Okay, good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Monday, July 6th, 2026 meeting of the Planning Economic Development and Land Use Committee of the Albany Common Council.

I'm the chair of the committee, Deborah Zamer.

We're joined by committee members Sergio Adams and Tom Hoey and our legislative staffer, Carly Johnson.

Today we have two resolutions on the agenda to reappoint members of the sustainability commission.

So first we're going to ask Daniel Kirk Davidoff to please come up and take a seat.

I think the mic is on for you.

Hi, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for your previous service and for your willingness to continue to serve.

As vice chair, I'm wondering if you might be able to give us a brief overview on what the sustainability commission does, has been doing.

Yeah.

If you don't mind.

And introduce yourself as well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So yes, I'm Dan Kirk Davidoff.

I'm the vice chair of the Sustainability Commission and have been, oh I guess for about three years.

Before that, I was chair for a couple of years, and before that I was secretary for a couple of years.

I've been on the commission for I think this is six years I've been on it now.

And yeah, during that time, we've performed a bunch of functions.

So at one level we're a clearinghouse for uh members of the administration uh who are members ex officio uh to meet once a month and talk with the sustainability man manager Jason West and his uh his staff about you.

Just so the our folks watching can hear clearly, thank you.

Uh he to me so uh as I was saying uh we we perform a couple of functions.

One of them is to provide a clearing house so that members of the uh of the of the administration can meet with um uh meet together and discuss sustainability topics, including the sustainability manager, Jason West, and his staff.

Uh and then uh it's also you know, we as the community members who are are a majority of the um commission are space to uh provide input and and advice uh from our perspective.

Uh we have a range of people with professional interests in sustainability and the environment on the staff on the on the membership of the commission.

We have uh members uh everyone lives in Albany, we live in different neighborhoods in the city, we bring perspectives that have to do with where we live and our backgrounds uh to those meetings, and we try to prioritize uh things that would be helpful for the city to think about in terms of uh maintaining environmental quality and uh quality of life uh and it within the city.

Uh for myself as a energy weather and climate professional.

Uh I've been really interested in understanding how the city can make the best use of the uh funds that are available because we have we live in a state that has climate policies and uh we have at times lived in a country that had significant climate policies.

Uh and there those represent opportunities for the city to uh make progress for its people in uh you know general context where we're not a particularly rich place uh and we have a lot of challenges and we need whatever resources we can to make our all of our lives better.

Uh also as a you know human being, uh I care about the legacy that we're leaving for our kids, and I think you know, all of us who have the opportunity should be thinking about how to minimize our impact on uh our warming impact on the climate going forward, which means reducing carbon dioxide emissions for the most part, uh as well as other greenhouse gases.

So we have a bunch of uh we have a bunch of subcommittees on the with it that are led by members of the commission that have different levels of uh of activity, um, but even when they're not really functioning as committees with volunteer additional volunteer members within the city, some of them are, some of them less so, uh they they are you know uh i i they're an opportunity for each of us to have some uh specialty and you know think about particular aspects of the problem.

So, you know, for many years now, Tina Lieberman has been heading up the solid waste uh subcommittee.

Um I mean, anyone who knows her knows her level of activity and you know service to the city uh and that's a really active committee, and they staff like just about every city event with people to make you know just make an educational opportunity so that folks who are attending some big big open public activity in the city know that there's a trash bin and a recycling bin and a compost bin and put their put their waste in the right place.

Um but she's also worked, you know, incredibly hard to make opportunities for the city to get resources uh from state and federal grants uh that would enable us to have more uh active uh solid waste uh reduction and and uh composting and recycling activities.

Uh we have um uh Scott Kellogg, who's the head of the um the head of the uh uh urban agricultural committee, and you know, he's also he also runs Raddox, which is an enormous organization on its own that does terrific work uh making you sort of bringing to the people of Albany the opportunity to grow food within the city uh and you know, running the Raddocks uh education center, which gives, you know, a a beautiful living example of how to uh how in an urban context you can raise some animals even and uh and compost and grow stuff in a greenhouse and uh they plant trees all over the city for uh beautification and food and uh and shade.

Uh and Scott and uh I have been uh collaborating with um Stacy Pettigrew uh who's also at Raddox and also at um shoot one of the colleges around here, I forget which one, um, uh working on um uh monitoring temperature within the city in order to understand the impact of street trees on on climate.

So that took a huge amount of work that took a lot of coordination with the city because you know, National Grid is unbelievably fussy about what goes on their power poles, even though we were talking about putting up these little hobo measurement stations.

They're just little battery operated uh thermometer, you know, uh uh hydrometer pressure sensor.

It's about this big and it just straps onto onto the pole, um incapable of doing any kind of harm whatsoever, but we could not get the lawyers from National Grid to sign off on this until we enlisted Gabriela Romero, who you know made the right phone calls and all of a sudden they were willing, you know, it's and we were able able to make that happen.

I guess I'm on the record here and I shouldn't be talking to I mean National Grid has a it uh is you know has a big sustainability program.

They uh they they do all sorts of stuff.

They also, you know, that that is that could be helpful and good for the community, um, and they also have a lot of lawyers and lawyers often see their job as saying no uh to stuff, and that's just a hazard of the occupation, and I I do sympathize.

Um, but this was a good thing, and it took a lot of work to accomplish, but now it's been accomplished, and we have a network of uh temperature monitoring stations all over the city, which is terrific.

Um we are what else is up?

Um uh I I've for a long time been the chair of the energy uh subcommittee, but that's been a bit nominal for the last few years.

I do have a big long membership list uh, but um we've we I fit I felt like we were having a lot of meetings where we talked about what was going on, and that that's helpful, I think.

But what I've been hoping for over the last few years is to transition uh work in uh in that space uh from talking to more action.

So along those lines, I've worked for a number of years with uh Mary Ellen Malia at SUNY Albany on uh spinning up a um uh uh uh energy efficiency volunteer corps, a weatherization volunteer corps, which you know has now been going for several years running, and uh the city has uh taken on a bunch of the work for that.

So the the uh Love Your Block Fellow Um Erin uh Johansson uh what's her name?

Um has uh taken that on on the city side and found uh people who were uh you know uh who would were looking for weatherization help.

Uh I think we covered six or eight houses.

It was probably maybe it was it was more than that.

There were so it was on each of two weekends, so they're probably something like 20-ish with like something like I don't know, 20-ish or more uh volunteer student volunteers plus a few community volunteers joining.

Um you know, this is this is a beginning.

Uh we are uh uh a long way from having a uh uh a green housing stock in the city.

Uh we our city is you know by uh dominantly heated by natural gas um which is still pretty cheap uh and it's gonna it's gonna be a ways until we get to the point where it's gonna uh where we're gonna be able to make you know fast pro progress at a conversion of all those uh all those uh gas heating systems into heat pumps.

But you know, because state policy is now very supportive of heat pumps for new buildings uh and for you know substantive renovations of buildings, we're seeing lots of new uh heat pump, you know, fully heat pump uh heated buildings going up in the city, and when we have major renovations, often that's the technology that's used.

Um but what we're trying to understand is uh low-hanging fruit opportunities for uh conversion to cleaner uh electric heat that is you know both lower, you know, much lower carbon emissions, but also healthier for people in houses that if they're not breathing, you know, the emissions from gas-fired systems both on on stoves and in uh water heaters and um and uh furnaces.

Uh so um I'm I'm I'm doing this a little bit off the top of my head and I'm missing things, and Andre's gonna have a chance to talk about his work when he comes on.