Longmont Sustainability Advisory Board – April 2024

Video Description:
Longmont Sustainability Advisory Board – April 2024

0:00
You too. So I’d now like to call the April 17 to 24 Longmont sustainability Advisory Board Meeting to order. We do a roll call.

0:09
Yes, Michelle Roth. Present Jim Metcalf. Barry Lynn presents Charles Musgrave is not able to join us Robert Davidson is not able to join us and Ralph Grace walls are also not able to join us. And Kate is going to be joining us late around five o’clock. So we don’t currently have a quorum, but we can move the informational items on the agenda until we do Lisa Knobloch here, Becky Doyle here, Francie Jaffe here, Susan Bartlett here. Heather McIntyre’s here and Councilmember mark is not here. They’re all positives. Okay. All right.

1:03
Landing dolphin statement, we acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, you and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the loving and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when the land was taken and to educate our communities ourselves and our children to ensure that these justices do not happen again. And are included inclusion statement, the sustainability advisory board embraces diverse perspectives from its members and the public to create inclusive space where everyone feels welcome to share their opinions, the board as to all attendees listen and speak with respect and avoid attacks on individuals or specific group identities.

1:56
So we have without requiring we approve the minutes

2:02
later in the agenda, so we can come back to that one.

2:09
Don’t have agenda revisions. So

2:12
yeah. Yeah. So we are going to move items 11 A, and 12. Eliminate? Well, a 13. A. And we will move

2:34
six day to

2:42
day without he sent us a write up. If y’all want to vote on anything, we will, we can have discussion, but if we want to vote on action. Okay, so 11am cadenza, 11. A, I just wanted to give you all an update on the sav composting resolutions. So I’ve been meeting with Jim Jim is going to present under special presentations at next week’s city council meeting. So that’s Tuesday, April 23. For April. I did want to note that Mayor peck on the April 9 meeting, did move and was approved to direct staff to work with Boulder County on 24 regional composting facility, which is one of the primary actions that we’re called for in a composting resolution. So okay, that’s great. And exciting.

3:52
So this County’s composting rather than a one.

3:57
Yep. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the county has been in conversation about that for a while. Charlie, and Nicole will talk to you about that a little bit at the last meeting. So the council did take action, specifically, from staff to work with the county, moving that forward. So that’s a that’s a great action item that preempts our Congress resolution a little bit, but just wanted to let y’all know that that is going forward next Tuesday. If anyone else would like to come and show their support, that would be great. Jim, and I will be there. Jim, do you want to add anything? Yeah.

4:32
Well, you know, I watched the video as

4:38
well. Well, yes, that’s kind of exactly what we’re hoping. So I’m not I’m not totally sure that what I thought I’m saying is good to remind people yet, but it’s great that it’s moving forward. I think.

4:58
Multiples forward that’s it. Right. Yeah.

5:03
Any other questions?

5:10
Do we know, like a timeline?

5:15
I haven’t heard anything about a timeline specific timeline. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about staff moving forward. That would be mostly folks on the Charlie folks on the sanitation side of things. But I’ll keep you all in the loop on that. I know the county is doing stakeholder engagement, and we shared those surveys as well if you are interested in participating, that and we’ll continue to share other opportunities. And genuine I can touch base rates.

5:55
So 12, a So Ralph attended, and also Mary Lynn. So please feel free to share your thoughts as well. So Westminster board of environmental affairs, kind of regional environmental affairs sustainability meeting that happened in March emerge the same day as our last meeting. And Ralph was not able to be here with us, but sent me this write up to read to you all, and then feel free to ask any questions, we can have some discussion. And then folks, I want to get your feedback to Seoul, Maryland, and then we can discuss best ways to move forward. So on March 20, Mary Lynn and Rob Greifswald attended in person the meeting coordinated by the sustainability board of Westminster, there are about 30 people in attendance. From Front Range communities, including both staff and volunteer board members, a group of five to eight people sat at different tables and shared information about what their community was doing. And each table one representative took notes. Ralph presented the priorities in one month, then each table representative presented an overview of what was discussed in the table. Since this was the format route did not get to hear much about what other communities were doing other than those directly at the table, which included Inglewood, Erie and Westminster. Mary may have a different perspective based on the experience with her group, but below or rouse impressions of the event. So first was a confederation of different communities and different levels of sophistication regarding a purchase to sustainability and environmental challenges. As such, there’s not a central mechanism of coordination at this time, and there was not a suggested plan on going forward as to how we might coordinate interest and efforts in subsequent meetings take shape, but right now and considering the varying interests from isn’t sure on how productive the initiative will be. Online is very sophisticated in its approach to these issues. Whereas some of the communities represented at his table were still trying to get their city to adapt centralized trash pickup, in addition route heard, but to get the details in a governmental that at a governmental staff level, there is some kind of grading group that interfaces with other communities in our area, I can share more information on that. It would help to know more about that. In our last two meetings I asked for any priorities or board may want to collaborate on with other communities, and the general consensus was to see what others were working on, and then decide our level of interest in any particular issue. So in conclusion, while any coordination can be beneficial outcomes and sharing those initiatives is the best vehicle to further the goals of our community. Mary may have additional comments or ideas and happy to continue to attend the Westminster meetings if the board would like representation.

8:45
Mary, do you want to share your?

8:47
Yes, so I’m Manuel in Boulder. We’re both in attendance. And we’re building counties very much ahead of where the rest of the state, or at least the Front Range sort of seems to be in a lot of initiatives. And I sat at a table also that was staff members from I believe it was Westminster, Rada and Westminster Bloomfield, and I think, and they were all also working on universal Haller is the way that they put it to the centralized cash pickup and have to deal with the fact that there’s multiple providers and organizing, and they were looking at, including recycling with that, and they my impression, and they were all staff members, and my impression was that most of the cities on the Front Range, at least in this group, have staff that are handling and things like this work does. And they’re understaffed. And they, they don’t even have recycling in a lot of the cities. So I did speak to the folks from Boulder, who are very interested in soil very interested in new, updated, more sophisticated, more appropriate approaches to measuring sustainability. They said that they believe that its soil and its water retention and soil and that we should scrap carbon. Because it’s, it doesn’t make a lot of sense because we need carbon. And since soil isn’t important, is the most important carbon sink that we have any contact with not being being landlocked state not being there. large bodies of water, like the ocean. Water retention, the soil means that that is carbon bait, you’re taking the soil and the soil is healthy. And the soil is acting as a carbon sink. So I thought that was really interesting. My husband then came down being he’s a farmer. And he was invited to just stay and they loved to having been there and they love being a farmer. So if there’s still any recruitment going on, for people to be on this board, I think it would be really worthwhile to have somebody here who is working with soil. And I think it would be very useful to continue to go to these quarterly meetings simply to sort of set the benchmark, Ralph was, I think, Okay, I’m going to opine, Ralph suggested that we come up with our punch list of most important projects, and that we strategize on them together. And I think that these overworked staff who are trying to get University calling and simplifying, kind of gave him that deer in the headlights look. So, you know, Ralph so much occurred, and he loves to get these going. And he’s kind of gung ho. And I was looking at it and thinking, Well, it’d be worth it to continue to attend and share information, and sort of like help. Just help to just build the community and information was the most important thing to me. So not necessarily for our benefit, so much is for the benefit of the other cities involved. So that’s my update.

12:25
Thanks very much. Councilmember Mark, just to catch up, we do not have a quorum. So we are moving some things around on the agenda to push informational items up until Kate comes around five so that we have a quorum so that we can be Iose in trying to push our presentations a little bit later.

12:46
Thank you. Dr. Wanted to catch you up wondering why we’re at the end of our meeting already.

12:57
I would like it while we’re interrupted. I’d like to ask Mary, for clarification, when you say do not think about carbon, are you talking about not trying to have the city reduce its carbon emissions from other sources? Or what exactly do you mean by not thinking about carbon?

13:17
So I believe, first off, I think we should ask Jonathan Cohen to come talk to us. He’s the Chief Sustainability Resource Officer for the City of Boulder. And he’s the one who brought up this idea, and I’ve been reading about it. And I’d like to learn more about how Boulder is using this idea. But what is the undo that it’s the idea that measures of sustainability are transferred to using water retention in the soil versus carbon capture, and carbon? Other methods of, you know, as a primary measure of our sustainability, so I would like to learn more from him and see how the city is actually making it applicable. Applicable. The more I learned about electrification, and it seems to me that electrification causes more fracking because utilities everywhere are building more gas plants to be able to meet the demands of the of the of the grid, I think we need to start looking at other ways to understand our responsible responsibility in terms of stewardship with the soil and looking at other ways to manage our electric demand and electric grid.

14:43
So I was in a meeting, we’re participating in Boulder County nature based Climate Solutions Group. And Brett comparand, from the City of Boulder was at that meeting on Monday, speaking to what you are talking about and it’s not like they are first Doing electrification and all the other mitigation measures that we are also pursuing. They are talking about what Bret talks about, and I haven’t had a chance to follow up with him is when we’re talking about nature based climate solutions. From his research and the work that they are doing, that it appears to be a more effective metric to look at soil and soil health and water retention versus carbon sequestration opportunities, because there’s a lot of variability in that, based on the research they’ve been doing over the last couple of years in terms of trying to understand the carbon sequestration potential and kind of the end of the day is we need to keep as much of it in the trees and plants and soil as we plan. But that those soil health, the water retention is a better metric in terms of soil health. So it’s not necessarily scrap carbon, entirely as an understanding for how we’re doing climate action. But when we’re looking at the nature based climate solution, pieces, that that’s probably a better understanding of the health overall, and its benefits to our ecosystems. Thank you.

16:13
So, so not to talk about not moving away from electrification, but moving away from measuring emissions like tailpipe and gas stoves, and

16:25
not even that. But we’re looking specifically at the opportunity. And again, this, this was my understanding, based on this brief meeting we had the other day. So I would love to talk to Brett more about that to see what the city of Boulder is doing on that front. But it’s looking at the when they’ve really been pushing that, in addition to all of the technological pieces of the mitigation pieces, or the SVI mitigation component as well, but looking at valuing more strongly the nature of today’s climate solutions and the benefit and value that comes from that, but the way that we’ve been talking about that, in some spheres to this point is around carbon sequestration. And he’s kind of flipping that to say, the more effective metric is looking at soil health.

17:15
The more economically feasible than carbon sequestration is for a long time.

17:20
Right. And he tree planting is another big one that folks are looking at among the range.

17:25
Yeah, that’s part of that that whole nature based climate solution. So

17:30
actually forgot that report. There are a number of folks in fact, there’s even a there’s even a office of what tree

17:36
planting is called.

17:38
And I believe my bags are not there yet. So yes, so this, this approach is sort of catching on.

17:51
Yeah, I was just gonna say we have what’s

17:56
your little competition? Because I’m writing for COVID? Yeah. And it was Brett, can you hear? Yeah,

18:02
I think like one of the I think a lot of us are rightfully suspicious of carbon sequestration. Seems like it’s a way for a lot of large companies to say they’re gonna do something without actually doing anything. Technology is not there. But I also think that some of the key ideas of sequestering significant amounts of carbon through, especially in the High Plains tree planting, are not also backed up by a lot of a lot of data and restoring shortgrass prairies and all those other things are certainly there. But yeah, I’d be interested to hear what they have to say now, because I thought when they went over presented here last time, my view of it was, how can I felt that a lot of their strategies are how can we say that we’re doing things without actually changing some of the fundamental problems that boulder has about sustainability? You know, it’s unbelievably expensive. Everybody has to commute everywhere. And they said, Well, if we can just keep our open space, that’s what we’re going to do. So I’d be interested to hear what their what they’ve evolved on now. Let’s see from

19:09
Boulder County Seat she sustainability resilience. City folder is also a lecturer at the University. We also talked a lot about farms and I I picked up this crazy idea that I called Great above because Denver has dubbed in urban Americans and I was something about it. And I thought what if we collaborated across Boulder County to create an urban garden program we thought that was a great idea. So I think that there is an opportunity for collaboration right there. And I mean, I’m always using you know, started at home I’m example we would have a quarter acre lot that is just like it’s wall to wall food growing. You know, and mostly perennials, trees and so forth. And I would love to see us really focusing on using the soil that we have, you know, it’s the greatest impact that we can And everywhere that we can. And because of my background and communications, I really think that that’s the best way to sort of like, get people passion, about the soil and sequestration and in trees and trees and whatever it is to have projects like that. So

20:16
I actually really like the cross county garden idea. Yeah. Because this is a suspicion, you know, based on stuff that I have working on land use of what the commissioners are, how they’re treating their open space and stuff. You know what, I’m really proud of the way Longmont mass manages its open space, which is mostly owned. In Boulder County, a lot of their open space is just easements that prevent development. But they’re, I feel without substantiation. So I could be talking out the wrong end here. But that they’re not as rigorous as they ought to be, in terms of making sure that that open space is managed and used properly. I have so much to say about that. If you want to hear by one minute, if you believe me, I’m that’s enough for now. But this, this idea would be a way to get everybody involved in seeing the damage. And will

21:25
a couple of things, I’d be happy to invite somebody from the City of Boulder, right? In order that bread is the one that leaves that and it against steeped in all of the research. And he was the one who came. So if I gave him time to follow up, because we never ended up doing anything with that because it turned upside down. There are some research studies, I see that Francis pulled up some reports that we can share with you in the meantime, that I think speak to some of the findings that Brett was sharing at this meeting. The other day, I do want to keep us on track for today, because we have two presenters, Kate, just for your information, they have to bump some things around on the agenda. So we had a party. So I’m excited that you’re now. So my understanding though, one, there was also growing gardens, which is a county wide urban gardening initiative. I can’t speak too much more to them. But but it’s something that at some point there’s interested in pursuing.

22:23
So we did a step towards growing gardens

22:26
online and happy to do that. So that could be an opportunity.

22:31
Yeah, and that’s my background. I’ve worked for different vendors for a long time. As well, I think with regards to the Westminster meeting, it sounds like Mary, if I’m understanding correctly, they’re just gonna have quarterly meetings. Yeah, moving forward. So we can continue to participate in that. And as opportunities arise, we can discuss them further, I think you’ll probably need to vote on that. And then there is a both a regional quarterly sustainability group that is staff across the front range, we get together Quarterly, we share information we talked about for projects, we always look for opportunities for collaboration, and then there’s also a Boulder County, similarly, sized state and pretty good contact

23:19
and account County and along with well, because we were we have the last meeting. Actually, I’m not sure when our next meeting will be. I’m wondering if we missed that we know that last one was just a merge. So So our next one will be probably do. Okay, for me? I’m not sure. Anyway, I was just thinking already having a staff meeting really. So staff people, a lot of the that meetings that people should we just combined them.

23:51
But potentially, that would be a decision for the broader reach group, as well. So that I’m happy to check in with our next meeting, actually, I think might be this week or next. Joe and I both are continuing to at least participate in the quarterly meetings.

24:10
While I kind of we already voted to do it last time. Do we have to change that status? I don’t think we don’t.

24:16
I guess

24:19
I mean, I’m well. We just we’ll just unforce whoever’s new on the committee that this person to vote the longest, so that would have to be made.

24:37
Okay, so with that, I want to go ahead and jump back if it’s okay.

24:41
Should we just do the 13 A quick and then go back?

24:45
Down? Oh, sure. Yeah. Um, Councilmember pardon me, I just put on here the code of ethics that was shared. I wasn’t sure if there was any more context or anything that you wanted to share with this group. Hopefully you all saw the email that went with that, but

24:58
yes, oh, Ralph, it’s a pity he’s not here. But he asked whether the changes would make members of this board liable if somebody’s objectives assumption, a city policy, and he had is putting together a long research statement and answer that question, but his off the cuff answer, which is all I have at this point, is that there’s nothing in there that could make any of you any more reliable than you already are.

25:34
Which was incredibly cheap. So with an answer, but you know,

25:43
my, my I’m not a lawyer answer is that the City Council or the city manager, or the chief of public safety, are the authors of actions that’s that, that could potentially make somebody say they’ve been harmed. And I doubt if this man will find that this corridor, any advisory board is powerful enough to be liable in any significant way. But that was the other thing. I’m not a lawyer to.

26:23
Just so that, you know, he means the city attorney.

26:26
Oh, sorry. Okay.

26:31
Tara, turn it back over to you. I’m sorry for the jumping around.

26:36
to six.

26:40
So cruel minutes from our last meeting. Does anyone have any changes or corrections need to be amended?

26:55
Because I was saying, Oh, yeah.

27:00
It’s interesting that you watched the video.

27:06
I just representing.

27:10
So it might

27:17
seconded. All those. Cool, thank you.

27:29
Right. So first, you have transportation mobility.

27:38
Until pretty well, on the transportation of the city. We always preface that by saying I managed the longer range pieces of transportation. So if you have problems with a traffic light that doesn’t terminate green quick enough, that I can pass those on to people who don’t, I think my belongings piece of this. And that’s why we’re really talking about the transportation authority. And more that long range, which we’ll see some stuff is coming up pretty quick. So we’ll talk about that as well.

28:11
Wonderful, to see something happening quick,

28:17
too quick to watch. We’ll work it out. So the mobility plan is really more of that idea of let’s start planning in 510 to 15 year 20 year increments, we are doing a lot of things that we can talk about later. And we’re happy to come back and talk more about the projects. We’re going to patch in the next one to five years. But this is really about talking about further. Looking further out. And tonight, we just want to talk about the kind of project overview for the traditional building plan. TMP is over calling it. So that’s let’s have a standard across the across all the different jurisdictions. So that’s the nice to just have people referencing back instead of a comprehensive plan for transportation. We also want to talk about community outreach and existing conditions and the next step. So hopefully you can bear with me and have plenty of time for questions, I hope. So a little project background. We talked about the transportation mobility plan as far as what’s its history, and a lot of it is talking about the idea that we’ve been actually planning transportation since 1971. Right. And people who put the city together did a great job. I think there’s lots of debate about that. But they did a great job of putting the streets together, building that grid system, that original mile piece. We built onto it the people who came after it built on to that there may not have been a specific transportation plan with that. And so that didn’t really happen until 2005 When we started talking about multimodal and how things integrated with land uses. So that first point in 2005 was the first foray into that and so Oh, I got to be able to do that as well. So I’ve been here for 24 years. So just to give you a little history of where I’m coming from, from this, my most recent plan is the 2016 Revision one mod plan, incorporated the land uses for an additional amount, which is a comprehensive plan for the city, with the transportation pieces. So we’ve really kind of put those things together and look at more systemic than just transportation over here and land uses over here. I mean, we look at parking, we look at streets, those are land uses. So we need to start thinking about how these all work together. We have had a lot of changes, and there’s been a lot of discussion, you’ll hear some, some of the new things that we’re talking about are like micro transit, which we hope to get off the ground in July. So so so those kinds of things weren’t even a thought in 2016. Well, they’re a thought by somebody, but not, not more globally. So it’s been good to kind of bring those new elements into this transportation planning process. So new ideas, new things coming along. And then we really need to set a road map for transportation, based on based on what we have for available and potential resources. So we really want to lay it out. So anybody from the public can come out and start to see what projects is going to be in my neighborhood in the next 510 years, might not, you know, maybe 15, maybe 20 as well. But that five year kind of capital improvement program is what we’re really trying to go try to build to. And so we want to make sure it’s very clear where these projects will happen and what they’re meant to do. So hopefully, that will be the end product, when we get to the end of this process. Just see, we’ve done some public engagement pieces on the top, you’ll see more about that, I really want to get into that and talk about what the public has told us so far in this. So phase one was the winter, the spring, capturing the feedback of the community’s experiences, and just getting an idea of like, where we can do better, or where there’s deficiencies that people are identifying. And we’ve putting together that feedback on the draft recommendation. So that’ll all go into how we prioritize projects, we want to start to build some criteria, based on the feedback we’re getting from the public. And plugging projects with the criteria so that we can evaluate the projects, and see where they move up and down on the list. A big key piece of this, which we’ll mention later, but it’s really the equity piece of this, so that we’re putting the resources where they are needed. Rather than just putting resources, you know, in the projects that are popular or on the cusp of a lot of people talking about or things like that, we need to put them in places where maybe we are not clear from our team, which was great to go to, was the idea that there’s some places in East on the side of town. Martin and ninth was brought up specifically as a place where doesn’t get a lot of attention. But there’s a lot of people trying to cross that mark. So what can we do? You know, obviously, the knee jerk reaction was what was simpler. Let’s see how this goes through. And we’ll see if that’s, if that makes sense. Or not. Maybe it’s maybe it’s a better cost of Juventus for pedestrians, and we don’t have to stop the pedestrian and stop, you know, we can have the pedestrian just go through without having to stop, we can put something like it’s flashing signals there. Just stop traffic. Anyway, I get too excited about this. Maybe the boring I vote or whatever, because I love talking about this. But the project, existing state of transportation, a lot more envisioning goals. We’re putting that together analysis. And then the draft recommendations for walking, biking, driving, a prioritized list of capital improvement projects, all the things I just talked about, we’re going to be coming up in the summer. So we’re looking about the support tickets Council in the fall, or they’ll be quick, it says winter, but we’re gonna be quick enough. So

34:13
I think there is a word I don’t see here, which is community education. Because you know,

34:24
you get a lot of letters complaining about bicycles riding in the street. Like they assume that because there’s a lane for bicycles in some places that somehow bikes aren’t allowed to be in the street because streets are for cars. And that of course is wrong. There’s only two things we can do about that. We can complete the bike bike network so you never have to complete like or you can almost impossible. Impossible Exactly. Or you can put people back and go Don’t

35:00
buy driveway, right? How do I write? Yeah, 68

35:04
mindset, we’re a bike is a vehicle and you better treat them that way. You know, and because people seem to forgotten that.

35:11
No, I mean, that’s the point of the whole thing is to start setting up that education. And the other piece that we’re not going to talk about directly tonight, but it’s going to be kind of the background piece of all this is Council has adopted Vision Zero. So the idea that zero deaths are the only accepted number that we can have people dying on our roadways, or walkways or whatever, any kind of travel mode, we don’t make sense, any deaths. So part of that is going to be that’s a huge education component, we’re going to share a lot of that with visions. So the outreach phase in February, we did do a lot of work to do an open house, you’ll see that I won’t go through all of this is I don’t see. It’s pretty long, we’ve got people coming up next to talk to you as well. So I want to make sure that we get get through this. But I will read all of this just to say that we have had 1000 engagement touch points. So far, a lot of that has been in survey responses. So to our website, we had ga 97 People put dots on a map to tell us where they thought there was some deficiencies, or they were there some good things too. So we got a little of both, but most of those deficiencies. So we did have 55 people attend our open house, which is pretty good, pretty full room was pretty exciting. And obviously was that open house kind of led us to this survey response and opening up to the web and getting the information out, which I think is where people really talk to us. And you’ll see some other ones do we had a bike to work day I went to my two day event where we have 30 people. So that was pretty exciting. Not a great day, but it was good. So it was it was nice. So this just kind of reread re iterates a lot of that information that we were reaching out to the general public, we did the social media piece, we’ve got a lot of stuff on Engage long one. So did you get a chance to do it, the engaged website, were the first thing on the list there. So that’s pretty exciting. We’ve talked to a number of groups, we still need to do a better job with our Center for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, that day we were going to meet with them and Whitestone was this was the same day that Representative reduce came and gave us a giant check for million dollars from Kansas. City. But that was unfortunate. We’ve gotten ECAD. I mentioned earlier some things on folks to my right. So thank you. Can I just say what a warm climate action

37:58
this is not a great picture. But a good picture of showing all the different touch points that we got from folks, some of those 297 277 dots that were put on the map. This kind of gives you an idea of kind of spatially where those comments were from around the city. So we’re Bible deficient out here. It looks like oh, maybe everything’s really great out here. So let’s kind of figure that out. But you can see where the bulk of things are in the downtown. We did get some surprising pieces up in the Northeast here. And then a lot of folks came out about the 17th and hoever intersection piece there. We just recently had a pretty, pretty bad crash out there that was on sale, self induced. But

38:44
is that around 6666?

38:47
Yeah, we’ll be right up here. Yeah, you’re right. That’s what this is. Yes, that’s something that scares me. Yeah. What did I say? I’m sorry. So there’s been some pretty big concerns out there with what’s going to school and those kind of things on here. So it makes sense a lot of stuff at 118. And over, down here too. We’re going to be spending a lot of money on that intersection events two years to improve that, too. So there’s a lot a lot of fun things going on.

39:29
Just put one foot but one thing on the previous slide, that those pale spots out of 119 and County Line Road there. Yeah, the there’s a lot of people who are our unhoused or staying in the extended stays that are out there and stuff. And they couldn’t come in for the threat because they you can’t get there from here from there. So I would you know, maybe deepen those dogs just based on anecdotal evidence of One

40:00
another reason why we went on to the

40:03
sorry, the downtown blog. What’s the northern terminus of that? What’s that street?

40:08
I’d say it’s about 11th Avenue, probably right here in London. And then it goes down Trickle Up theory or is it goes down to Bob first. Martin’s right here are a Boston check here. So it’s pretty close to

40:24
me. Is that parallel your pike?

40:27
Here’s Mike down here. Yeah. I’m sorry. This one’s good. So you can imagine a lot of comments about congestion and near. So one interesting thing is that congestion does help with crashes, it reduces crashes. So there’s a lot of issues with trying to balance all these different

40:49
things. 66 as well, because people go so fast, there’s no congestion there. Yeah.

40:57
Yeah, we do get some people call about how terrible it is to drive on that road, because it’s so congested. Just see another car. Our respondents to the to the surveys, as you can imagine, skewed a little bit. Because of just how you know how we’ve done it, basically, with computers, you know, it’s been computer based, so you have to have access to a computer into the internet. And so you do get some of these people who I mean, our highest number of respondents ordered over $150,000 per household. The 35 to 44 group was the biggest number from the age group. And that byte, obviously was going to vote or a group that responded to our survey, too. So we’re doing more of that outreach. Now what we’re getting out to different groups, because we’ve seen kind of what we’ve done as a cross section, and we’re trying to pair that and tie it more into our makeup as a city. To better understand that. You could probably imagine that a lot of folks, I think this is gonna be the thing where you go, yeah. Most people drive along with with family members. 77% by simply 14% have a pretty good but this is pretty, pretty low. And so just I’ll put to look at the other things, as well. One of the biggest challenges associated with walking or using a wheelchair last month non existent or insufficient sidewalks is the number one answer. There are locations with non existent or insufficient crossings, streets are uncomfortable or unsafe to walk. And we all want so I’ll do the kind of the top three of these but travel distances actually long was also a number, close number for their biggest challenges associated with bicycling or schooling and Walmart, streets are unsafe, uncomfortable trails not go where I want them to go. I cannot say forget to monitor these trails, insufficient or poorly marked bike lanes is also really high up on the list. I think we can all agree to a lot of these things. I think our community when I ask people, you know, do you generally agree with this? I think everybody has their head nodding through all through this biggest challenges associated with taking transit and Walmart, you can get this one to the bus doesn’t go where I want it to go versus and come frequently enough. The bus doesn’t run early or late enough. So there’s also some safety concerns there. So we got to be cognizant of that. The biggest challenges associated with driving along bond too much traffic, which is interesting. There are no challenges with driving in Walmart was the second. So yeah. And other we need to delve into trying to figure out what that is. In your opinion, what are the most important factors the solution considerable prioritizing transportation questions and spending? Improving biking by filling gaps to existing dedicated bike facilities is number one answer and then provide a balanced transportation system that provides connectivity and comfortable options for all modes. Yes, improved traffic flows, reduce traffic congestion, which is interesting, because we just talked about those challenges. Improved biking by adding more dedicated bike lanes. So interesting. These are the key themes. So I probably should skip right to this one because this is probably the one where speeding is an issue. You’d like to see more enforcement most people would like to see more enforcement. We hear that all the time, I think to sport desire to be inclusive of all modes of transportation. So really giving that choice to people so they can choose different modes of transportation. Yeah, that’s a good sense because right now, seems like one road it makes sense and not others.

44:59
against the

45:02
Jets options are in part inadequate. This is true, we’re hoping that by transit helps fill some of those gaps in the city, because what it’s meant to do is where there’s not good transit, get your chance to get those first and final mile connections.

45:17
Can you just talk briefly about what micro transit is?

45:20
I’m not sure. Yeah, yeah. So basically, micro transit is the idea of kind of placing an Uber or Lyft type system, that would have kind of one costs. Dollars per trip, instead of doing it by instead of scaling it by demands, there just be a fixed cost on that. And so you could call him you can use your phone to, to hail a ride. If you use a phone, basically, any language that you speak will be translated into the requests. So we all have, we have that capability of the city as well, we have a foreign language base piece where we can take almost any thing can call it almost any language. So within 15 minutes of doing that white healing piece of one of these bands, show about a picture but it’s basically the city passenger van is branded with the city, although we’ll get we’ll get a great name, we’ll go into the public and trying to figure out some great news for this service. But within 15 minutes, this, this van will come within a couple of blocks in your house. And so you may be asked to like meet up with some other people. And you may have to share a ride. And then within 15 minutes of being picked up, you will be taken and you may have to drop off people at different places to it’s like a almost like a car share carpool piece, but within 30 minutes, you reach a destination so and they may not be able to take you all the way across the city, but it may be able to connect you with existing transit services, they’re not gonna be able to take you anywhere in the whole region and take you within the city of Walmart. So we’re looking to expand that because we’re getting a great new mobility hub when it was 25, in a couple of months, see that’s putting that together building it. And once that’s completed, we’d like to get people out there because there’s a free bus service directly to Fort Collins. So that would be wonderful to get out. Like a bicycle facilities. Not sure what the scope and cost

47:45
that’s all lack of connectivity in the bike network. So you get a lot of bicycle feeds here. People want to be able to bicycle that are across town. This is kind of interesting. These are regional travel travel patterns based on connected vehicle technology. So when your car has a built in navigation system, you’re giving information to the world. Yeah, we used to use the phones, which I thought was a lot more interesting because you’d get walking data, basically data, card data, bus data kind of things. Because you can tell when a bunch of phones were at the same unit kind of moving at the same speed. Maybe a bus but have

48:27
you seen that guy who uses his phone GPS to drive dinosaurs with this? Oh, yeah.

48:33
Strava or something like that. So we found out that a lot of folks go in between are coming from, from older, or the older 180 corridor. So great that we’re going to go bus rapid transit in the next two or three years along that corridor, sort of I can come back and chat with a lot of folks coming from North Weld County, which was interesting, and from South Weld County, and then learn Oregon. So that’s, that’s a lot of the folks that are doing regional travel into our town. And when they show up in town, they periodically go to the southwest part of town for those regional trips, and even to the north part of town, which is interesting. We found that a lot of multifunction, we thought the downtown will be more of a destination for regional trips, but I think that this might be looking at as or commute times. And so this is work trips are likely.

49:28
So is it going to pretty much for tech quarter. Yeah, I think Silicon Alley, whatever you call it.

49:37
There’s some interesting information to that 70% of the trips that started Walmart also making more money. So we’ve got a lot of internal trip making being done and when you see kind of what happens here, here’s kind of where we’re traveling. A lot of internal southwest to southwest internal trips, a lot of southeast, southwest trips. You can kind of see what’s going on there. And here’s the biggest number though that I think is really telling the wrong one. It’s almost 80% of the trips and mop water between one and five miles long. So if we can get people on bikes, if that was more comfortable, if we needed people into this micro transit, which I think is going to be very comfortable, and convenient and safe, those can really start to take over all those trips walking troops. And other other routes like up I think the pipe destroy points, the bicycling, these 11% of the trips are less than one mile. So clearly walking trips that can be made, trips downtown. That’s why I always wonder about this, this seems to just show people rotating around the downtown. And I’m like, that doesn’t make sense to me. But I’ve had a lot of questions to our consultants with reliability of this data and how we can get better, more principal layers on top of this, quote, this is from student loans, data, which is they’ve added they’ve been forced to move away from the phone based piece and go to this connected vehicle, which is more open source or open data. I’m doing the same thing that he sold.

51:14
How much of this is deliveries?

51:17
Oh, that’s a great question. I don’t know.

51:19
You know, like Amazon pizza.

51:24
I think they were trying to stay away from that component and go towards private vehicles, commercial vehicles.

51:31
The GrubHub was still

51:34
it’s still a snapshot, I think it’s really important information to

51:39
what I did today was I’ll be honest with you, as I gave my console, I couldn’t pay my consultants to come to every advisory board for the city. So I’m kind of see in their place. So I apologize for not having all the info behind this data, but we’ll get it for you. We can get that cleaned up. Yep. So the roadway network, I think you pretty much realize this, but it’s kind of good to see is the different schema. So we have the different types of collectors arterioles. Or roadway network, basically how its operating, or how its operating today. One of the big components editions ago is going to be to push the limits, quite frankly. So coming to town and you see a thing that says unless otherwise posted 25 miles per hour. Next, we will look at all our streets. So this will be a great baseline to start from

52:32
Yes, is there going to be a significant amount of traffic calming involved. I live off 21st. And I know it’s very fun to have people from over to Francis, people just drag race down not all the time because it’s this big open stream stream. Well, and I know that one of the earlier slides had people wanted more enforcement of speed limits, it seems a way to not have to have more people out getting tickets and a way to slow people down. It’s just to make the road so windy.

53:01
We are actually joined forces a good example because we’re talking about taking away all the destruction and making everything and thinking about laying on the outsides in both directions and making that into profit. Because it seems like when traffic calming, you can make easier paths for people walking by.

53:22
You slow people down? And yeah, it seems like it’s a way to accomplish a lot of those things without having to necessarily rely on just giving people a bunch of tickets.

53:30
Right? We’re also looking at a number of number of places for new evidence. Yeah. So that’s very popular as far as being able to slow people down and actually features all the stuff that really can build up. That

53:43
can be a heat island mitigation piece.

53:47
For me, one of the big barriers for walking, especially in the summer here, there’s just no little shade there as if you’re trying to walk. So yes. It seems like that having common features like major features and three buffers and trees, things that can damage cars, slow them

54:02
down. And one of the things we can make sure of to be in the new standards Well, this is going to be on a number of years ago was to make sure that every sidewalk you said what Colton town was detached some territory law where you could literally be we’d be responsible basically because of the within the right of way. So yes.

54:24
Go ahead. Sorry. When gypsy has to have a comment on you know that what you need in our physical barriers. I’ve looked at how Vision Service played on citizen patent for a long time and unfortunately, they seem to be very heavily focused on surveillance. And what’s happening with that data is no bueno. Now, the companies that have developed these cameras are also developed the AI analysis and the automatic tickets that remove people from the from the any protocol process so There’s really no judicial review on it. And the evidence seems to be that when people are living in an area where there’s more cameras, they feel less secure, because it’s more alienating and they feel more paranoid. And I would rather see as much as possible. efforts made to make people, right, because they simply can’t make a bad decision. Because there’s a curve, and there’s bushes that you can’t see around maybe as easily. And there’s an electric I mean, you could be guessing the electric stop signs. You know, I think that that stuff really makes you more human seamless. They blink at you. There’s one about on set. It’s an uncertainty report. Right, but I’ll buy a Macintosh late to like smash into those million dollar houses like guarantees all the time. I thought it was hilarious. When I first saw it, I was like everyone’s doing. So yeah, as much as possible. I really, every time, you know, Harold talks about how his smart he said this in his in his city, coffee with council, he said, when we talk about smart cities, we’re talking about surveillance cameras, and we were all like, Oh, we don’t want any more of that. Take those out.

56:20
I bicycle a lot around town and from here to other places. And that kind of a basic rule that most cyclists believe is that anything that that drivers are more concerned about damaging their car than they are about hitting somebody. And so if if you have things that can damage cars, and slow people down,

56:39
to kind of measure that temperate and rebalancing. So, you know, hurting people with that, because we are visions of our city, we just need to make sure balancing all those different pieces.

56:50
If you’re driving 30 miles an hour, you don’t have these things if only people are speeding. Or that’s why we’re talking about

56:56
like, reducing the lane widths, where it’s quite to go, Hey, we gotta be doing some people to help me on this, we get, we get a lot of resistance from our public safety folks love that, too. So we’re working with them to have those conversations and just talk about ever reducing crashes. Yeah, that means you do, you don’t have to do all these coals, right. So hopefully, we can measure it. It’s all a balancing

57:21
act. So if you want more cameras, basically,

57:26
I think the police probably do for just they’re using them for tracking like stolen vehicles through town. So they can try the license plate and just watch it and where it turned when it turned. And once it kind of triggers the system, they can figure out if that’s a stolen car or not, we’re getting a lot of we see how crashes happen and what’s going on with the crashes. And so there’s a lot of that technology that we have not inserted the idea of like the speed cameras, or the red light cameras just for those very concerns. And for the idea that early on, in the last five or 10 years ago, when this kind of started out in Boulder really jumped on it, or jumped on that technology was that there was a lot of scam artists that were just doing this to get the money for the company, right. And so we got a piece of that ticket, but they really wanted a larger piece, you know, they wanted to make money. And so we kind of shied away from it. For those reasons that didn’t seem consider ethical. In some way

58:34
I looked at it. When we lived there, it was considered the most smart city city in terms of traffic safety in the whole country. And we moved because we would be going home one mile of the speed limit, and we get a little ticket with a picture of us going. And it was just so horrible. We were like this is really unnecessary. We get you know, perfect driving records, I think what we’re looking

58:57
for is maybe red light running running camps, because that’s part of the safety issue. And if we can, and are more working toward crashes, more crashes, we’re in crashes of those but the severity of the crashes are reduced when you have a red light camera. So that’s part of the Vision Zero prospect will need to work with all the different departments to go

59:18
and see what from based on my conversation about Smart City technologies, that what they really, they really want is fewer traffic stops and fewer chases, because those are dangerous for everyone concerned. And so if you get that done with street design, or if you get that done with automation, they probably don’t care which they just don’t want to have people up because every time somebody is stopped trying to you know, pull somebody over and somebody over is trying to fill up the filament and all that stuff. Then they can’t, you know, call them a domestic respond when domestic abuse call. So that’s the end

1:00:01
We just have more data for you. But this is all kind of existing existing conditions, we’re just measuring all the different speeds, the off peak, the peak, and then the difference of those is kind of a very light bar. So you can kind of see where there’s little differences. How is this what’s what’s not so. But this is just all going to go into our idea of how we do the roadway network and what needs to be looked at the roadways, bicycle network, shows all our different ones. This is more traditional pieces of just looking at all what we have, as far as a lot more buffered vitamins and we’ve ever had before. So that’s exciting. Those are coming on, that wasn’t something we talked about much in 2016. Either. We have a couple of underpasses that are being constructed. So they aren’t aren’t here yet. But we’ve got some good things going on the side of town to connect these links, pedestrian network, we really would just wanted to see where we have missing sidewalks based on a sidewalk issue of not connected, and we think we do a pretty good job of connecting. Some of our sidewalks are deficient in that they’re not wide. And so it’s very hard to walk even two by two on the sidewalk, which is interesting. But we do have some missing satellite, we just finished a project on 17, just east of over, which has been amazing. It’s a really good connection that we’ve been looking forward forward to for a long time. Our transit network is pretty, pretty slim. So we aren’t going to supplement this. You do you see that the we have an RGB FlexRide service that does cover the entire area. And the micro gens will supplement that quite a bit. We’re hoping to almost take it to get over and get rid of the FlexRide and have the power to put more resources into our flexPower micro transit service based on that. So we’re working with them on how Michael Jensen can take care of micro

1:01:56
micro transit isn’t going to go gonna do the door through door. So when you don’t clearly get rid

1:02:02
via will be out there still, those smart vehicles that do door to door service for people who are people with disabilities and people older, older population, trying to make appointments to different medical appointments and shopping.

1:02:20
Just remember this from previous meeting, we talked about the different routes that the buses go in town. And then it’s actually because it’s part of RTD, the city has limited, kind of say and how the routes are arranged. Does that fit? Am I remembering that? Yes, that’s absolutely do we have an opportunity to try to work with them to make them? Less for us?

1:02:45
We do we do. We do have a lot of opportunities to make that work. There are TV just presented at our transportation advisory board on Monday. And they said how great it is to work with the city. And they said yeah, we work with you and we put our input in but then it always, always boils down to resources. And they always say well, you can extend the route any further than this because of resources. Well, how do we work with you to build better routes? We want more frequencies on different routes, we think a 15 minute headway, you know, coming by every 15 minutes going on southbound mentioned makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think a lot of people would take that northbound as well, just trying to there’s a kind of a blended way, they’re the terms. But and they see that and they realize that but there’s just not the resources to put out there right now, you’ll see that we have a lot of loops and weird little things that just kind of end and that’s not the way we envision the system. So our idea is to start with micro transit and work our way into the transit realm a little bit that way. I think the key piece here too, is this will all change with the bus rapid transit, that’s going to be 27. So we will get a route that goes out to the east side of town. We’ll have more frequency on some of these buses to get people into what’s gonna be the first and main station right here. So this will all change over the next few years. This just kind of gives you the idea of how much ridership we have. This is this is interesting because there’s almost as many people per day on the 324 local bus as there is on the bolt is in Boulder and Longmont so we do have a free bus service in town or I hope everybody knows that with

1:04:32
Tony is that 80% of that right?

1:04:37
So she knows all about that good. But this is this is what’s kind of out there and you’ll see some of these very deficient routes. Unfortunately we have this Lt. It says Longmont to Denver but if you want more like 1122 Broomfield then you have to transfer it into Denver which is painful. Here’s our Flex Route. So this is this versus They do pretty well. This is a bus that comes from Fort Collins. So we’ve worked with a completely different transit agency on this on the Flex Route. So they come, obviously, they just have two stops, well, they have three stops example one of them is kind of more for the older balance or the older or going all the way to town. So we can’t go to Boulder on this bus, even though it goes to Boulder, you’re not supposed to talk to us the RTV system, which is bizarre to me, that you can’t do it. But the it’s all based on the drivers. So that’s kind of nice. Here’s a little bit more about the safety pieces that this is really going to feed into our Vision Zero piece, but it really is important to the TMP as well. The idea of bicycle involved collision. So really a concentration on this main street corridor from 17, basically on the north to about our downtown, maybe mostly on the south looks like and so you’ll see little, there’s little bits pieces out in different areas to kind of appear at 66, a main two and then all along the main street. Pedestrian involved collisions, again, long Main Street, run 17. And then south of downtown, for in downtown down to Third Avenue, basically. So between third and last week, fifth. So you can kind of see that crash types. This is just going to help us more about the crash data piece. A lot of variant crashes, as you can imagine, it’s the one before we start talking about broadside crashes, those are the ones that get pretty dangerous. And that’s where people start to spend time in hospitals or end up losing a loved one was. So those are critical tasks to reduce those next set of operations. So we do have a new vision zero coordinator who started working with us in February. And we do have an action plan that is going forward, we’re going to get that action plan done. And that will give us the ability to access resources money. So we’ll have more money to be able to spend on these things. Now the next steps, we need to put together that vision and goals for this project to make sure that we’re all aligned as a community are those and develop those recommendations for bicycle walking transit, the vehicle network, and then programs and policies. Maybe as we want to flip the script, we’ve always talked to all kinds of cars first, and then buses and bikes and then walking want to flip that script. So it’s walking, first bicycle in transit. And then even before personal automobiles getting freight, freight, delivered through challenges, as we talked about earlier, and then the personal vehicle. So we’ll be back here to talk to stakeholders, we do have a member on that working group, so I will be getting together again in the next couple of weeks here or next couple of months to get back together and start to work on a lot of this vision and goals meet some of this.

1:08:11
He said there’s somebody from this group was on that journey. Remember who it is?

1:08:19
Yeah, we didn’t hear him though. Being away. So

1:08:23
that’s good to know. Yeah.

1:08:25
So happened? How does that? Is that something that we formally decided that somebody from this group was

1:08:30
going to have somebody on? I think Charles volunteered basketball

1:08:33
to have trouble. Great.

1:08:40
And then there will be opportunities for Phil to come back to this group also.

1:08:46
through volunteering,

1:08:49
well, also, and hopefully like when you have recommendations and stuff like that to

1:08:55
volunteer to it to the materials twice, till we get somebody else who is an avid cyclist, which is not. I wish

1:09:08
hopefully, we answered all your questions during the presentation. So there any other follow up questions, or feel free to get into this?

1:09:16
super informative? I have one last question. But listen, it’s an intersectional question. There just seems to be so much angst right now about HOAs. And the obviously this intersects a lot with with transportation because there are the requirements for the HOAs to put in various kinds of islands and I don’t know what they’re called, like, strips, you know, like along the roads and so forth. And are you having any conversation with the HOA, and I know that a lot of people would kind of pull up turf, and so on and so forth. And as you bring in more lessons In more roundabouts and such, are you? What is the what are the issues that are coming up with HOAs? I know there’s gonna be some, just because I’m trying to learn about all things HOAs right now,

1:10:11
I’m not hearing that as much. So most of the issues of HOAs right now seem to be allowing for accessory dwelling units and more density within subdivisions. So that’s what we’re really dealing with HOAs is, how do they change their rules to be able to allow that because we have rules in the city that allow for it. And anybody can do it until you get to the HOA level of politics. And so that’s the, that’s the point that we’re really struggling with right now.

1:10:41
Is it going to change, it’s also going to change. Parking too. And then again, a lot of that open space that they have in the HOAs. Again, like I talked about, like the loading scripts, and so forth, a lot of that stuff’s gonna have to take up a

1:10:57
parking spot right?

1:10:58
Now we’re actually getting rid of, we’re gonna get rid of parking. So we’re not gonna as a city force, folks, this is even new to our council number, because we’re going to bring back two resolutions now. And so just the one because our internal working group of senior departments came up with the idea that maybe we’re middle we’re ready for parking maximum, so we’re gonna get rid of parking minimums, so we’re gonna bring that to council may 14,

1:11:25
so I sniffed around and found out who is nervous about parking minimums, okay. You wouldn’t doubt him. But, yeah.

1:11:37
As we convince folks, yeah, so we’re gonna get rid of all parking minimums, so the city will no longer say you have to put in as much parking for even multifamily residential, we’re gonna let the let the developers tell us how much parking they think they need. And if we see that it’s going to impact surrounding neighborhoods, so we’re gonna make a parking study to prove to it prove to us that that’s what’s needed. But we’re gonna put caps on working from here on out. So you’ll see

1:12:05
that are you share them to the public? No, it’s because I’ve heard people comes beside for itself, whole neighborhood, come to the coffee with council, I think it was the last one. And they were completely freaked out because there was no parking. And they had there was no place for them to park and they couldn’t believe inhibit the sign that way. I understand that this is very popular in civic planning right now. And transportation energy policy, but I don’t think

1:12:33
it’s a public ones. But we’re having lots of conversations. So it’s also

1:12:39
has come up in my neighborhood in multiple instances that want you to snap parking, because you know, that there’s been instances of trying to put in developments where there was only like 20% of housing in that the husband units would actually have a parking space, which would cramp the neighborhood, I’m just really concerned about.

1:13:03
That’s not very understandable. I think that’s why we got to the place where we did with our city staff, because there was this huge concern. Every time that we tried to bring data to the conversation. We hope that that helps. But obviously, there’s that perception that it’s that that’s not going to work. And so we’re just trying to get through that perception level with the data. And so trying to prove to folks that really a lender won’t give money to have development that can’t prove that it has enough parking. And so hopefully, I’ll then drill the other nurse using a bank, a bank will not lend dollars to, especially in cities like Walmart, that they’ve perceived as not having great transit yet. And so what we’re trying to do is supplement these gaps with better transit. And we’re hoping that people can actually make it meet that next step of do I have to own three vehicles or two vehicles, you don’t want the goal for my family to get around, or can I do it in these other ways, and obviously, if you don’t have great transit and bicycling options, a car is your only way. You got to slow down cars somewhere. So it’s all those conversations that we’re trying to have with folks and so places that are not very transit rich, we may have to look at that parking differently than places along the downtown core when we have lots of transit walking and bicycling

1:14:29
ability. There’s I think another thing which is for new developments

1:14:38
are planners will make sure that that street design and the path design and the Greenway connectivity, all of that are going to automatically be an improvement over how things are in the old neighborhoods. And you know, they can they can require as long as our code is clear. enough we’re working on of arquivo. But you know that we will have to fight with the H O H that comes after because it’s already going to be right.

1:15:14
So eventually can’t tell us or can’t tell people who park on campus are having

1:15:20
problems with HOA I think it’s the people who move in there and they say, Why is there no parking in our neighborhood, we didn’t realize this ahead of time, this is a huge problem with a specific thing that was said by these folks their economic development, it’s up by 66 of its townhomes. And they said, our driveways are just on ramps into the garage, there’s no place to park a car in the driveway, and there’s no place to park cars on the street. And the development behind us. They’re planning and putting in, you know, as as dense as we have with less parking available. And I just I don’t think that people want that here. And so when you say new developments, a what new developments would rather go bland. And be it seems like there’s an awful lot of remediation that has to happen right now because things happened without people really adequately serving.

1:16:14
Sorry to cut off the conversation but I do have another presentation that I want to get to so but if you all have other thoughts, please feel free to email myself or Bill and I’ll coordinate with so I’m able to come back later in the process. So

1:16:33
it’s very informative.

1:17:07
The most mouthful of a title when I was

1:17:12
terrible. There’s no other way to say. So how can people think that they get to move over other people?

1:17:18
Okay, sorry, I’m gonna move y’all on.

1:17:22
Hi, everybody. I’m Hannibal, right and the energy portfolio development manager for the city of Longmont. We’re big on left arm communications. I know you know Susan fairly well, because she’s here all the time. She’s my direct supervisor. So I’ve worked on Susan’s team, energy strategies and solutions actually haven’t had a chance to be in front of you formally. All I know, I spoke briefly about DRS a few months back when I had a short opportunity, but I’m really glad to be here today. I don’t want to say this negatively. But it was just here to talk about all the really exciting VR stuff we’re doing. But this really is a little bit more procedural rule makings and just kind of getting some underlying things that we’ve identified as some gaps in our current policies and great competitions for solar as well as renewable power purchase program. I’m gonna go through some things with you today. We went to council last week on this and had a pretty good discussion, we’ve gotten some feedback from them that we are working on. So there may be some changes to this as time goes on. But this is where we’re at now, and to try and clean into as best

1:18:18
handled over there.

1:18:22
Briefly, just want to say, what we’re going to talk about today is I’m going to start with just the timeline of where we are now and my plan to move through the summer kind of our public engagement and what to expect to return to council. I’m gonna talk to you about interconnection standards. So how we connect distributed energy resources to our electrical grid, and then the solar array analysis, which has two components, the amount we paid for that excess energy coming off the solar systems, as well as our renewable power purchase program that folks subscribe to. So that’s both covered over that last night. So just now let’s talk about where we are now working with the third bullet. So we went through Council retreat back in February to provide a high level overview of distributed energy resources and kind of touched on lightly the fact that we needed to look at a modified or modernizing, I should say our interconnection standards, our solar rates in our peat grow room. We went back to the last week with some review and recommendations. So that’s what we’ve been doing now we’re in the public engagement stage. I don’t actually have my public engagement slide on this, but I’ll let you know your first body and coming to outside of Council. My intention is to spend the next three months going to quite a few other entities sustainability coalition, sustainable, resilient, equitable Climate Action Team, some others that I’m forgetting one

1:19:41
sustainability coalition

1:19:43
does a bunch of shows up we’re also going to be reaching out to solar installers people in the permitting pipeline, we’re gonna go there newspapers, blogs, sustainability newsletters, so everything you hear today, we’re going to spend the summer really getting the news out there as fast as we can. That sort of thing. something changing, then we’re gonna go for councils direction and ordinance approval this is pending that we’re on our current timeline and nothing changes dramatically over the summer, in the budget season, so kind of later this summer, early fall, because other things to do with rates and money come through that we’re going to plan to return to council for further discussion. Let them know what we’ve heard from the public. And then if they feel uncomfortable, seek direction from them to prepare an ordinance, if need be more time will take more time than we have planned to actually come back and do some pretty robust public education, hey, these changes are actually happening, please get in your pyramid, or please, you’re gonna connection whatever we want to kind of let folks know, intention as of now is that any changes we’re talking about today are proposed to take effect January 1 of next year. So we want to get the summer kind of feedback and then come late father’s late summer fall, if we know the changes that are happening, really put out a message that January 1 is intended change, the rules are changing. Alright, so what are we talking about interconnection. So interconnection policies are guidelines for how distributed energy resources are connected to our electrical grid. In this case, or distribution, electrical grid, I want to clarify the term distributed energy resources, a pretty broad catch all term. So it often means thermostats and water heaters, and EVS and all these things, in this case, we really do mean, what we call bi directional distributed energy resources. So solar energy, battery storage, and eventually vehicle to grid charging, if that thing, when the thing is anything that’s going to back feed out to our grid, because that provides a whole lot of other things we have to look at in terms of ability to serve them safety, and otherwise, we need to make sure systems shut down and we shut down. So really, we’re looking at those, those systems at backfeed. And we have kind of unclear consistent policies. And we find some of those present barriers to development by causing delays or increases in cost. So generally, we have a interconnection policy goals that we want to enable distributed energy resources, while also protecting our student safeguarding their grid. We want to align with regional and state interconnection standards for consistencies are currently some of our standards are off with what other utilities have. So installers don’t necessarily know what to expect. So we kind of want to standardize modernize some of our standards. For next one, we want to modernize standards for address emerging technologies and demand response opportunities. Specifically, our current standards are with solar generation or generation wind, and do not address battery storage. And we need to address battery storage. We want to provide flexibility and our standards, particularly when it comes to solar generation to enable building in the transportation electrification. So we want folks to be able to produce enough energy and take to serve their needs. We want to update standards to allow for faster review and fewer failed permits. Currently, we are failing a decent amount of permits on 120% allow generation rules. So folks are coming in not generally asking for 200 million posts that usually it’s like 136, or 1.7. Like they want just a little more than we’re able to give them and I have no release valve currently to let them do that. And it’s something I would like to change that we say we generally comes to me for decision. And then we want to establish equity provisions to require engineering studies for distributed energy resources, build a big one, so a two megawatt solar system comes on. But also a bunch of solar are happening on one feeder. For example, right now we’re looking at a kind of case by case we haven’t seen a lot of big installations, but we are expecting big installations. So we need to be able to say hey, you gotta go pay for it and do a system impact study and tell us what kind of upgrades might be needed in the case of a big installation, for example, tones or small incisions? How can we help those residents make those improvements and not kind of hit the last person on the line? You know, everybody else could do it, but not the last guy. So how can we kind of study that ahead of time with some system impacts. So I have a Bush’s was a little bit bigger. Tough, I’ve told you my bias. But essentially, I’ve identified what was when we came to council, five shortcomings, and now they’re six, and five for both stages to address those shortcomings. Currently, as I mentioned, solar generation is limited to 120% of annual consumption, we would like to increase that to a system size of 12, kW or 200%, whichever is greater. Generally speaking, from our knowledge, Fort Collins is a similar 12 kW and what we intend to do is if you put a 12 Kw system or less from a consumption standpoint, we’re going to approve you we’re not going to ask for it assumption numbers are just full kW under we’re good. So we’re gonna look at transformer conduit, pay home all of that. But basically, if you have full paid up, you’re less we’re not going to fill your brain when one’s a little bigger system which does happen, we will look at the 2% rule. And then we also have no provision for new construction, new ownership or electrification and actually for further information on this. So what we’d like to do is allow a six kWh per square foot for new construction, new ownership or adoption of love suffocation measures. So what that is, essentially is that we’ve done analysis of 23,000 single family homes in the city and estimate figured out how much they use per square foot. This includes new homes, old homes, good envelope, bad envelopes, all electric rebounds, hot liars, you know, all gas, whatever the case may be, and a six kWh per square foot would serve the typical home at 200%. If we go a little bit higher than that would actually be more at 6%, we figure about 50% of people will already potentially be going over 200%. So we might not want to go any more generous, so that and the third thing which I forgot to mention, I had an old brain fog last week, right? What he does is that currently, we have no various procedures for folks who want to electrify I’m a new owner, I will have an Eevee I got a heat pump. I know I need all the cities and we’re just like, well, you need to prove it to us or show us that we want to have Americans process that allows folks to show us documentation that they’re installed the heat pump, and Evie whatever the case may be, and that they need a bigger system, we have language in there for Administrative Approval of a lot of persisting sighs we’re kind of trying to do, what do we do get out but deal with the average person and then having released out for those kind of outliers, which we have, and understand that we’ve been frustrated. Um, so again, so the we have no system, I said this before, the standards are limited to only generation battery storage or other distributed energy resources. So we need to include other D ers, we’ve got to expand it to battery storage and bidirectional may be charging, which again, is not actually fully viable, and in a sort of commercial level or programmatic level. But we do anticipate in the future, these roads will also apply for that that use, though provisions for engineering studies. So what we’re planning to do is or we’ve already worked on in my engineers over there as the llama distributed energy resource interconnection standards document, as some of you may be aware, a lot of our development, the outside kind of fakers document, this is how you build road, this is how you do public works, we’re going to do a similar thing where we have the code will say you need to interconnect these OSI these standards, and we have about a 40 page standards document. It’s really technical, we’re gonna have companions of checklists, kind of FAQs related to it. But it really is for technical experts, and it has all the provisions of what you need to do to provide us a study what we’re looking for, from your study what you know, how can you mitigate impacts on the grid, who’s responsible for what we have system size threshold, so certain system sizes, again, as we expect larger systems, build trigger additional things such as production. So that’s all kind of contained in there. And the ordinance is really simplified to just kind of go see the standards. And then last one is we lack industry standard communications or data protocols. So we don’t have anything currently that says your DVR has to talk to us in our way. And your solar has to tell us this should matter. It has to tell us this and we want to be able to tell you something, we want to establish industry standards, communication protocols for grid monitoring, signaling and future VPP or demand response. So we want to be able all your EVs or your batteries that are coming fall on it, you’re going to tell us how full it is. And it’s I triple E is the industry standard.

1:27:57
So it’s IEEE standards.

1:28:04
Yes, yes, we’re

1:28:05
familiar with such

1:28:06
a demand response opportunities, but was too long, man. Sure. Well, I, I do, I have a colleague who can talk speaking of setting standards, and especially regarding interconnect, I have a colleague who can talk about nothing but grid forming inverters. And I understand the role of the grid forming inverter if I live on 40 acres out east and and I don’t want a provider at all, you know, I just want to get on the transmission lines or something you know that I understand. I don’t understand the role of such devices where you are have a hybrid situation where you’re generating part of your own electricity and you’re on a distribution grid as well. I can think of well, least one application and someone else can come in if they want. But if we were to develop any microgrids within the city and state where they’re primarily served, let’s say they want a five megawatt battery and a one megawatt solar to serve this thing. That would be a we would want it to be if they want to be able to serve right out of blackout right or something. Or now that we want that to be a grid for me inverters when our power shut off automatically an island it doesn’t get back to you that becomes a grid, grid forming inverter. We haven’t seen any applications of that yet. But I have seen it in my life urban micro grid. Oh, we made if the sugar mill brouhaha ever gets ever gets resolved, then those are very progressive developers. They

1:29:39
were probably microgrid. And I know

1:29:41
we haven’t seen a matter last step, but I know they’re taking us pretty radical stuff energy wise up there. And we’ll know more as we get further into it. But you’re right usually grid forming inverters and we would also expect the Navy on a big battery installation, that it becomes great for me meaning it serves as a backup generator without backup but we haven’t necessarily it’s not a prohibition to have one, sorry.

1:30:05
My name is Frank Miller, my senior electrical engineer over at Walmart power and communications. And I helped work with hand on Dr. interconnection standards. But there are certain ways that grid forming inverters can connect to the system and still maintain operational status if the grid goes down and do so safely. And that’s something that wouldn’t, that is covered in our interconnection standards. It just depends on the characteristics of the specific connection details. So we would have to look at that. But there’s nothing that would prohibit that from being approved as long as it meets all the other connection standards that we have. So so

1:30:47
it’s not, it’s not like going to push back too hard or anything like that make a mess.

1:30:56
It is true when it gets to be more of a rural application. But there are certainly circumstances and may you be at our own facilities that we would want a battery with a grid of whoever’s gonna leave it right.

1:31:06
So since micro grids, have you considered neighborhoods that want to retrofit to create a micro grid, single block,

1:31:16
we have yet to be approached by anything like that. We will work like we want to Yeah, and we will certainly need the standards. And you’re going to need the inverters. So that’s, as Frank said, it would be covered in here, they would come and say, Hey, we’re on solar, or we only one battery, and then your proposed work with them on the inverter specs as part of the permitting interconnection and study to show that they have the correct inverters to do grid

1:31:39
supporting. And so I so I’m presuming that there’s going to be some work with budgeting so that if a neighborhood wants to, or a friend wanted to do that, there would be some capacity within the city to help build those specs for that, or the neighborhood have to build it all. But

1:31:55
I can’t speak to financial support regarding developing micro grids, and he’s wondering if there’s been communication. Again, that’s something we’ve been approached about. So we have to have to have conversation. We are we are.

1:32:10
Okay, so I just think there should be further conversation. Something I just, I just wanted a little more clarification on the question. So if there was a, if there was a block that one on I’m curious what the support would be LPC for putting that together? That’s basically the most simplest way to put it, or developing. developing, developing the plan? Yeah. If there would be, you know, there’s any I get help from,

1:32:43
there’s always just seems like there’s always a mental thing. There’s definitely technical assistance always available to our developers. So if they came to us wanting to achieve that, we would work with them very closely to issues. Okay.

1:32:53
But as far as

1:32:56
designing a system, I think that would happen outside and you can work with whatever design partner is proposing. But

1:33:07
just curious, yeah, it’s pretty

1:33:09
Congress’s job searching for, you know, somebody come up with a solar installation, we said, hey, maybe you should do it this way or so we think about that kind of cooperative relationship with the developers. Okay, I think that is all on my interconnection. And this will the rate potentially could be seen as more complicated. So we’re gonna move on to the solar eight unless we have any more and I’ve done a little bit more of a truncated version of this. If you want more information, the full presentation was presented to council and I’m happy to chat with you all, but I tried to keep it a little bit simpler today than it has been. So we included two I worked very closely, we have our rates manager over there, we’re really closely with their rates team for quite a period of time now in almost two years with LPC doing the credit rate for net metering or what we call the solar rate analysis. And then also looking at our renewable power purchase program, which is the voluntary program folks,

1:33:58
folks by participating I should say,

1:34:00
but take a moment and for most of you know this, I want to take a moment to level set on what net metering is and why there are some potential equity or equitable considerations and should be talked about with this. So currently, the city buys our city credits, older residential and commercial customers for their net excess energy so that they use they produce more energy than they use any month. We credit to them at retail. If they have remaining bank at the end of the year, we also credit that to retail,

1:34:32
we don’t have as many customers that

1:34:35
we were there last month currently as retail. Like I said, that also also the customers receive a retail credit for all the energy they produce and consume on site. What that’s trying to say No, maybe not the best way I know how that’s written is that essentially is you what I call se inherently retail for everything you consume. So when your solar is producing and you’re consuming, that’s always a retail value because you are now buying one kilowatt hour. We’re into retail. So we really do try and encourage folks to consume what they use on site to the best of their ability. And this doesn’t go into much but store when possible, we are looking at opportunities to incentivize and support battery storage. And that would help bolster the economics because anything stored or consumed outside, the city pays a premium to customers for net metering credits above what we would otherwise paying lack of a power authority for the same energy. And the money to pay this credit comes out of the pocket of all of our ratepayers and takes away revenue from other projects that

1:35:32
we could accomplish other renewable energy projects,

1:35:34
so on and so forth. This is a really well studied trend across the country, it’s kind of all anybody talks about the solar level, is the way that we’ve been kind of as an industry paying folks for the return of retail for the net excess energy has a inequitable subsidy connotation to it, because the 183, those folks are usually coming out of pockets that don’t have as much money. So we recognize as many utilities it is, a couple of years ago, three to look at how looked at changing this. And we spent quite a lot of time looking at how we might go about doing that. Before I get into the potential changes for that this is something we spent some time during I want us went over describing is that this is the excess purchase power annual expense. So essentially, is that is the cost the premium, the delta between wholesale and retail, what does that cost us a year over year in subsidies if solar keeps growing the way we think it’s going to. So this is a solar growth chart. This is how much solar we think we’re gonna get by 2043. This is information that is based on a distributed energy resource forecast and analysis that we have in that river Power Authority, that we think we’re gonna get 81 megawatts by 2043. If that continues in 2043, at the retail rate, we will be paying a subsidy of $3.32 million to our solar customers. per year, annually. Yes, yes. That’s not cumulative, which is this might indicate. So right now we’re paying 63 $64,000 a year. So it’s not a ton.

1:37:07
But it is increasing. And

1:37:09
we do see a lot of slower growth and retail rates also will go up over time. So that takes into consideration that using regional rates over time. That makes sense, everybody, I’m gonna go to recommendation slide, because I cut out again, I kind of cut out a couple slides, I’m gonna tell you a couple things to help. That’s the context of it. So we have a couple rules changes, specifically when it comes to the value so update the credit rate, but I won’t explain two terms that are on the proposed changes side one is the legacy retail rate. We are proposing to put everyone who is on solar has a solar system on the date that rate becomes the new rate becomes effective to get a legacy rate to pay retail for a period of time. And Council last week, we have proposed a 20 year legacy rate, we heard feedback that that may be a little on the long side. So we’re doing modeling about 10, I think 2030 10 and 15 year like by 2030 10 and 15 years and kind of see what that looks like. But we are wanting to kind of preserve the economic model that our solar existing solar customers went into it with with also the multiverse or have been stalled in just the last few years. So they have quite a lot of life left on them. So we do want to give them some sort of generous legacy way. And then anyone moving forward will be placed on what we’re calling in that role, what is called a failure solar credit rate for new customers. What I want to talk about a little bit is what that means. So value of solar is a kind of new methodology for paying back focus for the net excess energy, that is a rate that accurately reflects the local benefits of solar generation. So our chosen full generation benefit is an 80% premium above wholesale, so paying 80% of what we pay Platte River to our solar customers to reflect the local benefits. Those include a 3% line loss. So we’ve paid for 3% of wind loss coming from Platte River and 15% environmental benefits. This was based on substantial Best Practice Research of value solar studies all over the country and about 15% is what is found to be an environmental benefit. Few reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particulate matter if you should have about one I actually just read about our herd. Yes, the other day was reduced land use in pasture and that was really interesting one, that we have seven megawatts of behind the meter solar that’s 10 acres of land that we’re not using for solar. That’s very true when they have thought about before. Given that in the land use plan. Arbitrators should have probably thought about that before. But so what we’re recommending we want to do is so currently, without any changes to the current rate structure, as we talked about ratepayers will subsidize or customers $3.32 million by 20.3 equally implement and Institute legacy rate as modeled for 20 years because it’s the only number I have right now. And at present value of solar, we can reduce that to a $1.3 million

1:39:51
per year by 2043. So

1:39:53
that is our proposal and what we’re bringing in socializing through all the different entities. So that’s kind of on the right side. And then I didn’t have a slide on it. But I just want to touch on this briefly is that whether or not renewable power purchase program, through Platte River Power Authority, it used to be 3.12 cents, I believe still in our in addition to your credit rate, and that was based on tariff seven, but you paid a tariff to lever for renewable sources, that tariff was eliminated in 2019 20. Maybe we

1:40:26
no longer need it in 2020

1:40:30
COVID happen. Staff change over I came a little bit after the fact, we’ve known for a little bit that that needed to be adjusted, but we want to roll it in with the rest of the wage rates. So Brian and I works our rate standard and I worked at that river to determine that we weren’t accurate reflection of what are we paying additionally to Platte River for the wind energy, that the RECs are being retired on behalf of our participants. And that’s actually closer to a 1.7% premium. So it’s a 60% reduction in global power purchase costs. So our recommendation is that we adjust our rate six reduce it by 60% to 1.7 cents for renewable power purchase program. Participants which is my favorite thing to say today, can very first what you might find it and moving forward. And then the other thing is generally up until my time with the city that those funds were more just in the general kind of general fund of LPC. It did support the Platte River Power Authority purchase of wind obviously, but we have made efforts to more directly account for the budget and the income coverage recommendations coming in from that program to invest more locally in online specific renewable energy projects. And one such thing actually passed recently that we got approval through an intergovernmental agreements and IGA with online housing authority that we had LPC are subsidizing them. The infrastructure upgrade costs of village remain so familiar with village I mean six and Kaufmann, the low income senior housing law, my husband is doing a really major renovation of the whole building as they do every 20 years and they’re in there and they’re taking off a thermal water hot water. So we’ve just done that visit defunct up there, and they’re putting solar PV on themselves 165 Kw system to offset their their own bills. And they’re going to use that to support Server support resident services in the building. When they came back, they could essentially finance and afford the solar but the infrastructure to go from 72 individual leaders to a commercial panel and meter to support this AI system was $150,000 that they had not factored into their cost. So we came they we’ve been partner with them on a variety of things. They came to us and we worked with them. And we allocated the RPP funds to be collected this year to offset that infrastructure cost. So pretty exciting thing

1:42:41
and he’s got a new way of spending. So

1:42:43
pretty exciting stuff. And we will be working on new projects with that those funds move forward. That was actually all I have. mouthful the title three topics that I’ve been working on.

1:42:58
That’s so different up VDPs sort of as a little Ted Yeah, of course. Seems. Since you’re a planner, yeah. You’ve probably taken the The Weekend MBA and in VPP type training. So I’m gonna ask him, I mean, this presentation begs the question, if we actually went through a real VPP model wouldn’t follow these concerns building about equity? No,

1:43:28
not necessarily. So even in the BPP model, so we’re modeling our virtual power plant. So those numbers that came with Hey, we’re gonna have 81 megawatts of

1:43:36
solar and battery in your monitoring through LPC known PRP. We have Adelaide as

1:43:40
part of PRP because we are one in the same so they have come up with the plan but not one of the same but we

1:43:48
we are working together collaboratively with one of the wholesalers. So we would be part of the VPP for this month.

1:43:54
So we’re working really really closely with pet river. We have a derms roadmap and we’re going over their absurd distributed energy resource management system, which is like the enterprise kind of market participation version of the VIP. We actually are finalizing our review of an RFP going out to look for in terms of VPP vendor at River should their chosen vendor serve our distribution needs that we tend often with them and develop a VPP in coordination with Platte River. Loveland in Estes Park, Fort Collins has their own MPT provider, but they’ll be working in concert with us as well. And that’s something else. market opportunities.

1:44:30
Okay.

1:44:31
I’m interested in learning. Yeah, absolutely. I can just sit down and have lots of information. So are we all but there is a another gap here, which is the definition of

1:44:48
Yes. Yeah. That is a good question. Mark. It is a defined term. For some I learned about Yeah, well, but but

1:44:57
at some point, you know, I mean, there isn’t an end energy market. And, and their wholesale costs of energy are gonna vary based on the renewable supply and stuff. And the energy market is not up to snuff in terms of telling you what you’re paying for when you pay a rate on the spot market. And so we have no idea how that’s going to reflect the whole, though, the wholesale rate that they charge us for our demand. And we kind of really can’t implement this until we know that

1:45:33
we’d have to buy futures so far out in order to really make a difference. I mean, I think the economics here is a really big question. That’s for another time. Oh, sure. All of these questions are coming in as I was watching this. Yeah. I mean, I, right now, they define they define the wholesale rate for how long,

1:45:56
but it’s flat per year, the rate is set per year, set

1:45:59
per year, so we can count on them maybe doing that for a few years. Right? Yeah. But at some point, it’s going to have to flow. And of course, allowing wholesale rates up here is going to incentivize people to purchase batteries, which is a behavior that we want. So if it seems to be that PRP is dragging its feet in terms of getting that act together, and it’s too, you don’t have the depth of bench to address that on our own, because I’ve stuck my toe into it. And it’s pretty

1:46:34
hard liabilities that appear pa incurs by setting any rates more than a year, you know, could be very destabilizing for the, for the market, if there’s too much fluctuation and the people who are buying their solar panels are not economists there, I mean, keep maybe you can speak to this, they’re trying to advertise, you know, and weigh their costs and their payoff, you know, just kind of like the back of the envelope. So this is a really, it just seems to me that the more more comprehensive our VPP approach is. And the more we sort of like lateralized, that production of energy and allow for folks to put up the solar on their parking lots and all of those things, the more we take these economic risks out of the picture. But the whole economics isn’t, is limited.

1:47:31
I mean, at some point, wholesale is going to fluctuate like a market. Yeah. The map all the way through to the consumer.

1:47:40
Now, right, the cost of fuels, the cost of labor, the cost of spare parts, the cost of maintenance, the cost of energy purchased on the market, all of these things are not fixed. No. They tried to do an analysis. And last week was better than I can but they do an analysis of this is what we expect the price to be for the year 2025. And so based on that this is what the rate is for us to buy from them and flat rate through the whole year. And at the end of the year, there’s a true up, it’s like, oh, we charged you too much the neck rolls over into next year where we didn’t charge you enough, that means there’s gonna have to be a larger rate increase rate. So it floats, they absorb that shock. But at the end of the day, we do have a number that we can point to for that year. This is this is a wholesale

1:48:24
price for a while, but we’re talking about a time in, you know, as soon as possible.

1:48:32
When

1:48:35
you know, we’re going to we’re going to deal with behaviors of the energy supply, like the duck curve, and, and we’re going to want people to charge their vehicles and their batteries when it’s free. Which means wholesale comes in real time or near real time, all the way home to the consumer. And that’s what VPP does. So yeah, so they can purchase people to get their own energy. And then they can manage their costs on the derms component of the VPP. Like the Germans would talk to our VPP and say, Hey, energy is cheaper for you right now. Everybody charged occurs. Everybody talks about Yes. And that’s part of those interconnection standards, right, is that we need to actually figure out the protocol to actually tell them that because they’re going to be a double handful full of serious geeks that are going to want to do that from their phone and the rest of it, the system’s gonna have to do it for them. It’s probably going

1:49:28
to have other issues that we have to get through. Where are we? Sorry, I

1:49:32
know you’ve had your hand up this morning. I think that this is a really big concern. Yes. And again, I’m happy to have even returned at some point to have a more robust distributed energy resource conversation because I know we had kind of that one off opportunity a few months back and then this again is a little bit on the regulatory side of things on quite

1:49:52
river is going to be coming back to city council in June,

1:49:56
June.

1:50:00
didn’t pay to be in March? No.

1:50:07
I’m gonna Michonne said we have two minutes to do things like decide how we’re going to choose the number

1:50:18
one thing about I think solar on people’s houses is fantastic. Curious about the actual generating capacity that visiting officers want to have more tree cover a whole variety of events. Does this include commercial buildings at all? Because it seems like that is the the big, flat place where we can still put Julian solar panels that have hover already parking lots, you know, all the commercial buildings I’m wondering. So I guess I just have two questions. Really? Number one, does any of this include commercial space, like significant commercial space? And number two, do we actually have an idea if everybody in town put solar panels on their house? What we would what we would max out and actually, wherever that will go, for the actual needs of the city?

1:51:09
Yeah, yes, everything applied. Everything I’ve talked to you about today is both residential and commercial interconnection standards, the way we we have net access, enter, because we have different categories of paying back commercial deals

1:51:21
or large commercial spaces that are in contract with the city about putting solar

1:51:32
marks.

1:51:34
The situation is that our electric rates are so low that their corporate standards don’t require it. But if we, as pushing for it, you know, can you get time? 10 minutes after me because I don’t want to hold this that I want

1:51:50
to talk about, we do.

1:51:56
Have to come back and I’d be happy to say I’m always keeping my eye open for big groups. I just don’t have any plans for them at this moment. But it’s certainly something that’s on my radar. I was looking for Bruce and grounds.

1:52:09
Do we have an idea of how much the city could produce?

1:52:13
All I know, is that that we have to bet the forecasts of at one megawatts? I do not know. Okay, maximize everybody or space on that. Yeah, I’d be

1:52:28
very interested

1:52:31
to do the public invited to be heard. Okay. So it’s not

1:52:42
the agenda. So solid business? Yeah. Thank you. Okay, so just quickly, we have several vacancies that are coming up. And so we do need to decide how we want to approach the recruitment and the process or interviewing applicants that come through. So I thought about this. Okay, well, let me just let everyone know what we did previously. And so you all can decide if you want to do this. We got

1:53:15
to do it again, because we have a small group left, and we have a small group that didn’t review. So everyone was left on the committee needs to review very little

1:53:23
on this icon, your comments? Let Lisa

1:53:25
finish, please. So

1:53:27
last year, the way that we did it, we interviewed with that or that we had a small nominating committee that interview the applicants and then brought those recommendations to the board to essentially approved and then that’s what we sent off to city council. Ultimately, city council has the decision making may appoint the other option would be to interview as a full board. And that would essentially be the May meeting and I assume, or we would have to schedule something outside of the main meeting that works for everybody to do those interviews. So those are the options that are on the table. You all need to define on how you want to do this.

1:54:07
Well, I thought that we do it as a whole board because the board emphasizes so small, it isn’t on the dating committee.

1:54:13
Last year, we had two people as the nominating

1:54:16
committee as to restricted to two members who don’t have any component to it. But there were three keynote so we’re going to hold board would be anyone on the board who wants to be a part of that.

1:54:34
So you are applying now. And then maybe Dan

1:54:39
said we would need to do interviews, I believe between now and that they meetings.

1:54:47
Well, I would like to propose that we just do it as a board, rather than doing two steps. Since

1:54:53
there’s only four of us left chair,

1:54:54
there would not be two steps. So the nominating committee would act on behalf of the board to make The recommendation to city council they did not bring it to the board. Okay.

1:55:03
Sorry, I misspoke.

1:55:12
I remember voting. Voting on it. I think it’s not the way it has worked. I think last time you all did it as a board, the first time we did it as a nominating committee, and that committee forwarded their recommendation to council on behalf of the board.

1:55:35
Well, I was in it together, instead of having a nominee

1:55:43
decided we use the main meeting as where do we need to figure out how to

1:55:49
center and do we

1:55:51
don’t have an interview process?

1:55:53
Can we do we have any idea how many applicants there are?

1:55:58
still open. I think that recruitment.

1:56:03
I still want to propose that we do need to get that the remaining board members are all present and vote. That’s my proposal, my motion.

1:56:13
The three of us lead

1:56:16
us to a trove for people

1:56:20
that are named members, Michelle, and Mary,

1:56:24
then Robert, Robert, is up for renewal this year as well. Charles is leaving his his position early. So there’s actually four vacancies

1:56:39
the fact that we’re leaving, does that mean we don’t

1:56:42
you would you if you’re not reapplying, you would be able to be part of the

1:56:46
decision. That was going to check your motion?

1:56:54
I did a motion. For a second motion.

1:56:58
My motion is that the next meeting the remaining board members, do the review process and and create the recommendations that will go to city

1:57:06
council. That’s my motion, the

1:57:08
remaining members or the board?

1:57:10
Or the board? Sorry. Okay. So does that mean that we will do all the interviews of the next day or we can set up a separate meeting, because learning how to

1:57:18
do it either after the meeting or ahead of the meeting, if you wanted to do it that way? So people would come

1:57:23
into the meeting, I will amend my motions that we start a little bit early, so that we can get it all done at that one time. That is my motion so that we start a little bit early, and that the board and I want to submit a board. I’m a bit less yet it looks like Charles is excused himself for the rest of the sessions. So there’s just not available? Okay, I’m

1:57:45
sorry, I misunderstood. I think he should use he’s out in May be in already. So

1:57:51
I thought that he said that he was not if he was. So anyway, my motion is that the board will review the applicant will start a little early review of applicants and create the recommendations to go to City Council at the next meeting. So

1:58:08
it would actually be interviews that you Okay. divvy up how long the interview is based on how many yellow? Okay, yeah. So the meeting was started, what did you decide?

1:58:24
So let’s see, could we started at 330?

1:58:30
It’s virtual,

1:58:32
to start at 330.

1:58:35
How packed is the next day?

1:58:41
I can determine the future. I have a couple of tentative things that deep dive on passive design or discussion on regenerative agriculture and other things. I probably need to come back to this anyway, based on the conversation we had today. So there’s space for some of those.

1:59:00
So we did an interview starting at 4000 people.

1:59:05
That would only be a half an hour before our regular meeting

1:59:08
started. Physicians. I think it has to be 331 It’s not for it’s however many applicants we have

1:59:14
for position. So

1:59:21
just based on past experience, y’all should be out there recruiting because four is a lot of about water that way.

1:59:33
So, so the motion would be that next month, we started meeting at 330 interview applicants and then as a board vote on who to recommend the council. Your regular

1:59:49
meeting would still start at 430 Yes.

1:59:57
Yes, cause Okay, all right. Are you vote? Are you okay?

2:00:13
All right. Sorry, hold on. Question. Did you ever I did have a question for

2:00:17
you this, or Francie, or

2:00:21
whoever is doing the equity, can’t remember the name of that.

2:00:30
It’d be great if maybe. Are there any members of that that could be on a board? Because is the sustainability boards are so white? No, it would be good.

2:00:45
Then meetings are on the same line? Actually, yes. That’s probably a separate conversation. And I do it is 633. So we can connect that for another time. Because I there’s a lot more to that, that I think that’s a conversation needs to happen. Can

2:00:59
we just do a quick vote? To continue the conversation about to say yes or no, if you’re interested in the passive design?

2:01:06
Yes. So that was the the one last thing if you don’t mind, really quickly, we voted last time to do a deep dive on passive design and then realize we didn’t have a court. So I will just bringing that to. I do also want to make note of the fact that at the City Council meeting on April 9, the mayor did also make motion, which was approved to bring forward building electrification codes. And I’m not sure the timing of that. So some of that might be accelerated. And I’m waiting to hear from billing services focus on what the timeline of that is. And I still want to make sure that that that comes to you all for conversation. So I know that we wanted to have the passive design conversation before hopefully that other broader

2:01:56
building authentication code and conversation as well. They just want me to know that I don’t have that yet. So I’m gonna try to get

2:02:03
everything aligned, if you all revote on the path of desire.

2:02:10
Okay, Ken, so I can I said I was going to do some research put something together for us to talk about maybe we can bring, like go What’s his last name? Back again, the architect that recently met with who’s built the passive neighborhood in to little passive block in prospect, and he’s also just been put down a project in Arvada, which has been highly sobering from a zoning and land use point of view. And he has a lot to say about how cities should behave in this regard. Yeah. So is, so I would like to make a motion that we have that deep dive as soon as possible. It could be the next meeting, you would find the people that you would like to invite to bring in two as experts on that. Yeah. So my motion is that we have that conversation. We do it at the next meeting.

2:03:09
Discussion, next meeting or as soon

2:03:12
as possible, or as soon as possible after that if it doesn’t fit minutes. Okay, it’s

2:03:24
all better.

2:03:28
Thank you. Sorry to keep you all past.

2:03:33
Council items from Council. We already talked about we already got the electrification. That’s a biggie.

2:03:42
She had anything she wanted to share.

2:03:45
Not to be shared in negative five minutes, so I’ll hold

2:03:49
it for now.

2:03:56
And so yes. Thank you all

Transcribed by https://otter.ai