Everybody speak up because we will be going back to work at the table for interesting.
All right everyone welcome to the sustainability framework advisory committee. We do have a quorum.
It is Friday August 23rd 2024 at 1 30 and we are in the city council work session room.
We will go ahead and begin our item for individual consideration. A consider approval of June 7 2024
minutes. Anybody have any clarification or questions about those? No I approve. Okay so we have
a motion to approve from Ed. I'll second. Item second. All in favor? Aye. Okay so we will move on to
B receive a report and hold a discussion regarding Greensense incentive program expenditures
updates and next steps.
So just wanted to give you an update on Greensense. It's been going very quickly. Very well received.
So we have some of the just a reminder about what revisions we made for 24.
Where the expenditures are falling out this year and then what our next steps are.
Just the background began in 2009. We haven't done a good update on it since fiscal year 18.
That was less than every day about some change so we were due for some updates. It's funded through
DME and only DME customers are eligible but we do manage that funding. Still comes out of the DME
budget but sustainability is responsible for management. We have energy efficiency focused
building envelope and building systems. This is kind of where the two categories for how the
revakes fall out most in line with what we've been talking about with the climate plan and
sustainability framework. And just a reminder we had one million approved for fiscal year 2024.
So this is just a reminder of how we increase the rebates to make them
more substantial. With the rising cost of everything it makes sense to go ahead and
increase those rebates make it a little bit more meaningful.
So as of 8/16
we have about 10 percent a little bit less than 10 percent of the funding remaining and it was
broken up about 57 percent went to HVAC and smart thermostat. The building envelope the
insulation weatherization type projects had about 19 percent of the funding. Transportation
the e-bike and the EV which we did halt those in the spring because we already exceeded what
we were planning to spend for those. That took about 13 percent of the funding and then the
annual fan giveaway we did the thousand fans again and that's about 3.5 percent of the budget.
So just some adjustments from running the program and running about 900 applications through
the program this year. We have some lessons learned. We want to change that
time frame after installation or purchase from 180 days to 90 days. So just within 90 days you need
to submit all your information if you're going to apply for a rebate. A little bit more outreach
to installers. We're having quite a few new installers and just need to have a better
communication with them about invoicing and documentation. It requires multiple phone calls
between the homeowner, the installer, building inspection sometimes to get all of the information
that we need to process the rebate so if they could include everything on the invoice it makes
it easier for the homeowner, makes it easier for them. With us going to the more substantial rebates
we moved from all of them being a bring sense credit on the bill to issuing checks. If we have
customers who say landlords who may get more than one rebate in a year we want an option to have
the electronic funds transfer so that we don't have to kind of check every time and then we want
to talk about shifting the e-bike and the ev off of the bring sense fund maybe to the sustainability
framework fund. So this was the amount remaining on this was on 86. I think this was 16 actually.
So you can see we have about 101,000 remaining. I think we've processed about 48,000 last week
and another 40,000 this week so we are right at the edge of that.
So on the electric vehicle and the electric bike we adjusted those from 45,000 for ev. We planned on
45 we adjusted it up with the things that trickled through how the payments come through. We ended up
spending 87,000 out of the bring sense fund for those and just under 50,000 for the e-bike.
We took that kind of out of the multifamily. We were rolling it forward quarter by quarter
to see if anybody had taken advantage of the multifamily and knew that there was a cushion we
could use for it. So that's how that worked out and we also didn't want it to
start biting away at our energy efficiency. So it was time to, they're well received.
Makes sense to try to continue them but not at the expense of energy efficiency.
So yes. So Katherine, can you go back to the, so you want to in this discussion now discuss
the shift or would that be, do you want to talk about that in our next discussion?
I think we could talk about it a little bit now and then, yeah.
So I do, I'm curious, so if we, if the multifamily is not being used and it was okay to take out and
adjust, fund the electric bike and vehicles, but we're going to move the propositions to move the
EV and e-bike out of this fund to the other fund, does that keep multifamily in there not being used
or, no, we would keep multifamily in there, but we need to do a better job of speaking to our
landlords and management companies about upgrading their property and just making them aware of the
program. This was such a big shift that it kind of overwhelmed our office of processing them.
Yeah, so it's something that we know we need to do. We're starting to make those inroads with
landlords right now, but we need to do it on a larger scale. Anybody have a question?
Just some questions. Do we know who buys e-bikes? Is there a, has there been a study done on
who buys income? We haven't done a study, we haven't done a study on that. I do,
been working on a bike survey to go out to everybody who received a rebate just to try
to get a little bit of that demographic information. I can tell you that the
total amount paid for e-bikes swings by very widely. It could be a $700, a $400 e-bike,
up to a $9,000 e-bike. So we do, this is just for me looking at the rebates as they come in.
Some of the addresses that are around campus, I think that's probably more students that are
using the bike as opposed to somebody who's using it maybe for recreation or replace trips. We had
somebody come out to pick up a fan in our office on Bay Hill on his e-bike that he'd gotten the
rebate for. And he came from north of, got the program at University. So they're getting used.
So is this a situation where if I were to apply for an incentive to get an e-bike, I would receive
them as incentive money after I purchased it. Is that correct? Okay, well here's where I have a
problem. What about lower income households who can't afford to put that money out or down
out front? Is there any way that, well I think there should be a policy based upon, you know,
you set the level. But for people who can't afford to put out whatever they need to put out to get
the incentive, I think there should be some sort of procedure where they can get what they want
and pay for it upon completion of the project. Or even in some cases a payment program if we're
really serious about energy equity in the community. I think we have to look at some aspect of that.
And I understand. I think discussing it further than that is getting us outside of what it's
posted for. It doesn't change how much is in the program on the health program. It's about how it's
used though, right? So, well, expenditures, updates, and next steps. So I just think discussing on
changing a program is not what it's posted for. Fair enough. Still got my message, right?
I guess in the end we can ask for a discussion on equality.
Any other questions? I have a short question on more of a clarification. You mentioned that
you reduced the deadline from 180 days to 90. What's the story there? Why did you do that?
It's a very long look back for people to turn things in and it's harder to get the information
the further away you get. We've had some that we're kind of struggling with and they're going
back and forth with installers and they can't get the information and we don't want to reject them
because it should qualify that they don't have the documentation to support it. We're hoping that the
90 days helps people focus on getting that in and getting it complete. Okay, so you're just
starting the 90 days deadline. You don't have experience with that yet? Don't have experience
with that yet. That's what we're proposing. Adam, do you have any questions? I do have a question
pertaining to the Green Sense program and the use of the money. It might not because there's not a
bullet point in it, but as far as how you use it in availability for multi-family and landlords,
do we have a how-to video posted on like D&E website or our sustainability site where
somebody like you walk them through the process because it could be kind of complicated for just
anyone to try to figure out? We could definitely look at that as part of our education about the
program. We're moving towards trying to do more videos. I mean, very fortunate, Marcom is very
supportive of the educational pieces. I think we could probably come up with something like that
and then our social media folks are great with fun little videos. Okay, all right, thank you.
So I guess is that it for this? Do y'all have any ideas? Are you happy with the rebates that we have
in here? Anything else you'd like to add? I hope at some point that something can be worked out
again for residential rooftop solar and battery storage especially. And as the summers get hotter,
I mean it's, we've got to act. It's not going to get better. We need to get ahead of things.
So I hope there will be a discussion regarding that coming up when the physical year starts in
October. Adam, I think you had a comment or question? I was just going to say I was kind
of waiting because I'm looking at our next item coming up and one of the proposals was shifting
one of these items to there. So I thought I would hold that conversation to that because then we'll
have a more comprehensive sense. But in general, if you're just asking for feedback, I think these
categories are great. It's my understanding, but correct me if I'm wrong, that the especially like
the HVAC and the building envelope things have some empirical studies behind it in terms of bang
for the buck, energy savings and CO2 reduction. That's a smart way to invest our money, right?
And that hasn't changed. We don't have the data or anything about that. No, we actually need to
get some updated estimates and then we'll do it after the end of this fiscal year when we have
the whole program we ever would have. Okay. Thank you, Catherine.
So we will move on to IMC, receive a report and hold the discussion
regarding the sustainability framework fund.
So sustainability framework fund. So just a little bit of background, the funding, the estimates and
the actual, the projects that we have undertaken and then we want to talk about the prioritization
and adjustments that we might make to the framework fund work plan.
The next steps. Before I move off this one, sorry, just a reminder, we have the four million
projection for '22, '23 and so we program for up to four million. Whenever that wasn't realized, we
took that same work plan and carried it forward through '23, '24 while we saw what the revenue
was actually going to come in and saw what we would actually have available. So we had the
five hundred thousand dollars with the seed money whenever the sustainability framework fund was
launched and then we got the four million that came in at five hundred thousand.
The budget for '24 was adopted for seven hundred and fifty thousand. We don't have the actual
budget but the projected revenue is eight hundred and ten thousand for the fund and then they're
planning eight hundred thousand for 2025. So any planning that we do and anything that we want to
add to the work plan, those are just the numbers we're reporting right now.
Just some of the projects that we have underway are completed and the costs for those
we just got our second round of air quality monitors and we'll be installing those and
hope to launch something soon on the dashboard so we can start sharing that data.
We have been working with the departments to try to support electric vehicle adoption. That was
one of the things that we were really interested in trying to get that adoption level up and let
folks maybe some early adopters see how they work and you know if they have an EP and if they don't
have a bad experience with it you know them they can they can show it to others in the in the city
that it can't work. We're supporting an electric fire engine that will be at station one and then
we're working with PD for therapy bikes this year. They purchased some last year PD parts and fire
have them and the bike officers love them. They're much more in the mix. They're not in the
car. If they're on the bike it's a lot easier for folks to talk to them and have better interactions
with the public. They use them around the square a lot during events. They're great. We don't have
another vehicle going through the item. So just a reminder we did just move forward with that work plan.
These are the budget members that we're working with.
And then we want to work on the prioritization. So just some ideas. Transportation shift EV and
EV right to the framework plan. Consider that and then energy conservation efficiency, water
conservation strategies, and then the privet restoration projects that we're working on with
parks where we're going to go back and replant. We'll continue that so that we see that through
in the end. And this is what we talked about about a year ago.
So what we're trying to do now is start to develop our 2025 work plan.
We'd like the committee to identify the priorities and then we will work with the team to
develop the scope and cost and see what that might look like when we build it into the plan.
And then we'll bring that back to the committee for review and then consideration for presentation
council action. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Adam would you like to
share your comments with this item? First of all just a question. Can you tell us what is the
source of the revenue for this fund? It is earmarked. The city council earmarked funds for the
sustainability framework fund and a couple of other funds whenever it was created in 2021.
So I think our plan is to have a discussion where we're going to talk about priorities.
I'll just kick the ball off, use that metaphor. Do we have criteria in mind for how we would
prioritize things? For example a couple things that come to my mind is we just have the climate
action plan which meshes with other plans so we can look to those plans to identify what are our
priority areas right. Built into those plans I also would imagine is some data some empirical
studies about where we would get the most benefit different kinds of benefits from spending money in
different markets so that that may be how we want to frame the discussion I don't know generally.
And then specifically I kind of liked your idea but I guess I want to hear more about it
of moving the EV and e-bike funding over here. It seems like it's kind of swapping some other
priorities in the other fund and we already are doing some electric vehicle work here so consolidating
that just as a first blush makes some sense to me so those are just my kind of initial thoughts
about how to go about doing this. If we did though would the process change because this sustainability
the framework fund isn't necessarily a rebate fund. It's not a rebate fund but we would only
be changing the funding source for the program. I mean we would have to work through that with
financing and just make sure that that all works. My concern would just be that it would just stick
out like it would be different and then okay so you have one that you're taking money you're
rebating from this bulk of money. Does it switch back and forth or are we pulling other things out
of green sense because you know what I'm saying like I don't know I mean it's a topic for discussion
but that's just one of my would be one of my concerns because of that. Well and it was a
great way to pilot the e-bike and the e-B but it's not necessarily an energy efficiency
program so it does make sense to move it off of DME and onto another sustainable source of funding
but we could we could air market of course we have to adopt a work plan and discuss that first
but we can figure out how to put something else on that. So we're saying because it's clean air
it it more satisfies I mean it's over here in this fund. It doesn't reduce energy pollution
it can reduce pollution absolutely. Right yeah yeah reduce vehicle almost travel and reduce
trips so. Adam I saw your hand up. Yeah I mean I don't know how we're approaching it maybe we're
just throwing stuff out there and we'll see. Another question I had was the air quality monitors
you had mentioned something I didn't quite catch it we had that down for two hundred thousand
dollars is that a program where we it was kind of a one-time thing where we're getting some
infrastructure in place and then that money could be available the next year to do something else
or is that going to be an ongoing expense? There is an ongoing expense for the data but the initial
cost the initial outlay for the monitors was one time and then there's recurring cost and
I think it's $28,000 I don't know don't quote me on that one but I'll look that out the money now.
Okay so because that's the follow-up then if there's some things we do with this fund
that are initial costs but then there's a follow-up cost we need to be sure to budget that in right
maybe this was 200,000 last year but this year it only needs to be 20 right but it does need
to be something. It does need to be something. Okay and we're trying to look over one-time purchases
so that we don't have that right. Right okay tell me if I get out of balance yeah
I'd just like to throw out an idea for a priority is that acceptable now? Absolutely. Yeah I would
like it if we looked into community solar as a project which has obvious benefits in reducing
pollution also feeds into the equity issue feeds into people who have trees and can't have solar
panels feeds into economic issues keeping keeping the prices down. There's really no downside
to community solar so I would definitely like to see that included as a priority.
And can you tell me a little bit more about I mean I have to do some research on that to put us
together so are you thinking what pieces of community solar are you thinking that this fund should go to
to purchase of land to installation to? Yes I mean there are models already Austin has a community
solar program so does San Antonio and run by the utilities so it would be a matter of I guess DME
stepping up to the plate and working on this it's to their advantage as well because it reduces
transmission costs infrastructure costs but there are models available both in Austin and San Antonio
and I'm sure other places too but those are the two that I found and as I say it's something that
is set up by by the utility because as you know Austin San Antonio both have their own utilities
just like we do so there's there's a model for it. I believe Austin San Antonio has a third party
that they work with on that yeah they do and it's pretty far outside of San Antonio
at least the most recent one was yeah well there was there was just another aspect of this when
when the DEC was being discussed and approved eventually their DME spoke about having
the possibility of putting in community solar or a solar field out by the DEC on the land there so
there is land available evidently for for this sort of thing so I'd like it to be looked into
as a priority. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Yeah I have a question about the
pre-beat removal and restoration so is this one time how many times a year you do that
and what do you mean by restoration? So we did one larger project over all the building green
and we have to go through a two year growing cycle approximately what best practices is two to three
years of remove mechanical removal and some treatment and then after we get past that
growing cycle where we don't see a lot of it coming back then we go in and do the restoration
with the native plants, pollinated plants. So how do you remove it chemically or goats? They've tried
parses use goats on that site we they did the mechanical removal with the forestry mulcher. Yeah so if
you remove the roots then we use less chemicals to kill and they were doing this but we we worked
with parks to develop SOP for the removal to make sure that it was the most effective means possible
so that we could get them. So you plan to do it every two years? The first pass is the hardest
and the most labor intensive so there's been a little bit of maintenance but not as much as we
thought we would. We've done a couple of different sites and used different methods to see what works
best. So it grows fast. It grows fast. Yes. It does grow fast. There's one on Spencer poster breaker where
they cleared between Spencer and DCTA. That one they treated a little bit differently and it came
back a lot shorter so trial and error but we're working on the parks properties. If we have an
opportunity to remove it before it gets out of control then they're going to take that
but we're working with them to help get that taken care of and then actually do the restoration
afterwards. So $48,000 do you think is enough?
I can talk to parks so if we think maybe more on that we can talk to parks and see what they have
coming up this year where we may need to do some of that and we can build that in. I can go do that.
Adam go ahead. So a couple of like process questions. One is in the process of setting this fund
I think I saw a flow chart you're talking to us and to council. Is there a public input or
I don't know how far this goes in terms of. No we have worked with the committee to develop a
recommendation for council and that's how we did the first two rounds so this would be the third
week. We don't have a community input per se on the prioritization. That's okay I just kind of
want to know because then a little more responsibility for us to try to think about all the interests and
things we can represent here on this committee. Which brings me to my next question was
this is a fund we've got eight hundred something ten thousand dollars I would say
which probably in the city's scheme of things not very much money and there's other funds out there
that do some things so for example I would love to spend eight hundred thousand dollars planting
trees okay but I don't know if that like isn't there there's other programs like KDB has its
tree giveaway and there's other things and parks has their tree planting parks has things so I'd
love to spend eight hundred thousand dollars buying up green space to preserve land but
that gets rolled there's other mechanisms that that gets funded through so when I look at this
list it seems like part of what's going on here is these are worthy things that doesn't have another
home to get funded through is that fair to say like nobody else was going to electrify a fire engine
that's a cool thing to do I think that's probably very accurate statement okay and then we've got
this other fund which is doing a lot of the energy efficiency stuff but it seems like there's such a
demand for that that you could look at this fund in that like too and there'd be a demand for more
of that would you say like if we added we're not going to do another climate action plan right so
let's say there's 140,000 we could add more building envelope help or not we could good so if we're
looking at the so if we look at the 750 or the 810 from this year
you think about planning for that and maybe 25 percent more
programs I think that that's a good number so so we can just kind of take a fresh start going
forward looking at the 810 and with everything being one times for the most part we can build
in that continuing cost for the monitors but everything else is kind of a one-time or is a
one-time so well I guess what I'm asking is we could add different kinds of things yes because
interview efficiency not necessarily reflected here okay right right this could be something that
we haven't identified another source exactly for funding for that and we have a crosswalk
that would probably help kind of see where the other departments are doing things
we it was presented with the climate action plan but we could do a little bit deeper
data on that and how they're funding and what they're working on okay all of that is a setup
thank you my own sense of what I would prioritize would be things in the transportation sector so
these vehicles the bikes and the reason for that is because I think one of our big problems that
we've discussed through the climate action plan on other discussions is a local air quality
and I feel like here's a place where we could make headway on that so that would be a priority
for me I also second ed's idea that sounds pretty cool too yeah sorry okay oh yeah I was just going
to say that anytime say we discussed this here anytime an item gets to council there will be
public input for people to speak on it before they vote on something right so that's there's always
that just answer the question thank you well I feel like we've got a pretty good start here
and some places to go for priorities I think that if whenever it comes back maybe have a better idea
of what was one time what's reoccurring what will fall off you know like you know maybe if there's
maybe if parks can pick up the restoration or the privet or whatever out of some of their fund
I don't know necessarily how why that would keep ending up in ours I think maybe if they
have the word for it that would just be my my suggestion there on that reducing reducing the
pollution and making our air quality better is a goal here so whatever priorities we can move
over to this fund to do those things for the health of our residents the better
that that would just be my idea
I think I think we're good you have another comment
I have only one concern about I agree with the transportation completely but I my wildest dreams
I can't see people riding e-bikes when it's 105 106 107 degrees out so I think there's we we have
to look at not only clearing the air but we also have to look at initiatives
that fight climate change in other ways too
and that's why I'm quite adamant about things like renewable energy
that's a given I don't see EVs or electric bikes as being practical in some ways but in others
you know what's amazing I don't know if you saw the saw the article in the newspaper but
last week at Nettie Schultz elementary school is this on topic yes it's on topic it's about the heat
the the kids came out to get on their bikes after school and all their tires were flat
because the heat had melted the inner tubes I know I'm pushing it here but I mean that's what
that's what the earth it's it's urgent it is really urgent and the more we can do to get ahead
of the eight ball on this the better so risk my risk my case thank you and then on the priorities
for us too since we're in a drought too for our water conservation because of certain issues
I would say maybe move that up because that's going to be more likely every summer a thing that
we're you know experiencing and I know that we have the warnings and the requests for people but
I see water going off every day all times a day no matter what we say with our you know
only water once if you're odd or even nobody's paying attention so you know if we're going to
run out of water there should be some other kind of notification system for the threat for the
people and along adam's comment we're working closely with water and they just brought someone
in to work on the enforcement so education first a lot of folks just don't understand what it means
or didn't get the message so I feel I didn't know that so we do have tools to use there and water's
proposing some other things in the next budget year that I think will complement what we do
and I also don't think they know the seriousness of it you know I mean because we've always had
well it's it's you know well they see the legs full yeah um yeah just to follow up because on
both of these comments I'm glad you said something about water because I had been wondering but I
just didn't know what we could do in the budget so it's glad that I'm glad to hear there's some
ideas coming out there so maybe in addition to enforcement and notification if there are some
technologies or something for increased efficiency and we can identify big users where we could put
something in place that really gives a lot of reduced use without hurting whatever they're
doing in their operations that would be really cool I just don't know enough and then on ed's
point that's interesting about the bikes I think the bikes still should be in there but I also when
I said electrification and transportation I am talking about vehicles as well I mean I know
plenty of folks who want to get an electric vehicle but they're just worried about the
infrastructure to charge it and I know with our little bucket of money we can't maybe do much but
maybe we could strike a blow in that direction to build some more infrastructure to help this
nation technology get off the ground so that's kind of what I meant that in addition
just some things about water water efficiency I think the the way we do irrigation now is
not sustainable first of all and then second let's give up on this green lawn that we have a passion
for let's go native let's go plant native plants which do not require fertilizers and lots of water
that's my day and we need to rethink the irrigation I mean people need to rethink the irrigation not
spraying in the air just dripping those native plants that then use mulch around them on our
on this fund underwater I don't did we talk about rebates for smart watering systems in this fund
under that conservation I mean if we're talking about having money left over
so maybe maybe just add that to some priorities I mean if we're going to start rebating people
maybe adding water conservation under some of those rebates we did call out irrigation incentives
I wanted to double check so we got irrigation incentives smart controllers trip and then the
workshops that we put on so okay okay so adding that maybe even the irrigation tune-up
incentive like we do for the HVAC tune-ups we have the infrastructure here to process it so
okay well I think that's all for this item if you have enough to kind of go on
we will move on to our next item staff reports we have the green sense business program
and the matrix does anybody have comments about either one of those
I have some stuff for the matrix okay I want to go Catherine get situated thank you
you have some questions about it you want to add to it I'd like to add to it okay yeah all right
so we're not going to have the other presentation what's the other presentation
that you did both oh you did the green business oh well that's under staff reports do you have
questions about the green business that's not a presentation it's not a presentation okay if
you have a question about it at this point you can ask oh yeah I have a question about it
is the chamber of commerce involved in it too we presented to the economic development partnership
born last week and we got feedback from businesses and requested feedback from businesses in the
chamber and our economic development folks are they positive yes it was good thank you
okay let's move down to the matrix okay thank you since we've adopted a climate action plan
I'd appreciate a presentation on the priorities and timelines for adopting
those priority policies in other words I'd like to see whatever blueprint is being put together
to enact ordinances supporting what is presented in the climate action plan
then I'd like to go have a discussion of equity issues
and solutions for low-income homeowners who cannot afford to pay out front for incentivized
improvements I'd like a discussion about the benefits of community solar especially for
lower-income households have there been any links to the inflation reduction reduction act website
regarding the the sustainability initiatives that are listed there not yet okay but will that
happen do you think okay thank you and I think one last thing oh if could we get a report on
if or what the city if if the city has applied for and received any IRA grants
and finally I'd like a progress report on the status of the dent and renewable resource plan
the revision of that see how that's coming along thank you and I think that one's on our matrix
to be scheduled
it is on the matrix but I've been received information that
well I'd like to find out if it's on track
I mean I just second Ed's first proposal because that's what I was going to suggest is now that
we have this climate action plan has been approved I'd love to have a discussion about how we can
start implementing it and we will move to number two concluding items
I would I do have something this is my very last meeting today and so I would like to thank
the members board members and staff for all your work this last few years
I had the time of my life serving on this board so thank you all thank you thank you thank you very
much all right and with that we will close the meeting at 2 14 thank you