So we can use our time.

All right, so we're gonna call to order the work session for today for the Spen City Council.

Um let's do roll call starting with you, Councilor Mendes.

Ariel Mendoz here.

Mike Brightley, yeah.

Melanie Keebler, she her.

Megan Perkins, she her.

Steve Platty.

And Megan Norse is excused today, and we are hoping to have Councillor Francisa online virtual.

She hasn't shown up yet, but hopefully we'll be online soon.

Um so we will go ahead and launch into our presentation from Cassie.

Which is now full screen.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Cool.

Um, okay.

Uh good afternoon, counselors.

I'm Cassie Lacey, senior management analyst in the city manager's office.

I'm here for further discussion on our electrification policy options work.

I'm joined by Daniel Walker, who's our consultant from the Brightland group.

Um, also Elisa Dunlap from Pacific Power.

Um also has a portion of the presentation today, so she's in the audience right now, but she'll come up once it's her time.

Um, as far as meeting objectives today, the first objective is to share information about the emissions revenue and grid impacts of potential different potential fee levels and allow the council to discuss whether you are ready to move forward with establishing a particular fee level based on the information shared today.

The second objective is to discuss options for public engagement for both establishing the fee and also for establishing incentive programs to encourage electrification.

And then the third objective is to receive direction from the council about how you'd like to proceed with the policy development for both the fee and the incentives, um, which is informed by those first two objectives.

Um first I have a little bit of background to root this discussion in the broader context of the work we've been doing on electrification and how we got to where we are today.

Um so this is a graphic that we developed about a year ago.

I haven't shown it the last few work sessions, but I just wanted to remind us that the that the electrification fee and incentive program that we're discussing today is a part of a broader electrification work plan that we um developed last year.

So we have been simultaneously working on a three-part work plan to encourage electrification.

The first part of the work plan is engaging in education and outreach activities to encourage electrification and to provide a resources to community members to help them electrify their homes.

So we have been working really actively to expand our outreach and education efforts over the last year.

Much of the past year has been focused on the fundamentals of building out a web, web and social media content and having tables at events, and then our team is currently in the thick of planning an energy efficiency and electrification workshop series, which we'll be launching this spring.

We'll be partnering partnering with other organizations in the community who have expertise and provide services in the efficiency and electrification space, such as the Energy Trust of Oregon, the Oregon Department of Energy, local organizations like Energy Spend, the Environmental Center, and 350 to shoots to deliver educational workshops on a variety of energy efficiency and electrification topics.

So there really is a lot going on in the outreach and education space that we haven't talked a lot about at the council level and doesn't have a lot of public awareness, but I wanted to remind us that that's part of that bigger picture.

Um a little bit different than the education outreach, um, but our climate action partner grant program is also a tool that we're using to support electrification.

So for example, our highest dollar grant um is going to the Bend Redmond Habitat for Humanity, who are going to use it to install high efficiency heat pump systems with advanced air filtration to income qualified homeowners to provide efficient heat cooling and maintain good air quality for those homes, especially during wildfire events.

We're also funding Central Oregon Community College to create a workforce development program focused on clean energy technologies and the environmental center to develop a revolving loan fund that can be used to provide zero interest loans for qualified homes for energy efficiency and electrification upgrades.

Then the second part of the work plan is to develop incentives and disincentives that encourage people to build homes all electric.

So that's a piece of the work plan that we're working on today and what we've been focused on at the council level the last few months.

This involves developing a disincentive, which is the fee and also creating incentives for electrification.

And then the last piece of the work plan is that staff continue to monitor options for restricting gas through regulatory measures.

When we talked with the council about this work plan last April, we received direction from the council that you would like staff to continue monitoring the legal landscape for any developments on this topic.

So we continue to do that.

We don't really have any updates.

We're not gonna talk about that today, but again, I just wanted to make sure that we sort of remember this work plan that we committed to last April.

April, that's kind of the whole scope of our electrification work.

Also, as background, I'll just remind us what the few, the last few key steps have been that got us to today's work session.

Um following council direction to pursue a fee and incentive program in April of last year.

We held work sessions with the council in August, October, and December, mostly focused on the fee, talking through some research we've done on costs, the cost and impact of electrifying homes, fee design, and public engagement to develop the fee and incentives.

At the December meeting, we shared with the council the fee calculation and the approach to the fee design and outlined several policy questions that you all need to answer in order to move towards actually establishing a fee policy.

Council directed us to come back to this meeting today to further discuss potential options of the fee level, which was one of those policy questions that we outlined during that meeting.

And then at a council business meeting in early January, we had brought a resolution for you all to consider that would establish an ad hoc committee made up of representatives of some of our existing committees to develop recommendations on the incentive programs and some aspects of the fee design.

During that meeting, you all decided that you wanted to continue the uh to continue discussing the public engagement approach during the meeting this evening.

So it's really been that December meeting and the January work session.

Uh, those those two meetings led to the meeting objectives that we're discussing today that I just shared.

Um, so now we're gonna review some analysis and information that explores the impacts of implementing a fee on natural gas appliances at different fee levels.

Uh we proposed, we introduced the proposed fee design and fee calculation at the work session on December 10th.

I'm gonna walk through that fee calculation once more since it's the foundation of the whole policy and it dictates the maximum potential, what the maximum potential fee could be set at.

In addition, we have actually made a modification to this fee calculation since we talked about it last in December that I want to talk through.

So the fee is calculated on a per appliance basis.