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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 09/15/2014AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2014 DATE: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2014 LOCATION: Community Room, 215 N. Mason Street TIME: 5:30–8:00 pm For Reference: Tom Moore, Chair 970-988-4055 Ross Cunniff, Council Liaison 970-420-7398 Melissa Hovey, Staff Liaison 970-221-6813 Present: Tom Moore, Chair John Shenot Dave Dietrich Rich Fisher Gregory Miller Absent: Tom Griggs Jim Dennison Staff Present: Melissa Hovey, Staff Liaison (arrived 6:30pm) Brian Woodruff, Environmental Planner Dianne Tjalkens, Admin/Board Support Amy Lewin, Transportation Planner Rebecca Everette, City Planner Councilmembers Present: none Guests: none Call meeting to order: Tom Moore called to order at 5:43pm. Public Comments: None Member Comments: None. Review and Approval of August 18, 2014 minutes Rich moved and Greg seconded a motion to approve the August 18, 2014 AQAB minutes as presented. Motion passed unanimously, 5-0-0. 1 AGENDA ITEM 1: Updates and Announcements Budgeting for Outcomes John Shenot went through the City Manager’s recommended budget. Six of the ten offers the board recommended made it into this budget. The most important one, for a manual assessing air quality impacts from transportation projects (see board memo), was not approved. Does the board want to send another memo to Council regarding the items that were not approved? Comments/Q&A • John said Healthy Sustainability Homes and transportation manual and green streets did not make the cut. • Tom asked if the emissions offset fund make the cut. • John said the parking one was below the line. • Rich said the board can write a memo sustaining why some items should be moved up. The memo should include a complete rationale. • Dave said he wondered what staff’s response was and if there were tradeoffs that were made. • John said he didn’t expect to get 10 of 10, but it was more random than he had hoped. Can we write a memo standing by our recommendations and noting the ones that did not make the cut? John will send the list of recommendations and ones included in the budget and not, and determine via email if the board would be interested in writing a memo. • Dave said he understands that not doing the manual is a failing, but is Healthy Sustainable Homes getting completely cut or just not getting more funding? • John said he thinks the funding was to make a half time employee full time. • Rich said it is unfortunate they did not find a way to model air quality in their development analysis. • Dave said it would be good to get input from staff. • Greg asked if Cunniff is on board with these recommendations. • Rich said he is receptive to our ideas. Greg asked if we would go to him directly. Rich said he would be our conduit and the effective spokesman. • John said if all members feel strongly about a budget item that was cut, the baord would go through Ross to spotlight it for Council. The memo would go to all of Council, but he would be the champion. If there are offers that are close to the line, it may be worth the effort. • Greg said the entire BFO process is unclear. • John will send an email to the board. Martin Marietta Materials Draft Air Permit Comments/Q&A • Tom Moore said it could be a long time until we hear from the state. • Rich said what we asked for is unlikely to occur, especially asking to reissue the permit. • John said he thinks there is no chance of reissuing the draft. If we accept Howard’s analysis and believe that some of the conditions don’t meet RACT, it doesn’t serve the company well to issue the permit, because there is a good chance of litigation. • Tom Moore said other than not meeting deadlines, which is one of the easiest things to sue upon. • John said if he worked for the company he would rather write preexisting technology into the permit than risk being sued. • Dave said in negotiations with the state it is likely the RACT would be accepted. 2 • Tom Moore said he doubts the state will want to do additional monitoring. There will be more discussion on this topic. The operations and maintenance would be good to have a comment period. That is where you can reduce emissions from non-source equipment. This was a successful exercise. We did what Council wanted to see. We should plan to follow up on this topic. Energy Policy Tom Moore said the Energy Board is trying to provide a status report on what they are doing. Is this something the AQAB should endorse to build momentum? Could the Climate Action Plan committee have something similar to this document? Comments/Q&A • John said they put effort into tracking the GHG impacts and progress. It would be great for the City to do that. • Rich asked if the flyer will be issued or has been issued. Where would it go? The utility bill? • Tom Moore said if a graphic on criteria pollutants can’t be added since this is done, maybe other pollutants and criteria could be addressed in the Climate Action Plan. We can also ask if this is still in draft form and whether criteria pollutants could be added. • John said it is not easy information to get and add, but the information is available. • Rich said some of the information in the handout is hard to follow. Who is the audience for this document? • Tom said Melissa would like us to think of the applications for this type of document. • Dave said the document is very busy and if you don’t have background knowledge on these topics it won’t make much sense. “Super” Board meeting from 8/25 Tom Moore said he and John have been attending board and commission realignment meetings. The purpose of the Super Board meeting was to get input on BOB2 proposals. One item included is a ¼ cent road building tax. What is odd is that someone developed that without any input. There was an email that went around the City for items that did not make it into BFO. It will be in the April elections to reauthorize the tax rate. There were breakout sessions, then voting on the most important projects. They were asked to vote based on their boards’ input, but the information was not given out with enough time to get full board input. Comments/Q&A • Dave said they stopped discussing anything beyond Trilby, which is not the end of town. Staff also talked about train noise in Old Town, but the train goes through many neighborhoods as well. It was hard to vote on projects when they weren’t completely fleshed out. • Tom said it is unclear how these pieces fit together. The BFO is for short term projects. City Plan is not being addressed. It is not all being connected together. • Dave asked how the handout on board structure was connected to BOB2. • Tom said the handout was a side note. It shows how the boards align with the seven key outcome areas. Staff asked for input on this alignment. All the boards have organized missions and it is not clear what they are trying to achieve by aligning them under the outcome areas. • Rich asked the next steps. BOB2 is a funding source. Is this chart related to how they plan to distribute the funding? • Tom said no, BOB2 is for capital investments. It renovated the library, paves streets, etc. They are not things people are against. 3 AGENDA ITEM 2: Climate Action Plan Update Rich Fisher and staff led a discussion on current activities regarding the development of the Climate Action Plan. Rich said a group of citizens has been convened that represent organizations and activities in the City. Lucinda is the chair of the group and the Brendle Group is the consulting firm that is doing the planning and development of tools for people to provide input on. The plan is to meet through the end of the year and present a draft plan to Council in February. They have identified goals, targets, strategies and scenarios. One scenario is “business as usual” which shows increase in GHG emissions. There is a very aggressive goal and there are in-between goals. 50% of GHGs are energy related, 25% are transportation related and a variety of activities fill in the remainder. One would expect we would jump to addressing the 75% of the chart and addressing solutions, but this has been a process oriented activity. The consultants are looking at all of the slivers of the pie. Enough people have commented on this issue that we may suggest jumping ahead. There is a website where members can post information and comment. There are many technological solutions, so the real issue is motivating the population to make changes. We need to bring the community along, so they are with the City if the City can decide to take aggressive actions. Not many people will understand the technicalities of taking serious climate actions. There are a number of strategies and charts regarding fuel switching, etc. The group is starting to realize that there are certain strategies that will actually make a difference and those are the ones that need to be pursued. This board may want to be more specific about what we want the CAP to actually do. The crucial items are converting the coal fire plant to gas, but are we accounting for all the emissions in getting the gas? In transportation it would be getting people off the road, and into using bikes, etc. The other part is building. Taking action on building energy efficient housing, buying solar from the City, and building smart buildings is a good start. The nature of the group is to just do it, rather than continue to plan. This board can submit a recommendation after the next CAP committee meeting. Comments/Q & A • Dave said regarding the resources of the 40 members, they have the reports from RMI and Brendle Group. Those reports give all the background information you need. From there you can just pick what to do. • Tom said this plan can give a vision and a timeline of projects that can be completed, along with the community engagement needed to have the concepts embraced. • Rich said we have all heard the points about who owns Platte River. Why don’t we tell Platte River the answer? There are people in the room who are not technical experts, but are influential in the community. Having these people agree that we need to be aggressive and take action is beneficial. If they walk away being advocates, that may be a sufficient outcome. • Tom said the board has spoken up before regarding the need for this planning. Do we want to reiterate what we’ve already said regarding attacking the big problems, taking action, and creating a vision? • Rich said perhaps highlighting the work the six boards did should be encouraged. • Tom Moore said Tom Griggs and Greg should have an opportunity to read the document that is posted on the CAP website. • Rich will circulate the document to the group. 4 Rich moved that the Air Quality Advisory Board synthesize the six-board 2-page recommendations to Council and present it at the October 9 Climate Action Plan committee meeting. Dave seconded. Motion passed 5-0-0. AGENDA ITEM 3: Selection of Representative for Bicycle Advisory Committee AQAB board members discussed participation on the Bicycle Advisory Committee and nominated a representative. Tom asked for a volunteer. Comments/Q&A • Greg suggested having a rotation of members who could attend a couple of meetings a year each. • Dave asked if we are a member of that board but no one has been attending. • Tom Moore said yes. It is in our bylaws to have a representative. We may be able to do this ad hoc. • The Board agreed that Dave would attend for the remainder of his term on the AQAB. AGENDA ITEM 4: Bicycle Master Plan, Bike Sharing Program, and West Central Area Plan Amy Lewin, Transportation Planner, and Rebecca Everette, City Planner, presented a brief overview of the process for developing the West Central Area from the “visioning” stage to the alternatives and projects stage. Board members discussed how to effectively support and provide input on the technical analysis of air quality impacts in plans and projects proposed. Amy also presented a quick overview of the proposed Bike Sharing program, and Board members continued discussion on recommendations to the Bicycle Master Plan considering information presented by Amy. Rebecca Everette introduced the West Central Area Plan, a joint project between Planning and FC Moves. The Plan is structured around three topic areas: Land Use and Neighborhood Character, Transportation and Mobility, and Open Space Networks. The West Central area includes areas south and west of CSU campus. Since the previous plan there has been infill and increasing pressure on the transportation network and a growing population of students in the neighborhoods. The City needs to provide better multimodal transportation options in this highest density area. The direction that the stadium moves will influence this plan. There are constrained roadways and a poor pedestrian and bike network in the area. The team is looking at options to better use roadways, address livability, improve safety at intersections and increase access to parks and natural areas. A new design for the Prospect Corridor (from Shields to College) is also included in this plan. Staff is looking at a range of options to redesign the roadway to better serve all users. Once policies are developed an implementation action plan will be created. There has been a lot of time spent talking to stakeholders in the area and other community engagement activities including walking and biking tours, visioning workshops, and the online visioning survey. Amy Lewin discussed the vision statements. Goals include vibrant diverse neighborhoods, a more connected transportation network, a network of land that gives people access to nature, and making Prospect Corridor more attractive and functional. There are sub-elements and photo examples in the handout. For Prospect Corridor the process is to develop alternatives, evaluate them, and craft a preferred alternative that will become part of the plan. The alternatives will be evaluated in a variety of ways: technical/operational 5 analysis, using the triple bottom line, a technical advisory committee, and public input. Given that we have limited right-of-way of 60 to 90 feet at maximum, it would be difficult to redesign to road to meet the City’s standard width for four-lane arterials (100 to115 feet). So, what can we do to improve Prospect for all users? One approach could be a road diet that would remove one travel lane in exchange for a center turn lane and on-street bike lanes. There could be access control medians with plantings. Another is to look at potential improvements to Lake Street to take bicycle traffic off of Prospect. Transit enhancements for the area include access to MAX, shared bike and pedestrian paths, buffered bike lanes, sidewalks with tree lawns, etc. This is a gateway to the City and to CSU so staff want to have aesthetic enhancements and low impact development treatments that will improve stormwater. There is an open house at the Senior Center September 18. There will be a specific workshop for the Prospect Corridor on September 22. Comments/Q & A • Rich asked if Prospect Corridor would be in sync with the Bicycle Plan and what staff envisions for a bike friendly corridor from College to Shields. Amy said they will build off the Bicycle Plan while balancing right-of-way and space constraints with improvements. • Greg asked where they are with the stadium and what processes the City is engaging in. Amy said the stadium needs to be considered in their planning. At the same time CSU is working on their own plans for growth. Staff is looking at everyday use of the network and working closely with those who have done studies on the impacts of the stadium to make a larger coordinated City response and ensure it is consistent with the City’s plans. It will be considered in terms of infrastructure improvements and operational improvements. There would be six football games and an unknown number of other events at the stadium if built. Rebecca added that the student population growth that CSU is planning is of greater concern. Recently the incoming population has been smaller than expected, but the university has plans to grow. Staff is looking at both. • Greg said he is hearing this is a cooperative effort between CSU and the City. Amy said yes. CSU has representation on the TAC and regular coordination meetings. • Dave said many of the same visions were in the old plan, but nothing happened from College to Shields in that time period. As the CSU population grows more houses have gone to rentals and neighborhoods have declined as a result. How can you fix Prospect without acquiring and condemning the corridor? In order to make Prospect work you have to acquire more land. You can’t put trees in the middle of the street. Traffic backs up there and gets worse every year. How much of the plan can be reality? That is not the way this area is moving. He sees more density and rentals in the areas. What did the old plan have in it that didn’t work and how is it being addressed in this one? • Rebecca said the previous planning effort was led by neighborhood leaders and had many action items that were accomplished, such as the extension of Centre Avenue. Much of the vision is the same as for the 1999 Plan, but the policies and strategies will be different in some cases. Staff may carry forward some information and/or policies where progress has been made. This area is diverse and some neighborhoods have had a decline in livability and an increase in absentee property owners. Some of the neighborhoods have improved however, such as west of Rolland Moore Park to Taft Hill Road. Rental population has stabilized in that area. Dave said that is the neighborhood he lived in and he feels it has declined. Rebecca said the home values there are increasing and rental units have generally decreased since the previous plan. • Dave asked how you can do Prospect without adding more land to widen the road. Rebecca said the City is considering acquiring land through negotiated purchase. Amy said staff is trying to do what they can with what is there, knowing that some acquisition will have to happen. They will not try to 6 implement the four-lane standard arterial, though. Some redevelopment is expected to occur and that is an opportunity to get the right-of-way needed to make improvements. • John said he would love to see every road amenable to biking and multimodal transportation. Only in Fort Collins would Prospect be considered constrained. This city has the widest streets of many others. The problem is you are trying to accommodate bicycling, but otherwise the right-of-way is not constricted. You can still make a lot of improvements to the character, flow of traffic and pedestrian walkways. You really only have a biking problem. • Dave said you have four lanes of traffic that back up every night. If you add a stadium you have a major problem. • John said that is not a corridor problem, but a traffic problem. If you increase access to MAX and alternative transportation, you decrease traffic. Redesigning the road is the not going to solve the problem. • Rich asked the desired outcome: A walkable street? A boulevard? Or a thoroughfare? • Tom Moore said there are no air quality indicators in the description and that needs to change. If the goal for climate and air quality is to reduce emissions and give people other transportation options, then designing the street for cars is where staff should put the least effort. Maybe you decrease the traffic lanes and increase access for bikes and pedestrians. The street isn’t big enough and we want to allow more people to park there? CSU should put the parking somewhere else. You should have VMT reduction strategies. The crossing at Mason is a mess and needs to be repaired. Staff should think outside of the road as much as possible. Maybe Lake becomes a pedestrian way and Spring Creek becomes the bike trail? • Greg added that we are all intrigued by Lake Street but you still need CSU on board. Are they? Amy said staff met with CSU on design alternatives for Lake Street that focus on adding protected bike lanes and detached sidewalks. There is a question on whether to maintain on-street parking or create off-street parking. Staff sees this street as a good east-west alternative. There is work to do on Shields and the West Central Area Plan will address those. • Tom asked the definition of a protected bike lane. Amy said it has vertical division between the bike lane and traffic. Delimiters, planters, and curbs can all be used and are gaining prominence in bicycle planning. • Rich asked if there is discussion of an elevated bike crossing at Elizabeth and Shields. Amy said there are a lot of people crossing Shields. Grade separation can create safety. Staff is looking at options for underpasses and overpasses and may need creative solutions due to drainage issues and underground utilities. • John said he is generally opposed to ideas that try to get people out of their cars by making life miserable for them. However, he is not supportive of what appears the first priority which is to solve problems for cars and solve the problems for everyone else as an afterthought. The way to get people to solve the traffic congestion problem is to make the alternatives as attractive as possible to people and he knows this is what staff is trying to do. They will have more opportunities to take advantage of Lake Street than trying to accommodate everything on Prospect. • Melissa said that the board has always had the same issues with presentations in that the air quality indicators and GHG emissions impacts are not present. She wonders if people from the board could be members of the technical advisory committee. Alternately, the board has discussed writing a white paper on how to implement air quality analysis in transportation projects. • John said there was a budget offer for developing an impacts guidance that landed below the cutoff line. In general, all the board members are so over committed, that it is not realistic to think we can 7 give technical input on a project-by-project basis over and over. We were hoping the City will develop the process and expertise to include this as standard operating procedure. We want Transportation to think of air quality impacts on everything they do, not just come by the board on the way to Council. • Tom said Transportation employs travel demand models and he assumes that is part of the analysis. That is just a tool and there is a more complicated planning process. It is difficult to offer advice on the plan since we don’t see how it is connected to everything else. In the case of Prospect, is trying to keep bikes there even an option? Is Lake Street going to be paid for by the City or CSU? Rebecca said they are not to the implementation stage, but presume it would be a partnership. • Tom said the board expects data on increase in multimodal, reduction of VMTs, and reduction in GHG be presented with the plan. Maybe we should have the cross-MAX corridor on Prospect and have a bold vision? He made copies of a document for the planners. Amy said as planners develop alternatives, they have challenges in assessing air quality impacts in a meaningful way. They can use guidance in this area, as corridor alternatives tend to have more subtle differences/impacts. With system-wide analyses measuring and quantifying air quality impacts would be more viable. • Dave asked if participants in the surveys were asked where they work. Rebecca said they did not get to the level of information there to look at commuting patterns, but would consider it for future surveys. • Tom said independent of technical air quality indicators, the decision to spend $80 million of our tax dollars on the MAX corridor means that density is going to increase. You need metrics to relate the density that is expected there in 15 years. We are at full load on our roads. You can’t disconnect west central from east central. There has to be a way to not cut them into such small chunks. Amy said Prospect has been designated an enhanced travel corridor and staff will study the area all the way to I-25, but that has not been funded yet. • Rebecca said land use, transportation, and density work together. There is the High Density Mixed Use zone district located along the north side of Prospect Road. Redevelopment hasn’t happened since that zone district was created in the 1999 West Central Neighborhoods Plan, but how well the roadway will function for that potential population needs to be explored. • Tom said maybe the emphasis needs to be away from that area. Amy said on the north side, some new developments would use Lake as the main access road. • Tom said we are still out of balance in that we don’t have the emphasis on other modes that we should have. Let’s do a demonstration. This area is unique and we need to engineer outside the box; not the subtle differences we’re talking about now, but major differences. Amy said the Road Diet option does just that sort of thing. Staff is also looking at ways to prioritize various transportation modes differently. • Tom said with our bias toward reducing emission and VMT, maybe the improvements need to be made on the bike path instead of the road. You have the density there to achieve that. Rebecca said one challenge is there are not alternatives to the major arterials. There are not a lot of through corridors for bikes or pedestrians. There are connectivity issues in that area. • Tom said if CSU would extend the Mason Trail that would be an improvement. Amy said that has been extended through campus. There is a jog at Prospect, but it does go through. Greg added that it is a little messy with pedestrians walking in the area, but it is much better than before MAX. Amy Lewin gave a brief summary of a Bike Share program. Some benefits are making bikes convenient for public use. The concept is to have bike pods where bikes can be checked out at one location and returned to another. Phase one would focus on downtown and CSU areas and plug into MAX, then 8 expand further south along the Mason corridor and Harmony. She handed out maps with the first phase of stations. As part of the Bike Share Business Plan (May 2014) estimated demand was determined and used to lay out potential coverage. The City would own and manage the system and have a third party run the operations. This would allow people to use bikes to commute, get to restaurants, etc. There are capital and operation and management costs. Capital costs are $1.1 million for startup and approximately $500,000 annually for operation and management (O&M). O&M costs could be supported by sponsors and other funding sources. The BFO offer is not in the City Manager’s recommended budget, but they have submitted an FTA grant and have a proposal in BOB2. Ideally they will launch next fall before the students arrive. • Melissa asked if there was any interest from a private company to do this. Amy said these are often operated by non-profits. It is possible a company would be interested, but less likely than in a large city where more profit could be made. Also, the City likes to be involved and affect the planning. The third party operator could be a non-profit or for-profit company. • Dave asked if CSU was willing to make a financial commitment since many stations are on campus. Amy said they are open to a potential student fee and/or other sources to help fund this. No commitments have been made, but they would partner. • Dave said it would be nice to have a station near the mall. The downtown stations are very near to each other. Amy said there is a balance between having enough station and not having redundancy. • Tom said he would like a large interconnected loop of bike trails to make these bikes easier to use. AGENDA ITEM 5: Other Business Review of City Council 6 Month Agenda Planning Calendar • Melissa said the offer for how to analyze air quality impacts in transportation projects is currently below the funding line. There are more opportunities to give input to Council. It is unlikely that without further action it would come above the line. • Melissa said Environmental offers that are above the line include $20,000 for air quality support for special projects and the Green Building Coordinator. • Fugitive Dust does not have another date for Council yet. Other • Melissa will follow up on process for getting new board members. Futures Agenda Items • Hazardous materials in railroad tanker cars • Ozone action and planning • Next Meeting: October 20, 2014 9 Adjournment Meeting adjourned at 8:14pm. Approved by the Board on November 17, 2014 Signed ____________________________________ 11/18/2014 Dianne Tjalkens, Administrative Clerk II Date 10