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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Advisory Commission - Minutes - 09/19/2018Economic Advisory Commission Regular Meeting September 19, 2018, 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. Colorado River Room, 1st Floor, 222, Laporte Avenue 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 1 1. CALL TO ORDER Time Started 11:08 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 • John Parks • Mayor Wade Troxell List of Board Members Absent • Craig Mueller List of Staff Members Present • Josh Birks, Economic Health & Redevelopment Director • Erin Zimmermann, Admin/Board Support • Lindsay Ex, Sr Manager, Environmental Sustainability • John Phelan, Sr Manager, Utilities Customer Connections • Tim McCollough, Deputy Director, Utilities List of Guests • Dale Adamy (r1st.org) • George Grossman, Owner of Happy Lucky’s Teahouse 3. AGENDA REVIEW • No changes ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 2 4. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION • None 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES The August 15, 2018 meeting minutes approved as presented. 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS. a. City Plan Update (Listen/ Clarify) Expecting an update in November. They have three scenarios drafted. Now they are having public meeting roll outs. Next steps will be to provide tools for ambassadors and engaging with Task Forces. b. Board and Commission Evaluation (Experiment) Update— Sam Solt (Listen/ Clarify) Were supposed to have a planning meeting last week that was canceled. Ted: It was my understanding that staff was going to put together a proposal. Has that occurred yet? If there is any sense of urgency of the topic, the time is ticking. Josh advised Ted to follow-up with staff. c. Workplan Update— Sam Solt/ Josh Birks (Listen/ Clarify/Discuss) At the last meeting EAC members did some brainstorming and Josh was going to share that back out. It was proposed that staff draft a workplan that articulates the process for issue prioritization and includes the diagram and matrix that will be use to gain focus and then continue to work on details on identifying specific topics for the next year. Staff will get a draft out to the board to solicit feedback prior to finalization. It was requested to provide a deadline for feedback/comments. Staff will get a draft out early next week. 7. NEW BUSINESS a. Conversation with the Mayor— Mayor Troxell (Discuss/Act) Members discussed what topics and questions they wanted to share with the Mayor. Key priorities were around better understanding how best to engage with him and how EAC should prioritize their work and topics to be engaged on. For example. Are there better ways to engage with him as alternatives to having him come to the EAC ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 3 meetings on a quarterly basis. Comments: Ted: We are making a conscious choice to invest less time on the experiment and more on items with an economic focus. Willing to invest time on Council priorities, but I don’t know what’s most important. That would be valuable to me to have that in some way. Would be helpful to know the upcoming big three. Denny: Maybe Josh and the Chair meet with him and come back to us. I wish we had the list of potential topics ready because then we could get his feedback on that. Linda: The good thing with boards is they can make waves and have an impact. Sometimes I worry it could have too much impact on where we go as a board, if our liaison is too involved. Ann: I want feedback from him to make sure we aren’t missing something. That way we can get ahead of the big topics. Josh: For example, do we want to get involved on topics that are on the radar but might not be on the 6-month calendar yet. That way we can provide useful insight before, instead of at the end of the process. Aric: So, understanding what are things on his mind, that we could help investigate. Conor: I think that’s important, to focus on getting the liaison piece, not the Mayor’s perspective. Sam: Can we use our minutes as a feedback mechanism and communication tool? Mayor Troxell joined the meeting, and the dialog on communication channels and key priority identification continued. EAC shared the diagram of agenda items that will influence EAC’s 2019 workplan. Recommended communication channels included: Memos to Council, speaking to Council were identified as recommended communication strategies, along with participation in the Super Board meetings and periodically having a subset of EAC meet with the Mayor to bring feedback back to Council or having an EAC representative attend Council member listening sessions. Ted: One thing that is on our mind, is looking at the public engagement and city plan process and the experiment. Our intent now is to be more focused on issues of economics, so it’s important for us to be out in front of issues, as opposed to getting involved in something coming to Council in the next month. How do we capture through you as our liaison the big items that might be coming up that might not be on the planning calendar? Denny: What Ted is talking about is diagram on screen where yellow is items on ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 4 agenda. Red would be items that are Council Initiatives and items in blue are items that might be off the radar. One issue is frequency of meeting being monthly, so that needs to be taken into consideration. Mayor Troxell: Last night at Council, we were talking about the budget and there were a couple speakers who commented on the amount of money we spend on flowers in comparison to other line items. The other thing mentioned was the painting of the transformer boxes. A lot of these economic drivers are things you are wrestling with. How to interpret the rings are less single-issue and more the characteristics of a great community. Mayor Troxell highlighted the discussion on Metro Districts, KFCG, and the Airport as topics with great potential. There are things that are specific, but then other things that spin off. Transportation is a big example. I have been appointed to the Drone advisory committee to FFA and The Transportation Department. There’s something happening that’s big and it hasn’t even scaled yet. We have companies in Fort Collins playing in this space. Not that EAC has a crystal ball, but I do think there a lot of things on the horizon. It will be interesting to see how it plays out nationally. As we think about our airport, is there an opportunity for us to leverage that resource? Ted: So what I’m hearing, is one way for us to be involved is in looking at what are the assets in the region and how could we cluster them in a unique way and in a way that makes sense? Linda: A big question is do we want to be a Silicon Valley? Ted: What are big things on the horizon that you and your colleagues on Council think about? Things you lie awake at night and think about. Mayor Troxell: Heading into election season, so that will drive some conversations that are relevant to the community and beyond. Other things just emerge. Linda: 100 percent Renewable is an example of a topic, I feel like we should have been involved with early on in the process. Maybe Climate Economy is something we as a board should be talking about more frequently. Mayor Troxell: You can unpack the Airport topic in a similar way. For example, transportation- Are we going to build out a complete bus system or more blended system with Uber, and multimodal transportation? We talk about bikes as part of our brand, how does it manifest in our transportation strategies? I think there are a number of opportunities to unpack and apply an economic lens. Other topics include: Economic Clusters and FC Innovates. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 5 b. 100% Renewable Electricity Resolution— Lindsay Ex, Tim McCollough, John Phelan (Listen/Clarify/ Discuss) Lindsay Ex, Tim McCollough and John Phelan gave a presentation on the 100% Renewal Electricity Resolution that covered the history and background, how the Triple Bottom Line perspective is being applied, what metrics are used, what the engagement process has looked like and what trends have been observed The draft resolution was presented and discussed. Staff also sought input from EAC. Comments: Tim: We enjoy reasonably low-cost electricity in our community and some of the highest reliability through Platte River Power Authority. There has been a conversation in our community since last fall. We as staff were tasked with conducting an analysis and then submit a resolution to Council. Community engagement has been a priority. Aric- there was a partial goal in 2020, and I’m interested in understanding how close we are to meeting that goal. Lindsay: Our goals are to be 20 percent below our 2005 emission-levels by 2020, 80 percent by 2030, and carbon neutral by 2050. Current progress look backs one year so for 2017 we were at 17 percent below. John Phelan: The Energy Policy includes a goal of achieving 20 percent renewable electricity by 2020, with 2 percent from local installed distribution generation. Lindsay: We use a standard protocol to evaluate our emissions there are 8,000 cities committed to similar protocol so we can benchmark against others. Tim: Platte River is also considering a resource diversification policy that is specific about noncarbon resources. Lindsay: We are out talking with boards and groups. There are some areas of agreement and some areas of tensions. What will this cost? Is it achievable? How is this defined? Goal vs Mandate? What comes first: plan or goal? Tim: Some tensions we have heard is that if you go all the way on the spectrum for environmental, you sacrifice cost and reliability. I don’t believe that has to be true. We need to have honest conversations about how these three balance each other. Mayor Troxell: In the 70s when Council voted to approve the underground lines, the technology did not exist at that point. Tim: the level of innovation was an important risk so we could reap the benefits. Ted: What does the corporate community in the greater Fort Collins area look like to ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 6 support some of the pioneering that has to happen for this? Tim: The innovation over next decade is not necessarily in the physical hardware but could come in the regulations and how the control systems and control in structure is going to happen. Connor- Sun doesn’t shine all the time, wind doesn’t blow all the time so what needs to happen given storage limits? Tim: Progress needs to be made in storage technology, as well as some other spaces. The resolution as its drafted recognized those things need to be develop, grow and mature for this goal to be achieved. Denny: Hopefully you are also thinking about shortening the review cycle timeline. Tim: The industry is changing, and we are well positioned to adapt our business model. Sam: One metric you might be missing is livability. Linda: I’m generally in favor of renewable energy but there are costs that we don’t think about. There are other issues we need to consider. Ann: I just want to share data point that the Chamber conducted 24 interviews with high power users, major employers. They support pursuing renewable, as you can. This dateline feels very aggressive to the majority of people we talked to. Too much too fast. Reliability is number one issue for them. Cost is a concern. Many of our business partners are willing to pay more to get to this, but I don’t think we have any idea of what the tipping point is. Had discussion with business partners josh facilitated said we aren’t going to relocate, but we aren’t going to expand. I think it’s a balancing act. Josh: some of the same people said their customers are asking them to be more socially and environmentally mindful. They want to become more green and have these other constraints too. Their customers whether business to business or business to consumer, demand things change and they are also reacting to that. Connor: I fully understand and respect the impacts to businesses, but understanding that there’s a lot more going on in our economy. Having a goal to set forward and go towards, this isn’t a mandate; it is a good thing. Action: Connor motioned that the EAC recommend Council adopt the community-wide 100% Renewable Electricity goal with the priority of maintaining reliability at the current level or higher and that all costs are considered during implementation. Linda seconded. Motion passed 7:1. ECONOMIC ADVISORY COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING 09/19/2018 – MINUTES Page 7 8. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS None 9. OTHER BUSINESS None 10. ADJOURNMENT Adjourns 1:11 p.m. UPCOMING TOPICS UOctoberU:  Capital Expansion Fee Update– Josh Birks (Listen/Clarify)  Open UNovemberU:  Budget Review Update– Josh Birks (Listen/Clarify)  Open Slot