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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 06/19/2003MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE AVE. June 19, 2003 For Reference: Linda Stanley, Chair 493-7225 Eric Hamrick, Council Liaison 226-4824 Sarah Fox, Staff Liaison 221-6312 Board Members Present Nancy York, Jim Dennison, Mandar Sunthankar, Linda Stanley, Katie Walters, Cherie Trine, Ken Moore Board Members Absent Everett Bacon, John Long Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Sarah Fox, Terry Klahn, Lucinda Smith Transportation: John Daggett, Randy Hensley Guests Brian Chase, CSU The meeting was called to order at 5:10 p.m. Minutes The minutes of the May 15, 2003 were approved with 4 votes in favor, and one member (Jim Dennison) abstaining. CSU Foothills Campus Master Plan, Brian Chase, Director of Facilities, CSU Chase said the University has an attitude of trying to adopt sustainable measures in building and maintenance. The main campus is pretty much set, but the south campus near the vet hospital will grow. The foothills campus is a big opportunity. We're looking at 50 years of development. We're developing biohazard level 3 laboratories at the CDC. The density of people will be pretty low. We're doing studies to look at how we should grow in this area. We're trying to preserve open spaces and views. We're talking about using runoff water to take care of irrigation needs • Dennison: Is the new CDC building sited yet? • Chase: They're showing that the proposed site would be closer to the waters edge. • Dennison: I'm surprised, that place is hard to secure because of the hill. • Chase: I think you'll see that they'll fence along the ditch line. They're looking to build a nice research building. It'll have recreation facilities, like HP. It won't look like a prison. • Dennison: When they started talking about money for the old building they said it was too expensive to fix up. • Chase:If you wanted to go to a Level 3 facility it wouldn't be worth fixing up. Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 2 of 8 • Chase: People ask how to get there without a car. We envision a streetcar link to the campus. But in the next two years we're looking at a shuttle service. • Stanley: I asked to have this put on the agenda. There's going to be more density. The roads are not adequate by any means. Will there be any consideration of air quality when they go about doing this? • Chase: It's a great opportunity to experiment. We're looking at things like rather than taking sewer water across town, does it make sense to have a smaller water treatment plant on site. We've talked to the City about composting on site. • York: Have you considered hydrogen power? • Chase: Power is so cheap here it doesn't make sense. Sustainability is a balance between environment and economics. It makes sense to recycle newspapers, but recycling plastic cans is a joke. • York: Or not make them at all. • Chase: That's right. If we put more money into water quality we can get more bang for the buck. For air quality we can encourage carpooling, and make it bike friendly. The question is how do we encourage transit and provide alternatives. We're looking at shuttles. Parking is so cheap here charging doesn't make sense. We're talking about parking freshman at Hughes stadium. It's cheaper to shuttle people than eat up acres of land. In Fort Collins the reality is most of them don't use their cars during the week. How do you raise rates and not make people go nuts over it? • Stanley: I think you should raise them. Most people don't realize it's so expensive to park at other universities. It encourages people to find alternative transportation. • Fox: What about a monorail? • Chase: It's so expensive. It's less expensive to go with electric streetcars. If you build an apartment building on a street car line you don't have to put in parking. This is about land use planning and management operations. • Stanley: The roads up there are all dirt, will you have to pave? • Chase: There wont be that much impact. Most of the trips will be one trip in and out. Overland will have to be improved. We'll have to pay our fair share. State agencies don't pay taxes, but we do pay use fees. We'll need to kick in money to improve Overland. • York: Past surveys have indicated people would ride bikes more if it were safe. I hear you talking about vehicles. I would hope that biking would be at the forefront. Then there is no air pollution. • Chase: We have been doing studies, and talking with the City folks. In August we'll go the Board of Governors. • Stanley: I'm glad to see you've thought through some air quality issues. • Chase: We'll be looking to make it transit friendly. We'll take older buildings and make them energy efficient, and we'll make sure the new buildings are energy efficient from day one. Downtown Parking, John Daggett In response to a comment made by Brian Chase, Daggett said the City doesn't require a parking minimum on state property. He said the CSU Strategic plan presented a lot of data. Their roads are going to fail They're not addressing the issue of the number of autos coming to campus directly. There are two ways to deal with parking, increase rates, or decrease the supply. The Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 3 of 8 concept of moving the freshman to the stadium is pretty popular. All that does is buy them time. I'd love to come back sometime and talk about the CSU plan. Daggett said that included in the packets were two items, and AIS, and our response to City Council after the meeting. What we accomplished at the study session was educating them to the problem of parking in the downtown area. The pricing policy is backwards, the inconvenient spaces are expensive, and the on -street parking is cheap. The short term spaces are 90-100% filled all day long. It's probably worse on Saturdays, and not so bad on Sunday. The other problem we have is insufficient technology to enforce the regulations that we do have. There are technologies that are interesting, license plate readers. What Council told us is there is no money. • Dennison: How much are the license plate readers. • Daggett: Without the car they're about $75,000. • Dennison: How many people are chalking tires? • Daggett: Six to seven. • Dennison: So, one person could do the work of six to seven people. • Fox: Then six people are out of work. • Daggett: Not necessarily. With more people coming into downtown there is spillage, they spill into the periphery. There will be neighborhood parking permit programs. • Dennison: It almost seems a slam dunk, the labor savings alone would pay for it. • Daggett: The technology is a capital one time expense. There's a constant need to increase the frequency, or the geographic area. We've looked at the economics. If you have one or two, you are 30-40% more productive catching people who are violating. What Council said for us to do is start with enhanced enforcement and move toward pay parking as a long term solution. We cant get there right away, but we can make it painful to violate the regulations. Twenty percent of the spaces surveyed were occupied by employees or the owners of a business. We're trying to educate them. The whole concept is if your customer can't park, how will you make a profit? Parking is in support of economic vitality. There's a balance between being too heavy handed, it's a balancing act. • Trine: Go ahead with the meters and you wont need the new technology. • Daggett: If you go with meters, there's a different technology. Meters have a whole package. The meter would have a progressive fee. The longer you park, the more expensive it is. There's a wireless device in the parking space that communicates with the meter and a central data base. • Sunthankar: How much does a parking meter cost? • Daggett: For a block face, about 500 to 600 meters, it's around $40,000. • York: Do we not see that we're going to get saturated with vehicles. People need to turn to more humane forms of transit. • Daggett: People tend to not want to walk more than a block if they cant see their destination from the parking stall. This study is more than parking • York: How many vehicles go down College a day? • Daggett: Twenty two to twenty three thousand a day, when we reach twenty eight to twenty nine thousand, College Avenue will fail. We're suggesting that if you're going to build new parking resources they be at the periphery. Capture the cars before they get to downtown. • Fox: Why will people park and walk into a mall? Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 4 of 8 Daggett: Its behavior, it's because they can see the mall. There's a parking structure a block from the hottest part of downtown. York: There needs to be signage, and make people aware it's there. This whole City is geared toward cars, despite the fact it's a policy to try to become independent of vehicles. If we had a better transit system, if that old street car had been left, then people would access downtown. They'd hop off and walk, and get the health benefits of walking. The bike facilities downtown stink, there's nothing safe about them. Even avid bike riders stopped riding downtown. Now the bike racks are being removed when they fancy up the walking area. • Daggett: What I said to Eric Hamrick is that the key is implementation. If you don't implement you'll live with the problems • Stanley: Is there any evidence that if you charge for parking downtown, people will go to the malls more? • Daggett: I would respond that that's a smoke screen. People don't come downtown to park, they come to shop, or hear music, or go to a restaurant. How many people do we drive away with our current policies? The report from a survey says most people want some form of change. A lot of people want change in the way parking is managed. • York: I know a business owner whose business is in the high demand area, you could throw a rock and hit the parking structure, and he still parks in the street. • Daggett: Sixty-six thousand people in Boulder have eco passes. • York: They have frequent service. • Daggett: It all gets back to implementing. There are plenty of frequent service plans, let's implement. • York: Where is the resistance? • Stanley: It's the voters. • Moore: How about those of us who provide our own parking? • Daggett: If there are excess those spaces could be made available for the program, a parking cooperative. The notion is that downtown business property owners already pay these taxes. We can waive funds, or redirect funds to help with signage, paving, lighting, striping and maintenance. More than 50% of the downtown spaces are private. There are places where there is an excess. We can improve the nature of downtown by helping with a public investment and lowering tax obligations. • Stanley: It's true, we're going to have to get used to paying for parking. The challenge will be to get people to pay for parking without throwing a big fit till it becomes second nature. • Daggett: Economics will make it play, downtown is doing really well. Downtown was the only district in Fort Collins to see an increase in sales tax revenue for the last 3 or 4 quarters. • Stanley: It wont happen till people have to wait in traffic, or until we charge the true costs of driving. • York: We widen roads at an enormous cost. I think that we, the AQAB, should bring to the publics attention the adverse health affects of driving autos. We should show them the costs of improvements, such as, this repavement cost "this much". It's like secondary smoke, it's unhealthy, people are getting sick. We need to heighten the awareness of the cost of vehicles; the tires, streets, and what's sinking into the depths of our lungs. • Stanley: It's hard telling people that. • Trine: I like Nancy's idea of telling people the costs. • Stanley: They do that on new road construction projects. Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 5 of 8 • Daggett: But not per trip. • Trine: I never knew you could walk from the parking structure right to College. The stores should advertise that. • Daggett: They do, there are coupons and signs. • Dennison: What if you take a day a year and close down on -street parking? Make people use the parking garage. • York: What if you were to give the whole 100 block of College and W. Mountain free parking in the garage for a month. • Daggett: That's probably a good idea. It's worth a try and wouldn't cost too much. • Daggett: If you read the framework document I think you'll be pleased with what's in there. I'm happy to come back. This will go to Council on August 19`h. • Stanley: We need to this on next months agenda. Air Quality Policy Plan Survey Smith thanked everyone who completed the survey and said for those who didn't, it's not too late. The preliminary results include five (5) rankings from the AQAB and four (4) from staff. The left two columns are AQAB rankings, the middle two columns are staff rankings, and the third is the sum of all rankings. The top four (4) to six (6) pollutants seemed to come out clearly. • Walters: Every one on the bottom of this list was on the top of my list. • Smith: The instructions weren't that clear. They can be redone if you'd like. • Trine: The guidelines didn't talk about what's persistent. CO goes away, but lead stays there for ever, it accumulates. • Smith: The sub committee and staff did talk about the guidelines for the prioritization exercise. There were things removed from the list, we discussed short term versus long term impact, and localized versus regional pollutants. • Dennison: That's an important consideration. The City can't do anything about problems if they blow in from Utah. I would suggest that radon is a big enough issue that it should be separate. • Smith: Staff talked about doing it again for indoor air pollutants. We could do it as a subset. • Dennison: Radon is one of the things the City can do a lot about. • Trine: I thought there were some things missing, like mercury. It's more weighted for vehicles versus power plants, etc. • Smith: It's important to say that this is to get a sense. It would be a mistake to put too much stock in the outcome of this. It's a way to evaluate the collective considered opinion. It's not clear precisely how it will be used. It's important to focus on high priority pollutants. • Walters: The top eight pollutants that came out are fossil fuels. We need to focus on them. • Trine: I thought it was a great exercise. • Stanley: I agree, and I learned a lot. • Stanley: When we get the final results we can discuss this again. Air Quality Policies Smith said the time frame is five years. We'll be looking at them again in five years. When considering these it's important to keep in mind the definitions of principals and policies. We Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 6 of 8 will talk about this again next month. This is a draft that comes from discussions between staff and the AQAB sub committee, which includes Ken, Nancy, Katie and John. Staff proposed to get rid of the policy to keep emission from rising from the low point, and stick with the policy calling for continual reduction of emissions. Staff suggests a combined policy for reducing motor vehicle emission by focusing on both technology (the tailpipe emissions part) and behavior (the VMT part). • Stanley: In terms of the VMT piece, one of the reasons I like the idea of reducing VMT as separate item, is not only because of the air quality effects, but saving money on the transportation side. I like it separate. • Dennison: Will City Council receive and approve this? • Smith: Yes, they will do two things, approve the air quality polices related to City Plan, and also approve our document, the Air Quality Plan, which will have all of the air quality policies. • Dennison: I recall the item on the discussion of VMT, that VMT is growing faster than the population, ultimately this is true. About one and one half years ago, the action was to stop measuring VMT. • Smith: I don't think that was a result of the trigger. • Stanley: They said it was due to lack of funds. • Dennison: As far as our advice to the City went, it was a crucial thing. It's how they decide to spend money. We say it's a big issue, and they stop measuring it. That was an interesting response. One of the philosophies is "what does it matter if the total pollution doesn't change". It's a worthy goal to reduce VMT. Greenhouse gasses have risen per mile because the cars have gotten bigger. Policies to control VMT are worthwhile. • Sunthankar: Reducing the contaminants in the air is where air quality comes in. • Trine: There are other factors; gas station fugitive emissions, particulates, tires. • York: More asphalt. • Stanley: If these principals are consistent with other City policies, I'm pretty sure somewhere there's a policy or principal that says we'd like to reduce VMT. • Smith: It's in the Transportation Policy, there was an air quality objective to reduce VMT growth rate below the growth rate of population. • Smith: It seems there's interest in separate principals. Is there support for removing the one that says prevent total emissions from rising above the low point? • Sunthankar: Yes. • Smith: It's important to keep principals, even if they are difficult to achieve. • Smith: There are 3 more points I'd like to make: 1. The area -wide approach. The subcommittee recognized more research was needed on hot spots. Is there another standard that would be better? The EPA has health suggestions in their Air Quality Index which could be used as hot spot guidelines. Staff will look into this, there's no proposal yet. 2. There's interest in adding a new principal about health protection. A very general policy that specifically calls for fostering partnerships with the health professions. The City has asked for assistance from the Health District, and Larimer County staff. 3. I don't know what the last policy on the page would be called but it would recognize that it's ok to pay more if something has an air quality benefit. Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 7 of 8 • Dennison: When do cost -benefit analysis take health benefits into account? Is that a ridiculous notion? • Smith: No, it's important, but I think I would anticipate challenges based on where would the accurate information come from. I'm open to your suggestions. • Dennison: It's hard to get good information. • Smith: It sounds like some Board members are interested in wording that calls for recognition or incorporation of externalities in a cost benefit analysis. • Stanley: Maybe that's not even a principal. The principal could be broader in terms of considering the external costs in many types of decision. • Trine: I would like to talk about the health protection topic. I don't believe the Health District or even the County will give very good health advice. They are more into voluntary aspects than regulatory. They come from a very clear bias. They tend to not believe that carcinogens are a concern. There's a real bias there. They may not give the City the same advice we would give. You need to get health advice from people who take health concerns seriously. • Smith: What recognized organization would you suggest? • Trine: That's the problem. It's a great idea to get health input, but where you get it from is a problem • Dennison: There are people at CSU. • Smith: That's a great idea. • Dennison: Some of the issues you are studying are not insignificant. A lot of these issues are quite complex. The EPA could spend one million dollars on the fluoride issue and not be able to come up with the best answer. • Trine: Plus, you also get into fraud. I object to the Health District being the source of information. They are very biased, and will not serve the City well for health advice. If you could balance them out with a different point of view. • Smith: There are some good points here. I'll check into it, assuming Greg will agree to invite groups. I don't think any of them will have considered the issues from the perspective from which we will ask the questions. • Trine: If you involve the Health District, here's a precautionary principal. They come from the proof/harm perspective; it's safe because I can't prove harm. I object to that, and I object to the City relying on the Health District. Many groups have experts that won't come at it politically. • Smith: I don't have that perspective of the Health District, but it is reasonable to expand the expertise we're seeking. Other Business • Walters: The Denver Post said that Colorado is not going to joint the western regional air partnership. The other thing is they're considering "HOT" High Occupancy toll lanes, where single person vehicles can take the HOV lanes and reduce congestion if you pay to get on. • York: There's a new study, about living close to highways and talking about the fine particles. CSU didn't have it yet. • Dennison: What's the health effect? • York: Fine particles get in between the cells, and begin the disease process. Air Quality Advisory Board June 19, 2003 Page 8 of 8 • Moore: I talked to the mayor. I don't think it was too productive, but I hope he got something out of it. He wanted me to ask the board how many of the members have done radon testing and mitigation. • Dennison: We're failing to get people to read the available information. They still ask if anyone can say if this stuff is really risky, and how risky. They haven't heard anything they've been given. • Walters: He wants us to say radon equals this many lung cancer deaths. • Stanley: Katie will send something to Ray about health effects and demographics. • Stanley: On June 26 there is a development review luncheon to review the whole development review process. It's a big deal. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 8:OOp.m.