001beating of the environmental Commission to order treinen will you call the roll for us sure commissioner Hutton parks advisory mr. Skinner yes councilmember banister commissioner Cala we're here and Commissioner Brown here okay Commissioner Graham here chair needham yeah commissioner uphill great first order of business is approving the agenda dessert anyone have any additions or Corrections for the agenda motion to approve second all in favor and then we have minutes to approve from the April 25th meeting any corrections to the April 24th minutes mr. Stover it had one small one on page three of third paragraph under the presentation where noted I'd ask for clarification which was correct but I'd say all I received was an acknowledgement that the system needed work thanks any other Corrections is there a motion to approve the minutes a as
002amended so move all in favor our next item of business is public commentary has anyone hear from the public we'd like to speak to the Commission hi I'm Kathy Griswold and I'm speaking as a member of the Transportation Commission we've divided up some of the the work of the Transportation Commission based on the 60s and one of those e's is evaluation so evaluation means collecting data looking at it evaluating at doing benchmarking and what I would like to request is that the environmental Commission provide any data on the environmental impact of transportation decisions and that would be short-term as well as long-term decisions because long term of course we're honor reduce the carbon footprint but short term we can't just say we want to reduce the carbon footprint with our encouraging people to get out
003of their cars and providing other ways to get around town so I see that on the agenda tonight you're going to be appointing someone to the transportation master plan CAC so I want to thank you for that as well thank you anyone else is like to speak hi I'm Rita Mitchell and I'm just here to give support for your second agenda item on urging the Washington County Work Commission to reduce its use of pesticides herbicides and to be very specific there is some other consideration which is there are certain types of invasive plants that may require some use of herbicides but they need to be very selective so I'm thinking of things like I'm Japanese hedge parsley Japanese not grass etcetera there's some really pernicious once that needs some careful assessment but definitely to reduce
004the broad-based spraying would be a good thing thank you Thanks anyone else you'd like to speak there will be another opportunity at the end of the meeting if anyone so desires our next point of business is Commission elections for a chair and vice-chair for the coming year I'll open nominations for Commission chairperson I nominate Robert Needham I appreciate the vote of confidence but I would rather not I think it's best I've got a lot of commitments right now and I appreciate that but I was going to nominate Commissioner Brown huh second I'm overwhelmed any any other nominations all in favor of Commissioner Brown aye congratulations thank you and you can slide over quickly within cuffs of the back steps how fast can you read Robert's Rules of Order I've skimmed them okay so I appreciate
005everybody's help Mom with following proper procedures and thank you for your vote of confidence now my only concern at this point is that I don't have a very loud speaking voice so I'll try to use the microphone as much as I can okay yes sir all right so let's see you there any other there's a vice-chair election are there any nominations for Vice Chair I nominate Commissioner murski if he's so willing I decline I'm no vice chair of the Energy Commission two vice chairs adds up to a single chair if no one else is willing to do it I would do it because really you know Steve would be carrying the main load so but if somebody else is interested I'd appreciate somebody else stepping forward it'd be great for somebody else to get involved
006quick point I think it has to be a mental Commissioner that's true I matter I'm not a liaison yeah gosh you're right you're true yes could I look one seat to your left and perhaps mister or my left you're right mister no callewaert dr. calwork would you be willing to serve in this capacity having only been on the board for roughly over a year I feel not quite ready for that type of role hi any neighborhoods so the next item on the agenda is selection of a commissioner to represent at the transportation master plan CAC Emily could you update us yeah so this is for the Ann Arbor moving together towards a vision zero which is the transportation master plan update it would be for meetings they have their first meeting I believe in May
007in May and it'll conclude in the summer of 2020 you like Earth who's one of our transportation folks would be willing to sit down with anybody to catch them up and get their feedback for that first meeting it would be basically representing this commission and serving as a liaison back to this commission from what you've learned and that kind of thing that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge about this I have a question if I may like the co-chair position doesn't need to be a commissioner or could it be a liaison because there's several liaisons sitting up here I believe that for Advisory Commission being ignorant of the rule song I'm not it sounds about right to me does anybody want to weigh in on that I just would like to comment as a
008person who drives all day every day in Ann Arbor there's a distinct lack of balance and some of these discussions a lack of representation of the people who drive even if we convert completely to electric cars we're still going to drive in Ann Arbor and I hope that happens more rapidly than it is a lot of the decisions that are being suggested and made really interfere with the flow of people real life people who need to drive driving in Ann Arbor our traffic light system is antiquated it has five systems that don't talk to each other I've heard it said that we have a state of the art system which means that each intersection controls traffic at that intersection and there's really minimal attention to the progression of flow on the main roads through town
009the idea of parking on Huron Street was crazy thankfully the highway department agreed it's the most important roadway in town we only have two east-west roadways and they need to flow they need to get people across this town I don't want to get into another whole thing I'm not putting my name out there but I I hope whoever goes up there for that master plan will bring some balance and insist on some balance on these committees the great majority of people if we took a vote really want the roads fixed and traffic to flow better and it really can if we work at it without interfering with the other priorities of pedestrians and bicyclists we can't do pedestrians and bicyclists on the cheap we have to integrate them with the ability for cars on motor
010vehicle roadways to flow and that means even pedestrian crosswalks on major thoroughfares need to be coordinated with the light systems so nobody's booby-trapped it means you need to put in flashing lights where you put crosswalks on major roadways or don't put the crosswalk there were people hurt killed and crosswalks that didn't have those signals to begin with because we rushed to make safety for pedestrians crossing the crosswalk at Chaffin and first or second or whatever that is down there at the bottom of urine street needs to match the rest of the crosswalks in the city everybody is confused by red flashing light everybody in the crosspiece thinks it's a stop street across a traffic light and they pull out there meanwhile it's at the bottom of a hill you don't want to turn that thing
011red in the face of people in the winter coming down both directions to the bottom of the hill with a pedestrian marching out there not thinking that they need to worry I'm sorry I don't mean to spout off but no no that's fine Ann Arbor needs to balance their activities in this direction motor vehicle roadways are for motor vehicles not for pedestrians in any pedestrian walks out in one better be paying attention then we need to do things that do not make them feel like they don't have to thank you okay well thanks sorry well just like the Commissioner represent at the transportation master plan I see a lot of people look it up it's only for meetings folks just for three maybe even four it sounds like starting in the fall and the final
012reports due in the summer of 2020 well if you'll nominate me I'll go up there and bark I just nominated you got off your work I'm sorry I believe in electric cars and I believe in pedestrians and I do ride a bike and I'm not trying to be a bad guy but balance is important no no so so this is up for a vote for selecting Commissioner to be to represent the board the environmental Commission at the transportation master plan CAC I'm all in favor Thank You host I'm sorry thank you very much but don't leave a unanimous graduation and I will bring the environmental Commission viewpoint also which is electric cars as soon as possible and more safety out there and more more streets that are friendly and bike lanes without potholes - not
013just not just segregated from traffic yes I mean I personally take all modes of transportation whatever is appropriate so no I appreciate your concerns I think there would be good it's good to have a voice good it's always good to have a variety of voices present any importance so so the next item on the agenda is unfinished business is there any okay we'll move on to the next item new business so the first item is expansion of the number of environmental Commission seats to include two new seats for youth members so Emily can you sure this was an idea that came from the Office of Sustainability and innovations and we're just bringing it to you for your consideration as an idea the idea is that there would be two new youth seats that would be
014voting seats for folks who are between the ages of 14 and 21 they would be full commissioners and the reason this is being brought forward is a lot of the environmental and climate policy work that you all tackle has significant impact on youth much more so than older folks and so the hope is that this kid to youth members might bring a different perspective and could be useful to have on the Commission this is following some precedent on the absolutely sustainability Commission and we have new seats we've had a very hard time filling them but I think it'd be easier for you all here in Ann Arbor to fill them and when I was living in San Francisco they actually have a full Youth Commission for different topics so that's the that's the thought behind
015it and as part of that if it does pass if this is something you are interested in I would suggest possibly thinking about maybe moving the meeting back to start at 6:00 at the beginning of 2020 just to respect kids needing to get home earlier so that's pretty much what I have and I'd love to hear what your thoughts are I love this idea I think it's fantastic it's overdue I believe it's something that we want to bring to a lot of our boards and commissions not only because the decisions that we make really don't impact us tremendously but it does impact their generation but also to give people involved in the Civic process I think that there's nothing but good that can come out of that so I I can't wait how long would
016their term be would it be the four to five years however long our terms are I believe years or three years okay I'm just not sure that when I was between the ages of 14 and 21 that I could ever commit to something for three years but that's just me I think that's a fair point um I have talked to Laura Revati who is the executive director of the neutral zone and there's an environmental group there and I know that they benefit you as well and they are fully supportive of it and there are our high school students who are interested in doing it I do think three years is in an awfully long term for a high school student I would suggest that we think about doing an annual term and I'm also not
017sure that moving the meeting back to 7:00 would be beneficial with kids sports practice schedules my teenagers 7 o'clock is a pretty standard meeting start time so I think that maybe that should be we should look at that before we make a decision you're saying seven is not glitter that it is good that it is good six o'clock I I think would interfere with teenage schedules and I understand say maybe we just asked our ages 14 to 21 but it that's it just in the proposal that we're bringing for you so it's open to any edits including the term length if you want to add that as a an amendment so the process would be that a person in that category would raise their name to a council member and the council member would raise
018that named after vetting to the full council and then there would be an appointment I don't think those details have been figured out I think what you're doing if you're interested in this concept is approving it in concept and then sending it to counsel and counsel obviously make the decision it would be a change to your founding ordinance that would need to happen my assumption is is that the process would be the same as any other Commissioner that they would be nominated by the mayor and they would be voted on by council right actually it's a council that brings forward environmental commissioners okay first of all the reverse of everything else okay and there's an application yes right I'm just curious as to why 21 years old rather than 18 presumably an 18 year old
019could just apply for a regular seat right of course yeah I mean it's I think we were thinking about bringing in some college students that would fit that criteria but it's again up to you if you'd rather move it back to 18 that's up that's your prerogative absolutely it just had a question following up on the age piece I looked through the code and didn't find anything about age eligibility kind of criteria to be commissioners I don't know if I had missed it but that made me think that we should be thinking about updating 18 and younger so I was also had questions about up to 21 because but if we're thinking about this as a general youth or a younger adult position that would be a one-year piece I could see the value at
020that to another question I had was about voting or non voting and the materials that were sent out of the examples of the other communities I thought I read that they were all non voting so I'm just wondering about a kind of thought behind voting or non voting and this is definitely for voting so is there any additional information I think it was just to empower the youth commissioners to actually have a voice as opposed to be more of a token voice to give some actual power to the youth I was certainly my thinking but it's just me I would agree with that [Music] so that you could kind of get to the end of typical and anyway I've sort of grad school type level at a surrounding University so like 14 to 25 something
021like that I think maybe that feels kind of like you're really capturing that so that would be my and if the term was different then it would be easier even for a college student to make a commitment right yeah I would have a question in that instance about residents because we have students who live in Ann Arbor for the time that they are students at the University who don't have their pardon me oh I'm sorry sorry thank you I had just the question about residents because we have students who come to the University of Michigan for four years whose home it you know their voting registration may be in in some other city or some other state and would we be flexible about that similarly I know that a lot of the kids who have
022been particularly active in the environmental movement here have been students at Washington International high school which is a countywide school and there are cities that go to that cities whose students go to that school like its landing where there are opportunities but there are a lot of others where there are not and I would also just be interested in exploring the idea of allowing a student who is a resident of Dexter or Milan or Canton to be a participant if this is something that they were particularly interested in because we are the county seat and we're influential and it gives activist students more exposure to not activate just civic engagement any other comments I have a couple of comments first why I support the general concept I support also the idea of increasing the age
023I'm a little less enamored with the idea of allowing people that are not residents of Ann Arbor you know I think we're making decisions for Ann Arbor and hopefully there's younger students as well as University Michigan students that reside here and what there'd be sufficient interests amongst them and I think that the question that would beg the question well there's an adult in Pittsville Township that works here that does everything here that sees this as the county seat that would like to be involved I mean we allow that right now with the 7 vote and maybe we do something like that where we look at those candidates if they're really really good and there's a different threshold for them than there would be for a resident but still showing some kind of preference at least
024for for the the youth etter that are in the community and last comment I had was actually a lot of the climate related policy is actually in the Energy Commission and a lot of the activities and so my question is pinging up on council members Smith's comments about this being considered potentially four other commissions why not for the Energy Commission as well why not for transportation whatever and you know I think initially potentially those two because those are the ones that may have the longest or the greatest impact on their lives but you know I support the general idea of expanding this more broadly but especially for the Energy Commission okay how many more comments I would support the idea of there being an extra an additional standard that a person who's not a rest
025I'm Ann Arbor would have to meet ya know I sound like good point so at this point what should we do Emily should we write up our recommendations to the council we could do it sounds like you have maybe four amendments and I think you've had a person suggest an amendment and now you need a second so if you wanted if we can do that in order you can vote on it and then if that appeals to the first amendment I offered was changing it to one year terms so then you would ask for a second second honestly second one I heard was extending the age 25 from 14 to 25 second anybody amendment in terms of voting privileges I would say that they're entitled to full voting privileges so no Mike I don't think
026there's an amendment the next one would be residency requirements that there would be special additional the non-residents could apply but there were no prefer residents in Ann Arbor but some some measuring stick if not but we have the suppose by staff I have Bob we have a city ordinance that Borden Commission members outside the city of Ann Arbor require seven votes Friday so we could have an outstanding candidate like Susan mentioned and that would have to be recognized by five seven seven billion votes so I'm gonna suggest that possibly I'm gonna take out the words that reside in Ann Arbor Michigan or should I leave that in and then council rules would probably go into effect yes okay you'd have to change the rules to do something different so I think you're suggesting it's fine
027okay so all all those in favor say aye all opposed was there a second second okay well you did first so I'm gonna give it to okay I don't think so I think we addressed the term right we did the term I believe Commissioner muskie was talking about the preference for youth in the community which I think we just took care of and staffs interest is also expanding it to the Energy Commission but we were gonna come there first I think that's the end and now you should probably vote on the whole thing okay for a consideration of the amended proposal from city staff all those in favor all those in favor say aye all right all those opposed passes okay so the next item on the agenda is urging the Washington Rock County Road
028Commission to reduce herbicide yeast through the adoption of the strong integrated pest management policy and there was an information packet applied isn't it submitted as an attachment so I I glanced over this it looks entirely reasonable to me I'll move this consideration okay all right second second it's too bad that Commissioner Apple isn't here tonight because he is very much involved in using targeted herbicide used for invasive species and is very good at it so it would have been nice to have this voice here tonight but I will do my best to represent my own view and also channel him because he knows a lot more about specifics than I do I was a little confused number one I used to be an IPM person integrated pest management for MS use Biological Station for a
029research project I was on and that was insect oriented and so I feel like there's some terminology here that is a little confused because they're talking about herbicides but IPM standards are as far as I know I'm not steeped in it are much more insect based in terms of pesticide use and those I see is two very different things they're related but they're very different things in my book so any of those things can potentially cause harm I think insecticides have a lot more potential to cause harm because they're living creatures like we are and so they can you know the the targeted chemicals that are used have a better chance of affecting us too not that Versailles don't affect us as well but as somebody who in my work is constantly constantly trying to
030figure out how to manage some of the invasive species that we're about up tonight in addition to many others it would be basically impossible for us to even hope to catch up to deal with some of these issues without the use of targeted herbicides so it just feels a little broad to me in terms of the way this thing is put together and it also feels like it's not quite clear in terms of some of the language around it and so I'm not quite sure how to amend it to get to that point night I wish Commissioner Apple were here tonight to be able to talk more about his own experience but boy there's a lot of invasive plants out there and hand pulling it's it's just not gonna happen and so I am NOT
031the broad spraying I understand that we more targeted way but sometimes there's just a big area of some something awful and you have to do foliar spray like that so I can I can definitely get behind like you know how on the railway right away on the road right away where they're doing just broad you know for a half mile at a time like I don't think that's a good thing but I would I just want to be careful about setting some sort of precedent like oh we're just gonna do this with the Road Commission that it starts to filter out into other things that this would be some sort of template that then could be applied to other situations as well so I can't support this away that it is written right now I'm
032not again quite sure how to rewrite at all because I think some of the language is a little confused but if perhaps somebody could give a little bit of background as to kind of how we got to where we are with this particular piece of work that would be really helpful to understand is this like some incidents that happen is this is stuff that we got emailed about a few weeks ago I'm a little confused about sort of how that all came about so how did we get here and then how can we so just be be wise about how we handle herbicides okay so and would you speak to that yes well I want to yes I think that's an excellent point Shannon we got an email from a resident who's actually here with
033us tonight thanks for coming and and another 1/2 of a fifth Ward resident and emailed in because they had received the Washtenaw County roadside herbicide spraying notification and so that swung a lot of us into action and I want to thank everybody who's contributed to all the emails that we shared with each other about what we knew about the program and what we could do as an environmental Commission about it so one of the things is specifically about this resolution about the Washington County Road Commission they are going to talk about it at their meeting on July 10 Wednesday July 10 at 6:30 and one of their things that they allow is residential residents residences to individually opt out of their particular property of this Riverside spring if they do so no later than July
03415 and if they clear the right away next to their property of all weed growth and brush so I'm going to go on July 10 to the four devotional Board of Commissioners meeting and see what they say about it and but I agree what you're saying I think in our effort to swing into action and get this all ready for tonight's meeting we may have in our enthusiasm you know maybe not thought it through quite as well as what you're bringing up that's an excellent point that the pesticides and insecticides are also part of the picture and we want to be careful with the her herbicides so that's how it all came about and I've got all the emails here of all the different things dr. Stoltz outlined different things that we could do like
035working with Knapp to do just more public education for people like I'm there private residences to see how effective that would be and and then I think it was a you Commissioner Brown who brought up and others that the state has already preempted cities from banning these pesticides herbicides and fungicides and so we are in process of confirming with legal that that was in fact our our situation but as was also mentioned we have lobbyists in land sing-through GICs and kirk profits group so we could work on the state and then Commissioner Brown also wisely brought up that Senator Stabenow at the federal level does farm issues and so that's those Roundup Ready GMO seeds that you brought up which is a whole other direction separate but related and then we also have with us
036tonight Rita Mitchell who founded the be safe and Harbor and was a co-founder of be safe and harbor about pollinators and just overall education about reducing harmful chemicals so we I want to thank everybody for swinging into action and as far as how to address our particular resolution tonight I'm open to our discussion about how we could move forward with it but without with a pared down version to be amended you know I might make the suggestion I understand that we're under the time constraint of wanting to voice an opinion to the Road Commission you know I I can tell in the discussions I've had with Katie Scott you know she's well aware of this she's communicated with the Road Commission about this but I do believe that this this needs a bit of technical
037precision and I think as Miss Mitchell was talking about there are I think we need to be very specific about it I I would encourage us to postpone to table this until our next meeting with the intention of having perhaps Commissioner Apple he's not here so I will nominate him to chair this subcommittee and perhaps so miss miss Mitchell could lend her expertise to this if she's willing and able because she has been a fairly leading voice in the community about this and maybe Commissioner Jim Randall can share some thoughts just via email about adding some technical precision to this - hey you know we see these applications as being okay and these other ones so that that it's not just this broad broad brushed resolution that probably has a lot of unintended consequences but
038also makes us perhaps look not very organized I agree fully yeah no I would have create - because mom sorry so it really is important water spraying that is what chemical what thing is there spraying and how they're doing it one of what you specified here from the standpoint of pollinators if you're mowing roadside vegetation in the middle of summer or twice or three times a year it's not very good for pollinators either there's some indication here that the spraying that they're doing last some number of years which means it's not glyphosate it much is probably if they're doing herbaceous vegetation they're doing like the railroads do which is really killing everything for a while which means the chemicals durable in the soil and that's not a nice herb aside yeah if they're just using
039it instead of mauling the trees or they're growing up going in to the roadsides using spray to kind of slow them down and that could be glyphosate and very minimal injury to pollinators it really depends on exactly what they're doing and I don't see it specified here or anyplace on the website and it's not really contained in this resolution very well but there any other comments I think the intention is is good you know could be a weed I think and could also be an insect it could be any living thing so what we're what what what the resolution is asking for is that it developed a comprehensive integrative pest management plan it's not telling Washington County use this for this application use that for something else we're basically telling them that they should be
040consulting best practices other people to develop a plan similar to other best practice plans and I think that's the right approach I agree though with previous comments that it probably deserves a going-over by a couple of people before we take action on it and if the county knows you know what's what we're doing here or what our intention is in advance I think that's that's the proven approach and and they obviously can start to take that into consideration I would just say that the main thrust for me would be to move away from just broad spraying everywhere in order to manage vegetation and to be much more targeted about their particular herbicide use to match it to whatever invasive species they're trying to take care of that I'm in complete support of what I'm not
041in supportive it's just sort of willy-nilly spraying because you don't want to cut stuff back I think that's the and it's hard for me to know exactly what this was getting at you know in terms of the the initial you know actions that caused their residents to just to speak out so that's the direction I think that I would go is that because I don't think we want to take tools away to manage invasive species that you know are vegetative and I'd say past like pests it's in the industry pest is like it's a bug so it's an insect yeah yeah yeah so I think it's not so easy to just use that yeah right yeah so that I think that's the in terms of broad direction that's what I would like to see more
042of it's like get away from the big you know overspray because you just don't feel like dealing with cutting everything back but still allow for targeted herbicide use against specific species in order to be able to manage some of these really tough cookies out there that basically it's really hard to do it without it it was sad to say no I think I concur with all of these suggestions I think it's important to not get too technical it would be good to just send a message to them that the city environmental Commission feels like they should do something to for example use consider the most environmentally friendly or in one of the most specific agents that they can use and whenever they're putting together their plan I mean I have some personal experience here I
043was approached through my position in the Sierra Club by a resident of Lima Township who is concerned because they'd sprayed the Road Commission had sprayed widely and killed a bed of peonies that he had there was set back pretty far from room they sprayed the roots of some landmark oak trees there were close to the dirt rights a dirt road textile road and they also sprayed close to a wetland and I got the information from the I forget where I got her from that they were using tort on K plus two a few other things as well so and it was clear that they'd hired a company from Indiana you know who came and went and there was no real on-site supervision so those are all things that are not good right so I like
044the phrase best management practices as opposed to integrated pest management as a guideline the difficulty where the county is is and with any government so you want to spend the least amount of money to manage whatever they're managing and in this case vegetation going in the roadways means maybe this spraying which is new for the county relatively new or in the last generation these great brush hog machines that can go up sideways and just desecrate roadside vegetation and in the old days who was mowing which is a lot more labor-intensive and undoubtedly a lot more expensive and and if necessary sending guys out there were chainsaws to properly cut trees on the roadside a best management practices would not permit a lot of this baloney and okay it costs more so I'm working on an
045amendment to this that might be tolerable to the body striking the three whereas clauses that referred to hi p.m. and then replacing the therefore be it resolved clause and I'm and I'm just throwing stuff at the wall here to see if it sticks so please this is wordsmithing there is no pride of authorship here therefore be it resolved that the environmental Commission recommends City Council urged the Washington County Road Commission to develop a comprehensive herbicide application plan based on best management practices that's as far as I got you know I think Shannon probably used some language that's a lot smarter than I can come up with on the fly but I would suggest develop a comprehensive Road vegetation management plan based on best management practices road management Road vegetation management plan based on best management
046practices for that process as opposed to just herbicide and best management practices not include a highly soiled durable herbicide it is their wide recognition of things like that like IPM is is a set of rules eventually in best management practices is a lot more nevertheless yeah yes but yes there's plenty of stuff out there pretty boy it's not quite as comprehensive it was the last thing that you said you said which excludes something I didn't mean to include that in there okay all right without the plan the Mannings vegetation on the roadside is this really really works at best management practices could we add in something about environmental conservation because my concern with best management practices could be interpreted as cheapest quit list and we're done yeah any suggestions here I just try to work
047in environmental conservation minimize negative environmental impact environmental management practices particularly for pollinators okay so what what I've got then eliminates the three warehouse clauses referring to IPM and our resolved clauses now therefore be it resolved that the environmental Commission recommends City Council urged the Washington County Road Commission to develop a comprehensive roadside vegetative management environmental management practices that contains the so all right so the next item on the agenda are reports from committees other Commission's Council and chair so on what order should we I'm not sure what committees are I guess they're the energy the workgroup to work through instead of working so Chris do you have anything to say about that no I'm working on a couple co-chairs for the ball keeps flying well I'm in dire straits I have one and I'm gonna
048work on a second I'm kind of in trouble business-wise we do not have an update from the water store management okay I have an update from the solid waste working group we met for the first time earlier today with Jenny Petoskey he was a member of the city staff who Molly pitch s Keys assigned to help the to help the working group the solid waste working group work on metrics as he remember the sustainability plan that the cities had posted for some time has metrics for things like solid waste for diversion greenhouse gas things like that so the idea here is that we will develop some smart as a smart goal will by the end of the year we're going to develop some metrics in collaboration with the city to follow through over the years
049and they all center on percent diversion the greenhouse gas emissions that are are reduced by a particular action and by the cost as well the cost per resident per so there's some discussion about how do we normalize all these things so we need to also collect information about a number of households number of employees for business number of residents per household and it's not yet clear where we'll get that information but we're going to ask city staff about that that's right Alison had made the suggestion that we look at the a few years ago there was a star committee committee star communities initiative that the city had that presumably has this data available so I'm going to ask Missy's office about where that information is I can help find it and then and then the
050city already collects some the wait rots both for the trash that goes to the landfill for the recycling trucks and for the Uruk and X trucks so we will have these data and then there is not really any data collected currently for bulky waste for anything that's diverted to reuse you know such as the recycling arbors where you center the PTO thrift shop st. Vincent de Paul the Kiwanis Club things like that so we're going to look into that and then also construction and demolition waste recycle and Arbor currently has a recovery yard then not I don't think many residents are aware of that son Jackson Road near Baker Road and so they already collect some construction waste there I mean I myself abroad box springs and a mattress there which was disposed of properly
051so that's what we're working on and the intent is by the end of the year we'll have some documents that are almost like standard operating procedures you would have an industry there would describe how the data is collected how it's supposed to be documented and who it's to be a provider for and Protestant words to be posted that's it for working groups or other Commission's yeah I would say I'm pertinent to this commission we I think I've talked about this project that's on Platt Road that had a couple of huge old burr Oaks that were we had talked with the developer and a working session about keeping them but then as the plan progressed it ended up they ended up you know getting the way and he ended up wanting to cut them down and
052so we didn't pass the the plan there's been some lawsuits but those are on hold right now as he's going through ap process for that site to be able to condense some of the development so that they can keep the oaks and so that came through Planning Commission and it's been tabled to be able to get much more fine-tuned about how to deal with the area around the Oaks with targeted use of herbicides actually so apropos to our discussion tonight and kind of the standards and how they will be moving forward over time to be able to steward this area so that and it's all hinging basically on the idea that these very old Oaks which won't be around forever will be able to regenerate underneath them so it's not just a matter of keeping
053the oaks and having lawn underneath but actually having a little habitat around them so that it can they can perpetuate and we can have this the same genotyped that have been here for a long time I still remaining so there's some fine-tuning that's going to be happening with their management plan for these Oaks because that's basically what we're getting out of the PUD is is preserving these are not all of them but some of them and creating an area around them that allows them to be able to regenerate and and have both babies and keep going on you know so we can have so we can have that particular strain survive because if you put an oak tree and now it likely comes from Tennessee it's growing somewhere else so this allows our our area
054Oaks to be able to keep it going so that's where the status of that is they'll likely come before us again with a more fine-tuned plan and I will just shout out that boy it really would be nice if we had a heritage tree ordinance so that we could have more teeth because he was completely within the rules to cut them down and just have to mitigate for them that's what our rules say and it really would be great if we could have something that gives exception to some of these real old trees they're really big old ones y'all know where they are right you know cobblestoned firearm a long division you know I mean there's that no in the business school there's just a few of them that are just huge and iconic and
055we're here long before any white settlers were so it's those I think that would be great if we could have the existing to add a new natural feature right could that be done they needed to see that so that be done as a part of the natural features working group just a short summary of the last meeting first of all the Commission passed a so-called sense of commission honoring Wayne Appleyard service on the Energy Commission um he served over 26 years on the Energy Commission was not reappointed by Council and so we wanted to honor his service there was a presentation by a Pioneer high school student on lighting some of his concerns are addressed by the new lighting ordinance but most of his concerns were related to the amount of lighting and the spacing
056of lighting in residential neighborhoods and that potentially could be addressed by a next step with the lighting ordinance working group or we're gonna be working with city staff on potential revisions to the orange book related to lighting in the public right-of-way which is not addressed by the lighting ordinance we elected a new chair and co-chair the new chair is Shana Lenski and as I mentioned earlier I'm the new co-chair and then briefly on ordinances we continue to work plug away on ordinances lighting ordinance I don't know what the latest status is from the Planning Commission but I heard that one key feature which was an amortization clause which would basically require that lighting be updated after a certain number of years is considered to be not feasible I don't know if Commissioner bramble can provide
057any insights or feedback from the Planning Commission yeah I don't I don't know that level of detail around it we had a version of it maybe two or three months ago something like that so it's been a little while since we've looked at though because we've had several I mean I don't know probably three different sessions on it and each time it's gotten closer and closer and I'd say it's getting close that's what I would say I don't remember a memorization yet that's my understanding so exactly that that it's getting very close in the last real issue was this amortization clause and that most likely is gonna be dropped there's as I mentioned in previous meetings EB readiness actually Wayne Appleyard and I met yesterday and we have essentially a draft that will be reviewed
058by the working group on Tuesday so that's getting pretty close also and I think everybody knows what that is right I think I've talked about that and then we also have another ordinance that's a little bit farther away excuse me I miss both the EB readiness one the basic ordinance is there but we have to generate a table defining what percentage of parking spaces have what level of EB readiness and we've gone through maybe a quarter of that table and we'll do that next week the other ordinance where we are pretty far now is on what we're calling a head ordinance which is a home energy audit disclosure at time of market and there we took an ordinance from portland and revised it with some additions and mostly deletions that's in pretty good form and
059that will go ahead with the whole working group so hopefully something like that can go to the city attorney and then to counsel within the next couple of months and then we had a solar access committee but I understand that may not go forward I heard there's some concerns about that but and so there was some emails just recently trying to ascertain whether that has a future or not so that was basically what's going on right now in the Energy Commission I had a couple of other solid waste issues that I could bring up now or later under new business I just feel right now so first of all the Commission will remember that we had been received a commitment from the city to get quarterly solid waste reports while there has been a lot
060of reporting to the Advisory Committee and to also this commission of the work that abdomen we haven't gotten any reports recently on diversion rate in the past we had gotten forecasted diversion rates we have also gotten anything on expenses revenues and what the status of the solid waste reserve fund is we're reaching the end of the fiscal year so my request would be that hopefully at our next meeting or at the very latest we get a quarterly report with the final diversion rate for the year as well as an overview of the financials and in addition to the financials what I'm particularly interested in there's been a lot of discussion about how commodity rates are affecting City revenues so it would be really interesting for us to see potentially broken down on a quarterly basis
061how is changes in the commodity market affecting our overall solid waste revenues and therefore our net costs or revenue in total and then how that impacts the solid waste fund that's one issue I don't know if anybody has any comment on that second is it's widely known that at the end of April Raa submitted a proposal for reactivating the MuRF and I think it would be of interest to all of us to get a copy of that proposal and more importantly to get a report from the city on the city's evaluation and the status of potential implementation of that and I know that there were some changes that were considered by council I don't know exactly what the outcome of those were I heard that there was something passed at the last council meeting that
062would enable that to the acted on but what I'm also interested in is not just the approval issue but what does the city what are the city's concerns or evaluation of the proposal is this going to happen or not can you comment on that you know I will just I've been told that there's a resolution in the process of being developed that will be on the July 15th agenda leave this probably news to both councilmembers Griswold and Bannister that separates the discussion about the purchasing order purchasing rules ordinance from this Raa proposal and the resolution will authorize the city administrator to distribute and entertain you know entering into such an agreement so at that time I expect we'll all see the the proposal it'll all be public you know that was the the update I
063got it at 6:10 walking up here so okay I haven't seen the resolution I offered to co-sponsor that I think you know perhaps my colleague councilmember banister would be interested in that as well but I think it separates out to two different issues that are thorny for their own reasons yes and perhaps it gets us to and I think we're all very conscious of we want to move quickly on this and evaluate it quickly if we determine that we're gonna bid it then then let's do that quickly but let's not draw this out for another you know nine months well especially since at least we're talking about a savings of twenty thousand dollars a month at least and I think I may have mentioned it in this group before I was originally told that there
064would be some type of proposal presented to the city in July of last year there was a verbal proposal in October there was a partial written one I think it was in January there was a final proposal in April and we're sitting here spending all of our taxpayers money shipping things to Ohio burning greenhouse gases there really needs to be a sense of urgency on this from a dollar perspective as well as from an environmental perspective as well as from an economic development where we have jobs in Ohio instead of having jobs here in Ann Arbor so I think that's second point so maybe by our meeting at the end of July I think we have a meeting in July or do we not we do not in August so maybe we can get a
065copy of the rules Oh as well as what's the status of the proposal in the city's evaluation and then finally I'd be interested in a status on the update of the warm of the Washington Solid Waste Authority regional waste management authority we I believe passed a resolution unanimously in favor of that and I thought with that latest resolution we address two sticking points labor as well as voting rights especially if the city were to enter into into some type of a contractual agreement with the authority that would require significant additional investment so so I'm happy to provide that update all right I put it back on the agenda and after polling my colleagues it was clear there was not support to move that forward the the the rationale I got for that was that they
066want to wait until the solid waste plan has done and adopted so I withdrew the motion I thought it better to withdraw than have you fail right okay as far as I know I mean we haven't seen any draft language yet but you got buried we got a report I was not here that day from Optim and the city and I don't think the abdomen report is gonna go into any detail frankly on the authority so I understand the rationale for waiting but I don't think it's going to fundamentally change anything that has been known up to now and frankly I think our resolution hopefully addresses sufficiently addresses all the concerns that are legitimate concerns but we address those with measures that the city can take to ensure our interests are covered I mean that's
067very concerning you know to me as well because the current investment I understand is only five thousand dollars and it's just to enter into planning discussions there's it's clear that the solid waste that's W RMP and the regional plan that W our MMA are really on parallel tracks and have really no commonality in the near future even until maybe we reach six months from now so well they're there to other folks in this room that you can lobby and the argument that I continue to make is this is really about expanding the network of drop-off services figuring out how to fix the drop-off center as it is now this is about recycling it does not outsource anything it doesn't pave the way for outsourcing anything the city of Ann Arbor's resolution passed by Council to
068do all solid waste use our in-house union employees to do that that carries all the weight of the world in this discussion so doesn't matter what kind of regional entity we would enter into our resolution supersedes that you know this isn't about labour you know every municipality and that's part of this has their own way of doing it and this the the regional authority isn't about trying to make everybody use the same collector or the same method it is really about volume of materials trying to aggregate that and improve the volume here so that we have more ability to create and market so that we have enough material to do that and I just haven't you know that's about saving money for everybody I wish I was a better debater but I'm not okay because
069um this is the way to capture whatever synergies you can capture to save money across the board and also to make a common outreach and education platform and to capture economies of scale for recycling and organics so I'm not sure what the Commission in do about this at this point I there we've we've spoken twice I know that one of my colleagues was very very unhappy that I had reintroduced this motion thought that the the environmental Commission in her words was being insubordinate you know it was a heated discussion you know I and rather than risk this not passing you know my understanding is we have until September to be able to make this decision you know the water resources Commissioner was here to talk about it and it just didn't just didn't move okay
070well all I can say for myself right now is just that I hope council people who have concerns about it would come to members of the environmental Commission and explore what the you know and make sure we agree on the facts and then see what we think about what the implications are and what we can do to address those concerns that's I think all that can be done and so there's some disconnect between the knowledge that you all have done researching it and what well has the City Attorney um generator and an opinion on this I mean I think a lot of the confusion was nobody really looked at the language of the new resolution which was different you know and that was was a frustrating thing for me but the the I don't I
071understand the the union representatives being nervous about their their base and their people having jobs but you know I don't know that we can say enough to instill their trust in us that hey this City Council resolution is policy until another City Council resolution would undo that doesn't matter you know if it's 30 years from now if there's not a formal resolution to undo that that remains the policy of the body okay are there any more clarity comments I just have a question D is it a matter of education or is it just a matter of wanting to get this report before council takes action in favor of this so my understanding is that this report I think it was originally supposed to be due by July 1st but I think it'll be postponed to
072at least the end of July so maybe we can revisit it okay so let's see okay well I don't have any updates from the chair report from staff so report from staff so dr. Stoltz is working on modules to be developed based on based on the power hours that are that have been pretty successful mmm this year looking at possibly doing modules on water natural features and solid waste and so hoping that the working committee the working groups might be able to help develop these modules these would be particular to residential folks how they can manage water how they can manage the nashville features around their home and how they can do solid waste the most effective way to be environmentally friendly so that's just something that's coming up and thought we would throw it
073to the working groups to see if there's any interest if I can elaborate on that fairly heavily involved so traditionally the power hours as implied by the name have focused on entered related issues so renewable energy energy efficiency we had an introductory slide that showed sort of a cutaway of a home and talked about this home being the smart energy home of the future type of the things so there were solar panels on the roof and an e V and smart appliances and things like that and we decided that with some input from Commissioner Graham that that was a little bit of a narrow focus and so we changed that slide and we now call it the sustainable home or residence and we have not only the energy related kinds of things but planting trees
074for sequestration rain barrels having a garden reducing your turf grass and replacing that with other types of natural vegetation and so on and so forth and so we wanted to open with something that says we're gonna focus in this Power Hour on energy efficiency and renewable energy but there's a lot of other things that you can do if you can't put solar panels on your roof or whatever and what we would like to be able to do is augment these power hours and we might even change the name into something like you know a sustainability hour as opposed to a power hour where we can have a couple of slides or maybe even an entire presentation focused on these other elements related to natural features related to water management and things like that and initially
075the idea was that we would get at least two slides from solid waste to from natural features and to from water that we could integrate into the power hours and then potentially as time goes on like I said dedicate hours to these other more targeted topics thank you for the elaboration that was super helpful um let's see there's an energy efficiency RFP out for municipal buildings it's out now there's going to be an RFP out for munis little buildings for solar and that'll be coming out soon so that's exciting that we're moving forward on those fronts dr. Stoltz and I will be at Summerfest on Saturday night if you want to come by we'll be tabling we're always looking for volunteers for public events so if anybody is interested in tabeling with us it's getting
076close to the end of outreach season for the summer but we would love to have you there will be a dr. Stoltz is working on hosting 30 sustainability directors from across the country through an NSF grant they're gonna have a meeting here in Ann Arbor in early July the sustaining Ann Arbor together grants open again on July 1st all the money from this current fiscal year has been allocated so that's an exciting thing to be able to report so if people out there or have any ideas for grants feel free to submit them after July 1st there was an Eevee event at SPARC this morning that a couple of us were at I think that went fairly well dr. Stoltz wanted me to put it out there that we're looking to do neighborhood block parties
077and the reason for that would be to build resiliency in communities that neighbors that know each other will help each other in the disaster time so if there's anybody who's interested in hosting a neighborhood block party in your neighborhood contact dr. Stoltz the green fair was a success and hopefully we'll have a presentation from staff about greenhouse gas inventories at our neck at your next meeting so I just had one comment if you're looking for volunteers um where would citizens find a place to sign up for opportunities very good question it's not formalized yet we're actually gonna be meeting with a group from University of Michigan that have developed an app for volunteering and so we're gonna be talking with them soon so maybe at some point near future there'll be a nap if I
078can also elaborate on that some of you might remember that there was an idea of recruiting and engaging volunteers something that I initially started and chasten Frenzel myself and Joe Oren who's agreed now to take a leadership role for this working group it's really not specifically affiliated with any Commission we met with dr. Stoltz earlier this week and we're going to be meeting with United Way there's also this app where there's gonna be a meeting with the group that developed it from the University of Michigan it's called backpack and so the hope is is that we can make regular progress so that there is a formal approach for volunteers to be able to register and say I'm interested in doing this kind of work I have these kinds of skills I have the time or
079geographic limitations and that would be sort of one side of the database and the other side would be organizations that say I need this type of help and then the database would hopefully then match up volunteers with volunteer opportunities that's the conceptual idea there like I said nine way of Washtenaw County does that to some degree and we're gonna talk to them about piggybacking what we would like to do on top of what they're doing that's what we have first off record thank you okay so let's see the next item would be items for the next agenda were there any proposed items for a meeting in July I had something to toss out see if people think it's worth discussing I think I think the full Commission was copied down at least some of the
080emails about a recent situation along longshore and adjacent streets above Argo pound with gravel was being put down and residents smelled of petroleum odor and it was it was quite an ordeal to get action taken on it and I don't I don't think that the gravel has been removed yet but that was the outcome you know the complaint seems to be valid it just got me thinking about situations like that when there's sort of an environmental emergency like that what do we do as a city I think in the past maybe Matt nod was sort of the point person for dealing with things like that but with his retirement I wonder if there might be a vacuum and I just wonder if you know might be a discussion topic as far as do we have
081a formal sort of environmental emergency response plan should we should we have one you know nothing elaborate just a page or two of this is the person to contact who can you know who has the authority to to stop work on a project or to get the fire department out somewhere or whatever it might take you know rather than you know the poor residents trying to sift through bureaucracy and not know who to call and before you know what two weeks have gone by just food for thought yes council member Bannister was very involved I believe according to her email today they were removing some limestone and she was still know expressing that it should be sprayed down first because as they removed it more dust was being left in you know and so yeah
082I think council member and I and other council members have said anytime there's any complaint or anything of note happening in our ward the council members should be copied because we're the ones that then will follow up with the residents with staff to stay on an issue and luckily in in the case you're mentioning of this 2180 limestone smelling like petroleum and actually as was removed the city did swing into action but I think a quick response team I wonder if that would be in the Office of Sustainability even when it's an environmental issue to make the quick response even quicker well in that regard I mean how are potential hazardous waste spills you handle exactly you could just treat it like a potential hazardous waste it this industry this would be a part of
083the emergency response plan and a big part of responding to an emergency in industrial setting is some type of issue related to a release you know whether it's a spill or it's an atmospheric waste so I entirely support Bob's proposal and someone should be looking at the city's emergency response plan and if it doesn't include cases like this it should and you know this is just a in a sense a spill of a different nature you know this is a chemical that was in a sense spilled somewhere else and transferred here and there should have been a response according to the city's a sort of emergency response plan and that's the way it was handled where I worked I was the incident commander for North America and that would have been handled through exactly the
084procedure like you're discussing so I I entirely agree with your proposal well and we do and this is ring from the cave I incident we do have a person on staff and maybe miss drennan can remember his name because he's escaping me right now but we have a full-time staff person who is our emergency preparedness person and so we should look him up and and strengthen his responsibilities in regards to spills and Atmospheric and as you said bringing in contaminated okay or at least have the channels of communication to find it open I just took a quick look through an arbor fix-it and there's not a reporting mechanism there too and that may just be you know just as a way to open up something to the public something that says emergency or environmental concern
085or something of that nature just to accelerate it and you know maybe that also has an automatic response to alert the ward council people at the same time I will work with staff to try and find the right person to come speak great any other items for the next I have one question of staff or Emily in particular the format of meetings meeting minutes is there a requirement that meeting minutes describe blow-by-blow he-said she-said and/or can we limit meeting minutes I think you did this actually for a while where everything is recorded on tape or if at least it's supposed to be recorded on tape if it's not then potentially um we do need a more descriptive set of meeting minutes but I think it would it would save time and it would help all
086of us if we could focus on specific recommendations and action items and who's responsible and I don't know if that's possible but it seems to me it would help everyone he added me to answer your question meaning minutes to meet the laws can vary from action minutes which literally are just votes that were taken and who voted how they you know or all you can go all the way the other extreme and do the the blow-by-blow it's really up to the sense of the Commission about what they want it does seem certainly something I've thought about is that if somebody's really curious about something they'll probably just watch the video as opposed to reading five minutes if someone's really interested in the details yeah I might my work experience was we had our meeting minutes
087at least imprinted former also and there was a right-hand column and in the right-hand column if there was an action item you know it said so-and-so was two or something something was to be done than in the right-hand column it said you know Sally Smith was responsible for this and it was to be done by this due date and it made it really easy for everyone to simply read down the meeting minutes and you look for Sally Smith and you know that's me even That's not me in this case but that's me and I need to do this and I don't have to read through three pages as a reminder of where was my name in here and what was I going to do and I don't really see if it serves a whole lot
088of purpose for you and for us to be reviewing meeting minute details in great detail you may disagree with that because you picked out a word that you wanted to change but it seems to me that that would be an efficiency measure for us and for staff I certainly wouldn't disagree with you so I encourage you to take it up with Missy and Josh and maybe harmonize familiar with the contaminated limestone spit on roads probably at all but I have for quite some time been upset with the use of limestone on our gravel roads it's cheaper than using road stone which is really a crushed granite with fines in it but it is extremely dusty which has to bother and everyone who lives on a gravel road when they apply that stone it's a much
089lighter weight stone in soil erodes much more easily and a lot of it just goes right off the road the next heavy rain you get there seems to be a lack of understanding of how to crown gravel roads so there's a drainage way on each side and water never crosses the road and I it's another whole transportation matter that I'd like to mark about but contaminated materials being put on a road is not a good idea yeah but lime stones not a good idea to begin with but and I'm just follow up on that if you want to put that in a short email I know you're busy but you know a short thing like that too and it's gonna raise a total raucous out here well that's how that's a good point that in
090all this episode with the contaminated limestone it didn't even come up that limestone itself was a problem extraordinarily dusty when it's dry its pasty and muddy when it's wet I mean it's just not so you know he's talking about dirt roads which we don't have a lot of within the city limits we have a few but this is a base material which is completely standard the way all of the Satan city underneath asphalt that's another matter entirely different situations it works be careful not to conflate these things absolutely not a matter I understand you know strong opinions about materials I do too but let's focus on it's covered it's no problem good base right so so I heard somebody say that it was contaminated gravel or contaminated limestone but I followed this fairly closely with
091the City Engineer Janet Allen and it's really a natural petroleum kind of deposit there was recognized there's geological reports from the 19th century that tell you that this limestone and the in the Dundee formation is you know it still has carbon a lot of carbonaceous matter in it a lot of stuff and in fact you can you can google it and you can find a lot of media reports about people driving down the us-23 and complaining about the petroleum odors coming up wafting over from the quarry there so yeah so it wasn't it was naturally contaminated I have a question about our next agenda concerning the optoma report we have not traditionally held a meeting in August and if there is a deadline that needs to be hit by September if we haven't I'm assuming
092that we will see the draft report before it goes to Council and I'm wondering if it will be ready for us to see broad July meeting otherwise I'm afraid there's going to be a a timing conflict that's a good point I'd be happy with scheduling August meeting it's actually already scheduled oh okay great made the mistake of scheduling something I guess but it's already it's already been approved and it's up on the city's website great well representatives of the of the meeting just if we could if you could mention that our when our meeting is in July to see if it's possible to have that report prepared for us for the July meeting that would be super okay yeah so the next item on our agenda is the next scheduled meeting it's for July 25th
093is the fourth Thursday of the month so I think what I'll do is I'll check in with the city staff that'd be great thank you about that okay so the next item is public commentary does anybody wish to come on up to the microphone more specifically about the use of herbicides by lawn care companies so I have a toddler daughter we walk we're having a lot a lot of my other friends who have young children we're playing in parks and you often see those little sigh and saying that an herbicide isn't sprayed don't play here for two hours and it's you know just alarming to us as parents like what you know is that really enough of a warning children are much more vulnerable to these types of chemicals and just kind of is there
094anything we can do I know we're constrained by state laws about restricting the use of these chemicals but I kind of just want to bring it to attention and think about like other other ways we can raise awareness or restrict use or think about like I was sitting in that park right on North manes by Kerry Town and I could smell the chemicals and I thought to myself there must be someone spraying right nearby and sure enough as we walked out of the park right in that Lake condo complex there was a little sign and put up and I was like we were sitting right there and someone was spraying and this is my 18 month old daughter and just the thought that we were like you know braving it all in so just kind
095of wanted to bring that to attention and you know I love to partner with be safe as well and I'm also thinking about like rain gardens and you know just is there anything we can do to say like you can't spray near rain gardens you can't spray near you know access to where there's runoff to the river and I'm thinking about kind of how to integrate that into like I like your idea about the you know when we think about green spaces like native plants and reducing turf which would also reduce the amount of urban space and we could include something in those slides that specifically mentioned homeowner use of them I'm curious if Commissioner Graham can comment on your colors well the good news is that smell is added so you know it's there
096okay things were used in the 60s and 70s our band mm-hmm the stuff that's used today is much less worrisome mm-hmm the good news is they use a tacking agent which sticks the material to the grass and things that they're spraying so it's not once it dries volatile in the atmosphere or damaging to dog feet or kids feet the bad news is the state has preempted us from really doing much we can do something with people who suggest they're chemically sensitive and make sure warnings are given in excess of the state standards and so on but I do go back to what I've been saying for a long time turf grass is nuts mm-hmm and all of this happens because of that and if we had a lot less of it in town except for
097really intensive recreation Ares or moms and dads that have football kids in the backyards we'd be doing a lot better on more channels than just this one thank you well thank you okay well I think that ends the agenda so the motion to adjourn the meeting I should say one more thing a lot of the turf care companies want you to sign up for a seven course menu which includes at each stage whatever they have on the talk which includes in the summer not just fertilizer but broadleaf herbicides to kill the dandelions and often insecticides because some people have grubs that really can destroy your grass but they have it on the truck and so everyone on the route gets it if people would demand far less than the menu these turf care companies are
098selling you it would help most grasses need fertilizing in the spring in the fall some grasses need broadleaf herbicide control some grasses not pre-emergent control which is not terribly toxic to keep crabgrass and coming almost no grasses need insecticides what's being sold in the marketplace is overkill and we don't need to do it and everyone should stand up and say I don't want all that so what are like oftentimes they see the signs on larger apartment complexes or condos and so I'm assuming there's a property management company that's hiring these people and that the residents aren't even giving consent they don't maybe don't even know what's being used like if they're I mean I know we were constrained on the state level but is there a way to say you have to have up you
099have to have like buy-in from the residents before you can hire a company to spray in their yard where it's wafting into their windows and probably weekend but the organization that controls the property could okay so it would still be on like the individual like the property management would have to agree to to that it's not something that you could do they're all an automatic pilot right about all this stuff and it shouldn't be automatic pilot it should be do things that are genuinely needed to be done for the sake of the vitality of grass and the people that use it not this 7 course menu of overkill right and and then what about like one year so if the environmental Commission is approving new development is there a way to talk on like you
100have to include a certain number of like native plants the city records yes the city might be an artist native plants as Shannon would tell you they encourage it but they couldn't like require we do it because we're these condos going up right in our house and I'm like oh they're you know just it even gets me thinking like I know that the I know the council had to approve these condos because I was at that meeting too and so wondering like you know is there a way that we can provide and on the point of being able to really curtail the installation of turf grass mm-hmm that's the cheapest ground cover and so it's another step in our long-standing process of trying to bring natural features and natural systems to more importance in this
101area to get there if we could do better about that in demands we make on developers in site plans and have left Lester press we solve a lot of this trouble but a lot of its automatic pilot and as I say the ground cover that's the cheapest thing to do is grass it doesn't turn out that way in the end run because it costs a whole lot to maintain it right compared to a nice pair of garden yeah but to begin with when the developers paying bill and not having to account for the long-term effects it's the cheapest I would encourage you though to go to whatever the I mean any of those places like they're likely condos right that are doing this or to go up to a homeowner and let's talk about your
102concerns because I think mr. Graham is right it's like people just aren't even thinking about it and if they're if they know that there are options that maybe it's not the perfect lawn but it's a lot safer and you feel fine about your kid walking barefoot in it are you walking barefoot in it that I think the more we just spread awareness about it there's not very much we can legislate about it but we can have the peer pressure to and you know develop old flyer and talk to people about it or tell your story you know I think that if people know then they're coming oh yeah I didn't even think that we're really doing that so I would encourage you to get out there and talk to people about it because there's only
103so much we can do in terms of state law and in terms of development as well and we're doing everything we can really but we can't force people to have you know prairie and I will say you know thank you again for getting this ball rolling and I think what we have seen is that there's a lot of expertise in on the environmental Commission and so I will I will continue to work on this and I'll work with dr. Stoltz and I work with mr. Graham and you had mentioned Commissioner appalam it's not here tonight it has you know so so we will and I think what we can do is educational pieces through power hours and and flyers and and so you and I can work offline but thank you again for bringing it
104forward because we we will improve on where we are tonight which is a free and voluntary program that actually goes door-to-door asking people to pledge to not use herbicides and pesticides in their yard and so the success of it in at least the old west side of Ann Arbor was quite high for at least one round of knocking on doors the goal is a cultural change toward orientation toward lawn care and just thinking about the whole environment so it I just wanted to say that it's one more little thing that's out there that sort of organized that would be happy to participate okay and he's safe an arbor has a website that people can go to sorry ok so do I have a motion for adjournment you don't need oh I'm sorry all right I'll
105adjourn this meeting 47 so good you