001a councilmember eatin commissioner Coleman Garcia Commissioner hukum Commissioner murski their chair Olinsky and we have the agenda in front of us do I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved we need to take a vote we just approved and the minutes were emailed out for everyone's review second all in favor aye can we can't can we actually approve minutes and agendas and everything like that even though we don't have a quorum we should have a little all right open input if we have any members the public would like to speak about just climate countess energy all right yeah my name is Ken Garber live a 2387 Hilldale looks like you have a light agenda tonight so maybe you'll indulge me while I tell you how I view the climate crisis let's go back
002to first principles atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane allow energy in the form of visible light to pass freely through but not infrared radiation this has been established science for 140 years since the experiments of Irish physicist John Tyndall now the sun's radiation is mostly in the form of visible light which passes we need three greenhouses guest to reach the earth but when the earth radiates back heat energy which is an infrared it's partially blocked by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas it's heating the atmosphere with the large-scale burning of fossil fuels the level of co2 in the atmosphere has arisen from the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million to about 410 parts per million now global temperatures have risen about one degree centigrade with the five hottest years on record coming in the last
003five years and the 20 hottest years in the last 22 know all this I know you know already climate models allow us a certain carbon budget before reaching two degrees centigrade heating which is considered the threshold of global catastrophe the IPCC and other modelers estimate the carbon budget to be about 700 billion tons of co2 that's 700 billion tons of co2 that were not that we are allowed to pump into the atmosphere going forward and that's it no more right now we're pumping about 42 billion tons of co2 into the atmosphere each year and that number is rising do the math that gives us 16 17 years except that the principle of global equity dictates that the poorer and less industrialized parts of the world deserve a larger carbon budget to pull themselves out of
004poverty University of Manchester climate scientist Kevin Anderson calculates that the industrialized world needs to even reach net zero emissions by 2035 at the latest in order to allow poor nations up to 2050 to reach Net Zero now to be clear at two degrees centigrade heating many people will die from extreme weather events droughts and floods agricultural collapse and disease but they'll be poor they'll be non-white they'll be low carbon emitters and they live a long way from here we've already shown how little we care about them from how much co2 we pumped into the atmosphere given the front-loading of co2 it's realistically too late to keep temperatures globally at 1.5 degrees and pre-industrial so two degrees is the best we can realistically hope for so the industrialized world must achieve Net Zero by 2035 and
005we must take decisive action now because we're talking about overhauling our entire economic system which you can't do overnight we've shown over the last 30 years that incrementalism does not work annual carbon emissions have almost doubled since 1990 the year of the first IPCC report the baby boomer generation my generation has completely failed in its great generational mission we've wasted our 30 year grace period doing absolutely nothing to address the problem now the world is run out of time and only radical action could save the earth from complete catastrophe thank you thank you thank you energy from the Energy Office and commissioners and I thought that sitting knew and this he and John mirskiy next to me knew in his role as vice-chair we would you know speak for a couple minutes just about about
006that and I wanted to just start by saying you know that in my six years on the Commission I can recall only one other 5-4 vote before last month's election and that was about nuclear energy which we all know is the topic that is the most divisive thing to environmentalists so I just want to say I recognize and acknowledge that hope I can lead in a non divisive way and just recognize that the kind of surprised non reappointment of our illustrious prior chair and the election last month may mean that we need a little bit of healing and I'm gonna do my best to help facilitate that on the Commission the other thing I wanted to mention is just maybe like a couple minutes of background about myself because I know when I joined the
007Commission I had the opportunity to share a little bit my bio with the folks who were on it at that time but many of the people here were not and so I just thought it would be helpful to share I I want everyone here to know just how deeply I share the environmental values I think of the fellow commissioners here I got my master's degree at the University of Michigan in the school of environment and sustainability in sustainable systems I put solar on my house in 2012 I drive an electric car of cloth diapers my three children I'm still close to bringing the third of them we're a fully vegetarian household so on and so forth and I say that not to Pat myself on the back but I wanted to make sure for those
008who didn't know me that you know that I do share those values and and you know while those actions are important to me as I know they are to many of you to kind of live your own values I believe strongly that kind of as we heard in public input you know we're not going to solve our sustainability challenges via those kinds of actions and the change really has to come at a large scale fundamentally through our biggest institutions places like municipalities like the city and like utilities so that's why I'm here serving on this commission and that's where I worked for why I work for DTE so that's my background I guess the other thing is you know as I mentioned last month during the nominations you guys know the leadership positions on this
009commission is not like a powerhouse of authority right so we're not going to kind of change things up here the direction that we take is a commission is the direction that we democratically vote on and choose to pursue as a commission that said vice-chair mirskiy and I have discussed some ideas we had four things we would like to see and wanted to just kind of put out there for folks consideration largely related to kind of the efficient use of our time on the Commission here and operating effectively the first thing was we wanted to respectfully request that of our agenda items that we want to discuss and any resolutions that are up for discussion are provided at least a full week in advance to Josh so that they can be shared with Commission members and
010with the public it's the respectful thing to do for those on the Commission obviously for the public and hopefully then you know we can help our meetings run more efficiently if everybody has had the time to and committed to for example reading a full resolution in advance of getting here the other item I wanted to share and one of our fellow commissioners raised this is an idea last month was we're planning to create kind of an action item tracker to use when we commit to something in these meetings whether it's a resolution we passed or you know something we say hey I'll go research that I'll bring it back or let's invite somebody to speak just have those tracked so we know who's responsible and how we're progressing along on those and then lastly and
011this piece is a little bit more related to the content we talked about here I did just want to kind of encourage all of us to think about the work that we do on this commission being in support of and leverage to the city's sustainability staff they finally have kind of funds to do the work to take meaningful action they're the professionals who are spending 40 plus hours a week working on this so I think there will undoubtedly be times that we as the Advisory Commission will do you know what our name suggests to advise different directions or things that we feel that you know they need to consider that they aren't that's necessary and appropriate for us but I also think it's really appropriate for us to ask the staff what we can do
012to help them to execute the strategy that we helped them you know we gave them guidance and counsel along the way of developing it and you know there may be areas where we could be more effective putting our time into something that is high priority for them and they additional guidance or expertise or actual kind of getting our hands dirty work then you know coming up with new ideas that it obviously if we believe they're important we should talk about it but may sometimes serve as distractions to the staffs limited time and many times I think we won't know the answer at first about whether something is you know mission-critical or a distraction right and I I guess I would encourage I would love to see us use our time together as the Commission to
013explore some of those topics to educate each other and ourselves on them and to get the staffs input and find out whether it's something we want to take action on or whether okay we've educated ourselves and we'll put that aside if we're gonna take action on it is a resolution always the right path I don't know sometimes I think it probably is and sometimes we might decide there's another course of action that will be more meaningful so all of that is is really just food for thought like I said you know this will run as we collectively choose to run it and we'll cover the topics that folks here are interested in covering okay that's I'm done with my schpeel and I'll turn it over know if I can come in very briefly so as
014chair Lensky mentioned the two of us met and talked about these things I fully support her comments and her agenda this whole thing from my perspective I think from both of our perspectives is not about status or about titles or about anything else we really want to be something that is about shared values mission and vision and really be performance and outcome oriented and that's what we have committed to in terms of how we want to lead the Commission not that we want to steer anything you know we all have one vote anybody can propose changes to agendas and things like that but you have our commitment that we share your values and we share your desire to have a positive impact on the city in terms of energy efficiency and terms of having a
015positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions and the climate in the environment in general other Commission news energy updates so I guess this is a great segue kind of a collaboration between staff and Commission to talk a little bit about fire station number six so Chuck's been helping us out a lot as far as fire station number six goes I figured Chuck do you want to just kind of highlight some of the things that you put together here I sent this out a little earlier today and we do have kind of the copy here you have a bow so you can kind of scroll through and all that was done by Honeywell of city facilities where and we tried to come up with some ideas on what we should do spending wise on our infrastructure to
016improve it both energy efficiency and what else on the renewables front and so I think fire station six caught our eye as being one of those that could do both and the document that was produced by Honeywell we walked through that as a Commission briefly one night about a year ago I think and then we think we had a vote on whether we should recommend continuation of their services and I think we decided to take it offline and we're still in that mode of what makes sense from a city point of view holistically but I think what we said is fire station six represented an idea that could be a community facing solar system that had a lot of benefits and so the city decided to tackle the idea of working with U of M
017and they're in a group of um students were very interested in the volunteering aspect that we've nurtured in in Ypsilanti and take that into an Ann Arbor based alignment so this project has a lot of those elements in it in the sense of volunteerism so I decided I'm a professional engineer I do a lot of solar projects around town to volunteer my services as well on this to help move this along so I'm working on this from the perspective of design and hopefully smart procurement construction it's a 1981 facility it's I think 8000 square feet of roof space it has lots of exposure not a lot of shading so it has a great opportunity for adding solar it's a flat roof at one time the city put up some solar thermal on the roof and
018that didn't work so well so that system is still up there needs to be taken down doesn't look like it has any viability to move it forward it's an older system as well so the suggestion was what can we do to maximize our our investment here so we've looked at this Josh did an analysis I've done an analysis to look at how much solar could be put on the roof realistically and then looking at it from the perspective of different benchmarks you know looking at the demand of the facility what kind of solar PV makes sense looking at it simply from the facility as well as is there more so that we could put out on the on the grid so at this moment I guess Josh I'm not exactly sure the city filed the
019application with TT on the category 2 yes we have interconnect paperwork in two grandfatherís into the old net metering and we've done this for about 13 buildings friendly large city buildings far as large users as well as kind of iconic spots parks things like that that are in the community do you recall what we put in number wise for kilowatts in this I think we did 60 maybe a little above 60 kilowatts a little higher just to be safe okay yeah good so what you'll find when you go through this I'm not gonna I'm not gonna walk through this I think it's a lot of information for you to for you to look at in your light reading I'm one of these people that always look at charters I'd like to see objectives stated goal
020stated metrics defined schedules identified budgets then we can always go back and use that as a metric - are we on track are we doing things to plan if something happens mid-flight we can make adjustments and move forward so what you'll find is some technical requirements in here you'll find the code requirements of how what we have to meet what we found when we went to the firehouse was a lot of electrical information it was out of date it was not ever designed updated we've got some very gas-fired generation and our backup generation which is typical for an emergency facility so we looked at how do we best interface the solar with the building and so we came up with a strategy I think that works well we have an electrical room we have a
021way to tap into the system and so at this juncture we have and you know I'll get to us a picture here in a minute I won't go through all this in detail like I said but you'll see a rough system that's on the screen now we've got an upper roof that's on the west side of the building we've got a lower roof on the east side some other features I guess I'll just point out oops that's what most is fast tonight I'm not you might be able to if you do that scroll bar so you've got up here you've got the gas fire generator that's the back-up generator sits outside you've got the DTE interconnection coming into the building there's an electrical room about in this space here that provides the spot to tie
022in so it provides pretty good access for us and we looked at making sure we had enough room the worker on this area so in maintenance mode we can actually work around this facility we're not jamming too many panels up there for that we looked at an arrangement which is ballasted so it sits on the roof it's easily placed it's easily removed if we want to upgrade or change it we can the solar thermal is in this space here we have a little bit of shadowing that we're still playing with here in terms of how much shadowing is too much so there's some panels over here that might get shadow shadow had been a fulsome summer summer sun's it's us but in general we're southern facing fixed array and we have very little shading that's
023really going to impact this so it should get good solar insulation on the system I haven't modeled how much yet I don't know exactly how much we're gonna get in terms of generation at this stage we haven't really totally optimized panels but we're still in that mode I wanted to understand what our what our capabilities were so this is kind of a least cost if you look at what we're doing these days was single and dual access tracking and some really fancy technology this doesn't go there we just simply want to generate with with practical Tier one suppliers we've looked at some of the tier ones out there Mac and Mac is a local supplier of electrical they've apparently muscled up and said they would help us on some fronts so we're planning on going
024down a pathway of logic the one place I'll stop here we have about 210 modules we're looking at about 300 watts per module DC we're an aggressive ac/dc ratio or basically a fifty seven kilowatts AC the building demand is far lower than that so what will be pushing power out on sunny days to the grid pretty regularly I put together division responsibilities the owner of our energy Commission's on here guess what all the folks on the Commission are gonna be the owners engineer so as long as Jess what's that happen the documents I create and the information that we pass along which are gonna happen for I think fairly quickly now because we'd like to get this thing moving very quickly will flow through this commission so I actually have some technical eyes on things
025which I think works well so Josh's office is the owner um as is the fire department the fire department will also be supporting some of the labor and helping out in the field um there's an architect that separately doing the energy efficiency work that's not related to this project or budget and here's kind of the schedule we're looking at and it shows that we're gonna be basically energized this year which i think is a pretty strong goal will have labor coming back into town in September when the students to have nothing to do at the beginning of the semester hopefully we'll have panels from the stuff up on the roof and get them rolling so I think this is still achievable the budget still being refined you can see that down at the bottom it
026will be a much greater detail here shortly I need to work with Josh and the C on that front and you see the personnel involved so you've got Wayne John and the rest of us is Energy Commission supporting the project so here's kind of some thoughts on how we're gonna move it forward I think it it makes sense there's a lot of good involvement I think there's a lot of community engagement so at this time I open it up for any any questions I have a few questions as usual first of all my understanding is that we had I don't think it was called a GoFundMe but it was the equivalent to raise money and I was wondering how much we actually did raise it was around 12,000 wasn't it at one point or was
027that wishful thinking yeah I think we had a target of 10,000 I think it got closed out around 3000 so it's how much we actually ended up raising okay and I do want to I didn't want to take a second just to thank Commissioner hukum for all of the work he's done it's it's been incredibly helpful and I don't think we'd be where we are now without all of his work so I just wanted to take the moment to thank you and then also say that things are continued to move on the site there's a safety component of it we want to make sure having volunteers that you know we go ahead and make sure that they're they're safe so we actually have a ballasted rail system that's been put up on fire station number
028six so that's already up I think the piece and I've emailed some of the we have a kind of fire station group I guess a working group the piece that we're working on and I think it's probably going to take the longest is the kind of PPA model so currently we're trying to see if we can get a power purchase agreement with Michigan saves and that's probably just from the kind of legal aspect the legal component we've got to just make sure that you know everything looks good as far as the contract and all the terms are worked out so I think that's what's going to probably and has already pushed the project out this far there is also another piece of that as well which is I think as Chuck has mentioned that when
029students come back in August September because they really did help to start this project it's going to be I think the timing will be right to have them come back and kind of help with the volunteer labor on the fire station number six so in the end that the timing actually might not be so bad but I do think that PPA is what's holding things up the two bigger urgent things to just add on to that are getting their permit from the city which hopefully they'll just be all over because it's kind of a city related idea yes which I'll work that system that they need my drawings to do that as well as procurement so we need to get some things procured yeah so we've been in touch with a few different options as
030far as procurement as well to see what what the options are there for wholesale solar panels yeah so things removing I had one other comments last question so I reviewed this this afternoon and forwarded it to Wayne Appleyard and asked him about the status of the solar hot water system because when we were on site I think those of us that were there will remember there was some question as to whether it might indeed be something that could be resurrected he indicated that he hadn't done much although after I forwarded this to him he called the company in Canada and said that they're still in business the product is still essentially a viable product I think it's it's still even in manufacture there are some protections built into it that probably make the basic panels
031usable so the question is what he said he could potentially get together with Dave Conkel and review it but he wanted to leave that up to us and primarily to you Chuck to see whether it's something that's worth while looking into it could probably be moved if it's not in an optimal position right now he said that there's it looks like there's some problems in terms of the piping not having been insulation insulated properly and things like that so the initial installation was not as good as it could have been and so I I thought that I would bring his comments to the Commission and in particular to you and with the request that you think about it or let me know right now and I can get back in touch with Wayne and he
032could potentially do an inspection to see if it's salvageable well I've inspected it to be able he the via piece definitely needs to be reworked so if we were to save that if the balance of it still worked and I've done solar thermal so I know the the panels are what's critical right I can't tell if there's internal damage or not the fire chief said and I don't remember I can't quote him exactly what he said but basically said it's never worked since he's been there yeah something within a couple of months it was it was not functional so it may have been bad at training it may have been nobody did maintenance one of those things happened yeah I'd be more than happy to take that on and see if we could salvage it
033but basically at this juncture based on his input I'm not sure it's in that space so what I'll do is I'll I'll close the loop with Wayne I'll copy you and the the two of you plus Dave can decide to what level of investment timewise it is worth looking into it and then we can go from there his role is well Dave I guess is also familiar with his systems and it would just be a second opinion okay that's all okay I guess I'm weighing it talked with Dave and dave was in the indicated that he'd be willing to look at it together with Wayne okay and they could do that you could do it as a threesome sounds good I like foursomes I'm a golfer but the employee was installed probably yeah yeah he
034seems like you did some degree of familiar that's a good point yep just another coming I guess there's an absolute worst-case that's a possibility right and second question from my perspective ie I know you guys submitted the interconnection application the time for the net metering deadline I was under the impression there was another deadline that needed to be met I got six months later there was some point is that aligned with the timeline here so we do have we actually have energy efficiency RFP that's hit the streets we want to make sure that these thirteen buildings that they're as energy efficient as they can be before we put solar panels on there and we also have a solar RFP that's also hit the streets or at least should be hitting the streets very soon here
035for the actual installation of the solar panels on the thirteen buildings okay what about for this one specifically I thought it was a physical installation completed within six months but achieve that okay fine I just some details I haven't heard till tonight which the RFP I'm not sure how that works this is gonna be it's a good point this is going to be a separate project from the other twelve buildings I guess this would be the thirteenth just because the nature of the install the volunteer labor and then yeah just trying to intimidate this going as quickly as possible so for safety purposes obviously the electrical side of this project will be contracted out by a licensed contractor and hopefully but between me as building the electrical will end up with a better situation that
036they've got now which is we're not sure what we have we're looking at the breakers and not sure what's live and what's not you know what percentage other than they needed funding isn't so that has to do with the kind of PPA process so if we end up doing a power purchase agreement it's kind of a way to lease and then payback is it's almost like and that's we're currently trying to figure aside from what's been discussed here is there anything else Josh that you or Chuck that you guys assistance from commissioners over the next month before our next meeting I think the big thing would read the read the Charter and let us know if there is something that anyone wants to participate in in more detail if they want to work on design
037or anything you want to work on anything would be welcomed and then maybe what I need to do a little more granularly is advise the Commission what's coming next and when so there's a heads up that we don't surprise everybody with we need this response tomorrow so that'll be the plan a little more detail on that so given the importance of this in the timing maybe we can have a monthly update the other sites just where they stand great excellent all right and into your comment earlier we should look at progress against the target timetable because obviously we'd like to generate energy as soon as we can and we also don't want to miss any deadlines like the connection type of deadlines that you were talking about December's not a great solar month that can
038that is true we'll get it ready then it won't do much for a couple months that's a good point fair point and the solar thermal will have to move on quickly yes that's true and I'll mention that to Wayne - okay yeah thank you thank you okay moving right along we have a resolution to acknowledge the Ann Arbor Public Schools second all right discussion we had some comments that were provided over the course of drafting the resolution I would you like to read this before we vote on it or do we want to I have one question as I understand it the real objective of this is in effect if you distill it down to congratulate and to encourage me and our public schools to move aggressively on a wide array of environmental issues focusing
039and the priorities that have been outlined is that that's really what's behind the resolution right yes the original motive was really to acknowledge anarchic schools for having adopted a policy and a regulation into their their regulation in policies manual title environmental sustainability it's an entire category and the resolution actually includes the elements of the policy and so we were very interested in encouraging them and acknowledging them for for having done this passed on the Commission provided recognition sustainability goals any further discussion questions or concerns I look forward to the next resolution when there's a major accomplishment as I mentioned to you that's that's where I think it's really impactful is when we really see something significant then we really want to chime in and congratulate the public school system what they've done is laid a
040great foundation I think that's great and it deserves recognition and then hopefully we'll be having a drumbeat of resolutions lauding them for action taken well the the priorities right now as have been presented to the Board of Education the short-term priorities are focusing on energy and water the to reduce utility consumption establish a building energy improvement plan for each building as far as the focus for energy and water and then the second priority there's three primary priorities the second is focused on recycling program to enhance and repair current recycling system to reduce landfill and increased diversion rate of the waste stream as well as to reduce a single use product item items such as styrofoam trays in plastics and water bottles straws and plastic ler the third of the short-term priorities is to focus on
041supporting living and learning initiatives so at the elementary schools to transform them into neighborhood centers of engagement and sustainability and using school campus and buildings as living learning labs and curriculum for curriculum integration and also to enhance gardening programs and planting trees for shading so in addition to that there is going to be an effort to document current school-based initiatives and then also to create more opportunities for volunteerism and service learning so that's what they're working on those are the first things that they're going to be it's part of this this policy if I can comment make one other comment it was recently reported that the school board voted unanimously to go to voters in November asking for a 1 billion dollar its a millage the millage increase mm-hmm and I don't know if you're
042the appropriate person to take this back but I think from those of us sitting on the Commission I would hope that one of our interest is that as the details of that bond request are flushed out and are made public that one of the things that we would be looking at certainly is what is reflected in the bond in terms of sustainability types and investments that the public schools will be making I think the article said that the average age of public schools is something like 63 years old so that means there's probably really significant opportunities in terms of energy efficiency which should also lead to comfort benefits use of renewable energy and so on and so forth and I think it would be a pity if they went to the voters and said we're
043gonna spend a hundred million dollars to me a billion dollars and we want a 1 in 1.6 mill increase and there's really not anything significant included in that package related to environmental sustainability and climate action well maybe we can invite someone to speak to us and describe to us the different aspects of what the anticipated changes would be that do specifically relate to environmental sustainability at the structure of the building structural level yeah absolutely I'll take that on okay anything else all right shall we vote all right all in favor aye all opposed okay it passes moving on we have a Youth Commission resolution and this is something that the staff member Missy Stoltz mentioned last meeting it is a copy of a resolution that was passed by the environmental Commission looking to add two
044seats to the Commission to each of the Commission's for youth members you have that in front of you and again that was posted do we have a motion I move to consider the resolution questions so I think missional s meaning that other commissions were doing a similar thing it passed the environmental Commission in the last meeting what the plans are beyond that I don't know council member Eaton do you have any idea is this something that's intended potentially for other Commission's I don't think is potentially necessarily for all part of the rationale was that um environmental sustainability is going to have a bigger impact potentially on the youth as opposed to people in my generation that's not necessarily true of the work of all other Commission's can you comment on that I I'm not aware
045of any plan to universally include youth Commission's I know that there have been some preliminary discussions about having a Youth Commission to just actually opine in all issues I think this is a probably a more suitable way to go about this rather than having to general of a scope of authority I will note that the environmental Commission already has 13 numbers and to add two more members is makes the body cumbersome and so I think that that will be a topic of discussion and council I think there will be general support for youth numbers it's just whether or not that size of commissioners is manageable yeah and part of that is based on I think there's three liaisons including there are two council members there's one from this commission there's one from planning yeah one
046for transportation but yeah that's one from parks so at some point in time with a body becomes too big to be effective yet and the environmental Commission has so much on its plate right now that um I don't want to hobble them with excess population I'd be pretty mad so I'm not sure where that bracket came from usually youth I guess you're an adult after 18 I guess we're trying to fit a an educational profile maybe university students here so I guess I'm not going to get too hung up on that but maybe that's just the generality that it's generally between that group that age bracket I would also say that students tend to have a shorter attention span so this may not be something maybe we look at more of a transitory member that
047doesn't have the same term you know I remember when I was in that age group I would be interested for a semester and then I'd want to do something else I just we need to be a little bit flexible on how we bring this out I think them real rigid rules yes this one does have one-year terms okay length term certainly for college students schedules there's evening classes and schedules might change so that possibility of extension to a second semester John I think you maybe speak to us a little bit more yeah I think probably can the group was already originally 14 to 21 it was it was because I as your liaison there's some benefit so I can bring some insights from the environmental Commission the one-year term originally started out being three years
048just like everybody else and we recognized as you have and others that that's probably unrealistic and I think we didn't get into great detail but the sentiment was that one year is long enough where there's some continuity yet it's not too long where someone is committing themselves where they may be leaving town to go to college or going to graduate school the increase in the age originally it was for me that formulated 14 to 21 and what we wanted to be able to do was include graduate students because many graduate students particularly as our chair are studying topics that are particularly relevant to this and we would potentially be excluding them with an age limit of 21 so we didn't think about the word youth I guess maybe that was because all of us mostly
049there were were relatively older and they were still youthful that would still be youthful but that we did increase the age to 25 for that specific reason maybe before the brackets here we could use that word student instead of youth does that work from my perspective yes because presumably presumably they would all be students although can you know someone over 18 who is passionate about this maybe isn't going to some is not a student anymore and they're in a professional role now or they're in a job role and they still may be a good representative one last thing while I have the floor and that is I don't think it's reflected here but we also agreed that we would increase the threshold for non-resident youth members just as we have for non-resident commissioners so we
050didn't want to exclude an outstanding candidate from let's say a Township right outside the city limits maybe even going to in our Republic schools but not a resident of Ann Arbor so we said let's increase the threshold so that they require 7 volts votes from Council to be approved and obviously we hope that the the process in the case of a tie so to speak in terms of qualifications we would favor a city resident over someone outside the city those were the main topics that we discussed would that be covered under this final resolved clause about the city codes and the membership section those that should cover the voting required it's correct ok it's in the Charter so we we can't pass a resolution or ordinance that any further considerations recommendations I guess I have
051one last question this goes to Council for final fashion correct we're not making this decision ourselves you're passing the resolution in favor of it recommending yes correct I don't see it on on Monday's agenda actually the issue that that raises is that the Charter says that if you're not an elector of the city it takes seven votes to confirm you and so somebody under 18 even if they live within the city would require that seventh vote I don't think it's gonna be you know that big of an obstacle but because this Commission and all of our commissions are just advisory having them participated in that picnic of a deal we had youth numbers and our police oversight task force it presents some unique challenges but it was something that worked for a while let's take
052in the game so just one last thing I think that I don't have to vote on this but I think I know how this is gonna go I think that we should consider on resolution asking to add a youth numbers of this commission that's what this does mm-hmm I thought this was for the environment it was what as it was originally sent out it was for environment oh I'm sorry changed then my main concern about the the number of numbers isn't it so they're not going to do it for their Commission so this is just carefully I thought this was about the environmental Commission so you're asking your advising Council that we should add to members did this or youth numbers by one year terms okay so this is the advice that we're giving to
053Council so we just have to modify this presented as a council resolution I don't see a big obstacle there I believe our fourth whereas now therefore be it resolved covers that correct me if I'm wrong but I think the the Energy Commission for the city of Ann Arbor urges City Council to amend the city code to expand the membership so was this Commission established by resolution or ordinance think it was resolution I think so we would only have to pass the resolution to to unknown that previous resolution okay are there how many voting members are there on the Energy Commission I thought it was 11 so that would bring it to 13 instead of 15 right like voting members yeah I guess that would because the idea would be the youth youth commissioners be able
054to vote so to change 15 voting members to 13 voting members yes we gotta change that as well yeah in all honesty we grab this for the environmental Commission so there's a few changes we should we need to change it instead of the City Council amending city code it would be or just City Council to expand the membership of the Commission right that would Portland and and so we can literally just delete you know a few things there to pass a resolution to expand is that with and then I would remind the Commission that the bylaws that we previously approved that haven't been approved by the City Council yet because they're still under review by the City Attorney's Office it's both the council numbers as voting numbers as well as all right so that would
055bring us up to 15 here as well but you know what you decided it okay so we'll delete to amend city code title chapter 1 chapter 8 so forth to say pass a resolution and revise the 15 voting members to 13 at least based on current bylaws subject to change any further and it spokeswoman maybe one last question that we've seen students enter before I think it was a commitment I think that once students find out that this is an opportunity for them there will be some perhaps there's some teacher who give extra credit we have some aspiring politician one last minor comment and I can't remember how we came out on this there was some discussion about the time of the meeting whether at least for environmental Commission because it meets from 7:00 till
056roughly nine 9:30 we meet an hour earlier that may be something we may want to consider once we have youth members what is the best time based on their other extracurricular activities you know family mealtimes whatever else that might be constraining their participation so that I think we can take that question on at a later point and one further consideration is getting a quorum tonight was a problem but if you add two members it actually increases the number of people you have to have present to create that quorum to be able to vote on things and just okay we were unable to meet our City Planning groups whether it's the staff and Commission who those folks might be and start processing this with them because I want to make sure we don't get out of
057line with them particularly legal staff obviously ultimately we'll get there with them but I think we still need to understand who that is yeah we have identified someone in the city planning I don't think they could meet on the times we generally meet so it might be a conversation as to whether we could be flexible with our meeting time but I think as long as we can find out you know maybe a Friday or something like that a day that works for all of us we can set up that okay meaning the lighting ordinance is still hung up on the issue of amortization in other words when existing fixtures would need to be updated if at all the draft has an amortization included in it it's based on a national standard it is with the
058City Attorney's Office and between it and the Planning Commission and I don't have any specific due dates of when it's anticipated out of there beyond that we will have a second meeting or really first sort of official meeting on potential changes to the orange book related to lighting in the public right away on the 18th of this month so that's not this ordinance but it's sort of a follow-on activity from the ordinance as I've mentioned here before the energy audit disclosure ordinance committee sure I can comment on that so we we continue to meet we now have a first draft resolution based on a what's called best practice from Portland if I recall correctly so that that's been reviewed it's posted to our Google Drive and the next meeting will be devoted to going through
059that bit-by-bit with all the working group people and trying to finalize that that ordinance Josh anything dad yeah I just have one quick update that happened after our meeting there were I think the realtor's are very interested in being involved so they reached out and I think that might be something we talked about our next meeting kind of starting to involve them at this point that we have kind of a draft put together yeah I can speak to that the on June 27th there was an event that was hosted co-hosted by the city of Ann Arbor the University of Michigan energy institute spark in the ecology Center and the purpose was based on the recently announced incentive program called charging forward by DTE it was it was invited businesses in the Ann Arbor area to
060come and learn people who were property owners and managers of retailers retail businesses offices restaurants government properties to learn about being hosts charging Evy charging station hosts in what it takes to install charging stations everything that's entailed in in the all aspects of being a host a charging station host and we had three different companies represented who we had green works and charge point and II motor works reps were there to to answer questions DTE explained what the program was and it was very very well attended you were there right John yeah so folks learned a lot it was very interesting all the questions that were being asked the concerns that were being posed and I think it's gonna I think it's gonna be there's gonna be some some interest and some movement on increasing
061charging stations throughout the city as to the ordinance itself there is also a first draft now posted to our Google Drive of the ordinance we are using an existing parking table that's currently in the UDC so there is a table that looks at what defines and looks at all different types of property usages and defines the number minimum number of parking places or stalls required for that anywhere from none to you know a certain number per square foot or whatever Plus also bicycle parking spaces and we've simply added on to that and we now have that table filled out so that there's an initial starting point for us to review actually when Appleyard nine met yesterday because when we when we first have filled it out we had thirteen different let's say groupings of EB
062readiness requirements out of about a hundred and forty different types of uses if I recall and we sat down and simplified that down to six so it's not quite so complex and what we have done is we have some basic rationale for each one of those groupings we're gonna try to refine that and the agreement from the rest of the working group members is that they will review that before our next meeting which is two weeks from today so they can go into the Google Drive and provide comments and then our task will be to go through jointly and reuse every view everyone's comments pros and cons or making other suggestions and hopefully then arrive at at least an initial draft that we can start to bounce off of other stakeholders I don't have any
063update at this point in time so a couple of things I think are noteworthy first of all a comment made to open the meeting that I think is relevant actually for this commission council member Griswold who's attending this evening asked the environmental Commission to provide input on environmental impacts of transportation projects and my sense is that at least from an energy perspective we are potentially more or the appropriate body to do that working together with staff than the environmental commission of course that doesn't mean that there's other not other environmental impacts of transportation projects but if we're looking at any type of changes to transportation plans or policies that's potentially something that we should be looking at and weighing in on so we would potentially do that together with the environmental Commission the Commission also
064held elections Steve Brown was elected chair Susan Hutton was elected vice chair and Christopher Graham was elected as the representative on the transportation master plan CAC as we discussed the environmental division passed a similar resolution to the we just passed on youth members there was another resolution passed asking Washtenaw County Road Commission to reduce its use of herbicides through the adoption of a comprehensive roadside vegetable plant based on best practices it was brought to the attention that there's in some cases seemingly indiscriminate spraying of herbicides where they're just going down the road and spraying large swaths of vegetation and the hope is is that that we'd be done more judiciously not to eliminate it because there's indeed justifiable reasons for using herbicides especially with some invasives so we're encouraging them to come up with a
065vegetation vegetative management plan and I think maybe most interest is a couple of other things the committee the Commission I should say asked for a solid waste update report the Commission has normally been getting those quarterly in the past but since the solid waste resource management plan project and update project has been worked on there haven't been any update on for example financials so what our revenues what our expenses what is the net impact on the the reserve fund so we asked for that to be provided through fiscal year nineteen that's now or will yeah that's that that's now over we also wanted to get a read some insights into how commodity markets have impacted the city's income and his revenue related to recycled materials so the statement has been made for example by apt
066them that with significant decreases in commodity costs that that's going to in revenue not only last year but going forward so we wanted to get a better understanding of how that's actually fluctuated and what the impact truly is in terms of dollars and cents terms and then the last thing we asked that the city provide a status of the MuRF reactivation proposal that's been submitted by recycle Ann Arbor the city compared to when it was operating a MuRF locally or had a contract with someone to operate our MuRF locally we're spending at least $20,000 a month more to ship recycled materials to Ohio that obviously has a negative impact on greenhouse gases it also means that where we would have jobs processing recycled material locally and most likely Union jobs that those jobs are now
067in Ohio processing our recycled materials so it really makes sense to try to to bring that home so to speak as quickly as possible and I guess the only other thing is there was some discussion there's been a lot of issues related to heritage trees significant trees that have been cut down or put in jeopardy by various projects and so the request was made that the natural features working group look at a heritage tree ordinance based on best practices and that group has agreed to to look at that assisting and evaluating the energy or climate impact of transportation plans does the environmental Commission have a plan for how they will kind of be aware of and you know identify which plans are under consideration that they need to and and we should then consider addressing
068not that I'm aware of this was a request that was made in principle it makes sense that we should look at projects from a sustainability perspective and what the impact might be on greenhouse gases or other sustainability aspects but it was just Qwest that was made and I think that's something we need to discuss between OSI and Council and see what potentially might be expected and then I would assume that those projects that meet that that threshold they would go potentially to staff and both Commission's to evaluate and to provide input on so right now this is just conceptual okay we can we can put as an action item to make sure we follow up and understand how how we will get involved in those Mindy okay thank you all right that is the end
069of our updates from our subcommittees at this time I'll open it up again for public input if any members the public wish to share any input no seeing none discussion of items for the next agenda and on this our next meeting is our next meeting that's formally on the calendar is our September meeting we have typically taken August off I wanted to propose in some years in the past we have gotten together in August for a work session often a longer one than our typical meeting some kind of off-site used to talk about strategy for the upcoming year make sure we're aligned with you know we could use it to make sure we're aligned with staff think about whether the subcommittee's we have are the ones we want to continue conduct you know other other
070commission business obviously would be a public meeting given all of us getting together there but really use it as a working meeting throw that out there and see if there's interest yes I will not be here in September I'll be out of town but I support the idea of having some type of working session in the coming weeks scheduling is always tricky and I know I'm gonna be gone for a few days in August but yeah the concept is good I also like the idea as well I just have to figure out the right date yeah so if we do have that general interest what we can do is put together a doodle poll with some options and you know we'll have to think about let make sure that we've got a quorum enough people
071to make it worthwhile and if not look for other dates but you know there's nothing saying it has to be in August just since we don't have a regular meeting then then it tends to be a convenient time okay anything else then that for next agenda either things you'd want on the agenda for the special work session if we have it or items to add to the September agenda that we're aware of at this time it's not an agenda for the next item but maybe it's something to put in our calendars as a reminder maybe Josh you particularly this Friday the annual rolling sculpture which is sort of an exhibit of classic cars takes place in downtown Ann Arbor I've been there several times and literally hundreds of people show up and I think it
072would be great I did some some inquiries as to whether potentially a slot could be reserved for this session but apparently that's not passable for v's I mean if we're gonna be talking and there's gonna be hundreds of an arbor residents looking at the past of mobility and transportation and vehicles it would be really nice if there is also an exhibit where people that are knowledgeable about the future of Transportation and mobility could be there I mean there's also some antique v's in fact I reached out to the Michigan electric vehicle association head and they have a couple of like 19 19:20 type v's it would be great to have you know a bolt a Tesla yridian and a bunch of other vehicles at future events that is run though apparently by the Main Street
073area Association it's not I don't think officially a city event although obviously the city is involved and it seems to me we should try to get in line sometime like maybe April or March and inquire whether or not we could get X number of spaces to be able to promote v's at least our last induct greenhouse gas projection showed that transportation emissions was going to increase to be the majority of our emissions I don't know how it's looking now but it's probably not gonna change a whole lot that's what a lot of other projections are showing so transportation is going to be really a hard nut to crack and this was an opportunity to get in front of a lot of people and I think we should try to do that every year rolling hopefully
074just to uh set up Bahia track around the harbor yeah go from from zero to 60 in three seconds so everybody can get there geez that's a great idea put a reminder in our calendars every year did you know when our foreign events they need to reserve us but I don't it was just something that after the event that Carlene described a light went off because I had put it in my calendar because it's fun to go downtown and there's a lot of people out and so it's fun to car watching people watch and I thought why aren't we getting v's there and I talked to a couple of people and I got a feedback today that all the slots are taken like I said I reached out to the head of the electric vehicle
075association and they're willing to do it and to help and we'd have to work with potentially manufacturers slashed some automotive rightward not to retailers but what do you call them thank you to be able to do that but if we get you know a handful that would be really great yeah yeah then I can go ahead and look into what the timing would be yeah yeah I'm sure there's some point personally I guess give it those kind of details yeah that's it Thanks I can I can ask someone from the public school district a know public schools you possibly have someone here in September okay yeah especially if it looks like the resolution will be presented in August at City Council then they would be perfect I'm segue very nicely thank you excellent okay and
076that would be great since I think it's gonna be on the November ballot and we want to get that out and then if there's this kind of endorsement or position that we want to take that can't come just a week or two in front of the the Ballentine exactly okay and you know I just captured four main action items coming out of this aside from you know the general subcommittee updates one is to have at each of our meetings so we'll add it to the agenda the updates on the fire station and the other city solar sites the second was inviting the speaker from the school's the third is to look into how they want to identify the transportation plans where we would weigh in on the energy or climate impact and then the fourth
077is to have the city work with the rolling sculpture car show to look at opportunities to daddy bees anybody have anything else on this okay all right well do we have a motion to adjourn you