Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Commission - Minutes - 10/17/2018Economic Advisory Commission Regular Meeting October 17, 2018, 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. Colorado River Room, 1 st Floor, 222, Laporte Avenue 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 1 1. CALL TO ORDER Time Started 11:09 a.m. 2. ROLL CALL List of Board Members Present • Sam Solt, Chair • Connor Barry • Ted Settle • Aric Light • Linda Stanley • Denny Otsuga • Ann Hutchison List of Board Members Absent • John Parks List of Staff Members Present • Josh Birks, Economic Health & Redevelopment Director • Erin Zimmermann, Economic Health Admin/Board Support • Jennifer Poznanovic, Revenue and Project Manager • Kirk Longstein, Project Manager, Utilities Customer Connections List of Guests • Dale Adamy (r1st.org) 3. AGENDA REVIEW • No changes 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 2 • None 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES The September 19, 2018 meeting minutes approved as presented. 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS. a. City Plan Update (Listen/ Clarify) Connor- will have an update in November. We will be going over the policy implications and what they might mean for the City Plan scenarios. I’m sure there will be an update after next month. If you have questions, please feel free to send them to me. Anne- You can go online and watch video and provide feedback. Our organization will also be having some small groups with facilitated discussion. b. Board and Commission Evaluation (Experiment) Update— Sam Solt (Listen/ Clarify) Sam provided a short update: The project is still moving forward, very slowly. It really does address one of our duties and functions of integrating social and environmental. We do not have a date or topic for the big meeting. There had been talk about KFCG but in my opinion it is too late for that one. Victoria is the project manager. We are still pushing forward to get dates and topics. The planning group met in August. Had proposed to have the big group meeting in October, but that didn’t work well. Anne shared the idea of spending more time on the Triple Bottom Line and the tool as a large group. c. Workplan Update— Sam Solt/ Josh Birks (Listen/ Clarify/Discuss) Members discussed the EAC 2019 Workplan draft and the initial reaction and themes that came out of the initial review. They then prioritized some of the top topics to be included in the workplan. Erin will incorporate the feedback and email out the draft for final review prior to submission. Comments: Linda: We really don’t know what we mean when we talk about Sustainability and the way the three components are interconnected. Do we need to take one of these ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 3 topics on when we are already working on? Anne- Relative to Business Engagement, I know that effort came out of Baldridge, but I wonder if this group becomes a sounding board for the Business Engagement activities the City is working on? Josh: Right now, the focus has been within an internal group. An example that has come out of this is a construction toolkit. It is a tip of an iceberg. It has become more of a way to identify strategic issues and drill into them. We have a great public engagement guide, but it is one size fits all and we are saying it needs to have more segments of customers. Ted: Maybe a way to make progress on this is to have a full meeting dedicated to Business Engagement to see the whole and that may then give us more direction. I could say the same thing for Talent Development. Maybe for now its less important to pick things we will work on instead identify ones to have presentations on and see where they take us. Sam: I think we have been successful on items 2 and 3 listed in our duties and functions, but not so well on 1. Communicating with City Council. We could beef up our program by better communicating with Council. Curiosity around understanding Business Engagement and Talent Development. Sam: One thing we talked about was quarterly meetings with our Council liaison. Linda: When we do make a recommendation, we can designate someone to go speak at Council. Ted: Maybe include how we engage with Council to strengthen that function. Josh: The group would like a deep dive on Talent and Business Engagement and would also like to see part of the work plan include what we will do to strategically engage with Council, such as Linda’s suggestion. 7. NEW BUSINESS a. Capital Expansion Fee Update— Jennifer Poznanovic (Discuss/Act) Jennifer provided background, scope and timeline on the Capital Expansion Fee project, the proposed updates, and next steps. Impact fees are fees on new development. Capital Expansions Fees, Transportation Capital Expansion Fees, and Utility Plant Investment Fees are the three types included. Example: Community Parks Impact Fee which is used to build new parks. The objective of the fee coordination is to review updates together and provide a holistic view of the total cost impact and bring fee updates every 2-4 years. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 4 Plan is every four years Capital Expansion Fees, Transportation Capital Expansion Fees and Development fees reviewed; Utility fees reviewed every two years; and conduct fee study analysis the odd year before BFO; and in years without updates an annual inflation adjustment would occur. Jennifer discussed the 2017 drivers for fee increases and the concerns that were heard from the business community, specifically from homebuilders and within the construction industry. Given this, Council directed a stepped implementation for CEF and TCEF in 2017. Council also implemented a fee working group as well with 15 stakeholders, who met 14 times, and put together a position paper that was reviewed in September. Key Findings: • Sound methodology for calculations and inputs • Third party fee audit revealed how fees are collected are sound • If less than recommended is approved, alternative revenue sources will be needed • Impact fee amenities add to property value, but views differ as to what extent they impact housing costs. Recommendations: • Better communication/outreach and notice of fee changes • Repayment of the $130k identified in the impact fee audit • Progressive Fees if/where possible • Explore additional revenue sources for Parks Buildout • Investigate revenue alternatives to support parks refresh and maintenance • Explore stronger supports for Affordable housing fee waivers CEFs and TCEFs proposed updates for 2019: 27-28 percent increase. Water, Wastewater, Stormwater proposed updates for 2019: 7-11 percent increase. Implications if we do not implement fee increases: wait to build new infrastructure, lower level of service, look for alternative revenue. Outreach plan- Nearing the end. Nov. 13 th is Council Work Session. Dec. 4 and 18 th Ordinance readings. 2019: Utility fees, development fees and step III for CEFs. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 5 Comments: Linda: It was a very difficult committee (process). The first several meetings were contentious. Over time, as we learned more and more about how the fees are calculated and there is a lot of data and theory behind it. Followed the storming, norming, performing process. In the end, we all felt very comfortable with the end product. Josh: Are they serving us well? Would be another question to consider. Anne: Good group because people were vested in their position when they came in, but it did take time to set that back to be part of a true conglomeration. The issues Josh is talking about were the center point for us for the last four months. Citizens have the expectation of level of service, but what does that mean. Concluded that funding parks only by fees is not enough. A single funding stream is not enough. We like to talk about growth paying its own way, but we never talk about what happens when there were deficiencies to start. In summary it is very complex. Denny: There needs to be some fundamental shift in how people think about the fees all together. I appreciate the adjustments, but we need to consider market adjustments more frequently. Anne: We have no incentive for building smaller homes. You are better off building bigger homes. We have got to consider more progressive policies. Total cost of ownership. Action: Denny motioned to have EAC submit a position statement by November 1 st and volunteered to write the draft to circulate to EAC members. Motion passed unanimously. Statement will highlight EAC’s support of the process and interest in more frequent coordinated review of Impact Fees. b. Building Energy Scores— Kirk Longstein (Listen/Clarify/ Discuss) Kirk Longstein provided a presentation on Building Energy Scoring and the three components which include benchmarking, reporting, and transparency. The scoring fits nicely with the City’s free energy efficiency assessment program and CAP goals, as it is a way to engage with commercial buildings to meet those goals. Intent of this program is to address some of the split incentives. Split incentives occur when those responsible for paying energy bills (the tenant) are not the same entity as those making the capital investment decisions (the landlord or building owner) The intent is to get information out there and readily available so potential tenants can see operating costs on the forefront. Free flow of information in the market place. Scoring includes benchmarking, scoring, and transparency. Benchmarking ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 6 includes notifications and data collection, Reporting includes an annual report submission, and Transparency includes public display of scores. Benefits: • Energy Savings and lower operating costs • Identifying opportunities for investment • Market transparency for consumers • Market differentiator The City heard a lot of feedback on the phased implementation plan. The next steps are that the Ordinance will go to Council Nov. 20 th . Comments: Ted: what’s the pushback on this idea? Kirk: Feedback is the time commitment that it takes. Businesses would be paying a frontend staff inputting the data and ask the question if they will get a return on that investment? There will need to be some initial education on how to use the score. Denny: It seems like if you have ability to audit them, I understand if we make them do it they will be more aware, but have you considered reducing the hurdle where they check yes and then the City will input the data manually. Have you thought about that? Kirk: The automation of the technology is there, but we first want to understand the markets’ interest. I think the City’s initial investment allows for our current proposed option. We have heard that question about why we don’t create the score card and give it to us since the City has the data, but there are a lot of nuances that would require more investment for that. Denny: I try to think about how to make programs self-sufficient. Making it transparent is one thing, but not all info will be used so would you consider charging for the report? Kirk: Our working group did not recommend charging companies for a product. It could be interesting to think about that. We currently are not set up for that transaction-based model. A score by itself is meaningless. The call to action is we will come out and do a free energy assessment. Trying to couple our utility programs with this tool. Sam: What happened to FortZed? Josh: It was a grant we received from the Federal government to explore how to take one sector and make it zero energy. We did a couple projects, evaluated data, ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 10/17/2018 – MINUTES Page 7 and shared back. It was an effort of the Colorado Clean Air cluster, which is now defunct. Anne: Anxious about having numbers out there. Then the next step is requiring a company to move from one score to the next. It starts out as a good intention, but then regulation hits the organization on the head. Action: EAC agreed to have the minutes included in the packet when it goes to Council on Nov. 20 th . 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS None 9. OTHER BUSINESS None 10. ADJOURNMENT Adjourns 1:12 p.m. UPCOMING TOPICS November: ▪ Budget Review Update– Josh Birks (Listen/Clarify) ▪ Open Slot December: ▪ Open