All right welcome. Welcome to the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee. It is one o'clock
and we are in the City Council Work Session Room and we do have a quorum. Everyone's here
today. Welcome. And we will get started here with our first item for individual consideration.
Consider approval of the January 27, 2023 minutes and today we do have a speaker on
this item, William Minas. You want to come up and I think you have three minutes, is
that correct? Four minutes. And we actually are using the mics up above us today so make
sure and kind of project up. Okay. And she's going to time me so we've got four minutes.
Welcome. Good afternoon. My name is comic Bill. Bill Minas. I appreciate the time. I've
been here four times and I really enjoyed the information I've gathered here and I appreciate
all the work you do as volunteers. I was here at the last meeting and I heard Bill Shepard's
presentation on about how to make some changes for solar panels and the energy efficiency
program and so I wrote a long letter. I sent it to Catherine and she she forwarded the
bill and Bill called me up and we had a little bill on bill conversation there and so he
invited me on a little bit but then after I hung up I had a few I said wait a minute.
One thing he wants you know the $500,000 that's going towards solar panels he wants to move
that to the energy efficiency program because he says it's more bang for the buck for every
dollar you spend you'll you'll you'll reduce more kilowatts per hour. Well his problem
is because the solar panels were cities using less electricity which so they can't they're
charging us less it's throwing the city in the red. Well this would do it more wouldn't
it this making houses more efficient they'll lose less electricity and now we're in the
red five times. I don't know that's I didn't I didn't understand that at all and also noticed
that the energy efficiency last month not a dime had been spent out of it. You're not
going to gain a lot of efficiency if you never spend the money but I did pull it up and somehow
in January 35,000 was used so now it's down to 215,000. I think and I think the increasing
having a two-tier flat rate system one for solar panel people and one for homeowners is a rabbit
hole. You can so you're going to charge the same base rate for all solar panel owners whether they
have 12 pounds or whether they have 55 pounds and I can take you to a house on the corner street
it's 1100 square feet really maybe a low income family I don't know but I think 60 raising their
flat rate by $50 a month would be an impact on them. Also doesn't the same old truth I have an
electric car so I'm using more electricity I just bought this like a huge appliance and just got
moved in so that's just the opposite what maybe electric cars are offsetting the reduction of
electricity for solar panels. Also Bill never mentioned this thing about the mining deal we have
with crypto people. Isn't that half of our energy we use? I thought somehow that should be part of
the conversation because that enters into it it might make this all kind of insignificant.
Also I want to read one more thing oh guiding principles your guiding principles one of them
is maintain a diversified power supply portfolio while establishing aggressive energy and efficiency
constant and energy conservation programs aggressive energy efficiency and energy
conservation programs and now you want to increase the base for solar panel users
maybe you need to change your guiding principles if you recommend this thank you.
All right so we will move on to the consider approval of January 27,
2023 minutes does anyone have any comments? I would like to amend the minutes as they're listed
please okay so on the minutes it indicates that only two of our members were in favor of
the options presented under item D and I believe and I can't quote for VEDA but I had suggested
that I was at least in principle in favor of that option as well of what was presented and I would
like my name to be added to that approval list I remember that there was just one other layer
of consideration that I had a concern on but in general I did motion approval for that item as
the options were presented and I'd like it to be reflected in the minutes. Okay all right anyone
else have a comment on that? I'd get a motion for approval. I'll move approval of the minutes as amended. Okay second? All right all in favor all right can we please
amend those minutes to reflect that brand was in favor okay thank you we will move on to item B
receive a report hold a discussion regarding climate action and adaptation plan draft community
survey and meeting in a box engagement tools. Who's going to be presenting that to us today?
I think it's going to be Big E. So the engagement tools are in final close to final drafts I just
got another email with some changes but we wanted to give an opportunity for the committee to walk
through what will be going out to the community next week both the survey and the meeting in a
box tool we'll have the registration to request a meeting in a box live and I think that's all
like next week so we wanted that committee to have a chance to look at the tools before they go back
and we still have time to make any amendments that we need to based on recommendations.
Just a little break around so the progress to date and then we'll look at the community engagement
survey and review the meeting in a box. Just a little bit of history so the work plan
the selection of SSG we did the public engagement webinar back on December 14th and then the town
hall January 26th we were with this committee on the 27th we've reviewed the business's planning
analysis and then we presented to the council committee on the environment on non-wednesday.
So as I said the lunch week February 27th the survey will be live for a minimum of four weeks
we'll promote that on the website social media events we're talking about some tabling events
so that we can try to get more folks driven towards that survey so that we get as much
input as possible. SSG has a minimum threshold of 385 respondents that's really low to us we've
the last two surveys that I've done for sustainability and one for solid waste
we've had over 1000 respondents so I feel like we can definitely get there 385. It is a little
bit of a longer survey that's a concern for me but we've already made some recommendations to cut
down some of that length. So the meeting inbox the request form will be on the website we have it
going out in the March citizen connection so that it'll get in every utility bill account hands and
as I said in person virtual staff led or participant led options it'll be truly a box that we can hand
folks with all the tools they need to do the meeting and then all the feedback will be incorporated
moving forward. We're trying to get a standardized survey for participants from meeting in a box that
will be a much shorter how did the meeting go what were the conclusions from the meeting how
did the discussions go that will be standardized across the meeting in a box so that we're collecting
the same information from each meeting. We have a second town hall community workshop coming in March
and then we'll be back to this committee for a presentation also in March.
And then we have your document. We have a question. Yeah I'm sorry being a little
later to the party here but it helped me if you could talk a little about
what is the objective of the survey like are all the good ideas or whatever are you know all the
things we think are good ideas substantively for sustainability or you know leading good
ideas for sustainability and resilience in there and we want to know what's most palatable to the
public so because the idea is that we might not do some if the public didn't found them
unpalatable and we want to get like a rank sort out of that is that the goal? There is rank sorting
and I think it's more the palatability and then the readiness to adopt some of these changes
and is there an area where we need to do more education so that people understand what we're
actually leading up to you know we talked one of the questions we spent a lot of time on was
electric vehicle adoption you know is the opinion that there's not enough mechanics
in town for the EV population as it grows you know are you going to have concerns about having
your vehicle serviced you know can we find out what that actually looks like is that a true concern
for didn't so it might ultimately guide I'm trying to get a feel for like what do you do with the
output you know might it lead ultimately to phasing of the climate action plan is that kind of the
idea like what you know what has to happen before which which things yes and so some of them are
longer term some of them you know you can have some quick changes that might make a difference
you know in a short term window you know like a six month to a year but some of them are building
programs and you know an education piece for the community and then an implementation so a lot of
things that we work on you know you may have an education year before you move into the next steps
and yeah just moving adoption along okay yeah also I think you're already doing this so this is like
all a question but are you using the meetings as kind of communication checks on the way these
things are described because you know that's like a famous hole to walk walk into right with consumer
researchers sometimes just the way you put things people look at it or they think you need something
different like it's you know so are the kind of concepts getting the language around the concepts
getting refined out of the meetings that you've already had so I think so I think so especially
the consultant we we've had several discussions about what that looks like and what that looks
like here as well so it's interesting we we've had definitely some refining of the topics and
and then also as we have discussions with community members kind of backing up and seeing
what that means to them and making sure that there's a common understanding okay oh more
questions I have a question about the meetings well we have if when you have in-person meetings
will there be computers set up with the survey like there had been before like certain so that
people that come to the meeting can actually take the survey while they're there or no I think we
can do that um I know we'll have the QR code and it'll be mobile friendly so you can also do it on
your phone but we are doing some of our other recycling games and things like that with iPad
whenever we go out so yeah I mean just for those who may not be computer savvy or who may not be
able to you know do it from their home without internet or something just an option it's a
survey monkey form so we can also do a printout okay and have a paper copy this will make sure
we're capturing everything everything thank you and we can walk through both of these items really
quick just to give an overview so we'll take a look here at the survey first and as you stated
some of the outcomes here and so this will be reflected in the questions as well but basically
I'm taking a look at some of the background information related to climate change and where
folks are at on that as well as some of the barriers and then readiness for some of the
action items you'll notice in the questions that the action items are not called out specifically
it's more topic focused but the answers to those questions on the topics will lead to and especially
with those hurdles in mind what are going to be the action items that are going to help best
help residents overcome those hurdles towards those action items as we stated 385 respondents
and this is the PDF version that we have here today for you but this will all be in the survey
monkey platform and so we will be sending the results to SSG for analysis and then we'll also
be doing some internal sustainability staff analysis as well currently we're looking at a
four-week time frame so launching next week and being open for four weeks within the first two
weeks we'll do a gauge of where we're at on making sure that we have sort of an equitable sample of
the community and so we'll be checking in on that on a weekly basis if we need to increase the
time frame to either get to the respondent cap or to ensure that we have equity in the pool
we will do that at that time so the survey starts out with a lot of background information here on
climate change we did take this down a little bit we didn't want it to be too much of a barrier for
folks to be spending too much time on this and we also have the option if you do want to sort of go
through this and go right to the questions if it's something that you're already well versed on
and you're ready to take the survey you can do that as well again just to eliminate another
hurdle there but it describes how the plan came about and a little bit about the the city's current
goals and objectives like i said there so it talks about some of the impacts related to climate
change and basically for anybody that is going into this brand new it's the first two pages of
the survey but it does prep you to take the survey and answer all of those questions as informed as
you can be so as i said all of the questions are broken up into the different topic areas
the first section or topic area is about climate change in general how folks feel about some of the
the threats how they feel about denton and and denton's role in this and so that is the first
section after that we get into a little bit of background information focusing on the three main
sectors that are were a part of that greenhouse gas inventory that you saw and that's transportation
buildings and then the waste sector as well and so a little bit of background on emissions what
are our current emissions based on that baseline and where did they come from and then a little bit
of definitions there as well and so the first section is as we talked about a little bit all
in regards to transportation and so as i said really in these action item sections engaging
readiness engaging what are the hurdles for folks to overcome when it comes to some of these action
items and if you have any questions along the way feel free to jump in in the section and go ahead
yeah i had a question on uh it's page 11 where i see that
where industrial processes have not been estimated is there a timeline when we'll have that
that is not going to be included in the greenhouse gas inventory so the greenhouse
gas inventory for the climate plan is essentially finished and that was what was presented at the
two meetings ago uh two meetings ago and so um for those ones especially with those internal
processes now we have things like utility usage electricity and natural gas usage at those
industries but the internal processes are not estimated in the scope of this project
and uh one question under the scope too it says emissions from purchased and or acquired
what's the difference between purchased and acquired does that mean generated or um i will
have to double check on that and we can follow up on that absolutely anyone else have a question on
what we've heard so far oh i have one more okay may i yeah go ahead um i think it's on is it on
page six just an idea of what something means there's a term used called clean tech is that
on this page yeah there it's down in the circle on the right what is clean tech
um also potentially a good point for a definition there this this one came from ssg as a you know
standard photo for this survey and so we can follow up on that as well and is there any need
for desire to where we have energy efficient buildings to to maybe focus that a little more
and say all electric energy efficient buildings both residential and commercial
are you referring to this graphic specifically or in general yeah and then just in general
energy efficient buildings is pretty vague what makes a building energy efficient what would have
to be done in order to do that aside from windows and that sort of stuff the idea of well i mean
a lot of a lot of cities now are mandating new construction with all electric appliances as you
know and i didn't know if that was something that could be at least introduced and maybe it already
has been in this plan rather than just a blanket statement like energy efficient and i can talk to
you about the definition that you're using for this graphic great and i know that there is a like an
actual code in the building code that makes a building energy efficient yes and there were lead
um projects and now there's they're different so there's by acc yeah yeah and so like what
what are we striving for maybe are we striving for that are we striving for more than that
what is that what does that look like maybe as a destination and i will say if something isn't
specifically called out in the survey it doesn't necessarily mean that it's off the table by any
means i think it's really just gauging readiness and then from there we fit that into all of the
action items that are on the table well i think this might be specifically called out more because
we've had a full meeting about it and we have lots of money that's going into efficiency um so you
know that might energy efficiency building so that might of course yeah i just uh totally uh getting
where the comments are going i think the graphic is just high level categories but what this may
speak to is me for you know i know it's already long but uh you know maybe a little drill down
section on whether you're ready and motivated by this kind of energy efficient which energy
efficiency insulation windows this kind of thing like all electric you know that i think that's
requires like a drill down yeah you know these aren't and none of these are drill downs these are
just categories you know right so maybe like if if there's not a question or adding that as a as a
as a question or into an existing question or something about is your home would you consider
your home energy efficient or something yes and there there are a couple of energy efficiency
related questions all right so i think you're good yeah i was just concerned about any ambiguity
oh okay go ahead i am also kind of concerned about the length of this survey because it almost feels
like a focus group on your phone that it almost might make it more cluttered to give these really
granular definitions over every term that we have in here and so linking out i see beforehand you
linked out to like the the un's clinicals those i think would be really helpful if someone did have
a specific question but i worry that we're almost preventing more people from completing a full survey
by adding additional layers of information but hopefully to your point if there's a lack of
clarity about what does that mean what does that look like for here and especially too because our
state is a little bit different in the limitations we have for some of these categories it might be
something better served in those public meetings than within the survey specifically yeah and i
really think that the survey is to ask sort of intuitive questions about how folks feel about
things not about the individual actions themselves and then we base the actions and present them to
the community to your point to be discussed a little bit further in those public meeting settings
so and meeting in a box is something that gives the opportunity for that deeper dive if there's
a misunderstanding or a verification needed okay that's good so are you would you like to see this
shorter as much as this could be cleaned i think that helps people especially to if this is something
that they're taking we posted on our facebook pages and things like that and there's no there's no one
their staff or the consultant or otherwise to help walk through some of these i think the cleaner the
better and we can get down into the weeds and things in those platforms where there is a lot
more direct engagement with residents and we can really offer that clarity that they're looking for
or provide you know links within the text that can take them if they have different questions about
it i just feel like it's already quite a bulky 20 30 minutes is what i was reading on the anticipated
time to take it that's a it's a huge chunk of time i'll say we shared that concern striking the right
balance between are you informed enough that you feel comfortable answering the questions but like
you're saying not overburdening you and you know hoping that you know you still take the survey of
course which is the ultimate goal and so i will say that in the survey monkey version we've also
broken things out into cleaner paragraphs and things like that so it's it is less sort of
all coming at you at once and then similar questions here to waste and to buildings
those and then some small ones here related to land use and also a little bit related to
transportation there and then jt yes and i hope i'm on topic here there's some wording in and i
started this at the public presentation as well that carol gave this term that we're using in
question 21 i'm curious if we can workshop that a little bit or think about it i've noticed
this particularly online there's some pushback to that wording specifically with some case studies
in canada in the uk where they're of course we're not experiencing these problems on our own
and cities who have adopted models like that are getting a lot of public pushback just off of the
wording and i wonder if we can communicate the concept here and what it's intended to do not
necessarily keeping with that exact phrase what what didn't they like and what did it about i can
share some with katherine to distribute to the the group there's a couple news articles that
toss around some resistance to that term that it feels really restrictive that it's just a lack
it's an informational asymmetry between residents in those communities that are pushing for these
types of goals that don't necessarily understand what that does look like and apply in their local
context and so i think we can maybe dodge a bullet there just by changing the way that we're phrasing
this it was kind of astounding and prolific pushback just on the phrase there i will say
that we did add even just in the last few days this was one of the ones that we did add it to
include a little bit more information about what it is built into the question but even
even still i think we'll take another look at that so i appreciate it because in our
in all of our planning documents we talk about like mixed use
isn't that what this means essentially that would be more consistent i didn't know
let's think things it's mixed use so that everything you need is close
are we suggesting definitions to be put in here instead on number 21 our words other i think we
just need to see if they're they're 15 minute they were going to equates to what we talk about
with mixed use difference with our codes with our codes okay just to make sure it's consistent
okay thanks make sure we're not bringing the canadian term in here
and then of course finishing up here with the demographic information which is optional for
folks but that will help us make sure that we are equitably sampling the community with that i will
open it up a little bit are there any major sectors we feel are missing or need supplemented
huh well my question really is just more what what would be what will the output look like
i don't mean what will the actual answers be but you know what's what's uh yeah what's the template
what would what kind of uh what kind of metrics will come out of it sure um so ssg is going to
build these results into their modeling of action items and weigh them accordingly based on the
hurdles that they find and the readiness two different categories and two different items
so it's kind of rank order in terms of readiness it will it will feed into it it will not necessarily
be the only thing that is ranked in that uh in that calibration but it will feed into
that that final ranking of action i think to suggest uh i don't know if this term is still
in use but they might get it from this description a turf analysis which stands for total unduplicated
reach and frequency the idea is you don't want to know that just the same 10 people will do
everything you want to know what subset of all the options ultimately motivates the greatest
proportion of the sample so and just from that description i would be able to you know figure
out math to get that but that's the idea anybody else questions comments it's in the same spirit
uh i think i'm wondering because you said these results will be used with other things
i guess i thought uh i guess i'm wondering what what the other things are because my
impression is that uh in modeling this and thinking about it we're identifying what's
the most bang for the buck as it were to achieve our goals with this plan there's that and that
seemed more like what studied experts and you feel would come up with and then you want to serve it
the citizens for readiness for this so are we going to try to balance those things that basically
short answer yes okay all right
yeah so i yeah yeah on that so what happens if the survey and the the citizens it doesn't show
what the the action plan actually is proposing so i mean there's that
it could have been balance conflict potentially is that why you're i mean i'm wondering yeah right
yeah that's the balance it's a it's a community project we're doing so yeah yes i suppose if i
mean go ahead uh you know just to pre-reel a bit you know that you hope there's an event diagram
where you get or maybe it's a two by two matrix how hard things are to do you know how powerful
things are to do and how much impact they have and you hope there's something in the quadrant
that's sort of easy to do and has a lot of impact i don't know if there is anything like that right
it may turn out to be that people want to do all the things that are easy and they have no impact
that you know i mean i think that's what we got to find out yeah okay sorry to clarify they we're
going to be presenting this as an option to take after a lot of these public engagement meetings
right so there's an educational opportunity beforehand where there could be a little bit more
learned knowledge walking into it or yes and no okay yeah i think that i think that's our hope
and you know so we have our email list that we've been sort of cultivating over the last
couple months many of those folks have already attended at least one of our town calls and so
you know we feel pretty comfortable we're going to be sending out the survey option as well as the
meeting in the box option and then if they you know if they want to host a meeting bring in some
friends some organizational members things like that then we'll also have the survey available to
them directly after that you know they've learned something they feel a little bit more engaged
they're probably more likely to to take the survey rather than just coming at it kind of cold i
remember from carol's presentation last time that was a concern i vocalized then as well that there
this is a really technical field in changing the whole constructive economy and our built environment
that it is going to be a learned gap between maybe what the palatability or receptiveness for
our residents could be versus what we know and understand from best practices and industry
standards and the literature that these are our highest impact actions that we can tackle and if
that comes back as something that we're not ready for i almost wonder if you know i know this
community this community engagement process is probably going to be the most key point out of all
of this is how much have we actually done to communicate like the pressing need but also what
we do have a toolbox you know we're not just working blind here but i would hope that we really
do emphasize the education component and hopefully that feedback goes into the survey where we do have
an informed audience not just walking into it without any background on the issue
and to that i will also say that each one of us as individuals in this committee should be
available if anyone reaches out with questions to help go ahead yeah you know forgive me if this is
sort of in there and in my scan of it i didn't quite pick it up you know as people are evaluating
the different concepts you're mostly aware of the cost in terms of like does this seem like
you know something you could do or something would be difficult to do and you talk about readiness
or obstacles uh in the in the kind of preparatory bits before each section it gives you a general
idea like these would be good to do but i wonder i wonder if there's something that
the survey takers would understand that would be a shorthand for how much impact this would have
you know what's the like i'm going to make something up just to illustrate my point let's
say we had assigned to each one what percent of the goal it would it would achieve if the goal is
one big thing that's 100% and okay you're doing this tactic is worth 10% of the goal and now we
talk about good isn't bad because otherwise i'm only going to respond to do i have obstacles on
my ready book but maybe i would be ready to do more if i knew it had a greater impact you know
i mean and that in a way shouldn't we be kind of leading a little that way too like to you know
be saying you want to do this because this this has a lot of impact now let's talk about could you
you do it might make any sense am i just going on no no i understand what you're saying um i'm
trying to think about the survey design and where we might be able to plug that in without making
it longer yeah not a long description that's what i'm saying yeah deal my in my fantasy it's like
just a number that's there okay this one that's worth 15 golden tickets i know the golden ticket
or the how many stars is this yeah can i jump in because it isn't i'm sorry like is it in there
it's a need well it kind of says the transportation sector constitutes 53 percent of total emissions
yes that's all right but it doesn't really pop out in and i'm caught that in the presentation too
that i feel like that's the gorilla in the room or something you know this is this is really big and
it sort of says it there but doesn't yeah it's only a little it's an upper and a little sense
i'm not a survey designer so i don't know if there's any is there a way to those percentages
in the survey instead of just a bunch of words like make it more and then impact so that it's
more noticeable at the beginning of each section maybe i think you're after something with the
gold stars personally yeah it may be something as as simple as you know a mile relates to this
a kilowatt hour relates to this you know um so i think that something like that could be
included with the background section and i think at the section when you get to the section about
transportation you have something there as a reminder of what you read before or yeah just
something that favorites the impact percentages well i i was looking through the meeting in a box
slideshow but i don't see it because i'm skimming but i thought we had a emissions by sector
graph that if you just saw that and you pretty clearly see this is the biggest bar so that yeah
and less plus words and more pictures or i have a section for things that are just virtues
where where are you ecology scarf or something
okay and yeah i are are the normal what when when the city any any particular department announces
an initiative such as this or rate change or your ideas on this or that is there anything leading up
to the survey instead rather than boom here's the survey but there has been no
preconditioning of our audience to expect it and to be curious about it does this make any sense
the idea of that's yeah i can intervene usually on those type of things there's council work
sessions that you know come up and there's presentations and then the council says hey
let's put out a survey or there's recommendations you know there's there's that type of process so
i would say that our meetings act as as that precursor to the survey so if there's somebody
that's not familiar with our meetings maybe they can come back and watch them yeah i this sort of
goes into the same category as the survey being too long just in terms of people's attention spans
people's time i'm just trying to think of of of ways that this can really be talked up
in a positive way about how important it is
airspots i don't know the public access tv city tv station i mean this needs to be blitzed because
if if the response is anything like voter turnout we're in big trouble
you know and we need to we need to do something to stress that this is really important this is
about our future not in a negative way no no scare tactics or anything because it's not about that
but just positive positive input is how this is so important for this and this this reason just basic
ideas so we have water in 25 years so we have we don't we have
consistent electricity anything i mean anything so what is our current population
something like 135 000 that's how bright it was 150 000 i think it's 147 i mean it's the last one
i saw so i would think i mean if our goal is a thousand i would i would hope that it would be
more than that with our population the way that it is i would hope too but that still in a lot of
ways still acts like it's a little town it's kind of not how i mean this is a snarky way to put it
but it's not really a statistics work right once you get to a big enough sample of your
presidential polling where you're judging you know 100 million people or whatever you know they do it
off of a few thousand just because after a while the shape of the curve forms and you can get a
bigger pile than the curve stays the same shape more or less so you know that's a good that's a
good sample you've got a thousand i mean i i know you know it feels better obviously if you have
half the population but right no no statistical sampling but the 300 that they're saying is is
too low it's probably well i don't know if it's a math question honestly i mean you you're your
confidence intervals on your on your answers like if it's a percentage on 348 i'm gonna i'm gonna
wager uh you're somewhere in the plus or minus two points with 90 confidence like if it says
you know 25 of the people feel this way if you do it off at 348 you're probably the right the
true answer is probably somewhere in like 23 to 27 you know that's not i can i'm not against bigger
samples but i'm just but i don't want to i wouldn't want anyone to have the impression that statistical
sampling is like doesn't work right so we'll have the webinar the initial webinar is online it lives
online so folks who watch that before they take the survey it's a good primer to get on dtv and
have a spot made for dtv that would probably take four or six weeks and that would be past the end
of the survey time that we have allotted for the study so we would have to push out the deliverable
date to do that we've had the two s five meetings we've had the town hall in the webinar we've been
sharing information about it and building the survey list or this email list so the one piece
i haven't done yet which i'm meeting with dinner for chronicle next week about doing the banner ads
on the drc online and the digital paper where we could get clicks that come to it
that's the one piece that we haven't built in yet but
probably we'll be able to get that up within a few weeks at the outside i think we'd get it up
sooner and i know there's good part available and perhaps even another article in the paper about
the plan in the survey
okay i think that would generate some more interest and i'll say as we shift to the meeting in a box
as well that we will definitely be almost reaching out more with this item i think than the survey
because they kind of go hand in hand and as as we already said this is a bit of a primer for that
and so i think this is something that we will be you know reaching out to folks quite a bit about
so we'll run through this quickly and the idea again is that a post so we will have a registration
form on our website for folks to sign up they can choose if they like to lead their own meeting
if they feel that they would like some staff assistance with that whether that be a quick
phone call for us to clarify some things in the intro or if it's us taking some time to go and
lead their meeting as well we're willing to do that and so we'll have that registration form
on there where they can pick a date and decide sort of what style they would like as catherine
said it'll be a kind of compact uh kit that they will get and it will include this presentation
the first part is instructions for them the goal here is to limit as many decisions as possible
and so you know there's a little bit of an icebreaker built in there if the folks don't
already know each other basically things that it's outlined for the host that you know you
don't have to make these decisions it's kind of start to finish what you can expect to do
um again it's it's during the meeting and so for the reason that um the idea is that community
this will be a community member led meeting it is not as heavy on the technical pieces
of these items there is a small amount of background but we don't want to put that
burden on community members to sort of educate themselves to the level where we are expecting
please explain you know the entire plan uh to folks so this is really um you know raising
awareness and gathering some high level ideas uh regarding the different action items uh so
very similar to the survey um it goes through the different topic areas um now we have narrowed this
down a bit um so we are very welcome to any notes or any um items that come out of the meeting we
definitely want to be able to capture that as kathryn said there is going to be a very very
short five question survey for individuals who participated in the meeting they will let us know
what meeting they participated in and answer five very short questions about how one how they felt
that the meeting went and also what their thoughts are on each of the different sectors one question
each to capture that and then we will also have an online form for the host to go and add their
open-ended notes from the meeting so general trends that they saw things like that and so we
will be capturing all of that information as well this is just a little bit of a sample of different
ways that the host or if they have a note taker even better can kind of gauge where folks are at
that attend their meeting yes so this is actually a physical meeting it's not a
remote it's people in somebody's living room uh essentially yes we're really hoping for
organizations that have sort of a public meeting space but we do also have an online option as well
so if folks want us to host an online meeting uh we we are willing to do that as well has this been
has this format been used before with issues or whatever kathryn you want to talk a little bit
about the dallas can you make the screen jt can you make the screen day for the folks at home on
um a little early maybe
okay
and we know that dallas worked with the meeting in the box concept
they did several hundred meetings whenever they were doing their climate action plan
do you remember the number i don't remember the exact number i think i can refresh that
and some jala a little right i thought they did bump up um i know that they they didn't have a lot
of takers at the beginning and then they started having a little bit of momentum and so they
extended it and um but it could be you know eight to ten people or less just small so this hasn't
been done in denton before this this format this is new
so when is this going to be the information about the this going to be disseminated to the public
brain has a question did you guys speak with the dallas office about how they got
this project framed up i've talked to sue about it in the past i'm just curious like what you said
there was like a kind of like a switch and then all of a sudden they got more uptake in people
hosting these meetings since we are there's a lot of information burden on the people doing that i
just wonder if they had maybe like a lessons learned that could help us get the ball rolling
on organizations to take it up well i'm going in the way back files here but i think they did a lot
of stuff left i don't know that there were as many community community left so do we actually
have a list of of organizations that can or will be contacted yes great is it at some point can we
get that list it's going to be coupled together from all of our um outreach lists but we could
probably share because we might see some things where we could add something to it anyway and i
can tell you generally it's um asia ways management companies our university contacts
local service organizations um just kind of any group that you can think of it might have a
nice contact list the chamber will be reached out to the chamber oh good um i think some of
the faith-based organizations are on the list that we have i was going to say if there's any
churches that would be good we have contacts um at several of the churches where we've worked with
them on recycling programs we're pulling from all of our lists so any suggestions open to suggestions
yeah you might you might have said it i'm just uh uh asking after hoa's neighborhood association
is that in your list too like this you know yeah let's say the obvious one we have um we have lists
pretty comprehensive list with recycling that we reach out to all the great all the groups that we
can adam ahead well are you going to keep going through the slides uh yeah we'll talk about a
little bit about the presentation itself yes and that's where my question is okay i'm not ahead of
the game um yeah so from there on forward um all of the slides will be available to uh the presenter
to go through and so that it is um you know consistent in that way throughout all of the
different meetings with the background information that's provided again sort of why why are we here
what are the goals of the city and how does that fit into the larger picture of what the climate
action plan is trying to achieve um very generic here on some of these questions um in terms of
just you know getting the conversation started and what the the meeting hopes to address um of
course the goal with the meeting in a box smaller groups a little bit more honest and relaxed
conversations there for folks and so that's really what we're hoping to get we'll be interested to
see um you know how those results track with the survey and things of that nature
uh as we said a little bit of background on uh the energy and emissions um again not as intense as
you'll see in the um in the town halls or in the recordings that are currently on the website
um for the um for any staff-led ones that we have you know internal staff will be prepped to answer
those questions but we want to make sure that the burden is not on community members to be
bombarded with questions that they may not be able to answer is this where your question
yeah I have a issue with at least the perceived inflation of energy and emissions in this
report our goal is not net zero energy so I don't know why we have a graph right away talking about
gigajoules when that's not the problem at least not the way we framed it the next graph has co2
equivalent emissions but that's by fuel so right away I feel like this is confusing for people
like are we trying to get net zero energy are we worth no it's emissions so I feel like we need some
refining on how we frame this problem and the goals with especially these graphs and I'm sorry
because I wasn't paying attention I didn't know industrial wasn't modeled in our or captured in
our inventory because here it has industrial if you go back to the next one is a pretty big chunk
of energy though so but what I don't know is is that all electricity and if it's all green
electricity then that's fine that's consistent with our goals so you can see how people would be like
well my gosh industrial is going to be a big problem and we don't even capture that in our
inventory but then we're have to say well no it's okay because it's all going to be green
or is it are they going to be using coal or who god knows what you know so do you see them saying
this point well taken I think switching this out to more of the emissions in general that you're
saying and I think I think that is well taken I think the by fuel gets a little bit a little
bit too deep on it for the the style of meaning that this is yeah it emissions by sector right
right yeah yes our if it's in there pardon me but is there a definition of co2e yes so there's a
glossary at the end of this so the gigajoules are in there too yes yeah well I mean I think this is
way over a lot of people's head and that they would be put off by this sort of thing if we say
it needs to be simple into the point I don't see this needs to be simplified because it's big it's
I could see how people would throw their hands up
quite well taken I think that we can definitely make that happen
I think maybe even this is you know a little bit more towards the simplification of what what do
things look like right yeah and so and again this one as well sort of you know what what form are
all action items going to take you know they're going to fall into one of these categories and
then really the presentation the main the bulk of it is you know what are the main areas that we have
work to do and you know let's have some conversations about what is most appealing and what the largest
hurdles are in each of these sections and so each one has some topic questions and and really I
think the big ones right are the same thing that we're trying to gather from the survey in terms
of what are the hurdles you know what would convince you to do something what what's in your way and I
think you know that is the the props of what we're hoping to get from the meetings just one other
thing in the campaigns past environmental campaigns that I've been involved in it's a matter of getting
a message out of what we need to do and why we need to do it and I think that anything that can be
that basic will go a lot further than than all the little figures and all that stuff here's why we
want to put this plan together boom here's what we can do boom if you want more information boom
go here at least something that the person's going to go oh wow that grabs somebody the city
needs to do this we need to do this and here's why you know it's just basic advertising go ahead
I simply just want to want to chime in and confirm the concept that he's presenting I'm a pastor I
generally had 30 to 40 minutes to have the impact the glossary alone is three pages long it would
take me 30 minutes to help people understand now I'm grabbing the average community in which I live
in this really needs to be brought down to a level and a language that the average layperson
can understand I would lose people in the first two or three minutes even trying to invite people
to this type of this is really high level my I'm a mastered degree individual this is high level
information to try and present to the average individual I think that's well taken and I think
even for the staff led ones of course just because we could does mean that we should for those so
well taken go ahead too I think this is into it's kind of completely compare with you I think this
format of public engagement is one of the best tools that we do have to emphasize those major
points that we're talking about to overcome the information separation that we have with
we're all sitting here we receive this every single meeting all of us are steeped
we represent our community because this is the issues that we care about my neighbor next door
my roommates don't have the same level of information that I think really just driving
those main points home this type of format would serve it really well because you do get to have
those really personal conversations here's what we're proposing here we know are the big impacts
and then I know this is partly to gauge the receptiveness as well as the same similar questions
as gets into the survey but to Ed's point and to to window's point I think this is
needs to be simplified and really just be a communication tool for what really matters
I think we need to be very careful because this is the community engagement part of it and I don't
want to drive them to such a narrow focus by telling them what we need them to do we need them
to tell us a good deal of that rather than it being and if we weren't going to do community
engagement we could just create a plan so it's there needs to be a balance there I understand
it's pretty high level we can work on the language we can work on
some more examples yet not to get too long it's going to be a balance and it may be better that
it be staff-led instead of citizen-led it may all be staff-led I think then and I totally go
what you're saying because I know we're really trying to avoid being prescriptive that I wonder
then if the purpose of this meeting is for the meeting in a box is to get that feedback or is
that what we're trying to achieve with the survey do we need these dual forms of tools or can we do
something more educational in this type of format and then get the receptiveness or the feedback in
the survey form I'm just wondering if we need what feels like overlapping goals with two different
tools that are trying to achieve it feels a little vague to me I just wonder to the simplification
message if this can be more of an educational component similar to the town halls about
what are these processes what do these look like and then use a separate tool for that feedback
I think I've struggled I want to get them before they answer you okay um I've struggled with that
I really didn't want these to come out at the same time
ideally there would have been the meeting in a box and then the survey later
ideally I do think that the folks who are engaged and who are passionate about the topic are going
to be the ones who jump in and take the survey right away I think that there is a huge segment
of folks hopefully a huge segment a segment that want to know more and we'll do the meeting in a
box and we'll get the engagement back from them and we may only get the brief where am I ready to
change in what we talked about in this meeting they might not ever go through the long survey
but we're going to still capture some of what they did and what they felt walking out of that
meeting ideally they'd be engaged enough to go take the survey initially it was just going to be
meeting in a box one person jot down what everybody thought and I'm like what if everybody
didn't think that so that's where we went back with probably five questions I think that everybody
every meeting of attendee can fill out one of those and we can tell what meeting they were at
and then we can also go back and look at what the meeting notes said if there were meeting notes
so we didn't want to miss the opportunity to capture what everyone was feeling walking out of that
yeah we need to find a balance I understand what you're saying it's not an easy topic
a component considered I don't see a train the trainer
component in here and I think that would be very very valuable to help promote it I'm thinking
block the block almost you know I'm thinking about the community of again which I live in
I would love to present something among these lines two out of me prepared for two hour up to
two hour meetings that's just not going to happen of course any community of which I have been in
business meetings you name it we're not trying to be too out so a train the trainer component would
I think would be very helpful for those who do have interest as you have just stated there are
folks that that would eat this stuff right we need to identify those and then we can help you or
utilize them to help get this message into the neighborhoods that's where it needs to be and
that would be a great way to filter down what's really needed if we didn't train the trainer
session and go through these initial slides so this is what we're trying to communicate how
best is that going to work for you there you go there you go and then I can see it simplified
simply or maybe even more simplistic and that allowed the trainer I'm taking that hat if you
move it I'm giving it to you yeah allow me to cut the information down to where the trainer can
present here's the state of the union ladies and gentlemen 25 years we may not have clean water to
drink 20 years what are your kids your grandkids going to do I'm going to his session yeah so we
want to make sure that people understand the severity of what it is we are doing this is a
very important matter yes we need your input yes we need your suggestions but yes we need some
commitment to hearing the steps that we need to take so that I can make sure my granddaughter
that clean drinking water in 25 years so if we can approach people you know but in a very simplistic
manner okay I got my preaching hat on and that's that's what we have to do we got a short period
of time to present here's the state of the union this is what happens if we don't make an adjustment
here's the chance here's the opportunities to participate to impact and affect our future
I think these are great comments we can take back to ssg and talk about how we might be able
to break this down a little bit more and then we can sit down and think too about how we want to
present this to the folks who are going to have meetings and just that it's more like climate
oriented I mean like I'm reading these and some of these you know some of the questions are like
the surveys that we see on parks and some of them like just the regular do you love living in your
city kind of question like you know that's that's not necessarily that's a good thing to know but
you know how does it relate to the climate action plan when we're trying to pare it down maybe we
just assume they all live in here well yeah I mean it's just kind of something that we're trying to
find you know minutes to take off I'll think I was behind you yeah I was just going to make
this I mean we we all have a lot of work to do because as far as I know
climate change has never been one of the top 10 priorities of the city
and it was not in the last list that came out that the mayor gave out climate change was not in
city's top 10 priorities we need to make it we need to do something to get into the top 10
and if that means I don't know what that means I don't know the
directions that one would take within the city hierarchy to get something like this
to where there's a united front here saying folks we need to protect our community from
from what's going on and if if I just it just burned me every time I would see that that was
never listed by the mayor or the council as council's top 10 priorities not really discussed
at uh retreats mentioned but not really discussed to the extent that it should be so I mean we've
got we've got to offset that and it does roll under sustainability environment which is the
the larger heading in the priorities this is a question I should have asked at the beginning of
the meeting in a box thing like asked for the questionnaire so what is the output what are
the answers that we will get but you know what form does it take what would you expect to report out
uh you know the outcome the output from these meeting boxers and integrated into the now that
it is happening simultaneously is it integrated into one big readout of the community that's real
meeting a box as this services this uh how does that work this one is less influential on the
actions this is more for the educational component and the um its purpose is to educate yes it is to
raise awareness of the climate action plan and what it is and then also gain as Catherine said
not missing the opportunity to gain some feedback but it is not going to be built in the same way
that the survey items are we will take a look at the overall what was the feeling from the meeting
in the box how does that compare to the survey but it may just be they they were similar they
were in agreement i wonder then uh you know if it's primarily cell you know less input uh i wonder
if they should be sequenced but but it's the opposite sequence that i think you were made
originally out of mine you're you're crafting the plan but we are crafting the plan based on
input from the survey where we have all the best ideas we think and we're going to find out what's
doable and what sequence and why that people will find palatable that's going to lead to a dynamite
plan that people will we hope will embrace then you sell that into the community through these
meetings that have much more of a pastor steven's uh approach you know that express urgency and call
for participation and you know it's it's uh it's not a survey tool anything i think to your point
for the reason that it does not hinge on the action items being developed we have no intention
of putting a hard stop to the meaning in the box the same way that we did the survey because those
are needed for the model whereas the meeting in the box results are not and so i think the intention
is to continue on with the meeting in the box as long as folks want them throughout the course
wouldn't you put different things in the box if you already had your crafted plan and you knew what
the highest priorities were that you needed this you know the residents to take action on i think
you can shift the action is part of one of the keywords right it's the climate action plan
you want people to take action i think it can shift as the town halls shift there's no town hall
that's going to be the same information twice and so i think as we enter those different sections
of the plan and what we're presenting in the town halls we can shift to the union box as well
something you want to think about though right okay thank you are you good
okay y'all have what you need going forward i think so yeah did you need any more questions
all right thank you so much all right so yeah we will move on to item c staff reports and the
matrix um i don't know that you guys take off in a little bit do you have anything
with the matrix if you'd like to change your ad
no i don't know i have one does anybody else have anything i might have okay all
go ahead i'm just looking at uh we have a adam brand requested a review of current development
codes parking minimums and on street parking would that include energy efficient building codes
is that is that no that would be under building codes okay then then i would like a report
or a presentation about the city's current green building codes
thank you um my question is i know that the um the speaker came up and mentioned the
denton data center and i actually have requested a presentation from dv on that and it says that
there's going to be a staff report um instead of a meeting or a presentation i if the if they can
put the energy usage in that staff report if they don't want to come and do an actual
presentation which eventually we may ask for um the energy usage of that data center and
and the offsets of that they can make sure and include that in the staff report i don't know
what how detailed or not they're planning on that being but um just to make sure that that's addressed
if possible i don't know that will be possible okay i will
talk to them and i know we it gets into the customer service side of it too
i'm sharing customer information so what just the overall usage of the data center
yeah so there is a bill that passed i think it was in 2021 that limits our ability to give
information about individual customers of our utilities can we abstract that data enough to
where maybe this is just based on industrial type or customer type to where we can get generalized
information over the these types of i think we're going in the direction of high energy users within
the city portfolio is there a way that that could be abstracted to whether or not identifying any
information with a particular customer i i don't know what's possible with that we'll have to
look at it and you may ask them if they'd rather do a presentation to us rather than a staff report
i mean either way we might be better that was the only thing that that i wanted to bring up okay
okay i think we're good we can move on to concluding items anybody have concluding items
no okay then we will end the meeting at 2 12 thank you very much thank you