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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 01/23/2007MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 200 WEST MOUNTAIN AVE. January 23, 2007 For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison 407-7393 Brian Woodruff, Staff Liaison 221-6604 Board Members Present Nancy York, Dale Adamy, Eric Levine, Gregory McMaster, Kip Carrico, Dennis Georg, Shane Armstrong, Jeff Engell, Dave Dietrich Board Members Absent None Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Brian Woodruff, Tara McGibben Guests Tracy Ochsner, City of Ft. Collins Maintenance Superintendent; Dave Leiseter, City of Ft. Collins Shop Supervisor; Ken Maranon, City of Ft. Collins Director of Operation Services; Marla Sittner, City of Ft. Collins Transfort General Manager. The meeting was called to order at 5:38pm. Minutes AQAB December meeting minutes have not been approved. Public Comment • No public present. Agenda Item 1 Tracy Ochsner, City of Ft. Collins Maintenance Superintendent Ochsner: There hasn't been much new on the alternative fuel front since the last time I spoke. The city runs a few propane vehicles; that program is on its way out. We were doing after market conversions and after doing the emissions testing we didn't see much benefit. We look only at OEM vehicles. Natural gas has been played around with for the last 18 months. We have a fast fuel natural gas station located at the Transfort station that can fuel a natural gas vehicle in about the same time as a diesel. Previously we relied on Excel which didn't have the capacity and fuel makers but that's still not enough capacity at 1 gallon an hour and a bus that holds 70 gallons takes a long time to fill. They can fill at 3-4 gallons an hour but still a tedious process. The city runs bin Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 2 of 14 diesel (1320) on 100% of the diesel vehicles and equipment that we have. We've had good success during the last cold snap; bio diesel performed well. There are a few growing pains with new ultra -low sulfur diesel and bio-diesel concerning bacteria growth and water condensation. They're working through that with additives and we're pleased with the performance. We've been running this for one year and 6 months prior on 7 Transfort buses. We have high hopes for the use of hydrogen and hythane (85% natural gas / 15% hydrogen mix) unfortunately the electrolyzer that separates the hydrogen from the water equipment we're using for the hythane is more of a beta test than we envisioned therefore delaying us by two years on the project. After running 8- 12 hours it has stability issues. It's built back East and we don't have a ship date as of yet. Once here we'll be able to fill pure hydrogen (factory fuel cell vehicle) or hythane mix. Hythane works in natural gas vehicles so a natural gas bus will be used to test it. It's a test project on the horizon. The city has 7-9 hybrid vehicles that work very well for us. A lot of the vehicles are rated at ULEV level, which is ultra -low emitting vehicle level. We'll continue working with hybrids. • York: Any hybrid buses in the pipeline? • Ochsner: We are talking to a few manufacturers but its not mainstream technology and costs are still very high. We have a natural gas bus and there are natural gas and diesel hybrids. We're a few years away from hybrid buses and they're cost prohibitive right now. There's not a lot of luxury with back-ups in the fleet and whatever we buy has to be low maintenance and clean burning. • York: Do you have a cost comparison between each kind of fuel? • Ochsner: No, but I know bio-diesel and diesel flip-flop in costs; when one is high the other is low. As an average we're paying a slight bio-diesel premium lately because a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon and running bio-diesel. • York: What's the cost compared to natural gas? • Ochsner: I checked pricing of natural gas 3 to 4 months ago and looking at a diesel equivalent gallon of natural gas, natural gas was a few cents lower. Gas prices were higher then too. Since then we've installed a back up compressor, which takes less energy to run. I need to go back and figure costs for maintenance, gas, electric and wind power, but the smaller compressor is all we need now. To run the few and the full size bus, the back up compressor works for now. My sense is we'll be pretty close to the same price per gallon since diesel prices have come down. • Dietrich: You mentioned down sides that occurred such as the cold start-ups and the bacteria in the bio-diesel. Are there any down sides with the hybrids that you or the shops have seen? • Mannon: We've had good luck so far. There are a few battery issues if they sit for a couple weeks due to the temperatures. We've taken measures to combat that. • Dietrich: What type of hybrids do you have? • Mannon: We have the Toyota Prius. • Ochsner: The battery life should be 7-8 years. No battery packs have been replaced yet. • Leiseter: The Ford Escape performs well and handles nice when driving to Denver. • Dietrich: So you're likely to get more of those? • Leiseter: We look at the department request and see if there's a match. The cost is a factor with some departments. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 3 of 14 • York: Hybrids are best used for stop and go activity around town and not as good on the highway, is that correct? • Leiseter: Yes, you're correct in that the engine shuts off when the car stops at a stoplight or train. The car switches from the battery to the engine when driving on the highway so the fuel economy is fairly good on the high way but bigger benefit is in town. • Ochsner: The fuel economy on the Prius runs 48/49 gallons to the mile on the highway and city. • York: The Smart car, is it converted to be a hybrid? • Ochsner: No, not yet. The Smart car is from Europe and just now able to sell in US due to emissions and DOT issues, that is just becoming US compliant. The cost is $24,000. The EPA rates them mid 30 miles to a gallon. We haven't run it in the past month, but early fall we got 50 miles to the gallon. That's better than the EPA rating. But it's a test car and we may work with Woodward Governor to convert it to hythane. • McMaster: Are there staff that don't want to be in smaller cars due to the danger factor with all the SUVs on the road, especially driving to Denver? • Leiseter: We've taken the Smart car on the interstate to get a feel for the handling. We don't think it will be a Denver car. We do have people not interested in driving it. • Ochsner: Another alternative fuel is E85, which is made of 85% ethanol and 15% gas. We're working on getting a dispenser at the city site. We have about 40 flex fuel vehicles at that run on E85 as well as straight unleaded. The E85 industry has pulled all the UL listings for the components that dispense this fuel and have underwriter laboratories reviewing the alcohol content because it's a corrosive liquid. That put a damper on new and existing stations because fire authorities aren't recognizing those as legal stations. The local fire authority approved a temporary tank pending the legality of the stations. We have a $15,000 grant from the state to install the station hopefully by the end of this year. • Carrico: Since you already have the natural gas fuel stations, have you looked at any passenger natural gas vehicles? Honda makes the Civic. • Ochsner: The Civic is a good vehicle. The physical location of the station is our barrier. The Civic would apply as a pool car and that's small for Transfort. When we buy new vehicles we make sure it makes sense and meets our criteria. We have a few mini vans and one light duty pick up that run natural gas that are at least 5-6 years old. • Levine: In 1997 we were pushing for natural gas. What progress has the city made since then percent wise? • Mannon: Manufacturers change directions so fast and they change the vehicles types so fast that they don't always match what we're looking for. We knew our direction on buses and because we've got 12-year buses we have to wait the 12-years to replace them. As we replace them, we replace them with natural gas. Federal funding becomes the issue. Regarding the cars and light -duty trucks from the past, the manufactures are all over the place creating difficulty when matching the vehicles we need to replace. All dial -a -ride vehicles were natural gas; however today you can't buy that size vehicle in natural gas. We strive for the natural gas vehicles but because of the manufactures we can't always get where we need to go. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 4 of 14 • Sittner: The problem is trying to get the federal dollars to replace the vehicles that we have. We've relied on 80% federal dollars and 20% local dollars. The federal dollars are keeping us from getting back in line with the replacements. • Ochsner: We have our own fast fuel facility that is a large size so we can make a difference and we have growth potential. • Levine: Is there a big difference between the natural gas and the diesel bus replacement costs? What kind of federal dollars need to make up the difference? • Leiseter: About $50,000 per bus. The cost of one bus is around $350,000. • Levine: The PSD buses are technologically proficient at a cost of $80,000. We're wondering what technology the city buses have. • Ochsner: I can't talk about the difference between an $80,000 school bus versus a $314,000 transit bus. We submitted a grant in cooperation with ICLEI for $64,000 to retro fit a couple transit buses with particulate filter traps. • Leiseter: We're working with Cummins for the correct particulate trap in meeting EPA requirements. Cummins is looking at two different types of particulate traps that were only made possible this year due to the introduction of ultra -low sulfur fuel. A few years ago they wouldn't even provide it because the diesel fuel wouldn't function and that was the problem with the earlier particulate traps. • Levine: What time frame will the clean air technologies make a difference? • Leiseter: It was brought out here this year here. The technology is there and more advanced. We'll be successful, it's just a matter of purchasing the traps and getting them installed at $10,000 to $15,000 cost per bus I believe. There are filters that trap particulates to a point and then they have to be replaced which is different than the particulate trap, which regenerates itself and cleans itself. We're looking at the traps as opposed to the filters. • Marmon: We've been running low sulfur fuel for some time; it's the ultra low that's new. We've been paying the extra dollars annually to do the low sulfur and now they're requiring the ultra -low. We've been trying to do what we can for years. • McMaster: Why not use a school bus instead of a transfort bus? • York: They may even be safer. • Marmon: The real issue is access. Being able to get on and off and still be ADA accessible. We've gone to low floors because you have to get people on and off fast. • Leiseter: They aren't a 12-year bus. If used in town they would last between 5 to 7 years. They are a step below, as transit buses rum year round and have destination signs, wheel -chair access and fare -boxes. School buses don't run year-round or have all the requirements the city would need. • Sittner: Standees must be accommodated. • McMaster: The school buses seat more people. • Sittner: There's still not enough access. • Leiseter: We'd never get by with a school bus in a transit application because people have to filter through the isles to get a seat. The transit bus is a quick on and quick off. We can buy a school -bus style transit bus that cost $100,000 to $120,000 and they're a 7-year bus that we'll run 15-18 years due to funding issues. • York: PSD also said they have engine heaters so they don't park them inside. • Leiseter: We have the advantage of keeping our buses inside. We plug in our buses to block heaters. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 5 of 14 York: Tom said they save money by not having the buses in heated garages. Leiseter: They have 300 or 400 buses so that would take a lot of facilities. They have a box for their heaters, which fire up on their own. We have that in our C&G bus. That would be the only way they can function because they have to start up in sub -zero weather so they probably have engine block heaters and fuel line heaters and Webastoheaters that heat the cooling system so when they turn on the fan the vehicle is heated. • McMaster: That gets back to idling issues too. • Leiseter: Transfort parks inside so there's no need for excessive idling. • McMaster: There's a period of time to turn off the engine. • Leiseter: Transit doesn't idle because their stops are so close together. They don't idle at all and if they do the policy allows for 5 minutes only. • McMaster: What would it cost to rotate a smaller bus into the system? • Leiseter: That was the cost of a 30' bus. The larger 40' to 60' articulate buses run $500,000 to $600,000 each. • Sittner: We've been purchasing 30' size when we have an opportunity to purchase buses. Prior to that we've had 35' buses and we have one 40' bus used for CSU routes due to high ridership. • Georg: You have a lot of programs in place, what are your priorities? • Ochsner: Priorities concerning alternative fuels? • Georg: In terms of impacting vehicle emissions. • Ochsner: We're going to do what ever makes sense. One of our priorities is working with our equipment board regarding two administrative anti -idling policies. One policy relates to saving energy by turning off vehicles if idling more than 3 minutes except when used for traffic control or running accessory equipment. It is vague and loose as far as what you can and can't do. The other policy under air quality urges employees to eliminate unnecessary idling of vehicles. We're working on which vehicles and how long they can idle and work out a compromise with some city departments. We're looking at various technologies on idling such as after market idle -shut down equipment. We're looking at all technologies and cleaner burning diesel. There is more grant opportunities that we hope to take advantage of. • Georg: Are there best practices from similar cities that you'd like to apply? • Ochsner: The anti -idling policy and the clean diesel technology are best practices in some of the larger cities. Mannon: With every vehicle request we scrutinize size and fuel economy. The police department is a good example because they request Dodge Chargers with Hemi engines that we refuse. We have to look at fuel economy and choose either hybrid or natural gas vehicles. As our funds dwindle we figured out how to deal with the various departments not doing preventive maintenance by charging for miles used. We told the departments they have to reduce mileage and that we're not charging for maintenance but charging for your mileage. We're going to continue to maintain them. We completed the first cycle and we're going to evaluate that. York: How much is it per mile? Mannon: That depends on the vehicle; the larger the vehicle the more cost more per mile. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 6 of 14 • Ochsner: A light duty patrol car is 15-17 cents; a staff is 10-12 cents a mile. The number of hours equipment puts on; if they don't need to run the equipment they can reduce their hours. We knew going in it would save fuel and save the air. It's saving them money if they choose to reduce. • York: I see people working in the streets who run their lights. I ask if they need to do that and they say yes due to the draw on the battery. • Ochsner: What kind of lights do you mean? • York: When they clean the gutters. • Leiseter: Yes, that's true. There's no other way to operate the lights without running the battery down. Police vehicles have duel batteries and that's even tough to keep up. The Webasto heaters come into play if it's just for heat. • Georg: Would you reduce the number of vehicles you have? • Mannon: For every vehicle there's a monthly charge even if that vehicle is just sitting there. Charging a fee discourages departments from keeping their old vehicles. • Georg: How many did you reduce last year? • Mannon: About 50 total. About a dozen were turned in just because they didn't want to pay for them. • Leiseter: Departments know now about all their vehicles now. • Levine: Did you go to the city manager to get this policy? • Mannon: We gave Darin options within the BFO process. A lot of departments pushed back. Now if they want to budget they have to figure out how many miles they're going to drive and they know the cost. • Leiseter: They're surprised we get the problems fixed right and get it back to them quickly. • Ochsner: Parks is in tune with this that's why they district. We send a remote service technician to them therefore saving them money (no miles/usage), time and convenience. • Levine: I realize your focus is delivery of reliable transportation services at a good cost. And, you know, that's a quality product. Of course, we're focused on the air quality aspects as we should be, so I think everyone understands that here that the priorities are not that complete; we're just looking at that one aspect more than some of the others but we realize the job that you all do and what you need to do and everyone here I think believes you're doing a good job at that. With that said, I've got a couple of big picture kind of forest requests. I am wondering, from the air quality perspective, what has been the progress made as far as; source reduction would be good too; but you know the tail pipe emissions of the vehicles. What did that look like then and what does that look like now? And with the policies in place I guess what will that look like? Maybe when the ultra -low, we get the full benefit from the ultra -low. And then I guess some of what I would love to see is some best practices as Denny mentioned already. If anyone Brian or Lucinda or if anyone knows some; if you've looked at some of the best practices from other cities and how we would compare where we fit on the curve of the best practices. And then, you've identified some of it already, but if we could, some of the big picture barriers and opportunities that we have. We've some of that. We've seen that you've done; you have some good solutions to some of those barriers already with the charging the departments per mileage. It's funny from our perspective, cutting down on the mileage from some of the city staff and those is a good thing, but yet on Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 7 of 14 the transfort side of things you really want to increase the miles of the vehicles and the ridership especially. • Ochsner: I'll address some of those. First of all we've had a lot of help with our technology stuff and the instruction of the ultra -low sulfur diesel. You know what diesels were ten years ago and you know what they are today, it's so much cleaner. I remember sitting in some fleet meetings and engine manufactures saying there's no way we can run this stuff, get to the standards that the EPA is asking us to get to. Not just with the field but with the standards on the engines. We've already passed that first tier and now we're hitting the next one here in a few years. The manufacturers are stepping up a lot because they have to and that's helped us out a lot as far as air quality. I wish that there was more ultra -low emissions vehicles available than there are today. Ford was heading that way with their alternative fuel stuff then they pulled the plug on that program. The hybrids are there. I read some information that tells me that there's going to be some of the economy cars, I can't specifically mention them, but the Ford Focus, and some of those types of styles of cars are going to be classified as ULAVs very soon, in the next year or two. So hopefully that technology will help us move forward too. I don't think this is a one solution problem. We have to pull out our magic bag of everything we have available to us and figure out which makes sense economically, which makes sense practically and then go with those technologies or those strategies. Some of them are more costly than others, some of them are more effective than others but we just need to pull out everything we can to try to do this and improve our air quality. I think we've made some headway with some help from regulations. I think our commitment to air quality hopefully, you understand, that's a high priority when we're doing business. The big picture? The forest. Hydrogen and fuel cell stuff. That's where I hope that we go to in our lifetimes. • Sittner: We are adding more transit routes this year. We have 30-minute service along Harmony corridor. Another route will be added to Timberline and E. Prospect the first part of April. • York: What's the timeline? • Sittner: The Harmony route is a 30-minute service on weekdays, 60-minute service on Saturday. Our 2006 ridership is up 2% versus 2005. We're making progress. • York: How long does it take for people to understand it and use a new route? • Sittner: 18 months of service on the street. We have gotten some grant money and are working hard with employers along the Harmony corridor to get employees riding the bus and hope that will help with overall ridership. • McMaster: Besides additional routes, any hope of extended hours and Sunday? • Sittner: During the BFO process, one thing that I hope to do is to extend our service hours because I know we're missing the early route riders. There are over 135,000 in the community and stopping bus route service at 7pm doesn't make sense. • McMaster: What would you propose? • Sitmer: I would propose not full -service but having some level of service out there. I don't have it all worked out yet. We'd have to do some rotation with some of the routes. • York: I would think the efforts to curb global warming would be favorable to extend the service. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 8 of 14 • Sittner: There's so many valuable and important city services that we're all competing for the same dollars that there's just not enough dollars out there to be able to provide the level of service that we'd like to provide. • Georg: I like your models of using economic feedback to help the decision process. That makes a lot of sense. You can reach a mutual understanding of the cost and the benefits. The idea that you might allow somebody to have an unmaintained vehicle is non -sense when you think about the total cost of ownership. To be committed. • Levine: I agree. I think that's a really valuable policy especially in the city use of the transportation product. I think, unfortunately when you get into the city having a real transportation system, a full blown transportation system, those benefits aren't as visable as some of those short term costs. It doesn't become as easy, unfortunately to sell it, the real benefits are not as easily quantifiable and their hidden subsidies of course to single occupancy vehicle use and all of that in results of infrastructure unfortunately built around that as well so it's more of a challenge. As far as the requests that I made, some of that is not only to you. It would maybe be to the planning department and to the air quality staff. Just as far as looking at where we were, where we are now and with what we're doing, what we will look like. I think that's important for the board to look at some of those big pictures in terms of metrics when we evaluate you know, where we're headed air quality wise. Anything you can provide would be greatly appreciated. • Engel: Is there anything that's quantifiable in numbers like here's what we emitted then, here's what we emit now, here's what we emit in the future; understanding that it's a bit apples to oranges but we can at least look at marginally, the numbers. • Woodruff: Let me take a stab at this. I don't know what you guys do in your office with information like this. I know you have emissions data on different kinds of vehicles. I gather from what you're saying that you're not operating from a goal of achieving a specific level of emissions reductions. You're just trying to do the best you can. Lower the emissions from the fleet by buying the best vehicle, keeping it clean, running it less miles; sort of a do the best we can sort of model. Is that correct? • Ochsner: I would say that's pretty accurate. We don't have monitoring equipment for our diesels we'd need to ratchet down on those emission levels. Unless you guys think of something different. Are we going to continue the gas emissions program as a fleet? • Leiseter: We have the machine that will measure performance and that kind of thing. But as you all know the gas emissions program has gone away, considering that, we won't turn every vehicle in every year. • Levine: I didn't want to really; I don't want to make work for you. I think you've got enough already. I was kind of thinking of the manufacturer's specs for these vehicles and the new ultra low emissions vehicles for instance, and compressed natural gas and if we had a policy a city policy that purchased these that that much sooner what would that look, what would be, you know, emissions and our air quality look like if we did something sooner just based on manufacturer's specs and easily gotten data. • McMaster: The BFO process may even be a way of further justifying this direction. • Carrico: You can calculate the number of, for green house gases, emissions per vehicle mile traveled per person for ridership on mass transit versus single occupancy vehicles and make a case by helping the city meet its green house gas reduction goals. • Smith: We don't break it down to per rider or per mile but it could probably be done. It could assist the BFO offers adding additional information like that. The sustainability Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 9 of 14 report will not report on fleet wide emission or reductions but it will quantify some of the changes in procurement decisions that were made. Vehicle request -transfers such as a pick-up truck to an alternative fuel or hybrid are being tracked and will be reported in the 2006 sustainability report. Agenda Item 2 Brian reviewed the various roles of the board's interaction with city staff and council. The board's main thrust is to advice council. The board/council relationship is so important that I would start out each discussion item with a motion. Focus on the board/council relationship and what advice you're planning to give them. • Carrico: Do you think we'd ever give them too many recommendations where they may disregard some? • Woodruff: I don't know. You may want to ask David Roy about that. • Georg: My impression during my interview would be to stick to the significant recommendations. Agenda Item 3 Review of Annual Report • McMaster: I think we need to set a high standard for the annual report. Correct 20009 to read 2009. Greg McMaster motioned to accept the 2006 Annual Report with the correction of the year 2009. Jeff Engel seconded. The board unanimously passed the motion. Agenda Item 4 Work Plan Items • York: Pesticides were brought up at a council meeting by a citizen and council voted not to do anything with it. Elections are in April and spring is when people spray herbicides and pesticides. I'm wondering if that's anything we want to devote some time to. The situation involves a woman that has extreme chemical sensitivity and her neighbor insists on spraying and refuses the natural herbicide she's offered. Cherie wrote an ordinance that's representing the citizen allergic to the pesticides. Cherie sent me the proposed ordinance. It's restrictive to some degree, but it's very mild in my opinion. • Adamy: I agree. I'd like to see it on the work plan. • York: I'll email it to staff and anticipate April elections perhaps. • Adamy: Could you get a copy of the draft of the ordinance? Seems there are not a lot of things citizens can do but an ordinance is a good start. • York: I'll send it to staff and have staff send it. • Levine: If we're going to look at spraying, there's a state chemically sensitive register and various requirements and a spraying notification issue. If properties connect they have to notify of any spraying. • Woodruff: The person spraying didn't want neighborhood services to get involved and didn't want to participate in the mediation process. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 10 of 14 • Levine: Some say there are too many ordinances. Seems that so many laws are for that minority of folks that won't play nicely with others. • Adamy: Would it play into the WNV issue? If the city were going to spray would the city have to comply with that spraying ordinance and notify her? • York: I would think they would have to notify her. The proposed ordinance says that the chemical sensitive person must be on the chemical sensitive registry and they pay for the alternative pesticide and there's some notification. I'll send it out and you can all read it. • Levine: There are state laws and ordinances, where would we fit into that and how can we be empowered to do something? • McMaster: We don't have the expertise to do this. • Levine: The weed management folks would know the state law and the city attorney's office would know the basic home -rule of either yes or no. • Woodruff: Do you mean the county weed control district? • Levine: Either the county or the city. The staff that does that. The city does use herbicides on golf courses. • Georg: We should look at all the items that could potentially be on the work plan. There's a lot of homework involved and impacts many people using those products. • Adamy: There are alternatives. Her neighborhood contractor responsible for weed control should use the alternative product. • York: I'll send what I have on it. • Levine: My feeling is the board needs some minimum information from the city and state policies to make an informed recommendation. • McMaster: That's a good point. We still have the general issue of putting pesticides into the environment. We can weigh in to some extent and hope three council members tell staff we need to look into this. • York: The vote was 4/3, 3 in favor. Two of the four are term limited. • Dietrich: Do we put this on the work plan for the year, is that what you're proposing Nancy? • York: Yes. • Dietrich: We should prioritize this in the spring. • McMaster: We have many things we'd like to do right now. • Levine: I don't have a sense how much time we'll have in 3 or 4 months from now. • McMaster: In April the council make-up will change. I think we struggle with the work plan because we know we've got too much and there are always new issues that come up. I like the idea of trying to have schedulable deliverables allowing flexibility. We have the global focus and the smaller, more local issues that we can deliver on, prioritize and schedule. We need to throw our full support into the global warming issue. We can really support Marla's BFO transfort proposal of expanded routes and expanded service therefore pulling the big global warming picture together with smaller local issues. • Levine: Regarding the city's climate re-evaluation issue; I don't know how much time that would take. According to the city manager, the composition of the task force and participation of the boards and commissions is going to be large. Council gave it thumbs up. • Carrico: That's a vote to convene a task force? Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 11 of 14 • Levine: It is scheduled for February 2e. • York: I don't see it on the 6-month agenda. • Levine: That's only a draft. The re-examination has full council support. • Georg: What's the output they're looking for? • Levine: The city has a green house gas reduction program that started in 1997. We haven't been meeting that goal due to the VMT increasing and tail pipe reductions aren't decreasing. The city has policies to increase the renewables up to 15% by 2015. Instead of Kyoto, which is 2012, this starts in 2010. • Georg: They're looking to create a replacement plan? • McMaster: They're not even close to meeting a much less stringent goal. • Carrico: A goal that's much less stringent that what Kyoto calls for. • York: Are they going to choose task force members from the boards? AQAB perhaps? • Woodruff: The task force will be made up of members of public, boards/commissions, and city staff. The manager shall appoint and convene a task force to elicit public input and develop an updated plan that will describe the steps our community can take to meet the green house gas emissions target established by resolution. • York: I encourage anyone who has time and interest to put in your names. • McMaster: Is he soliciting names? • Woodruff: Council has to pass the resolution first. • McMaster: It doesn't hurt to tell them you'd like to be on it. • Carrico: The more from our board the better. • Georg: Seems there should be something the board can do in terms of prioritizing this work plan so that we align our input as a board into this plan. • Levine: I don't have a good sense of the time frame and what the input opportunities of the board would be. I assume the board would be very active, but I'm not sure about the time frame and how that would fit into our workplan. • Georg: Do you have the 2007 workplan? • York: Yes, here it is. Do you have the mobility management document? • McMaster: The city seems to be ignoring it. That's another thing we want to push. • York: Transportation is a big chunk of it. • Levine: The WNV task force hasn't set a date to meet yet so I put a call into Tom Vosburg about that and discuss it next month. The minutes approval can be done now. • Adamy: I didn't review them. Can we postpone them to another time? • McMaster: I didn't review them either. • Georg: As I was thinking about the boards, I read your charters and minutes. You have high quality discussions. • Levine: I hope that people do get a real sense of the issues we're tackling and the points that we've made. We can postpone the minute approval. Regarding the workplan, we've heard from the cities transportation and fleet and PSD. We were talking about bringing players in and discussing their programs and their policies and find the low hanging fruit to make recommendations to. Obviously we haven't heard anything from CSU yet. The mobility management report gave the city's parking management a grade D. I wonder what CSU got in terms of their grade. Who should we invite and what issues should we look at from CSU? Do we want more from the city or the school district? • York: Parking is one aspect of it. They're on that sustainable transportation committee. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 12 of 14 • Woodruff: I go to it from time to time. • York: The dream team would be between parking management, Mr. Green from ASCSU, and the convener of the sustainable transportation task force. • Dietrich: What's specifically is that called and what do they do? • Woodruff: It's called the Sustainable Transportation Committee. It is convened by the department that's responsible for parking management and is under the CSU police department. They are trying to get recognition from university administration that they are a bonofied group with a charge to do things and resources to do things. One of the initiatives that parking management wants to do is to change the parking fee structure by increasing it and use the proceeds for an internal CSU shuttle; encouraging people to park farther out and have easy access to campus but not fighting for parking. • Dietrich: Is there a leader of that group? • Woodruff. Her name is Cindy Leinweber. • Dietrich: Is she a CSU employee? • Woodruff: Yes she is. • York: Is she with parking administration? • Woodruff: Yes, she is. • Dietrich: It might be helpful to have her or someone else from parking administration come and present the concepts they're looking at. If someone on campus is working towards a solution, our role could be to encourage the city and CSU to bonofy this group. It would be interesting to find out what they're doing. • Woodruff: Would you like to invite Cindy? • Levine: Yes. • Dietrich: Is ASCSU is a member of the ad -hoc committee? • Woodruff: Yes, they're on the committee already. • Dietrich: So do they still need to come? • York: Yes for transfort topics. • Dietrich: We should hear Cindy before ASCSU. • Levine: Transfort decided not to grow the further areas of the city and is concentrating on the core and growing transfort by growing the student ridership. • McMaster: There are series of cuts hence no more night service. • Levine: Cindy at the next meeting would be fine. • Woodruff: Just to learn about what they're doing? • Dietrich: What their role is and the projects they're doing. • Georg: This is a daunting work plan. Next year at this time, what are the two things you want to accomplish as an advisory committee? What are the 2 or 3 things would you want to look back on regarding the important recommendations made to city council? • Adamy: We talked about that and I agree. • Georg: I recommend discussing what do we really want to have an impact on. Is it green house gases and mobility management? What are the few things you want to focus on? • Levine: The workplan acts as a public record of all of the issues. If it comes up we have a record of it so we can go ahead with it. If people look for issues we already have them listed as part of our workplan. We haven't made a commitment to explore every one of these issues by December 31, 2007. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 13 of 14 • McMaster: This is a lot; but we've been able to move forward in the past. Such as the second bullet, we met with the city and PSD and we're talking about CSU and we're far enough along that we're breaking through with these things. Marla met with PSD and could only agree on driver training because they have different demands and needs. • Georg: It's not what we do but what is the output and what are the two areas you want to focus. Every item will have opportunities. It's still going to take a lot of work to get the output at the level you want. We'll all have a chance at some other venue to get behind finding those three votes; if council knew we had some focus of intent on outputs with regard to a few items and we'd all articulate those few items, I think we'd have a better impact. • Adamy: Well said. Perhaps we pick some three for future agendas. • Levine: The mobility management report is one. Climate is probably another but it's too premature by a month or so. • Woodruff: We presented the mobility management report to the transportation board and they had positive comments regarding systems thinking and that this is what we like and want. There are interested people on the board for you to coordinate with. Mobility management is not the main thing this board deals with. If the transportation board works on it your work would be easier and your objectives would be met. I encourage some cross over with that board. • Levine: We had a joint meeting with the transportation board and it wasn't a good meeting. In next months packet I'd like the transportation board's minutes on this issue. It really wasn't a good meeting because the mobility management report wasn't ready. We heard fluffy presentations that both boards already heard. • Woodruff: I'm not recommending joint meetings but crossover like joint committees that you can form. Your work on mobility management will be more effective working with the transportation board. They were interested in the BFO process because they're eager to see the mobility management report reflected in the next budget. They asked Mark Jackson when the board can get involved in this and when is it getting into the budget. Mark did the best he could because the budget process isn't clear to us yet. • York: I would like to have a public meeting and hear the public and have a report on the air quality to get input from the public. Other voices will reinforce our concerns about global warming which is an urgent matter. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way. I'd like us to give us a state of the air quality to the public. • Georg: We can put into a recommendation to council to support hosting such a dialog. • York: We don't need them to tell us to do it. • Georg: It may be more powerful if we use council communication. • Levine: Perhaps we can take some of this up at our next meeting? • York: We can prioritize the workplan? • Georg: I think prioritizing the output is better than planning the events that get us there. If we prioritize the outputs as far as what recommendations we make to council, whatever it might be, we use those things to drive which of the activities have the priorities. Such as what are the outputs and strategies and tactics and become a communication vehicle for the council to the council. • Levine: We have our directives in the air quality policies and the parameters that determine air quality. This is part of trying to get the city to look at and adopt some best practices. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/23/2007 Page 14 of 14 • Georg: What are those alternatives? • York: The city seems to be going through reorganization. One of the things in the mobility management report shows how many people are in transportation; can we weigh in on that. That should be reorganized. • Levine: Natural resources is going under cultural resources and taken out of the advance planning department. It doesn't make sense but hopefully those connections won't be lost. You can't have a systems approach if the major departments that comprise LUTRAC (Land Use and Transportation and Air Quality) aren't connected together. • McMaster: There are a few things we can do that are more output -oriented such as recommendations to council on the BFO process like supporting extended routes/hours of transfort. • Woodruff: This is the year for the bi-annual budget so council will discuss this all year. The budget is adopted in November for 2008/2009. • Levine: Timing is everything in terms of what success is. It's difficult to finesse and not easy decisions to make. Is there any other business? • York: I move we adjourn. • McMaster: I second. All are in favor of adjourning the meeting. Meeting adjourned at 8:27pm. Updates • None. Committee Updates • None. Agenda Planning • None. Meeting adjourned 8:27 PM Submitted by Tara McGibben Administrative Secretary I Approved by the Board on 7 Signed C��� 4 (2- /a8/ AC07 Tara McGib en Date Administrative Secretary I Extension: 6600