Ann Arbor Environmental Commission 10/22/20

001of the environmental commission of the city of ann arbor to order it's 701 pm um caitlin would you do the roll call yes sir just one second i'm just switching screens okay okay uh commissioner graham and commissioner graham i'm here commissioner skinner commissioner needham and i'm going to check the someone see there uh council member smith president commissioner slavic here all right commissioner apple commissioner apple commissioner gibb randall here council member bannister here commissioner kylie ward yeah hello commissioner uh chairman uh brown um here okay uh commissioner oberpeck commissioner overpat commissioner here vice chair mitchell here commissioner bonita bonita i'm sorry yeah okay we got a queen okay thank you um thank you galen so um the next item on the agenda is approval of the agenda now um um let's see i'm going to

002um i'm going to the agenda didn't quite come through as expected on legistar so what i'm proposing is that um for example the old business category isn't there after public commentary so i'm suggesting that we um we discuss and vote on the bylaws that are that were attached but um we'll will postpone the more extensive updates from the working groups review of working group structure the review of the 2020 accomplishments the discussion of the 2021 goals and the discussion of the annual report to council i'd like to postpone that to the december 3rd meeting otherwise um everything would stand as it's uh as as it's posted on register [Music] any discussion um john yeah in the materials that i think galen said in advance there was also something about a draft of a resolution on

003blood pain flood fringe areas is that something that we're going to discuss yeah that's on the agenda that's something that uh commissioner mitchell submitted um last week um and uh part of the problem is that the way the agenda was printed is that there's no titles on anything oh i see it now sorry thank you you should have gotten the attachment okay the draft resolution um and the other thing is that none of the minutes we have three sets of minutes that have not been approved yet so they were not posted on legislar so i'm going to defer the approval of the minutes as well to or postpone that until december 3rd okay uh any objections i have a question john um is there a systemic issue with um legistar um i last checked about

004a week ago for energy commission and um since like march virtually nothing has been updated in terms of meeting minutes or ctn videos or anything else and it seems that we have the same problem with the environmental commission yeah that's correct um um do you want to speak to that i'm caitlin yes um we're going through like a uh i say like an institutional knowledge drain uh we lost uh uh we lost kelly beatty you know he was our go-to guy for legistar yes and then we we lost uh anissa who's recently come back now you know as a contract employee so that's one of our issues you know like like we don't use legislar every day and that's no excuse now but the thing about it is when we have questions you know we

005have to go to jacqueline or someone else and it might be a delay but i don't know if there's anything structurally wrong with legistar you know but it's just that we need to increase our knowledge and just get better at it so i'm not going to make any excuses for ourselves you know okay yeah part of the problem i've heard is that tom there's no uh there's no uh dummy setup that you can use to practice with it now we don't use legistar until there's a request you know it's not something that we pick up we might open up legislator twice a month and i just really started using it in july after uh you know emily left so it's on the job training but there's nothing that we can really go to and practice

006with okay all right so um if that's okay with everybody i'm going to modify the agenda to eliminate the approval of minutes and postpone that until december 3rd and we will only and for old business we're going to talk about the um just about the bylaws the only item on the agenda for old business of the bylaws that we need to approve and then there's a presentation by uh thea jagerlaner i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly um about an update on the uh osi's ghg inventory uh assessment for greenhouse gases so and then we'll move on to new business and then um and then the agenda stays as posted on legislative any objections any questions okay then um do i have a motion to approve the modified agenda i've tried that and am banister um

007all who say i raise your hands always say no raise your hands or speak out if you're on the on the phone okay seems to be passing unanimously okay um um okay so let's move on to the public commentary this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call either 213-338-8477 and enter meeting id number 924-909-5613 or you can call 206-337-9700 and enter the same meeting id 924-9093-5613 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automatic announcement that the host is

008allowing 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 stick your name and address at the beginning of your comments and please be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established okay we'll start the clock okay there are no calls okay thank you galen so let's see i need to brought up galen do you have the bylaws uh readily available somehow i've lost one you want me to share my screen or or would you like to share yours i can just switch yeah why don't you share your screen with the bylaws okay somehow they've disappeared from my computer here okay just one second oh one second i'm just opening up that

009file oh here it is okay commissioner graham you should jump in with an update on the c's program okay so let's see thanks galen for posting that um has everybody had a chance to review them the bylaw changes um so let's open the discussion is there a raise your hand please if anybody wishes to make a comment about these suggested bylaw changes i can't see everybody on the screen on my screen now so if you can raise your hand using the uh you know using the side panel that would work okay i don't see any hello this is rita i don't know how to raise my hand um but i will raise my voice um if that's okay sure okay um so i had just two minor comments one on page two um of the

010document there's a a sentence that looks like it's incomplete where it says clean production um and we'll find it in a second um number seven to advise the city council and city administrators on all matters related to sustainable development clean production and environmental technologies it looks like it's incomplete to me um i assume that the intent was clean energy production does anyone know i i would only state that um really that's more in the purview of the energy commission um i don't know of anything that we're doing in the environmental commission that has anything to do with green energy production even landfill methane capture and energy production is something that's handled by the energy commission um we may want to strike that entirely um i'm neutral on it it just seems like a little red

011herring i i agree well well wait wait um i looked at some of the older minutes and i i mean some of the older bylaws and i think the intent there is clean production technologies period oh what's that remember because remember that if there's manufacturing in the city here that um you know that you know for example uh the gelman plume you know there was manufacturing at that site and there was some contamination that resulted from an unclean production process or an unclean disposal process so i think i think that's what was intended not just energy production specifically but um clean production so could we um add a word someplace some particular correct word well what is it did we also scroll down to the area galen would you mind scrolling down to the area

012that we're talking about so that we can just have it in front of us yeah it's page two number seven galen great thank you yeah i think it i think it's good to stand as a stands clean production what about sustainable production um is that a broader term including things like emissions and things like that or clean may not necessarily apply that um well i think i mean clean production to me means exactly where what it says that it's something that does not produce any environmental hazards i think that's the intent um you know that you have production that does not um provide some clean uh production methods or um system and environmental technologies i agree it's uh it's a rather general term but i could uh what what about just on all matters related

013to sustainable development production and environmental technologies yeah i mean as the environmental commission i mean we're uh we don't have purview over a lot of things that involve production or development um probably environmental technologies but um anybody else have a comment i i agree it's not the greatest phrasing but my feeling is sort of that this body exists because the city council created it and if they want us to speak about sustainable development clean production and environmental technologies that's what they want us to speak about i'm inclined to leave the language as it is i agree with john actually i think sustainable development production and environmental technologies i think is is probably more accurate in terms of what we um because it's a it's it's it's messy stuff yeah like we can't guarantee anything it's

014clean you know so it feels like sustainability is also uh like it's a it's a way of looking at trade-offs and things like that too and so i feel like sustainable encompasses more complexity than just clean um so i guess that's where i would lean i still think that we do advise on you know development to a certain extent too and production and environmental technology so i i guess i'm i'm in support of what how john had edited it yeah i think that that would seem to be appropriate yeah yeah many of those others are very generic terms or general terms i mean not generic so um i think it would be okay just to strike the word clean works for me sorry shannon said it better than i did thank you okay all right

015so there's there's been one suggestion for an amendment to them does um well i had a second one steve and that is on page three number four point five and so this is also for discussion of the group but um it seems like we might want to indicate something because to acknowledge our youth members that those under voting age are exempt from the requirement to be a registered elector could galen galen could you go down to the third page and the text that 4.5 okay so there's two things two ways this can be done if it's um waived by a resolution incurred by at least seven members of city council so as part of the youth commissioner appointment appointments uh uh they could insert a clause to um to waive that requirement for these commissioners

016yeah that's good what do you think about that ann and chip i think so yeah it wasn't covered somewhere else when chris frost updated these bylaws before so if it wasn't if there isn't something special about youth members i think reed is right that they don't have to be a registered voter okay what what um steve was suggesting is just that in their nomination they could be that they could have that um registered voter uh requirement waived so that's good um so thanks thanks for talking that through yeah so i could see is we could either ask council to do that when they appoint a youth commissioner or we can insert that as a specific waiver um in the youth commissioner sec clause when these bylaws did you find the youth commissioner clause um that

017is on page three it's number 4.13 so it's just up above and it doesn't mention their no voting status i kind of feel like it that we've got it um that it could be part of the nomination process yeah because all youth commissioners can be anywhere up to age 25 right so i think as needed yeah the specific instruction would be for youth commissioners under the age of 18. 16 right for youth commissioners 16 to 18 the council should insert a clause in their appointment to waive that requirement okay so i don't given that i don't see anything is the youth commissioner position open to students who maybe aren't registered to vote yes in ann arbor so would that be another exception that would need to be made well that's true because we do have

018other uh you know commissioners which are which are not who are not residents of the city of ann arbor do we because i know with planning commission you actually have to be as the part of what that may be getting at is that you need to be a resident of the city of ann arbor and if you're an elector then you know that that may be the way of covering that so i'm wondering because i just tried to look through the other stuff to see if there was any other thing any other piece in that but i'm pretty sure that you have to be a at least on planning commission you have to be a a resident of ann arbor unless you get some sort of waiver from the mirror there's there's some something that's

019like an exception that can be made but the standard is that you're a resident i mean the planning commission is a little different in that it's governed by state statute you know the the other boards and commissions are established through either policy or resolution or city ordinance when we passed the youth commissioners portion for boards and commissions it was the debated about what age level there is and one of the things that that we've got are students that don't necessarily reside within ann arbor but are students at an ann arbor public school who may be interested in participating and i do not think that we uh established language to exclude those folks i think we just said you know the whole discussion about being a registered voter was was about age more than anything else

020if i recall correctly um they required one additional vote for um for election that sounds right that's my recollection and if you recall like on the energy commission wayne appleyard um is not a registered elector in the city of ann arbor i assume that there's some consistency between these i don't know yes and i think that was the case with him as well he required one additional vote john when you say um additional vote do you mean a quorum vote you know that or is it another time in sequence i i can't remember if it's seven votes or eight votes required to approve okay i think it was eight votes um yeah right ah this mother ain't gonna be able to like 8 30. yeah i might talk about i'm gonna call somebody else and

021ask them to get on well oh 937.762. that's happening i'm trying to caleb alan you might want to mute yourself okay well you know um my my thinking about this now is that um this is actually a right this is a responsibility of city council so this seems to be just expressing uh you know expressing the preference that commissioners the electors in the city of ann arbor and if and if uh if council chooses to appoint them uh people who are who are not electors in the city then they can do that um you know with the seven members but on the other hand it's really eight members is my understanding i think it's seven seven okay and that resolution might be the nominating resolution too all right so um i don't know do we

022have a do i have a motion for a friendly amendment let's see i thought it doesn't need a amendment anymore yeah i don't think so i think it does so i appreciate your time talking about it but i i don't think it does okay so um all right so we have uh so there seems to be a consensus that we don't need to change that clause 4.5 or 4.1.3 is that correct okay i hear no objections um so are there any others okay i don't hear anything so um i think i think we would so i had one suggestion to amend them by striking uh the word clean from um uh article three on in page number two um let's see do i have a motion to approve that amendment i'm rita and john okay

023uh all who are uh all who approve um say aye for raise your hands hi all who are disapproved please say no may okay so i suggest we uh approve so i suggest that we approve the bylaws as written except for this one correction [Music] okay i'm sorry who is that yeah okay all who approve about the current version of the proposed revisions of the bylaws with this one amendment please um say aye or raise your hand any opposed say no okay the bylaws pass unanimously as amended so on the next item on the agenda is a presentation from thea jaeger leaner i hope i'm not pronouncing that correctly um um galen could you give uh share uh allow theater share her screen and post her present i got you and then um i believe

024uh miss wu wanted to speak briefly before the presentation is that correct but i don't see her here on the line no she's not on the line um okay fear happy to kick it off um well good evening commissioners uh for those of you who i haven't met my name is thea i'm an energy analyst in osi um and i prepare our greenhouse gas inventory each year so i'll be presenting an update on the inventory so city council has seen this presentation as has the energy commission and i understand you guys want to spend around 10 minutes on this so i will try and keep it brief um can you see my presentation okay yes yes i will kick it off then um so this is a quick overview um we're setting up what i'll

025go through the long-term trends of our community submissions also go through what we currently account for in the inventory and then our planned improvements for the future and then just as a reminder and for those who are watching in the public our greenhouse gas inventory is especially important for our city's h20 plan because it provides a consistent system to measure our progress towards our mission reduction goals um so the community-wide greenhouse gas inventory is prepared on an annual basis and it estimates emissions associated with all of ann arbor not just municipal operations the 2019 greenhouse gas inventory accounts for at a minimum the basic reporting categories required by the carbon exposure project which we participate in on an annual basis um for the most part we can't directly measure our largest greenhouse gas emission sources

026so the data presented here is based on it oh please move yourself if you're not speaking thanks but the data here is based on aggregated scaled or modeled data and our overall goal is to achieve an accuracy of around five percent um additionally some data isn't available on an annual basis so you might not see expected changes from year to year over into individual years so emissions for each source are estimated using methodologies from the ickle us protocol that provides strategies specific to the u.s if you are interested in more information on the methodologies that we use in the data that we use um i'm currently working on preparing a report and a guide to our inventory to post online so that will be publicly available as well the inventory accounts for three greenhouse gases

027carbon dioxide methane and nitrous oxide other greenhouse gases like those used for refrigerants might be estimated as made in later years but they're not currently included so diving right in we can take a look at how our community-wide greenhouse gas emissions have trended since 2000 which is our baseline year this graph compares the simple inventory um so that includes in emissions associated with residential commercial and institutional or the university of michigan buildings local transportation and landfill waste so we see that we've reached a 20 reduction in emissions over the past 20 years over the last three years just accounting for weather fluctuations and changes from year we have an average reduction of around 16 um and that's around you know one percent a year and many of those reductions occurred in commercial and institutional buildings

028so this just breaks out where those changes came from by sector just to note here commercial and institutional buildings are combined just because the categorization of the sector has changed so much over the 20 years um it's it's more helpful just to look at a sum to understand those changes um but we can see that buildings account for roughly two or roughly three quarters of emission reductions to date even in cases where the total consumption of energy has increased emissions themselves decreased and that's due to using cleaner electricity or our grid has gotten cleaner so as we can see from 2000 we can see why the grid that provides our community electricity determines so much of our emissions our buildings account for two-thirds of our community greenhouse gas emissions and 40 percent of our missions

029come from electricity so in 2000 um 77 of dt's electricity grid was sourced from coal uh and that's under 60 in 2019 and those that's been displaced by natural gas nuclear and renewables and as a result there's a 30 lower carbon intensity per unit electricity um many of these changes occurred in the last five years um coal has decreased you know 10 percent for 2015 or it coal represented 10 percent more of gt's fuel mix in 2015 than in 2019. um so right now the cold dominated grid is more carbon intensive than natural gas used in buildings just as a note to point out here this is only looking at the actual use of natural gas in power production and not any fugitive fugitive emissions i'll touch on those later um but we can see

030that even the portion the portion of electricity supplied by coal has decreased it's still the primary source so it's had a big impact on our missions to date but we have a lot more work to do to achieve a renewable grid and we can see how big of an impact that'll have in all of our emissions we also know that ann arbor has changed a lot in the last 20 years so if we look at population and gdp this graph looks at percent change since we see that emission reductions aren't usually exclusive with healthy growth and then i just showed you a simple inventory to understand long-term trends since um or over the last few years standard protocols for estimating inventories have become more comprehensive and more data is easily accessible so what that means

031is we're now able to more include additional sources of emissions to provide a more complete picture of our carbon footprint and we're calling this the expanded inventory so in in addition to the mission sources that we just looked at in the simple inventory it also looks at emissions associated with commuting patterns local rail um some more municipal facilities like the airport and the closed landfill as well as upstream emissions associated with electricity and fossil fuels most of the changes are are small um compared to the total emissions like less than two percent uh commuting adds around fifty percent more emissions and ads isn't really the right term just as a reminder um those submissions occurred in 2000 as well we just can't accurately estimate their magnitude so just pointing out that's the largest change and

032then we can visualize this change as well so this blue line shows the simple inventory trend that we just looked at and this lighter blue shows the increase in the expanded inventory again that's due to the ability to account for commuting so while emissions have decreased uh 20 since 2000 that's one percent a year it's larger due to changes in a cleaner grid um we can see that we have a lot more work to do to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 you know working at a much more rapid pace and um working on a lot more strategies so this illustrates where our community submissions come from we know buildings account for roughly two-thirds of our community submissions with passenger vehicles i'm sorry we know buildings account for two thirds of emissions and passenger vehicles account

033for over a quarter the remainders accounted for are accounted to commercial vehicles waste an upstream emissions so the left graph illustrates year-to-year changes in emissions by sector and the top values representing the total emissions each year there are some changes from year to year that's mostly due to changes in consumption from electricity and natural gas that are somewhat weather dependent we can also look at the sources of our community's emissions so what fuels are our emissions coming from the use of electricity represents the most emissions in 2019. the portion of emissions is expected to this portion is continued to decrease as planned changes from dt and u of m come online and more coal is phased out however a natural gas powered grid will still have significant greenhouse gas emissions associated with it um this

034is a reminder the 820 plan targets securing 100 renewable energy for our community to eliminate emotions associated with electricity consumption so looking at the pie chart we see that then natural gas and transportation will become our largest sources of emissions and that's why it's really really important that we also address those and that just reflects day to zero strategies and i'll run through these very quickly um just as a reminder if you want more information i'm also posting a detailed report within this information if you'd like to go through it on your own time again stationary energy emissions are roughly two-thirds of total emissions um and since 2000 there's been a 22 decrease in emissions from buildings and those largely due to the changes in the grid um just as a a time check if

035i could ask for one um i can either skip through these or if you'd like i can i can answer them shortly um no why don't you go okay thanks um so university of michigan buildings or institutional buildings emissions decreased eight percent since 2015 um and that was just due to a spike in natural gas consumption that's uncorrelated to how cold that year was or how much heating degree days there were um in fact institutional consumption of electricity and natural gas are negatively correlated with cooling and heating degree days that means it's like not very temperature dependent um the pie chart just points out a portion of that natural gas is used to generate electricity in their essential power plant and then just to understand how university emissions are trending with growth we know that

036u of m has grown a lot in recent years so the graph on the right the dark blue shows percent change in the ann arbor campus population with a lighter bluing lighter blue showing total ann arbor campus emissions so we see that even though population has steadily increased emissions started to decrease around 2015 and we see that reflected in the graph on the left that there's starting to be a decrease in emissions per capita in residential buildings um they've decreased roughly 20 since 2000 um that's largely due to the cleaner grid but natural gas consumption also decreased around 13 since 2000 at the same time the use of electricity increased so since 2015 residential emissions have remained fairly steady um but natural gas emissions are strongly correlated with heating degree days i think i have

037a quick illustration just to point out the barograph is how much natural gas was consumed um related to emissions um and you can see that it generally tracks the heat and degree days just pointing out that's very weather dependent which makes sense we use natural gas to heat our homes for the most part in commercial buildings the combined um total of commercial and institutional emissions or commercial and industrial missions have decreased 22 since 2000 um from 2015 commercial emissions have decreased 32 percent um that's because we see that commercial emissions largely come from the use of electricity and that's strongly correlated with cooling degree days so that's how much um how often you probably use electricity to run ac to cool things down because you you need to um address high temperatures so we we

038can see um the yellow bar showing showing cooling degree days that the use of electricity generally tracks those in terms of transportation overall these represent 30 of our emissions we account for a local passenger and commercial transportation uh we now also account for commuting patterns so emissions outside of the ann arbor boundary and local buses rail and aviation it should be noted that non-local so like the scope 3 buses rail and aviation trips and non-commuting long-distance passenger vehicle trips are not currently estimated so if you jump on a plane in detroit metro to go on vacation we're not currently able to check those submissions in local transportation we account for passenger and commercial vehicle trips that begin and or fully contained in ann arbor so since 2000 local transportation emissions have decreased 16 percent and

039we see that since then the vehicles mild the miles traveled actually haven't changed that much um by you know only around two percent which isn't that much and so this is largely due to an increase in vehicle efficiency since then so our vehicles are about 17 more efficient um passenger vehicles represent most local transportation emissions um we base these off of uh vehicle registration data for washington county so that's where that split comes from you can also there's a darker middle screen the 0.25.28 is commuting emissions those are just based off of census data and are only available in five-year increments so there's not much change from year to year there but they did increase from 2015 to the following years um just to point out so upstream emissions count for transmission and distribution losses

040from our electricity grid there's some um efficiency loss just moving electrons around um and it also accounts for local fugitive gas emissions so some of the natural gas that's in the city is released um just as methane without being combusted uh this doesn't account for or include um non-local fugitive gas emissions which are occurring at a much higher percentage um there it's it's hard to get a clear number on that um which is why it's not included here um i do run through that in the report if you'd like to understand the magnitude of that waste and wastewater represent a very small amount of our emissions we account for the wasteb landfill the closed city landfill composting and wastewater treatment so we see um the since 2015 waste emissions decreased 35 percent and that spike

041in 2015 that you see is largely due to operations in the closed landfill either associated with flaring gas annual repairs or updates and data collection so just to wrap up um in the beginning of this presentation i went through our simple inventory and that allows us to evaluate long-term progress compared to a 2000 baseline then we looked at expanded inventory which provides a more comprehensive picture of where we are now in the future we hope to share an expanded plus inventory so this is this will include consumption based emission sources like the expanded transportation activities how we consume food goods and services the embodied carbon and new and existing buildings and renewable energy credits and offsets and so we plan to develop this inventory as part of a cohort organized by ickley unfortunately that was

042postponed by the copa 19 pandemic so we don't have anything to share this year but we hope to work on that in the future um also as i mentioned a few times we are posting calculations a guide and a report going through the inventory as well for transparency to our website so you can look for that in the coming weeks uh thank you so much for giving me this time and i'll open it up to any questions you might have okay yeah thank you thea um let's see i i can't see the uh everybody on the screen here so just either speak up or raise your hand in the sidebar here there we go any questions i don't see anything right now i had one question thea yep that is uh when do you expect

043to get data for 2020 given the pandemic um most of the data is fairly straightforward to collect and shouldn't have a big difference um i mean some of them we get internally uh some of the data that we get from external parties might be a bit harder to get a hold of we'll see how big of a change that is so that might be looking at um our transportation study um or some sources like that it honestly just depends on what organizations have faced a staff time reduction so we'll see how that plays out okay any other questions um shannon yeah i'm just wondering if you all um have a system in place to be able to track how uh renewables in the city are happening like in terms of the solarize program or people

044that have done things outside of that i'm just wondering if that has been any part of at all in terms of your analysis up to this point and then if if yay or nade like how how you're moving forward with that information because i think we'd all be curious to see how successful some of these programs are to see what if how much it actually moves the needle yeah so we are kind of indirectly um getting some of that in in the inventory we get aggregate um electricity consumption data from dte and so they don't none of that data includes solar energy that's produced on site and consumed on site so indirectly we're accounting for it we are missing some just because of the info outflow system it's hard to tell between solar energy that's

045um sold to the grid and then later used and make sure that it's not being double accounted so right now it's a small enough percentage that it's um not a big issue but just also that's important to track and so we're also working on getting together um additional metrics that show how we're doing so in addition like evs are also important to understand um in our ev adaption so we're looking at um ways to easily get that data and then display that visually in a way that's like very easy to understand for the public so in practice as well okay um rita i think you're muted [Music] pardon me um you're tracking the embody carbon of buildings have you considered looking at the embodied carbon of trees yeah so that is part of a current

046um study going on that we're working with some university of michigan students who are looking at quantifying our current tree cover and the emission reductions associated with that in addition um we are trying to look forward at new trees being planted and just trying to figure out the best way in an inventory to both present the current trees and also trees that are planted so we know that when you plant a tree the missions don't happen immediately and it also depends on the success of that tree um so it assumes that that tree is watered every year and and makes it to adulthood so we we don't quite have the exact protocol figured out and how to count it for it but it is in process okay thanks those uh um students here that you're

047working with sound like maybe some that we're going to uh for in chris graham's presentation talk about are those in the c's department that are working i believe they are i work a bit less indirectly with them um so i'm not quite sure what department they're in and they may be the same group but i'm not sure my question i thought that was a great presentation thank you and i learned a lot and i just to follow on rita's question about the embodied carbon and the whole expanded inventory how soon is that going to be like a long time for the expanded inventory or are things moving quickly um well for one uh it is a newer um thing to do uh and so we do need some support to do so we are waiting

048for um equally the organization i mentioned to have the capacity to run that cohort and then um i do expect some sources will be easier to estimate than others and we'll be able to present them uh sooner um so we might be looking at a couple years it just depends if the data sources already exist if it's uh data that we have to go out and get um which which could make it a bit longer thank you okay all right well thank you thea um there's no more questions john yeah thank you thea um just a a couple of things for us to ponder i think um i think while the report is excellent and the methodology is really great i think the report should be sobering for all of us in the sense that

049we're reducing greenhouse gas emissions at roughly one percent per year almost all of that is due to changes in the grid from dte and not from things that we are doing at the city level or as residents and we know that dte's target for carbon neutrality is 20 50. so it's way way past our target and so we obviously you know we're we're decreasing emissions at one percent per year i think it's a little faster than that thea since maybe 2012 when we had our first uh climate action plan but again almost all of that is due to dte emissions reductions as well and the thing that i think is we need to be we need to recognize is that um roughly 50 percent of our emissions if i caught it correctly are coming from

050heating and from transportation so heating is you know furnaces and boilers and hot water heat that's all coming from heating with natural gas and transportation is all from gasoline and diesel and those are typically you know capital investments in in a in a business kind of sense these are things that you just don't stop doing to today and then you have something new tomorrow you're talking about spending five ten you know and more thousand dollars to to change and these are things that people just don't change on a dime so we really have um a huge challenge in front of us and i think we need to do everything we can to help osi and to work with our fellow residents and just one last comment and that is um it's the area under the

051curb that's important so it's not like we can go at one percent per year for you know another four five six seven years and then reduce our emissions dramatically in the last couple of years um we will have admitted far too much um and that will impact them you know global warming um and yeah and we all know the consequences of that so thank you thea okay so um thanks john dia so uh let's move on to the next uh on the agenda new business um first thing up is uh chris graham um he submitted a proposal uh the seized proposal and the resolution for support of the of the seas proposal um i think uh uh chris you have the floor thank you um most of you should have a copy um we the

052your natural features committee has been working on this proposal since last winter the idea is to try to enlist university of michigan master students to help us with really two things that are pretty important first to use existing remote imagery technology and software to greatly upgrade our woodlands map our natural features woodlands map layer the information in that layer was developed in 1990 through a contract with a vendor for the city it was an extremely rough compared to today's standards uh set of information set of data in literally any sort of wooded area across the city whether it was a buckthorn ticket or a plantation or a neighborhood with a lot of trees or a native forest fragment the data we have doesn't distinguish much less does it distinguish within native forest fragments some of

053which are quite large communities plant communities jason talent is a gis person and already is doing some of this work as those on the committee know with university and he's recruited two or three really very capable people who are also working in this area to help with the team um the second part of the proposal is is again responding to the natural features master plan and the set of recommendations the natural features committee made a couple years ago about wither and how where are we at with natural features to begin to develop an outreach program the idea being that neighborhood by neighborhood we could reach out across the city and teach people about the natural resources in their neighborhood about their water resources about how to better retain water on the land about how to

054have and operate and do a much more sustainable landscape probably one of the foremost pieces of that puzzle is a whole lot less turf grass in any case we would we are intending to ask the students if they will help us develop graphic materials and um i don't know they'll have to design it themselves but how best to reach out and and um and educate people and get them get them excited about their neighborhood and what can be done with it to make it more sustainable the thanks to anne bannister the council approved a similar resolution earlier this week and we're hoping that you'll join them and and give us the strength of city resolve to take to the students and say we really do want to do this so i would move the resolution

055and i hope someone will second it and i hope you'll approve it second is there a second from bob and even one first um all right so um um the floor is open for discussion um does anybody wish to make a comment um john callaway i uh support the concept definitely just a question on process if council has already supported this do we really need to pass a resolution no but i'd appreciate it it's just one more um piece of strength showing to the students at the university it's this is a competitive process and we're hoping to get them interested so the more the more we are interested the more they will be okay um yet to me it's a an important goal that we have an updated online natural features and inventory so um

056i don't know how this um i'm assuming this incorporates all the city parks as well uh yes we have um though they haven't yet been included in the new natural features pages on the city's website um the parks have over the years uh distinguished plant communities within them and of course probably the greatest number and highest quality of the native forest fragments are on our parts so they're very important they're very important as models for what can be done elsewhere in the city to the extent we can encourage people to restore um some facsimile of our native force okay and um is there some connection with the university's property in the ann arbor public schools as well all property in the city will be part of this project okay all right that's wonderful so we

057have uh any uh anybody else wish to make a comment i don't see any hands so uh there's already been a motion to uh to vote on this so all who approve of this um resolution please raise your hand or say hi hi all opposed anybody opposed thank you passes unanimously chris wonderful good luck thank you i appreciate it a lot very excited yeah so the next item on the agenda is um as a resolution that's been submitted by rita mitchell um it's about uh uh fringe about the flood for development in the flood fringe um so rita uh you have the floor thank you um would you display the resolution now the draft resolution oh gosh i wasn't ready to do that um i think well galen i've got it if i can share

058screen if you can do it and that's great yeah well if well i don't i i'm not authorized yeah she has to be allowed to galen could you so galen could you give um ann bannister permission to be the host okay and you've got your host as your host now so you can share your screen okay so while you're getting that up um i've looked at the two resolve clauses the first resolution is just to approve we didn't have a vote on on approving the um the proposed overlay um district so the first uh resolve clause speaks to that but there's a second one about development in the flood fringe area and um and i personally don't quite understand what um what is in the i understand the sentiment behind it very strongly but i

059don't understand how that might affect um what the city is legally uh permitted to do and what um and uh also keeping in mind that each individual project has to go through the planning commission and be voted on by city council presumably i'm not sure personally um um if that second statement needs to be refined a bit or or what the impact is um actually on on the city's uh scope of uh scope of action so um all right let's open the floor for discussion may i give a little introduction please yeah yeah sure thank you um first off i want to say um thanks a lot to jerry for the presentation that he gave at our last meeting or last um formal meeting of of the commission um and the the goal of of

060creating this was to first off as you said to support the work that he's done with the floodplain overlay um that was presented to planning commission this week as i understand and it was passed he said also um and second of all to offer in the scope of the environmental commission's responsibilities to support the health and welfare of the community to offer a little more strength to the um overlay to allow um the ongoing existence of open spaces that are in flood fringe areas so according to my interpretation i hope that jerry will will join in and provide additional explanation as needed um the flood way would be set up to not allow any new construction there are many um structures currently in the floodways of ann arbor that are controlled by the city of

061ann arbor by as opposed to the state um and those are the areas that are in the less than two square mile um size of of the flood print flood plain in the city um and so if we allow our current um open spaces to remain as open spaces that will provide additional protection um from with respect to storm water management for uh just the general natural use of of the space in a flood plain um i'm not asking for any tearing down of structures i'm just saying it's a good idea for us to allow spaces to remain open and what i what the resolution um requests is for a additional um review and strengthening of the existing overlay as proposed um so that it would um prohibit new construction on properties that currently don't

062have structures on them um so that's very specific so that's that's really my presentation but my goal is really the health and safety um knowing that we have um the potential with climate change for greater intensity of flood events in the future so i'll stop there and open i hope for discussion did my screen share work um we it would um it needs to be scrolled if you can or could i ask have the commissioners had a chance to read the document as submitted i didn't there was no hyperlink in it um so when you click on yeah there was nothing associated with the agenda that i got i guess oh i'm so sorry um we i did identify that beforehand but this morning i thought it worked and it does possibly not in the

063documents that were circulated to commissioners but it is in the city's legistar um active i did not get into legislation i just i just um went with the the the pdf agenda that we had yeah okay that's disappointing got updated yeah with the hat link well let's see yeah i have it on my computer here so if i if you can allow me to i will post it i will share my screen hey guys it's actually josh uh galen had to stop step off because of some technical difficulties um but um i think ann could you uh you might actually have permission now to to change the host do you see if you go over to the participant side yes okay yep and then if you just make uh steve the host he should have

064access to it i'd just like to add that um i appreciate the consultation that i got from jerry hancock on on looking over this um and i did send it specifically to commissioner needham um who was certainly interested in looking at it in detail and i'm sorry i didn't we didn't have to have an exchange of discussion but okay let's see i still don't have oh here we go okay okay so here i have it on can everybody see that yes yep yes so rita you need to tell me where to move it to um well i think we should let the commission read it and give about 10 seconds or so of reading time at least and then scroll what's the status of the full uh amendments to the udc for this that jerry's

065working on where is it in the process now it was approved at planning commission tuesday night oh good it will be scheduled for uh city council at first reading uh november 16th and second reading december 21st wonderful well i think you could probably scroll now steve buddy okay to move yeah maybe you can move it up to show the last result thank you um in three in the fourth paragraph from the bottom and the fifth and third paragraph from the bottom right i would it caught me caught me trying to read this whereas federal department of housing urban pod prohibits use of funds for building in flood fringe areas i almost said okay that means buildings i would i would switch these two words building and construction in the next paragraph i put construction up

066here in that paragraph and buildings and then in the third paragraph in other words it would say whereas hud provides use of funds for construction in flood fringe areas because of risk to health and safety whereas avoiding new buildings and for french areas can support improved safety and stormwater management that sounds good to me okay rita can you take note of those i will do that i just got a notification from chip about an email chip do you want to kind of summarize what you just sent out so that we could um sure so this is um the email that i just sent out was sent to uh planning commission into city council by a group of 35 west side property owners who all own houses that are either in the fringe or in the

067flood plain they have a number of concerns with the ordinance as it's currently written as it limits their ability uh to rebuild in the event of disasters i think these are important considerations and the fact that these houses uh have been there for years and years and years many of them have historic designations or in the old west side historic district all of that warrants consideration i would say at least from my perspective i wouldn't be comfortable voting on this language until that issue is resolved i i don't know if this was discussed the planning commission uh shannon but but uh if it was i would appreciate an update here i asked about the date of that email was yeah october 18. there you go and then i actually had to join the planning commission

068late on tuesday night because of parent-teacher conferences but jerry however was there during the whole discussion and so he might be in a better position to be able to summarize i do know that resident concerns were brought up and that jerry did summarize they had planning commission had asked him to have another public input meeting because um you know it takes time for people to kind of figure this out that it's going on and and they had a really robust first session but they they hosted a second one where they really got into some of the minutia i think of how to you know what where what they have the freedom to do and not um in terms of their homes and uh so i know that that that was certainly discussed but i don't

069know that we ended up actually changing anything jerry correct me if i'm wrong but it seemed like it went forward as it was but it is something i think though that is is very much still being kind of figured out by residents and i too feel like it would probably be good to let some of that settle a bit before um i'm ready to just kind of race forward with this and also just because we're kind of reading it on the fly here um um so i guess that's that's my that's my take on it but jerry i would appreciate any any um comments you have since you were there for the whole discussion and i was only there for probably the last 10 minutes yeah so the this particular home home owner group has

070provided comments at several points along the way and a couple weeks ago we had a workshop and we it was a two hour long workshop and i would say seventy percent of the conversation was uh addressing the questions and comments of that group and the overwhelming majority of the comments and questions are about current code not necessarily the code changes it's already required by code to elevate elevate properties when you do substantial improvements in the in the flood fringe um the the building code already has definitions for substantial improvement which we spent a lot of time going over so there's very little in the way of change in the proposed ordinance in the flood fringe from current code we are proposing to elevate one foot higher than what is currently required and then there are

071some there's one change in how we uh calculate substantial improvement we're putting a time frame on it over 10 years so that people don't um come in and piecemeal a project together to avoid the current regulations um so i'll be i'd be interested in seeing what the their concerns still are i haven't i haven't seen any um correspondence from that group since the workshop yeah this was sent to um the planning commission on that on the 18th in advance of their discussion uh on the 20th was held um quite a quite a few days before that correct jerry like that the um the second meeting that you had when was that it was two weeks ago tonight okay great all right and i would just like to point out that the second resolved in this

072that we're looking at tonight applies to areas that do not have construction so these are areas that are i'm thinking conceptualize them as properties that don't have construction on them right now as opposed to people who own houses that have you know that they live in that are in flood fringe areas right now so it's where no structures exist as of this date so when i talked with jerry he said there aren't that many but if we have them it seems to me it's a worthwhile thing to prepare to not add to the risk that could take place for anybody not just people who are eligible for hud support but for anybody i have a question about how to interpret or how maybe jerry how this would be interpreted this says it prohibits new construction

073on properties in the flood fringe area where no new structures exist the question that i have is what if there is a larger property with a um flood fringe and and floodway potentially also um that um let's say occupies 20 of the property my understanding is this would prohibit any new construction on the 80 percent of the property outside of the flood fringe as written it prohibits new construction on properties so if there's a property that's defined with a plot and there is flood fringe area um and there's no construction on that property um then the 80 percent um would not be able to be built on is that is that the i mean that's the way i i lead this i don't know how others read it and i don't know if that was

074the intent i can say that that was not my intent okay but if there's a way to write it in a way that that supports kind of the the outline that you've described um i would suggestions for sure well what if it's just prohibited construction i mean i think i might yeah okay i'll get to my second comment later what about prohibit new construction in flooded fringe areas where no structures exist as of this state isn't that what it says no on properties new flood fringe area so i would strike no prohibit new construction in flood fringe areas where no structures exist and i think that would cover the concern that i have that you could still develop in the hypothetical situation where there's a substantial portion of a property outside of a flood fringe

075area that that part of the property could still be developed that's that's a good suggestion uh if if staff is directed to revise the proposed ordinance we would only be regulating within the flood plain area so yeah yeah that seems clear yeah because all of the the studies that right now for the affordable housing initiative that's happening through jennifer hall's program they're looking at several properties that have flood fringe on them and so that means that you know none of those would be eligible for that yeah if the entire property works right right exactly and there's some you know there's some i have neighbors that have a corner of their property in flint fringe but the vast majority of it is out of it so i think it'd be really important to distinguish that there

076yeah and that that is how the the overlay district works you know it only applies when you're below the flood elevation um so regardless of how you end up writing writing this we wouldn't be applying floodplain regulation on areas outside of a floodplain i have a question also what jerry what is new construction if i have an existing building and i raise the building um is that new construction if i add um something off the back let's say hypothetically outside of the front fringe area or even just even if it is in the flood fringe if i add something um an elevated um and the sat back or the side or whatever is that new construction or is that a different um defined term like is renovation fall under new construction or is that exclusive

077uh an exclusive term how is that understood independent of the the proposed resolution here how when regulation works right um so obviously a brand new building would be new construction sure in addition would be new construction although in the ordinance to make sure that it's clear for example in the flood way we've specifically said no additions so that so that it's not interpreted or misinterpreted uh but i mentioned earlier there there's a concept in the building code that's related to flood plain development that's called substantial improvement so if you have an existing structure and anywhere in the floodplain and you're going to do a prod a project to it whether it be internal or putting an addition on it if the market value of the project or excuse me the if the project cost exceeds

07850 percent of the market value of the existing structure then you treat the project as if it were a new building and you have to bring the old one up to code in other words elevate or flood profit um if you if the project falls below that threshold the the existing building does not have to be brought into compliance and that's because that's in the building michigan building code and communities are not allowed to change that we're not proposing any changes to that it's already a code or already in the building code thank you and jerry would you mind um just restating what you've said to other groups about historic buildings historic structures in the floodway and floodplain yes so within that that definition of substantial improvement there is an exemption for historic structures so

079in other words you can you can maintain and improve a historic structure in perpetuity because that because that threshold doesn't exist right now if the ordinance goes through you couldn't put an addition onto a historic structure because that's outside of his footprint and then the only thing that would uh cause someone to lose that exemption would be as if the building were destroyed to the point where the historic district commission no longer considered it a historic structure how many of the feelings in the floodway and flood fringe today are historic structures or as a percentage of the number of buildings that are there that aren't um so total there's about 490 structures in the flood plain i don't have the number right off top my head but i would guess that it's around 45 percent

080are in the historic district because uh allen creek and the fingers that go off to the west are where most of the buildings in the floodplain are and all of those or the majority of those fingers that go off to the west are in the historic district we also have some structures in the historic district at the lower reaches of traver creek they just have to be in the district even if the building itself isn't historic or does it have to be an historic building in the historic district so the way the building code is written it has to basically the structure has to be considered historic so so if it's a 1950s house in the historic in the old west side it wouldn't qualify in the same way as something that was built in

081the late 1800s in the old west side um i personally don't know the answer to that because that's that's more of a you know what how does our district look commission look at it i think you're correct no because it because they have a term of contributing or non-contributing right okay that's right and then right now jerry it's basically in the in the one percent in the what they call the hundred year right and the way it's written right now is for that and there's sort of room for the 0.2 or the 500 year as they say but it's right now the way you've got it written it's for the the one percent am i correct about that yeah yep yep regulations apply only to the one percent flood plain area where the proposal is

082buildings within that one percent were asking that they be elevated to the point two percent which is called the 500 year also um but not regulating that um horizontally there's comment in the email from from folks in the neighborhood out west about market value [Music] what's your assessment of what might happen to market values if if the proposed changes to the udc go ahead absolutely nothing so within the proposed ordinance we're providing a definition of market value that is basically what the city assessor uses as market value that is exactly how staff has been implementing the flood regulations since i've been at the city which has been the last 30 years so it's no change we just wanted to codify it to avoid um arguments with petitioners and give petitioners you know the transparency that

083for them to understand what we're going to be using um now if someone disagrees with the assessed value no so in the usually when people disagree with the assessed value of a property they want it to be lower so they can pay less taxes in the case of one point regulation they might want it to be higher so they can have a higher substantial improvement threshold if somebody wants to go to the city assessor and take uh you know on a private assessment that they've had done to our city assessor they can go there's a process that they have already established you can go in and you can have that conversation and once the city assessor agrees on a new number they would provide that to me we would use that in the building permit

084and then the assessor may change their taxes at some point as a result but um so that that process already exists so we like i was saying we we're just putting that in code to codify um current practice i think though that part of what they may be getting at which is not part of what the city what you're you're talking about is that if i'm i'm looking for a home and i want to see one in the old west side and i know that because i'm buying if i'm comparing two and one means that i can never put an addition on it or put a shed on it or or make the garage bigger or something like that versus another one that's higher and drier it's not the assessed value that you know that

085they're talking about in terms of the city it's more like the potential for future changes i think and and that probably would have a difference that like i know when you know people buying the historic district they kind of sign up for okay if i make any change i'm going to have to go through the historic district and there's a whole set of regulations around that and this would mean that there's kind of another set of regulations around that um so i i think that in terms of the the piece that you're talking about you're you're totally right but i think that there is you know just as is somebody who may be selling their house knowing that you can never add a mother-in-law suite or that you can never you know do that that

086does make a difference i think in terms of on what people um how people may perceive the value of a property so yeah same time i think you know what i see this is as the really promoting the safety and welfare of of people who live there and i think that's why i brought it as part of our purview as the environmental commission any other questions um so i have a change in two of the whereas clauses and a change in the second resolved clause to remove on properties um are there any other suggestions for changes i think i'd just like to i think i generally agree kind of with this but i feel like i just haven't really had time to because it wasn't kind of part of our agenda in terms of being

087able to review it on our own i would propose that we let it sit for one more time and and have time to be able to um just be able to kind of digest it a little bit more within this before voting on it i guess that's how i feel i feel a little like pressured on the fly to read it on the screen and figure it all out i totally understand that and i i'm i'm very sorry that it wasn't available to everyone i got it in my agenda announcement from galen two days ago when i tried when i opened that up it did not have a link in it my mine does not have a link in it it's not on the agenda it was put in uh it was an attachment it

088was a separate attachment maybe that's what i was doing well i don't know if other people that feel the same or not if people feel you know um prepared to vote on it or not i i would i would like one more one more whack at it i see i feel like things are still a little kind of even though planning commission passed what was there this is a little bit different i feel like things are still kind of bubbling um and personally i would like another i would another another take um but if other people are feeling totally comfortable with it um i guess that's john cut a few things but i feel like there's other things to kind of um potentially think through that would be my preference to the question i have

089we didn't have any public comment today and i would think this would be something that had just been well known and um that we would have pro pro and con comments i think that's an indication that maybe it wasn't recognized in the community um i mean i i'd be i'd be okay to vote but my preference would be to wait another month i'm okay with that um since at least there is an opportunity for us to act before council gets a solid vote on it i certainly appreciate comments from everyone and and jerry's review as well i have another question about the wording and that is um in the resolved clause rito do or jerry do we need to have the exact language defining the fred flings as the 0.2 or the 1 fringe area

090in order for this to carry the that that's already that's already defined in the proposed overlay district okay yep okay so that way my goal was to put the exact title of the of the overlay district in there and if i need to make corrections on that i certainly will do that okay okay okay um so i get the sense that uh we'll table this until december 3rd so do we have and we'll put it on the agenda for december 3rd and try to get engaged more community input and so is anybody do i hear a motion to table it no um second okay chris seconds it um all who uh agree to table this until december third raise your hand or speak out does that work with council's schedule jerry you the final vote

091is in december sometime if they don't delay if they don't delay it'll be december 21st okay so we have our yep so we'll have time on december i will send out what we've revised as of tonight as soon as possible to the commission and i'll work with galen to make certain that it gets included in our next agenda packet in the correct form yep thanks for your work on this rita yeah i appreciate it too and you might even think because i know that there's a very active group of people around this and chip i think it's his district or his ward you know and so you might even you know through him or something put it towards some of those folks too and see what they think about i just think it's better to

092try to engage people and get their reaction rather than just have them you know show up so because there are definitely people on the record that have been sending a lot of emails and things like that we've gotten a lot of them and there's actually quite a long treatise um from a group um i've read that yeah yeah right so i just think it would be great to um just have have multiple eyes on it see what they think about it i totally get your intent here i just want more time to digest and i feel like things are still really bubbling you know with it too so um well i think the the neighborhood group is ultimately you know poised to be supportive but i think you know they have to be able to

093work through some of the issues that they've brought up and have satisfactory resolution and and i think turning them into allies will be very useful and there's the allen creek um floodway group i mean they may want to speak for this and to give you know strong experience it would be good for us to hear um distinct voices on both sides um i mean i've been in i was in jerry's first presentation of this and there were quite a few people from that group that that attended that and spoke up and we haven't heard from any of them so i think it would just behoove us to make sure that we had proper on public content it sounds like it's not going to make a difference relative to council schedule so i think that's the

094best way to go my only concern about the council schedule thing is that if they can they make i don't think they can make amendments between november 16 and december 21st but maybe this wouldn't be an amendment they they can make amendments it just sends it back at first reading if the attorneys determine that the amendments are substantive changes so that potentially would delay it one month correct yeah so it's not like we're throwing a total monkey okay yep so chip who makes that judgment uh generally that's uh this is a land use regulation so i would think that kevin mcdonald would advise on on whether changes were substantive or not the city attorney's office yeah okay all righty okay so um let's move on to the next item on the agenda which is a

095preliminary preliminary discussion of 2021 goals um i think given the time i think i will uh like to postpone that to december third as well okay if everybody's agreed okay so um so the next item on the agenda then is the reports from committees um natural features working group we are meeting tomorrow the final um touches on the seas proposal will get done we're going to look a little bit at what the numbers might be as insofar as funding is concerned um as i said in the resolution the uh to hire a consultant to do these two pieces of work would be in the many many tens of thousands of dollars um if we can entice the u of m students to do it not totally for free i hope we can find some money

096for them we will get a better product for a fraction a small fraction of the cost and given the city's financial circumstances way sooner which would be wonderful uh um we are also as you know have a subcommittee of the national committee trying to make an amendment such as this floodplain one to better protect trees in the city as requested by council and resolution and we're many miles through that but not done yet but we'll talk with the committee about it tomorrow um there are some philosophical changes as well as some regulatory changes the most important one being um establishing a higher that is doubling the mitigation requirement for what we call heritage trees which um are large trees um of um of our landmark tree list and that itself we're revising to really include

097a much more diverse list with native trees having a prominent role but other trees which are important to many people having a role as well in the protection of trees across the city we're beginning to talk about soil compaction in projects which is so limiting in terms of how plants of any sort grow after a construction project occurs if compacted soils remain on a site we're getting close today i'll get a draft out to you um uh it's a slow process i think jerry can tell you about the one he he's working on now it's been five six seven eight nine years we aren't going to take that long but uh uh it is taking time okay um that's all i can remember about tomorrow sorry okay i'll be enough all right thanks chris thank

098you yeah the solid waste working group we don't have anything to report right now um let's see how about other commissions um shannon um things that are relevant to the planning heir to environmental commission um we looked at the floodplain piece like jerry had talked about and passed that um we looked at the capital improvements um uh new methodology uh which is also interesting um and and seeing how they are incorporating some of the new um sustainability goals into that and then i guess the other thing just especially relevant to what chris was just talking about is that uh actually in the last couple of months we've had two projects come before us where somebody had um a developer had landmark trees that they were supposed to protect and um in one case it was

099just they they just killed the tree because of soil compaction and things like that and and then in the other case they actually took a tree down that was kind of on the border the right-of-way and they felt like it was in in the sight distance of cars and they so we we had to kind of reapprove the the the plan with the mitigation that was required of that and and when they do that it's a 200 so normally with the landmark tree it's it's 50 of the diameter of the tree and you like if you have a 10 inch tree um then you have to mitigate for for five inches of it um uh with the when you when you make an oops or you you know knowingly violate something then it's 200 percent

100so it's it's a pretty it's a it's pretty big difference so um so we had you know they had to come back through site plan uh the site plan approval process which is no small thing either to have to do that and then they had to have a mitigation plan approved so i think it's apropos and what you all are thinking about too that you know these things happen um and and that they have to they have to come back through planning commission and then they have to plant way more trees and um you know for the one that came down in the right of way it was a great big oak and it really i think could have been solved by just doing some pruning of the branches um which is kind of tragic

101um but it's done so they had to come up with a mitigation plan for it um so anyway like i think just that's one of the one of the areas where um these commissions dovetail and uh so two in the last couple of months had come through and had had that happening so i just thought you all might be interested in that where was that one in the right of way um it was called the annex i think it was on nixon oh it was a big white oak that came down so sad okay well thanks shannon how about um um um parks mike oh mike apple you're muted we could just stop sharing the screen so that we can actually see each other again i'm not sure who's in screen sharing mode i can't

102remember anymore uh the things most relevant to environmental commission that we've discussed at parks have to do with uh people wanting to garden in parkland uh we had a group called the northside food forest recently uh just start planting trees on a fifth of an acre up in leslie park so most of our last meeting was discussing how we were going to move ahead with them uh and we uh the commission approved working with them for a conditional year to see how it works and also gave them a lot of feedback on the sorts of things that they might want to think about in terms of organizational structure a departure plan inclusivity with the rest of the community public meetings that will satisfy the entire community as opposed to just the people that they know

103that want to do this so that was uh what we've been talking about interestingly enough i recently heard through the grapevine that project grow is no longer allowing for perennial gardening so there used to be a few project grow plots that allowed for year-long leases and allowed people to grow garlic and horseradish and all these crops that take more than just a few months um so i would imagine that this is the sort of thing that we'll be seeing more over time uh is that there'll be more of a demand from residents to be able to have a place to be able to do longer term gardening in the parks we're going to have to figure out how to move ahead with that if we see more demand for that all of these things you

104know people are approaching us saying hey this meets the city's sustainability goals and we should just be able to do this um so there's a fair amount of head scratching that needs to happen in order to be able to let that happen and uh this northside food forest i think was a great shot across the bow for us to be able to start to think about this in a more holistic sense of how we might need to accommodate the needs of residents in order to be able to garden and that's the exciting stuff yeah well thanks mike what's up um chris you wanted to comment were they doing this in forced areas micro open recreation lands it was a turf grass area uh most of the staff agreed after they saw that it was probably

105the best place up there that they could have chosen for the site um you know some of the problems included uh you know the fact that they didn't have a public meeting before uh also the water that they had used from the project was coming from uh arrowwood and not all of the arrowwood residents are on board with the project so you know to them that was taking water from them to be able to water the project um so yeah there are there are certainly some issues that that that we're dealing with here um but like i say they're they have agreed to work very closely with park staff moving ahead and you know basically not do anything without talking to park staff first uh and we're gonna see how the year goes uh we're

106going to revisit it next november but before this in april we asked them to to come back with a pretty clear list of uh all these things that i mentioned before in terms of you know who who exactly we're dealing with and and and how we're going to go about communicating with them very interesting the sighting wasn't terrible and why is project grow not allowing perennial gardening anymore just the demand they want new people every year for it uh no i think it has to do with tidiness um and also uh you know project grows governance is based on uh the the the people who are actually doing the gardening so they have a they have a meeting every year that involves people that are uh participants in project grow um so you'd have to

107ask project grow about that um all i the only part of it that i've heard about is uh hey why aren't i allowed to perennial garden anymore i think part of the issue um may be that they do they tend to do um soil preparation all at once in one big area and working around plots that are perennial and not it makes it a lot more complicated for them rather than you know everybody's done in november and they can just plow the whole thing and turn it over and then be done with it so i know that that could be part of the issue i don't know if that's all of the issue i don't i have one out of math eye and i i haven't heard anything about this so maybe it's site by

108site it might be um i the annual board meeting project row board meeting is coming up soon so i'll send all the commissioners the information for that if they want to talk to them at the board meeting um i have a perennial plotting at uh county farm park and um this i have not heard anything about that uh these were complaints from greenview that i had heard is that the greenview perennial plots were getting shut down so maybe this is just a local thing and it's not across the the uh the entire project grow system okay so mike i want to just say i'm really glad to hear the what um the parks mission is doing in terms of asking for a plan from the group because of the experience that i had in another

109park that just had a spontaneous um set of trees planted um i think it's a really good way to deal with all those issues so good going yeah it's uh you know if i were looking to not give the staff additional work this wouldn't be the approach that i would take but uh staff was enthusiastic about being able to take it on um if they if they weren't i'm not quite sure what our resolution would have been uh but since staff was willing to really work with these folks moving ahead it it seemed like it was a good fit yeah it just for sure needs a plan so it sounds like that's what's going on it's great yeah yeah and thanks for your thanks for all the work you're doing in worcester park to take

110care of somebody else's trees rita okay how about energy john yes uh we in our last meeting had the same greenhouse gas inventory presentation we had a presentation uh the city's solarize program anybody that's interested in solarize i encourage you to go to lifestyle and take a look at that program it's basically residents reaching out to their networks and bringing those people all together right now via zoom and based on volume being able to get a discount on solar um been very successful in terms of increase in number of permits and kilowatts installed one concern is cost transparency and whether really the costs that are being provided are really that that competitive um but osi has indicated that they're going to look into that and then the last thing i would offer is that the

111eb readiness ordinance which will um address eb charging infrastructure in the city has its first reading um in front of council on november 16th and anybody that is interested in that is encouraged to provide public comment um while i have the floor i want to just raise one other question about the resolution we just considered that rita authored and that is reader if we could also look into whether or not new construction includes um a park pavilion for picnics tables for example or a playground or whatever i'm not sure we necessarily want to restrict those what i would call it not semi-permanent kinds of structures that would uh especially in in urban areas where we have a lot of our flood plain floodway issues um those kinds of parks we may want to have a

112playground or something like that and new construction generally that's it okay um let's see so let's move on to council but to my knowledge a couple meetings ago week the council did pass the solid waste resource management plan and that also cleared the way for um the downtown now to get their plans together for some reason they had to go in order like that and um i just wanted to add that on the um exciting new umc's program proposal to master students i hope we'll get a lot of students interested and that ties in with a comment we had at the natural features working group meeting that wouldn't it be wonderful if the the weber property on 2857 packard road is for rent and bob webber is trying to earn some money off of it

113while he works with um matt groskhoff and others on dividing the land and saving some of it and building on the other part of it and so meanwhile the weber property is for rent for only 1500 a month for the whole historic collins house which is uh three to four bedrooms one bathroom and i believe it was 1600 square feet and and so it was suggested that maybe the students that are working on our tree programs would like to live in amongst the trees and also you know rescue lots of lots of the acorns and it it's just so i'm just re mentioning it to you all that if if you know of good people to rent that property um and as we move into the seas program and talk to more students uh it

114is a very rustic house you know so it's um so that's just keep that in mind it would be great to have that new life great breathed into that property and maybe people would welcome all of the rest of us to come visit and lastly i believe this is my last official environmental commission meeting i've really enjoyed working with you guys these last three years and i'm still here i may even apply uh to be a regular uh resident at large on the commission and i would definitely with commissioner graham's permission i would like to continue on the natural features working group because i know that there's a few other regular citizens on on that group yeah happy to have you anna thank yeah you you anna it's been um and man yeah thanks everybody

115so so i would um follow up with one piece of information is i spoke to the u of m board of regents today during public comments uh about their um what i consider to be their rather inadequate regional participation as it regards both carbon neutrality and and covert their response covet 19. their president's commission on carbon neutrality which was expected to deliver recommendations to get to net zero emissions um by 2030 they were supposed to deliver those recommendations by the end of the semester that's now been delayed until february of 2021 uh i think that this body will will need to uh i think because most of the regents don't live in ann arbor they don't understand a what we're trying to do with the a20 plan and they are kept pretty insulated from that

116aspect of the university i think it will be important that that me as a citizen that and as a citizen that all of you as environmental commissioners be involved in speaking to the regents at their meetings in public session to try and keep their feet to the fire to make sure that you know these recommendations are are real that they're transformative uh and that they're working with what we're trying to do i think there's uh a lot of opportunity for us to have positive influence that way so i just wanted to to share that with everybody the regents meet what is it every other month you need to sign up in advance there are 15 public speaking slots that come at the end of their meeting uh but uh unlike ann arbor city council they

117run their meetings pretty efficiently and are very scripted so you know it's generally not too much that you have to sit through before you get a chance to speak so i would encourage all of you to uh speak in that form i know many most of the people that speak before that that body are students or affiliated with the university directly i think it's useful for them to hear from alumni from community members from people who are working in this field especially when they are are not living up to uh their leaders and best mantra um chip don't two of the regions live in ann arbor i know mark bernstein does uh mark does ron ron wiser lives in uh in the township i believe or in barton hills one of those um you know

118but but the i i think as i was talking about the a20 plan there were an awful lot of just puzzled expressions they didn't know what that was so i had to spend more of my three minutes than i'd like to kind of bringing them up to speed but uh you know looking judging by their faces they also didn't understand that ann arbor public schools are limited to virtual instruction right now because we are unable to hit the infection threshold metrics to uh allow us to to go back to in-person instruction and the reason we're not able to hit those numbers is because they made the decision to have in-person undergraduate classes without adequate testing and enforcement in place before those students came back and you know this was a predictable unfortunately a very predictable

119outcome to that but they have the ability to make the next semester virtual and and with the hope of getting our kids back into the classroom sometime during the 2021 school year okay duly noted and uh so thank you both um ann and chip for your service on the commission here i've been greatly appreciated it's been a pleasure we'd throw a party if we could so okay so let's move on to i know the uh people are anxious to listen to the debate probably so uh the chair has no report um right now um report from staff hi all i wasn't expecting to speak tonight but i'm just going to go ahead and do a really quick um kind of overview of some of the things that we've been working on steve could you uh

120make me host again i just wanted to kind of share my screen really quick [Music] so if you go to participants it should bring up kind of a list on the right-hand side and i'm actually logged in as galen to ensure there was continuity with zoom yep cool okay now you're the host all right thank you um so the one thing i wanted to share with you all and i will keep this brief um so for the energy commission one of the things that we've done and i'm not sure i talked to to galen about this but i'm not sure if he brought this up we wanted to make sure that there was a kind of continuity and you know just kind of transparency and collaboration between the office and what the office is doing

121and what the energy commission uh the work that they're doing so one of the things that i did with uh with our with the staff internally is create kind of this basically a summary and it kind of goes through all of the major projects that we're working on so energy benchmarking disclosure um you know this reform re 4m so we just did this kind of these couple of convenings on electrification heat pumps challenges solar eyes i know john mentioned that we had julie present last time so we kind of look at solarize and a few other kind of programs but you know one of the things that we're doing with the energy commission is that we have this uh basically posted on our agendas on a uh so every month that we meet so that

122way all the commissioners can kind of look at uh what staff are doing um and i have recommended uh that gail and i kind of shared this with him as well so i think that this might be something um that he puts on as well i mean there's everything from 10 000 tree initiatives so it's not only energy specific it's basically everything the staff is doing and then the second sec section here is actually public engagement updates and so that's actually addressing some of the uh public events and other events across the city that are that are happening so i won't take up much of your time but i did want to let you guys know that this is out there and i've talked to galen about it hopefully he'll put it up for you

123guys on your agenda as well so that's all i have okay well that's good um thanks josh yeah okay look forward to that in the future how often are you doing these and how are they made public yeah so they're uh monthly updates um so right before each of the the commission meetings basically i do for the energy commission side i do a call amongst all staff to give updates on on projects that they're working on and then we're we're actually putting it straight into the agenda so we're putting it as an attachment in the agenda so that way people can go ahead and take a look before before our meetings thank you okay thank you so um the next item up there is items for the next agenda i have the uh redis fringe

124development fringe flood fringe development ordinance would be on the agenda plus our housekeeping stuff that uh you know that comes up every year we should start that discussion on december 3rd um does anybody have any other suggestions for agenda items i have one um topic to put on the radar whether it's an agenda item or not um we had a commitment in the past from administrator lazarus to get quarterly solid waste updates um we got one a couple of months ago but if that still holds then we should be getting another one soon and we can decide whether or not that can be in written form or an agenda item i leave that up to you steve together with galen and eileen um or jenny yeah i'll contact eileen and see and see if that

125will happen okay yeah eileen is still out on the maternity leave so that's slowed up the uh city staff um involvement they're busy with the murph contract and collection contracts that are coming to you so um i'll do that um for the december meeting one other topic if i may um i'm wondering we touched on it a little bit when we had the report on the watershed and that is microplastics in the environment i'm wondering if that's something that we should deal with more broadly in a sense it strikes me as being something like greenhouse gases and global warming it's known among some people but not broadly understood by public at large and how pervasive they are and how they're getting into the environment in the food chain even plant uptake in formula and i'm

126wondering if that might be something that the environmental commission should be looking at and you know who and when but i'd like to put it on the radar um i'd hate to be you know 20 30 years from now and saying we knew this um you know a long time ago we probably knew it even 10 years ago and we didn't do anything about it and that's certainly what happened with global warming it really we didn't get serious about it until 10 years or so ago 10 20 at the most yeah yeah um i should have mentioned this probably with for the solid waste working group but yes this is uh this is a potential serious crisis that's um almost upon us um so um part of dealing with plastics has to be reducing and

127reusing them and not just recycling um so but we'll cover that in some detail at the next um solid waste meeting which we might have to bump until january until the january meeting you know given um given all the uh things we have on the agenda already for december 3rd but uh so um okay um [Music] so the next scheduled meeting is december 3rd my only question is is will it be online or we do we have to do it in person um do either of the council representatives here know what uh what legally might be possible on december 3rd as yet yeah the state has adopted you know the legislature passed and the governor signed the uh changes to the open meetings act that allow for electronic meetings to continue okay all right so

128we'll be electronic then on december 3rd so uh now we're reaching the second public commentary period for public comment um this is another opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call one eight 213-338-8477 or 206-337-9723 and enter meeting id 924 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press 9 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

129name and address at the beginning of your comments and please be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established i'm not seeing anyone steve okay so this ends the uh public commentary period uh we have no callers so i declare this meeting adjourned on at 9 17. all right thanks everybody you