HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-06-2020 Climate Action CommissionIowa City Climate Action Commission Agenda
Monday, January 6, 2020, 3:30-5:00 p.m.
Note: Meeting Room B
Iowa City Public Library
123 S. Linn
Meeting Agenda:
1. Callto Order
2. Roll Call
3. Approval of December 2, 2019 minutes
4. Public Comment of items not on the Agenda
5. Old Business:
a. Request from Council for Commission to research and advise the Council on the carbon
footprint of buildings of varying density and scale
b. Request for Commission to get public input on 100-Day Report
6. New Business:
a. Basics of Open Meetings and Open Record Laws
b. Commission feedback of the 100-Day Report, "Accelerating Iowa City's Climate Actions'
i. Buildings
ii. Transportation
iii. Waste
iv. Adaptation
v. Sustainable Lifestyle
c. Update on working groups
i. Buildings
ii. Transportation
iii. Outreach
iv. Equity/Adaptation
v. Waste
d. Update on Climate Festival- Sept. 18-20, 2020
7. Staff/Commission Announcements
8. Adjourn
NOTE: February 3, 2020 meeting will be held in MPOJC Conference room in City Hall.
If you will need disability -related accommodations in order to participate in this meeting, please contact
Brenda Nations, Sustainability Coordinator, at 319-356-6161 or at brendo-notions(a)iowa-citv.org. Early
requests are strongly encouraged to allow sufficient time to meet your access needs.
MINUTES PRELIMINARY
IOWA CITY CLIMATE ACTION COMMISSION
DECEMBER 2, 2019 — 3:30 PM — FORMAL MEETING
MPO CONFERNCE ROOM, CITY HALL
MEMBERS PRESENT: Madeleine Bradley, John Fraser, Stratis Giannakouros, Grace
Holbrook (via phone), Kasey Hutchinson, GT Karr, Matt Krieger,
Jesse Leckband, Becky Soglin, Eric Tate
MEMBERS ABSENT: Katie Sarsfield
STAFF PRESENT: Ashley Monroe, Brenda Nations
OTHERS PRESENT: Miriam Kashia, Jeff Falk, Ben Grimm, Tina Nedbaleck
RECOMMENDATIONS TO CITY COUNCIL:
None
CALL TO ORDER:
Krieger called the meeting to order.
APPROVAL OF NOVEMBER 4, 2019 MINUTES:
Fraser moved to approve the minutes of November 4, 2019. Karr seconded the motion.
A vote was taken and the motion carried 10-0.
PUBLIC COMMENT OF ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA:
Miriam Kashia is here from 100 Grannies and IC Climate Advocates and wanted to say they
hope the Commission will use them and hope they'll have a representative. Tate asked Kashia
how they would like the Commission to use them. Kashia stated their motto is educate,
advocate and agitate, so in any of those ways. Fraser added they've mentioned numerous
times that the Commission wants to be involved with 100 Grannies, so they are very welcome.
Jeff Falk stated he is not affiliated with anybody but here to get an idea of what the Commission
plans to do or not to do. He reviewed the minutes of the last meeting and found them totally
incomprehensible and not directed towards much of anything except process and operation
within the City. Falk is in energy efficiencies and measurement of energy efficiency; he has a
background in statistics and has several data loggers all over his house which he's been using
and would like to be useful to the Commission.
Krieger thanked Falk for being here and stated part of that process is the Commission is just
forming and they are trying to get legs under them. Today they will be speaking about the
working groups where the Commission is trying to engage other members of the community, not
on the Commission, and that's a great opportunity to get directly involved.
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December 2, 2019
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Ben Grimm is here representing Iowa City School District. He was asked by their admin team to
come to represent the School District and start making connections between what's happening
with City and what's happening within the School District and make sure information is moving
back and forth.
REQUEST FROM COUNCIL FOR COMMISSION TO RESEARCH AND ADVISE COUNCIL
ON THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF BUILDINGS OF VARYING DENSITY AND SCALE:
Krieger noted this was assigned at last meeting to the buildings working group to research and
advise Council on the carbon footprint of buildings of varying density and scale. This was
related to some of the rezoning discussions that were taking place. At this point in time, there's
no additional updates. Currently, they have identified a timetable for two or three months to
come back with some feedback and recommendations.
Hutchinson noted she was in a meeting today and the County Planning Department would like
to be looped in on that before there are recommendations to the Council. They'd like to maybe
attend a meeting or understand what will be recommended.
Krieger stated as part of trying to build the buildings working group they reached out to Anne
Russett with the City to ask about suggestions for adding planners to the group and also to the
American Institute of Architects to reach out to the local architecture community to get additional
individuals who might be interested in joining the buildings working group. They are trying to
start with targeted groups and outreach and trying to build a broad working group especially
related to some of the initial things they will be taking a look at.
UPDATE ON BY-LAWS:
This was passed by the rules committee as up for City Council on their agenda. Nations noted it
should be passed tomorrow and when it's done, she will email everybody a copy of the final
bylaws. In the bylaws it says that as new members you should get a copy of the bylaws but
they're not official yet, so nobody has a copy, but she'll make sure to email those to everybody
on Wednesday.
UPDATE ON WORKING GROUPS:
Krieger noted at the last meeting and in the minutes, it was noted that they are looking at what
were the original working groups under the advisory committee to write a brief description of
their tasks so they can include that when they starting to do outreach and growing those
working groups.
For the benefit of the new members, it was decided that each of the current Commission
members are expected to sit on at least one of the working groups to be liaison between the
working group and the Commission. The current working groups that have been identified are
buildings, outreach (which was formerly communications), equity and adaptation, and then
transportation. The idea was when the groups were first thought of was to focus on the
priorities, the actions and the action plan that had the most potential for impact on greenhouse
gas emission reductions, and then also those elements that reach out in communities that are
have cross-pollinization, so that's why outreach and equity and adaptation were formed.
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December 2, 2019
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Krieger noted with each of the groups the Commission has asked each group develop a kind of
a charge sheet or a strategic planning, if you will, but address the goals and kind of actions that
the group would be taking short term and long term.
Karr asked if the Commission is satisfied with this group of the set of working groups? These
were put together over a year ago, they hit on the central points of the report, but it may be a
good time reflect and see if anything was missing.
Bradley had a comment about the equity group, to her it seemed like maybe there should be
someone advocating for equity within each of the working groups, or how does the equity group
work? Does it receive information from each of the groups?
Tate noted one thing that's interesting about what Bradley just said, there's probably a lot of
dotted lines among all the working groups. He thinks of outreach, probably could have an
outreach representative for each group or an equity member for each group. But whether they
formaly have equity in each group or not, they certainly need to be thinking about it. If there
were enough people, he thinks it's a great idea, but likely there isn't enough members.
Krieger stated the initial thought and how they were starting to organize was that each of these
groups provides focus, they give a give a way to look at issues more in depth and then that's the
point of having the liaison from the Commission, so that they can then bring that back and
integrate it as part of the discussion. So for example, outreach, they will be diving in deep into
what events are they planning and what groups are we supporting or targeting or presentations
we're getting in the community. Those are things that we're probably not going to discuss in
detail here with Commission but it's something that they can report back on and others coming
from some of the other working groups are able to offer input or feedback on as well. Another
example would be with buildings and this density issue. There's a lot of dialogue that probably
needs to happen between transportation and buildings as well because they're very interrelated.
Tate noted one of the challenges is we want to draft outside people to be members of the
working groups, yet that needs to be manageable. So it's going to be a fine line between having
enough people and having too many people that are manageable.
Fraser stated it a good point about equity being sort of a cross cutting group. Krieger mentioned
that they've done charge sheets when they were the advisory board and so they drew one up
for equity and it reads "the goal is to understand how equitable the distribution of resources and
benefits from the proposed Climate Action Plan activities are across Iowa City will also
determine methods of measuring success". What they don't want to have is all these working
groups working independently, they come up with their actions, and then we start thinking about
equity. So Bradley is totally on point with trying to make sure that's integrated and should be
further topic of discussion.
Krieger noted they did have a lot of discussion around that initially, both developing tools that
other working groups can utilize, but also evaluation after the fact after it's already been
developed.
Tate noted the least representative groups tend to be the ones most affected by our wonderful
ideas.
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Holbrook noted there's the way the actions are described in the original plan, another way they
are described in the 100-day, and current groups don't seem to capture the waste, or potentially
sustainable lifestyle.
Nations stated one of the reasons for not having a waste group is a lot of those actions are
really internal within the City, although they're not totally, but a lot of waste actions are covered
by the City. Perhaps they should merge waste and sustainable lifestyle together and have one
working group for those.
Krieger stated one of the reasons that they didn't initially form it was that they were just trying to
prioritize quite honestly, and so waste had 2% impact on overall greenhouse gas emission
reductions, it's 50% for municipal so the City itself was focused on it as far as what makes a big
impact but as far as what this Commission could do, we had less of a focus at the time.
Nations noted that sustainable lifestyle is something that is important, but it's really hard to
measure so the working groups that were chosen were ones that could have the most impact on
our local emissions.
Frasier noted one of the things he's struggling with a little bit looking at the plans is trying to
figure out that is the City actually controls a small fraction of the actual emissions of Iowa City.
In conceiving this whole plan, we're basically asking the 97% to do things in this Commission
has no say over. There's two pieces, there's engagement and then there's also advisement. We
can advise City Council and say we think these are great policies that someone that you could
take on. He was just reading in California now they're looking at battery storage and realized
finally batteries don't equal emissions reductions they just smooth out the renewables, grants
and other forcing policies. There's an app that captures, essentially, what generation is
happening at a certain time of day and you charge your battery based on that, and you're not
drawing off a base local plant that night and claiming reductions. Those are policies that are
going to drive decarbonization. Frasier asked if the Commission is leaning towards those kind of
really strong enforcement measures that are going to allow everyone in Iowa City to decrease or
is it all voluntourism and engagement? You should buy a different car or you should use less
water. Is that going to get us there? What's this Commission leaning towards when we think
about our role. He noted it's really hard to get to all of Iowa City and have them change their
behavior to get the reductions we need to be IPCC aligned. Also the need to do that in an
equitable way. We need to structure policy, not at the goodwill of someone who wants to put
solar panels on their roof. Policy is going to move the needle, so is the Commission an
advisement group that's trying to restructure policy in Iowa City or what? 95% of emissions are
not anything that Iowa City has any control over unless you legislate.
Nations stated she feels policy is one of the things that we have trouble within the state of Iowa
because we're not allowed to because of state rule. She noted that is why the outreach group
is going to be so important, especially with new events or climate festival, and outreach for this
100-day report. Outreach is going to be really important and we need more people in that group.
Tate stated in looking at the 100-day report that was presented to Council last month there were
a lot of the actions about education and outreach.
Hutchinson added about the community, the whole thing was what everybody else can do and
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how we can have incentives and look into what policies we can have. It was that 90-some% and
not internal City operations.
Karr noted regarding the question of are we about policy or are we on the other side,
volunteerism? The answer is unfortunately, yes, we can't pick one side or the other, we have to
do both.
Krieger added when they get to the evaluation group reports later on some things to keep in
mind is what do we tackle first or how do we prioritize. He feels there needs to be a mix of big
impact, which are usually long-term initiatives, and also short-term wins. The 100-day report is
also written in terms incremental timeline, so near term, within five years, and then further out,
within the 10 years.
Frasier stated policy leads innovation, it's nice to innovate, but nobody's going to innovate
unless they have to and that's where this Commission has a challenge because we don't have a
lot of control to set policy so what we have to do is communicate appropriately and successfully
with the people that do have the ability to establish policy.
Nations stated the Commission must also advocate to change State policy, that's one of the
actions in the 100-day report.
Frasier added there is an area of control and policy makers outside that and also an area of
influence, so they have to work on the people that they can influence.
Karr stated part of the work that they maybe need expand on soon how to prioritize who you're
speaking to, that level of influence. We can mix with some other characteristics or attributes,
but it seems like that's something that we need address within the next outreach meeting,
prioritize who we're going to get to, and how to communicate to them.
Nations noted that the equity fellow, Kuann, is almost finished with a report, perhaps in the next
week or two, and then Nations can send it out and also put it on the website. There is an
extensive list of all the groups in town and all the organizations which is more extensive than
what we originally had from to start with.
Krieger said to add to the list two things, engage and advise as well as follow up and measure.
There have been some comments noting we've struggled with how we measure each of the
actions?
Frasier suggested maybe adding another group or different strategies or rethinking how those
groups act is the way that you get to it.
Nations stated Iowa City has a very engaged public that would be interested, and this would be
much harder if we didn't.
Krieger asked how the Commission wants to proceed about populating these working groups.
Should they consume meeting time to do this. Should it be done offline. Knowing what they
have to work with today, for instance, they're getting a lot of requests or interest in joining, which
is good. As discussed last time, each group needs formulate a description of the group. Then
when someone inquires if they can join, we have something we can send out with who the
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contact info is. We also just need to make sure those groups are meeting regularly and
reporting back, probably should be meeting at least monthly as well so we can have kind of
frequent regular updates. So for today let's just get a feel for new members and what group
they may want to be on, or if you have a recommendation for a new working group.
Soglin sees herself on the buildings group, based on the 100-day report. With her background
in building will cross over and relate to potential regulations and with the county potentially. She
can't speak for her Board of Supervisors but these are things that could expand potentially.
Krieger stated the other intent behind this is the working groups can be a little fluid and that we
can create them as we need them as we identify the need for something short term, which is
that goal, and maybe it goes away.
Frasier suspects any of the groups already mentioned, none of them are short term.
Frasier's suggestion to new people is where's your passion?
Hutchinson stated when she read through the 100-day report, she felt she was most suited for
adaptation and that would probably be my top pick. Second would be transportation, but really
whatever group is in biggest need for members.
Bradley would prefer outreach or transportation.
Krieger noted Leckband leads transportation, Krieger and Karr are buildings, Krieger also sits
on outreach with Frasier, and Holbrook. Tate and Sarsfield also sit on the equity and
adaptation.
Krieger would like to see the working group started, start reaching out to everyone to get a time
that works. For the next meeting each group should report on an update on the description and
maybe initial priorities.
Nations noted at the Big Grove event she got names of people who are interested in being in
the working groups and can pass that along.
CAAP ANNUAL UPDATE AND METRICS TRACKING:
Nations stated that in the Climate Action Plan there are 35 actions. Staff has been working on
trying to get an update and show metrics of where they were on those actions to show how
successful they were. However then they got sidelined with the 100-day report and now have
64 actions in that and have 99 actions total and it would be difficult to track that many because
just for the 35 it has been difficult to find the numbers or the right metrics and we really need to
show progress in the areas of our Climate Action Plan to know what's working and what's not.
Therefore, Nations has been looking at other cities and has attached in the packet a dashboard
of Vancouver's which has 20 metrics, and she is hoping to work with this group to get some
metrics that we can show the success of our work, like how we're doing on transportation versus
how we're doing in buildings, etc. We need to show how we're making progress every year.
Nations has been working on that 35 for the initial Plan and it has been difficult to find really
clear metrics. She has talked to Karr about this with the buildings, and for example we don't
have good record of how many people have energy audits, or how many people do certain
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things that are in the plan. And with the 64 additional actions, Nations doesn't think there's any
way that they can go into detail. So instead she would like to propose that they combine the two
reports and look at the overall trends of numbers that they do have so they can see how
successful they are. For instance, buildings, we just don't have some of the data, however some
of the data we do have is every year we get how much energy is used in residential, commercial
and industrial and so we can see which of those groups are going down or going up as far as
their energy use. Additionally they look at transportation, the way they measure that is every
year they have vehicle miles traveled within the City limits and that they'd want to reduce so we
could see if we're reducing that or if it's growing. There are also things like bus ridership, the
census, commuter mode split tells how many people walk, drive alone, ride bikes, ride the bus,
etc. Nations suggested they look for numbers that they can report on every year to show
successes. For example looking at Vancouver's, some of these we don't have in our report but
they are good examples, and there's only 20. Nations thinks if they had 20 metrics that could
show the success over the years that would be enough. Obviously, there is the greenhouse gas
inventory and that shows how our how our emissions are being reduced or not. We also know
that a lot of it is MidAmerican or the University, but we need more detail as far as how
successful is all of our residential work on buildings with energy audits and incentives, instead of
saying how much we spend on grants or how many people we've granted, she thinks they need
to think about what is the change that we want to see and find the numbers that show what
those are because what they really want is energy reduction in residential. They have that in
numbers that MidAmerican provides, she is hoping to get to 2019 numbers so at the beginning
of the year she can start looking at past years and compare.
Nations is hoping the working groups can look for their group at what are the metrics that could
show were there was success or not. She will be looking at more cities to see what and how
they are tracking metrics. She would like the group to think about how we can show success
with these 99 different actions.
Frasier agreed they need to set the metrics before they set the ultimate goal. The goals and
metrics are really tied together.
Nations agreed and stated the 100-day report is more like the implementation plan.
Tate asked who defined the actions in the 100-day report. Nations replied it was created by the
City Manager's office and then ran by all the department heads.
Krieger stated Nations is asking for help and to provide feedback on the metrics that she's
researching, but also if there's others that we would suggest as far as related to any specific
actions. Nations confirmed yes, to somehow show success and be transparent and show what
we're doing and what's working.
Soglin asked if Nations has the Dubuque sustainability metrics that were developed about
seven years ago. Nations replied she did, however those were broader, and these are just
climate, we are looking specifically for climate metrics. She was hoping when they finished our
first Climate Action Plan that they'd have liked to have metrics as a starting point however is
realizing why they didn't because it's a lot of work and it's really hard to figure that out.
Vancouver has excellent metrics but they've been working on for 20 years and they have a staff
of 28 people. However the goal is to see what we can measure and what's useful to us
because we don't want to just collect numbers to collect numbers.
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Frasier noted not only do they need to identify the things that they want to measure but also
how they're going to measure. For example, with the same indicator, you can measure it in raw
numbers, you can measure it in per capita, you can measure it versus investment, and they may
all say different things.
Tate also stated knowing over the next couple of years if MidAmerican will continue to green the
grid means that you can see reductions coming down the pike and not necessarily have anyone
engaged in doing anything. However, that's really hard to disaggregate as you don't know
what's their investment. Whereas if the City does it there is going to be variance amongst
people who can afford or not afford to capture different elements. If our goal is to say, move
everything in your house off natural gas towards electricity because we know our grid is going to
support greener electrons. To do that means that you have to have money.
Krieger noted that is a good example of are there specific metrics we want to be tracking on
100-day report, action that spoke to that issue, the incentive program for electrification and
switching low income households over to that. Or even on adaptation where it was switching
some of the public infrastructures or park money to tree planting and things, but within those
neighborhoods as well.
Nations agreed and noted they see their emissions decrease because MidAmerican going to
wind, it doesn't mean that people aren't using more electricity. That's why if we have kilowatt
hour usage we can see if people are still using more electricity or less.
Tate stated they want to tease out what it is we want to look at to really understand. If it is
kilowatt hours going down as a good measure of success across the board, we can read quickly
if people are using less electricity in the household. Whatever the technology state is, turning off
a light requires no technology, it's a nudge behavior push. However, having someone get air
source heat pump that's pulling electricity and not natural gas into the home requires a different
kind of huge capital investment. Frasier thinks disaggregation is a great approach and is in line
with measuring equity as well.
Giannakouros noted from his background coming from Phoenix planting a tree doesn't have the
same value everywhere in Phoenix, because if you plant in south Phoenix where people are
standing waiting on buses and they have heat stress, the trees are coverings and not just taking
carbon out of the air. So how do we think about a tree as not just a tree, but where that money
goes how we're going to assess more value for a tree planted in a neighborhood where people
are more likely to be waiting for a bus than walking.
Nations goal is to have 20 metrics that are easy to get every year and that we'll see progress
with.
Tate noted it is important to not reinvent the wheel but to look at what's been done elsewhere.
Karr stated they have begun this work with the demonstration projects as well. When they try to
just do the pilot 15 to 25 houses, they're really trying to streamline it. They did do a
walkthrough, observe the Green AmeriCorps at one of the City properties last week and it was
really interesting because it's an achievable thing that can be done in about 30 minutes. This is
real easy, low hanging fruit we can get pretty easily 100, 200, 500 people to do with pretty
minimal investment and get actual numbers.
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Krieger noted kind of the sort of approaches we need, to package these things and then the big
push is to get that out to every single person in Iowa City, and then we're going have a real
impact on emissions.
Tate agreed, he is glad to see the school district here, get every student bus pass, that'd be
great, that'd be a doable thing and real impact instead of watching City High's parking lot fill up
Actual things that can be done for $10 a month, here's what happens. ridership goes up, you
get more grants, etc.
Krieger agreed and stated getting that sort of PR messaging out there about what you can do
for the community with $10.
BIG GROVE EVENT REVIEW:
Overall comments were an awesome turnout, it was kind of cool that we had it in a different
place besides the City building, it was a different feel and was really positive.
There were seven speakers and then a quick open mic at the end. The open mic was really
good, people were to the point and shared valuable stuff.
Nations noted for anybody who wasn't there, the event was taped and if you're signed up for the
sustainability newsletter, it's going to come out with a link to where you can watch it if you'd like.
100-DAY REPORT UPDATE 11/14/19:
It was delivered.
REQUEST FROM COUNCIL FOR THE COMMISSION REVIEW AND PROVIDE FEEDBACK
OF THE 100-DAY REPORT, "ACCELERATING IOWA CITY'S CLIMATE ACTIONS":
Council talked about the 100-Day report at their working session and they want Commission
feedback and Council will not move on any of the report until they have feedback from the
Commission.
Monroe stated Council asked for feedback from the Commission and are looking to the
Commission to assess what is in the report, make sure it matches up with the Climate Action
Plan. In the various categories we defined the regulations, the policies, the incentives,
education, the projects, if there are things that are missing, if there are things that you feel we
should reconsider, if there are aspects such as the idea to give kids bus passes, that's a new
idea that we didn't specifically note in the Plan, maybe that's a separate idea broken out, maybe
it's included in our incentives to get more people riding, whatever those things are, if the
Commission wants to more fully develop what needs to be said it's really an open invitation to
make edits and changes and they are looking to this group of people to be the technical experts
in recommending what those changes are. It can go through the working groups or the
Commission can walk through each of the items during meetings, however you all want to
handle gathering that feedback and providing it to Council in a memo. Monroe suggested taking
a couple of months to reach out to staff as you consider these things, if you want to bring them
up with the next meeting, if its in between, staff is available so we can offer some guidance or
explanation of what we're thinking. Monroe added along with Nations request from this group to
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find measurable things, they want to quantify things that that the City can measure as a
community that shows action on these specific items. Whether it's our buildings, or vehicles or
bus rides, or whatever it is, trees planted, all those things that we're showing action. Even as
larger entities like MidAmerican and the University are making progress on their goals too.
Monroe added they do want policy recommendations from the Commission as a whole, it is that
balance between outreach and policy and the Commission is the recommending body to the
Council for advocating for policies and regulations that we need in place.
Krieger asked about the balance between wanting to get something done quickly and moving
forward, however there is the financial side because some of its already been put into your
budget for the next fiscal year. Monroe stated they are currently working on budget. There are
things that we have expanded upon, so requests from our departments that make it possible for
us to meet our strategic goals. For example we're going forward on our transit study, we've
budgeted for our methane study and those kinds of things. They have already budgeted for the
things that are in progress. Monroe worked through a basic funding plan for each of these
areas, concentration on buildings and the projects and programs defined here, money for
transportation. projects or plans or incentives, etc., but everything is flexible. The estimated levy
from the emergency levy is expected to be about a million dollars and can be divided in a variety
of ways. The departments in budget meetings requested money for educational programs, so
things that they're already doing, that they can expand upon as part of implementing the plan or
report items. They have some like advertising and marketing money in the budget in their
departments, but there's going to be a bigger pot to pull from City wide. This Commission has a
budget, a couple thousand dollars for holding meetings, planning small events, etc. Larger
events like the climate festival or whatever comes from that we're planning on that money
coming from this money so it's a mix of our funding. Monroe stated the City is moving forward
with a lot of the things that are the next steps such as enhancing our single family rehab
program to include more environmental projects, amplifying our tree plantings, all those kinds of
things are more next steps and not necessarily the brand new stuff that we want the
Commission feedback on.
Frasier asked how long the Commission has to develop this feedback. Monroe stated City
Council has a lot to do between January 4, when they get a day full of budget and strategic
planning, so maybe February or March would be nice to have official feedback from this group.
Monroe added another piece of this is whether the Commission wants to get additional
community feedback and input on the plan, is there a meeting, a public survey tool or is it just
talking to people. Whatever level of engagement with the community the Commission wants to
do.
Krieger noted when the Commission was were working on the action plan it was a yearlong
period and they held two community meetings and had an electronic survey that went out. Now
with a lot more actions out there, trying to understand priorities, do we think it's reasonable,
advantageous, beneficial, whatever you want to say for having that public input. What are the
best possible methods of garnering that feedback at this point, knowing the kind of short
duration.
Karr stated wasn't one of the conclusions is that the respondents weren't totally representative
of the whole community on the survey and the meetings? He thinks surveys are fine, but we
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just need to keep that in mind and try and do better, and maybe augment that with other forms
Perhaps take advantage of this list Kuann was starting to put together for more of a targeted
outreach.
Soglin noted that some of the actions say next step and are already underway. While those may
be analyzed on whether it's the right thing to do should the recommendations we make, and ask
for public input on, be on things already underway. We need to be upfront and transparent.
Perhaps another column could be added to the appendix where there's explicitly funding
already devoted to it.
Hutchinson noted that getting quality public input and Commission thoughts and melding those
two and getting that to the Council by March is isn't going to be easy particularly with Christmas
right in the middle of it all.
Frasier suggested maybe it ends with a request for public input after the February or March date
that we say we need to look at this longer term.
Krieger asked when these positions are going to be posted
Monroe stated they have a person who is retiring within a couple of weeks so that position is
getting kind of reformed into an engagement specialist type position, someone who will be
coordinating directly with the outreach working group and this Commission and some volunteer
coordination and the communications aspect of what they are working on. Nations got the go
ahead to hire the vacated intern position, Denise is going to keep working with us and then the
following position we're going to wait to hire is the data and equity analyst role. They want to
make sure that nothing recommended by this group, or if the recommendations change for how
we balance our projects doesn't change significantly, then we would plan to move ahead with
the data analysis position. But if there's some other need where there is some new building
projects or we decided for a natural areas management, whatever that dictates it might change
the role of what that person will do. Monroe stated they want to have all positions in place by
the beginning of the fiscal year.
Frasier noted that with all this talk about measurement and indicators it seems like someone
with those skills would be help in that respect. Monroe agreed but reiterated if there are
priorities that are different after this all shakes out, then we'll go where those priorities lie and
how we can best use our resources.
Nations stated that one thing that might help when thinking about prioritizing some of these
things is that a lot of the actions were supposed to be outwardly facing and not City government,
but then when we looked at all of our emissions, like 82% of our emissions are existing buildings
and that counts the University, and when she did a calculation showing all these new buildings,
new construction is actually about 1 % of what's already existing and that is residential,
commercial and industrial. Additionally, it shows industries are big users, but there's not very
many of them whereas residential, there's a lot of them. With businesses, we want to have a
green business record recognition program. Existing buildings are the majority of the
emissions as well as transportation. A lot of the actions are educational, because outreach and
getting other people to know what's available, education is like a fourth of the actions.
Climate Action Commission
December 2, 2019
Page 12 of 14
Monroe confirmed that a lot of the next step elements are those education pieces. Staff has
done some of that, but clearly there's going to be an elevation of how much and what we're
communicating so if the Commission wants to build on that or have ideas for who do we need to
be talking to, what is the frequency, what mode, etc. Nations stated about a fourth of the
actions are education so that's going to be really important in general and we're really looking
forward to your feedback of what might be missing or what we should prioritize and who we
should be speaking to.
REQUEST FOR COMMISSION TO GET PUBLIC INPUT ON 100-DAY REPORT
Krieger noted with regards to public input it's a lot to try to take on in the short term. His first
inclination is as part of the working groups reports to also report on how the 100-day actions fall
within the priorities and what are the recommendations there. However, he thinks it's also about
the targeted outreach to specific groups for their input as well. Part of growing the working
groups is reaching out to those groups anyway so it makes sense to maybe include feedback
from those parties.
Soglin stated it will take a conversation and that takes time if you want something that's
substantial enough and not just go through the motions and leaving people feeling even less
heard. Perhaps there is some sort of combination thing they could do, they could have an event,
very informal out in several areas of the community versus at one location, where they listen.
They can talk about and basically introduce this and acknowledge it's going to have to be
somewhat a work in progress, and then listen for feedback.
Krieger noted as an example they did give a presentation, like the format that Soglin is
proposing, kind of a listening post, to give a presentation on what is the outline of the plan.
They did that at Oaknoll and people were just trying to take it in and adjust so there's not a way
for them to immediately react or provide significant feedback at that point in time. So it is a
longer duration type of thing and maybe the first step is us providing feedback based on our
expertise, background, and what our recommendations are, but with the understanding that we
need to be making it more of a transparent process and taking that out into the community.
Soglin suggested Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as it relates to issues of justice and for climate for
people so we should have something that day somewhere.
Frasier liked that idea and said in his experience in doing such processes is if you do it at night
the particular people you want to meeting with are working at night because they come from a
certain socio-economic background. One option is to allocate money if possible, out of that
budget to provide things at this event (food or entertainment) to get people to show up and be
somewhat interested in the event.
Soglin suggested they go to events that are already planned, because there's always a rally of
person and be part of that event for 10 minutes.
Monroe noted if it comes out where the Commission is okay with the general concepts and
ideas that are in the report, then the specifics of each item can take longer to develop and reach
out. Things like outreach to certain populations and developing communication plans may take
longer to define.
Climate Action Commission
December 2, 2019
Page 13 of 14
Krieger asked if City staff was developing this for Council's review is the intent that in the end,
you end up doing all of them or is this a laundry list of things you'd like to do, but really want
help to prioritize.
Monroe acknowledged they were hesitant or nervous about proposing all of them because that's
the expectation, you put it out there, and you have to do them all. So that is why they created a
phasing of how many can they start in a year and what areas and departments need to be
available or community groups need to be involved. If there were too many, or one area of
staff's time, it got pushed a year so it should be manageable.
Karr added over time there will be changes and revisions, such as to building codes, this is not
final, there's going to be a whole iteration of process and opportunity for public input.
Frasier agreed and reiterated it makes sense that education, incentives and policy is how you
convert changes into being green.
Giannakouros noted the priority is to get the working groups going and get them together for a
meeting. We need like 10 people, get them in a room and have a meeting, every group.
So the charge for each working group is to meet and report back at the next meeting. Nations
added the City is willing to help with anything if you want to hold a meeting, or if you want to do
a survey, they can put on the website, she still has the email addresses of everybody that was
in some of the first meetings, etc.
WORKING FILE STORAGE:
Monroe stated that any files the Commission has already created, Google Docs or whatever
they are, treat them as a public record, so they could be called upon as a public document. Draft
forms typically are not taken as public information. When working in the working groups, any
number of five or less is permitted by our open record meetings rules, five Commission
members or less can collectively be working on a document together at the same time, staff
needs access to it. Monroe will outline this all in memo to the Commission.
STAFF/COMMISSION ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Nations stated they will have a new member orientation from legal, she is asking them to come
to the next meeting.
Nations also stated the location of the next meeting will change, it will be held in Library meeting
room B. If for some reason you can't come to a meeting, please Krieger and Nations so they
know. Bylaws state you cannot miss three unexcused meetings.
ADJOURNMENT:
Krieger made a motion to adjourn.
Giannakouros seconded the motion.
A vote was taken, and the motion passed 10-0.
Climate Action Commission
December 2, 2019
Page 14 of 14
CLIMATE ACTION COMMISSION
ATTENDANCE RECORD
2019-2020
(Meeting Date)
NAME
TERM EXP.
O
N
Madeleine Bradley
X
John Fraser
12/31/20
X
X
X
Stratis
Giannakouros
UI Rep
X
X
X
Grace Holbrook
12/31/21
X
X
X
Kasey Hutchinson
--
--
X
GT Karr
12/31/20
X
X
X
Matt Krieger
12/31/20
X
X
X
Jesse Leckband
MidAmerican
Rep
X
X
X
KatieSarsfeld
12/31/20
X
X
O/E
Becky So lin
--
--
X
Eric Tate
12/31 /21
X
X
X
KEY: X = Present
O = Absent
O/E = Absent/Excused
NM = No Meeting
-- -- = Not a Member