reliant on fossil fuels and how much fossil fuels have to be replaced so if you're interested you can go to the legistar and look at that presentation we've got a couple of presentations coming up that i think might be a very broad interest in the february meeting so this builds on the energy delivery presentation we will have a presentation on municipalization there is a group in ann arbor

136called ann arbor public power that is formed to promote um the idea of municipalization as an alternative uh and you might remember in the 820 plan that what's favored there is community choice aggregation that will require legislation at the state level municipalization does not but it has um its own really really tremendous hurdles we're hoping to be able to bring in some other experts to talk about what some of those other options might be like cca or others um there's a utility expert in lansing that i've been in communication with and i'm hoping that that individual be able to talk at a future meeting so there may be a series of meetings that may be very relevant for the path that the city takes going um going forward we also considered the same energy principles

137and passed the same resolution that we passed tonight at the last meeting and then lastly we um agreed with osi that we're going to focus on um five project areas one is um electrification we're going to start initially with home appliances and looking at what we can do there to really drive and promote electrification starting with cooktops and ranges um electric vehicle strategy what's the next steps now beyond the parking ordinance we're looking at developing an energy concierge service um so imagine you know a hotel you're you've gone somewhere and you need advice and you have an idea of really what you want but not much more than that um we think that this is really necessary an enabler for almost everything else that we want to do in the energy field other than some

138of these big things like you know where we get our electricity but if you think of you know you want to replace your furnace and you want to know what the options are you want to replace um whatever it might be you want to improve your envelope who do you go to what incentives are there and so on and so forth and right now it's there's only informal networks and unless you're tied into those informal networks you have really nowhere to go really nowhere so that's we're going to work on that we're going to lower on trying to improving solar accessibility for lower in middle income residents right now you know solar tends to still be a fairly um expensive proposition um and then we're going to be doing working on a series of energy

139education we've done some of that in the past but we really want to start to step that up so that's what's going on with the energy commission okay thank you john yeah go ahead shannon yeah can i just respond briefly to what you were saying he had that very discussion in fact lisa brought that you're you're pro probably word for word what you said um so we did definitely have that discussion um i i think it probably wasn't characterizing it quite right i think it's not even really midway between the two extremes you were talking about i think it is closer to the to the you know going all electric route but i think it could probably use some tightening up to further define what that is um because it's like i think the planning

140commission would say it is unacceptable to have gas ranges like it's not like that you know it's more like the feasibility of how to truly heat systems when there are some things that are still pretty mushy in terms of what's the best system to use and how it models out so um but the language isn't that tight either you know in terms of kind of where that that continuum is so um please know that it was discussed but it i would look forward to some further discussion i think at council about that perhaps to see if it's possible to um to see what it means to tighten that up or to have mr leonard kind of say what what his intention was and how they might be able to uh to negotiate that or how

141to even pitch it to developers they have to meet with planning first thing so that they can kind of say this is what we're talking about here not like you know you just have your dte capacity thing there and you do everything the same you know so um there might be different ways to handle that but i just wanted to respond to that so you so you had some sense of what we what we discussed okay um yeah thank you shannon so uh report from council let's see i don't have anything that we haven't already discussed okay um lisa do you have anything i can't think of anything because you already know that we passed the floodplain ordinance and you know that we passed the ev ordinance yeah and i can't think of anything else

142and i just wanted to very briefly say that um regarding the racial covenant mapping project another cool thing about it is that it would permit us to do overlays so to look at where which parts of the city are best served by infrastructure for example and that those kinds of questions are very relevant to the sorts of projects that we're doing now in solid waste and in a20 and i know that we'll see a pattern to the places that have restricted covenants are going to have better services and places that didn't won't and so we can address some of those and this this project can help us address some of those inequities so it is both sort of eye-opening for people to know that yes ann arbor like every other municipality in the us had

143racially restrictive covenants but that it it is actively informative for the decisions that we are currently making now about where to make our investments thank you lisa so um the chair um i don't have anything to say right now um except for one thing and that is that to remind people that on part of the eagles effort to boost recycling in the state is a program they call next cycle and there is money available for small businesses the focus there is on generating small businesses that are local that use recyclables as their as their starting materials as their feedstocks for a manufacturing process so i just want to say that that's out there it's not something the city is responsible for but there are opportunities for business and job creation locally here there is money

144available from the state to do that if you can find a way of taking the local recyclables and making a commercial product out of it um so report to staff okay um really quick i have one thing to report um our h20 ambassadors are entering the project phase which they'll begin on uh february 10th uh for those of you who have projects um please or want to be uh or have projects that you would like consider please enter it into the spreadsheet that we have it's in an excel spreadsheet that's been going around and also another way to entice some of our ambassadors to pick up your project or get excited about it uh we're creating an opportunity for you to record a pitch that can be played for them so um that's something that

145we're really looking forward to we have a real diverse group of ambassadors and they can handle low-level and high-level projects and that's our report okay thanks kayla so so gail in that regard would you mind sending the url or distributing the link for that spreadsheet yes to the commissioners okay thanks you're welcome so uh the next item on the agenda are action items and i only have two and that is that our council representatives will consider um the value of an annual report on the state of the environment and the other one is that galen will send out the url for the project listing and um and project description for the ambassadors um for the a20 ambassadors so the next schedule meeting is february 25th 2021 um the next item on the agenda is public

146commentary we have our second period of public comment uh this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 973-1841 this information is also displayed on the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments be patient there is a delay of up to 30

147seconds before the connection is established and again please call you can call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 924-5796-9823 do we have anybody on the line yet galen uh there are no callers at this moment here okay well let's wait um um another 30 seconds oh do you have any callers at this point no but yeah we have a hand up from uh councilmember griswold let's see kathy yes kathy um i just want to thank staff because they're moving towards having recurring meeting ids for zoom and what that means is the environmental commission will have the same meeting id every month and so we won't have to be scrambling and looking for that new unique number well thanks kathy i i see a lot of people nodding i yeah i'm becoming somewhat of a zoom expert

148from having caucus meetings and and realizing you could have a uh a personal meeting id as well as the regular meeting id for a given meeting and so this this is it sounds minor but it's really going to streamline the process yeah it's happened tonight so yeah okay thanks kathy thank you so um is there anybody on the line galen uh there are no callers okay then well i uh i call this meeting adjourned then at 9 23 p.m thanks everybody thank you everyone you