Environmental Commission 1-24-19

001I'd like to order this meeting of the terrific in our efforts to go paperless you do not have an agenda directly in front of you but it is posted on legislator legislations to the agenda sera motion to approve the agenda second all in favor aye the agenda is approved our next order of business is public commentary are there any members of the public here who would like to address the Commission nobody okay there will be another opportunity at the very end of the meeting if anyone would care to we have no unfinished business but our first item of new business is a presentation from City Administrator Howard Lazarus on FY 2020 budget for sustainability issues thanks for coming mr. Lazarus random button-pushing his farm there we go once again superstition and happenstance has overcome science

002and getting us to where we need to be appreciate the opportunity to talk to you this evening we are about to embark upon that biennial or every other year process of putting together a two-year financial plan as we started last year the approach is to go back to boards and commissions and get in but the difference there are a couple differences between last year and this year one is we are approaching a full budget cycle the other is that we are actually approaching this budget cycle most likely in a better financial position than we've been in in a while so it gives us the opportunity for a couple of reasons to look more broadly to reestablish some of the programs that we'd like to see that re-emphasize climate change there we emphasize our environmental environmental

003role and help to reestablish us in that expression our friends down the street uses being leaders and best in the field so I think there's a lot to be excited about we were doing this earlier so the bad news is you won't see a lot of numbers the good news is that there is a chance for meaningful discussion about what you would like to see us do what kind of goals and objectives you'd like for us to set as we approach the two-year planning cycle the other really big thing that's different between last year and this year is the presence of your staff liaison dr. Missy Stoltz who is now over our sustainability and innovations office which really did not exist last year other than a figment of many of our imaginations but is now

004something very real I'd also like to thank Missy for her preparing these slides so we can either give her great credit for insight or I can blame her as I stumble through them oh yeah so that's either magic or let me see has the so tonight I do want to talk about the distant overview of the financial planning process where we are in the budget and then get your thoughts and share some thinking so it's an opportunity for creative interaction to really address the things that are important that we'd like to get done oh it's wiping oh so we look at the budget process we're in that time frame now we're reviewing our financial projections and we've sat with Council on a couple of occasions to establish some strategic direction and priorities one of our

005goals this year is to have council look at outcomes and talk about a strategic plan for the city they've given us some very valuable input as to what they'd like to see and then our challenge is to put the resources in the right place to get us there over the next couple months February and March we have a series of work sessions with council to go through each part of the budget in detail public's public services those agencies that draw from the general fund our community services efforts as well as the other agencies that are part of the city's budgets and that would include the county's Office of Community Economic Development Housing Commission and others when we get into April I will present the formal budget to Council and that is again as our two-year

006plan Council will deliberate with all seriousness and in May they will debate the budget and hopefully adopt it and then as we know the fiscal year starts July 1st oops Broadway Syria well this is fun all right there No there we go so when we talk about the budget I apologize for that the light the truth is that you see now 40% of the city's property is off the tax rolls and property taxes are the primary means that we have for financing most city operations exclusive of those that are enterprise water sewer and some of those the truth is that the city is the largest landowner property that's not taxable and that really is attributable to parkland you see doesn't have a lot of large facilities so most of what takes up the our Holdings

007is parkland behind that is university and then the public school system so it's really about 2010 and 10 in spite of that we will see a growth of property taxes in the coming year greater than we've seen in past mostly due to a higher rate of inflation so that's the basis of where the revenue comes from you can see we're really dealing with a total budget of just under 400 million dollars now what's interesting about that is the general fund is only about a quarter of the total but it seems to get the most attention as we talk about budget and that's because we're a lot of the services people expect come from police fire some of the environmental programs are funded there some of our parks are funded from there it is the area

008where Council has the most discretion and how they obligate funds on the revenue side you can see from the general fund public safety take up about 51% of the total expenditures that's actually very good cost control compared to other municipalities where in some cases over 80% of the general fund dollars go to police and fire so we are very fortunate to be able to fund a healthy and robust set of services from our general fund some of the constraints I think this is where the discussion really starts with us is our environmental concerns are addressed through multiple funding sources some of it comes from the water fund some of it comes from the general fund some comes from other sources so in that regard it's really more important point to think in terms of outcomes

009metrics and a policy agenda rather than focus on specific funding we did meet yesterday with councils policy agenda committee and did incorporate that input you gave into the policy objectives for the coming year that's important one because it helps us guide our search for grants and other sources of funding but it also helps us look to both Lansing in Washington on those things we need help from our elected delegations to change statutes to change laws that allow us to proceed and on the path we want to choose to be environmentally responsible as it stated here the journal fund is the most competitive fund because it has the most discretion and Missy's shopt the office of sustainability and innovations works within the funds listed there so it is a smorgasbord of where things come from but

010it also is a testament to the fact that our environmental agenda affects everything we do some ongoing issues of concern it's really on water quality we have P fats and their related compounds I think that's a really much and you'll and Brian will talk about that in a little but it's primarily a good news story because we know what we know and we can take action we're in a better place than those who don't know what they should know in terms of contaminants that exist there is a process ongoing to address P fast which is still below the advisory levels that EPA have set and we feel confident we'll be able to meet future regulatory requirements which are many many times lower 1 4 dioxane and the Gulman plume continues to be a concern we

011do not have any 1 4 dioxane either in the source water now or in our treated water Brian will hopefully talk a little bit about the plans we have to have increased diligence and our monitoring as well we are looking down the road at the water treatment plant design and construction with the idea not only that we can treat what we know now but we what we can reasonably anticipate in the future those things that are unknown to us share this with Brian and Craig you pee many times that when Craig and I were starting off in the world as engineers we were looking at treatment levels at the parts per million range now we're talking about parts per trillion for things we didn't know existed that's a million times more protective and we can

012detect things that we didn't know were there before so that's a good news story we our goals always provide a a safe and reliable source of water and the process which we started with councils approval of a progressive design-build approach at their last meeting gets us on our way there's been concerned about sanitary sewer discharges and what some of the increases in the sewer rates will be able to start doing more preventive maintenance on our sewers and then there's the ongoing discussion about rate structure particularly on the water rates in the area of resource reduction recovery recycling and reuse there are several issues we are talking about solid waste regionalization we are going through the solid waste resource management plan which will guide our investment the coming years there's a lot of concern about the

013status of our recycling operations and the desire to make sure that it matches with the solid waste resource management plan we do want to extend organics collection on a full-year basis but also address the operations in the downtown which because the nature of business is heavily does produce a lot of food waste in an organic matter we also want to be more responsive to the concerns of downtown merchants and then we want to make sure over the long term that the fund is balanced but we also want to start the discussion that how do we go to potentially as a pay as you throw policy for council to adopt if that's something that they want to do if that's something that is desirable for our community so that people are properly incented to reduce the

014amount that they consume in packaging and other things that may eventually wind up in the landfill so those are some really meaty discussions to have things that we certainly seek your input on as well some of the priorities that Missy has put together for her office we are looking at building resilience hubs in the neighborhoods whether it's part of a new fire station or if it's a standalone structure part of it at the Rec Center but we do want to be prepared in case of emergencies and we want to do it in a way in a way that separate of all we are going to be more engaging with our community as he has taken up the sustaining Ann Arbor together program which is really the micro grants program that was in the Climate Action

015Program there's some exciting things going on some good news that'll be coming out of that as well she's embarked upon a listening tour to get the input directly from our community as well energy is probably one of the areas where there are more exciting things in the works then than anywhere else we're looking at net zero energy for affordable housing and for fire stations there was a commitment of two hundred thousand dollars to the Housing Commission so that when they redo the broadway apartments that they can be more energy efficient lowering the burden financially on the occupants but also being the responsible thing to do we are part of the AARP aging-in-place initiative to see how we can help seniors stay in their homes longer we are committed to achieving council goals for carbon neutrality

016I think Missy has arranged for us to get a Chevy Volt and for us to test drive as a way to convert our fleet further to renewable sources that will also require us to put in some charging stations charging stations are included in the DDA project for addition to the ANA nationally garage as well so we're excited about that and then there are some things that may not quite be ready for primetime that address solar energy we have reached out to our legislative delegation about reintroducing the measures that will change the tax treatment of residential solar they were both passed with overwhelming majorities in the Senate and the house last year outgoing governor Snyder for some reason vetoed them I think there's a lot of support for that and it shouldn't be a very heavy

017lift in the legislature this year and then with really with mr. Murray's health and others we are going to do a better job of being transparent and tracking what we do updating our dashboard not only for Missy's operation but throughout the city and report on those things that help us answer the question that the community would ask is how can we tell you're doing a good job how are you being prudent with our tax dollars so you'll see that come out as part of the budgeting process as well so that's kind of what's in the hopper and at this point I'm gonna turn this over to you and to the distinguished dr. Stoltz to lead the discussion of what is it that you'd like us to address in the two-year financial plan didn't respond any

018questions may help the County millage rebate and the implications plans for that the implications for sure there as you know last July the council adopted a statement actually to utilize ago that they would go 40 percent to affordable housing 40 percent to climate action 20 percent to pedestrian safety this past year we did program out the 20% for pedestrian safety to do primarily variable speed limit signs at schools and we're going to continue to use that money for pedestrian safety along with some other funds there's been some use of about $200,000 or so from the Housing Commission to pay for some of its operating costs one thing that will come to council soon is there'll also be some assistance to the Commission to get over the hump because they've had some financial challenges or may

019have some financial challenges due to the slowdown in federal funding but there is funding that'll look crew for affordable housing in - about 25 percent will go towards operations 75 percent will go into the affordable housing fund so they have the money to build additional units in the future and then the forty percent that was allocated to climate change they said there was two hundred thousand dollars set aside to assist the Housing Commission for energy efficiency that's where we are now Council is debating what they want to do in the future they've directed us to go out to the community with a survey those survey questions have been reviewed and are going through further review both with Council and some folks at the University to make sure the questions are free from bias should go

020out within the next week or so we'll get the data back in time to make budget decisions in March so that that's where it is we're gonna it's it's sort of a little bit of a circular process we're going to use treat those funds for now non-recurring we're going to start programming things that are one-time we're limited time occurrences until we get some certainty as to the direction councils going to give us on how to use those funds other questions regarding the survey is that something that can be shared with the Commission the questions I think we can I mean the questions we can post when they're when they're finalized I think that's a reasonable reasonable ask if you remember we went we had a with an open surgery if you will that we got

021over 2,000 responses to early in the budget process and that was posted online the question this survey is a closed survey to make sure we get representation throughout the community so it won't be posted online for response it's it's very similar in nature to the National Citizen Service we do the same firm is doing it so it'll be mailed out directly to residents when it comes back it'll be sorted and adjusted to reflect the demographics of the city so you won't have a chance to respond to the questions but I think we can make them available once they're finalized once they're finalized not for input though I think the process is gone kind of down the road and because of the people who have reviewed it and council has the opportunity we want to make

022sure that the questions are unbiased not that you're biased but from a you know you bias in a sense that you don't ask leading questions so because of that approach because you want to make sure that what we get back is statistically significant and free of bias we've gone in the path we have how's your how's your view of road repairs evolved great question we are committed I've committed that we're gonna find some additional road funds for the coming year I've also talked to council about committing some additional funding for pedestrian safety crosswalk improvements and lighting improvements so we do have some one-time funding this year that we can dedicate to pedestrian improvements for the coming year when we talked to council in December there was more than a bit of dismay at the decrease

023in funding level part of that is because over the last couple of years we had some big capital projects to that ground money I think to keep your if you're gonna keep your eye on something keep your eye on the improvements that we're doing with Capitol preventive maintenance and as we do the next year the follow-up survey on asset condition to see that we're making progress towards the goal of 80% of our roads and good or better shape by 2025 so council has expressed their dismay we're gonna try and find additional sources of funds and I think you'll the capital preventive aims we did on South Main on your own parkway you'll see more of those because they extend the life of the pavement further but it is a priority for council and we're gonna

024put as much funding towards that as we can it's not about potholes either it is about road condition you know potholes I think are euphemism for other things we have to look and see what the governor's gonna do the new governor with her plan to fix the roads and one thing that would be really interesting is to have a discussion of what fixing the roads really means is it just pavement condition or is it safe used by all users of all abilities and that's a good conversation to have is this going to be a phone survey or written survey it's a written survey and will there be sufficient background information provided yes for the questions it's a really delicate dance and that you don't want to bias the survey but there's enough background there so

025that we can explain what we're asking for without leading the respondent to an answer all right you know I just wanted to make sure that the basic facts were given it's a part of the survey you know in terms of what money was spent already and what the background was the history I think there's sufficient background to explain what the intent of the survey is I have been I haven't drafted the questions mr. Crawford's work the CFO with the firm to develop them to make sure that they're consistent with counsels desires and that they are unbiased thank you also for taking part of your you need to appear in front of us this evening I've got to sort of general questions first of all you started with the fact that 40% of property in Ann

026Arbor is off the tax rolls do you have a rough idea how that compares against let's say the national average or maybe more specifically against pure cities well we're university towns I think it's probably pretty common in university cities I think what makes us unique is the amount of land we have dedicated to parkland and we have a commitment that everyone will live within a reasonable walk of a park quarter mile or so 20 minutes or less that you don't find while you plant you find that as a goal in some places you don't find the commitment to follow through so I think that does make us a bit unique I would be interested in knowing with the benchmark figure is certain you know some university towns are obviously larger like st. Madison others are

027very capable say Boulder of the interesting to know how we stack up against them I think we can do that the other general question I have is try to I think for all of us better understand priorities and spending a question that I have is well let me start my understanding is that because expenses are generally been increasing faster than revenue that in at least relative to the general fund we're talking about a zero-sum game so if we say we want more spending for X then it's gonna take money away from y is that generally true within the job the general fund that's generally true okay so one of the questions that I have in that regard is how is the administration and council looking specifically at outcomes - and relative to its goals in

028defining what its spending should be for example in looking at your presentation ahead of time I saw as you pointed out that safety services are roughly 50% of the city spending and I looked online there's a website called city raiding and I assume they pull data from the public domain and I look just at serious crime and for example property crime and Ann Arbor is down roughly 45 percent since 2000 1999 were well below the national average like 30 percent below the national average also below the Michigan average violent crime is down roughly thirty percent from the same time frame and were maybe a third of the national average at least according to this site so a question that I would have is you know take serious school city crime property crime serious crime take

029whatever you have how does counsel look at those outcomes in the determined priorities based on objective measures and not just from what I saw from the materials that were posted for the work session looking at the citizens survey and using that to drive priorities so if you want to focus on public safety or in general most of our general fund cost or our labor and while we have increased some period some staff positions over the last couple years it really hasn't been that significant so we have kept our workforce fairly stable we are a much leaner organization than most if not all of our peer cities so I think that's a benefit to us we've negotiated fair contracts with our with our unions particularly Public Safety and to the credit of our firefighters and police

030officers they have been good and willing partners and striking fair deals with us we have changed the nature of our pension plan to long-term limit our liability we chose to have some short-term concerns we have seen benefits from our wellness program where our exposure rates for medically related accidents are much lower and have resulted in some rebates to the city on the public safety side which is the majority of the general fund our police department also is pretty lean the average number of officers per thousand residents for a comparable city and somewhere around 1.7 we're at 1.05 when you throw in the university police it rings up about 1.1 so our players have to use data to assign resources and I think they've done that very very well they're very we are also very good

031at getting reimbursement for big events that occur on the fire side we just did a firehouse location study and we can cover almost the entire scent of the city within the four minute response time that's the NFPA standard and the entire city in six minutes that's fairly remarkable as a result you've seen reductions in fire related losses on property and we haven't had a fire related death in many many years there's a problem that that's kind of correlation not causation but it's it's hard hard to go between those two on the on an on public safety side I think we've done a good job of leveraging it and you know p.m. other people's money we've been very focused on the things that we want to do and we've been very careful in the assignment of

032resources getting back to fire real quick and I want to give chief Kennedy some shoutouts we work together to reduce the general fund burden for fire inspections that saved us half a million dollars a year in general fund money and Mike worked on our assignment of fleet vehicles for fire and that saved us and their 250,000 a year in general fund money so we're continuing to do those kind of improvements as well the long-term goal is to balance the rate of cost growth with the rate of revenue growth so that we don't have a structural imbalance in the budget and as we do that over time with some prudent and neighborhood sensitive economic development I think we can grow the revenue to where we can bring on some of the additional programs but the short

033term goal is to eliminate that structural deficit that's built in where you know the revenues have been going up by a percent or percent a half-an-hour cost by over two percent I think we can balance that out and I think we've got through this year maybe a one-year anomaly you don't know but part of it is is prudent development and leveraging a property that we have I guess what I'm driving at is you know flip it so it could be either way that if we're meeting our targets or even overachieving at targets in some area then maybe we don't increase the rate of spending as much in that area or even freeze it or cut it back and use that for other emerging priorities and that could be taking the examples that I said if

034for example these were the crime rates were exceeding our targets then maybe we don't grow the the safety services budget as much and we use that for water improvement or potholes or whatever could be the other way around if we are over achieving our goals let's say in greenhouse gas reductions then maybe we should not put as much money there and use that for something else it could go either way but it'd really be driven by outcomes in defining our spending priorities as opposed to just looking at the NCS or whatever National Citizen survey or other more subjective measures so again the general fund is where Council has the most flexibility and right assigning funds I think we've taken steps and we'll continue to take steps to use the data that we have to assign

035resources appropriately we are going to do an enhanced job of reporting on metrics and putting those metrics in context so that each year when we do every other year we do the budget plan we can marry those up to what we get back from from citizen surveys and really come up with a strong plan things like doing capital preventive maintenance over the long term will decrease the amount of money we have to spend on road repairs as an example it generally cost about $50,000 per Lane mile to do a preventative maintenance treatment it cost upwards of over half a million dollars of Lane mile to do major rehabilitation so by putting money out on a consistent basis we can extend the life of those assets one of the things counsel did last year does they

036adopted an asset management approach where we are starting to put funds away for the capital reinvestment we have to make in our facilities our parks as well our budget doesn't respond well to perturbations big ups and down so if we have an incident where the air conditioning goes out on this building we should have funds set aside to address that and not have to pull money from somewhere else so I think we're doing all the right things to become more resilient as an organization and keep our fixed costs down so that we can make those decisions based on the needs in the community year to year in the case of all the dedicated funds have we now pretty well eliminated the structural deficit problems in them water sewer storm these are all now very healthy

037well stormwater fund as you know a couple years ago I had a pretty big in percentage-wise and I really cost-wise increase in in the rate that's allowed us to and allowed us to reinstitute a cyclist maintenance plan for our urban forests as an example and I think the stormwater side is it will be in good shape there was an increase in sewer rates that council approved on second reading on my on Tuesday that increase will allow us to make sure there we don't run afoul of our debt service coverage on the debt from the wastewater treatment plant upgrade but hopefully will also allow us to start doing preventive maintenance on our sanitary sewer system and then on the water side the big thing that's out there is we need to upgrade the plant that's that's

038what's going to drive rates so on the enterprise funds they are in better shape because they can address their their needs through adjustments of rates on the general fund we get into restrictions the states impose through you know Headley and prop a and a growth of of rates and by the way I think we all are concerned about the impact of rising taxes on people's ability to stay in their homes and keep their homes affordable so there is a positive side to that so from a policy standpoint we want to address at the state level to have some more flexibility some of the things that will be in the policy agenda are things like perhaps ticket taxes on big events that occur in town that aren't directly related to university operations that may be something

039and actually I've shared that with with some folks at the University there are some ways to better leverage the monies we get the through some capital investment we can reduce our operating costs for energy by taking facilities off of DT power maybe and using more renewable sources as well so I think on the enterprise side we're wearing we're in good shape we have the ability to put money aside for the needs that we have I do have a concern that's been a little bit more forward-looking that as more and more vehicles you use battery power if you will you know art road work through fact 51 is funded by gas taxes we were a little bit at odds with ourselves by trying to get more money for roads but at the same time trying to

040reduce the amount of fossil fuels that are used that's a long-term problem from a policy perspective we're going to have to address and it you know it may be that we wind up with a fee that's based on miles driven that's going to require some collaboration at the state and the federal level so that's a long-winded answer your question to your question the question is yeah we're okay on the on the enterprise operations we're working on the general fund so I have one other question which I doubt a lot of people understand but you probably can illuminate it very well we've been building a lot of very tall buildings in the city which have very likely a significantly higher tax income to the city than a four-story building would have is this really helping our

041tax income is balancing out I mean is it really a genuine financial value to the city to have these tall buildings yeah so property its property what you can build on your property is based on the zoning okay and so if there are things that are done is owned D one where you go up 180 feet you can do that I think clearly you know in revenues that are the property times the military so the higher value of the property the more tax revenue that will get the schools looking at the county you'll get the libraries will get so if you build a big building that has a lot of units that are rated well you'll get more money out of it I'll go back to one of my favorite quotations which is I think

042Oscar Wilde quotation that the cynic is a person who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing we need to address community values as we look at development the goal is not to what's the goal we have is it to optimize revenues to the city or is it to optimize quality of life and that is why you have some very esteemed knowledgeable educated and dedicated public servants as your counsel to bake to debate that policy issue I have a word of encouragement to my other commissioners the administrator I think knows my priorities but I think it'd be interesting since it says here you would like to know our priorities no one's spoken up yet with environmental or general sustainability spending priorities I think well thanks thanks means segue I think dr. Selina Lazarus

043came we want you to share your priorities I'm gonna jot them down and then we are gonna carry them over to our work planning session next month so John recites lead everybody knows mine so I've encouraged others to speak well I'll toss a few out I'm certainly finding a way to get a functional MuRF here whether that's a regional or city owner what it what it looks like but making that happen as soon as possible would certainly be one of mine and as you had on one of your slides expanding organic side a year round and throughout the downtown another big one I'm very thrilled to see doctor's thoughts begin to talk about a community outreach program that works with neighborhoods a number of channels energy storm water retention called out in 2004 was in

044the city's natural features master plan an outreach program to educate and encourage and work with people to teach them what natural features they have in their neighborhood and how to steward them better and I'm genuinely hopeful that outreach program that she builds includes that component allowed to talk on this table about toxics and energy but a big oak tree sequester's more carbon than many other things that we might be able to do and if we have a lot of oak trees including a whole lot of young ones in this city we'll be doing a very fine thing for the climate I hope so I'm interested in making more investments toward equity pairing equity and energy together I like the things that are happening with the solar power I like the idea of electrifying housing units

045I'd be interested in looking at an electric car sharing program like Los Angeles is done I think all of those things are really worthwhile thank you I'd like to add on what Bob said and really more than just an operating Merc but really looking at Ann Arbor as being a leader in waste management I think we all like to reflect on the fact that 20 years ago we were but the fact is is that we're it were not now and hopefully through this process of regionalization that will happen but I like I say that that idea of being able to be a something we can all be proud of as a city is it's certainly something that has intangible values but values nonetheless have yet the opportunity to participate in the stakeholder group for the

046solid waste resource management plan there's some really interesting numbers in there that on one hand would say that we're actually as a community doing very well in some areas we have on a apples to apples comparison basis we actually have a pretty high diversion rate and it's remain constant and the cost of achieving that diversion rate for us is a lot lower than it is in some of our pure cities and that does not take into account the fact that we have a bottle law here that keeps some of what would normally be a recyclable out of the waste stream the interest of the MER Farrar have been I mean the community to a certain extent has been very patient about how long it's taking us to retool it but the market is different than

047it was 20 years ago you know there's less paper the markets are different particularly last year with the international sales of materials being being basically cratering having said that we do need to have a facility that allows us to have more direct contact and lesser travel distance with those materials re-entering the the manufacturing stream and I think there's some opportunities to do that as well but long-term really a part of it is looking at how do we reduce consumption and that ties to miss Hutton's concern about equity about having people have greater access to fresh and nutritious food with less packaging so there are a lot of things as a community we're gonna have to make some decisions about a aggressive pay as you throw approach is something that will provide further stimulus for people

048to reduce the amount of things that they throw out you know recycling like other utilities is that odds with itself financially because as you can serve and consume less of a commodity the actual organization providing it has lower revenues so as we try and reduce the amount that people throw away we wind up on a page your throw basis with less revenue so we have to solve that that conundrum as well but I really hope over the coming year to get the merv off center stage as the feature that people are focused on and really talk about how we can be what we say we are and live our values going into the future it just feels like impending doom scenario that a lot of people that I talk to you feel like we don't

049have a lot of control over in terms of how its moving what we know about it it just seems to be changing like people predict and then it changes and what really are our options in terms of dealing with it when it hits our pond you know which is 80% of our drinking water so I would like to understand that more and really see what the potential strategies could be for us to be able to deal with it so that's one piece and the other is I'm thrilled to see this sheet that has all these Allen Creek projects and what's coming and I I work on this in my own professional life too but I walk by West Park every day and probably every other day I smell a strong smell of gasoline coming out

050of the the grate and I know the city knows about this and but it just reminds me all the time that despite all the good work that has been going on with stormwater in that Creek that there's still a long way to go and that I think we have some big incentive with the development that will be coming along the Broadway bridge because they hope to be able to have some areas where people can access the water with that and that is directly downstream of where that comes out and as opposed to the cascade which is just upstream of where that comes out so I am hoping that we can start to drill down on some of those last remaining pieces of point pollution that are coming in there so that we can feel okay

051about putting our feet in the water where it comes out a couple of hundred feet where it finally hits daylight again so that those are my two priorities thank you active assets a consideration that hasn't arisen anyway in a conversation so appreciate you bringing that up is something that we need to address I sure the concerns about the mark and about solid waste management and but I also have a concern about the tree line versus a Greenway option some to me the tree line seems over engineered in a sense because the true benefit I would think for many citizens have told me that the true benefit would be opening up green space you know to especially as the downtown development as the high-rises go up you know you need to provide more of the natural

052features or more of a natural pathway to for example West Park so instead of building it all the way you know connecting downtown to the river and to West Park I would hope would be rethought as a priority for a great way rather than continuing that development over basically sidewalks in a cityscape for several blocks to the south thank you yeah two thoughts one a general one I just want to reiterate support for the sustainability plan that was introduced last fall and unanimously supported by the environmental energy Commission's and that we continue through our funding discussions to think about that as a plan and not just look at particular parts of that but that we approach this as a plan the other issue just a question that always bothers me as we take more about

053electric vehicles and that hopefully has that expanse for thinking about what is the energy source for those vehicles if it's coal-fired electricity we're not really gaining anything without getting too far ahead of ourselves we do have some inspirational plans to increase the available of renewable sources of energy for city operations wonderful and I think as those things develop don't you know not not to be secretive but some just things just aren't ready for primetime and that's what you as we get through them appreciate both the questions you can put in the relationship that we have as well as their dedication to serving the community I wish more of you would have had the opportunity to come out Saturday for the recognition event for our boards and commissions but I can tell you now that we've

054taken the first step we'll do it again so thank you for your service to the city thank you thank you very much next up Brian Stieglitz is here from the city to give us a presentation on PFS contamination and also I think address dioxane well thank you for the invitation to come talk to you I think this is gonna help you I'm hoping I'm a little more success than this okay thank you all right I got it so I'm here to talk to you about a few things tonight this a majority of this talk or parts of it came from a presentation that I did the City Council did for City Council on September 17th on updating them on emerging issues related to water quality primarily soapy fossil was one of them we also talked

055about a couple other items but tonight I'm gonna focus primarily on pee fuss and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about where we are on what I can share about 1 4 dioxane and then all some opportunities to answer some questions if you have any so I don't want to spend too much time on this but I think most of you are probably familiar with this topic a little bit on what our pee fuss there's been a lot in and live and in the news and the media has been following this pretty rigorously over the past Oh probably a couple years now but these are per and Polly four Oh alcohol substances they're used in a lot of products that we use every day some pictures on the slide whether it's a Teflon pan

056fabric softeners food wrappers dental floss things that we're coming into contact with regularly fire fighting foam is also another major source of pee fuss um they're very stable these chemicals they do not break down they have a very long half-life in the environment in our bodies our bodies don't break them down which is why they can have health impacts at such low concentrations and there are many thousands of these chemicals that are being used every day and new ones are being introduced into our environment and our watersheds we currently have analytical tech to test for only 24 of them and that is what we are currently doing so how did the how to pee fast impact public health we have a fair bit of data now on two of these chemicals one is the acronym

057is P fos and the other is pfoa and those are the ones you've probably heard most about ingestion is the primary route of exposure from a health standpoint so you can get it on your skin it's not doesn't really have an impact I'll talk a little bit more about that with some of the River contact issues it is bio accumulative which is one of the issues with the why there's a do not fish eat fish advisory owner here in Louisville because it's accumulated up in the fish species that are in the river identified here some health impacts cholesterol it could infect your immune system increase in cancer risk so there's sort of an assortment of things that PFS can help they can impact your health we also we have some data on some other ones

058recently there's been some health information that's come out on Gen X which is a proprietary brand that P Fuss P FBS is another one so every day we're learning more and more about these chemicals and more information is getting out into the public environment so it's quite a dynamic space that we're working in related to these chemicals how are they regulated so currently they're not regulated in drinking water in Michigan they are regulated on from a clean up standard and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit the EPA has a health advisory level for these when you add the two chemicals that I've talked about PFOA and PLoS together the Health Advisory and this is a lifetime health advisory so it's not an acute it's if you're drinking a certain

059amount of water you're two liters of water every day for 70 years you're more at risk for having the health impacts that I talked about in the previous slide if you're exposed to more than 70 parts per trillion or nanograms per liter of a combination of those two chemicals so that has been in effect since 2017 they're also recently in December of 2018 the governor pulled together a science advisory board and they just came out with a report related to pee fuss in Michigan and it has indicated and there's a lot of literature indicates currently that 70 is probably not the right number and a problem we should be lower so that's something that we're also trying to understand and get our grip around here in Michigan and in Ann Arbor there's a report that

060came out by this agency for toxic substances disease that indicates maybe more like 7 and 11 or appropriate numbers target so we should check for for those two compounds currently in Michigan there is a proposal in the legislature to regulate these two at five and five so five parts per trillion for P Foss and five parts per trillion for PFOA so we're following that and tracking that and seeing if that's going to have get support so we talked a little bit about drinking water the source of this is our is our surface water so we obviously tested all of our drinking water sources well and River and unfortunately our well water does not have P FS in it but the river or does the wastewater that comes from our wastewater plant does primarily a place

061that's coming from the drinking water the fish I've already mentioned that and I'll talk a little bit more about do not eat fish advisory and firefighting foam fortunately we've had some great conversations with Chief Kennedy and Ann Arbor has already gone to flurry and free firefighting foam so we've disposed of all the one the firefighting foam that contained PFS that had they had in stock and now they're using fluorine free and he chief Kennedy has also been an advocate with some of his peers so we think that's a really positive stuff because we wanted to make sure that people are aware of this issue and can prevent these chemicals from getting into our watershed so in Ann Arbor we've been monitoring these for several years now we are currently the slide says currently monitoring monthly

062but at the direction from the city administrator we are now monitoring bimonthly so twice a month we're getting samples of our source water and our finished water and we're also posting all that information on our website so our customers can see if they have questions about what the water quality is the maximum detection was was several years ago in 2018 and 2017 we tip we've been below 10 for the combination of these two chemicals in the drinking water but recently in the end of 2018 there was a spike in the river that got a little bit of press and our finished water levels were above that probably be somewhere between 10 and 20 parts per trillion we have we're using granular activated carbon at the plant and I'll talk a little bit more about that

063in a minute but that currently is the best available technology for municipal drinking water treatment to address these chemicals so we're fortunate to have that available to us and be using that at the water treatment plant to address this in 2017 we looked at an alternate granular activated carbon material not all granular activated carbon are created equally and the manufacturer who we were using had identified one that has been affected effective at removing pfosten pifo so we decided to pilot that in a couple of our filters we worked with the MD QD @ permission to make some changes and over the course of several you know about six to nine months we found that this was very effective at bringing our P phos and P FOA levels down to non detectable levels so staff recommended

064a City Council at the end of 2018 to implement this in all of our filters and they had the foresight to allow us to make that investment and they approve the the financing in order to make that happen and we're in the process of implementing that currently so we've done about a third of our capacity we have 26 filters we've done a third of them we're going to be doing the balance of our filters over the next in the spring over the next several months so then we will have now this media in all of our filters so we think that's a really positive step in addition we're participating in research that's going on right now we're going to be part of some work with North Carolina State as part of a Water Research Foundation

065grant to look at what types of technologies can be effective at removing the shorter chain P Foss compounds so those are the ones where that granular activated carbon is not as effective at removing so it's something that we're also excited to be part of if you look at the sort of the timeline how we got to where we are today you know - that was it started really in 2009 when there was a provisional health advisory and you can see the the levels were in the hundreds of nanograms per liter you know since then there's been a lot of research done there were some provisional surface water criteria identified in Michigan in 2010 wordsmith air force based at a fish study in 2012 and they found very high concentrations of these chemicals in in fish

066you can see the numbers are in the tens of thousands of parts per billion so this is not parts per trillion but a thousand times greater so quite high levels again they Bayou accumulate and then in 2013 is when the surface cluttered criteria were put in place and those are currently regulatory those are the regulatory levels that currently exist in Michigan so 11 nano grams per liter if you're discharging into a water supply that is a drinking water source which the Huron River is considered and 12 if you are discharging into a non drinking water surface water supply the wife hime health advisory was in 2017 I sort of talked about that already and part was formed in 2017 also men part is Michigan's pifo section response team and they there's a lot of great

067things that they've been involved with and trying to coordinate a lot of state government activities together under one hat to address this issue I'll talk a next slide a little bit ups what some of the data that they've generated come up with and then in 2018 is when these drinking water criteria were established by MBQ again it's not regulated it's guidance but they're asking utilities to attempt to achieve this less than 70 nano grams per liter and their drinking water for these two compounds so what this slide illustrates is some of the results of the EM parts work so they took the initiative to test all drinking water supplies community drinking water supplies and schools in the state of Michigan no other state has done that has but taking such an aggressive approach to address

068PFS and there were three buckets that they divided that the results ended up in so we're one of the the participants there's almost 1,400 community water supplies in the state and two of them had concentrations of PFS one community water supply and one school greater than 70 the community water supply was parchment if you heard about them and now they're connected to the Kalamazoo system so they are not part of their own self sufficient water system anymore so that the some degree problem has been addressed we're in this middle bucket of this 10 to 70 and there's we're in there with about 45 of our peers maybe 30 community water supplies they're just under who have in this range of 10 to 70 parts per trillion of P Fossen p fo and they're drinking water

069so now transitioning to talk a little bit about the the river and what we're seeing from the fish standpoint the MDEQ uses this 300 parts per billion as a trigger for P Foss to issue and do not eat fish advisories so you can see there are several samples along the watershed Kent Lake baseline lake Argo pond all have fish baseline late it's really close but above basically 300 parts per billion that's the reason why when when they when these analytical results were analyzed by the state is why they indicated that the stretch of the Huron had to do not eat fish advisory question sure those are parts per billion before we were talking about parts that's correct that's correct so the for for fish and consumption it's 300 parts per billion this this chart shows

070and it's sort of difficult to see maybe for the viewers but you the red dots the big red dots are the higher concentration and you can see along the if you remember stretch up towards Milford there's a couple big red dots so those are quite high concentrations of pea Foskey fos in the Huron River and the next slide will zoom in on that a little bit so we have some results that are you know over 5,000 nanograms per liter remember we're talking about at the drinking water side single digits so it's several orders of magnitude higher so we you know based on these results in june/july to 2018 we see well there's obviously some source here and the eq has been pretty aggressive in researching what this is there's a creek that enters the Huron

071River there it's called Norton Creek and the wixen wastewater treatment plant discharges into that Creek and they found that that that Wixon wastewater treatment plant was a significant source of PFS and the the source to the Wixom wastewater treatment plant is a company called tribe are there many metals manufacturer and they use these chemicals as part of their process so there's been some a fair bit of aggressive work that's been happening since this was found out tri-bar has put in granular activated carbon treatment at one of their plants it's discharging into the Wixom race water treatment plant and that's been effective at removing these long-chain the PF OS and the PFOA a just like it's effective at our treatment plant it's effective for them but we're continuing to work with the MDEQ to determine if

072there's other sources in this area and also our concern about the other p fuss because we know that even though the health impacts haven't really been identified yet and we're we're just we want to be concerned about any any of these chemicals getting into our watershed so we're we're aggressively working with mue q to help address that issue help us address that issue i guess one last thing about foam p foss like to enter the state of foam and we have a lot of dams on the river there's surfactants so they sort of they get in foam they concentrate so we had collected some data on what the levels of the p FS were in the foam and it's you know in the thousands of parts per trillion so high and at that so once

073we had that data available to ourselves available we shared that and we have a do not eat foam advisories not that many people are going down to the river d the foam but and we told them it's probably wise to avoid that also contact with pets and things like that because the concentrations are elevated in the foam and that's pretty common and that's something that we've seen around the state had a lot of other facilities so that is my quick PFS update can anyone have any questions or I can move right on 2 1 4 dioxane yep yeah I have some questions um first one is is there a plan I think I'm part originally planned to test some private wells drinking water walls that were near the river is that ongoing as well I

074don't know about their plans to test private wells we can we can investigate whether that's the case it yeah I don't imagine any city residents have private wells is that true um that is true and how about I know in Europe at least table there's a probe but there's many countries have programs where wastewater treatment plants sludge and water releases are being tested do you know if the state has any plans to do that in the future yeah there our wastewater plant has been sampling so that that's trailing a little bit of the on the drinking water side but bio solids is another place that they're looking at does PFS concentrate so they're starting to collect the analytical data on that currently oh good no thanks some dumb one other question is um I know

075and part had plans to examine manufacturing sites that might be releasing some 150 or so manufacturing sites statewide so they were saying they would really set data by the end of January last I heard do you have an update on that I don't have an update on that okay and then just one last question hmm sorry and that is um unity as you know with these shorter chain P fast compounds it's it's very expensive to use these LC ms/ms methods to test for each individual compound so many countries in Europe are using another assay that's really very cheap just to fight for any organic fluorine compounds it's called combustion ion chromatography so it can be I think it can be piggybacked on top of regular fluoride analysis so I would I was wondering if there

076were any plans to use that as kind of a backup testing even though they're not regulated right you could start getting some baseline data for the presence of the shorter chain compounds or other things that aren't being measured out of that Tom I think it's EPA 537 so right now our analytical work that we're doing is is compliant with what the EPA approved method is so we're using that I'm not familiar with the technique that that you're like we can we can clearly investigate what might be available to us as part of the research that we're participating in with North Carolina State they are looking at new analytical techniques and they may be similar to the what you're describing to do it faster and right now the turnaround time of us getting results can be

077three to four weeks so we're not really getting timely information so there's a lot of challenges with what current analytical capabilities are yeah this is technically a much easier and cheaper assay so I could send you the scientific references okay so yeah please do thank you it's a clarifying question I think the DEQ and M part and your group are doing the sampling so we are doing sampling of our source water and finished water twice a month and that's the city city of Ann Arbor at the city harbors expense the state the Huron River is waters of the state so DEQ in partnership with M part it's the DEQ M part is just an umbrella for several state agencies they are doing the analytical testing along the stretches of the Huron so all of the

078data that I just shared on upstream Norton Creek Milford Wixom that's all MDEQ sampled and issue sampling and the tissue sampling is also by the state correct and our source water is Barton pond or where do you what's what is actually our source water our source of waters Barton fund yeah I'd like to piggyback on Commissioner Browns comments so um I knew that toxins are regulated much more tightly in Europe under reach then they are under Tosca in the US so I did a little bit of research and looked at what is going on in Europe and I worked for a European company so I thought well look somewhere else in the world and I'm wondering if we're doing that here locally both at two levels in terms of addressing root causes and secondly in

079terms of treatment and in terms of root cause I mean the root cause basically is that industry as you said fire departments are still using this chemical and what I was at least able to see in the public domain is that in Europe both P foss and P fo are both banned where for p fo there it won't be enforced until 2020 but essentially the ban is in place so one of the things that I would encourage the city to do is to take a position with the state through resolution or through our lobbying efforts to say let's not just keep on putting band-aids on this but let's do what the Europeans did and that is get rid of these chemicals out of the environment I mean that's something that you personally can't do but

080we have council people here and it seems to me that's something that we really should be doing otherwise we're gonna be talking about this because as you said these are persistent chemicals and their bio accumulative so you know we're gonna be dealing with these things for a long time and the sooner that we really address the root cause the better off I think we're gonna be and you should verify what I said but that's what I could tell the other thing is from a treatment perspective I'm wondering what other highly developed countries in the world are doing in terms of treatment I'm guessing that the better companies that are providing these treatments know what's going on internationally but that might be worthwhile checking to see what kind of technologies they're using I think Steve mentioned

081that there seem to be some other promising technologies out there you know what are they doing in Japan what are they doing in Europe I mean these are highly industrialized countries they they have gotten rid of these and they obviously must be treating them somehow - and I would only suggest that we possibly look in those two directions and I don't have any answers I just have good proposes it's potentially alternative ways of approaching the problem I had a question about the communications I'm at I'm really glad we're monitoring it bimonthly now I'm putting that up on the website and I know we have those little signs by the out by the river saying you know don't eat the fish but I could are there any plans to put our bimonthly report up digitally by

082the river like at the canoe liveries we have not had that conversation so it's something that we could consider real quickly Shannon and I and people from the yeren River watershed Council are gonna be meeting with city staff about signage about watershed health and putting out some information about what is the health of our watershed and what actions people can take and potentially we could include that kind of information in that information and it could be updated that regularly so we'll be meeting I think end of the month I think idad Brian has asked about getting some additional dedicated support to help in messaging I think hopefully he's convinced you that technically we're doing we're at the leading edge but communicating in this environment can be a challenge because you want to be transparent open

083but you don't want to incite true public panic I don't think we can count on the media to help us in that regard so [Music] I'm gonna take the incursion from his banister we're going to provide that support and do it in a way that is honest but also doesn't leave you just you know it's you know trust in government these days is not at its highest and we want to make sure that we do things in a way that inspires trust and confidence one lets people know that we are protective and we are delivering a safe reliable source of water I just have a comment about contextualizing and me it seems to me that one of the things that might be useful to residents is knowing that these are so ubiquitous that even when

084you're testing you can't use certain sunscreens and you can't use certain you know toothpaste I mean this is everywhere and so even when we see these things and they're alarming contextually in everything that we encounter every day it's not significant and it's not it's not super significant and that knowing that I think would be really useful I don't think people have that since and my second question is if the city is having any reaction to the state having passed the bill that raises the cleanup rate is there is there any action that the city can take to try to counter that I'm not really prepared to discuss that tonight I think we're I think we're still trying to understand what that means and how that impacts all of the things that we're involved in so

085I just don't think we have answers yet but it's weird it's on our radar for sure to dioxin okay the next one topic thank you for that I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to answer all of your questions on this topic but I'm gonna do my best and maybe we can come back if appropriate to hopefully answer the questions and I'm able to answer but I provided a quart of an update to the administrator which he shared with counsel at the end of last quarter and my intention is to move forward with quarterly updates on the progress and this the few slides here are extracted from that last update so it bear with me it's just some statistics but in terms of the monitoring of water supply wells so these are people who are

086using water for drinking water and this is not in Ann Arbor proper mostly in sigh o Township but 67 wells were sampled in the last quarter no Wells had detectable levels above the seven point two which is the current cleanup standard that the e key was using two wells show had detectable levels they were in the one to two parts per billion and they were on the south side near Elizabeth Road where fourteen and ninety four intersect so the Gilman has a plant they're extracting water you know around-the-clock the extracts about four hundred and seventy gallons per minute of contaminated groundwater it's pumped to their facility where they have treatment they use ozone and hydrogen peroxide to remove the dioxane so there's low concentrations still in the effluent but probably in the single-digit range during

087the the May to September period of 2018 they treated over 81 million gallons and removed 282 pounds of 1 4 dioxane from the from the plume this is a picture of sort of the limits of a couple things I guess I'll point out if you haven't been familiar with looking at that in the upper left-hand corner of the slide all of those dots those are all private wells so people who are still using on their private wells and there is no evidence yet of contamination at those locations that read sort of line that goes around that's the prohibition zone so that's the no we're not extracting any groundwater in that area because and that's legally identified by the courts as this area is prohibited from groundwater extraction you'll see a lot of circles in there

088that have sort of a white and black symbol and those are monitoring well so you can see there's a lot of monitoring wells within the zone where Gelman is extracting data and we're collecting data to identify the limits and how this plume is migrating the the plume is moving I think as you are all aware towards the Huron River you can see it's sort of moving towards the east and the different colors you'll see sort of the beiges yellowish color is the one part per billion contour and then inside of that is the 85 parts per billion contour so it gets concentrated obviously as you go further towards the source where you know this is something that we're tracking as the data comes in regularly several many times I don't think they're sampling some of

089these quarterly some of it may be more frequently than that but we're looking at the data we're watching the migration boom clearly from the city of Ann Arbor's interests we're concerned as commissioner did Randall mentioned about our water supply so we're looking is there any ma is there any migration northward towards Barton pond of this plume and so that's clearly the city is very interested in watching that and monitoring that so that's sort of an overall picture some of the some additional sampling that's happened in the recent future in the last quarter there's been a sort of a renewed or a new attention towards shallow groundwater and surface water so there was a fair bit of testing analytical testing that went on in 16 sites with groundwater within 20 feet of the surface was were

090tested two sites had detectable levels but they were below EPA's regional screening level of 4.6 parts per billion also 18 surface water locations were sampled a eighth of them eight out of the 18 showed detectable levels of dioxane between 2.1 and 19 the 19 is in Allen Creek drain so what's happening next well this the the state and the county are working together and they're putting together a sampling plan really the state is doing that with with involvement from the county to do some additional analytical testing at some of these locations so that's coming up in the next quarter or in the next three to six months they're working on that plan currently so there's additional testing that will help on maybe identify what the source of this is or and add some more clarity

091to this data so I don't I don't have a lot more to share because I don't think we have enough data to really understand this part of the situation yet obviously you're all aware that the city is involved in Wittig Asian so I'm not at liberty to talk about much more about what the city's role is and how that's all progressing but depending upon what additional questions you have it may we may need to consult with the city attorney about a future time about what we're able to share with the Commission and what we can that's my update on questions I have a couple one is that I remember early on they said oh it's so deep it's never gonna get close to the surface so what is your just current understanding of I mean

092I glaciation happened there's all kinds of crazy stuff going under the ground we cannot predict so but given that the data is showing otherwise of what you know people told us 15 years ago what is our current understanding of how it's just moving in ways that we didn't I think would happen I don't have an answer for that question I think we're we're wondering the same thing and we're gonna be looking at the data and we're gonna be looking at the new sample data and we'll be consulting with some of our consulting experts and try to get a handle on that so we can share with this group and others what our interpretation is but I don't think that there's consensus on that issue yeah then my other question and this relates to my role

093on Planning Commission too is there was quite a bit of controversy with some developments in the town on the west side that are fair close to the the original Gelman site and it's in relation to how we're dealing with strong our infiltration with the Gelman plume and we ended up passing the project but it became very clear that there are lots and lots of projects that are in this bloom with higher concentration and I don't know that we necessarily know what the implications of all of that mean and it would I would be really tough to think oh we're just not going to do any storm water infiltration anymore because of this this this issue but and and you're not gonna be able to answer this now but I guess I'm just putting it out

094there that this is we we've kind of been moving in this certain direction of stormwater infiltration for a long time and this is kind of a game changer if suddenly we have to think about that we could be accelerating a problem and so I just want to I guess comment that this is something that we really need to start to put some attention to because this has been a massive effort for our area and I think we've been leading this in a lot of ways in terms of how we're handling stormwater and sustainable water management and it kind of kills me to thinks it may be creating a problem with that too so you know I know maybe this is even a shout out to the University started thinking about research around this issue or

095something because you know we have all kinds of stormwater infiltration areas in the plume you know in the concentrated part of the plume we've talked a little bit about my participa Commission meeting when that conversation was brought up and I listened to the conversation around that and I we I agree we need to be prepared to be able to discuss that and address that issue at the time DEQ is their expert was here and he addressed it and his his position was is that it's not an influential on on migrating the poner accelerating the mobile meeting of the plume but you know that was his professional opinion and clearly there were others who didn't agree with that in the room so I think we to do some work in that area sure and then another

096just quick thing on and this is just my own understanding it's akin to contact versus ingestion in terms of dioxane what's the story on on that you you gave us some information on that with the PETA's chemicals and chemicals but what is this durian you know that's I know that the regional screening level incorporates ingestion dermal contact and inhalation so that's all captured in terms of that regional screening level but in terms of how its weighted across the different areas I don't know the answer to that all right thank you other questions yes yes it's been pretty stagnant at that level that's been the constant level thanks very much thank you thank you next item of business is solid waste regionalization vo Egremont from washington are here nice job with the name yes nailed it

097well thanks for having me here I'm excited to be presenting on the regional authority that is will be forming over the next couple months I've got commissioner Pratt and our legal attorney Bob Davis who is also here tonight the authority is pronounced warme that's the name the so I want to give you a little bit of a history of where this proposed Authority is coming from the County last year gathered stakeholders together to discuss issues surrounding recycling and what was going on in their communities out of that stakeholder engagement process one of the recommendations that came from that was an authority to be used as a tool to address some of those issues that people were discussing so an authority is a legal entity formed by two or more municipalities in order to manage solid

098waste or actually the enabling law also allows for a dog pound but we're going to solid waste route interesting fact for you and the authority is once it's formed the members who are part of that authority formed the vision form the priorities and they take it where they want to go so this authority can move as fast as the member authorities want to take it in gathering members from eight different communities on the eastern and central part of the county those members made it clear that this authority we will be focused on recycling and long term look to approach zero waste so echoing some of Howard's comments tonight that's the long-term vision the priorities that first steps that the members talked about were really addressing metrics let's look at what we've got let's try to

099get the divertible material out of the trash and move that to more appropriate streams in order to do that where I need a pretty serious engagement outreach activities focus on education and that's really where we want to put a lot of our first efforts that was very clear from members let's start with education and outreach we need to clean up our recycling increase the quantity and quality of those and then we've got a more marketable product so we want to clean the stream and through that once we've got our quantity and quality up then we can attract local processing so that's a something that everyone said we want to do we want to get to the point where we've got a marketable product we can attract a private hauler or private processing to be in

100this area also people are interested in drop-off stations we've got a need we did a study that looks at we have some opportunities to collaborate around let's get let's make it convenient for people to drop off hard to get rid of things TVs oil and ivory use those type of products so we need to through our education outreach produce clear and consistent messaging right now if you move from one place to another you've got different haulers that makes it very difficult we have to continually educate people if they move from one community to another with this our goal is to get a consistent here's what we can take in your recycling whether you're in any of these eight different communities so that way we can start to work on habits habits are hard to change

101this is one way that we can produce that without having to have people change their habits again and again and again so the benefits what's in this for everyone people talked about wanting to have more regional collaboration this is a very clear way to do that there's potential for reduced costs and improved services we can take advantage of economies of scale by pooling our efforts as well as our our dollars we have greater buyer power when you've got this municipality we'll have somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of the population of the county banded together when you do that you have much greater buyer power and working with haulers for both recycling or solid waste if that's the way that this authority would like to move also opportunity for optimized for routes for hauling you've reduced

102your greenhouse gas emissions you reduce the wear and tear on your roads and you can decrease costs which are passed from your hauler on to you lastly there is an option to withdraw so once members join the authority there is a process which stipulates by which members can get out of the Authority Bob Davis will talk a little bit about that after me so there is an opportunity to leave if the authority moves in a direction that Council is not satisfied with it if it no longer benefits you you have an opportunity to get out additionally there's an opportunity for other members surrounding the authority to be a customer or even within the boundaries we've had conversations with the universities early on in this process - who would like to be involved with it somehow

103so the universities are not municipalities they can't be Authority members they don't get a vote but they are engaged in the process and interested in the outcome of potentially a customer as this Authority progresses so with that I'll introduce Bob Davis who's our attorney he has extensive experience with authorities so I'll let him continue on thank you for the opportunity to be here a couple of different issues before I get to the authority mister mirskiy you had excellent questions on that p5 issue could I approach and just give him some information about a stewardship program that was developed where eight major manufacturers in the United States to stop the manufacturing and and interestingly a lot of the concern now is the stuff that is coming from other countries through the mane event manufacturing process what

104could I approach him just so he could have that article thank you the second thing I would like to mention is that I am the outside counsel who briefed and argued with your attorneys the intervention process into the Gillman case to work with to be in the case and without divulging any non-disclosure agreements I would advise you that your questions were very pointed and very accurate and I can tell you those are some of the major issues that are are being discussed your your comments and concerns are directly on point I I was sitting back there wanting to jump up and tell you so many things about what what's going on including major conference call tomorrow morning on the issues I just can't what your questions are right on track so good job I'm staying

105with that the the Constitution in Michigan we have students here right [Laughter] the Constitution in Michigan through its exact language and then down through its enabling laws likes for groups of municipalities and entities to get together and do things as a group that could be done singularly thinking that the economies and the benefits are better if you do things collectively garbage management trash management composting recycling are one of those areas of municipal involvement where the government strongly believes that unified groups do better than singularly so they do have their own enabling law on this topic which means that two or more can get together and form a group legally and lawfully if they follow a certain process of developing Articles of Incorporation and then filing them right and making sure everybody certifies them and everybody

106agrees to them and they're all unanimous and then you're on your way to being a lawful entity for the purposes of which you undertake so we do have that enabling act and by way of background I have represented the South Oakland County resource recovery authority since the year 2020 and we have 12 cities ranging from Berkeley down to troye alphabetically with unique characteristics unique development patterns royal oak is a lot different than Hazel Park which is different than Clawson and unique needs and unique developments and that that group has functioned in terms of waste collection disposal compost and recycling over the years when I joined in the year 2000 as as their attorney we were embarking on new contracts and one of the things we did was we took the geographic boundary which is about

10775 square miles about I think it's about two hundred ninety thousand citizens and we came up with a mechanism for a new bid process where and we got rid of the division line between the communities so a person could bid on a chunk not a community a geographic chunk not a municipal boundary so the truck didn't have to turn around every time it hit the end of the street and we could have better routes when we when we did that process and we we went out for bids we ended up with very discrete waste hauling contracts and our rates went down by sixteen to twenty percent across the board with the various communities thereafter I led them into constructing a MuRF in Troy at our existing transfer facility I know Molly I arranged for her

108to have a private tour of the emerge it was Molly day at the MuRF and she saw the the operations firsthand and we did a big four and a half million dollar cart rollout where we rolled out carts with logos and we imprinted certain information on them and since we have not one year of a little over one year of data from our conversion to that process and our recycling is up 27 percent across the board in the communities there's no linear relationship between an increase and recycling and a decrease in the waste it is somewhat related but it's not it's not a one-for-one but we are doing a pretty good job on reducing our tonnage that is going to the landfill we have an entity who operates and helps us at the Murph we

109have a trucking company that trucks the materials out of the Murph and out of our transfer station so we also constructed a very state-of-the-art compost facility it's in Rochester we we haven't told Rochester it's there but it's in Rochester we haven't had one complaint in about 25 years we bought all state of the art equipment we tumble and mix that stuff and then we give it back to the communities to the dPW's and to the other maintenance organizations that's our first priority is to return the yard waste back to the community for community projects and development and that we sell the rest so when when I developed the MuRF and helped them develop the MuRF we developed the mirth MuRF in a fashion that when all of our waste would go when all of our

110recyclables would go there we would only be at 50% capacity so if I took everything the 12 communities had we'd be at 50 cent 50% capacity so now that a year is past we're going to market that availability and that funding is going to return back to the member communities so it is a system and I only bring that up to show you that it is a system that works we haven't had anyone leave we haven't had anyone withdraw we haven't had anyone not satisfied with what the Authority has been able to achieve when you look at the Articles we had you had great representation at at all of our meetings and it it was difficult because I came in with articles that were this big and said hey the enabling law says we can

111do all these things and now we're about here which I knew we would would probably do because all the different members who are going to potentially get involved had different thinking different thoughts so if you look at what we're proposing here we've defined very carefully what the purposes of this authority would be from its outset and we actually defined very carefully what it will not do and that was a big concern for many of the communities nobody wants to get involved in owning a landfill it's just not prudent probably not smart transfer stations a little less risky but maybe not within the appetite of some MuRF I think is a wonderful thing to have strategically located it's my opinion having worked on these issues for many years that a strategically located MuRF benefits the area

112as a whole ours are sits right in Troy which is three-quarters of the way up the southern Oakland company city chain and it's just perfect location the folks know it's there the drop-off centers are surrounding it the folks know where to go we put out a great messaging everybody in the 12 communities you could move from Birmingham to Troy from Troy to Clawson and the message on recycling is consistent there's no confusion there's no discrepancy on what's recyclable there's no confusion on the carts there's no confusion on what goes in and what doesn't go in and it really works well it really works well so the other things that came up during the course of negotiating and talking about these articles was the idea that voting under the proposed format we're suggesting each community one

113vote majority vote on most issues certain expenditures two-thirds certain expenditures back to the community's legislative body before it can be approved by the board so each community would have a representative this community would designate a delegate a representative to the board so if we had eight community involved we'd have eight board members and they would function as a board and make decisions with respect to the authority each community would have a certain buy-in of $5,000 to get things rolling and bring a green even among me wherever I go because he promised that he would match everybody's $5,000 so I don't let him drift far from the meetings so everybody would have five in everybody would get a five match that would happen for a couple of years and the articles would be in place we

114also put in a budget process which is actually not in my other articles but so that you would know the communities would know it in advance what what is the Authority thinking of doing next year and are we still on board are they still headed in a direction that we like we're gonna see the budget where is the money gonna go what are we planning on doing and then there's going to be a yearly activity report what did we do I think the city would want to know since we became part of this Authority are the recyclables up or are they down are they flat is equality increasing are the people getting the message is the message consistent and how are we doing so there would be a yearly activity report there would be an

115annual audit process we have a mechanism in here for insufficient income if we if we had a budget and we somehow went over it how that gets handled and how it has to go back to the legislative bodies to be examined and how the cost would be allocated there is a withdraw process and let me tell you why that reads so unlike my writing style because you read these articles and you say Oh Bob Davis was working on all that well he didn't write that part and then you see it I wrote the rest of it and then you say well we didn't write that part there's two parts in here that are required by law in 2001 Madison Heights wanted to exit from the soccer organization the law never had an exit provision to

116anything people apparently were going to leave or dissolve so through some legislative connections and despite pending litigation I was in a courtroom trying to get this resolved and Madison Heights was in Lansing and getting new legislation and so now everybody who forms an authority going forward under this act has to include the dissolution language and the withdraw language most of which makes no sense to what we're doing because it talks about environmental liabilities it talks about your fair share of the landfill costs it talks about tonnage of waste that went to the landfill over the way it makes no sense but there it is and I have to put it in even though it doesn't apply so what we did in these articles is we tried to go around those mandatory provisions with all the

117other things that we inserted including the budgeting the the audit process the way we handle finances and the other voting structures so the articles were very well worked on and again you had excellent representation at all the meetings took us three meetings to come up with those acronyms and that it was difficult to name the thing and we've been going community to community now with this kind of a non-action presentation there's no action on these yet but when it is time we have to get everyone has to agree to the same articles or we have to start over so we're trying to introduce them to you at this juncture so let's just last thing let's picture the first meeting let's say we take mr. Needham and he somehow ends up being the delegate representative to

118this authority board and I'm not saying you are I'm just let's just use an example so now we have eight people we envision that the first two to three meetings of the authority would be let's look at everyone's existing recycling contracts how does it fit into your current waste hauling arrangements when it went could it be renewed when could it but when does it have to stay in place under a current a contract arrangement what are what what are you paying for the recycling services or or how's that working financially and we want to get a all eight people analyzed I have already successfully worked with several of the communities who may be joining this Authority and their contractors to say if so-and-so joins this a thought Authority can I remove from their existing contractual

119relationship their recycling portion of the contract and I've been successful with that endeavor so then we would know where everyone's contract is then we would start working on our messaging and our communication about recycling with the end goal I think being in about three to four years we have to be realistic we're in the tank right now on recyclables financially I I suggest you it's going to rebound within that time for him and where we want to emerge three to four years from now is a group of eight communities ten communities however many communities who have a market reputation of high quality high quantity recyclables who are in the business of producing high quality high valuable high high highly of sawed recyclables so that we can get one or two private entities to manage those

120recyclables at good rates having a local MuRF fantastic I get paid by the word and I'm done so you said you have not yet started the process of going before the actual municipal no we have we have but only we haven't sought we haven't been an action item yet on anyone's agenda you expect that to start the next round we did for communities this week okay because we do have resolutions yes you do you're the first and we're just advisory right and eventually I have to go to your legislative body right to get the the accident we had we had a meeting the other night where there was a recommendation to send it to the next level we're getting positive recommendations wherever we go but eventually I have to go to the legislative body of

121each entity and get the same articles drafted which when you have 12 it's a very interesting because one change you do all you do 11 and the last person wants it changed you got to do the 11 again so we always start with Birmingham because I know they're gonna change joining the authority if the City Council did decide to do so would commit them to everything they would be they would the the the Articles govern the entity that is formed there would be a separate legal entity known as the warm up and they would have as designated in here a representative to that authority and the authority would be bound by the Articles and yes down through would be the community is operating under the Articles and that's why mr. Neame that's a great question

122because that's why if you go to pay I don't know if you have a draft but if you go to page two that was why there was way more time than I ever thought under article 3 what would be the purposes and more importantly that one sentence what would not be the purpose and the purpose took along it was a very well-thought-out exclusion John I actually knew you were gonna have a question so I don't know if Theo passed on the email that I sent him last night I have specific questions about that if I'm a mom and I unfortunately didn't print out a copy so I'm doing this from memory but I'll quote from the Articles of Incorporation one concern that I have that I think a lot of other commissioners would have that

123its states for the purpose of these articles materials management shall mean the management including the collection of municipal solid waste yard waste and recyclables I'm wondering why the term yard waste was used and not organics because organics is let's put it the other way around yard waste is a subset of organics agree and if we're excluding things like food waste and fogs and things like that I would have a concern with that and so I'm wondering with that an oversight or was that something that was done on purpose that's a a it was done on purpose B you're correct and see most current contracts use yard waste I believe even yours does to some degree and and I agree with you it's not the proper term anymore but if you look at bidding processes going

124on all across Oakland Macomb wash saw it they've been on three things the municipal solid waste yard waste and recyclables well so I don't least preclude no I don't have a problem and I don't have a problem with that thought so is I mean I'd hate for somebody to come back and say this is the Articles of Incorporation yard waste is a subset of organics yeardley we're not going to do that was not the intent that was not the intent but I I agree with your comment so can we change it we're here first its own consider it so the second who the second clarification actually a very good observation these were posted by the way on legislature so I took a look at them last night it's right after that it says the ownership

125this is what you talked about the ownership the following shall not be authorized focus of warme as the effective date of these articles the ownership or purchase of any real property and or any facility used in the pasture of the future for this puzzle of universal municipal solid waste by permit or otherwise again I take solid waste to be the overarching term yes and the other aspects like recyclables organics etc to be subset of solid waste is that correct correct so this would preclude the authority from owning or purchasing any facility meaning a drop-off station a Merve a disposal disposal disposal is a defined word in the law okay for the disposal not for the collection of correct okay and not for the transfer and not for the MuRF management excellent okay yeah perfect question

126though because you know when you look at the tsdf acronym disposal has a unique legal connotation of disposal includes incineration okay good I think we don't have a problem with that III obviously misread it so the other question that I had was relates to a document that was posted called collaborative contracting process this is not a part of the con the Articles of Incorporation but I'm nevertheless concerned with it it here because it is in writing and it says that there's a park called hauler determination authority contracts with hauler members who opt in agree upon a single hauler to contract with is that the direction of the authority I mean it what that implies is that the only way we're going to do hauling is by having a single what and I apologize I I'm

127not sure what document that's it's posted to leches firearm it's titled I just have to be any enough to scroll out the people that collaborative contracting process all this exam is shitty yeah I could take that so this was mostly for demonstration to show that that was an opt-in process we had one so we're not reminding anybody though or ourselves to only having one contact of the king that it makes more sense to contract with two entities or three entities in fact that's how they you know you know you don't mister mister mercy that and that's that's a great question because when okay you can sit out on that he gets paid more that way so when I was throwing all the communities on the other one everyone had the same thought here's this this

128lawyer you know he's just trying to steer everything towards waste management or some big corporation to bundle up twelve communities worth of nice consolidated you know the waste haulers they love it when you're dense and you're close by and and a lot of rooftops and you know they're gonna get a lot of business and and I always had it just the opposite in my head they gave me far too much credit for thinking beyond my means so what did we end up with we I and I knew how I thought it would go everything got bundled there were no boundaries so mister mirskiy owns ABC trucking he could say I'm putting in a we went out for bids I'm putting in a bid for this box you know part of it was Troy part and

129I only really I only want to do municipal solid waste I want do with organics I don't want any do with recycles I just want to bid on that part so that got matrix tin your now it was a bitter on that Park and when we when we got all done and collated we birmingham and several of the communities right near Birmingham our our entire contract is with car trucking have you heard of them no I'm glad car trucking they have one of the most valuable pieces of my organization's business and is a big-money contrast and they're fantastic and the rates are so then if you go south and you're in the Troy area and some of those communities we have train galley sanitation you heard of them right so that's how it ended up

130and there was never the intent never the intent here to have those were I think that was produced as an example and that was that was our intent here and that would be our intent with this organization and one other request just to keep it short and that is I think all of us would be interested in rough timelines I mean the two of you sort of laid out some rough timelines but like what is a timeline if the authority is formed between the creation of it and the target date for educational and engagement and outreach materials what is the timeline for a Murph what is a timeline for this so we have at least some sense that because we're updating our solid resource management plan and we were supposed to lay out what we

131want to do over the next five years and I think it's an important input to have at least some sense of what timelines the warmer has compared to what we're thinking about doing here in an hour okay I could I could get to something like that you can give it to Missy and then she can distribute college yeah I was involved in in the area of renegotiating the host community agreement between your landfill and the county so I had some peripheral involvement in your your County Solid Waste Management planning process most recently but but I can assure you this the the approach we want to take is fairly aggressive you know we want it we want to we want to it's a great time I think you know realistically you're gonna see contractors approaching communities

132and it's already happening where I live in in Macomb County that they're trying to reopen contracts to force the communities to pay them for recycling see that again yeah I was careful with my wording there I think I got it right contractors in in some communities are asking the communities to reopen their existing contracts which have recycling services to require the communities to now pay the contractors in you know because there's there's no more benefit to them to the young products right now in the market so you come from the end product of recycle is not earning enough money to cover their cost because the commodity markets are so correct yeah and and unfortunately it's a bad signal yeah it's a bad signal to the end to the end people we're trying to really work

133with here the citizens when when you have to say you know we all want to be on board with recycling but there's a fee associated with it yeah it's terrible that's a terrible outcome yeah I'm sorry questions one is when you say entity what does that really mean in terms of membership is that a city is that a Township what does that mean in terms of having a seat at the table a yes a municipality municipality goes okay and then why is it one per entity if Ann Arbor is five times the size of Dexter then why do we get one and they get one one one representative and one vote mm-hmm that's the way the group put it together the way we it morphs that it usually starts like that the way the other

134one I work on Maura morphed into tonnage he was the most tonnage got the most votes mm-hm so when when Troy casts a vote even though they have one they're there because you don't want to you know you don't want to you want to get into the waiting how many people are earrings right so they have one representative there but when they vote their vote carries with it the last three years average tonnage in comparison to the group as a whole so the even the quorum is formed by the weight but we don't have that yet because we don't have any weight mate we don't have that yet because we don't collect anything we don't have that yet but eventually the amendments are some the the the articles are subject to an amendment process and

135for example in just to go the other route in that on that conversation some of the smaller communities have said you know if let's say we were going to get together on a messaging campaign that costs money while it and it's going to produce something even though I know we're paperless let's just pretend it's going to produce a pamphlet then the city of Ann Arbor might need more pamphlets right than Ann Arbor township so what Ann Arbor township have to pay for you know one-eighth of the pamphlets or some prorated and we left that open to handle on a case-by-case basis well while we're starting here so it works in both directions yeah but you would you would be amending your articles as as that became necessary okay thanks yeah I was just gonna ask

136the same thing and I think that really needs to be looked at you know when you were comparing it to Oakland County where there's more similarities across communities than there is with new mom you have some real differences here no I just I'm glad to hear that there's an amendment process yes that may need to be attended to before we be many we and your representative talked about that a lot and you you had Matt an attorney who was at a lot of our final stage meetings who I found to be very very helpful and then the other question I mean I'm generally supportive of the regional approach but one point in your presentation you mentioned you believe that the markets are going to change and I'm wondering what's in your crystal ball nothing I

137got nothing but if he if you look back historically this cycle you know this is not our first down cycles so I I think the materials are gonna return to value now I can tell you this because of some of the efforts made over a long period of time with these communities our prices haven't dipped as much as others we have really clean recyclables and and and and you should be asking citizens gonna ask this question she's gonna say what happens if you know so and so community's recyclables are not so good and now they're commingled with ours into one contract and and we all know that the city of Ann Arbor would be the best right number one almost this year so you would say that'd be a great question so now I've got

138you guys have your community totally on board you got the best darn recycle and and one of the other communities keeps muddling it up with there and that's why you know the the group has to function as a whole and we have to have a consistent approach to recyclables across the authority as a whole I don't have that happening there's no you don't have any black sheep in the in the group of 12 and and we're we're doing very well we're still we're still doing very well on a recycling and we're returning money to the communities how long you expect the process to get an approval good no no I think we're realistic Lee Mr Graham I think if we were sitting down for our first board meeting in April or May I would be

139very pleased I would do I'd be very to hit but you know I got a lot of legislative and you know there's different meeting dates and you know you know you know how it goes you know this young man is always at the meetings Rock team from the attorney's office said who Bob referred to as part of actually putting the articles together everybody raised good points anyways that's any other questions I can respond in writing the one question I'm gonna respond in writing was a more defined time line but it's a great thing penned if we could follow up on mr. Markey's point about organics - yes so we don't have a sponsor on the commission but there is a resolution before us that I'll just read the resolve clause clauses of resolve that the

140environmental Commission is supportive of the city participating in a regional approach to materials management strategies and resolved that the environmental Commission recommends that the city of Ann Arbor becomes a constituent member of WR RMA is there a motion to second second any discussion all in favor aye post motion carries thanks for your time your time is very much appreciate it thank you our final item of new business is a resolution that councilmember Bannister is bringing before us today support for strong Clean Water Act and strong clean water rule yes about two weeks ago we got an email comes member Smith and I from Jason Frenzel and Meredith gillies and they were suggesting to us that we consider a resolution opposing Trump's dirty water rules as of late and so I really want to thank dr.

141Stoltz for swinging into action amongst all her others responsibilities she she took the ball ran with it and prepared us a draft resolution and then late this afternoon Meredith gillies sent us a template from the Clean Water Action National Team and so there and again dr. Stone's team is swung into action and integrated the two resolutions so what we have here just in case you didn't get a chance to study it yet was that the current Trump administration is looking to revise the definition of waters of the United States and this could affect 18 percent of our streams and half of our nation's wetlands with a proposed rollback on the definition and so the resolution is resolved that we would preserve the definition of the waters of the United States and that we would ask

142our urge city council to direct our lobbying efforts in Lansing and at the federal level to support the old 2015 definitions of waters of the United States and urge them to work to revoke the proposed rollback is there a second for the second so we're asking POTUS to preserve wotus one quick thing before we move on to reports I have to apologize early in the meeting I skipped completely over approval of the minutes from our December meeting I realized they were posted to legislature does anyone have any additions or Corrections actually weren't posted I think I submitted some some corrections to Emily there's some name Spelling's from public speakers I don't think that was Emily's ended a long time ago it's not just oh right yeah there is something I'm gonna start but it's not

143but yeah I think one posted yesterday email from Emily draft minutes from 12 six yes I mean I don't remember off the top of my head what I sent but I know there's misspellings of this of the speakers so we should hold off till next time probably get that get those right report from any committees any of our subcommittees have reports Commission's we weren't that busy given the holidays in terms of the the things that we reviewed more Medical Marijuana other things that didn't have anything to do with not much relation worked on the capital improvements plan so and there was some discussion which Missy's probably been involved with in terms of weighting and sustainability that will probably get worked out in the next year as it relates to us but not not anything that

144interesting a couple things from energy first of all last meeting we had a presentation from a University of Michigan student and recycling or reuse of urine actually pretty interesting as positive climate benefits and a bunch of other benefits and I recommended that and the student agreed that he'd be willing to present it here in the environmental Commission I won't get any details it's it'll be posted on ledges are I made a presentation on what our sister city tubing in Germany is doing in terms of climate action and anybody that's interested I can provide them that or talk to them and then we're considering a solar access ordinance draft because there have been cases where people have invested money in solar installations to have then someone erect a building or some other structure that then shades

145their their their their solar installation so we're looking into that and the other the only last thing that I wanted to mention as what I think is a good practice for the environmental Commission to consider what the Energy Commission is done is we meet on Tuesday evenings and so that same timeslot is reserved every Tuesday evening for a different subcommittee so we've formed five different subcommittees and we're working on a lighting ordinance and Evi ready ordinance a health excuse me on a home energy score at the time of marketing ordinance so though an audit would be done and a home energy score would be generated and that would have to be posted on the MLS at the time of marketing we're working on a community engagement group and I left out one but it's not

146all that important what I think is important is we've split up into these groups we have commissioners and in some cases volunteers from the community serving on those and I think the environmental Commission could get a lot more done if it took the same approach for example there could be a natural features subcommittee left by led by mr. Graham here to my right there could be one for example clean water or worse at health etc etc so I think that's something that the Commission as a whole should consider going forward that's all that's one thing we can talk about in our next meeting yeah lots of new stripes on the courts great season of deliveries councilmember banister do you have any report from Council just a small one up from councilmember hey nerd he said

147he met with the policy agenda committee about meeting yesterday the policy agenda meaning and he wanted me to share the good news with you all that as a policy they are going to we are going to as a city be pushing the state of Michigan in a lot of different ways to allow municipalities they have more strict environmental rules than the federal state the only thing I had to mention was commissioner josh rego has moved out of state and resigned from the commission so if anyone knows anyone who would be a good addition I encourage them to apply dr. Scott steel Obama I just wanted to wave in the back of one of our applicants he has joined us tonight it back in the back row and the green turtleneck is Rita Mitchell and she's

148one of our candidates for Josh's seat thanks for welcome dr. Stokes did you of a staff report fun things to let you know about we have given up two grants through the sustaining Ann Arbor together grant program and I feel like I need to say thank you to Susan because this is your brainchild I know we've borrowed three extensively from Seattle on this and I remember being on the commission thinking through this with you so thank you for your leadership yeah next week we're gonna do a press event I think that's when the Bannister's gonna join us beyond our esteem at Northside is a recipient of a solar curriculum for K through 8 education so we're gonna go out and try to get some press with some students and generate some support for that and

149then there'll be a press release coming in a little while about Leslie science in Nature Center develop them nature-based playscape which is super cool and I'm happy to share any of the renderings but it looks fabulous and so we're helping support that project making it 88 compliant so every kid very excited we also are working on a grant for Aging in Place efficiently and we it's a match with the local Foundation and a National Foundation and this is about as we age as a population making sure people can stay in their homes and I know we talked about this earlier in July or September sometime in that space that that was an area we're focusing on we just found out today that we are part of a peer exchange around resilient sums so I think

150you know that's an area we're really interested in so five cities have received some funding to sit down together and develop our work plan around model so that's a big thing thanks to John mirskiy chief Kennedy and Howard leadership here we are moving forward with a volunteer solar program following the model this is an opportunity to install solar at a much cheaper rate because so much of the positive solar is actually in labor and so we're gonna try to test that stay tuned for more and then oh the last thing I just want to do is a shout out to the city administrator that right before the holiday he gave I would say me a gift and probably a curse to everyone else and that we're gonna update our environment preferable purchasing policy overtime to

151exclude all single-use plastics within the city we can't do it externally for outside but within city operations we can as well as styrofoam and some other compounds so thank you is the administrator for that leadership and we are working to educate all stuff and to make that our next meeting in February will largely deal with a brainstorm session on things that we want to tackle for the rest of the year but if anyone has anything else that they want to address at the next meeting please let dr. Stowell tonight we try to accommodate that the next scheduled meeting is February 28th 7 p.m. here is zinc and with that we come to our final opportunity for public comment any members of the public like to address the Commission at this point okay any final words

152for many commissioners all right we're adjourned thanks everyone you