May 27, 2026 Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee on 2026-05-27 1:00 PM

Good afternoon. This is the meeting of the Sustainability Framework Advisory Committee on May 27, 2026. We have a quorum today, so we will proceed with approval of February 25, 2026 minutes. Any discussion regarding those minutes? Any motions to approve? Okay, Mr. Helms, seconded by Mr. Richter. All in favor of approval? Second item, item B is to consider approval of the March 25, 2026 meeting. Any discussion? Motions to approve? Motion to approve. No. Second. Richter. All in favor of approving? Aye. I've got abstain, I think, from these ones. Okay. Mr. Briegel is abstaining because he was not present. Do I, I mean that's a process question, I guess. So, you know, if you wish to abstain, that's permissible for you to do that. Okay. Dr. Briegel abstains. Item C, oh wait, did we vote on that? Yeah, we did. Item C, receipt will be court hold discussion and give staff direction on the update of 2024-2025 fiscal year and 2025- 2026 fiscal year to date, sustainability framework fund incentive programs. The sustainability framework fund incentives programs estimated greenhouse gas emissions reduction. And we're by discussion . Mr. Chair, did you do the April 22 minutes? I thought I did. No, we did too. We did do the April 22. Oh, it's not, what, oh no wonder. I had the April 22 agenda. Pardon me. Okay. Third, consider approval of the April 22, 2026 minutes. Any discussion? Any motions? Motion to approve. Seconded. Dr. Briegel? Abstaining? I could vote. You want me to approve these? Yeah. It's not what I want you to do, it's what you want to do. Yeah, no, I'll vote for this one. Yeah. Okay. So majority in favor of adopting those minutes of April 22. Now, the next item is to receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction on the update of the 2024-2025 fiscal year and 2025-2026 fiscal year to date, sustainability framework fund incentive programs, estimated greenhouse gas emissions reduction. We have a presentation. All right. Good afternoon, committee, committee chair. My name is Caitlin Mather. I'm one of the conservation program coordinators in the sustainability division. It's a bit of a mouthful, but I want to talk to you guys about the sustainability framework fund incentive program, the results and greenhouse gas emissions avoidance from starting last fiscal year through quarter two of this current fiscal year. So just a brief background, mostly for those watching at home, the sustainability framework advisory committee was established to advise on the implementation of the city's sustainability framework, which is a living document. And the sustainability framework fund, its revenues and expenditures is adopted annually as part of the annual program of services. And the framework fund provides funding for many one time and ongoing projects, including our ongoing residential incentives for electric vehicles or EVs, as well as e-bikes and electric lawn equipment. And these programs are meant to incentivize and encourage city residents to reduce emissions from gasoline power transportation and the water. So this table right here shows the rebates awarded by fiscal year. So just a reminder, the EV and e-bike rebates were originally offered as part of the greensense energy efficiency incentive program. This program was funded by Denton municipal electric and starting last fiscal year in the spring, the rebates were relaunched as part of their own incentive program. And the electric lawn equipment program started as a pilot last summer and last fiscal year. And so far, what's looking like just like last fiscal year, we will, we are on track to reach the funding expenditures for electric lawn equipment. It's looking like that will be the case for e-bike and we are seeing an increase. It isn't the same, it doesn't show it. It's a little old, but we are, we are having an increased EV applications as well. So to help gauge performance of the framework fund incentives, staff sent out surveys to recipients of the framework fund incentives. These surveys were designed to gather information to better estimate greenhouse gas emissions avoided by each rebate type. Rebates provided, sorry, respondents provided information like vehicle trips, miles traveled round trip, use of e-bikes in place of gas powered vehicles and use of electric in place of gasoline lawn equipment. So we had a lot of surveys distributed and even though we only have about 30, 40 percent response rate, it was just in a few weeks. So we had a lot of people reaching out and talking with us about these rebates. Excuse me, could we possibly get copies of what these surveys were, what the questions were and percentage of the answers and that sort of thing? Of course. Yeah. Thank you. So next I'll just go over some survey highlights and some greenhouse gas emissions estimates. Again, these are estimates just like we did for the Green Sense rebates a while back. So between last fiscal year and through quarter two of this fiscal year, there were 135 EV rebates awarded. So how did I go about calculating emissions avoided? So the EPA reports that the average gasoline powered car produces about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in a year or about 8,900 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. And again, this is just carbon dioxide. This is not including the other emissions associated with car exhausts like NOx or volatile organic compounds, things like that. And then the Federal Highway Administration reports that the average Texan drives approximately 15,000 miles in a year. Texas is big, we really like to travel. And then of course the average fuel economy of the average gasoline powered car is about 25 miles per gallon. So using this math and looking at the 135 EV rebates awarded, these rebates helped contribute to the avoidance of 500,909 tons of carbon dioxide in one year. And then we've got some interesting survey highlights down below. So starting on the left, figure one, majority of our survey respondents, about 86% of the ones that completed the survey report that they travel anywhere from one to 50 miles per day. And then figure two on the right shows the percentage of trips made using an EV are survey recipients. Majority of them are using it for at least a quarter of their trips, if not every trip. Can I ask another question real quick? I have owned an electric vehicle since 2019 and I haven't, I didn't receive a survey. Is there a reason why it was certain, just a random selection or how was that done? So we can check. We can check, yeah. Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks. Of course. Next we'll go into the e-bike. So these are conservative estimates. So between last fiscal year and through quarter two of this fiscal year, there are 188 e-bike rebates awarded. And nearly half of the respondents of the survey that have received an e-bike rebate report using their bike to travel around one to five miles round trip. So in figure three on the top right hand side, these are our survey results. And again, 28 people total, nearly 50% report at least using their bike for one to five miles round trip. We've got several that are reporting using their e-bike even further. But if we use the same math that we use for the electric vehicle greenhouse gas emissions avoidance, and we just look at the 28 respondents who report traveling at least five miles round trip, this is equivalent to the avoidance of 33.46 tons of carbon dioxide. Again, this is a very conservative estimate and it's just based on the 28 respondents who reported traveling at least five miles round trip. And then figure four on the left of our e-bike rebate recipients who completed the survey, they report that they primarily use their e-bike to commute to work or school, running errands, either exercising or fitness or other forms of recreation. And of the recipients who listed other, they say all of the above, which we love to see. And then figure five on the bottom right hand corner shows of the survey respondents, they report almost 50% report using their e-bike at least a few times a week. Almost 30% report using it at least daily. And then finally we'll talk a little bit about the electric lawn equipment. So most people don't think of lawn equipment when they think of air pollution, but it's a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the local environment. The research is a little spotty. So of the research available, some of them are EPA reports. EPA reports one hour of operating a new gas powered lawn m ower emits the same amount of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide that's driving a new car 45 miles. Additionally, the emissions from powering a two stroke gas stream trimmer for just one hour is equivalent to driving a gas powered car for approximately 300 miles. So based on the limited research available on emissions from gas powered lawn equipment, we can conclude that just from the lawn mower rebates and stream trimmer rebates alone, which is 366, these electric lawn equipment purchases help to avoid approximately 11,617 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted to the environment. Again, these are very conservative estimates. It is likely the greenhouse gas emissions avoidance is a lot higher if we include it in the other rebates. Quick question on the second bullet point, it just says emissions. Is that VOC and NO like the first bullet point? It's a great question. I believe it's carbon dioxide, but I can confirm. Okay. Thank you. All right. And again, these are conservative estimates just based on the limited data that's available. That's the only, I only included electric lawn equipment and stream trimmers. And figure nine shows from our survey respondents, many of them report they choosing electric over gasoline powered lawn equipment. Reasons for choosing electric, they like the lower maintenance. They like the quieter operation. It's lightweight and easier to handle. So it's more inclusive. And then finally, throughout all of our rebate types, our respondents reports that environmental health benefits are the main contributor to choosing electric. I'm assuming in the survey, they were able to select multiple responses. Yes, that was a mistake on my part. No, no. Yes, there were multiple respondents. So it's used the results a little. Okay. So this is reflective of all the respondents selecting all the reasons that they elected to come to the reading. Yes, that was an oversight on my part, but they also had an open response where people could type in what they wanted, I believe. And it just corroborates the results that we have. All right. And finally, an additional $50 is awarded to residents who purchase an electric lawnmower and subsequently disposed of their existing gas powered lawnmower, either through a curbside pickup or a drop off at home chemical collection . So this table shows the number of lawnmower rebates awarded by fiscal year and the number of turn-ins. I want to make a note that the 83 reported for this fiscal year is the correct number, not 85 that's on your agenda. And so of the 262 total residents who received an electric lawnmower rebate, 73 of which disposed of their existing gas powered lawnmowers. So that's about 28%, which further ensures that these gas powered lawnmowers are not being in use in the community to air pollution in our local environment. And we can see it's really starting to pick up the popularity of turning in the gas powered lawnmower. We can see in this fiscal year compared to this time last year, we're getting more people that are turning in their existing gas powered lawnmower. Did anything change with the incentive or did it just happen? I think just with the word getting out. Yeah. You know, last year was the pilot program. So the word's getting out and people are taking advantage of it. So finally, some next steps. We're just continuing with all of our rebate programs. We 're continuing to track effectiveness, program allocations and continuing to live up to the program as needed. And we're continuing working to identify opportunities for municipal operations to incorporate electric lawnmower and move to our inventory. And with that, I thank you very much for your time and I'll take any questions. Any questions? I guess I'm just kind of curious because just by the numbers and I understand the purpose of this was just to kind of explore the direct impact as best as we can assume for what these rebates are getting us for avoided emissions . If we were to go kind of crazy with this and look at, you know, all the wraparound needs or infrastructure costs, I guess for the record, just looking at the numbers, it would show that our EV program is really good at avoided emissions compared to an E-bike program. When if you look at the total embodied carbon of the construction of the car or the infrastructure needs for that vehicle, it just feels like we're waiting at like, oh more EVs you guys. That I'm just curious for what we're interested in regarding the impact of what we're doing with these rebates. Is there some way that you would consider the total value perhaps in a dollar term or however we'd like to think about it for what might help us prioritize or direct additional programming to each of these different categories? Like is there some sort of equivalency we could consider that might just make it a little more even for each of the separate? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah we can look into that and look at equivalencies. Because yeah we're just looking at direct emissions within the city. Right, yeah right. Yeah I just wanted to say I'm sort of in a way on the ground floor of this program because my wife and I were adamant pushers of this, gosh I don't know how many years ago, but I just want to say that's not the point of what I'm saying. It's great to see that from that perspective the progress that is being made and I thank you for all the work that goes into this and I hope we will continue, I know we will continue to build upon this because it's a great great positive thing for the city and it's really setting an example for what we need to do in the future. Thank you. Can you tell if these are repeat applicants or are they new applicants? Is that something that you ask? Yes we can tell. For the different rebates they can apply for multiple rebates. For the e-bikes you can get two per home so we do account for duplicates. I 'll just add that we are seeing a lot of crossover from rebate programs. We may get them in the door on an EV or e-bike and they get long and then vice versa. I personally was not answering your question but we've just seen since we've launched our new sustainability incentives webpage they're all on one landing page. We've seen a lot of crossover. Anything else? Thanks. Thank you. Okay our next item is to receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding projects and programs and prioritize funding for the development of a fiscal year 2026-2027 sustainability framework fund work plan for city council consideration. Okay. I'm going to take this one today even though it says Jalisa . We've changed back and forth on this one a couple of times. So today I really want this to be a conversation about the framework fund work plan. Sorry I was writing my notes. I'll go through a few highlights for us to think about as part of our conversation but that I really want to get the committee's feedback. So just some highlights. Framework fund was established in 2021. It's guided by the annual work plan and funding is adopted as part of the annual program of services. For 26-27 we do not have a budget estimate yet but we're going to work with a planning budget of a million which is what we 've used for this past planning window. We can look at a mix of ongoing and one-time projects and then discuss caring over our existing programs. So on the ongoing projects and programs we have 150,000 identified for EV rebates, 100 for e-bike, 100 for lawn. The minor home repair efficiency program we have 350 budgeted for that. It's had a little bit of a slow start. We're not going to reach that but we're seeing a lot of movement for the homes that we are working with. It's interesting to see what needs to be addressed in these minor repair homes. And then the air quality monitors ongoing maintenance and repairs. And while we're here I'll just go ahead and update where we are on EV. We're at 89,000 on EV rebates right now, paid and pending. We're at 78,600 on e- bike. We're at 70,500 on lawn. Yeah I have reasons too that you don't think that I am. The city fleet support. We have four or five new EV vehicles that we've helped support this budget year. I think one more coming. We bought another round of the park's electric mowers. Those are working fabulously for them so they bought an additional round of those and we'll carry that forward into the next budget year. We've committed to three years of those mower purchases. And then we're working with parks on identifying. We've identified a handful of median projects that we want to do for the low water use. It's going to be an interesting mix. Some are full sun where we're going to try some buffalo grass. Others are plantings in shade areas. Some of it's on carrel. So there'll be a mix around town where we can try different tactics and see what works. Okay and that moves into the discussion. Do you have any feedback about ongoing, existing? Just kind of picking your brain a little bit on the fleet support. Just in your conversations with I guess it's supposed to procurement mostly. Is that triggering an actual opt-in where we would have gone for a combustion engine? We are going to go for an EV because that support exists or it's already in some plan a fleet to lean in that direction with their much more significant budget than our sustainability fund? The sustainability fund is just to help with that income and cost. So if they have a vehicle replacement funded and they need additional to go to an EV, what we've done is 10 percent of that cost roughly is about that increase that you would see to go from the internal combustion to EV. So that's what we're focusing on. As we get more EVs in the fleet, I think we'll see more departments asking for them. Right now it's more we're making that option available and we're trying to encourage them to to choose an EV option whenever they go for fleet repl acements. Hope to have a little bit more push behind that going forward. Right now it's just an option for fleet to go with EV. All right thank you. I have a question. Are the sustainability framework fund and the green sense fund separate? Yes. Okay. And just a reminder for everybody, green sense is the energy efficiency portion of the incentives and then the framework fund are the air quality related. Great. And the mic. Catherine, those dollar amounts, were they just were they tied to any kind of emission reduction goals or are they just arbitrary? They're not tied to the plan. And then the $7,500 for the air quality monitors, what does that buy exactly? That helps cover the ongoing data fees and then some maintenance that we have to perform to replace the payout sensors. Okay . Things like that. Okay can we just so big picture we've got most of the money going towards incentivizing electrification in one way or another right and then another big chunk for water basically water reduction. And I'm just like you wanted to have a big picture conversation so I'm looking at our focus areas like in the sustainability framework plan. It kind of makes I'm just wondering like does it make sense? Well the electrification touches on a lot of those focus areas so I feel like that is a good way to spend the money right energy air quality right with those emissions. It helps us reach our climate goals right the and transportation some of those goals. What's not represented maybe worth discussing is maybe more land use ways to spend that money and also like materials management but maybe that's not where this money is best spent. Plus there's like we have these programs going already so they they get their own momentum and it kind of makes sense like Ed is saying to build on what we have and it does seem like it's going well so I'm not proposing that we make radical changes just in the spirit of you saying we could have a discussion about maybe some of the focus areas that aren't represented. The the medians tie the water in land use so I think that that I think that's going to be a good program it's just taking a little bit more time to get off the ground looking at other land use. When you start looking at the budget available it's not a big impact on a lot of land use projects and there may be money in other budgets that address those right instead of the framework right. I think I share that perspective frankly I feel that perhaps it's more of the jurisdiction of P&Z and council to make land use decisions and land use management decisions than our fund as small as it is I think we do have the most direct impact in as you said like meeting that last step that last mile of I was evaluating buying a new combustion mower and this incentive is here that I'm going to switch over this and perhaps that build up the momentum you mentioned of more people on bikes, more people need these helps guide the more general conceptualizations of how we engage in space around town. Well I agree yeah it's proportional to what we have access to in these resources that I don't know if we can really step into that. I mean I think it's good it's a bit extra I should think to rethink it all but I agree that it seems like we 're it is a limited pot of money but it's with what little we have I think we're doing really good. I'll just add that whenever I add in the green sense reb ates we have already processed 1227 rebate applications this year. Wow. Wow. 665,000 of that is green sense but we've paid over 900,000 already rebates to community this year. I'll jump off of that I have been thinking I mean we've been here for you know five six years almost working with this pot of money in these programs and that's grown a lot over the years and that's great we are feel having a more direct impact on residents but perhaps also we keep adding workload to the office and I'm just curious if there's any interest in perhaps taking a portion of this and helping you guys with staff line even I don't know how that works but perhaps like an internship even just to help you guys process the volume of applications that we keep dumping on you guys over the years and you know say the ROI of the funds this account keeps growing and these projects keep getting larger or we add new more ambitious things it's a lot of overhead and admin load that I don't I don't want to add additional burdens to staff who might have other roles and positions or focuses that that feels a little uneven is that something that would be welcome or helpful? I don't know we will have to see if that's even possible the way that the fund was established. If you're able to find that out I would love to explain. Sorry this is a good point I didn't think about that. A one -time project I spent a lot of the last few months over in Sweden where public transportation is amazing. Part of what makes it great is of course the frequency of the buses running but another part is just the shelter infrastructure and when I come back to Denton and I see the few folks that we do have waiting for a bus and there's like nothing and I know I think we talked about this in the past I don't know if it's our even our jurisdiction or we could do something if you had a more pleasant place to wait for the bus I know it doesn't solve everything but is that a something we could do with this money are we interested in that I'm leaving so I don't know if I should have much of a say in it if but it would I don't know if the properties within city right away even if the bus itself is DCTA operated do we do we have a stake there? I will have to dig into that there's moving pieces there yeah yeah I'm sure there's it makes it hard but just an idea I know in the past when Eileen Brock was mayor I think that this was brought up and discussed quite a bit and some of the city actually I don't know if the city partnered with DCTA or not but they did update some of the bus stops at least they had a canopy and a bench but it didn't go very far so there has been there's a history of trying to fix this problem for sure I'm sure the routes have modified as well and I don't know if you travel on Ibre ever but that gets pretty frequented because most of the bus routes we have in town now serves three human teams and many of our students utilize those routes and if you pass by on you know the middle of the afternoon there's a degrading human experience happening on the side of the road there where there's candy than 110 degrees and there's 15 people waiting on the bus plus you get dropped off on this side of what's going to be a six lane road and you have to get to that side with no crossing infrastructure at the stop you know so there I'm just I don't know if this is this fun but there's definitely work to be done eventually it would be worth a couple hundred bucks right it would be a small I think a small cost would that what would you feel about what was the initial fund amount when we when this was we we've had a wide range of estimated revenue projections the year two was four million I think we planned for four million and achieved less than six hundred thousand that year I believe so we were working on the four million dollar plan for a period of years this would be a completely new work plan that will go to council for approval whereas the four million dollar multi-year plan we carried out over for most of years so well would it be out of line to boost this estimate up just say another five hundred thousand dollars since the program is growing I would have to talk to finance and see what the revenue projections are that I would be curious because if there's if there's an opportunity to bump it up even a little I think we should take advantage of that or perhaps is there a way to have alternatives or backups should the ROI deliver beyond the estimate would you have to come back for to us and the council for approval of additional items or could we set out here's what we really like and should the funds exist to deliver them here's kind of a prioritization of how that could pass through we have planned and estimated higher than revenue projections in the past so so we could have more dollars for projects than what is actually estimated at this point and take that it almost could be helpful to have kind of tier one our top priorities we like a lot of the transportation related projects as you were saying we have momentum behind them perhaps there's some secondary interests like the bus stop question just brought up that if that's allowable just to put that in the packet to say tier two if the funds exist we can do that and then some of our programs are scalable so there's additional funding you can do a bigger push forward yeah in regard to say something like the ev fire truck which was quite expensive i see that as a foot in the door and ob and of course also i don't know what the status is now but there in the past there was discussion about electrifying the garbage pickup trucks and and usually the response rightfully so is is it's not financially feasible yet so i wondered if if if these projects are like the fire trucks electrification of the city heavy fleet if that is is becoming becoming more economical and if it is is there a say a master plan where by such and such a time we hope to have this this and this and this and so that we actually have a a proposed plan of what could be if if the funding is necessary so that we can say yeah waste management would like for sees this and such and such and such and such would that would that be i think that's something that can be built into our we need to update our clean policy so i think that that's something that's built into that as we work with fleet on that operationally the trash trucks weren't there we tested one truck and didn't work out great for us but solid waste is open to trying those and i think it's good i think it helps us i think it helps the manufacturer understand where there might have been a limitation sure solid waste is open to electrifying other equipment so there's still opportunities there they purchased i guess they had four or five evs now that they purchased without assistance from dme has moved to some electric pto on some of the smaller bucket trucks and they're great they can hear each other now you know it's amazing it's like hey i can hear the guy on the ground talking to me so they're having good luck with them good and i think as we get more in the fleet folks are seeing that they work and really enjoying them i 've noticed that the more e-bikes you see around the more people start talking about and you start thinking well i can do that you know so that's the same way with lawn equipment yeah i see you out mowing your lawn and it doesn't smell and it's not noisy where'd you get that yeah what was interesting to me on that graph was the highest response was people and they bought them for low maintenance that was a practical reason of it they bought one more thing on the low water use stadium pilot is that restricted right now to city streets like city right away is do we have any influence with denny county or text dot for those right away that they maintain we do have some some of them we can actually we're operating for those text that right so i can work with parks those are all the road people parts department where it is that so we're able to enforce that so the roads that they're putting in you know by bonnie bray in 35 i was surprised and disappointed see them rolling out big rolls of bermuda grass so we need to let you know whether we want to carry over existing programs etc etc or a mix of ongoing and one-time projects anybody have any suggestions recommendations for me well i would stick largely with what you've got because the momentum is going and it seems like a lot of positive feedback i like this idea maybe another tier or maybe a couple of one-time things you try out just to see but the the bulk of it it seems like we're doing a good money good work with the money so yeah i agree and as long as what you said about the possibility of a one time when when we can say put in another program as a test program pilot program and so that we're continually still growing the money that the fund as necessary for our for our needs but i i agree with adam stay with the uh program as it's now okay and i'll go ahead and add to we had some great conversations over the last few weeks with our transportation folks and our new bike tech coordinator i think we've identified some sidewalks and bike lane gaps that we're going to be able to go in and help fund those connections which only helps for all of our e-biking pedestrian traffic to have this connectivity have that connectivity does sometimes the last slide says staff recommendation i didn't know if it's appropriate to ask what the what you all think i mean you're you're on the day-to-day running this i like the programs that we have in place now and i do think that the momentum's there and i don't want to lose any traction with those the community is really embracing them it's been great i may have a recommendation for a little bit of change in the funding levels when we started we didn't know that we were going to have as much uptake of the e-bike so we thought we were going to have a little bit of room there so we may want to add a little bit of funding for a bike for that low income um e-bike program um i think we could do that through vouchers i've got some positive feedback about that so that may be a recommendation to come back with the pilot for that program for next year um it'll be a smaller amount but definitely to try to get something off the ground i may recommend a little bit less money for the minor home repair it's just a little bit more slow going than than we thought it would be remind us when that when did the first actions in that program begin this past fiscal um october november i believe is when we started doing the the audits for the applicants i think the applicants could apply october 1 maybe and then once they get approved and they go through the the audit program we have the energy audit come back and see what needs to be addressed in the home we run into some hiccups with some of the older homes with altered duct work don't work well with the higher efficiency air conditioning units so we're we're trying to figure out how much disruption that is and can you go in and replace the duct work now instead of going with a lower efficiency still something that needs great sense but could we go with the 17 instead of the 15.2 if we have right in the deck as well sorry we're learning which department are we working with it's the minor home repair program that we're able to add that actually did you get any feedback from the applicants maybe through the surveys and things that they suggest be done differently with the program i can't remember anything off the top of my head kate went through the survey results we asked for all right that was a great question we asked mostly for pros and cons and if you would recommend to the debate but if there's we can reach out and ask if there's any additional feedback okay because i guess as you said prior the update is pretty consistent within a general demographic group of population that if we have a strong base of support who've engaged in a number of our programs they might be able to provide some substantive feedback to you know what was working well or not but i guess really we're asking these questions like are we missing something in where we're allocating these resources but my only comment again was if we could explore leaving some of that overhead from you guys i think that would just kind of help with the delivery of some of these programs and i'll let you guys focus on what your focus areas are and if possible i will say we took the feedback about allowing two e-bikes to heart and you know i don't know how many couples get e-b ikes together it's really great like y'all are so nice to each other y'all can go high right that's great that's cool anything else um i do recall a while ago we had a previous framework that talked about like local food and now i think that's kind of under a land use generally and i know citywide there's been a focus on delivering bowling green and updating that i'm just curious if there's any appetite to me and there was a former staff member who called who was really working in that area as well and then we seem to have lost the staff is there something that we could focus on in that area that might be helpful in pushing projects or sustaining existing ones there may be some room to work with parks on additional community garden space they're going to be using raised beds at bowling areas my understanding and i think that may give them a better handle on what kind of maintenance will be needed going forward so we may be able to push that a little bit more we're still doing the level food programming we actually have a preserving and canning and pickling series of workshops coming up partnering with the extension office it'll be a four-week program and those classes do so well is there such a thing as a community pollinator garden slash beekeeping community that would be cool um what are these city um and we do work with the different kind of beekeepers but i don't know if there's an opportunity for folks actually involved in planting and maintaining we've tried yeah i mean i've always wanted to do that my wife won't let me yeah that's wrong maybe there's other people this city had them right yeah we used to have landfills any other discussion do you have what you need i think so we'll bring a document a fleshed out document to you for adoption for the future great thank you all right next to staff staff reports over here and grab a different cap um the first memo i believe is about the committee appointment process um you requested the information about that and all the committees operate under that board's information tan both in those rules and if there's no questions about that then we can go i had one question okay should is it is it all right for previous applicants who weren't appointed not because they were disproved but because of the breakdown in the system uh should they apply again i think anybody who's interested should fill out an application okay yeah and is it uh i don't sit ask this well well is there any has the system been fixed so that this breakdown won't happen again you know whatever i really don't know what where the breakdown was myself the the process is council members with vacancies are providing the application right and then they choose to nominate to boards and commissions based on that list of applicants right because the problem was it's the council some of the council people never responded to the split at any rate i just hope that that's going to be a pass now so i that's good is that is that is that allowable uh this is maybe a legal question if there's a vacancy and it goes to a city councilor can they just let it sit there there's no mechanism that the city law to compel them to fill vacancy what a full interest is long one um reticent to provide legal advice to the committee well it's just a question i'll look for them interpretive question it's something we can discuss separately if you'd like okay that's a good way to break down this okay thank you for that and uh is there another no we just had the memo um following up on some matrix items and then the matrix is there a june we do with the june okay anybody have anything for the matrix when appropriate we could we request that community improvement provide uh just to check i'm not familiar with the low-income housing program largely and with the what program sorry the program we just discussed in the work plan the low- income housing to go over there um thanks as we deliver that which it's a big chunk of our budget it would be really cool to kind of see how the progress is tracking how the program works what impact it's having there's tweaks we might consider leading up into next year's fiscal that would be really cool we can work with them to create that anything else uh i i have something um would it be possible to uh or has it has any has there been any discussion or examination of city buildings municipal buildings that would be good candidates for solar installation has there been any talk talk about that if not i'd be curious to know how many buildings would be good for solar installations or and or parking lots too we have that presentation from our facilities manager where he provided the list of buildings that could possibly be yeah an option has there been any update on that or especially the the parking lot i don't know if he discussed parking lots did he i don't recall i'm i think the back end is just check yeah presentation yeah anybody anything else all right with that at what time is it 152 152 at 152 we will adjourn all in favor of a journey we are