001we're gonna call the order at 7 p.m. so Eileen would you do the roll call Emily yep that's okay Commissioner Hutton absent Commissioner Needham Commissioner uphill commissioner get Randall councilmember Bannister here commissioner callewaert your chair Brown here commissioner over Peck Commissioner Graham vice-chair Skinner yeah councilmember Smith Commissioner Slavik here and Commissioner Mirsky here you have a quorum all right thank you first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda so see I have I have one proposal to make and that is given the given the how how many is given how many items are on the agenda of interest and that Chris is not here I would like to postpone the consideration of the heritage trees resolution until the next oh hey Chris no mercy so Chris we were just discussing given the
002packed agenda whether it would be wise to postpone the heritage trees resolution until the next Commissioner meeting okay that's true are there any other comments any discussion can we decide later in the meeting if we're here at 11:30 and we still haven't gotten to it then yes if it's 9:30 then we can desert okay any other discussion about the agenda and do I have a motion to approve it so moved is there a second all approve say aye aye okay passes unanimously the next item is the approval of the minutes from the September meeting let's see does anybody have any comments on the agenda on the minutes from the previous meeting all right do I have a motion to approve the minutes John got a second Alison all of her all who approve in a
003minute of the minutes say aye anybody any nays no one passes unanimously so the next item on the agenda is public commentary so there's quite a few interest in a few of the items on the agenda today so please be keep your comments as brief as you can and come up to the microphone I'll recognize anybody who raises their hand and please come up to the microphone if you have any public comments to make I think my name is Robin tuck and I'm here along with others to encourage you to pass the Declaration of climate emergency there are many benefits to passing the declaration not the least of which is a clear message to the citizens of Ann Arbor and beyond that we are in a crisis that requires emergency response an early analysis from
004the UK supports the idea that declarations of climate emergency have been successful in speeding decarbonisation declaring municipalities the vast majority 89% of those cities and town declarations set in motion the development of a climate action plan something that our declaration also seeks to set in motion I understand the 2025 is right around the corner but I believe it is better to set an ambitious goal and to stretch our minds and striving to reach that goal and perhaps fall a little short than to be too conservative and risk making no substantial progress we cannot afford to move slowly on the climate crisis thank you for your time hi I'm Meg Burke Dean I'm a graduate sooner you of M NGO working on climate justice for our upcoming contract campaign and coach area of HV DSA I'm
005here to support the climate resolution emergency resolution I know that we've received responses already from Susan and Stephen I will say it did feel quite discouraging that Stephen you brought up that we should be paying attention to our own carbon footprint I think that most of us especially the young among us probably have the lowest carbon footprint I don't fly right I have the most to lose I'm 30 so actually there are many other all of you with children have the most to lose we know that Kalamazoo just passed a climate write emergency resolution that we're behind Kalamazoo on that and we're supposedly the most progressive City and in Michigan feels wrong I think I take all your points that we don't want to just pass this and have City Council kind of green wash
006over it what I'm proposing is that we pass it as a way to create a crisis point for us to push city council on this right I don't go to City Council meetings anymore because I feel pushed out I think environmental things we talk about aren't big system changing things right a lot of city council meetings feel petty they they don't feel like inviting to workers which is what I am and what the majority of people who will suffer under the climate crisis are as well so I I want to move forward on this not only because it's our more it's a moral we important thing but also because we're not gonna see power change and system taint change by individual action right but by pushing for big things like this and we'll take the
007fight to City Council if you use your power to move on it so thank you thank you would you state your name for yeah hi my name is Gus teske I live in Ann Arbor I'm here to ask the Commission to vote in favor of the Declaration of a climate emergency because obviously we have one and people the first thing you do when you have a problem you like to declare what the problem is the problem for us is is getting it through this commission and then taking over to City Council and getting them to act on it I'd like to thank you all for the first one you passed that apparently was buried somewhere I don't know where but we'd like to try again we hope we can get your support to do that
008you all know how severe this is I like to thank the members for the email I've been exchanging with some of you it's obvious you know a lot of what about what you're doing and you know I'm part of Ann Arbor indivisible we just heard about this recently from climate mobilization they came by to a meeting and talked with us about the problems they were having getting their resolution through and it's just it kind of astounding that amber hasn't done it already and I realize you've already done your part I just want you to do it again so they asked us to help out and we are helping we're just a little grassroots individual indivisible group and I'm trying to stop that but we we organize at the grassroots level and we would like to
009push this through so any help you can give us with that maybe you need to amend it a little bit I don't think climate mobilization is very good at doing long term transformative plans that's more your bailiwick so I'll just close it off right there and say please pass it even if you have to strip out the any planning in there okay any dates you want to take it to Council okay okay thank you I'm happy to have the I'm sorry could you state your name first closer to the mic so that are you going TV I'm Kathleen Murphy a resident of Ann Arbor a retired teacher educator and tonight I'm part of Ann Arbor invisible which is supporting this resolution I'm here I'm happy to have the opportunity to speak to you in support
010of climate mobilizations declaration of employment emergency I emailed you several days ago and I received a message from Susan and which I was very happy to get it filled me in on some of the difficulties you've had in trying to get a sustainable climate plan in place it also made me realize the time effort and talent that you and other members of the city government have already devoted to this planning process nevertheless I think more has to be done I come to this as a person who was very concerned about climate change and who strongly supports the green new deal which was proposed in Congress I was disappointed that the DNC didn't plan one of the Democratic presidential debates to be about the climate crisis dealing with the climate crisis seems foundational to any other
011plans we have for the future at the global national state and local levels I've discovered recently in talking to some people in Fort Wayne I mean in Ann Arbor about the green new deal that they had no idea what it was which surprised me I went to the climate strike and afterwards I talked to many people who also didn't come because they didn't know about it so it's becoming increasingly clear to me that some of us are very tuned into the urgency of this problem and others are not tuned in and should be I'm driven by the to action by this sense of emergency the International report that said we had 12 years left to try to turn the process around is now 11 years what this declaration of climate emergency says is that we
012have an urgent emergency and we have to take urgent somewhat drastic but well-planned steps in a short amount of time to help sustain the planet in the future it will take a lot of planning lots of money and the collaboration of a lot of people to make an arbor a leader in bringing about what I see is the equivalent of a mini renew deal so I urge you to pass the declaration of a climate emergency and I would be glad to help you plan it and sell it to the City Council and the residents of Ann Arbor thank you thank you mr. Murphy hello my name is Janine Diller I've lived in the city since 1993 through graduate school and now as a resident and a parent and I'm just here to ask you to
013declare a climate emergency the main reason I know you probably agree with this is I think it's a responsibility of everybody to take care of their own corner of the world if we all did that the world would be taken care of it's our job to take care of Ann Arbor and we need a goal thank you I came Estella over here hi my name is Kent Clark live at 497 Larkspur Street I'm actually not here about the climate emergency resolution but I do support it and you'll hear a lot of excellent comments on it tonight and I appreciate your consideration of that I am here about your inventory that was presented to you at your last meeting of greenhouse gas emissions in Ann Arbor and particularly transportation emissions I was on the commission a
014long time ago and we did one of the first inventories for the city of Ann Arbor and I've got some notes every inventory Ann Arbor's done since then has inexplicably had transportation as a minor source of emissions though nationwide it's one of the biggest sources of emissions twenty-nine percent nationwide only seventeen percent here versus thirty one percent for the state of Michigan when I was on the Environment Committee I looked into the source of that discrepancy and I found we were basing our transportation emissions on a 2003 U of M Center for sustainability study master's thesis that document had some some really serious emissions it did not look at non-resident commuter traffic at all it specifically ignored that traffic it did not look at aircraft traveled by residents of the city of Ann Arbor it
015did not look at transportation related most of the businesses in our but though it specifically did include a few major businesses such as the University and AATA and city of Ann Arbor I do include in this packet some of the actual text from that document that spells out precisely what they did count in their analysis it's unclear that these problems oh I'm sorry and also emissions from the freeway ring also not counted as part of that seven cleared those problems been corrected I pointed them out at the time but I've never seen any change to indicate that there was some kind of reanalysis done our transmission transportation emissions are still not mostly low compared to everything else we compare that to there's now a potentially better source of that information NASA Oro rnl has produced
016a street-by-street of the entire united states analysis of emissions roadway transportation emissions and they provide that to the public in a one-kilometer granularity grid they provide the data for free it would just prior that somebody take a look at those those data and compare that to what we have in Ann Arbor and I'm recommending that I've asked how we calculated how nurses a sponsor but it was only last week so it's not really staff taking too long but I would ask you to look into how we're calculating transportation visions for that inventory and you should decide if the non-resident commuter traffic which at times is more traffic than any of the resident traffic should be ignored my belief is that it should not we have influence over those commuters and how they get into an
017arbor really our lacking that information is part of the reason we have been pushing for the commuter rail that we really should have pushed a long time ago more than we have it seems to have dropped off the radar I would also ask you to ask staff to look at the dark a data set and see if it's something we could use in Ann Arbor thank you well thank you mr. Clark good evening my name is Frank Bateman I'm here with my born and bred in Ann Arbor Tony wife Lindsay I'm here to speak as a volunteer at food gathers to support the resolution you have before you later we have volunteered at food gathers for almost 15 years almost full-time weekly since we retired about 10 years ago I've worked in every facet of
018their operation from the kitchen to the warehouse we did it because we spent a year trying out volunteer opportunities in Ann Arbor when we retired and found that this was the most rewarding one for us because it did the most for the community that we could see tonight I could speak specifically they're asking for help with their food waste recycling and we do tens of thousands of tons of that a year we bring food in from everywhere from stores from gardens from homes we sort it we reuse most of it and what we don't reuse we separate the packaging and recycle that and then we compost what's left in fact we have a lot of fun doing it and part of our social life is now with people we volunteer with there and I would
019encourage anyone of you anytime you want to come and work with us side by side with us it's a lot of fun it really is please please give us consideration thank you all right thank you well my name is Dan Calderon I'm a citizen of man harbour I just recently retired retired after twelve and a half years of food gatherers so I'm gonna speak to the same point the last speaker did I've worked in a lot of different organizations in this town grassroots organizations who gathers as a place where I found at home recycle Ann Arbor was a place that I worked in the mid 80s was part of the great expansion of the 80s it was a exponential time I carried some of those principles that I learned there in the food gatherers and
020that's what I want to kind of talk about what we were able to keep out of the landfills six days a week food gathers sends out five to seven trucks picking up food from all sorts of retails be it wholesale or small businesses or grocery stores we bring that all over the county all that food that we get from these stores out of their back rooms would be going straight to the landfill six days a week we coordinate and supervise dozens of volunteers like Frank we just talked and these people help us to processing all that incoming donation they make sure that everything that we do receive that goes back out is going to be safe for our clientele presentable for our clientele and then they very carefully separate and make sure that all the
021recyclables can come out of that all the compostables get put in the right place this is a really labor-intensive process we're talking thousands of pounds of food today and yet we accomplish it every day I say we because I still feel like a food gather up to twelve and a half years I've only been retired for a month so I'm still there this gathering process required great care many hours of work as well as constant vigilance developing standard procedures implementing and monitoring them take time and diligence we monitor temperatures are sensitive food from the moment they touch our hands to the moment they go back out of to our clients to make sure all our food is safe we spend hours and hours teachers teaching and supervising volunteers who go out on routes with the
022truck drivers work at our warehouse and work at the Delano Center where we have the kitchen for the homeless downtown in our operation we're very careful not only to provide good food to our clients but to divert as much as possible from them from the landfill using getting rid of only the unusual portions we recycle about seven bales averaging almost a thousand pounds of piece every two weeks that rounds out to over 100 150 bales a year that's a lot of space we also recycle a lot of plastics being packaging and of all sorts of different kinds we also fill up six dumpsters a week of compostables that would have otherwise gone to landfill I urge you to consider food gathers as a responsible member and keeping the landfill as clean as possible out of
023the landfill as much as possible and please recognize them thank you oh thank you sir good evening my name is Judy FOIA and I'm really amazed at these extemporaneous speakers up here I wrote mine I'm also going to speak to you about the gem that is food gatherers over the past two and a half years I think you could say I've become an excitable girl with difficult news almost every hour of every day with changing cultural norms that I thought were bedrock with unraveling institutions I thought were sound and maybe even improving even relationships that have hardened along political lines yes I've become excitable and I've done my share of protesting meeting writing singing supporting and I'll continue but I have learned that while it is very difficult to protest against policies and terrible choices
024it's harder much harder to advocate for what continues to work what continues to make communities like Ann Arbor meet vital needs and to thrive this evening you are witnessing with both people and data an organization that continues to make this community work with food gatherers you're hearing from Ann in touch effective and efficient organization that never stops it good enough food gatherers has met the constant challenges of changing markets changing attitudes and regulations and the growing threat to our environment beyond the 5.4 million meals that it provided just last year alone one fiscal year food gatherers handling of food waste has filled a void in city services that should not only be recognized but it really should be championed I feel strongly that council that you should you get food gathers as a partner in
025food waste management food gatherers deserves these annual funding appropriations and this always improving city deserves a partner like food gatherers thank you I look forward to seeing the boat hi my name is Francine Alexander and I'm a longtime resident of Ann Arbor one I can't imagine that anyone here is doubting that there is a climate emergency and I welcome you making a stand and an expression of that and help the city take action in that direction some of the climate emergency is offset by the organization we've been hearing about food gathers who is trying to reduce the impact on climate change I would like to note I think John John can correct me if I'm wrong sixteen point four percent of the six million pounds that food gathers re collects and redistributes is potential food
026waste from the city of Ann Arbor alone that is nine hundred and eighty four thousand pounds annually the cost to food gathers in doing that as a nonprofit is a hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars I would suggest you think about what that would cost the public entity the city of Ann Arbor to do that work given the amount that the food gathers does to leverage volunteers like the gentleman we just heard this is an incredible service to the public good and the public community that's being funded on a shaky earn shaker ground of private philanthropy and it's not appropriate to have that sustained in that manner supplemented yes but sustained and relied upon know that needs government and public reliable revenue stream and so I support I ask you to support that and think
027about that very explicitly they also serve 170 partner programs so that food that comes into food gathers goes to 170 other programs who otherwise would be seeking money to buy food at rates far beyond the arrangement that they have with food gathers 90 percent of those programs in the annual survey that is done by food gathers as part of their continuous improvement and service analysis 90 percent of those food partners say that loss of food guard air support would have a major and negative effect on the programs they serve so the cycle of good and the cycle of savings that that does for many other programs is has an incredibly far reach in closing I want to quote from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization if food waste were a country it would come
028in third after US and China in terms of global warming food waste decomposes in landfills and releases methane a greenhouse gas that is at least 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide I ask you to think about their impact on the environment and on Human Services in our community and fund that reliably and sustainably thank you thank you miss Alexander evening Judah Garber a longtime and Arbor resident here to speak just briefly in support of the climate emergency just a few points one there was a climate emergency whether we declare one or not and two I believe it's incumbent for all the reasons that have been said for each of us individually and government entities to do what we can to mitigate that thank you thank you sir hi I'm Rita Mitchell and and I'm
029one of many the support the moving forward in addressing the climate emergency and I ask you to address approach it with that urgency and with the courage that we all need to spend the money that it's going to take it's going to be expensive but we almost have no choice so let's go forward with God I do have another comment though about the heritage trees so this is a totally different direction but it is somewhat related I hope you'll work on that tonight because our trees are part of our climate plan and I just want to point out that for example on Huron Street we had some trees that will not become heritage trees that were removed during the reconstruction that's been going on and that's a shame and I hope that we can develop
030some policies that will protect trees more carefully in the future Thanks and I have come to ask you to support the climate emergency declaration for our children and our grandchildren thank you I'm thanking misprint anybody else wish to offer public commentary at this time over here there will be an opportunity later near the end of the meeting for further public commentary Ken Garber no relation to Judah I also applaud food gatherers efforts extremely important I'm very aware of the contribution of food waste to global heating but I'm here to tell you tonight about the world's biggest pyramid scheme would make Bernie Madoff blush for over 30 years we've known about anthropogenic climate change that we had a certain carbon budget to spend before global temperatures got out of hand that's because most co2 once spewed
031into the atmosphere stays there for centuries are longer so we had this budget which we could spend down but when it was spent we had to be at zero emissions it wasn't hard just reduce emissions one or two percent a year and we could have gotten there within budget carbon budget instead we spent like drunken sailors we continued on the next we counted on the next generation to bail us out we talked a good game remember the Earth Summit at Rio and 1992 I do like it was yesterday Kyoto 1997 finally Paris in 2015 by now it should be obvious this is not working annual co2 emissions are almost double what they were in 1990 and they're still going up even if countries we're meeting their premiers commandments which they're not we'd be on track
032for over three degrees Celsius heating more likely to be four or five our carbon budget for 1.5 degrees may already be gone depending on system feedbacks which are uncertain the only question now is how many millions of people will die and how many millions of species will go extinct this is not hyperbole this is coming meanwhile I'd fly everywhere take road trips eat mindlessly by endless stuff emit like crazy the carbon economy has been great for me a guilt free ride I assume someone else was taking care of global warming except they weren't really it was all a scam and I was happy to participate in this scam this pyramid scheme because I got in early it's today youth who have no carbon left to spend who are at the bottom of this inverted carbon
033pyramid I'm running out of time so I guess I'll get to the point last month you criticized our climate emergency resolution as symbolic without specifics funding or accountability I actually agree with you after the false promises are real and Kyoto and Paris I don't want another symbolic resolution here this time we're serious we must end emissions in six years based on science and global equity principles we've given you one possible roadmap our six-year decarbonisation proposal last time you asked us for something real I think this is pretty real now I'm not naive I know most people here I'm ready to make the necessary sacrifices to do this but I think you know this is the right thing to do thank you thank you mr. Grover [Applause] hi everyone I'm Mary Garden I'm live in northeastern
034Harbor I don't have a prepared speech and I wasn't planning to speak so we'll see what happens I'll make it short you all know the data of how many people are being affected how many people will die annually due to climate change and how much more it will cost if it isn't addressed right now the longer you wait the more evening will cost to get back to get any sense of normalcy even though the normalcy we're talking about is a hotter temperature than we grew up with if the lives that are at stake and the infrastructure that is at stake and the incredible cost it's going to take to maintain our infrastructure and our public health if that doesn't constitute an emergency I'm wondering what the definition of emergency is and the reason I asked
035this we were at a city council meeting a little while ago and we were asking for climate funding and one of the city council members said well this money shouldn't be spent this way this money should be spent for an emergency and that is perhaps the most important reason to pass this resolution because if we don't acknowledge that this is an emergency it just gets kicked down the road it is an emergency it is now we don't have much time we're in the last decade so we already blew those decades before we're in the last decade this is like big football guys you know weird or in a bad shape right now so if this isn't an emergency then what what are we calling an emergency if the future generations are really gonna question how
036we handle this so let's call it an emergency and let's act like it is Thanks thank you Miss Garden is there any more any people desire to make a comment at this time again there's another opportunity later in the meeting thank you everybody so the next item on the agenda is the as the MuRF rfg o the introduction of new staff members Eileen would you like to go first my name is Eileen Naples I'm your new resource recovery manager for the city of Ann Arbor based in the public works office I come to you from Oregon where I was a senior hazardous waste analyst before that with US EPA where I worked on solid waste and lifecycle assessment policy I'm a waste walk and really thrilled to be working for a city it's such an
037impassioned City in particular really exciting to hear all of the engagement tonight I've been working with the city since October 1st and it's been a really energizing three weeks I can tell there's a lot of passion around these topics and I'm thrilled to be working with the city on behalf of the city of the community and with our partners here in the city including you all to foster this wonderful legacy of resource management that you have down we'll hear from Galen Hardy good evening everyone I'm Galen Hardy and I'm the new employee with the office of sustainability there I'm your new community engagement specialist ed my motto is for all the residents out here I want to work with you well for you with you so that's what I hope to permeate throughout the neighborhoods
038and throughout the communities because climate change is real I live in the city of Detroit before I came here I worked with zero waste Detroit around recycling and before that I spent some years with focus hope so I'm a man of the people and I just want to tell you that you guys are way farther ahead in the big cities so just keep pounding and keep doing the hard work because you know if the big cities can't lead it has to be one of the most progressive so thank you welcome mr. Harvey so okay so the next item on the agenda is the Murph RFP Crescent thank you good evening everyone do you have it just squiggle the mouse I was told go ahead and search yep okay because I've got opening remarks yes introduction
039I guess as usual let me just start introduce other folks staff fellow staff with me besides Eileen just introduce yourself in the tremendous addition to our team with me also is Craig QP or Public Services administrator my boss and my Lee machi SK are polar courts manager Eileen's boss and my colleagues so so tonight knowing you've got a lot to do and I don't get you folks updated I'm gonna do unusual for myself and commit the cardinal sin of reading off script to stay in on script and to try to be timely so pardon my lack of usual eye contact with folks but I want to get through this so that you folks and certainly move on to lots of other important things that you folks are looking to get to tonight so thank you
040commissioners there we go we got one folks we got one on the left side tonight I'm here to update you on the status of our procurement process to choose a vendor for processing an average recycling material but Before we jump into the nitty gritty detail of our process I want to put this task into context for you and for the community here in attendance and watching at home as you know the city of Ann Arbor has historically provided the local processing capacity for recyclables collected from city residents and businesses as well as outside third-party material however in July 2016 we ceased processing operations at our materials recovery facility or MuRF as our contracted vendor did not have a safe work environment or equipment in proper condition in spite of the recent challenges our proud that
041the city has maintained an uninterrupted recycling processing service despite the lack of our MuRF not being processing here locally as Ann Arbor looks to the future direction of local solid waste management our collective goal is to identify best the most effective and efficient recycling processing option for our community going forward like our neighbors elsewhere in Michigan and in cities across the country and arbors efforts have been impacted by global trends in the recycling market as well as my local evolutions in program management statewide recycling has received attention from the highest levels of government in 2017 the governor's recycling Council issued a comprehensive report to push the state to double this recycling rate of only 15 percent as our current statewide rate through increased education market development increased funds clear performance metrics in implementation of hub-and-spoke
042processing model where materials are collected in lower density areas and shipped to high-tech regional merce to achieve economies of scale the report was prophetic because in 2018 China a national sword effectively banned imported scrap materials unless those materials met an extremely strict contamination rate of 1 hat 1/2 of 1% 0.5% contamination today recycling service providers across the country continue to adapt to the new recycling market and associated price increases by embracing change and the opportunity to implement recommendations much like the ones highlighted in Michigan's 2017 recycling council report here locally in Ann Arbor we've developed our draft solid waste resources management plan the shrimp again bad acronym sorry a detailed strategy document that focuses on a 20-19 a23 planning period to address our solid waste operational needs and desires of the community was brought to
043you folks back in August that draft document the shrimp furnace process was cognizant of ongoing developments in regional recycling cooperation efforts as well which led to the establishment of the Washington regional Resource Management Authority or warm up on December 5th just as a little heads-up your next meeting between November and December will be bringing back the revised we have based on the feedback from you folks in City Council at their works so you can anticipate that followed by providing it to City Council for their acceptance after that so with this context in mind the presentation the next following slides I'm gonna walk you through our process to date for choosing a recycling process service method and provider for Ann Arbor looking ahead for the June 30th 2020 expiration of our current contract for these services
044so to begin with that service to that end this August we started the process to identify your firm or team of firms to provide the labor equipment and materials necessary to sort process and market the city's recycling for the next five to ten years finally pre-proposal meetings in late August we had five firms that attended we received two proposals on September 17th and reviewed those proposals and interviews of the two firms were held the week of September 30th needless to say this has been a very busy time a slide in our process but we're excited to walk you through our process to date about the future of recycles processing in Ann Arbor so again just a well history in context for our own facility the existing mer facilities approximately thirty seven thousand seven hundred square
045feet in size approximately 11,000 square feet of that is open tip floor area the area there in the upper right hand corner of the graphic where the materials are brought from the collection trucks our MuRF currently handles approximately fourteen to fifteen thousand tons of city residential and commercial recycling materials annually as was on the previous slide if you had noted the facility was originally equipped for dual stream processing when it opened in the 1990s and in 2010 it was modified to accommodate single stream processing the current facilities layout as it's shown here is influenced by its original configuration and actually some of the equipment still in the facility is over twenty years old as of 2016 July 2016 when we stopped processing the MuRF has been a transloading operation for the city's collected materials find
046the city's kind of track termination with the then Murphy operator in July of waste management conducted interim translating operations until July 2017 and then the city contracted with recycling Arbor Rea for translating services which are scheduled to go through June 30th 2020 that's the contractor we're looking to replace so the decade excuse me the facility is well over two decades old so another aspect here of course as the building is getting old and aged and in need of some repair so see separately is planning on doing a facility evaluation to look at what those repairs need to be done so just a little sight of them that we have coming up so one other item in terms of the MuRF itself in terms of its history in particular and out to the equipment and kind
047of a situation we're in that following the termination of the more contract back in July of 16 our city's Safety Unit undertook a review of safety related deficiencies relying on in-house inspection reports as well as those provided by my OSHA with the intent of identifying facility areas that needed repair replacement or new installation to bring the facility back to an acceptable state for safe operation and to meet safety best practices deficiencies cited in their report included issues with electrical equipment conveyor safety and guarding wood worker safety and walking and working surface hazards some of our findings for this process are added here give you an idea the state of the facility and the MuRF equipment that's how is didn't we be happy to provide more detail there's been interest and we've been talking about it
048for some time but to cut to the chase following these equipment inspections the city's made the determination that the existing equipment with the exception of the baler and it's feed conveyor which are still used by our AAA today will no longer be put into use due to these concerns and it's it's poor condition so it's part of our process potential offers on the RFP we our proposal medium is out at the site and they had the opportunity to walk through the facility prior to submitting any see the Passaic themselves so the RFP itself in a rapidly changing recycling market and I was striving to make an informed decision about how best to utilize our existing infrastructure and maximize recovery of our recycling resources we whine a neighbor's recycled materials to be more than just discarded
049household and business debris we want them to be part of a clean and valuable commodity chain destined for their best and highest use as new folks do - so our RFP 1928 I was issued for this process provides two potential options for recycling processing for us here in Ann Arbor the first option that we sought was a continuation of our current services where our MuRF building would continue to be used to transload recycle materials to another MuRF for processing while the section second option entails replacing the existing MuRF equipment to allow local sorting and process you know recyclables here at our facility there are relative risks and benefits to each scenario and I'll discuss those in the upcoming slides and again this city seeking transloading or the MuRF services for five years was our base
050starting as soon as the current contract ends so the new contract would start July 1st 2020 however well we'd also consider a longer term of ten years if it would be to the benefit of the city so that was an option included within the RFP so the results as I mentioned Scirocco we received two proposals in response to our RFP one from recycling arbor rea for either transloading or MuRF processing they submitted it for both options and another submit Oh from M terre environmental who proposed an option one for translating so with that background in mind let me walk you through or two offers first for option one latrans loading option so recycling Arbor Rea of course well known but make it clear for everyone re is a local nonprofit that began the Curt site
051collection in the city in the 1970s and has actually director with the city to collect recyclables in the city since the 1980s re also operates the city's drop-off station they operate their own reuse center on South Industrial and a materials recovery yard out on Jackson Road in south ownership where they handle construction and demolition CND materials as well as other bulky and drop-off materials for the past two plus years RA has been providing the transloading services as I mentioned for the city out of our Murph facility Rea currently uses the baler and the conveyor that I mentioned that is still functioning well and they bail what's called OCC or old corrugated cardboard so I have some of that material that comes in very clean and rich so they're able to bail that to take for
052processing and they loose load the other recyclable materials in an open-top trailer which if you can make out in the photo there is what what's happening there that material is then transported to a MuRF down in Cincinnati Ohio that it's owned and operated by their team member Rumpy waste and recycling services for our AA's option one they proposed to continue loose loading and transporting their recyclables with the transportation services provided by a subcontractor recycle waste services of Northwest Ohio but instead of transporting the materials to Cincinnati and Rumpke re proposes to deliver the materials to the Rostock MuRF in Southfield Michigan rossik is the resource recovery and recycling authority of Southwest Oakland County so another Regional Authority in the area and that MuRF for Rock is operated by Republic located approximately 40 miles from Ann
053Arbor and again our a would continue to use our baler and conveyor for their OCC as they have the other proposal for option one our second option or second proposal from M Terre environmental em tear is a vertically integrated resource recovery and recycling company with 43 years of experience with in-house recycling collection processing and marketing they're headquartered in Canada but they also have a significant footprint and presence in Michigan they own and operate 14 of their own and contract six others for municipalities and as a firm process over 550 million tons so over a half a billion tons of recyclables annually in Michigan they have over 60 municipal contracts with three facility locations that serve communities in eight counties including Genesee here on Lapeer Oakland and Saginaw in June of 2020 and Tara is opening
054a single stream Murph in Lansing Michigan with the capacity to process forty to forty thousand tons per year and so I'm Tara is proposing in their proposal to operate maintain the MuRF again as a trans load facility to receive the recycles and they will trans load that into their their trucks and taking it to the new Murph and Lansing for processing em Tara also proposes to use the existing baler and feed conveyor for OCC and M Tara's a person marketing team will be the ones performing the materials marketing and logistics for our materials and so to explain a bit of the graphic here a little different than our floor plan from their proposal the colored areas illustrate some new items that they're including for there were a new loader and forklift but key item a
055high compaction compactor and that they would use closed top walking floor trailer so rather than loading on top they would be loading closed trailers and that's notable because with the use of the compactor and terrorist proposal states that they're capable of consistently achieving 25 to 20 23 to 25 tons per load and the closed cut top containers and Tara agrees to meet or exceed our our current average minimum weight standard of 25 20 point five tons per low so observations between these two proposals under rupture one to summarize both proposals continue our operating procedure since July 2016 without significant capital investment both proposals significantly reduce the distance that an average recyclables will travel for processing compared to today as we consider the proposals we do observe some differences between the two for option one RA
056is a local entity with experience in the community including twenty six months of transloading operations at our facility m ter is a larger geographic and recycling management footprint both offers have met the conditions of the RFP and their respective organizational structures though approaching it differently Rea proposes using a team and subcontractors while I'm Tara is vertically integrated using their own resources finally in terms of processing differences between the two proposals Rea offers to continue loose loading as I said into open top trailer for transportation to rocks Murphy while on Tara will provide the equipment compaction unit loading the material and the closed top trailers to transport it to their new Lansing Murph in their proposal in the interview M ter emphasized their new Murph will be equipped with new equipment to officially processor recyclables meeting
057today's strict recycling commodity standards so for option to replace the Murph equipment process we know the city is proud of its legacy as an environmental leader and early recycling and Murph adapter in keeping with this legacy we're looking to this RFP as an opportunity to determine whether it's prudent and in the city's best interest to bring back on-site recycling processing to an overseer it's our duty to be analytical and clear I to staff as as much as possible as we evaluate our options but we recognize this as a manner that generates strong interest even passionate enough and asked I don't know how many times I've been asked well when are we going to restart the MuRF we take that these questions and that question in particular very seriously and the pride the city has in
058its legacy as a strong environmental leader as we evaluate option two the option to replace the MuRF equipment and once again perform processing on-site we also have to consider the complexity of today's recycling market and financial obligations associated with large capital investments and ask ourselves is restarting the MuRF processing and they never is the most efficient and effective means of recycling in and ever so that's what we estaphan with them and so to move forward we did receive one effort for option two from our AAA so this proposal from recycling Arbor would be their first effort equipping and then operating a full processing MuRF so to perform that they've assembled a team to implement that plan and it includes their current processing partner Rumpke waste and recycling services to prepare them to train them up
059for operating and processing facility our ace proposal includes refurbishment of some existing offline equipment although the RFP indicated that other than the existing baler and the feed conveyor the rest of the equipment was not to be used due to safety and maintenance concerns we asked Ari about that during their interview why the proposal included refurbishing some of that equipment and they indicated that it was cost that was the deciding factor for that and so taking into account as we go forward the detailed cost analysis that we need to still need to do but so folks are aware arrays cost estimate for operating the MuRF is based on refurbishing some of the equipment that the city has determined needs to be retired their proposal states they'd perform transloading on-site without interruption during their proposed RIA quipping
060of the MuRF initially they indicated that take two years I was in their written proposal to do that process but in the interview they reduced that to one year another aspect of the proposal is the cost proposal in revenue structure that we requested in the RFP is the current industry standard approach where the operators costs are covered by the capital cost basically paying for the equipment that comes in and is placed in the facility and the OEM the operational maintenance cost the actual processing cost to operate that equipment and do the processing those together make up the base service fee that they would be paid on a monthly basis then in terms of the revenue share revenue typically with this arrangement and as was asked for in the RFP the revenue would come to the
061community so it come to the city until that revenue amount exceeds that total base service so all of a sudden when it's met what their costs are it's kind of gravy so at that point let's share it between the two parties however under our EES proposal they've proposed to receive all of the revenue until it reaches $45 and then above that there would be a proportion between the city and us so they basically reversed the standard approach and also how we've asked so that was an exception to our RFP so something that would need to be evaluated and considered so in terms of observations that we have so far restating some of the things I've mentioned noted this would be our ace first undertaking at operating a processing MuRF they've indicated that they can't perform
062the translating operations and keep that facility operating as is why they do the RIA quipment and they have the exceptions that I just mentioned in terms of refurbishing some of the equipment though we've indicated that it's it's offline and to stay offline and the revenue share item reas option two they proposed a 10-year term first to consider and again regarding timeline as I mentioned originally they noted that to re-equip the MuRF would be a 24 month process and then during the interview they enact that in half to 12 months which sounds very desirable certainly if we had that direction we want to do but we would need to be real careful and evaluating considering that to determine whether that truly is feasible giving the work that's going to be involved and again back to those
063repairs that city may have to do to the structure itself so that would need careful consideration so next steps of where we're at we the staff needs to go through and review material that they're in proposals we had interviews and with complexity and items with this we've asked additional questions and for materials from the vendors we've recently received that so the staff needs to review those items and come up with a selection of the recommended contractor and option to select so then we'll move forward our standard process would be then to negotiate with that selected contractor to form a recommended contract which would be presented to City Council for approval and their action or targeting November 18th which is still gonna be tight but I guess I've got nothing better to do definitely the first
064meeting December but that is our target realizing you've got a lot to do I don't know if we have time but there is a question discussion I must add for her all right Thank You Crescent yeah let's see any comments John I just had a question is there any difference in kind of what we'll be able to recycle with either other proposals or assuming kind of current practice within an hour yes there is no exceptions that were raised and that was included what our materials are so not anticipated thank you how does this relate to the the county effort of regionalization could you describe how that would fit or is it sort of operating independently as well as that could come into play but the city has not yet decided to join the regional authority
065the regional authority is up and running so they are established and are beginning to work I'm sure over time there could be opportunities perhaps even with either option now and actually both options and the price requests did include for additional material and what we would get what's called a host fee which would help offset the use of our facilities so that certainly was laid out and included in the RFP so the vendors were aware of that possibility anybody else yeah you mentioned the revenue sharing for option to the any revenue over $45 per ton would go to Ann Arbor what would the revenue be like for option 1 further to option 1 they didn't there wasn't a change from the standard which is similar that the revenue share would come to the city until it
066reached the point of the processing fee and then at that point there's there's a split as far as the proposal or the response to Commissioner Skinner so let's let me try to describe it and these don't take these numbers as accurate but just keep the numbers simple if we are paying the processor X $100 a ton to process our recyclables and they go through and they sort them and they send them to end markets and they have some value it's a little more complicated but then you calculate what is the average value of all the cardboard the plastics the aluminum you can come up with what's that average dollars per ton on the market that was received until so let's say we were paying operator X $100 a ton next month they recovered the revenue
067was $50 a ton under the standard process what was asked on the proposal we would get that $50 in in essence it would credit or we would get the revenue or credit off of our bill if it was a hundred and hundred dollars a ton it would still come to the city if it was a hundred and ten dollars a ton the city would get the hundred dollars and then the ten that's over the processing charge there would be an established agreed to percentage 50 50 40 60 60 40 so we might get four dollars of the ten we might get eight dollars of the time so so to use those same numbers as the analogy that we pay them a total of $100 per ton next month the revenue is $25 a ton and
068in fact currently our materials in the range of $20 so next month they would keep all the revenue the next month it's $30 a ton they would still keep their revenue wouldn't be until it reached $45 and Assent say $50 that was we that's when we would start receiving a portion of the revenue under what they proposed to me any other questions John I have a couple of comments first of all I'd like to commend the city and the process just so everybody knows the city that Steve and me have input on the RFP and we provided input and based on that there were some things that were changed with the RFP I think including the inclusion of option one so I appreciate that secondly I would urge the city when it evaluates as well
069as council the proposals it's not explicit in the evaluation and I don't even think I gave this input I can't recall any more but Ann Arbor sustainability framework includes economic development and what I would suggest is that any RFP that the city issues that it looks at what the economic development impact is to the city is their investment in the city are there more local jobs in the city and so I would consider I would ask that when you evaluate I think the proportion that's thirty five percent where you're looking at the the details of the proposal that you consider that aspect of the of sustainability framework in looking at what the economic development might be on an IRA may not be very significant but there may be differences between the the various options and
070the various quotes and then thirdly also with respect to both quotes that's practice in industry these days is to basically have responsible ability for the entire value stream and that way you can really look at recycling where it starts from reuse and potentially not even using a product at all all the way through recycling and how it's sorted and how it goes to landfill and so I would ask the city to look at these quotes as well as just how we go about the process in structuring how we handle our solid wastes to see what we can do so that there really is responsibility total responsibility and accountability for the value stream the last comment I had is I think it was a great process I only wish this RFP he had gone out a
071year or 18 months ago I mean we were been in this situation for a long time we know that we're spending a lot of extra money by handling recycling recyclables as we are and I think one of the lessons learned for this going forward needs to be what's the earliest we can put an impulse out into the vendor community and get input on something like this and act on it quickly so that we save not only money but also greenhouse gases which we're currently wasting in a sense right now by shipping all this stuff to Ohio so thanks very much Chris the entire stream collections are so important in an hour our amount of waste in our recyclables is way less than most communities because we have educated our residential customers so very well and
072because we have paid recycle in Arbor to out of their trucks with notes on the bins to work with people and try to get more conscientious effort about recycling and I would hate that to be lost I would certainly hope it would be included in any RFP about how we handle recyclables I know lots of other communities have their trash people pick up recyclables and if the recycle trucks aren't available they just send the trash trucks and take it to the landfill I don't think recycling are was ever done such a thing secondly these proposals the two first ones seem to say where at least five years if not ten in shipping our recyclables to Oakland County or Lansing and only one of these three says we keep them here in our processing and build
073them into our own community as they have been I certainly would prefer that I think trucking things elsewhere is problematic and expensive also there was clearly some issue about compacting recyclables and increasing the amount of waste that then is produced in the process recycle Ann Arbor we won that argument last time around and they used the open bins in order to keep from compacting that is maybe increasing costs - I don't know but in any case these are very difficult decisions and very complicated ones but there's so much included in collection as well as processing and then how to minimize the amount of transport cost that it's the big picture of you I know you're trying thank you yeah any other comments um I have a question so I mean I agree that with other
074comments that have been made that that vertical integration in a sense of collections all the way through the sale or the commodity is valuable in that sense that you do have some control over contamination and the quality of the recycle the value of the recyclables that end up out of the process I'm not sure what you meant by that empty area is vertically integrated basically they as a firm they collect they process they market their employees their equipment no subcontracting and that would be the case here there would be entero staff driving em to our trucks being loaded by antara staff to take into the m Terra okay but understand this is not the local collection the company mind set okay okay Crescent and I mean I also agree that you know that one aspect
075of this is the regionalization I mean as a governor in outlying governor Snyder outlined at 2017 that a system where you're consolidating into am worth into and we're from the more rural areas surrounding which has been envisioned with this warmer proposal you you get both efficiencies and you also get you know some economies of scale so how would these option ones be be compared economically for overall costs you know if we were to go to a regionalization in other words in other words or all the other communities in Washington are County going to have to have their stuffed truck to a MuRF far away like Lansing or and how would that affect their costs you know the total cost structure versus if we really had everything collected to a local morph and processed and then
076and then shipped from there you're asking speculations we can't say what warmers going to do or not do they're a separate organization or not part of that body and so it would be improper for us to even speculate what they're gonna do with their materials yeah no I understand that I'm just thinking trying to look forward a little bit to different scenarios responding I would say that yeah that's epic warm I'm think is gonna be looking at but our facility and wherever we're at with that will be enabled to protest for not a member at that point can I comment on that briefly I think Commissioner Brown brings up an important point and I would like to use this opportunity to encourage our council representatives to really bring to closure this question on warm oh
077I think this commission unanimously passed a resolution encouraging council to join the warm up and this is a good reason to do so I mean if every county or every every individual municipality is shipping all of its processing waste somewhere else Ohio somewhere else in Michigan that really doesn't make sense we've addressed we think the the key issues in terms of voting rights those can be changed if there's an investment that the city makes and so that there would be proportional voting rights we've also we think addressed some of the other questions related to labor issues and so we really encourage council to act on this because these kinds of decisions are definitely interdependent I agree and then I just had one question about I understand you're scoring in the percentages you give to different
078categories so you presented here about qualifications experience work plans and fee proposals I don't think we have time here to go into the details of that but I think it would be instructive for us if we all understood better what the criteria were you know these were all numbers or associated with a topic but it's difficult to tell what the criteria are overall in terms of what's IT staff thinking okay and I would also you know urge Council to - I was wondering if you all were gonna present a SWOT analysis of these options to council now you know strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats analysis of each of these options going forward to council because I think it would be appreciating them now standard procurement process Commissioner Brown is to present the recommendation to council
079no no but I think you need all the business situations I've been and it's important to have a swallowed into SWOT analysis so that the decision makers have an idea of what the potential you know not the black not getting into the black swans but you know the the different strengths opportunities weaknesses and threats of the various of option one or option two okay so I think that would be helpful anything else okay well thanks a lot guys thank you thanks Craig thank you thanks for all the staff for coming yep I would just like to say for all of the people who are here to address us about the climate emergency this is one of the things that we would be dealing with after the climate emergency resolution was passed and I just want
080to make sure that you all pay attention to the dates and if you want background on where we are and how we got to this place and what the issues are I'm very happy to talk more with anybody about this okay well the next item on the agenda is the climate emergency resolution I think yeah I have to know I have to run over my people there's been some back-and-forth between myself and a few other commissioners to citizens who wrote to us and it was all in the spirit of providing some information about what's happened here in the past and both in the Energy Commission in the environmental Commission I think it seemed that many people were unaware that this body actually passed a very similar resolution in December of last year almost a year
081ago and that the and that I'm having a lot of trouble finding the difference between this proposed resolution and the one that was passed a year ago I think the only one that I've located is that our proposal had the resolution that we passed proposed that the city get to carbon neutrality by 2025 I believe but that the city overall get to carbon neutrality in 2040 and I think and at the time we thought that those were smart goals in the sense that they were achievable so you know with proper planning and citizen participation and and so these communications also we're encouraging people here to participate in the November 13th Town Hall climate emergency Town Hall that city staff the sustainability office has organized and I think Robin you were involved in that as well
082so I would encourage everybody here who concern he was concerned about the climate emergency that I think we all in this room share that every single one of us and the comment that I had made about your personal carbon profile was not meant to criticize anybody it was just meant as an educational exercise for all of us and that was because I personally found this very instructive for myself about being able to measure my carbon budget my carbon footprint and figuring out how much it would cost me personally to reduce it so for example I only got around an airplane once a year to see my son in California everything else I Drive and it's more than two people in the car so you know I know it seems marginal but everything everybody can do
083I think would contribute towards this goal so maybe I can offer a little bit explanation why we're having this discussion again I think that two council liaisons council member Bannister and myself probably dropped the ball last year and not formally bringing that resolution to Council but you know I think we've had the discussion before it's really easy to pass these resolutions you know I've sponsored god knows how many of them uphold the Paris climate Accords declare climate emergency you know do this do that and you know it it feels good to pass it but we there's nothing that that comes out of it and then we get to the budgeting process and and this energy behind hey let's do this resolution goes away and you know the budget comes and goes and things get stripped
084out and and we don't make any progress on anything and if anybody has been watching council lately I continue to talk about the fact that this is going to require sacrifice considerable sacrifice and in the way that we go about our lives and you know the way that we can have as a municipality the greatest impact on it is in our land use decisions in how we prioritize modes of transportation and I frankly don't think that that the people are aware how how people are voting on these things every little land use decision that we make impacts this and I think you know I completely wholeheartedly 100% support everything that's in this resolution I think my point is I want to see this energy brought to the council table when there are difficult land-use decisions
085to be made when they're difficult transportation decisions to be made when they're difficult resource allocation decisions to be made because all of a sudden it's silent then and that's when we need the push to do this stuff because it is gonna be hard and it is going to be hurt and it's it's gonna make people change so you know with that I I'm happy to take this to Council and I'm happy to I would hope everybody comes and pushes hard and I would hope that everybody starts paying attention to how your elected officials are voting on these things because we don't have a newspaper in this town covering us we don't have a local television station we have W EMU periodically but you know it's going to take work on everybody's part to make sure
086that that the elected officials are taking steps to get to carbon neutrality and I sit at that table and we're not making substantial steps at all any other comments I would just you know I agree with much of what chip said and you know it was exciting to have all of the email that we got this week and I'm sorry that I didn't respond to a lot of you because it just kind of quadrupled and I wasn't able to get everybody but but we've been talking about this for a long time and we've been working at this for a long time and I know that some of you are coming into this process and we very much want you to join us in this but you know there are a whole lots of decisions that
087we have passed resolutions we've passed and we're not making progress on our goals I mean our recycling rate has not changed we did not come make any progress on our recycling diversion rates over the the plan that expired in 2017 we're not making progress in these things and we need people to come to city council meetings and to come and make arguments for why we're making the decisions that we're making and how we're spending money when we're allocating the budget and you know it's about five or six of us that are coming to these meetings and asking for them and we need more people to come I don't see why not sure but you can write emails I mean I'm not here you better outreach well I think the city's sustainability and innovations office is
088making the first step with that with this climate emergency test summit in on November 13th which is a Saturday it's going to be an all it's gonna there going to be things going on most of the day and there's a hour and a half for the public to come there are opportunities for people to volunteer to be on committees to gather information and help city staff with the planning process so I think it's going to require as input from as many citizens as possible and it's also going to require developing the political will in all the people who aren't in this room so you know we need to talk to our family friends and neighbors about you know about what their concerns are we did make that step this document that city van our climate
089mobilization the long list of things that that one would need to do we would need to do in the city some of them would put me out of business it's this is radical stuff but this stuff needs to get put in the hopper at the council level we you know it and each piece of it will be a big discussion and maybe the sustainability office is the place to play first on these things and they will take them up to the council will help but also but also you know for example the sustainability office organized putting up solar panels on the roof of fire station number six just last week and a lot of that was fueled by volunteer effort because you know the city has limited resources so it's going to require a substantial
090amount of volunteer effort to help with things as they like that as well I mean real tangible work out in the city I just wanted to answer your question the City Council puts its agenda up every week and so you can look online to find out what City Council is going to be talking about and I think the way that this group of people mobilized email us is exactly the example of how how you do it would you it was very nicely done it was really well organized it would have been helpful if we could have had the messages that we were sending back and distributed because I felt like I answered the same question again and again a lot of times and that would have been more helpful just it is an emergency so
091let's not tread the same ground over and over let's communicate and let's have this conversation and carry it forward but but I think exactly the way we're doing this right now and having this conversation right now that's how we do this and to be clear environmental Commission is an advisory body we make advice to City Council and the city administrator we don't have a budget we don't get to make those sorts of decisions but we are a voice but you are also a voice and and and it's helpful to have that coming from lots of quarters not just ours well I think it's going to be yes yeah it's gonna be the whole Wednesday afternoon with the public session from 5:30 to 7:00 with with with required online registration just because space is limited and
092you want to say something to you well just you know most of all of us have jobs too I mean it's hard for us to do these things and you know and we recognize that and you can't do everything you can't come to everything but you can't participate in a lot I've got several comments just to piggyback on that first of all how each one of us feel about council and individual votes my experience is is that all of Council is extremely dedicated and all of Council makes a really tremendous effort to reach out and listen to their constituents so if you can't make it to a meeting or if you don't feel an email is effective then arrange for meeting over coffee or a beer or whatever are go out to City event where
093they're gonna be there and engage them so I really think it's important that you talk to Council a couple of other things my personal preference or Mike is that we as a commission take a stance again tonight going into this summit and this is something that I just thought of in the last couple of days and that we look at these resolutions and consider passing a resolution possibly with different dates than either December resolution and at least in my opinion with different than the dates that are in the proposed resolution and I'll explain why I don't think those are feasible but at least something that sends another signal to council that something has to be done and that the climate neutrality summit on the 13th is the beginning of a process with the intent that
094that be carried over through several months and be elected in the next budget and I really think we should take a stand here my personal position is that the date should be 2035 and I'll explain why so the city of Ann Arbor the community is different than the city or than the University of Michigan or a company because it's not a command-and-control entity you don't have a president of the company or president the university in a border regions or whatever and they tell the entity this is what we're going to do we're going to put all resources behind it everybody in the organization falls in line we're gonna do your performance evaluation every year and if you don't and if you're not carrying your weight you're gonna be you're gonna there's going to be consequences
095the city is different the city has a hundred and twenty thousand independent actors the city has no authority over those people other than small in individual kinds of ordinances and things like that so it's not like presidents woo-seok can say the university is gonna be carbon neutral the Commission makes a recommendation it's going to be by the state the university is going to put this much the endowment behind it and everybody in the university fall into loud I worked in in industry I always worked for people I was never the guy at the top but I always knew what it was clear to me what had to happen and that's completely different in the city of Ann Arbor in the city of Ann Arbor in order to be carbon neutral by 2025 every single furnace
096virtually in the city of Ann Arbor will have to be replaced every single car will have to be replaced with an Eevee that Eevee will have to be charged with a hundred percent renewable energy which DTE doesn't supply every single gas station in the city of Ann Arbor will have to be a cart a charging point part all those cars by the way that we sell will go into some other community and pollute somewhere else so these things this is a huge task it requires new products it requires new policies it requires huge resources can I think we talked about your paper it's an excellent paper in terms of being something that really is a thought provoker but I think you told me that the price tag is 1.4 billion dollars that's a huge amount
097of money it's not that we're spending not that we're spending that money right now we are all paying the social cost of carbon it is there but we have to realize the total general fund of the city of Ann Arbor the total general fund is roughly a hundred million dollars so we're gonna spend 1.4 million dollars to do this you might you're safe billion right yeah I'm just I think I know I understand that not all of it would be the city's cost but just to put things in defend into consideration and then the other thing is the city cannot like the University of Michigan or the an our public schools issue a bond for seven hundred million dollars and then use that money for incentives and things like that for I mean that that's
098for capital investments that the city would make like the Ann Arbor Public Schools is considering making so these things are extremely complicated it's in my view simply impossible to get a hundred twenty thousand actors where there's a constituency for everything in the city to to you know with with their desires for extra money to meet 2025 I'll bring this to a point I think we should make a statement I think we should pass a resolution with a new date and that should be something that is taken into consideration by leadership including ourselves going into the neutrality something yeah I mean for example DT is announced that they are gonna go carbon neutral by 2050 but we get most of our energy accounts from New Zealand yeah but they're gonna build to a gigawatt size gas
099plants those will be in operation for 60 years so alright so let's see now can I make a few other comments real quickly there are some other issues with both of these resolutions in that it's not clear whether or not Rex or offsets would be satisfactory it's not clear what scope of emissions there's scope one two and three emissions generally Ann Arbor looks at scope one and two plus scope three transportation emissions as was pointed out we probably need to take a better look at those scope three transportation emissions but when we set these targets we have to know is this going to include the carbon footprint of the pencils that we that we source from somewhere else these kinds of things are really not yet clear and that's why I think we can send
100a message but there needs to be a lot more specificity a hell of a lot more planning and a hell of a lot better understanding amongst ourselves as well as in the community of what we're up for okay well we should close the discussion I hope if there was no other comments yeah well yes and that guy was just gonna piggyback on what we're saying that these are really complex issues and I think we should be careful not to demonize each other or jump to conclusions because there's no silver bullet you know the more I try to be a very I try to be a very thoughtful conscientious council member those people who've worked with me and you know there's a lot of detail in this like who knew we're discovering that concrete to create
101concrete is a huge greenhouse gas intensive process or there's trade-offs for things like if we want to add sidewalks for mobility we may be taking down heritage trees to do it or if we're taking down heritage trees to build more housing you know we need to take into account what we're losing when we what's the checks and balances and the trade-off on the different decisions we make and if we have a lot of density but we still have our cars then we have idling and and and so I'm just I'm really excited to that we're doing this climate emergency with teeth and the next make tonight and in the months ahead and and I really look forward to looking at these issues in detail and and and as a community taking a leadership role and
102getting to the right answers and I'm on the details and not just leaping to conclusions on something that looks good on the surface I hope that we I look forward to continuing to work with all of you to dig deep into the swot that you mentioned Thank You Man and I sigh sir I should also mention that the Energy Commission has been dealing with these issues for many years as well as the environmental commission but it's the Energy Commission that's been really at the forefront you know of adapting to climate change I guess I would also just want to say that we have passed multiple plans we passed the climate action plan in 2012 we passed this climate emergency we've passed multiple resolutions and plans and the point of doing them becomes the power of
103doing them becomes less relevant if there aren't people who back them up you know if we do this and we say we want said he comes up do that we need you to come to City Council we need you to contact your council people we need you to pay attention when there is a decision about whether or not we're going to reopen the MuRF or if we're gonna keep shipping our recycling to Ohio these are things that you know there's this aspirational we want to be clear and we want to make a really strong stance and that's important but there's also all the incremental stuff that we need to do at the same time and they both need all of our attention so also the Commission bylaws empower us to appoint working groups yes that
104have that only need to have a single Commissioner on them and so this could be a forum both at the Energy Commission in the environmental Commission for us to develop groups to work out various planning to do various planning and analyze costs benefits so on and so forth going forward so that we can present a more coherent and cogent package to council for their consideration and this would be a forum as well as the Energy Commission to discuss these periodically sorry and just one more thing I guess that I want to say it's not just City stuff that we should be talking about I mean DT has a it has a 70% coal fuel mix you know these are not things that we have any control of but there are things that we can tell
105our neighbors about and they're things that we can write to the Michigan Public Service Commission about and try to be really active and make whatever in exert whatever influence we have at a more than a local level because we can do certain things that are within in our bure and it's great and we should be doing them because we have the intelligence and the support for these things to be done and to be modeled then by other cities across the state but we have state policies that we really need to tackle and we have the university that we need to keep in check and there are all of these things that are things that we can do steps that we can take and that are all meaningful just ask a process question back to John's
106point about taking some type of action tonight I'm wondering if anybody has any ideas particularly the council members of is it best we've got two very similar resolutions and what I'm not certain what the best approach is to kind of reinvigorate the process commit to what we already committed to last December or good to do something new we share I share those concerns as well so Chris did you can I just propose a simple paragraph language okay that the environmental Commission wishes again to ask the Council of the City Council to forthrightly and genuinely expressed their awareness of climate emergency upon us we urge the council to join us in setting a goal that the city itself the residence the city and the University will steadfastly strive to reach of carbon neutrality by 2035 I
107think that summarizes a consensus here but well we have to do now is bring these resolutions to a voter or postpone I think I I would defer to the council members present here about what might be the best solutions that are going directly don't have one on the table so you would have one on the table yes so we already have the resolution so well if you like it I'll make the motion where my number it's all the numbers are are let's say there's no one number I there's there's no one model that says what's going to happen in terms of what the ultimate temperature increase is going to be there's different probabilities so you you just pick a number but I can tell you twenty third twenty twenty five is impossible i I've worked
108in in huge organizations and it's this is not possible when you have a hundred and twenty thousand individual actors the company I worked for I had four thousand employees with over eighty billion dollars in sales and that might be possible in a company or someone at the top says we will do this it's not possible in Ann Arbor so I'd rather pick something that really is super tough and that yeah it's it's can't you can't tie it to anything I mean the Paris Accord says we have to be carbon neutral by 2050 so this is substantially ahead of that a city like Ann Arbor has to be way ahead of everybody else cuz not everybody else is going has the resources that we do so I agree with you 2050 isn't good enough for a
109town like an hour 2025 I don't believe is realistic and I think that's one of the charges that can be to this summit is to come up with something that is real that is resourced and that is not something that is just a political statement that says we're going to do this and we're going to just like some of the other things pass a target for affordable housing and then not have a plan and not have the resources or whatever it is infrastructure or whatever else this should be something that is really founded and read somewhat in reality and yeah for me yeah we solve the problem I respect that and that should be part of the conversation but yeah I want I want the Commission or the council reps on Commission to do something
110and up until now and I think that's what we're hearing from everybody in the audience is that we've not done anything and we can't repeat what we did in 2012 pass a climate action plan with no implementation plan with no resources we can't repeat what we did before and I say this rather plaintively we went to Council with a plan on five priority actions saying this would tell us 1.4 million dollars no action was taken on it well put it this way it wasn't passed and we barely got $800,000 passed and there were many council people that never indicated how they're going to vote until the day that the vote was taken we can't allow that to happen again and yeah well put me on the spot me too it's nice it's fair enough I
111think councilmember banister and I I don't think we need to pass another resolution because ultimately whatever resolution goes before council will be different than the one that is passed here in language I think I think you know at least for me I it's very clear where to go but I think what I need to do is sit down with my colleague and figure out what's the timing in the next you know six weeks to get this on to a council agenda what is the proper number to put in here I'm sure council will have some debate about it and and probably end up changing that number you know I mean ultimately council is the policy-making body we are going to bring forth a recommended resolution and you know our colleagues can do with that as
112they please is that some because and I think there are some things in the works that you that I haven't had a chance to talk with you out about that way bring it forth even sooner okay yeah I would say you know I would move to postpone yeah I'm neutral and then I mean I think that it could it all using the old one using the new one doing nothing all three of them are good I think there's something good to doing it again now just for you know there's no sense I mean there are all three good options but I lean towards approving our new one now and and I do agree with John mirskiy commercial mirskiy about the 2035 and and that doesn't mean we just sit and wait 20:35 no we can
113all start immediately to lower our carbon footprints I especially like the language about educating our citizens on their carbon footprints you know I think we've all learned as a community a lot we're learning more every single day about our carbon footprints and so I really like that education piece because with our 120,000 actors it does require each and every one of us to have a major paradigm shift in our lifestyles I wonder if there's any value in waiting until the December meeting to bring the resolution forward because that would be after the climate neutrality summit and we could have a more accurate view of what we can do with more people behind it yeah all right that seems like a compromise my opinion is we're not gonna have any answers we're gonna start a process
114meeting but you know whether is we're not gonna know in that meeting whether twenty thirty or twenty thirty two or twenty thirty eight is the better number we're not going to know any better about reps and offsets or scopes or anything else my my feeling again is that whatever comes out of this meeting whether it's the to lead to comes to the a labs or whether it's us taking direct action something we need a commitment that something be taken to Council and the expectation that counsel then debate in public and that they take a vote and that it's out there for everybody to see so I'm it's not clear to me we already have this one resolution from the year ago I don't know I'll commit right here on television you know going out to
115millions of people then I'm happy to bring what we've passed up to Council but according to my colleague there's something else in the works that I don't know about no okay all right I just have a question for their group do you feel like us taking some action would kind of give that a shot in the arm I mean I'm I'm I I'm open frankly right now I can see different ways to go with this what I really want though is to activate people so that they will follow this through to their elected representatives cuz I think that is the heart of it folks there are the ones that are making the decisions and they have to realize that their constituents care about this and that's when they're going to make decisions that reflect what
116you guys fail you it's really when it comes down to and so if passing something tonight activates that forum more then I'm all for it if you feel like it's kind of yeah whatever does doesn't do much then I'm fine relying on the one that we've had in the past I just don't I'm just not very much in touch with the planning and you know yeah I can speak a little bit to it so the climate neutrality summit is something that is evolving every moment of everyday in our office in terms of the breadth of it you know the number of co-sponsors we have the amount of people that we can take in at cobblestone for the day I think it's just really a political decision you know if Jones suggesting that it would be
117helpful to have the resolution before the the Town Hall I think you can go that way he's correct I think that we aren't gonna have any answers for your December 5th meeting there's it's a very it's a process that is gonna hopefully wrap up on Earth Day with a plan that the city presents but it's gonna be a whole learning experience from November 13th onward so yeah there wouldn't be any more clarity I don't think from after the summit do you feel like it would help this summit kind of energized it saw it would it would it complement it in any way like do you feel like it would yeah I think it will help everybody is committed to doing something you know huge and what that is will depend on how others in in
118the community how other leaders respond to it so it won't hurt will it make a big difference you know make a big difference I mean this is today's meeting and everybody showing up made it I think a big difference just in certainly how this Commission deals with it and we have to counsel people there that have sat through everything yet those things that's really important to it and got all the same emails that we didn't bring and I serious I think that's awesome yeah yeah okay it truly makes a difference I think when I mean there's a lot of people that couldn't show up tonight I know that it said that in their emails too and you just have to keep that moving on because there's two council people here but they mean it not
119the year council people you need to just keep keep it going that's okay well I think let's say I'm satisfied personally with council membership or this commitment to take the current resolution to council and making that public we have a meeting a council meeting it doesn't necessarily have to be considered in that meeting but at least you can you can bring up the topic and say that you know you're gonna be pushing to bring this to council and that can happen before the the meeting on the 13th and hopefully then there's a clear input and thrust going into the meeting and extra nudge okay well so it's not clear to me if there's any action that we need to take at this point because we already passed a resolution it's already been communicated to Council
120and I'm personally comfortable with chefs promise that he's gonna the council will take this up I just have one one question again the Commission has the whole wants to speak on this whether you think that I personally think the 2040 date is it good enough whether 2035 is is good enough this is certainly debatable but that would be one question one thing that I asked that you take to Council and that is since we passed this the latest IPCC report came out even since then there's a lot of other additional reports that have come out that have been really really discouraging you say or alarming and so that would be the one change that I would ask that you at least bring to council that that when you pass this but it isn't good enough
121and that helps we'll take it up okay so do we need to express this formally I don't I don't think so I think ultimately in this for everybody in the audience and all of our viewers at home I will get something in you know in in conjunction with councilmember banister so that it's on the November 6 agenda okay so so let's move on I think we have a consensus here I guess should we all vote on that is there a motion to accept so the next agenda item is the food gathers Eileen thank you for your patience thank you hi everyone good evening thank you for all your hard work not just tonight can I just make one other last comment on the climate thing I've committed to attend the Ann Arbor individual visible meeting
122on Saturday at 3 o'clock to talk about what people can do to keep this conversation going and so anybody that can attend I encourage you to join that meeting [Music] I was gonna talk for a second and then do the video but there's just one make sure okay great so we'll just wait just a second we'll duvalier well let's hope so thank you all for all the time and effort that you spend these issues both tonight and every night that you work on them I might leave spring um the directorate's weed gatherers and I wanted to start with that quote that seems pretty relevant given tonight's discussions and the quote is the that the outrage of hunger amidst plenty will not be solved by experts somewhere it will only be solved when people like you
123and me decide to act in 1988 a small group of volunteers with the support of a local food business Zingerman's decided to act and launched what became michigan's first food rescue program this grassroots effort has provided a unique public service to Ann Arbor and watched our County the quote many of you may know who's been around a long time is actually from diet for a small planet which was one of the first popular books written about the connection between our food system and environmental degradation for three decades be togethers has been on the front line of the interconnection of these issues of food insecurity and climate change diverting food that would end up in landfills to the plates of the one in seven of our neighbors who experience hunger so food gathers charitable human service
124infrastructure sharing food with 170 communities agencies at little or no cost just from our last year's audit the value that exceeds ten million dollars that piece of our work is well known I would say and my goal today is to underscore to you that food gatherers is also an essential part of this communities environmental stewardship I hope to persuade you that annual operating support for this food infrastructure is a really smart and logical investment of public resources and is aligned with your zero waste goals and also that it's necessary for food gathers long-term sustainability we have just a brief excerpt of a video that we put together about five years ago that sort of dramatizes a little bit of our food recovery efforts I just hope the volume works 79 percent of that food is
125successfully reused in the community putting more here and less here food industry changes with just-in-time deliveries more ready-to-eat foods with shorter shelf life and in grocery and restaurant venues have complicated from RESCUE the new focus on prepackaged ready-to-eat foods means that this has become this and this has a shelf life of roughly one month and this has a shelf life of just four days these changes have meant that a once-weekly rescue has become these weekend rescues the shorter shelf life of foods also means that volunteers might have thrown your food away and recycling packaging instead of redistributing foods out to the network as a business we have found efficiencies that help us outpace national doors food gathers knows how to stretch a dollar as a nonprofit charity private giving comes from more than 6,000 donors
126or more than twice the national food bank median for donors and a community sighs after 25 years food gatherers is at a critical juncture despite our strengths we face increasing cost of operations driven by our continued commitment to environment health and equity changes in the food industry have increased the cost of rescue and redistribution of these resources healthier foods expensive produce and protein are much more expensive to secure store and share safely a nearly saturated donor base with our donors exceeding the national food bank medium for community this size 2017 will mark the first time in its history that food gatherers will need to dip into reserves to become for second consecutive year with our community already engaged at this broad and deep level we must continue our drive for excellence in new ways the
127reliability of this critical infrastructure is at risk and has a limited time horizon without meaningful changes and strategy and/or revenue streams our hope is to work with you with all of our anchor institutions in Washtenaw County to find new ways to support each other thank you for that so we have a brief PowerPoint also to share that really is trying to highlight the city of Ann Arbor food rescue activity that we do obviously serve the whole county but for the sake of this Commission and potentially civic council wanted to hone in on our food rescue activities in Ann Arbor okay good at multitasking oh that's pretty good so that shows our food rescue in numbers rescued food makes up 41 percent of all the food handled by staff and volunteers in the 1990s we assumed
128operations of the existing food bank which action actually was the first time we were the first organization of our type to do that so we also administer several federal food programs that you may hear about like USDA or Summer Food Service all of that is sort of leveraging our local food rescue food and here you can see the breakdown where all our food poundage comes from and that if so if we look just it it and in Ann Arbor that food rescued food from the city of Ann Arbor makes up sixteen point four percent of all the food handled by our staff our volunteers are 40 percent of all the rescued food and I want to just sort of describe that a little bit in that Ann Arbor is has an inordinate number of grocery
129stores for a city of our size it's really why we exist food rescue as a method to fight hunger is not really doable in communities where there are food deserts so we are definitely reflection of the food system here and that the number of grocery stores in Ann Arbor is really the bulk of that that that poundage number that you see and if you think of you know obviously we're talking about places like traders like we are to Whole Foods in our city within I don't know 3 miles of each other that's really I don't think you could name another city that that's true of of our size so when you pick up like those Whole Foods or like Trader Joe's or lucky market within the city they're pretty small footprints they compared to Costco
130or Meijer where are places we also rescued food from who are outside the city limits the challenge of working with these based and Arbor stores is that their size doesn't allow for any any storage space and so if we're going to get good food from them and try to convince them to give it to us and not get rid of it and composed it we have to do really what's become daily deliveries and so daily rescue activities so named Ann Arbor city alone they eight retailers we go to six days a week several retailers five days a week and you know the rest are to every other day etc and that's partly based on just the nature of how they they do business okay so this is just another dramatist a food recipe by the
131pound where you could see the total of the portion I wasn't trying to do a maize and blue thing but it looks like it came out that way but it just highlights again the the portion of the pounds that come from city of Ann Arbor retail pickups and want to know that even though we are rescuing food from any other Ann Arbor individuals food that they maybe donate from their garden or when they clean out their pantry or farmers markets or even U of M none of that's included in that this is just retail grocery stores in the city of Ann Arbor and I got some help I am not as savvy about environmental calculations but it was my understanding that just looking at the city of Ann Arbor poundage that we're helping divert about
132twenty eighteen thousand dollars cost right that would that the city would pay and disposal costs by doing this work and that the social cost of carbon number is still hard to say that is approximately fifteen thousand dollars so just to give you a little taste of that the cost of food rescue you know we've been doing this a long time and as we evolved it's just gotten much more complex and more labor-intensive and difficult to do as you know the city does not allow really doesn't have a place for commercial food businesses to compost and so we actually contract with organics to pick up our composting that's a pretty good deal that we pay them given the time amount that they come because they have worked with programs like us throughout the country to give
133us a discount it's not guaranteed that we get it every year when we we do pay city trash fees we're in the process of seeking a waiver for a portion of that because the city charter Earth's solid waste charter allows for a portion of that to be waived and we've just submitted that and rest is really just really showing our staff costs we pay a living wage because we are in Ann Arbor and are required to do so and we actually compete with food businesses who are not required to do so and that's always an interesting tension in in and again understanding the value of the services and the and the cost savings that were we're providing when we were really we were to really show the infrastructure cost overall at both maintaining our warehouse
134and the community kitchen inside the Delano Center which serves daily meals using primarily rescued food to people who are staying in the shelter and others in need we really live just applying that 16% piece it's about four hundred thousand dollars in our total sort of operating cost so the other thing I think it's really keen talking a lot you know tonight about community engagement and how to get folks involved we have always believed that there's a role to play in the fight against hunger and we have been really amazingly successful in engaging volunteers we have more than 7,000 individual volunteers that show up at our kitchen or warehouse every year that service alone if you use the independent sector this it has a way of volunteering a sort of labor it's at valued at more
135than 1.8 million dollars so again you get a sense of all the activity happening at not cost this picture I like particularly because I'm pretty sure these are folks who work at the EPA who during the government shutdown spent several days in our warehouse sorting food and I didn't even really know that till I was putting the photo I'm like oh this is perfect for this right because here are folks that understand this work and it shows a little bit of just the kind of activity that has to happen that's a box of produce that me been picked up unsorted could have a ton of produce in it could have a couple cans of tuna in it could have god-knows-what and that's how we get it it all has to become brought back to our
136warehouse inspected and sorted and distributed generally within 24 hours I also want to mention about our volunteer force is that we really have found ways to engage people very deeply and of those seven thousand volunteers about 18 percent of those folks are people with disabilities and special needs that have found our activity in our warehouse to be a very welcoming place and that we're able to you know a lot of people will assume you have retirees and obviously college students but we really are touching just about every sector in our community both in our hunger relief activities as well as in our community engagement so again just wanted to highlight the community engagement activity from just an exclusively Ann Arbor perspective about 50% of those volunteers are actually residents of Ann Arbor and one thing
137I want to share that's a little kind of dramatic and I didn't I didn't put this in the package but again just to try to and you were all invited to come spend an afternoon do some sorting with our volunteers because it's really hard to imagine what it looks like so you see it every day but one of the challenges in the food industry is that we are there are no Universal guidelines are used by days or sell by dates for the majority of prepared food so if you've gone bought anything and you look at that label and you're like what does this mean this is a used a best buys you know there's no standards Kroger's has a different one Busch's has a different one so what do we do because we have to
138abide by really pretty stringent health department guidelines we have to ensure that the food we distributing is safe to eat and safe to eat for a couple days after we're distributing it the people were serving are already really vulnerable and would have compromised immune system so we have to be really really stringent around food safety and experts in it in addition to logistical expertise and volunteer management and which is really tricky so we used to be able to select a little magnet so stretch your food dollar and it has these these guidelines about you can use you know eggs cheese and yogurt 14 days after the printed perishable food date etc we used to be able to condense this in something you know this size but with changes in the industry packaging production and also
139just greater awareness of foodborne illness and how it happens what we were able to do in this little thing this is just a really complex one that actually uses visual management that we end up sharing on this pathway that we are literally moving all this food in the course of a day using volunteer labor abiding by these standards similar it's a little less exciting and we also have to be able to recall it so I'm just trying to characterize the tremendous infrastructure that we've been able to build up that based on this expertise you know over 30 years now the other challenging thing in this picture here you can see that some people are preparing food some are packaging food folks who are volunteering what they love the most is to actually share a meal
140at the community kitchen right that they come in they prepare food they hand of plate of food to someone in front of them the less exciting and sexy jobs are literally putting your hands and a wet vat of produce that half of its rotting and half of it isn't and they have to get all stinky and messy and sort all that out it says some of the volunteers I think things that got tired had to leave but those are our weekly warriors people who actually do this on a weekly basis are doing that kind of activity and being careful to make sure the good Apple stays and the bad Apple goes the part about the pineapple is the worst part right because we will get tons and tons and tons of small packaged food that's
141about you know three ounces of cheese spread or hummus or whatever has excessive packaging on it and it's just really overwhelming to be able to you know handle that and be good stewards of that in the time frame and so I'm sharing the statistic around the value of that activity of from volunteerism it's about you know half a million dollars but part of that to you know handle this these materials part of that is actually a lost opportunity right that they are not feeding a person they're actually managing a waste but we have great citizens here as you know you talk to many of them who are deeply engaged in this work and believe deeply that we can do both we can be good stewards for the environment and and good good citizens and help
142feed people and so that's really the gist of the data I wanted to share with you but I'm happy to answer any questions I I know this came up right when I was chatting a little earlier with the volunteer one of the numbers earlier is that and when we talk about volunteerism I mean it's really great but the other piece was that we have pretty much saturated our volunteer base meaning that we compare food gatherers to organizations like us in other parts of the country that the rate of volunteerism and the rate of individual donors is twice the national average it's impressive and we're really proud of that but it means we have nowhere to go right that it's we can't grow our volunteer program much more than that seven which is pretty intensive nor
143can we raise the charitable dollars that we're using through private philanthropy at the same we can't just keep it keep it up because we've already pretty much saturated the market now it doesn't mean we're not trying but we already know that we have pretty you know great private support when it comes through the charitable work but we are currently not receiving the support for the kind of waste reduction infrastructure because people don't but when they give to a charity are giving to us because we feed people not because we're diverting food from the waste stream and even though this community in Ann Arbor supports both activities it's not a funding model for us if you will so I'm really eager Dave talking here some questions and I know you all want to go to bed
144soon so in 2018 what's a ballpark number that you've discovered might be they ask could you ask and that for 2018 the cost of disposing a million field or recycling or disposing of your organic waste was what what's your ask for support from the city on 2018 numbers more or less okay it's 2019 some confused well but that's not over yet okay so you're asking what what we would request for the city to support this yeah okay sorry oh just a ballpark yeah well everything no I know I really interest you know we're in this for the long haul and we want to work with city staff to you know be thoughtful about it and yeah so I would say that what we're really looking for is annual support meaning that something who don't because
145generally we start our budget every year with zero then with how grant funding works and charitable works you know we don't know what we're getting til we get it so it would be very helpful to us and I would like to make a case that we received around one hundred and thirty thousand dollars annually from the city and I feel like we could make a good case for that but I am not aware of all the particular funding streams right that the city and the solid waste budget you know has so I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater right and leave some other essential service that we depend upon but I do that would go a long way in providing some stability for us in this ongoing work question yeah so
146thank you very much for the presentation and all the great work that the organization does for our community and communities around this question I wanted to get a better understanding of reading the resolution and what you've stated as savings for the city of about $18,000 and I'm wondering how that's calculated I could see a savings for the stores that you're working with but I'm wondering how is that accrued back to this city yeah why I've never written a resolution before so what I was trying to convey and this is based on some advice from folks was that the roughly 18,000 is view of the city of say that 1.3 million pounds of food we need that didn't happen end up in the landfill if the city was to cover those as disposal costs that would
147be equivalent to a cost of $18,000 and that was just based on looking at the current contract but it's not a waste of the city it's a waste of it within the community it's not municipal waste that were correct okay but it cost the city to move I mean is the waste of the when he would otherwise pay them in a landfill so because instead of going to landfill yes I understand the value of it not going to a landfill there isn't a business cost not a municipal cost aren't they no I mean the city is essentially pays what would pay you know for this much there's many pounds or tons going to landfill we would we would pay that cost for the collection right now here the collection for landfill landfill fees good it's
148not like it'll charge each business and each business weighs its waste or anything like that and they save them you know II mean it's just more of a set cost is my understanding well this would go into the solid waste stream it would be picked up it would be taken to landfill and we would pay you know landfill fees you know the truck goes in it gets weighed and if those trucks had an additional 1.3 million dollars of food or 680 tons then we would pay that much more in Fayetteville tipping fees thank you the point how okay thank you it's hard to write these things so so have you have you gotten a legal opinion from city staff about about about allocating these resources from the solid waste fund no I can step in
149and just so they've turned in a proposal that they meet the requirements of section 26 I believe of the solid waste code that allows them a certain amount of trash services that the city would cover so they've turned in their 501 C 3 and 501 c 9 ish thing to us and then we sent it to legal so it's it legal right now and that was for $16,000 covered well my understood so the ordinance is written you know it's not that clear to me but my understanding is that it would allow us to receive one visit a week at no cost of city trash so to speak so what our annual cost of 12,000 would reduce to 6,000 if they were to say yes so this is a small amount compared to the asked the
150larger ask that she's here today for any other questions what is the larger ass well I'm happy to develop this with people and me because I well I recognize it's an unusual thing but I fear appear I feel that to look at the portion of activity that we're doing for the city of Ann Arbor when it's both in waste reduction that to look at the cost I shared with you which are roughly one hundred and thirty thousand dollars I look when you total up 128 is the slideshow so that would be underwriting the cost of our cost to compost this food the fee that we serve the current fees that we pay to the city and and some of our staffing cost is there a reason why the hundred and thirty thousand dollars isn't in
151the resolution I don't really know how to write resolutions if I'm just writing to you know I I just I was seeking advice about how best to do it because I think there's two ways this Michael is to really start a conversation a process for which the to work with city staff and an ongoing basis to do this and so I think you know that's kind of where I was coming at it but then when I was getting advice for different people they're like put a number in it so I'm trying to do both things to please everyone but I could certainly amend a resolution to include a specific price or our specific cost it's just you know I haven't seen how the sausage is made back there so seeking advice about how best to
152do it in a way that's respectful and thoughtful and productive heritage trees resolution that we're also talking about good enough to provide a little bit of guidance here because in that case the resolution that would be a strong pass tonight is only to direct city staff to look into how one would go about you know in this case helping to find you know instead of a sustainable funding for the waste services that who gathers continues to provide but I'd also like add just to Eileen's horn a little bit in terms of solid waste which we talked about before every time any one of these consultants has come to town I feel like food gathers sort of gets up drag drag out to show how great this community is at recycling waste and when the rubber
153hits the road you know the six thousand dollars that the city might knock off the trash bill is it's great but we're all looking at this is the way as one of the ways that we reduce food waste in this community you're really big if not perhaps the biggest part of certainly getting that still usable food back into the into the end of the food stream it's diverting waste entirely so yeah I back to my main point though I think perhaps one of those resolutions that says you know we would like to direct city staff to figure out how to come up with a sustainable funding source regarding the waste diversion that food gathers provides to the community I mean I will say that we have participated in numerous city launched commissions and studies about
154this over the years that have all concluded that we should be compensated in some way for this work like or the veterans like city services are but that those particular recommendations never when we're never full fully adopted or when and this is most happen recently in 2017 so we really have tried to do it through those processes but they just have gotten lost in the shuffle and it's five years later and we're kind of still on the same place facing deficits every year that I only see continuing to be our reality I like Commissioner Apple's suggestion that staff weigh in on this I mean the resolution gives some some really clear costs as to what the savings are but there's some other ways of looking at this I just did a quick back of the
155envelope estimate that our diversion rate would go up about seven tenths of a percent if we included the six hundred and eighty tons that's going in there and one way of looking at this is what else are we looking to do and to increase diversion rates and how much does that cost per ton or per percent of diversion rate and here we have it right in front of us and I would also suggest that just to throw it out there as every most people know I'm a metrics driven guy I would like to see maybe something that says we're going to give a certain amount of money to food gatherers and then there's a performance based elements in this so that if you increase it by another hundred tons then the amount that we give
156you isn't just fixed at whatever dollars but we give you credit for that extra hundred tonnes that you divert so I think there's a couple of ways to look at this and I think staff to your point is best able to to make that judgment and maybe there's a another social aspect that's included also in the amount as well I would own collection I'm just gonna make a suggestion on the resolution is we can certainly amend it here on the floor to strike all of the resolve applauses and replace it with a very simple one paragraph resolve clause therefore be it resolved with the environmental Commission recommends Ann Arbor City Council direct staff to work with food gathers to identify funding alternatives for the food gathers food waste diversion program but you've done the analysis
157of what the cost is of what you would need so I I wouldn't I would say it's probably prudent to put a number in there I mean I would just add to your suggestion to just to say that they should be calculated based on avoided costs to the city plus value added this conversation that preceded our presentation very interesting and learned you know learning more about the upcoming initiative on the 13th that I do see like we do a ton of education both directly and indirectly about how to manage food waste and on the individual level right as well as a community level and I think that we have you know just an opportunity to advocate and promote this is some of the sustainable the issues that you will be you know working on and
158we are happy to incorporate that as best we can in our advocacy in our volunteer engagement and our education because people get it honestly they spend a day in our warehouse they're like oh my god I had no idea and that's this a great opera opportunity that you have I think to help reach people who need to learn more about the organic waste management and the challenges of it okay chip did you type away that reason changing the the resolution everybody's a lot smarter than me so I don't know type that quickly Steven could you repeat what you wanted me to add to that oh just that this calculation be based on both costs avoided to the City College and on value-added in terms of social cost I mean none of us want to see
159like hundreds of people dumpster diving and and included a performance based element I know we don't normally do this but I also wonder about putting a timeline yes we should do that so our fiscal year begins in July and ends in June so it's the work that's the same as the city's um would it be some value in having like a rolling couple of year commitment in terms of your own budget in other words we would presumably somebody would do this calculation every year that's the tricky piece and that's why it's helpful to work with staff on this because you know we can't guarantee right that these Ann Arbor businesses are gonna give us sixteen percent of our food rescue could end up being 30 percent one year or twelve percent because it's a very
160volatile industry so that's where it's almost like you know you sort of project right that you estimate it will be at this level and if it exceeds that or falls below it then you make an adjustment based on that you would need somebody to move so I think you know a clear floor hopefully that would be a relatively high floor and then there would be something then potentially on top of that I mean that's a possibility that's what staff would have to evaluate mm-hmm by the way I'd like to also mention food gathers is a good neighbor in one other regard they're putting 160 kilowatt solar system mm-hmm which is three times the size of the one that went on the fire station and I believe is probably one of if not the largest non
161utility solar installations in the city yeah it's not quite done yet so it wasn't gonna announce it but no that's it's it's going on yeah and we you know we we take this environmental stewardship very seriously and you know we couldn't afford to we've gotten some other investors to help us with the solar panel we also are working on a project right now using other private dollars to convert all of our warehouse lighting to LED which is you know like about fifty sixty thousand dollars probably and some other similar initiatives that really are you know lessening our our use and footprint so and you know ghrelin which is our annual event of it I know some of you have come to it's out in the fairgrounds it's a big party it's a zero waste event
162it has been for several years and again that's no small feat to do with a lot of volunteers out in the yard surfing lots of food so we really are good partners I think in our environmental and this is very little work okay so I guess I'll propose a motion so I've taken resolution I've added something in here therefore be it resolved that the environmental Commission recommends Ann Arbor City Council direct staff to work with food gathers to identify funding alternatives for the food gathers a food waste diversion program that is calculated on waste cost avoided added value to the city in terms of social cost an inclusive of performance metrics that potentially increased support should the diversion rates increase well sounds good my only question should it be a certain Department of staff rather
163just sings to city staff I mean I know or if it comes from you is it I think it is a multi-jurisdictional effort I think one of the concerns I think that somebody brought up is is legal doesn't need to review whether this is actually something that the solid waste fund could do on its own I think ultimately there are a number of different departmental actors that have to be involved in it I would suggest the sustainability office and also they know waste management it's really it works yes it's not really sustainability office it really is probably Aileen which should be finished by the time you budgets yep we need to know it for our budget yeah I think we didn't we usually start our budget discussions in December we have our first meeting so
164maybe mr. Lazarus should start including this in his stock by December that initial meeting well the December meeting is our retreat to set our priorities and then the budgeting process is January February March April so you know if we're working with staff over the next two months I'm sure that this can be worked out you know and I just might because some of those the priorities meeting the priorities are already set in some many cases so that's why I was trying to get this on in that December meeting so they'd be part of the his pre-prepared priorities for us that's I don't see any harmony I mean I guess not we don't really usually drill down that far into the detail in December it is more kind of 50,000 foot you know what priorities should
165we be working on and it wouldn't necessarily at least my experience in doing this for the couple of years that I've done it has been we would talk about a goal of ours would be increasing our waste diversion or our organics collection we wouldn't necessarily get into the who is going to do it and how much is going to be done it would have to come out of that it would have a priority based on council's feedback at that three and then that would be done incorporated in the budget no sorry question sorry called the question which means you take a vote on it yeah all right well there's been an amendment for pros I think the first item was to strike at least for resolve clauses if I make this in to add a
166clause that chip is just recited so so do we have a motion to vote on the yeah we have to vote on the phone was dead trees need a second chip moved it okay also whoever proves this mom amended resolution I all right well thank you Eileen for all the service the gathers just glad you came up take our thanks back to all the volunteers okay next item on the agenda is the natural features so this should be non-controversial but I I would move the resolution we put in front of you it simply asked the council to request that staff assist the natural features working group and the Commission in developing some relatively minor changes to the code that would increase protection for large and special and culturally important champion trees in essence it means
167changing adding a another category on the landmark tree list typically with some sizes are a bit larger and those would be the heritage trees we would change the mitigation requirements increasing them where trees of that size are involved what is not happening here is regulation of trees on property zone single family or two family where projects do not go through the site planning process whether vacant or or already built upon and we're losing a lot of trees on those properties and as some of you may know the issue on the property on packard came about because it was zoned single-family prior to having cycling on the table and so there are no protections for the trees on that property essentially we're going to go back to work tomorrow on that problem but this problem has
168to do with heritage trees that do go through this high plane process okay all right so yeah I don't tell ya I don't I had a minor comment just the toe sometimes the trees are cut down for safety reasons you know there's a scoring procedure with any tree that has to come down that it it if it has to come down for safety reasons because it's rotten or dead or whatever there's a whole scoring system that happens within so that's essentially covered so that's covered yeah so it's her my friend sorry okay any second second all right do you prove this motion of this summon this resolution is written hi v-- opposed so let's move on quickly through the rest of the agenda which would be reports from the committee's other Commission's council chair so
169that's why the order or let's say alright from committee so I'm us to the solid waste working group has been working on metrics and something that present metrics for solid waste you did a big help tonight thank you and as I say we're going back to work tomorrow to work on the single family to family problem Susan your mics off the water group met and we talked about some alternative goals that we felt like we could accomplish given the staffing level that we have and we expect to have something to bring to you I don't see so other commissions now anything for Parks okay anything from energy very briefly our last meeting where unfortunately we didn't have a quorum we got a presentation from the Unruh public schools on their bond proposal focusing on sustainability
170aspects related to that there was strong support for everyone that attended there was a resolution that was had been drafted in advance that I think would have passed had we had a quorum but unfortunately we didn't have a quorum so I think in some cases individual members have offered their individual endorsements just a couple points from my side the public schools does not yet have a greenhouse gas inventory it does not have any target set and it doesn't have any specific measures of what they plan to do and what the impact will be and also the process when individual schools are up for improvements they want to which is I think appropriate get community input on what priorities are so even the plan potentially could get shifted so my message to all of us and
171to the Energy Commission into the community is that if we want the sustainability aspects to remain in and have some level of priority then it's going to take continuous engagement on our part otherwise we could get a lot of money spent for beautiful classrooms and other wonderful features at where none of them are not very much money is left for what alcohol just sustainability kinds of features so that that requires our our continued involvement the other thing that we're doing is we're looking at updating the bylaws those would have been voted on as well I'm just clarifying some of our objectives and updating some other things and other than that we're continuing to work on ordinances making progress in most cases but I can do those details later or on another time not later I
172think the only news is that we passed a project on Washington that take advantage of some of our new it's late I think the words are not coming our new affordable housing premiums and they had some solar on top but we asked them to actually do a little more with the solar they actually had two buildings that were a piece of it one was in historic district and so they're gonna try to go back with that to be able to get more solar on that because it's a beauty so this is our chance so yeah so I'm hopeful that they will a little I just briefly um let's see I know it's this meeting tonight heated up and there was a lot of discussions you know about who voted what on the budget last year
173for earlier this year I just wanted to clarify um last year that I had voted YES on both of the budgets because best budget methods the 40-40-20 and the other one based on the citizens survey because there was so much division in the community I think there were good aspects to both of them and I was hoping we would come together and meld both of those budgets so I voted YES on both of those and more things on the record I want to thank you all you three people I'm in this group for working with me and I think that we were I think we should be proud of the time we bought those trees on Packard Road because I think one of the things we learned as we discussed those trees was that even
174though the pud plan was supposed to save some of the trees with the compacting of the critical root zones we might have lose lost them anyway so we're not out of the woods yet so to speak but I think it's been the right choice that we bought a little time to look more closely at it especially in light of climate emergency thoughts and how much 57 burr Oaks could be worth to us and the storm water and and just lastly I want to give a shout out to Janet Lipson and her these REE white because they were big food gathers volunteers Janet in particular and they are the ones that scheduled a meeting with me and Eileen back on June 30th that brought all of this I know lining has tried in different years but
175I'm I'm glad that we resurrected it in 2019 and want to give a shout out to Janet for having that original meeting back on June 30th tonight regionalization of waste and I hear the staff coming here and saying oh well we don't really have any gardens there's not this regional authority to be able to give us any guidance but I know that that passed this Commission unanimously and I thought that was a done deal at City Council so what's going on there there's an update I would like to hear yes I um I think we had tabled it's um perhaps commissioner councilmember chip can tell me where it's at I think it's gone back to staff for further notice further research and reporting I don't think it's it was it was postponed indefinitely upon for
176waiting for the completion of the solid waste master plan I tried to resurrect it and did not have the votes so the solid waste master plan which itself relies on the notion of regionalization is being held up because nobody wants to vote on the regionalization actually the the draft plan doesn't even address and never was intended really to address regionalization so he holed up on the vote to wait for the plan was never going to be resolved by the plan in the first place that makes sense I think let me try and say this is the purpose of the regionalization is to fix the drop-off station and to try and get more recyclable materials here and it just at least the discussions that I have heard is there are not six votes in support of
177that you know I suppose we could try and bring it back for a vote when I tried to do that several months ago it was not looked favorably by one of my colleagues who was not acceptable to bring that back on the other hand the existing drop-off station ellsworth was failing and it's been feeling since 2004 I mean there's there's a foot of water there well then I think the Union issue was significant and remains significant we can if we continue to have trouble with that in that we do I think a lot of us want to support our ask me city workers and so I think we'll be looking for confirmation on that every firm confirmation on that as I recall it just it just caused a question what we do here when we
178have staff come to us with a resolution that they say they wanted supported we support that resolution wholeheartedly and then it dies when we give it to our elected representatives these are climate questions that could be solved here with this leadership that we are not that brought it to us a first place staff helped her out and staff has said repeatedly here in this forum that oh we have these larger regional regionalization questions that need to be answered and council has the opportunity to answer those questions by promoting that regional authority because there is larger leadership that our staff respects that they will listen to when it comes to making these solid waste decisions that they do not make themselves and that we have been hearing over and over and over again for the four
179years that I've been here on this commission this is your opportunity for leadership yeah I haven't heard personally I haven't heard many cogent arguments about not just boy not to join if it's only a 5,000 dollar commitment right now and you know and it allows the city to be involved in the discussion on a plan that they the staff has helped around yes no I mean I can understand them i something's going down the road that there's not a commitment you know that we would make such concerns much more visible and realistic it seems to me so so I mean I think I might recommend that a few members of council go talk to the county staff about Worman was a county initiative so as far as any member of council ever talk directly to
180county staff about their concerns about joining I had had one conversation with seven Pratt and I did notice he was here tonight I think that probably reflects his concern for regional ization on their plans how the city is gonna go forward with solid waste issues so I would encourage you know council members who have these concerns to go and talk to people well I think the two concerns were they the ask me union that was not guaranteed and the other one that Commissioner Murphy mentioned about the voting that it's it's not prudent for our representing the city of an average to go into a situation where we were only gonna have one vote when we were so I think those two issues I wasn't prepared to talk about this tonight but as I recall those
181were two deal-breakers for people on council I've spoken to one council person my understanding is those are the two issues the feeling is is that the Articles of Incorporation do not reflect some of the desires at least from that individual and that the greatest leverage is now my my personal feeling is that the current scope of the regional authority is limited and it does not involve any hiring of hourly labor it does not involve any invest and so I agree with what we all discussed here including both of you that this does make sense now and if we don't like what's going on later with labor issues or if we don't like what's going on with proposed investments and our vote voting rights related to those then we can step out as the Articles of
182Incorporation allow and so I agree with Commissioner Apple these are the kinds of things we need to move forward on and if we don't then and there is an out it's not like there's is not an expressway with no exit ramps there are exit ramps anytime we want there is a very clear exit ramp with a certain amount of time and we can get out but if we never get on the freeway we're still stuck in a dead-end we're in a cul-de-sac right now and we're not doing anything for the city or for the county okay well I will revisit my people on that and then see see if we can get it back out then or ricci if what what you all are saying is everyone else is understanding too yeah and I think
183the recommendation to talk to the county is the best one face to face and then then we know directly from the authorities what the situation is we have dealt with all of these issues and have a pretty standard way of dressing it which seems to be common and not not difficult to arrange which addresses all of the issues that we have understood Council has including the waiting I was kind of surprised to see the proposal to reactivate our MuRF on that agenda tonight actually staff has been up here or many times saying well we really don't want to do that until we get to the bottom of a potential regional undertaking so what they said tonight was steps decided that we're not doing a regional thing and so here we are what we could have
184been doing two or three years ago or 10 getting our own MuRF back upright again in other words that - without doubt but but I mean it's a real change of tune and I've comes from that council it's not supportive my feeling is that these are not black and white issues and you know I understand completely some of the issues that some individuals have with the current structure but it's it's you know we're not looking for a hundred percent if this is 80% then let's in my view let's go ahead and if the 80% turns out to be oh damn we misjudge this this is only 40 percent then take the exit ramp it's education and outreach that's the current scope well I love to champion the good ideas and so I will report back
185at our next meeting all right now it's my eye [Laughter] I will keep it short and sweet you guys have actually covered a lot of the stuff fire station number six we had about 40 volunteers it's a fifty three kilowatt system and it's just a fantastic model we're looking at doing some more of these in the spring it's a little too late to do them this year the carbon neutrality summit is November 13th the time that's open to the public is 5:30 to 7:00 and that will be in cobblestone park or cobblestone I believe we're actually sending out invitations to everybody who lives in Ann Arbor I'm not sure about that that seems really aggressive but maybe we are I also wanted to invite you all to a free movie at the Michigan theatre it's
186from Paris to Pittsburgh it's done by National Geographic and it's on November 12th at the Michigan Theater at 6:00 p.m. other things we're working on our Earth Day planning so we have a University of Michigan lots of partners and we're looking for if anybody has any events that week feel free to let us know so we can co-sponsor them or get the word out I didn't know this until recently that Earth Day was started here in Ann Arbor at Chrysler auditorium so this is the 50th anniversary and if Peck were here I think he would probably be talking a little bit about University of Michigan's plans because my understanding is that he is the lead for them and that's all I have okay so it's recently come to my attention that there may be four
187different groups planning Earth Day events so which one is city staff engaging at the University oh I have no idea okay there is an effort to consolidate those efforts current plans are that it's going to be from 10 to the 14th of March which puts it ahead of Earth Day but if that aligns exactly with the original one which is actually called teachin and the environment and most likely the lead event will take place at he'll this time unfortunately not at Chrysler for a number of different reasons but again that's given the time probably better discussed at a different time different date so moving on to the items for the next agenda the only one I'm aware of is the pesticide herbicide resolution that's being drafted by a group well in terms of new business
188any other suggestions for December 5th no ok so the next scheduled meeting is December 5th happy Thanksgiving everybody now there's another opportunity for public commentary should anybody choose to I please come up to the microphone and state your name if you wish to make a public comment and cover again thank you all for the fantastic volunteer work most of you volunteer work on this commission especially those who serve on multiple commissions councilmember banister Commissioner Mirsky tops members Smith Commissioner get random maybe others I don't know so and it's late I'll be very brief you've given us a lot of on the climate issue you've given us a lot of advice tonight I really appreciate your candor high person I alluded to this in my remarks I personally don't feel like I have a lot of
189credibility talking about the climate issue that's because I've spent my whole life pretty much contributing to the problem and just being very complacent and thinking that it's been taken care of because of high-level international meetings Democratic administrations and you know it's only recently I've come to the realization that we've really blown it I mean it actually might be too late to take meaningful action you know and I've looked at the science carefully science is my thing I'm a science writer and I've looked at the climate models and it's really really really dismal alarming and we've front-loaded so much carbon into the atmosphere that we're almost assured 1.5 degrees centigrade and and that's going to mean tremendous suffering and death anyway the one point I want to make now all this you know is that I
190feel that the youth the young people have a certain moral authority that I lack I feel uncomfortable talking about climate because of that and so I would just like to see you know some a little bit more interest in a little more acknowledgment of their justified anxiety and concern and urgency that they bring to this whole question and I'm incredibly impressed with the young people here today I mean I certainly was not that aware at their age and it's very very personal to them I'm worried that this whole process with the carbon neutrality summit and town hall isn't going to involve young people enough and freaking will bring that sense of urgency to it you know John knows I've been a few of the planning meetings with the summit and except for Missy it's just
191been people over 50 some of us well over 50 and you know I think we can make a conscious effort to maybe change that so that's my whole message to you here so anyway again really appreciate all the comments and the the time you spent about this issue tonight and I really look forward to engaging further on it going forward thank you well thank you can oh thanks a lot for that information packet oh and in this regard this commission and others are looking into recruiting youth members for near term so that process is ongoing and actually stuck at the Energy Commission because you weren't able to approve your bylaws and we want to take energy commission and environmental Commission bylaws to Council at the same time so hopefully this is something that can happen
192by in our next meeting right do you think there's a possibility the Energy Commission okay all right okay so do I have a motion to adjourn okay thanks everybody for your patience