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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 07/24/2007MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 200 WEST MOUNTAIN AVE. Tuesday, July 24, 2007 For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison 407-7393 Brian Woodruff, Staff Liaison 221-6604 Board Members Present Jeff Engell, Nancy York, Dale Adamy, Eric Levine, Gregory McMaster, Kip Carrico, Dave Dietrich Board Members Absent Deny Georg Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Brian Woodruff, Geri Kidawski Guests None The meeting was called to order at 5:40pm. • Woodruff: May I acknowledge Geri Kidawski, who has volunteered to take the minutes for this evenings meeting. • Levine: We have a full agenda because I put in a couple of documents in at the last minute, and I would like to move the item Fort Collins Moves to the August meeting agenda. Minutes Approval • Adamy: The minutes were very brief and summarized that may be because there was not a formal minute taker? • Woodruff: Yes • Adamy: I appreciated the comments that were made and wondered if I could review the audio of the minutes? • Woodruff: Yes, we have a file on the minutes and I will get that over to you. • Adamy: This would be purely for my interest and there is no reason why we couldn't approve the minutes. • Levine: When I was looking at the Transportation Board's work plans I noticed what criteria they were interested in and I'll bring that. They were interested in specific metrics especially the shift over time from one mode to another. • Adamy: Could I include that for FC Moves? York moved to approve the June 26, 2007 minutes. Adamy second, and it was unanimously approved. Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 2 of 10 Public Comment • No public present West Nile Virus • Levine: There will be a second spraying this evening. • McMaster: The Board has seen a flurry of emails lately and this was due to a conversation after the Air Quality forum. This prompted a huge email response, which filtered over to the Air Quality Board email list. Eric you were at the Council meeting, and in the emails it seems that everyone was acknowledging at some point that there is not an institutional oversight, and there seems to be strong support for reconvening the West Nile Task Force. • Levine: I don't know about reconvening the West Nile Task Force. They didn't discuss specifics, and it wasn't addressed by every Council member. What Council discussed, and it almost sounded unanimous by both the conservative and the liberal side of the isle, is that they believe there is a need to re-examine the policy that we have. The policy that they specifically referred to was the adulticide policy. • McMaster: I believe in your letter you wrote that Damn Atteberry suggested that Parks and Recreation head the group and there would be input from our Board and Human Resources. • Woodruff: Actually that was a rumor that I started, which needs to be corrected. There is interest on the part of Council to review the West Nile Virus policy, but I said that Mike Calhoun from Parks department would convene the review in the fall, and that is not correct. It has not been determined as to how the City Manager wants to staff this, but Council does want the policy reviewed and brought back to them for decision. • McMaster: So it is encouraging to me that it has everyone's attention, and it will move forward in a reasonable time frame especially for budgeting for outcomes. • Levine: I intend to put together a package with the history and present this to council. What Darin said at the meeting is that he would like to address this sometime in the fall. People do not like to have changes in policies in mid -stream, but I would like to move as soon as we can after that and early fall would be best. We need to start this before the budgeting for outcomes process begins. I would like more voices there besides the county. I would like presentations that have some health perspectives. • Woodruff: Is there a sense that people have given up talking with the Board of Heath and the Department of Health about this issue and in joining forces with them to come up with better recommendations from the County Health establishment? • Levine: I submitted some of the history in a memo to the City Management, which are the results of the Fort Collins West Nile Virus Task Force. It's the established, active academicians from Colorado State University (CSU) and Center of Disease Control (CDC) in ecology. • McMaster: Your question is a good one. I think we should have the County's perspective there so that we know what they have to deal with, and then to also have the connection with the city. In the past it's been very difficult to get that kind of interaction. • Dietrich: What is the County's role? Do they tell you that there are X amount of West Niles virus cases, and then recommend spraying? I'm not sure what the City of Fort Collins roles is in this. 1 Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 3 of 10 • Levine: They recommended four criteria for spraying, and if any of those four criteria are met they automatically recommend spraying. The four triggering criteria are .75 per thousand of adult mosquitoes infected with West Nile, a lot of dead birds (which is not defined more than that), a horse case, or a human case. The horse case should be near an urban area in the county. • Dietrich: Their role is to define that there is a risk. • York: I think they are working reasonably close with the Center for Disease Control. • Levine: Boulder County has criteria of .75 and will only spray if that criterion is met. • York: What does .75 mean? • Levine: The first one thousand adult female West Nile Virus infected mosquitoes. • McMaster: In 2003 the infection rate was off the chart. • Levine: I called Kelly who got the numbers from Ben and it is 1/6, so the trigger is 1/6. Six times higher and it would barely meet the Boulder's criteria. • McMaster: One thing that bothered me is that the actual numbers were not clear or easy to understand. If you hadn't gone to Dr. Bailey and received the numbers there are no real numbers to review and that can be a problem. • Dietrich: The City of Fort Collins needs to have a policy and the policy can be straight forward. There are Homeowners Associations around the City that have clear policies and when that number is hit they spray. • Levine: Most policies state that if a number is reached in an area, then they spray. Early on they use larval control. Boulder's program spends a lot of money monitoring and preventing if the year looks like it could be a bad year. • McMaster: There was a big deficiency, in which the mapping wasn't done. Now they are doing better, but I'm not sure if there isn't oversight there too. There are a bunch of components that recognize effective policies. • Dietrich: I would agree. Isn't the direction of the City Manager to convene a group to come up with a policy? As a Board we provide input to that process, correct? • Woodruff: That's the way it was presented to me, but it is very unclear who will convene more, and how is the process structured and how much staffing is required. • Dietrich: What can we do to recommend the process move forward as a committee? • Levine: It is on our work plan to address this year and it is also on our work plan to reconvene the old West Nile Task Force. I'm hoping that group or a beefed up version of that group will address all of these issues. • Dietrich: Is it the Boards responsibility to reconvene the West Nile Task Force group? • Levine: It's part of our work plan, and Council approved our work plan. • McMaster: It's not something we have to do, but we can. • Dietrich: So it is our responsibility to reconvene a West Nile Task Force? • Levine: We said we would this year, and Council approved our work plan. That's my interpretation. • Dietrich: Does that conflict with what Darin Atteberry said that he plans to do this fall. • Levine: The City Manager answers to Council. • Woodruff: I think it's safe to assume that there will be a review, and that the Air Quality Advisory Board will be part of the review. The decision that you have to make is, do you want to begin convening something or do you want to make recommendations on how it should be convened and who should be at the table. It's not clear at this point how Darin Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 4 of 10 Atteberry is going to organize this. I would suggest that it would be getting the cart before the horse, but I certainly would not get in the way. • Levine: Some of the history is that the Task Force recommended a program that could be the basics of a better program recommending the basic steps. The Council said yes to the basic steps. Early in 2003 the Council said that even if the County asks us to spray we are sticking to this policy, which is the education part of this policy. After that point the County Board of Health, chair person (who is now deceased) sent a strong letter to the City of Fort Collins that we need to spray. The County also sent a recommendation to the City of Fort Collins to spray. Then without a formal process or bringing other voices to the table the City of Fort Collins Council adopted every one of the County's recommendations including the four triggers. This recommendation was against various Boards and Commissions that weighed in and also against the Task Force, and City Staff recommendations, and the old official City policy. All of the Council members that said yes this time to the adulticide program, said as one of their talking points — the city crafted this policy with all of the voices at the table and the experts the City brought to the table over a long period of time. So who are we to throw out that well crafted policy? • Dietrich: That's Council's decision, but the City does not have the policy on spraying. • Woodruff: Yes we do. • McMaster: The City knows that the policy needs to be reviewed. I would suggest that the Board decide what we want to do at this point. I propose that we put together a recommendation suggesting what we think would be a good way to move forward with this issue. McMaster motioned that the Air Quality Advisory Board recommends that the City of Fort Collins reconvene the West Nile Task Force to review the existing City policy and recommend any appropriate changes. The Task Force should be composed of Natural Resources Advisory Board, Water Board, County Health Department, Air Quality Advisory Board, TEC, City Staff, academic experts and citizens. The first meeting will occur September 2007; the final recommendation will be crafted by December 1, 2007. York second, and it was unanimously approved. • York: I think we need to identify the academicians. • McMaster: We could include members from the human and environmental health areas. • Levine: And also former members of the Task Force, which consists of eleven members. • Woodruff: Do you think you are in the position to set forth some principles or statements to inform the way you look at this issue? For example instead of naming names for the Task Force, you could say that this Task Force should not proceed with out the following specialties involved. I gather from the decision that you have a principle in mind of accessing the risks of spraying along side the risks of getting sick from mosquitoes. Could I be right about that? • Levine: You are right about it as far as my opinion. • McMaster: The whole policy is a little more than just adulticide. • Woodruff: That may be a principle that we should work from a long term plan for the whole mosquito season and decade. • McMaster: I would offer that part of creating this policy needs to take a bigger picture. Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 T Page 5 of 10 • Woodruff: To tidy up my question, I was wondering if as a group you are ready to state those principles that you want to see explored in the Task Force. • Levine: We can issue another recommendation to Council. I've reviewed a couple of programs and one that I reviewed closely was the City of Boulder. Boulder and Fort Collins get hit with West Nile Virus at the same time in the same environment. The two Cities went on different paths in developing a program. Boulder has a better plan and the aspect of a very well thought out program to reduce the need of adulticide impressed me. Fort Collins doesn't have funding set aside for such a program. We fund a program if it's a low or a high West Nile Virus year and it's the same amount of funds every year. Boulder does more measuring than Fort Collins does, and they ship massive preventative resources into those areas beforehand. In the years that look not problematic they monitor and do minimal resources, and over the long run the same amount of money is spent but it's spent where is makes sense. • McMaster: Those are very good points and I think that is what you would want to come out of this group, but the question is how do we want to move forward? I hear two possibilities. (1) Two separate letters, although I think one document is the better way to go. (2) The general things to consider are, how this program will be funded, and what items need to be addressed. • Levine: This is a best practices approach that I'd hope we'd take. Certainly the Bolder program as far as I've reviewed is the best approach. • Adamy: Do we need a resolution? • Engell: I would not like to see us muddy down a proposal to reconvene a West Nile Task Force with philosophy and detail related principle in what we want to come out of that. I think it will get lost in translation. That being said, I would like to see those philosophies and principles presented during that, and whether or not it gets ram-rodded through that committee, that may need to happen. And devising a plan to make that happen perhaps is more effective. • York: What about the scope of expertise that we want. • McMaster: All stake holders and perspectives need to be considered. • Engell: We'll tell them there needs to be a job done and then let's help them figure out a way to do that job. I don't think this would have to be the same correspondence. • Woodruff: Eric has also put in his letter the issue of resources that should be devoted. So at this stage your recommendation has a chance of influencing the amount of resources that are put in. You might say that we don't want to just meet three times and come up with a recommendation that isn't binding on anybody. You may say you want a long term plan, with best practices. If the Council agrees with you, then they would instruct the Manager to go broader with it. • Levine: That is a very good point. From what I know about this process, watching it from beginning to end it seems logical to me. This will be very controversial to the City of Fort Collins. The City Manager has to make these decisions, and it is incumbent on him. I would like to see the very best people working on this. • Dietrich: What City of Fort Collins departments should be included? • Woodruff: There are a number of City departments and any one of them can take the lead. The Board discussed crafting the motion for City Council. Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 6 of 10 • Woodruff: For the minutes do you want to have a more generic motion or do you want to read our discussion on the motion into the record? • Levine: Do I hear a general motion. York moved to draft a recommendation to City Council that the Board will formulate and vote on by email. Second by Carrico, and it was unanimously approved. Joint Committee with Transportation Board • York: The Transportation Board seems overwhelmed with what is on their agenda. I feel they would favor one person attending the Air Quality Advisory Board. • Dietrich: One member held up a sheet and said the items on it haven't been dealt with throughout the time he/she has been a Board member. Another person thought if they knew what the Air Quality Advisory Board is trying to achieve, state some goals and objectives for instance, and bring that back to the Transportation Board. We could craft something of what we are trying to do and give it to them. I feel if we continue to show up at the Transportation Board and bring things back to our Board it would present an opportunity for them to consider doing the same with our Board and then they can ease into it with an alternative. • York: I did try to convey that to them that I thought we could be more effective with the work we are doing that involves air quality and transportation. It was acknowledged by some of their members that air quality was a part of transportation. • Levine: The Task Force is assigned to some very specific recommendations that are also short tern. I don't think there is much congruence there; I feel that is not adequate. • Adamy: They also have a sour memory of the Mobility Report that they reviewed twice, and they couldn't see any objective in meeting with that in mind. • Levine: One member said something that two new members weren't even familiar with the Mobility Practices Report. It is the major study effort of the City of Fort Collins in a number of years. I reviewed their work plans for the last five years, and except for this year every work plan states to work more closely with other Boards that are involved with transportation issues. • Adamy: I recommend that a direct conversation with the Chair of the Transportation Board would help bring us back into play. • Levine: I would like to do this, and also I will look at their work plan for the areas we are interested in, and bring those specifics up. • York: Is it kosher to write or recommend any changes on some aspect, I'm thinking of the Mobility Management Plan, and sending it to the Transportation Board asking them to sign off on it? That would put it back in our field for us to study the Mobility Management Plan more closely, and come up with recommendations. This would draw them to the Plan. This is building on Budgeting for Outcomes. One of the things that the Mobility Management Plan states is that we have no dedicated funding. It seems to me that there is a point where it all crosses. • Levine: Our output is supposed to go to Council. Gary Thomas did say that he is not against individual Board members being self-seeking. This may be a way to chronicle the process. Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 i Page 7 of 10 • Dietrich: We can send a recommendation to the Transportation Board inviting any interested Board members to a meeting to review the Plan. • Woodruff: I got the sense that there may be some Transportation Board members who are interested in this when Judy Dorsey and I attended a meeting to present the results of the Mobility Management Plan. • Levine: We are at non-compliance. What kind of transportation funding is at risk that would interest the Transportation Board? • Woodruff: A lot is made of the threat that comes with being a non -attainment area, but I would tone that down, because what the Clean Air Act says is if you're a non -attainment area you must write a plan that has actual steps to remove the emissions and bring the area back into compliance, and you must implement the plan. The only time that the sanctions of removing Federal funding for the roadway network are applied is if you say that you will not write a plan or you write a plan and then fail to implement it. Let's not worry about the sanctions, rather let's write good plans, and implement them well. • Adamy: There has been an increase in grant writing among City of Fort Collins staff. I wonder if there is an opportunity for the sub -committee to work toward some grant writing techniques to play into the non -attainment. Who's been instrumental in writing all these wonderful grants? • Woodruff. I know who the grant writers are in our department, and the successes they have had. The Transportation staff is working on a huge grant for the Mason Street Corridor, and there are grant writers all over. That would be a great recommendation. It seems to me that Council could take the recommendation and act on it. • Dietrich: Are we going to establish a committee here to look at Mobility management? Is this something that we want to take action on now, and then the sub -committee can invite people from other Boards? • Engell: Is the thought to establish that because we want to establish it, or is it to establish it so that we can have an excuse to invite the Transportation Board to collaborate on it, because those are two different things. • McMaster: I think it would be both. Climate Task Force • Carrico: I went to three meetings and they were fairly productive. I missed the first part where it was decided how decisions were going to be made and how the commission impacted on the Council. After that, it was making out the list of measures that would be tackled by the City of Fort Collins by 2010, which is the date for when the goal for green house reduction was selected back in 1999 by the original task force. Those measures came from a variety of sources. These measures range from radical life style change measures to detailed technical measures. Those measures were put into a table by the Brendal Group, and they added information in terms of cost, implementation, feasibility of eventually achieving it by 2010 and potential CO2 equivalent savings from those measures. It was based on a complete list of information as well as the description of the measures and reshuffling and combining things that work the same. Then everyone voted on twenty-five measures, and I gave Eric my input on this as an alternate of the committee. This list before you received the top votes and was agreed on as to where to make the cut, it will then be handed it off to the Brendal Group to do the detailed analysis of all these measures. The analysis is happening now and the next meeting will be in August and eventually the recommendation will be passed on to Council in terms of Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 8 of 10 comprehensive plans or a list of measures that the Task Force will recommend to the City of Fort Collins to meet the goal of 2010. • Levine: We were able to get the goal higher to 1.1 million tons. Some of the original VMP growth and cafd standards were two items I objected to, because the City didn't do much other than send a letter to Congress saying that we need to up the cafd fleet standards. The BMT was not a realistic worse case scenario at the time, it was believed it was, but the time was a period of weeks or several months, which happened to be congruent with when the first climate formulated its recommendations. It hasn't been used for any City projections so that is how the numbers got a little high. The other thing I like about this is that the group could concentrate on one strategy, which is the renewables. I also want the Board to concentrate on transportation measures because it has so much direct air quality implications to it, and because that is why we got the bad report card in the first place. I was please with the mix of the two that we're working on and the initial support of both of those strategies. Some of these need budgets and funds, which I'm concerned about. • Carrico: That will go in the feasibility column. The Board reviewed and discussed the Climate Task Force 2007 Tier 1 that made the cut — New Measures under Consideration. • McMaster: Kip and Eric, in looking at the tons reduced and the feasibility, do you feel that was generally accurate? • Levine: I trust Judy and Lucinda because I've worked with them before. • Carrico: It wasn't strictly that criteria people weighted other factors in. Eric and I both brought up the fact that some measures have co -benefits, things like air quality and reducing traffic congestion. If you are trying to pick between the two, one may have some other great side benefits. • Adamy: Any disappointments? • Levine: At this point I'm very pleased. When it starts moving forward there will be some choices that will have to be made. On some of these I'm a little concerned and Darin Atteberry expressed some of his concerns as well. The big mistake we made before was to look at the big and small ticket items almost equally. • York: My suggestion, which didn't make it to the final measures, had to do with conservation. I suggested that City buildings compete with each other to reduce energy and water use and to increase recycling methods. They could keep track of this on a percentage bases for a few months. Then people may become conscience about saving energy and recycling at work and then go home and do the same thing. • Woodruff: Nancy, could that idea fall within a larger umbrella such as the Community wide climate challenge item #31. • Levine: Instead of dropping ideas like this, we should look into different ways of doing business, different methodologies. • Adamy: What is on the agenda for the next meeting? • Levine: Tier 2, where we look at everything more closely. I would like to look at those existing measures to make sure that we run the credit. • Anonymous: The committee structure consists of Air Quality, Natural Resources, Transportation, Economic Advisory Board, Fort Collins Sustainability group, and Solid Waste, CSU students and others. ' Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 9 of 10 • Levine: It is a very diverse group. I, as well as others, in the group want to look at the measures after 2010, because we are charged with doing that. It's not just to meet the goals we should be climate programmed for Fort Collins phase IL Fleet Emissions Estimate • Woodruff: This is a work in progress. The progress is that I found a person at the state health department who is going to help us with the emissions per hour, i.e. the hours from a Zamboni, a lawnmower, or a heavy vehicle. That will fill up part of our matrix regarding emissions per hour, per mile. Those that I've talked with about this are interested in it because it will show you by pie chart which vehicles are producing the most emissions. It directs you to the largest issue, which may not be the one you're looking at if you just jump to a conclusion. It measures not only emissions but also miles, which will show the effect of policies that the City of Fort Collins puts in place. The trick is to make it fine-grained enough to pick up on these differences. There are still challenges there. Deny Georg and others were persuasive on the point that what we are talking about here is a tool the City Management can use, I suspect that it will end up something like that. • Levine: The City of Fort Collins is committed to Climate Wise. • Woodruff: Yes, and this would tie into it, and it would put it in the context of other kinds of emission sources as far as CO2 is concerned. • Levine: Any approximate time line? • Woodruff. I would prefer to wait till August's meeting to give you a time line. Air Quality Report to the Public • York: Brian, do we have a record of the suggestions made by each speaker? • Woodruff: Worst case scenario would be to listen to the tape of the meeting and then take down notes. I feel that this would be the way I would prefer to do it. The record is there, and the question is what do you want to do with that. Do you want to write it down and send it, or do you want to summarize it? • York: It would be nice to review what people wrote down, and then see how we would respond to them. • McMaster: Should we pass it along to Council? • Levine: It will be broadcast so we can listen to it at home. A suggestion would be to have, after the broadcast, a TV screen that would include a web address to send additional comments to. • Dietrich: Brian on the back charts people wrote down some comments. • Woodruff. I have those and we can write down what was said and send them out to you. • Dietrich: Is there any staff time to view the tape and write down any questions or suggestions? • Woodruff: Yes, we had hoped not to do that, but it seems like the very appropriate thing to do. I could probably do this, but not verbatim notes. • Dietrich: Would you like us to forward to you our notes and suggestions? • Woodruff: Yes, I will have this ready for the next meeting. • McMaster: Is there any value to summarizing the questions from the first portion, because that reflected people's opinions and suggestions. Air Quality Advisory Board 5/22/2007 Page 10 of 10 • Woodruff: I would suggest that you could also put it in the context of other information that Council are getting such as the survey and since your information is different you can say whether yours is consistent with the survey or not. • Levine: Do you suggest putting a contact address for comments at the end of the broadcast? • Carrico: What would you suggest? • Woodruff: We would prefer to not get a lot of calls so an email address or a web site would be better. I will ask TV folks for recommendations. • Dietrich: You can state that if you have any questions or comments email or write. • Carrico: Will this be an annual thing? • Levine: I don't know. • Adamy: Nancy what do you think about the effort put into it. • York: As far as effectiveness it would be ok, but what would we do next year? • Levine: There could be a lot of different topics. • York: I like public involvement and education. • Woodruff: We haven't debriefed on it, we've had only one meeting since then. We need to come up with an idea to see if this would help our objectives as well. We are interested in public education, but having a forum is only one way of doing this, so how does it fit in. I will have an answer for you next month. • Dietrich: How often is the survey done? • Woodruff: Every two years. • York: On the positive side it puts it out there that air quality is an issue and that has merit in and of itself. Committee Updates No updates Meeting adjourned 8:00 PM Submitted by Geri Kidawski Administrative Secretary I Approved by the Board on , 2007 Signed Geri Kidawski Administrative Secretary I Extension: 2815 o laSI� ate