Hello everyone welcome to the sustainability framework advisory
committee today's Friday September 23rd and it is 1 o'clock and we do have a
quorum here in the City Council work session room and we will go ahead and get
started with our first item for individual consideration which is
consider approval of August 26 2022 and August 31st 2022 minutes on the meeting
minutes not the special call but regular meeting they have me asking about carbon
output and zero scavenging what I think I actually asked about was the amount of
carbon sequestered by the current tree canopy and the zero escaping there's a
typo it should be XERI pardon me XERI instead ZERO
escaping that's all okay so would you like to approve minutes with those
suggestions with gusto all right so we have a motion to approve with those
changes second okay all in favor all right so those will be approved if we
get notes for those changes okay we will move on to be receiving report
discussion regarding sustainability solutions group SSG progress on City of
Denton's climate action and adaptation plan and I'd like to introduce Carol
Frazier from SSG Carol will be making today's presentation answering any
questions that you may have at the end okay so I'll just go ahead and reiterate
that SSG is short for the sustainability solutions group so when that is
mentioned that's what this is referring to okay all right thank you welcome thank
you glad you're here so glad to be here so my name is Carol Frazier I am with
SSG and consultants and we have been selected by City of Denton to work with
you on your climate action and adaptation plan so I'm here to give an
update about what that planning process will look like how you all can get
involved and what the next steps will be so first I'll just go over the project
approach after a little bit more of an introduction and then the project
scheduled I'll talk about this committee's role in the project and then
answer any questions that you have can you hear me okay it's okay to use this
much oh that mic is not working so the mic above you the white one is the one
you'll need to project to good for now thank you all right so our protest is
SSG's approach to climate planning projects well we're really concerned
about where do Denton's GHG greenhouse gas emissions currently come from so
what you see here is just an example this is not an actual calculation of
Denton's we're working on doing that right now it's just an example from another
city that we've worked with but essentially we'll break down the
activities that are causing energy use in Denton that's what you see on the
left by fuel type so anything from propane to gasoline electricity natural
gas etc and then we also break that down by sector so we'll be able to show you
all where your emissions are mostly coming from either waste sector, transportation,
residential buildings, commercial buildings etc and using our systems
integrated model that gets us that information on the previous slide we can
also make projections about what might happen in the future under various
scenarios so again what you see here is just an example but it shows a
trajectory from right now through 2050 breaking down the energy use oh sorry in
this case emissions by sector over time based on the kinds of policies that you
might implement so this one is showing you what happens if you don't implement
any new policies this is what we call our business as usual scenario so we develop one of those that
becomes our baseline against which to compare future policy actions that you
all could take
so then once we have an understanding of that we work with you all on
understanding what kind of actions could Denton take based on your current context
in a variety of ways so we could look at how could you electrify
transportation not only personal use vehicles but public transportation we
look at how can you electrify or otherwise reduce the energy use of
buildings for commercial and residential buildings like heat pumps for example we
think about how can you improve active transportation avoiding emissions in
the first place looking at the renewable energy mix that you already have and
seeing how we can further that and strengthen that future demand we also
examine energy efficiency in buildings so whole home retrofits or retrofits of
commercial property so that they're actually needing less electricity or
energy over time in the future we think about alternative fuels that may be
useful for some of those harder to decarbonize sectors such as
manufacturing aviation thinking about hydrogen or other kinds of renewable
natural gas for example and then finally we think about adaptation and resilience
so what can we do to not only reduce emissions but strengthen Denton's ability
to respond to a changing climate in this case hotter and experiencing more
intense and frequent rain storms so what we do is using our model that I discussed
just a moment ago we take all of those actions and we're able to quantify many
of them if not all of them and create what you see here which we call a wedge
diagram so at the top left you see this is the current emissions level from the
reference here in this case 2019 data is what we're using that's the most recent
data that we have a complete data set for and that's going all the way out
until 2015 so each wedge in this diagram is showing you the reduced emissions
impact of each potential action so the ones that I just mentioned anything from
let's say we retrofit all the homes in Denton that would one potential wedge
and again we can break those out by sector so you get a sense of how each
sector is going to approach decarbonization and then you can compare over time that
reference scenario that dotted line that's that your business is usual what
if you took no other actions so in some cases you know electricity sorry energy
use over time may be decreasing to to that relative point from here but
there's a whole suite of actions that you can use to get down to a target and we
will be working with you all on understanding what kind of target could
be said that's feasible that you all can get to and as well as interim targets
between now and 2015 and then everything that's still remaining under those wedges
is what we call the carbon liability so that's still the emissions that are going
to be room going to be emitted under that scenario so you're probably think
that that's great but how do I get involved how do I get input it's not
going to be a black box black box exercise we are going to be engaging
with you and the community quite a bit over the course of this project so our approach is first of
all to take a step back before we begin engaging any community and do what we
call pre engagement so we're in the process of finishing that up right now
what we're doing is interviewing people from key groups who might want to be
involved in providing input and asking them how would you like to be involved
what's the best way to provide input what hasn't worked in the past what can
we really do here to make sure we're hearing from everybody in the community
who wants to be a part of this process we take that information and then we
create an engagement plan so this really lays out okay for this duration of the
project here's the ways in which we engage people here are the goals for
that particular engagement activity or tool here's how we're going to use the
input in the final creation of the plan and then here's how we'll report back
on what we're doing and it also have a timeline so there will be a really
concrete sense of when these activities are going to happen so some of the things that we
might do include webinars or in-person events where we talk about climate action
and adaptation planning 101 is really giving people a foot in the
door to understand what's going on and then build on that for further
participation we may also do things like community town halls or survey or a whole
host of other tools that we've used in other communities again to be adapted to
what we hear in free engagement and what we think might might work best in terms
of the schedule what you see here is the detailed breakdown of the tasks that
we'll be completing what's highlighted in yellow are the the things that we have
at least in our kind of draft understanding and again it's not
finalized of coming to you all here at the sustainability advisory committee and
talking about first of all the business as usual what will happen if no other
action is taken scenario then we'll come back again once we develop some targets
and we're talking about what kind of sorry once we develop some actions and
what kind of targets could be set and then finally we'll come to you towards
the end of the product process and keep the results of the guy so that's our
preliminary idea that could change a little bit but that's what and that will
be in December ish January ish and March ish and I say the ish not because we're
not committed to it but depends on you know there's the holidays and you know
things get in line so it will be in in those windows there your role as SPAC so
as I as I just mentioned during these time periods we'd like to work with you
all in a few different ways so for that first inventory and business as usual
workshop we really want to hear from you okay what are the key opportunities and
key challenges to bringing emissions down compared to what is projected to
happen without any kind of further intervention so there may be some things that in Den that are
really going to catch on quick we're able to hit the ground running some some
policies or programs you already have we want to know how to leverage those we
also want to know what's going to be really challenging it's going to be
important to think about addressing the harder stuff first off rather than
leaving it out to a later date if it's going to take a while to work through we
want to know what those kind of things are because they may take some time to get
going when we come to you with the actions and to discuss targets we really
want to know what you think of some of the actions that we've developed and and
and the targets in terms of feasibility and timeline or implementation that will
build on that earlier conversation that'll be really important to get your
feedback on those and we'll be able to do following that workshop that's when we
take the actions and we put them into our model and then we can really discuss
what will the emissions and energies impact be and then finally we want to
come back to you before this is a final document final plan it gets put out into
the world for implementation so we want to know that we got it right and we can
adjust things at that stage
So that's my very brief presentation. I'd be really happy to take any questions.
Anyone have questions?
Ed?
Yeah, welcome to Denton.
This may be going down the road too soon, but I didn't see anything about it.
Will there be any sort of cost-benefit analysis?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So I do believe we will be working with the sustainability team and doing a
cost-benefit analysis. What we like to do is kind of a financial economic benefit
look at how much investment would it take to implement these actions and think
about that in terms of net present value, return on investment, those various
angles and then we also think about co-benefits. So what are the other
benefits of taking these kinds of actions say improving air quality or
health outcomes in addition to reducing emissions. So while we're very
technically focused on the quantitative aspect of understanding how emissions
can be reduced, we do recognize that you know people think about the benefits in
different ways and it can be really useful to communicate that to various
audiences so that will be part of our analysis in the final plan.
Great, thanks.
This kind of follows Ed's question kind of related to the technocratic issues
that can be around this subject and so I know you're in the pre-engagement
process right now and kind of gauging community's feedback. How, knowing that
this is going to be a very data-dense document, how is it that you try to
break down that really heavy information asymmetry that can exist whenever you're
talking with people who might have different lived experiences than what
you're presenting is not going to be the plan or solutions for these. I'm just
kind of curious as how those like dialogues help inform where this plan
goes if we're not really talking on the same baseline. Absolutely, yeah so
definitely one of the first things that we'll end up doing is that climate planning 101
where we do take a step back and we put all of these discussions more into
context. It's not necessarily going to be only about the numbers of what's going on
in Denton, but we want to talk about the potential co-benefits of taking action
or talking about what other cities have done. I think really getting down to the
concrete framing of how might this affect people's individual lives, right?
The kinds of choices that might be available to them in the future and
taking that kind of holistic perspective when we talk about you may have access
to an electric vehicle charger in your neighborhood, you know, would that
be useful or not useful in that kind of way, right? So very open to suggestions of
what might work particularly here, but I will say our company is pretty proud of
how we can really blend our engagement practices with the technical modeling. So
we have an in-house engagement team that really thinks through the kinds of
activities that we create to gather that input and not keep it at that
high technical level. We adapt it to that kind of model.
Matt? So my question kind of, I guess, comes up because I really, I'm like
community town halls, community surveys, communities, and I guess this is what
you're talking about with like engaging the community. So it's, you're doing
surveys with them based on your findings or is this, you're drawing from the
community to get findings? I guess I'm kind of lost in what that is. True, yeah, and it'll be
up. So part of it is we draw on our knowledge of best practices from across
across the world, really, of how different cities are approaching these
very similar problems. So we can work with sustainability staff and kind of
ground truth that here and say here's what we think based on that. At the same
time, our process is very much we gather input or even collaborate with the
community members and hear from you all. Here's our top priority, here's what we
think will work, here's the kind of actions that we could take, and then we
can quantify those as well. We just need some parameters around what kind of
what kind of quantified aspect there would be to to implementing some of
those actions, but we can work with you all to develop them. So it's not a
top-down coming from us only. We really do want to hear what you all think will
work in what you're sitting on. Okay, my second question. So it's hard to get the
full community represented. So I'm wondering, because you mentioned with the
pre-engagement that you're like everyone who wants to be involved is involved.
There's also a lot of other people out there who might be unaware of what they
can do. So I'm wondering about like how do you account for like involving groups
who might traditionally not be involved or this kind of like questions of
justice and access to this information? Yeah, so part of what we do is work with
the city's communications and engagement staff and make sure that we're
using the channels that you already have to reach people. And then as you
mentioned in our pre-engagement process, we do talk to a variety of people from
different groups and ask what hasn't really worked before, what might
potentially work here. And then we use a variety of techniques. So sometimes that's
in person, you know, sometimes it's come meet us here where it's convenient for you.
Sometimes it's let's do this virtually because then you don't have to drive
across town and you can still get your input. Or using the survey it gives
people another another way to give input. So I think the key part will be in we
have all the techniques. It's really getting the word out and working with
your staff to make sure that happens. Mr. Seagal. Again, this may be early, but I think
it's probably right in between the cost benefit analysis as well as who's
coming to the table we're going to gather information from and then you'll
come back to us. I just want to ensure that the focus groups see a line 2.06
that we're going to be talking to and leaning towards this question who will be
the people at the table that we're going to be talking to. My mind comes to the 80/20
group. Probably 20% of the offenders are creating 80% of the the issues that we
need to resolve. Can we make sure the focus groups in the survey and that we
are focusing on the major offenders and I know they're not doing it
intentionally but the data supports that there are organizations, institutions
that are major offenders that we want to make sure we hear from them as to why
you know they are not performing better and then to get an honest true
commitment from them in terms of what they're going to do to reduce it. No
sense in talking to the guy who just threw his milk jug in the wrong container
so to speak in terms of the waste issue and so forth but who are the
folks that are really really causing this issues and can we make sure we're
talking to those folks to ensure that they are part of the right solution that
we want to approach. Is that possible? It's already been worked out. I could be
you know just in the dark. It's really good to hear your perspective. Certainly
that's the kind of thing that we are examining through our pre-engagement
process so and our initial we're doing an update of the GHG inventory at the
beginning of this process as well so we have a sense of you know what what are
the largest admitting activities in Denton in terms of what's in scope with this plan so we can
definitely consider that in terms of how we end up engaging. I think maybe to
build on your calling comment too as well then there's also for us is very
important the equity and social justice component of who are the people who are
going to be most affected by what happens as a result of this plan. We want
to make sure that we have engagement that asks them for further input on on
how we should shape the programs and policies right that are recommended if
those are the folks who'd be most affected. So we'll definitely look
both sides. I think in terms of how you're talking about it with the 8-20 rule we
we are interested in working with y'all on having the biggest impact right with the
actions that really cut through and like I mentioned you'll want to do that more
now in this decade so that when you're in the 2040s you're dealing with things
that are maybe a bit more tricky or more on the margins. There's really a lot that
can be done in the next 10 years as a result of Inflation Reduction Act, all the federal policies so yeah great thank you for the point.
It will be very important when you guys can come back to me supporting whatever proposal will ultimately hit the table. I'd really like to have that kind of information who the players are. Thank you.
Sounds good, thank you. Brian, do you have another? Yeah, just one more. So last year our committee as well as our council's committee on the environment have approved a target, a science-based reduction target. I was just wondering if that already approved target is what's informing this current action plan or is that kind of back on the table now for discussion to rework very quickly?
Do you mind clarifying that actually? I'm aware of the target but I know we're also going to be looking at how that target fits in. We'll use that target as our basis but we'll also look at the modeling and see if that informs that we may need to revise the target or how aggressive we need to be to reach those targets.
Could we, it would be interesting in the newer models that I've developed to kind of see how that comparison trends from when we had set that this last year and then what our new projections even might look like as informed on the new greenhouse gas emission. It just would be nice to see if like what we had looked at and discussed and the information that they presented before. That was what we had agreed to and then this new target, I just want to make sure we're familiar with where our pivots might be going so we're making a more informed decision about it.
Great, yeah so I think we will definitely be able to visualize that in the context and then looking at what your projections are we may say actually you could potentially reach a more aggressive target based on our analysis or the target that you've set might be really really difficult and you might want to rethink your, because it's an interim target that you're talking about right?
It's 46% by 2030, okay great yeah so I mean just off the top of my head like that sounds very similar to a lot of other communities and it's a fairly reasonable trajectory but we'll have like more solid data and math to really back that up and talk about it in more detail.
Ed, do you have a follow up? Yeah just one more thing, sort of on what Brent, where he's going and this might be for Katherine really but on the agenda information sheet for this it talked about data transfer in three categories, high priority, medium and low priority.
Would it be possible to find out what those are? I mean at least I can't speak for the other committee members but I don't know what the priorities are. Sure yeah so that's just our internal system in terms of populating our computer model to look at the energy emissions.
Some data sources are really important to get really globally specific, others we can use state level data or even federal level data to fill in the gaps and that mostly determines the prioritization in terms of what we ask.
Your wonderful staff here, can you provide us with some of this data? We want to make sure that's the data that they get us first so we can start creating the model.
It usually is what accounts for the largest emissions. I can get you the specific sectors though. I appreciate that, thank you. I don't have them up on my head, sorry.
I have just a couple and thanks for bringing that up about the carbon reduction that we had set earlier in the interim because that was one of my questions I had.
So just a few engagement questions. You mentioned survey and I know that our residents really love the survey when it gets shared. I mean the online survey, I think we can reach a broader range of people who maybe aren't able to come out to the meetings.
And I know that having a computer set up at some of those meetings with the survey there has been helpful in the past.
And how many community meetings are you planning? At this point, I don't want to give a number because it might change and I'm not even quite sure, but it's going to be at least probably three workshops identified here in addition to one or two more approximately.
Just a suggestion, just based on that equity, if we could move them around different spots of town just so that if somebody doesn't have transportation, they have an accessible way to get to the meetings if possible.
And another process question, so in between all of those stages where you come back to us, will you be going to council in between as well to review that? Or is that just towards the end after we?
And I think that's it. I appreciate it. Yeah, that's all I have. Great, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you being here.
Alright, so we will go ahead and move on to item C, Receive a Report, Hold a Discussion Regarding 2022-2023 Sustainability Framework Fund Work Plan.
After I'm going next, sustainability management.
So just following up on our last meeting where we discussed items for the upcoming year's framework fund expenditures.
We'll kind of go through our brainstorming and suggestions and then some of the projects that we received feedback from other departments and added to the list.
And we'll just discuss the focus areas and the topics that we have and then work on our next steps in any feedback video.
And still the background, we have the work plan that we are still working on that was approved in March of 2022 and the additional funding of approximately $4 million for 2022-23.
This was the framework fund as proposed.
We are obviously working on the climate action planning, the air quality monitoring that came back, we're working on evaluating those bits. Food fellows and alternative transportation are both underway.
So a few that we didn't get to with the city fleet electrification and rainwater capture, but those are ongoing and we will work on plugging those projects in as the design and the buildings are prepared for adding those types of things.
May I ask a question on this? Sure. I was just curious where you got the figures, is it $260, $270 per watt installed for the solar?
That was the estimated cost that we were given for municipal solar projects.
Okay. That's current?
That was from March, probably earlier than March when we developed this.
Okay, so realistically this cost could come down?
It could. That was just the cost that we were being quoted at that time.
I understand, thanks.
So just a little bit of reminder on the timeframe on some of those work plan updates.
Some of the activities that we've done.
So I brought the funding up by goal area, and as you can see in the AIS, we just put a target amount for each focus area and then listed some projects under each focus area that we feel would be beneficial for sustainability, that we can work with our other departments to get these projects done in the next year.
So as we go through this, if you see anything that you absolutely don't think should be part of the framework fund, let us know or if there's something that you feel like should be a priority.
Another question, the reclaimed water program, does that include things like gray water?
That's on the larger scale, that's the purple pipe is what we're talking about, but gray water is a little different, I mean each case is going to be specific to that home.
When I was on PUV, if I recall correctly, there's only two lines that are currently dedicated of gray water, and they're used, I know one of them is for a golf course.
And I just wondered if there was any consideration of expanding that program of, as it were, recycled water or reclaimed water or gray water.
That's exactly what this is. That's exactly what this would be, helping expand that program, make it more available to other locations, helping that program increase its availability and capacity.
Great, thanks.
Just for clarity, the items listed under each focus area, are those our aspirational brainstorm item or is this now each of these items will receive some degree of funding out of the total listed above?
These are still the aspirational and some department programs that we know we could work with the department collaborate and help facilitate moving something forward.
And on that, how do we, as a body going forward, will staff bring us individual things and say, hey we've got this, can we use this much fund towards this because it fits in our plan, or just to make sure that we're doing something and the money's just not sitting, we're actively working on projects.
So if we take the $500,000 bucket for water, and as we're working through that, okay we're going to come back and tell you, we're going to spend this much on this project, but in order to move the work plan along, if we can say, we want to have a bucket of $500,000 for water, and then we'll narrow down the projects as we work out that work plan and find out how we can get things done in a timely fashion.
So it's kind of asking for approval of the bucket, and the aspirational underneath it, and then we'll try, if there's one that's a priority, we'll try to get that one, but there may be another one that, hey we can knock out three goals with this one project, and it's already designed and we can get it on the ground and coin.
And also just, this is, for this one but also as we go, the other areas that are coming up, so like there's this bucket, say we may choose one and it may take the whole bucket, right, it may take the whole bucket, okay, as opposed to like three smaller ones that you could do to make, to take that bucket, or choose one, okay.
Would there be the opportunity, seeing as how, you know, this is a minuscule amount of money for what we've got up there, that this could be tied in by actual city ordinances requiring some of this stuff?
Rather than us just saying we should have this in the plan or we should do this, can there actually, do we have the option of actually requesting or working towards a city ordinance requiring a particular development in this focus area?
Like in terms of wastewater, some sort of ordinance regulating the use of wastewater, what you can do with it, what you can't do with it.
And that would be a different discussion than what we're having today about the Framework Fund. I know there will be some opportunities coming up with some water and wastewater planning, future planning and some documents there, so there may be some opportunity for some input with those.
Great, thanks.
But for this discussion I think we need to focus on this Framework Fund.
I understand, thanks.
Yes, sir.
Any other comments or questions about water?
Anything on there that you love or would love to see in place?
Anyone have a comment about this list?
We can go on to the next one?
Okay.
So for air quality and greenhouse gas management, we know that we're going to have more on this list when the Climate Action Plan is done, so that will probably be in next year's budgeting.
So we anticipate this number going up more for next year, but these are just some of the ideas that we had and the committee had in talking with our departments, too, for what we might be able to do over the next year.
The electric lawn equipment rebate, we had talked about, of course, trying to increase the idling reduction, education and information, and anything that - we can work with parks for a native grass installation for enhanced carbon sequestration, stormwater filtration, it's so much bang for your buck there.
Is there a possibility to explore partnership with utilities under our transmission lines for a project like this? I see stormwater filtration, reduced maintenance, carbon sequestration, it seems like that would do well with perhaps their maintenance goals under their power lines as well.
Just as a thought, I don't know, it would take a little exploration.
It's one that we've mentioned in the past, so we can have that discussion with DMV as well. If we find a model that works well for planting and maintenance, then I think that will be an easier sell for under our utility lines.
Anything anyone wants to add to this one? Everybody okay?
So on energy, facility maintenance fund support, so energy and water conservation on the existing buildings that we know we're going to have in our building stock for the next seven plus years.
The HVAC building envelope, all of those items will really help our buildings be more efficient and anywhere that we can reduce that consumption, then we're reducing the need for increased capacity from DMV.
Nice energy management for air quality, solar parking shade structures with charging and battery storage, through that one in there. Demand management and other strategies and then continue the low income weatherization once we get that program kicked off.
Ben?
Yeah, just a question. Under demand management projects, would something like time of use policy be in there too?
It could be, yes.
Okay, I would like that to be in there.
Okay.
Brian?
Could you define what you're talking about when you say advanced energy management?
So that would be advanced controls in our buildings. So more controls when buildings aren't occupied that we're really actively managing that time and space.
Thank you.
Matt?
I have the same question. That's not the same thing as a smart service control?
It would be a smart thermostat on steroids.
Hopefully.
So land use, open natural space. We have so much that we can do in land use and open natural space.
The curviest walking trails, sidewalk connectivity, if there was any gaps that we could help with some incremental costs maybe to close some gaps.
We know there's a sidewalk fund, but maybe there's something that didn't get captured and we can help with that.
Curviest walking trails along drainage channels where we have a cooler space to walk rather than on our adjacent to roadways.
The green infrastructure projects with drainage, restoration projects, working on the pollinator waste stations, pocket prairies, tree rescue within our parks, within our open space, our green space.
Do you have a question?
Maybe a tree and native plant rescue and nursery facility where we could, we talked about it before, rescuing plants where there's going to be development and where could we have those and make them available for other projects.
Maybe our pollinator waste stations or restoration projects.
Landfilled cells with wildflowers or grasses, the National Wildlife Federation program, city facilities, habitat support, of course, zero scaping, low water use in landscape incentives.
We saw a really great project with the wildflower boxes along sidewalks.
Certainly anything that we could do with rain garden and kind of sidewalk scaping.
Maybe we could do a pilot on that.
More native planning for the biomass wells, erosion control, bank sterilization projects, and then working with parks for some smaller, more walkable community gardens.
Maybe not as large as Bowling Green, but have three or four plots spread out throughout the community.
Do you want to have a question about this list, Ed?
I don't know if it would be included in any of these, but the expansion of IPM programs in parks.
I know we've got pilot programs now, so I'm assuming that based upon the outcomes of the pilot that there might be the option of expanding those programs in other city parks, et cetera.
We can definitely visit with parks about that.
And I think, I was going to say some of those are going to grow organically.
But I think that parks is really like in the way Avondale is coming together, and I think that those practices make sense, and I think we'll see that in more parks.
We can help facilitate that when that would be agreed.
Catherine, I have a question this way before our lawyer in the room, too. So on this list, the title is Land Use in Open Natural Space, but not listed is, say, preservation of land or something, just generally.
So like, if there was an area in the town or in the city and council needed some extra funds and they were asking, they wanted to ask our committee, could you help us purchase this to preserve it?
So like, is that, does that need to be individually listed? I'm just like, you know, on a case by case basis, or would there have to be an amendment to this document for them to ask us for that, or would it just be open?
I think that if you said you wanted to include that under land use and open sites, if you wanted to include preservation, just generally preservation, I think that would leave the door open.
Okay. And I mean, we discussed this as a body once before, but I mean, it just has been getting left out. And so I thought right now before it's approved, if we wanted to add that in to give the council an option to ask us, we can always say yes or no.
And I know we've discussed this before. I love what this list represents, and I think implemented, it's an amazing possibility. And I vocalized this the last time we talked about land acquisition, that I mean, parks have presented their worksheet of properties that they were interested in acquiring a year or two ago at a parks meeting, and it's just orders of magnitude above what we're able to even budget for something like that.
I like the idea of leaving the door open, but hey, we just need a little bit of a gap closer to meet this need. That would be awesome. I just think that our our ability to implement a project like that might be better served by something that was approved through the bond committee for parks last open space acquisition project.
For our budget, I think these sort of beautification and greening improvement programs are maybe more feasible for what we're able to put to it, but that would just be my two cents. I would agree that at least leaving the door open to close that gap if it's possible would be really nice.
And I know there's no way to purchase property or land with that, because I'm just saying, and we have smaller community gardens, so say like if there was an area and they wanted us to help with that purchase, is that included in there? I'm just trying to think in the future so that documents don't have to be reevaluated and amended if that was there. I'm just bringing it up.
I don't think it's excluded. It's not excluded. Okay. Okay, that's fine.
So transportation. You know we've talked about city facility EV charging stations. We have an internal board right now who's looking at a gap analysis for the community EV charging stations, so that will help inform maybe where we want to encourage others to be installed.
Maybe it's a small supplement, you know, that gap closing or bike and pet infrastructure, they do have their own fund, but if there is some piece that maybe they aren't able to do, maybe just an incremental funding for that.
We talked about the bike repair clinic, bike sale, maybe some of the impound bikes that we've had before have bike sales with that. The cycling training, Kim has been in touch with PD, and we'll be working with them for the bike rodeo, seeing if we can bring that back.
It's been a few years that we've been bringing that back. We have looked into the city run bike rental program, and we'll keep exploring that and what opportunities there might be. Bike rebate program or e-bike rebate program, exploring those.
And then lastly, it's not as highly used and getting as we see in Dallas or Fort Worth, even, but some type of employee incentive for using mass transit, rather than everyone in a single occupied vehicle.
I was just thinking about our green sense business program, and I wonder if there would be any flexibility on using a funding like this to allow for businesses who are in a green business program to apply for the installation of a bike rack at their location if it's not something they'd be able to cover on their own.
And just as an incentive as part of the program, I think that would be really helpful for facing the accessibility of biking to different locations around town, not just on public spaces.
I was looking at education and outreach in regard to transportation.
Well, I know that Johns Colorado has quite a bike infrastructure, bike lanes and arrows telling cars what to do with it.
The last time I was there, which has been maybe five or six years, they were really having problems with accidents, not caused by the cyclists, but caused by vehicles.
I wondered if it would be possible if some of this comes to fruition and bike usage expands to have an educational program of some sort, just to remind drivers of how to behave around bicycles.
There's probably an updated version of Share the Road that we can help promote.
That would be great.
Anybody else have a question about this list?
So education and outreach, it's a smaller amount here because it's a lower cost for what we do.
It's our time, not really all of the expense with it, but green business incentives, item reduction signage, education, working with the development, education about private removal.
We want to try to turn Bowling Green into a demonstration area with trails and signage and explain why the private removal happened, but then restore it with a better habitat for the wildlife in that area.
And then maybe work to contract some removal in some of our profile city and location so that we can tackle that and get it addressed and then have that habitat restored.
Video series for education instead of the classes that we hold so that they're available anytime somebody's available to watch one, and then just supplement any of our current education and outreach funding where it might be necessary.
Does anyone else have anything on this list?
Mr. Stevens.
Yeah, just a comment with regards to the educating and even specifically the education community or sector.
I have some close relationships with some people that are in the school system, and I asked them on a regular basis concerning recycling as a point.
Yes, the education has been there, but there's no follow-up to see if the goals and the strategies are actually being implemented.
My daughter is a second grade school teacher, and I'm very interested in educating the next generation with regards to what we're trying to accomplish.
It's not happening. It's not reaching the grass level roots, if you would. So can we look into, as we're talking about educating the community, can we revisit what the plan looks like with regards to educating our elementary grade school children, as well as the college level?
I have another associate who is connected to UNT, even. I was on the campus this past weekend, and we were walking past the recycle bin, the next to the trash bin, and you notice one is very empty.
It's being utilized, and I ask, "Hey, what's the school's approach to this?" And that individual says, "Well, it's really not talked about much." So I simply say that to say there's an opportunity for us to possibly revisit the strategy from an education perspective.
And is there an objective? I understand the educational piece. Do we have an objective for the people, for the institutions to arrive at? What if it goes to some of the incentive-based type plans?
What can we do to even incentivize those institutions? And I refer to both the elementary school level, as well as the graduate level, and it seems like there's great opportunity. That's a very small audience that I'm speaking with, but it would appear to me that there's opportunity to move this to the next level.
The resources are there on site for them to use, but it's something missing in the educational piece that's not affecting the result that we desire, so I want to offer that as something that we consider as we continue to go forward, because it doesn't appear that what we're trying to accomplish is actually working as well as it could.
And I would agree with that statement. We relaunched our Sustainable Schools program for the school year after taking a break during COVID. I believe we only had six schools sign up for it.
We are working with each campus, doing waste audits and recycling audits, and every school was offered the opportunity to sign up and to have anyone from sustainability, anyone from our recycling education team come out and do presentations to the classes.
We've had a lot of takers, but not that many schools have signed up for the program, so if anyone you know has any sway with the principal, you may suggest that.
But we can also, individual teachers can reach out to us, even if the school isn't signed up, we would love to go out and provide more. And that's part of our core, so this doesn't really, it doesn't fall underneath the Sustainability Framework Fund as much, because that's part of our core daily activity.
Have you talked to the school board and to the superintendent about this, about education in the schools, rather than going to individual principals?
We work with the curriculum coordinators and we were at the in-service trainings this past summer for both upper and elementary schools. We have not done a presentation to the school board.
I really think, you know, what they're doing with putting solar on their schools now and the fact that they're trying to reduce their fossil fuel bus fleet and the whole thing, I think it would really be wise to go before the trustees.
We have a great relationship with their facilities department.
And Paul, I can't remember his last name. Yeah, I would really, you know, 100% go in and present to the board what's going on and how we want them to be part of it.
I just want to make sure we're staying on topic with education and outreach and that this $100,000, is this, when you talk about education and outreach funding, are we talking about?
This is at the sustainable schools program, so it would be different funding for this outreach for the schools. This is more community business oriented outreach funding, just to kind of bring us back to the topic.
I do have a question, and I have to make a comment about the private removal, because it was very jarring to see, and I just have a question of clarification for this.
So are you saying that this money is going to go towards more private removal, or just for this one specific to kind of fix the harm that has been done?
Education and outreach would be to turn Bowling Green into a demonstration area.
There could be additional private removal looking at our properties where some of our trees are being choked out by the privet. There may be additional private removal on public property, but we would try to restore that and have a full education program about the understanding of why we're doing it.
Okay, so I'm good with the restoration. I just was curious that if we were going to fund or use the fund for private removal, I request that the committee gets a presentation and is involved in the process and is able to explain best practices for when something like that happens again.
So, I just wanted, since that was specifically on that issue, I thought I would bring it up and ask and kind of clarify, you know, like, well, you know, if it's more of a homeless thing, then I don't know that our funding should go towards it.
So, just to comment.
All right. All right. So material resource management. We do have quite a bit with the comprehensive solid waste management strategy that will be taking on that this could be to help facilitate some of those coming on a little bit sooner, maybe some pilot diversion of some of our larger non problematic materials.
Some of the glass that we can't take through the drop off system, styrofoam, the large plastics, maybe some drop off events for those where we can compact those and ship them off.
One of the things we're working on right now is books. Pratt can't accept hardcover books, so we're working on a pilot to take our total books to another recycler. But just trying to divert as much as we can from appropriately from Pratt and from the landfill, if Pratt cannot take it.
Trash ballet, the green business program support. We have a lot of problems at apartments where they have trash ballet so maybe providing some clear bags to those apartments so that they understand that's the recycling.
Instead of them just providing a black bag, and it all goes in the trash.
There's a project working on replacing the containers on the square, the big bellies, with more appropriate containers and additional containers. I think we talked before about how when the big bellies were installed the waste profile for the square was so different than it is now.
So just putting the appropriate containers there, the organics program expansion, any support we need for the Dawn Order product campaign, increasing our sustainable purchasing.
Just including the education outreach and employer support.
I have one question about sustainable purchasing. Does that also relate to the city's green procurement program?
It does. It could cover an incremental cost if there was for a sustainable item.
Thanks.
And then our last topic area, resilience and public health. So the neighborhood gardens, we're looking at kind of a four quadrant, shallow model with raised beds, on-site composting, small riddle feed, just to track who's using those.
Drainage, helping drainage with the green infrastructure. And these cross over between different focus areas, you'll notice. If we deal with resilience and public health, it's also benefiting land use and it's also benefiting air quality and greenhouse gas.
Which is how our stuff is so unrelated. One thing we talked about was the heating and cooling stations and any way that we could harden those facilities, whether it's battery backup or backup water, whatever we would not be able to do, looking at those facilities.
Eco-friendly playgrounds, we talked about the wellness workout stations, and then the various trails again on the list here. Any additional comments on that?
I had something, I may have missed it. Is there any mention, I know we've got solar parking, shade structures, charging and battery storage. Do we have anything about community solar microgrid possible projects?
We don't have that in there right now.
Would it be possible to add that?
We could also look at that whenever we get the climate action plan back and see what those recommendations might look like from that document for next year.
I'm okay if you want to add that suggestion now.
I would like to, sure.
We do this as a new business because there's maybe some members who might not know what that is, and maybe at the end you can ask for a presentation on it, and then we can revisit that with more knowledge.
Okay, that sounds good. I also think that kind of dovetails with maybe the special meeting we had about conversation with EMA in a lot of ways. Anything with community solar installations. I think that's educating us about what community solar is.
So we'll bring that back up in here in a minute.
Thank you.
Any other questions? I just want to comment and say thank you so much for this detailed listen. Able to take all of our suggestions and the conversation and make something is really great, is this document. Thank you so much.
I'm excited about all the things we can do.
Looks great. All right, so we will go ahead and move to staff reports.
Yep. Did anyone have any questions about the gas well memorandum that was in the backup?
Just with information. Matt?
So we don't know anything about studies on plugged wells and integrity of those wells and other things like that because it seems like there's, there's no action on this, because this is beyond the HB40 questions of what the city can do.
I mean, they're, they're plugged and kind of the Railroad Commission is gone. Right. I mean, this is what I think out of this document.
Then it becomes the city's responsibility to think about the integrity of these boreholes that have been plugged with cement and the integrity of that cement.
And then what structures are being put potentially on top of those boreholes.
So I'm just, I'm thinking like my level of trust for the Railroad Commission is not very high.
My level of trust for Portland cement and lasting forever is not very high.
And I think we should be thinking preemptively or proactively about preventing houses or other structures being built on top of boreholes, whether they're plugged or they're inactive or anything.
But so like I appreciate the presentation, but I'm just, I mean, like my question mark, what do we know about the integrity over time of plugged wells? Because there's not a lot of research on that.
There's some growing research on that. There's question marks about those things.
So I think that would be my comment about this presentation. I mean, because it's great to see it, but it's like, so we can just build right on top of that.
Well, there's a, I think the city of Denton has, I get 10 foot. There's some.
Michael Gallegos, Director of Environmental Services and Sustainabilities. There is no restriction actually within that.
That's what you read through the first two paragraphs. Currently, our code does not have any restrictions, no setbacks, anything.
Once it becomes a plugged well, there is the restrictions under our code no longer apply at this point.
That's what I was clarifying. That was the question posed to me was what does our code do? Our code doesn't do anything.
There's not, I'm not up to speed on current research on doing activities on top of plugged or abandoned wells because you have two different types.
You have a plug that was actively producing and you have what's called a dry hole, which meant it was never producing.
So theoretically, it's a filled in area that never produced gas. Two different things.
But no, we don't have anything at this point. It could be for future discussion for sure. It's just not in the current code.
Because I believe that other cities actually do have some setbacks around plugged wells.
There are various, throughout the Metroplex, other parts of the state, yes, various cities have all different types of requirements,
whether it be markers, setback requirements, different things, just to prevent or control what can be built on top of that.
But our current code does not require that, okay?
I must be misremembering. I thought we had something in our gas well ordinance that was just like, it was something minuscule, but it was something.
So I must be remembering that. So maybe we can have a discussion more in the future and have the director come in about planning and talk about it.
Yeah, I think that would be important. Because plugging has increased, it seems like recently, because some of the prominent wells have been plugged with new developments coming in.
Thank you for the document and the information. It was helpful for us to get to where we are now. Thank you.
All right, so we will move on to new concluding items. Does anybody have anything for concluding new business?
Do you want to bring that kind of back up, Matt, or do you want to request a presentation?
I think another presentation will be good, and also to kind of get a scope of what some other cities are doing with setbacks around plugged wells and other things.
Okay. Ben?
And I'd like to add the community solar microgrid presentation.
Okay. All right. Anyone else? I would like to see if we can get our economic developer, our new economic developer to come speak to us about opportunities with pace, renewables, and preservation in regards to economic development.
And I think that's it. So we have three items to add in the matrix.
And you said about pace, renewables, and?
Just preservation. Just in general, you know, sustainability and economic development. Just kind of like a, those are just something I threw in, but an overall picture of how these play together.
Okay. Yep. All right. We will conclude the meeting at 2 0 6. Thank you, everyone, for your time. Everyone have a good weekend.