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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 06/28/2005For Reference: MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE AVE. June 28, 2005 Eric Levine, Chair 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison 407-7393 Lucinda Smith, Staff Liaison - 224-6085 Board Members Present Kip Carrico, Dave Dietrich, Eric Levine, Ken Moore, Linda Stanley, Nancy York Board Members Absent John Long, Cherie Trine Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Liz Skelton, Brian Woodruff Utilities: Kevin Gertig, Brian Janonis Guests John Barthalow, City of Fort Collins Water Advisory Board Jim Woodward The meeting was called to order at 5:31 p.m. Minutes With the changes made during the May 24, 2005 meeting by Nancy York, the minutes of the April 26, 2005 meeting were unanimously approved. With the following changes, the minutes of the May 24, 2005 meeting were unanimously approved: • Levine: Change the header on each page to May 24, 2005. Public Comment There were no public comments. Chronic Wasting Disease and Fort Collins Water Treatment Kevin Gertig, Water Production Manager in the Utilities Department, made a short presentation regarding the Water Treatment Center operations and Chronic Wasting Disease. • Levine: Kevin, you should be aware that Lucinda and I culled some of what you sent; so the board has about 60% of what you sent to Lucinda. • Levine: Do we have any way to test for CWD in the water? • Gertig: Not at this time. That is something that I am aggressively pursuing, but it is not coming very quickly. Giardia took about a decade. Here we are talking orders of Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 2 of 14 magnitudes smaller when you are talking protein chemistry. The other problem is how do you concentrate to even find them? In water treatment we deal in the micron level, and we deal with inorganic chemistry and organic chemistry. This is an area where the science just isn't there yet. • Levine: What kind of environmental temperature extremes and chemical treatments do the prions normally survive? • Gertig: It takes extreme amounts of chemicals. You have to use something like sodium hydroxide under the digester. That's high temperature, under pressure, in a very basic solution. It's very aggressive; far more aggressive than what we could do in a conventional treatment. Prions are very resistant. We do use calcium hydroxide and we elevate the pH, but we immediately bring that pH back down. • Levine: What is the temperature range? • Gertig: They are fairly high temperatures; Jim, do you know? • Barthalow: The digester is only 300 degrees, but the dry heat exposure is in the 600 degree -range. • Carrico: What about ozone? • Gertig: Ozone is still pending, as with many of these technologies the science isn't there yet. We have the capability in our research facility to do that but it may take high doses. The other problem with ozone and cold temperature waters is the half-life problem. In a lot of our research we've conducted, we don't use ozone in water treatment because the half-life is so long in low -temperature water. • Levine: I just did the conversion: 600 degrees is over 1100 Fahrenheit. Jim Woodward made a short presentation on information regarding the issue of the DOW facility's proximity to the Water Treatment facility. Mr. Woodward handed out a fact sheet on CWD. • Levine (re: DOW composting of carcasses): That really surprises me. You would think with any kind of possible infectious material there would be well established protocols that would say "no" to a practice like that. • Woodward: What you have to realize about this facility and the DOW in general is that they've operated this place since the mid-1970s and during this time the scientific knowledge about CWD has been developing, and they have (in my opinion) failed to take the proper action to contain the infectious material. Specifically, they don't have any kind of solid waste disposal permit from the State (CDPHE). The State has regulations governing those kinds of facilities. I recently asked the State if the DOW had ever sought any permitting and the answer is "no". They recently did an inspection and made some recommendations to build a concrete structure for the composting. • Levine: Is there any evidence in literature that composting will inactivate the prions? • Woodward: No, it doesn't. The heat level is not high enough. • Levine (re: necropsy laboratory): Do you know how many head is brought in each season? • Woodward: A couple of years ago they collected 20,000. Some of those were on the western slope. It's thousands that go through there. John Barthalow made a short presentation on the City of Fort Collins Water Board's deliberations and position regarding the DOW and Water Treatment facility issue. 0 Levine: How long did the Water Board look at this issue? Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 3 of 14 • Barthalow: Over 3 to 4 months but it was not a concentrated effort, it was very sporadic. • Levine: Did you get a formal presentation from the DOW? • Barthalow: Yes, in conjunction with two safety officers from CSU, both of whom have some oversight of the DOW's activities because the DOW leases that property from CSU. By the way, that is a fairly long lease. • York (re: possible dust contamination): What I read was something about how the DOW keeps those pens wet. Is that true? Do they keep them moist so debris doesn't blow around? • Gertig: They attempt to, but to say it is always at that level — no, I couldn't respond to that. They do get water from the other facility I pointed out, but to my knowledge they don't have a mechanism to distribute water. That is a recommendation from some other agencies; that they need to be more proactive in their abilities to keep the dust down. • York: Is the drainage away from the Water Treatment facility? • Gertig: That is correct. We do not obtain any run off. So mechanisms would again be airborne or physical. • Stanley: I'm trying to look at this from an air quality standpoint. The Department of Health letter says that there is evidence that dust-bome disease transmission is unlikely. Does that go along with some of what you've found in your research? • Woodward: They are basing that on the fact that, mad cow disease for example, is generally is transmitted by eating contaminated material - with CWD, the jury is still out. They don't know how it is transmitted. There was a study on environmental transmission where they put healthy deer in with infected deer, healthy deer in with dead carcasses and healthy deer in with feces from infected animals and in all three cases the healthy deer got CWD. So, that statement, I think, is a little misleading. • Stanley: There was conflicting summaries of the study in our packet. So shouldn't we be concerned about transmission through air and breathing in the air? • Levine: I've passed through that site hundreds of times. The Foothills trail was there and I went hiking there three times a week. It is a favorite site for many. • Stanley: That concerns me, especially because of the management techniques out there. The more I hear about protocols and not following protocols, I get concerned that we are going to have some event that will be unfortunate simply because we are not containing pathogens. Often times the protocols aren't followed. • Levine: My opinion is that it sounds like they are still following 1960 protocols and we are well into the 20`h century now. Imagine if we are operating our motor vehicles according to 1960 protocols! Our air quality would be in a sorry state right now. We've made a lot of progress since 1960's environmental protocols. This whole issue got me thinking about air quality regulations and laws. For instance, acid rain is not regulated from the human health standpoint. As far as an air quality issue, I think human health .is absolutely the fundamental issue that we deal with, but it is also environmental health in general. My question is, of course the Water Board is looking at this from the human health aspect but since we are part of the Natural Resources Department, have we been looking at the possible transmission of this to wildlife — that absolutely have this transmitted and have it transmitted by indirect methods? • Moore: I'm surprised we don't have someone from the DOW here. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 4 of 14 • Barthalow: Taking a stand back and looking at the situation — CWD is endemic. We are the epicenter. We collectively have a responsibility to have people of high quality researching this and trying to get rid of it from the source. We have to recognize that the DOW is capable of playing a good role here and we owe them some support. • Dietrich: What is DOW's position on that site? Have they considered other sites? • Woodward: They have not publicly expressed any desire to move, although we do have evidence of internal discussions regarding moving. At this point they are making moves towards trying to implement some better management practices. • Dietrich: From the photographs, it seems like the site is relatively small. Researching something as important as CWD may need more space • Woodward: I think one of the reasons they haven't is that if they were to build a new facility it would probably be a higher bio-containment level than what's there now, and they might not have the financial means. It would be very expensive. One idea is to move the CWD research up to the Wyoming site. It is a more remote site. That is the other site where it is believed that CWD might have originated. There is already the infrastructure and researchers up there. • Gertig: Of course there is a ton of questions that go with that because of course you would have to remediate the site, etc. I will tell you I can give them a call if there's any issues over there, which we haven't had any. You don't want to have an adversary; you want to work together with your neighbor. They are well attuned to our issue and concern. We have to build on that and hopefully they will find a place to relocate eventually but in the meantime the Water Board's direction is to be cooperative and do the best you can for the given time period. • Levine: As an example of one protocol, they are taking contaminated carcasses, composting them and trucking them back? • Woodward: They claim the carcasses are going to the CSU digester. Previous to 1985 they realized CWD was in the pens and any animal brought in was going to die. So in 1985 they tried to eradicate the disease from the facility. They killed all the deer and elk, buried the carcasses on site and took helicopters and sprayed bleach solution over the pens. They then plowed the pens and did more bleach. They let that sit for several years. Eventually when they brought deer and elk in, the animals got sick again. They surmised that was because they couldn't kill CWD with the bleach solution. • Dietrich: Did they do any testing outside the facility? • Woodward: That's a good question. When they first identified CWD in the pens and they started surveillance outside the pens, the first place they found CWD was right outside the facility. One of the theories is it originated in the facility, and the other is that it was in the wild anyway and just happened to pop up in the facility. The area moving away from the facility has a high infection rate. They bring animals in the facility and ship them out to parks and zoos and that probably adds to the spread. • Dietrich: When was the soil test done? • Woodward: Ob I'm sorry, what I was talking about was testing animals. Right now there is no way to test the soil. • Dietrich: So when you said the pens were contaminated, they only knew that because any animal brought in there got sick? • Barthalow: And it's well documented that it has spread from the facility to the outside. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 5 of 14 • Woodward: Well, there is some debate about that. The endemic area originally was North Central Colorado. Then it started moving east and west. Now it is showing up everywhere. To answer your question, there is not conclusive evidence that it started in the facility and spread outward. • Stanley: How is CWD spread from one animal to another? • Woodward: They're not sure. It could be nose to nose contact, feces, urine or saliva, or it could be environmental contamination. • Dietrich: They haven't proven anything yet? • Woodward: Correct. It could be multiple routes as well. • Gertig: There is a paper forthcoming that should be released any time and my understanding is they have indeed concluded the mechanism for transmission for deer and elk. It's just a matter of when it's published and we'll soon have that. I don't know what it says, because again the author has not published their research. We're all anxious to see that. • Dietrich: Where was the research performed? • Gertig: That was Dr. Miller and perhaps other University of Wyoming colleagues. • Stanley: I'm not arguing that the research shouldn't be done, or beating up on the DOW, but I'm just wondering if it is the appropriate place to do the research, and given that it is located so close to the population, the winds blow towards the population and it is a high traffic area — in the short term are the proper procedures being followed to minimize the possibility of transmission to human beings? That's where my concern is. • Gertig: Our perspective is, in keeping with the Water Board's recommendation, we will do our best effort as staff to keep appraised as to what is going on. Moving of that facility will take some time. I'm also interested in dust mitigation and have talked to the DOW; they certainly know the Water Board's recommendation. Perhaps there is a cooperative effort to help mitigate it knowing that it is a long term situation. Most folks agree to relocate but it will take a long time. I can make the offer if any new developments come forth I will come back for an update if that's acceptable. • Stanley: At first I wasn't sure about this topic, but after hearing everything it makes me a little nervous. • Dietrich: The prions are in the water supply, we just don't know the concentrations? • Gertig: That's the hypothesis of our employees. • Dietrich: It would be interesting to know the vectors of contamination. • Levine: I've been on the board since the board existed and there seems to be more gaps in the state of knowledge and research on this issue. I can't think of another one that compares. • Dietrich: There are a lot of issues, and we don't even know what most of them are. • Gertig: I think most of you know that Fort Collins Utilities is committed to high quality water. There is the idea that prions, from a theoretical point of view, will adhere to particulates. There is data that suggests that they may be removed in the coagulation process based on them sticking to clay particles. That said; there is no science to demonstrate that. My point is we use very precise devices to ascertain their chemistry. • Levine: That's in terms of removing them by water filtration. So if it were to adhere to PM 2.5 and smaller and get blown into the air, those would tend to get entrained within the lungs. 0 Woodward: It's all theoretical. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 6 of 14 • Dietrich: Is there research going on right now about water treatment for prions? • Woodward: Not that I'm aware of There's research going on that is just preliminary research that's found prions in treated wastewater bio-solids. • Gettig: I have sent out a worldwide message to research foundations that we are very interested if anything comes up. We are trying to solicit that and that's one of the things we will keep active on and measure that. I have a lot of interest in the techniques to ensure the safety of our citizens. I'll keep you posted on that. • Barthalow: I'd like to provide my rebuttal to the Larimer County Health Department's recommendation to all of the board members. • York: I think we should also put a little more pressure on them because it sounds like the maintenance is kind of poor. • Moore: It may just be they haven't been called to task before. Transportation Price Reform Brian Woodruff presented on his proposed project regarding transportation pricing reform. Mr. Woodruff handed out copies of the Talking Points document that was sent to the board via email. • York (re: Comprehensive Transportation Market Reforms, Talking Points): When did we get the electronic version? • Woodruff: I believe it was Wednesday or Thursday of last week. • Stanley: It's a good summary. • Levine (re: Direct ($1.00) vs. perceived ($0.12) costs): That's almost an order of magnitude. • Woodruff: This emphasizes the point that the way we pay for vehicle travel today is under -priced. The consequence again is that the drivers don't know the true cost of travel and they travel more than is in their best interest. They don't have adequate information or choices. • Stanley: Or really, they drive more than what is in society's best interest. Because society is bearing some of those costs. • Woodruff: That's true, too — thank you. The market is distorted by these hidden subsidies. If you had a pure market where people knew what the costs were and paid them at the time of travel, this picture would be improved quite a bit. In an optimal market, if drivers knew and paid for most of the costs at the time of travel, VMT could fall as much as 50% over the long term. That means things like urban sprawl would start to change because people would prefer... • Levine: Land use patterns would change to accommodate market costs. • Woodruff Absolutely. This wouldn't change overnight. A more achievable goal is to reduce the hidden and fixed payments as much as possible and convert them into variable payments according to how many miles you drive. A set of state -level changes of that kind could reduce vehicle travel 20%-35%. • Levine: Could you give some examples? • Woodruff. Yes, the set of strategies would include.... • York: Pay -as -you -drive auto insurance? • Woodruff: Yes it would include that. I refer to a paper that analyzed potential VMT reduction for the State of Washington, and their package of measures included requiring everyone have their odometer checked every year and that go into a central Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 7 of 14 database. That establishes a VMT basis for how much each car is driving every year. Then the second step would be to pro -rate annual vehicle plate fees on a mileage basis instead of the way we do now, which is based on the value of your vehicle. That money is used to pay for roadway construction and roadway upkeep. The value of your vehicle has nothing to do with the amount of damage you do to the road. The other idea is to extend the sales tax to fuel. Right now gasoline is off limits to state sales tax or local sales tax. But this could be done in a revenue -neutral manner. Whatever money comes in from sales tax on gasoline would be used to reduce the overall sales tax rate on everything. • Levine: What would be needed before the City could do that? • Woodruff. That has to be done at the state level. Again, we're talking about a packet of state -level measures that could reduce VMT 20-35%. The other part of their package is to convert about 10% of the free parking into paid parking where you pay maybe $0.30 per hour. And 10% of the employee -provided parking would be cashed -out. We haven't talked about cash -out yet. "Parking cash -out" is a method where employers stop giving away free parking. They turn the parking `benefit' into cash and give it to employees and then stop giving them the parking space. So then the employee pays the employer for the parking space. Or they can buy a good pair of walking shoes or bicycle or whatever. That's the package. There is a lot of detail, but just one reform alone such as Pay -as -you -drive insurance can reduce VMT by 10% all by itself. That is, instead of insuring by the year, you insure by the mile. It averages out around $0.05 per mile for the typical driver. • York: That's paid at the pump? • Woodruff. Not necessarily. Some states have done some research on charging at the pump, but it doesn't have to be that way. For example, in the Washington State research called for an odometer check every year. That could be used to establish the fees. There are insurance companies who are doing this right now in the USA, UK and Netherlands. It's quite popular with consumers. The point is that if we have access to these types of market reforms, the benefits in terms of VMT reduction are huge. You may ask why does the VMT go down? Do the trips just disappear? People wonder about this but what is actually happening is that drivers and families respond to the higher cost by reducing the number of trips they take or reducing the lengths of the trips they take and sometimes, for the lowest -value trips, they forego them entirely. Anybody can try this exercise — if I gave you different trip purposes you could put them in order by their value. Most people might put emergencies, like getting their wife to the hospital to have a baby as the highest valued trip. They'd pay a lot for that one. Commuting and major shopping trips are probably lower. • Levine: So the trip to the store for a quart of Ben and Jerry's at 11:00 PM is probably lower... • Woodruff: Yes. And every driver has that lower -value category that they can dispense with, if they see that the price is more than they want to pay for it. That's what causes the VMT to drop. • Levine: A lot of people would realize this if they thought about it for a little bit. How many times have you gone to the store and forgotten a couple of items and you go back? The obvious solution is not to forget those items and be a little more prepared. • York: I want to ask Ken about odometer manipulation. • Moore: On the older cars you could roll them back. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 8 of 14 • York: But the new cars? • Moore: The newer cars, they could change the dash unit but the computer itself has the mileage recorded and most people don't know about it. If you take it in to the dealer for service they can tell by reading the computer what the actual miles are on it. Anything can be beat, but the amount of money you want to spend to go in and do it is the big thing. • Woodruff: There will always be some cheating, but that's true for just about anything. • York (re: Revenue -neutral price changes): What's a Transportation Utility Fee? • Woodruff: That is a fee that is charged to property owners based on an assessment of approximately how many vehicle trips or VMT are generated by the facility. • York: The transportation impact fees that are assessed to businesses and also residents — we already have that, sort of. They do project how many trips are going to be out of.. • Stanley: This Transportation Utility Fee, I think the way it's being used is not very precise. Usually it is on your utility bill. They estimate based on the size of house or the number of occupants in the house. So if you have four people and they only ride bikes you probably are still going to get charged what four people over here do when they have four cars. It's sort of a blunt instrument. • Stanley (re: London's success with congestion charge): They have a lot of alternative transportation though. • Woodruff: My questions for you are, what issues come to mind as we talk about this? And would you support the City getting more involved in this issue? And what further information do you need? • Moore: "What's in it for me?" That's what everybody will say. • York: Since you area mechanic, it means less business but a more relaxed quality of life! • Moore: You've got to look at all these things as "what's in it for me". The average person out there ... the goal is to clean up the air but they also want to have convenience. Cars are convenient. • York: They still have that choice; they just need to pay for it. • Moore: There will need to be other convenient alternatives in place. Such as a subway or rapid transit that is reliable, on time and plentiful. Carpools are a big thing now. Maybe that works for HP because they get off at the same time, but that doesn't work for most people. It is inconvenient. • Woodruff: Those types of trips would still be made the same way that they're made now. • Moore: So say I do drive less, Ok what's in it for me? I may save some money on my car insurance. • Woodruff: That's right. You get to keep some money in your pocket. The other factor is traffic congestion. That's the number -one pet peeve of most citizens. What these pricing reforms do is reduce the number of cars on the road. When you go out there you face less traffic congestion. • Moore: But it also becomes an inconvenience because I can't jump in my car without paying the price. • Woodruff. You also end up paying less in taxes because transportation investments may be delayed or avoided altogether. You don't need to six -lane every single arterial street. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 9 of 14 • Moore: How would businesses be affected by this? For example, in Downtown, one of the things I've heard over the years is, they really enforced when they had stickers for the emissions, and they would get a ticket. In a heartbeat they would get a ticket. People stopped shopping downtown because they would get a ticket. I remember when there were meters everywhere and they slowly disappeared. The meter might be a good deal for people to shop instead of business people parking out front of their shops. You have to look at how it affects business because right now the economy is not so good. Some economists might disagree with me but every businessperson I've talked to agrees. You lose big businesses if it is going to start costing their employees. If it costs them too much to be here, eventually the tax base will go away and you will have accomplished the goal of eliminating congestion but there is not going be anything to support any government. • York: The thing, though, is if you allow people to cut down their costs by reducing their VMTs and choosing other modes of transportation, then those individuals are going to have more money in their pockets and more disposable income. It actually might be a benefit to the community. The City has an $8 million dollar deficit and a whole bus route that operates 6 days, 12 hours a day for a year costs $235,000. One lane -mile costs $2 million dollars. You figure that if we could make some shifts in transportation and not have so many expansions on lanes, we could wipe out our $8 million dollar deficit and have bus routes. • Moore: But that goes to convenience. It's got to be convenient and timely. • Stanley: That's one reason that on a city level, I just don't know how much it is going to work. It has almost got to be done on state or national level. Europe is doing it in great form on all sorts of things and their economic productivity is going up because of it. If you do it revenue -neutral, what you do is you place the cost where it is supposed to go. Right now driving is heavily subsidized by people like Nancy, who ride their bike everyday. If you could put a tax where it should be, you are correcting a previous market failure. If the City were to go revenue -neutral, is there something that we can stop taxing that would cause productivity to go up or cause economic activity to go up? It's simply a use tax. Unfortunately people have been getting it either for free or in a place where you don't see what your true cost is, so you don't make the correct societal decision. • Woodruff: Ken has put his finger on some really important issues with this. If these ideas are going to gain any ground at all, there needs to be some kind of hook that makes sense to people. • Stanley: That is what Boulder was trying. They were actually going to give people money for driving less. So instead of charging you for driving more they were going to give you money for driving less. But of course that requires some up front out -of - pockets costs and how soon do you see the effects of that? • Dietrich: hi doing your research Brian, it took 30, 40 years or more to get to this level. In an economist's eyes, theoretically no matter how you make these changes some people will get hurt and some will get benefits, but over a period of time it settles to its proper position. Has anyone projected the number of years it would take to make those changes and get to that position? • Woodruff: No, the paper about Washington State, which had the series of three steps to get to the optimal... • Dietrich: Optimal meaning what? A reduction in VMT of...? Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 10 of 14 • Woodruff: Of 35%. • Dietrich: That's what they said was optimal? • Woodruff: Well, that's what was doable within a limited number of years. We're talking about 10 years to achieve that amount of reduction. But obviously, the `ripples' would still be `rippling' after 10 years. There would be effects that would be felt farther down the road. • Levine: The thing is we're growing at about 50% more than that reduction. What does our VMT grow at, is it still 4.9%? • Woodruff: Yes, 4.9% is our best estimate. • Dietrich: Well Nancy brought up bus routes and that means alternatives and that means a capital investment over `X' number of years to invest because the community can't come up with all the money tomorrow. It takes `X' number of years to get that capital investment in place. That's one of those things that is always a struggle. I don't disagree with any of this; I think it's great. The struggle is people can't see more than `X' number of days ahead let alone... "If we make this move, 15 years from now this will be where we want it". At a national level... OK. But on an individual community level, or even a state level, that's a tough decision. • Levine: Say a bus route, incrementally expanded, still rather expensive — I think you're going to see year after year of no bang for that buck. And you're going to have to weather year after year of failure and people are going to get a little more strident on where is this money going to. Whereas if you did it all at once, you have a real good chance within a very short time, because people have a viable alternative the faster it's done, and within a fairly short amount of time people can discover that this is a viable alternative that I can use occasionally. • York: I think people are already becoming aware of the costs of transportation, just because a barrel of oil costs $60. • Dietrich: Well, if you want to reduce VMT quickly, raise the price of gas to $5 per gallon and it will drop like a rocket. • York: Well remember what Brian said about the community -readiness levels? From unaware, to denial, and the third one was...? • Woodruff Vague awareness. • York: Well, it's our officials who are in denial, I think. • Dietrich: Well they are profiting from this. They are not just in denial, they are profiting. • York: No. See I don't know. I've been a strong advocate for alternative transportation for over thirty years now, in the 1970s. Just like I said about one lane -mile costs upwards of $2 million, then you say the buses won't work. But if we added bus lanes, it's like the chicken and egg. • Dietrich: I agree with you totally, and I grew up in an area were nobody had cars. Back east, you didn't need cars. You took the buses and they were convenient. You had local shopping: You could walk to the grocery stores. That's gone. It's gone. • Levine: They had that here 100 years ago. • Dietrich: Exactly. And it's gone. And why is it gone? It's because automobile manufacturers took care of legislation. • York: And they are still taking care of it. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 11 of 14 • Dietrich: Right. And how many campaign contributions come to senators and congressman at the national level from alternative transportation sources? • York: What Boulder has done is they went to the people and asked them what they want and they have a transit system now that has relieved a lot of people driving their own cars. That's a success. But Boulder — they pay more money. It's higher costs in some regards. But they are successful in that regards. • Stanley: Politically, right now, this is dead in the water. I love this stuff — this is my area. It always tees me off that people talk about the market, but when it actually comes to trying to make a market work and have a real market they don't want to do it. They say: you can't do that — that's communism! When really it's trying to make the market work like it should because we have so many market failures. In Fort Collins right now the political situation is such that I can't imagine you would get any support from this, on Council at least. I'm wondering if there is some way to make a coalition with other communities. If we can start getting some education going... But you can't get people buying in to this unless they also know what they are going to get in return or why it does make sense. • Levine: One of the biggest problems is we're talking about the market and subsidizing this and that and the main problem is people haven't subsidized it. Our long-term road shortfalls are $1.2 billion dollars. We have borrowed on that infrastructure and who has benefited have been certain parts of the development industry. New housing and new businesses have not paid more than a fraction of the actual costs of the infrastructure shortfalls that we have incurred. One of the ways I've always liked problem solving, if I look at a problem that's ongoing, obviously like our VMT and our transportation shortfalls, I've always thought of the first thing to do when finding yourself in a hole is to stop digging and looked at it as triage. Our approach has always been that way with the radon: look at the new development and correct the problem there while it is most efficacious to do so. We've tried as a City to do that and made some degree of progress, but not enough on the new housing and have fair allocation of fees versus infrastructure use. • Stanley: But that doesn't help VMT. It actually just makes it worse. What you are doing is you are putting out there better infrastructure that makes it easier to drive and to get to those outlying new developments. • Levine: I'm not sure, because... • Stanley: I'm not saying I believe in these impact fees... • Levine: If you're charging a proper fee structure, the more sprawl and the more on the outskirts the much higher the fees are so I would tend to think in a market that would tend to limit... • Stanley: But that's not how we charge fees. • Dietrich: That's true of Fort Collins but so Windsor then develops the land and Loveland develops the land. The same problem exists. The people from out there still drive into here., • Levine: That's a big problem. It's just like air quality; the air knows no bounds. • Dietrich: It has to be at the national level. The country has to move forward. Individual cities have a difficult time unless they are small and already have an infrastructure of land use that exists that allows for that. Everybody uses Europe for an example but Europe has totally different land use patterns. Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 12 of 14 • Stanley: And they've done it as countries. • Dietrich: Oil and gas, because it's all imported, is at $5 per gallon. Cars are small and used infrequently, public transport exists everywhere, people live in more dense communities — it's not the same. • Stanley: They use it everywhere. They use it on pollution and take it off of. labor. I do think it can be done at the state level on things like the Pay-as-you-go insurance. • Dietrich: Some things, definitely. • Stanley: Maybe that's something to try to work on with other communities. That is a relatively small change that people may see as positive. • Woodruff. There are a lot of people who feel that they don't travel the standard number of miles. That will be very popular. • Dietrich: That would be a state -level insurance making decision? • Woodruff: Yes, insurance is regulated at the state level. • Dietrich: The same thing could occur with the sales tax on gasoline? It would be a state -level decision? • Woodruff: Yes, it would have to be. • Moore: Or parking. • Stanley: Or registration fees. From what I understand if we could get several jurisdictions together, I'm not calling it anything here, then we could do something like that. There could be some sort of enabling legislation that would allow as to charge vehicle fees based upon what we want to. • Levine: The Pay -as -you -drive insurance, you could have a lot of people thinking that would benefit them directly. If it's gasoline tax, people are not going to feel that way necessarily. • York: I wish that at our next meeting we continue this and that we would think about making a recommendation to City Council on many levels. That's part of our lobbying them and they have to get over their denial as well. I hope that we can come up with good recommendation based on what we've talked about tonight and incorporating other things. I hope you interview the County Commissioners. Or, certainly that we give the papers to Karen Wagner. She's very pro -transit and she's on the MPO. • Woodruff. We're not out of the closet yet with this. We're still talking among City staff. Of course, this is all public information so you are free to do... • York: I'll do it. • Woodruff: We're still trying to figure out if this a legitimate area for the City to be involved (in hard budget times) and can we justify it? Some of these things wouldn't pay off until ten years out. It seems appropriate to do it, because in ten years we will get some benefit from it, but right now we are strapped for cash. • Levine: It is hard to justify ways of operating that incurred $1.2 billion dollars in transportation shortfalls. That's not sustainable. • Dietrich: Brian, do you know if the Pay-as-you-go insurance has ever been introduced at the state level? • Woodruff: Yes, in Texas, Oregon, Maryland... • Dietrich: But in Colorado? • Woodruff: In Colorado, no. My understanding is it would be legal; there is no regulatory barrier to an insurance company offering Pay-as-you-go insurance. But nobody's doing it. What other states have done is they've passed bills that incentive- Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 13 of 14 ize it. For example the corporate tax on insurance companies could be reduced if they introduced these new insurance products. So you get something going. That kind of a bill could work here. • Carrico: Are there reporting costs for reporting annual vehicle mileage? • Woodruff: Yes. There would be the odometer checks and some administrative costs. • Moore: I was just playing devil's advocate. • Levine: It's obviously true that there are some initiatives that people see or would imagine the direct benefit to them immediately and some that are a benefit but it is not a direct, easily -seen benefit and it could also be at some future date as well. Very different perceptions involved with those strategies, for sure. • Woodruff: I think this is something we are going to hear more and more about in the future. Partly because Europe is doing so well with it and having economic success with it. Partly because communities all over the Country are strapped for transportation dollars and they are looking for ways of increasing revenue stream. When they begin to understand that by changing the price structure they will have fewer cars on the road, which benefits everybody, it will start to make more sense. I looked up what point in time the license fees were set the way that they are now — creating an excise tax on vehicles — and it was 1936. • Dietrich: It's "always" been this way. • Woodruff: That's right. Reforming the way we pay for transportation is harder because the current methods have grown over a long time and we are not even aware of them. They don't come into the awareness of most drivers. That doesn't mean that reform is a bad thing, it just means that it's hard work • Levine: What has been the City staff s response to this presentation? • Woodruff. Very similar to the issues that the board has raised. • Levine: But we're not totally unaware and in denial though. If the City is past those couple of steps, that's promising. • Carrico: I don't know if you can't take steps toward this at a city level too. If you look at something like climate change, there has not been a lot of effort at the national level to address that but you have a lot of cities that are taking actions to address that and they get no direct benefit out of it and they have to pay a direct cost to do that. • Levine: It seems to me there had been a lot of effort at the national level to deliberately not address climate change. • York: The point is, that is one of the leverages that the little cities have: to influence the federal government. Eventually the government will come along. • Carrico: It could be taken up at the City of Fort Collins level. Maybe not in the current political or budget climate but I wouldn't shy away from necessarily approaching it that way. • Levine: Excellent work Brian. Especially for a relatively short document; I'm very impressed with this document. Great work. • Woodruff. Thank you. Public Outreach The board elected to move this discussion to July's agenda. Updates Air Quality Advisory Board 05/24/2005 Page 14 of 14 Nancy York handed out four newspaper articles for the board to review. • York: If I might say, the things that I passed out tonight, the June 15th one talks about the inflation involved with asphalt and other road building materials. Another one is about the IRA and the mileage discount and how it is not meeting what the real cost is and it tells the real costs of driving a 6-cylinder or an SUV. The last one is about fuel costs too. I hope you just give it a little look. Meeting adjourned 8: 00 PM Submitted by Liz Skelton Administrative Secretary I Approved by the Board on July 26, 2005 Signed Z 2 yZR;];L. 07/27/05 iz Skel n Date Admimstrative Secretary I Extension: 6600