HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 09/20/2023Page 1
09/20/2023 – MINUTES
Natural Resources Advisory Board
REGULAR MEETING
Wednesday, September 20, 2023 – 6:00 PM
222 Laporte Avenue, Colorado River Room
1. CALL TO ORDER: 6:04 PM
2. ROLL CALL
a. Board Members Present –
• Barry Noon
• Danielle Buttke
• Kelly Stewart (Vice Chair)
• Kevin Krause
• Lisa Andrews
• Matt Zoccali
b. Board Members Absent –
• Dawson Metcalf (Chair)
• Drew Derderian
c. Staff Members Present –
• Honoré Depew, Staff Liaison
• Nick Combs, Comms & Marketing Manager, Utilities
• Eric Keselburg, Parking Services Manager
• Drew Brooks, Deputy Director, PDT
d. Guest(s) –
• Javier Camacho, Platte River Power Authority
• Masood Ahmad, Platte River Power Authority
• Carly Lynch, Platte River Power Authority
3. AGENDA REVIEW
4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
a. No minutes to approve this month.
6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS
7. NEW BUSINESS
a. Platte River Integrated Resource Plan – Platte River Power Authority
(PRPA) will be presenting their upcoming Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for
awareness and discussion. (Discussion)
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• Discussion | Q + A
• Matt – Q – (Regarding the slide with budget system total) Can you
give me an idea of what other purchases are? Javier – A – So that is
our purchasing power, right? Masood – A – We are well connected
with other utilities here. We buy and sell with all the transactions. In
any hour, if our marginal cost is, say $20, and there is a power
available at $19, we will buy it because that saves our customers
money. And the same way, if our marginal cost is $20 and
somebody’s willing to pay us $22, we’ll sell it. That is in real time.
Then we also make forward transactions like we’ve made sales for
next summer if we think we have access, energy and capacity. Matt
– Q – If I did my math right, those numbers are not included in the
non-carbon resource percentages. Masood – A – Yes, they are
sperate. We have to keep them separate. It is hard to pinpoint the
carbon structure of those purchases. A lot of times, this energy is
available when there’s a lot of wind in the area. It’s very windy. They
have, I think, 4,000 megawatts of wind. The prices drop. So, we say,
hey, why should we be running coal. Typically, if it is below our
marginal cost, it has to be renewable because renewable is a 0
marginal cost energy, but we don’t count the carbon of that. That is
what our team is looking at. There are a number of options our team
is considering.
• Kevin – Q – As far as the modeling and opportunities, clearly on the
demand side there has to be some gives there because you have
additive sources coming online with EVs and home electronification
and so forth. How much can that contribute when you think about
changes in behavior, changes in improved installation building
envelopes, and these things. Is there modeling and data that can
come back to the City or already provided to the City to say this is
how much of a difference these other things can make. Otherwise, as
you indicated, it’s just more expensive. You either spend the money
here with those efficiency upgrades that we talk about in. I guess I am
trying to understand how much of an impact that can have, that
actually changes behaviorally or on demand through these other
methods that are just reducing demand from an unneeded demand
perspective, is the best-case scenario versus the needed when
you’re saying we’re electrifying the transportation side. Masood – A –
There are two different demand areas. One is electrification the other
is thermostat/electric heating. Let’s take them one by one. On
electrification, as I mentioned, as more and more customers buy
electric vehicles, that is a demand we have to meet. To the extent
that the customers work with us to charge when we tell them it’s a
better time to charge. When we tell them it’s a better time to charge,
the price of electricity is lower and renewable is available, and don’t
charge during certain hours to the extent to give us control of your
charging time. That’s very valuable. You can give us the flexibility.
That will definitely help us reduce the resources that we have to bring
on time. Kevin – Q – Just to clarify, my question is not about those
new sources of demand, but about existing demand, existing
efficiencies. So, saying, should the City actually be spending four
times what it’s spending to have more homes insulated more
effectively rather than wait to spend the money by having to create
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these demand response technologies and additional battery storage
and feeding that information back to the City? You’re going to spend
money, so maybe we should be tripling down over here first because
our model is showing that will take this demand down and we have to
put online less sources. Is any of that in the modeling? Masood – A –
Yeah, its not only modeling, which is future, it's happening now. Don’t
quote me on these numbers but I can tell you ballpark. Our cost of
electricity that we charge to our cities is a little over 100 million dollars
a year for the four cities. We spent almost 10 million dollars on
energy efficiency programs on behalf of the four cities. We have been
doing this for the last 10-15 years. We have a track record where we
are working with residential customers, industrial customers, and
commercial. We are helping to reduce the demand. I have heard the
City of Fort Collins has been able to reduce demand to the tune of
one percent for energy efficiency measures. What we are looking at
is less than overall. If you didn’t have energy efficiency programs, our
demand would be growing at about a half percent per year more at
the wholesale level. I think the City of Fort Collins is close to one
percent but again, these numbers are just ballpark. A lot of activity is
happening in this area. One quick comment; unfortunately, the
heating load, there is not a lot of flexibility. We can, especially if it is
extreme cold, we will not be shutting down your heater. What is the
best scenario for electric utilities is you have your gas heat as well
available as back up. Obviously, gas heat is more polluting but when
the extreme temperatures come, if you have that back up, that puts
less pressure on electric utilities because at some temperatures, the
heat pump efficiency goes. At that time, everybody resorts to
resistance heating. We see the demand growth is going to be really
high. Now, peak demand is in summer but in the next two decades,
we could become winter peaking if many of our customers have heat
pumps, and they resort to resistance heating in extreme weather
rather than keeping the gas heating as a backup. That is a better
scenario for electric utilities.
• Barry – Q – So candidly to ask you this, how optimistic are you that
advances in technology can keep pace with advances in demand
particularly along the Front Range, where population is growing
almost exponentially. Masood – A – We all collectively made a
forecast. Let’s look at the demand. In the 1990s the demand really
grew fast. Since then, the energy efficiency efforts that Platte River
and its communities made the demand, we have made a dent in that
demand growth. It has been around one percent or so. Because of
electrification and because of the heating load, the demand could
jump up to two or three percent again. The demand is going to
continue to grow, and the growth rate will be determined. We know
electric adoption is already here. It’s accelerating and the electric
heating is a little bit unfancy. So, it’s going to grow a little bit slower
than electric transportation. But the technologies to go 100%, that’s
the second part of your question, we have our consultant and
advisors telling us, for example green hydrogen. There’s a lot of
money being spent and it’s not commercial today but maybe by the
middle of the next decade hydrogen could be a viable source where
you don’t need to burn natural gas. You make green hydrogen when
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there is access renewable and you store it underground or in tanks
and then tap on that every day in the evening when you need it or
when there is extended dark period. That is hydrogen. Similar
situation with the long duration energy storage, that technology a lot
of R&D on that. Some pilots happening. We are thinking of a pilot
ourselves but again by the middle of the next decade. Jaiver –
Comment – I know this is not part of your question but something I do
want to underscore that Masood did mention is we need to pursue
these technologies because they are emerging technologies. We’re
one of many utilities that are keeping an eye on how quickly these
technologies are evolving but we are also looking from a tactical
standpoint how we can actually integrate them into our portfolio
versus other utilities, they are just keeping a pulse on how to
eventually transition to their portfolio. What we have to do, because of
our size of utility, we are 700-800 peaking utility as well as we are all
around the generation and transmission side. We need to determine
that these technologies are commercially viable which means we
have to determine that they can actually function across other utilities.
We also monitor how other utilities are adopting them. There are a lot
of factors that we keep in. So yes, the demand is definitely continuing
to grow, and we are keeping forecasts on that. Technology is
evolving but, in a nutshell, at a slower pace. We need to just keep in
mind that financial sustainability piece and make sure it does make
sense when we want to introduce a new technology to our portfolio.
• Barry – Q – I have a follow up comment. Let’s have a simple metric
here. If we look at the demand to availability ratio and as that ratio,
let’s say, approaches one or on some occasions even exceeds one.
Then then price for megawatt or kilowatt, whatever the measurement
unit is, access to that becomes socially inequitable. So, people who
are already empowered and wealthy can afford to pay additional
dollars for access to energy, but those who don’t have that ability… I
have a broad thesis that so many of the social problems around the
world can be explained by one metric, and that is the ratio of the
distribution of wealth and opportunity. I’m concerned that this demand
availability ratio, a simple metric like that, could exacerbate the
inequitable distribution of access to energy. Javier – Comment – Your
comment is well taken, which is why, as we continue to pursue our
goal of the resource diversification policy, we are not relinquishing,
and we’re relentless in that effort of our three foundational pillars.
That of reliability, ensuring that we are living up to our responsibility
and obligation that has been founded in our organic contract. The
environmental responsibility which is one of the guiding principles that
we were founded on, and the financial sustainability factor. As I
mentioned we are not going to avoid rate increases but how do we
actually ensure that it’s in a measurable amount? Masood –
Comment – And minimal. That’s our starting point. We want to make
sure the cost increase is minimal. Javier – Comment – Minimal
knowing that they inevitably will increase. So, your comment is well
taken and definitely something that guides us as part of this ongoing
process.
• Danielle – Comment – I think it’s really remarkable that you’re seeing
a decrease in demand, because we know writ large globally, we are
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experiencing Jevon’s Paradox. Where we make more energy and
people just simply consume more energy. We’re not actually seeing a
net reduction in overall global energy use. Even as these renewable
energies come on board, we’re just seeing demand increase because
everything’s electrified. We used to sweep our floors, now we have a
robot vacuum. We used to hand grind our own flour, now we have all
these gadgets and screens that simply demand more electricity. I
want to commend you on that because that is really remarkable.
However, I still think it’s concerning particularly given Barry’s
comment about equity and knowing that all the statics you stated
about how much money is spent on attempting to reduce demand
and yet, even with those pieces in place, we’re still just seeing that
1% reduction. So, I think a lot of the efforts to reduce demand are
focused on simply making the infrastructure we have perform better
but very little of that is actually spent on behavioral modification. How
do we get people to actually change their behaviors, to turn off lights,
to not have so many screens, etc. So, I feel like there’s a huge gaping
hole in a lot of the portfolio. Javier – Comment – So you are talking
about education and that is definitely something that keeps me up at
night. Part of what I do at PRPA is managing our marketing outreach.
What we’re doing in this very moment is crafting a strategy that is
working regionally with our owner communities and really amplifying
that education outreach. As Masood mentioned, through our
efficiency works program, which you probably have heard of, and Fort
Collins has a piece of that as well as the homes program, but we
work very closely with the Fort Collins Utilities on that education. Now
we’re starting to amplify that because we are seeing an evolution not
only on the operations and the generation side, but what that’s going
to look like on the consumer side. So, the relationship that an electric
utility has with its customer is also changing. We are now having a
relationship, not just transactional but relational. We need to influence
behaviors or educate consumers on how to better utilize their
appliances or what tools they have. We need to access data too
because we also recognize that customers may already know how to
use their home in an efficient way. That question is do they want to
share the data with us. We are actively developing that strategy and
recognizing that we’re not the only region or the only utility trying to
figure this out. We are collaborating and establishing that strategy
right now.
• Danielle – Q – So along those lines, from a social equity standpoint,
and I apologize that this is already in place, but when it comes to
water usage, we know that there are surcharges placed on those high
users. When it comes to electricity there’s other factors that need to
be put in place, such as is this home owned or a rental. Someone
that rents a home can probably not participate in efficiency works and
cannot upgrade appliances or perform those energy reducing
measures the same way that a homeowner can. Are those user
search charges something you’re looking into to attempt to modulate
those behaviors? Javier – A – That is a really good question, and I
honestly couldn’t sit here and say yes. I would need to go back to our
team to determine that. Since we are on the wholesale side, we at
PRPA do not get down to what the actual customer bills look like. We
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have four major customers. Those are the four municipalities that we
serve. It would be more on the distribution side that we need to be
examining that. It’s definitely a conversation worth having. Honore –
A – The City of Fort Collins, I don’t know about the other partners,
has the EPIC homes program, which is a finance program that
specifically targets landlords to make efficiency improvements in
rentals. Javier – A – But your question about the billing side; how can
you influence behavior on the billing side and I worked for water
utilities so I know what you are talking about with the tier structure.
You incentivize the water efficiency users. Danielle – Comment – And
some of the best social marketing research has come out of utility
billing social marketing approaches. I think there’s a lot of opportunity
there.
• Danielle – Q– The other thing that struck me was in your projections
looking at hydropower, looking as though staying pretty static, despite
the acknowledgement and I have a little bit of a miff by calling it a
drought because we are not experiencing a drought; we are
experiencing climate change. So, water and hydro will continue to
decline and yet on your models it looked as though it was projected
as being rather static. I think that’s somewhat questionable. The other
thing I had a really bit question about was why rooftop solar was
expected to remain static. I would have thought that rooftop solar
production would grow over time. Masood – A – So let me address
your comment about hydro. It is decreasing but very minutely. We do
run scenarios and cases where there is less hydro available like “dark
calms.” We want to make sure if there is hydro is less, we can
provide electricity. We covered that at the wholesale level. Now your
comment on the rooftop solar. This is older data, almost a year and a
half to two years old. What we have seen is the actuals are coming in
higher than we projected. We are almost up to 25 or 30 megawatts in
our system with our peak demand of 700 megawatts. That’s 5%. It is
coming at a higher rate. So, we’ve updated the forecast and if you
see the latest charge almost double that but its 60-70% higher than
that you have seen in that chart.
• Danielle – Q – Really phenomenal modeling and explaining that is
being shown tonight. There is an issue of aging infrastructure. A lot of
homes that were built, prior to even 2000 only have 150-amp service,
which is not supportive of a lot of the new heat pump technologies,
particularly when electricity demands under our consumer driven
lifestyle with all the screens and other electronic devices are asking
so much. So, there’s a lot of debate that I’ve been exposed to in how
are these technologies really going to be adopted when there’s an
even bigger entry cost because that infrastructure is not set up to be
able to allow us to switch directly from natural gas to the heat pump,
to geothermal, or something along those lines. I am wondering how
the industry is going to handle that there is more incentive and more
investment in upgrading aging infrastructure or as Kevin alluded to
could we instead focus that money on simply increasing efficiency
and reducing demand to allow that transition to take place? Masood –
A – First on the demand side, when we hired a consultant to do the
forecast of heating demand, they brought up the limiting factor will not
be customers desire but will be the constrains in the last mile as you
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referred to. That is why we may not become winter peaking as fast as
customers would like, because of the limitations not on the supply
side of not having enough green electrons but we don’t have enough
pipeline at the end. I am also aware, and I think it’s an early stage,
but the City of Fort Collins is starting to look at what they call feeder
by feeder study. There are thousands of feeders for serving all those
customers. I don’t want to speak on behalf of the City, but I am aware
that the City is aware that some feeders may need upgrading and
they are looking at it. When we were doing this study, this was an
active discussion with the City.
• Kevin – Comment – Just one more comment on the point of behavior
change. I feel like we have to figure this out. There’s this human
problem in this modern society problem where nobody wants change.
We’re not figuring out ways to dive that change at scale. I hope that
everyone can come together from all your customer utilities and you
all. This psychology focused podcast I listened to recently on how to
drive change and there has to be some different things attempted. If
people are aware of how much more their existing unavoidable loads
are going to cost them in the future, if they don’t take out their
avoidable loads for example. If that picture isn’t painted for them in a
very obvious way or if they don’t see that Danielle over here manages
her energy this way, you can too. We need to crack that because all
these other things aren’t lining up perfectly. It’s not a question just a
hope that we are trying really innovative, maybe non-traditional things
to get that messaging. Get that opportunity to resonate. Masood –
Comment – I will add people respond to their pockets. If you look at
Europe or even Japan, the cost of electricity is two or three times as
much. They import energy there. GDP to energy consumption ratio is
much better than ours. We are blessed with a lot of resources. It’s
difficult to become more efficient when its 10 cents a kilowatt hour,
when in Germany people are paying 32 cents. It is easier for them.
Javier – Comment – Customers respond to incentives and it’s usually
financial incentives or competitive incentives. You create a
competition out of it and there are apps that are out there that allow
you to compare your energy consumption to your neighbor or you
compare your energy consumption to a household that looks like your
household. The previous utility I was at had an app that did that. We
saw great success with it and how customers were doing, particularly
with those that were lower income. Even though you are low income,
talking about the social and equity issue, smartphones are very
affordable. It’s the computer that even low-income households
couldn’t afford. So, you put the app in their hand and suddenly, you’re
creating an equity issue and helping address it. Kevin – Comment – I
think part of it is personalizing it, humanizing it. We’re unfamiliar with
the neighbor comparisons. I’m picking on Danielle, but This is what
Danielle did. Danielle doesn’t turn lights on during our meetings as
you can see in her background because why does she need to.
Danielle can keep her lights off. There’s a difference in saying what
can I specifically do or what is someone specifically doing that’s worth
it? It’s not everything but you have to start somewhere. That is my
hope.
•
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b. Downtown Parking System Update – Eric Keselburg (Parking Services
Manager) and Drew Brooks (Deputy Director, Planning Development and
Transportation) will share current activities, financial and maintenance trends,
and seek input on future policy/operational improvements prior to an October
24 City Council Work Session. (Discussion)
• Discussion | Q + A
• Kevin – Q – Is what you just said in the slides? Drew – A – I don’t
think so. Kevin – Comment – To me, it’s so painfully obvious. I would
throw it out there. Shouldn’t that be the story we are telling so the
decision makers can understand we are very different and it’s not
working. Drew – Comment – I don’t think anybody doesn’t know that.
I think the problem has been, I guess I would say politically, it has
been difficult to make that change. Eric – Comment – I think the first
2013 plan identified if this than that. So, if we have a certain capacity
off street, then we need to relook at our model. 2017 did the same.
We are at that stage now. We want to go to Council’s discussion
about right sizing. Kevin – Comment – I think that is what they are
going to ask you. They are going to want to see that, so they don’t
have to draw that out. Eric – Comment – We want the blessing to do
some additional work. Kevin – Comment – I think like you said, you
did the comparison on fines, why not show the like for like
comparison. Drew – Comment – Yes, we certainly have done that
with groups that we’ve met. We’ve shown case studies on what other
communities are doing.
• Matt – Q – Can you let me know who the other groups that you
visited are? Drew – A – We have not visited any other boards as of
yet. We’ve had several meetings that the DBA helped us to bring in
participants, mostly business owners or folks that live in the
downtown area. We’ve also had folks that were bicycle advocates
and others that sat in on those sessions. We’ve had a pretty diverse
group of participants in those settings. We’ve had between 20 and 30
folks that attended each of those three that we have had so far. Eric –
Comment – The Parking Advisory Board was dissolved in 2021 due
to a lack of form and a lack of interest. Drew – Comment – So there
was a parking board before the pandemic and even before the
pandemic, it was very difficult to get participants in that board. We
very frequently did not have forum so eventually Council opted to
dissolve them. Matt – Comment – It’s probably on your list but the
commission for disabilities or those kinds of groups are really critical
to include and ensure that kind of mobility and impairment is
addressed. Drew – Comment – Yes, and to reiterate that the first part
of this process is to get state of affairs if you will and take that back to
Council. What we’re hoping to do is have a second phase of this
where we would be much more robust where we would actually be
talking about, okay here’s some actionable or operational changes
we’d like to make and then taking that to all of those boards and
commissions and having that robust conversation. Matt – Comment –
I think the discussion about economics is great because I always
think about it too. We mostly ride our bikes downtown but if we do
ever drive, we go to the parking garage. It’s free the first hour and a
buck for the second, and we are out of there within two hours.
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Usually, it's not very much money to cover coming down here. I can
totally get on board with the discussion about how we need to pay our
way to help with this process. Eric – Comment – And to right size. I’m
not throwing numbers out but to have the parking structure be less
dollar amount than for parking on the street. Does it look like a dollar
an hour or is it less than that to incentivize that longer term use to
free up that parking space? That’s some of the discussion we’ll be
having after the Council meeting.
• Lisa – Q – I wondered if that bar graph that showed the portion of
occupancy by portion of the part of the day included garages as well.
Drew – A – Just on street, on identified streets in the downtown area.
Lisa – Q – What would that look like if you included the parking
garages availability? Eric – A – A healthy parking garage capacity is
65-70%. They will fill up to capacity like we said, for things like New
West Fest, or Taste of Fort Collins. That is when they were full.
Overnight is less than daytime but we don’t have solid data around
parking structure occupancy. Drew – A – I think anecdotally we could
say that they are highly underused for most of the day. Lisa –
Comment – That is my impression too. Eric – Comment – We can
safely say you can always find a parking space in the parking
structure.
• Danielle – Q – I am excited to hear you bring up that behavior change
approach of making on street parking more expensive than garage
parking. I don’t think the answer is to decrease the price in the
garage. As mentioned, it’s incredibly cheap and affordable,
particularly for a city this size. I think the answer is simply to
dramatically increase and/or have paid parking for that street parking.
I think generally that parking is an overlooked behavior change
modifier for a lot of the City’s carbon goals. When people are
participating in optional recreational activities, that is when they are
least tolerant of inconvenience. That’s when things are like, I am
going to bike because it’s just easier and I don’t want to have to deal
with looking for parking. Or I just got off work and I need to get there
quickly so I’m going to bike because it’s faster. I’m going to take the
Max because it’ faster than having to look for a parking space and
walk and the uncertainty that comes there. I think that there needs to
be greater integration of parking services into the Climate Action Plan
than there currently is. Again, it is such powerful behavior change
motivator because when we see that peak occupancy, it’s in the
evenings. It’s not during the day and it’s not the morning. It is when
people are least tolerant of inconvenience and therefore, we have the
most power to nudge them toward different, more carbon friendly
forms of transportation. Kevin – Comment – I guess I would add to
that integration with the climate action plan and also with the most
recent active modes plan. It feels like to have a goal as indicated in
that plan, which is 50% mode share via active modes. We can look at
space in our city, our space, how do we use our space and how we
use our space is indicative of the results that we want to achieve. I
would love to see, and I suspect council would love to see that tied to
active modes and how that allows us to achieve that particular goal
which is going to be a challenge. Tied to that, as you all have
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indicated, parking should certainly be covering itself and possibly a
net positive to then fund the larger initiatives for active modes and
these other areas that we’re looking to go back to voters from a
taxation perspective for the climate action initiatives and so forth.
Parking could be a revenue generator because it is in many ways
necessary, and I am not arguing that but how we architect it can
really impact those other goal areas which I think is exciting. The
average person is not going to be impacted in a way that really
detriments their life. It should be positive. The other area I have a
concern with that perspective is the call out really, it feels like an
ongoing call out of the economic vitality. Parking is the economic
vitality is the message that certain groups push over and over but I
question if the data across the world and across different
municipalities really ties to that. I would love to see research or case
studies brough forth to say these changes were made to the parking
in these municipalities and they actually saw constant business or
even an increase due to the accessibility of businesses by other
modes, the ease, and not having to search out parking. I don’t know if
its true, but it keeps getting put in there. I am not saying I have the
exact studies folks in here might have them more readily, but I feel
like I’ve read things on multiple occasions where the business
community always pushes against parking changes. The result is
parking changes are made and business increases because of other
modes being more accessible to said businesses. We can’t keep
beating that if it’s not possibly true.
• Danielle – Q – Do you handle bike parking as well? Eric – A – We
don’t handle bike parking, but we work closely with FC Moves
regarding bicycle crowds or the downtown businesses that want to
have a bike rack in the parking space in front of their business. So,
we work with FC Moves on finding some viable options for bicycle
parking. Danielle – Comment – I know I am speaking from a place of
extreme privilege but there is a really vibrant and growing cargo bike
community in Fort Collins of people using larger bikes to move
children. At the same time, I’m seeing a trend of decreasing bike rack
space. For example, there’s a big bike rack on East Mountain that
was just moved over to the curbs, and you can’t actually get a cargo
bike on it. There’s one on Olive that previously stuck out far enough
into a parking space so you could get a cargo bike in there. You can
no longer do that. When you have to bring a cargo bike up onto a
curb through a dismount zone to park it, and you’re not as tall as your
bike is long, it’s really challenging. I think we need to think about
updating our parking infrastructure. I know it’s legal to park in a car
parking spot with a bike in the City of Fort Collins, but no one would
risk their integrity of their bike to one of those giant Diesel trucks to do
that. I just want to plug in there that we need to be thinking about the
changing bike trends that we see in the community when we are
planning out this infrastructure. It is really frustrating to not have a
safe place to take those bikes when you have little kids. Eric –
Comment – That is good feedback. Thank you.
8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS
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a. Barry – Barry was interested in learning more about the concept of Fort
Collins becoming a dark sky city. He shared that the lights from Fort Collins
have grown and dominate the sky. It also has a negative effect on migrating
birds. They can see it from their cabin in the mountains. Honore shared the
link to the webpage regarding this topic. Honore will add it to the planning
calendar for NRAB.
b. Kevin – Regarding the proposed changes to the Bicycle Advisory Committee,
during the 1st reading, Council did unanimously vote to move it to an Active
Modes Board. That will go to a second reading around the beginning of the
year.
c. Matt – Matt was interested in hearing more about the progress on the ground
water contamination at the Larimer County Landfill but was not sure if it was in
NRABs purview.
9. STAFF REPORTS
a. Honore – Changes came last night regarding boards and commissions. There
will be a new manual, flexibility for one or more boards to meet after Council
liaison approval, and terms changes for members.
10. OTHER BUSINESS
a. Six Month Calendar Review
• October
• Economic Health Strategic Plan; Circular Economy
• Budgeting/Strategic Plan
• NRAB 2021 Work Plan – due Nov 30
• November
• Discuss Council priority setting (input and influence)
• Strategic memo on Council priority setting
• NRAB 2024 Work Plan – due Nov 30
• ESD Background/Overview & Input on restructuring (Honore
+ ESD Lead Team & Director)
• Larimer County Landfill
• Advancing Transit Initiatives Update
• Only if input is desired and helpful prior to Dec 12
Work Session
• December
• Strategic memo on Council priority setting
• Night Sky Initiative
• Other business
• End of Year Report
• Water Supply Requirement fee discussion
11. ADJOURNMENT
a. (8:11 pm)
Page 12
09/20/2023 – MINUTES
Minutes approved by a vote of the Board/Commission on 11/15/23