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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD - MINUTES - 02/21/2024 Page 1 2/21/2024 – MINUTES Natural Resources Advisory Board REGULAR MEETING Wednesday, February 21, 2024 – 6:00 PM 222 Laporte and Via Zoom 1. CALL TO ORDER: 6:02 PM 2. ROLL CALL a. Board Members Present – • Dawson Metcalf (Chair) • Kelly Stewart (Vice Chair) • Barry Noon • Danielle Buttke • Matt Zoccali b. Board Members Absent – • Lisa Andrews c. Staff Members Present – • Honoré Depew, Staff Liaison • Amy King, Environmental Services Department Director d. Guest(s) – • Xavier (no last name given) 3. AGENDA REVIEW Chair Metcalf reviewed the agenda. 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION Xavier (no last name given) introduced himself and commented on his work for a company that specializes in decarbonization. He mentioned he’d like to learn more about Fort Collins’ climate efforts and determine how he could involve his art in educational efforts. 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES (December and January) Noon commended the minutes format change. Chair Metcalf made a motion to approve the December and January minutes as written. Buttke seconded the motion. The motion was adopted unanimously. Page 2 2/21/2024 – MINUTES 6. NEW BUSINESS a. Introduce Sustainability Services Leadership – Jacob Castillo (City of Fort Collins Sustainability Officer) and Amy King (Environmental Services Department Director) will join the Board to introduce themselves and discuss 2024-25 City Council Priorities that pertain to the Sustainability Services Area as well as the Environmental Services Department restructuring , previewed last month. (Discussion) Chair Metcalf noted Jacob Castillo had a scheduling issue and could not be present. Board members introduced themselves and discussed their backgrounds and interests related to the Board’s work. Amy King, Environmental Sustainability Director, introduced herself and discussed her history and prior work experience. Depew outlined the goals for the discussion of this item. Buttke commented on the possibility of a retreat and on Board members being resources for staff on specific projects. She questioned what tools and resources might best facilitate that cross-over work and mentioned the importance of making staff and Council aware of the skills and strengths of Board members. Members discussed the ways in which staff engages Boards and how that process could be improved. King noted conversations have been occurring about how to be more strategic with Boards. She also noted Councilmember Kelly Ohlson is the Council liaison for AQAB and this Board. Depew commented on the possibility of a joint meeting with the AQAB , potentially in May after new Board members have been seated. King commended Fort Collins’ early organization of the sustainability umbrella under the triple bottom-line concept and discussed the way in which Council is structuring its priorities. Buttke noted everything is tied to climate change and questioned how Boards should strategically think about the issues they tackle and how they can be aware of issues that may be falling between the cracks. King replied she is still learning about the exact purview of the Boards and how they have evolved; however, she noted Sustainability Services as a whole is very focused on the Our Climate Future plan . She noted it is the job of staff to ensure the dots are connected between the Boards. Zoccali asked if the March 25th Super Issues meeting involving all Boards and Commissions is new. Depew replied in the affirmative and stated it is strategically intentional on the part of the City Clerk’s Office. Page 3 2/21/2024 – MINUTES Chair Metcalf commented on the difficulty in determining whether existing programs are addressing new Council priorities. He asked how staff is able to track items that started as initiatives and became programs. King replied the recent Council priorities planning session was facilitated to ensure priorities were strategic and fewer in number. Depew further detailed the priority setting exercise and discussed how staff was involved in an iterative feedback loop with Council related to programs and staff work. He discussed the Council priorities related to solid waste management and the reduction of climate pollution and air pollution through electrification. King commented on Sustainability Services becoming more strategic about its work and noted construction demolition and recycling staff are shifting to Community Development and Neighborhood Services. Members and staff discussed the timeline for Council adoption of its priorities. King discussed the wording of the priorities and commented on how assigned staff or groups for each priority have become more collaborative. Depew discussed solid waste management, particularly the future of composting in the community. Noon asked if the City keeps track of NGO’s and commented specifically on Vindeket Foods which takes expired foods from grocery stores and makes it freely available to those in need. He suggested the City should be encouraging these types of efforts that aid in keeping food waste out of the landfill. Depew replied the City attempts to keep close connections and partnerships with non-profits and other organizations. He noted there is some complexity in terms of leveraging City systems and processes to incentivize those programs; however, grant programs are the main way in which the City is involved. Zoccali asked how the new initiative, NOCOBiz Connect, which was the Climate Wise Business Program, layers into the priorities. Depew replied the program developed a contract and did a request for proposals which resulted in the hiring of an outside firm to implement the business support system and program. King noted there was a strong representation of Latino business owners at the NOCOBiz Connect launch. (*Secretary’s Note: The Board took a brief recess at this point in the meeting.) Buttke commented on the push for electrification and stated having programs available for a longer period of time might increase adoption rates. Depew replied the Energy Services department in Utilities would be a good reference for that information and that department’s manager is one of the co-leads for the Our Climate Future team. Page 4 2/21/2024 – MINUTES Depew noted over 65% of the community’s emissions are associated with buildings and another 25% are associated with vehicles. Additionally, the small engine category crosses between climate emissions and air pollution. He stated there are current City programs to help advance all three of those areas, including building performance standards for building energy and water scoring, vehicular conversion to electric and ensuring charging infrastructure is available, and conversion of lawn and garden equipment and small utility vehicles to electric. Depew stated Sustainability Services gets more involved with community-facing efforts such as policy development, incentives, and regulations. Noon asked if the source of the electrification is specified to be from renewables given that the idea is to reduce CO2 emissions. Depew replied that is a baseline assumption in the projections (and the majority of projected reduction in community emissions) is specifically the continued conversion from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources in the electric grid. Buttke asked if new methane regulations and/or monitoring of methane leaks is part of that given the low number of gas wells in Fort Collins. Depew replied there are some new things around methane monitoring and other air quality monitoring using satellite technology to detect leaks. He noted one of the Council priority areas includes existing oil and gas wells and their negative health and environmental impacts. Zoccali asked about the inclusion of alternative fuel vehicles. Depew replied the department recently supported some analysis with Operations Services colleagues who make decisions around fleet conversion and it was found that compressed natural gas did not have an overall net positive as it was more expensive for the City and did not help accelerate environmental gains. Depew commented on a new grant given to the Innosphere from the National Science Foundation. He noted the grant will help provide the opportunity to help define northern Colorado and southern Wyoming as a climate solutions hub, in collaboration with the City, CSU and many other partners. He suggested there may be an opportunity for the Board to spend some time discussing this new initiative, especially as the grant proposal includes partnerships with oil and gas companies and defense contractors. b. 2024 Proposed Our Climate Future Budget – Honoré Depew (Climate Program Manager) will review the 2024 proposed Our Climate Future (OCF) budget items to be considered for funding by City Council from new 2050 tax revenue dedicated to reduce climate pollution. (Discussion) Depew noted Council has yet to consider the budget items proposed to be funded by the 2050 Tax and stated these first items will be considered separately from the overall budget process. Depew stated fifteen projects were identified by the leadership team with a Page 5 2/21/2024 – MINUTES total cost of about $3.5 million in proposed investments this year. He outlined the ballot language that was approved by voters which included programs and projects advancing greenhouse gas and air pollution reduction to meet the City’s adopted goals for 100% renewable electricity and carbon neutrality by 2050. He noted the challenge lies in how to create a clear understanding of the way that a diversity of climate interventions can ultimately help get at the goals even if there isn’t a directly quantifia ble greenhouse gas mitigation impact in the short term. Depew discussed the process that was undertaken to get to the recommended list of budget offers, including specific criteria which included the use of the “MRE nexus” (which looks at mitigation, resilience and equity impacts). He stated the projects identified were not brand new but were already in process and could be scaled and accelerated and it was ensured the funds could be used this year. Noon stated he is in agreement with the broad objectives but questioned why the word ‘monitoring’ is seldom explicitly mentioned. He questioned what will be measured to evaluate whether the goals have been achieved. Depew discussed a recent conversation at the leadership level for the Sustainability Service Area around evaluation and how to better build that into project development and how to be more consistent with reporting. He stated there are some extensive processes in place for monitoring and reporting on progress around new investments in the organization and noted the department is expected to report in a modest amount of detail on progress made qualitatively and quantitatively at least quarterly, though that could be more robust, and a better job could be done with dashboards. Noon stated the term ‘resilience’ is quite common in ecological literature, though it has very specific interpretations of how it is used. He stated resilience has an upfront component called resistance, which is not used as commonly and is related to how much stress a system can sustain before it undergoes a significant state change. He stated resilience is condition ed on a state change in terms of how long it takes a system to recover. He stated all of those things require designating measurable quantitative state variables. He suggested the possibility of using existing or new staff members who understand selecting and estimating monitoring state variables and how to fit trend models to the data. Depew commented on the balance or interplay between direct environmental impacts and the monitoring of things like river health or species biodiversity and the human element and measuring improvements to things like social health or the adoption of new behaviors. Noon stated a monitoring program by itself reveals nothing about causation , but if the monitoring program is accompanied by co -variants, inference to causation can be allowed. He noted there are experts in the field at CSU. King commented on the recent efforts to focus on connectivity with experts in Page 6 2/21/2024 – MINUTES the community and on leveraging those relationships. Buttke commented on adaptation versus resilience and on ensuring monitoring programs are evaluation programs to address ‘what if adaptation did not occur.’ Depew suggested the evaluation policy could be a topic for a future meeting. He went on to detail the criteria that were used to develop the list of short-term budget offers for projects. He outlined the actual offers themselves and discussed how they align with Council’s identified priorities. Zoccali stated many of the items appear to be good one-time items; however, he questioned whether expanding the scholarship program should be ongoing. Depew replied that item was framed as possible to be executed in 2024 and continue for future years if funds are available to help bolster the program. Depew stated these items will go before Council in April or May . Zoccali asked if the Board always goes line by line in terms of evaluating the regular budget as it did during the last cycle. Buttke replied that was the first time the Board did such an in-depth evaluation, and the exercise was seen as a way for the Board to be more proactive. Depew noted the Budget Office is indicating to staff that expectations about new enhancements and new budget proposals should be tempered which makes the opportunity to leverage the 2050 Tax revenue source all the more important. Depew showed the poster made by Chair Metcalf for the Super Issues meeting outlining the Board’s duties and responsibilities. Zoccali asked about quasi-judicial Commissions at the Super Issues meeting. Depew replied they will likely display the same types of information as indicated on Chair Metcalf’s poster. 7. OTHER BUSINESS • Board Member Reports ▪ Chair Metcalf reported that Kestrel Fields Natural Area opened off Vine and Overland and it contains a farming area for conservation agriculture. • NOTE: March – May NRAB Meetings Location Change – City Hall, 300 Laporte Avenue ▪ Depew noted the May meeting could be held jointly with AQAB. • 2024 Super Issues Meetings of Fort Collins Boards and Commissions will be held at the Lincoln Center. The dates are as follows: ▪ Monday, March 25 (Columbine Room) ▪ Monday, June 10 (Founder’s Room) ▪ Monday, September 9 (Founder’s Room) ▪ March 25 meeting will be dedicated for Boards and Commissions to learn Page 7 2/21/2024 – MINUTES about each other. Request from City Clerk’s Office to have several members of the NRAB present. • In-person training for new Board and Commission members to take place in Council Chambers on April 8th and April 22nd. Current members welcome to attend. ▪ Topics will include the Code of Conduct and the Anti-Discrimination and Anti- Harassment Policy. • Six Month Calendar Review https://www.fcgov.com/cityclerk/planning -calendar.php ▪ Depew reviewed Council’s Six Month Calendar and noted Council will be considering the Strategic Plan, adopting priorities, and a regional wasteshed update, during the next six months. He noted the Board could weigh in on the wasteshed topic at its March meeting prior to Council’s work session on the topic. ▪ Noon noted the Thornton pipeline 1041 regulations are again being considered by the County Commissioners. He also noted the County’s Environmental Advisory Board was precluded from making any comments on the 1041 decision. He stated if the County approves the project, then 1041 has to again become an issue for the City due to the location of the pipeline through the city. Additionally, he stated Save the Poudre has sued the Army Corps of Engineers for approving the project. ▪ Noon proposed recycling a memo written by the Board a few years ago related to buying water rights to remove the Poudre River’s low diversion dam above the railroad bridge and create a river trail from the Shields river access through the whitewater park. He stated Northern Water will contemplate buying those water rights if the City does not. ▪ Depew highlighted other items on the Six Month Planning Calendar, including the urban forest strategic plan, impact fees, water supply requirements, the 2024 appropriation of the 2050 tax, CCIP renewal, and building performance standards. He stated he will check with the building performance standards project team to see what sort of Board engagement would be most timely as there will be a series of discussions. • Revisit action items from previous meetings & preview of next meeting ▪ Depew noted there is a running list of potential topics for 2024 meetings and he has added 1041 regulations and the memo mentioned by Noon to that list. ▪ Depew stated staff from FC Moves will be attending the March meeting and suggested also discussing the regional wasteshed at that meeting. ▪ Members discussed the possibility of discussing building performance standards rather than transportation issues at the next meeting. ▪ Buttke asked if the Board will have a liaison for the new Active Modes Advisory Board. Depew replied the liaison model is not being continued as it is now an official Board. City Websites with Updates: • Natural Resources Advisory Board webpage: https://www.fcgov.com/cityclerk/natural - resources.php • Our Climate Future: https://ourcity.fcgov.com/ourclimatefuture 8. ADJOURNMENT Page 8 2/21/2024 – MINUTES a. 8:26 pm Minutes approved by a vote of the Board on 03/20/2024.