Hey Denver, it's time for this biweekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now.

Good afternoon.

My name is Chantel M.

Lewis, and I represent District 8.

Welcome to the Transportation Infrastructure Committee.

Today is Wednesday, September 17th, already 2025, and I am excited to chair this committee.

With that, we'll do a round of introductions and start with you, Proten.

I go there.

Good afternoon, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Good afternoon, Flora Ridres, Lucky District 7.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver District 2.

Hey Denver, Chris Hines.

Perfect.

And we have no virtual participation.

We do have an action item, a number of action items from the Denver International Airport.

And I'll have you all do an introduction and then you can jump in.

And Pamela Deshant, Senior Vice President of Concessions at Den.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, thank you for your time, everyone.

Good afternoon.

We are here before you today with a very distinct and unique group of concessions contracts that we will be asking to be amended.

I'd like to provide you some context before we get into the details of the contracts up for amendment.

Over the past few years at DEN, we've been really working hard to modernize the program, to bring in new concessionaires, more small local businesses.

So a huge modernization program going on.

The one thing that we had not modernized in our program had been the length of the contract terms.

The terms went back to the very first day of the airport, seven years for retail, 10 years for food and beverage.

So as we redeveloped the program, we realized recently that you know what?

In order to keep up with today's world and today's costs, we needed to right size the contract term links, which is why in January of 2024, it was January 1st, 2024.

All new contracts moving forward have new contract term lengths, which are nine years for retail and 12 years for all food and beverage.

This is really important because the cost of building out at the airport, we learned, has doubled for food and beverage operators and has tripled for retailers.

So it made sense to us that effective January 1st of last year moving forward, we would lengthen those terms.

We did, however, have a group of concessionaires that came to us and said, thank you for the changes.

This makes a lot more sense to us.

We'll be able to recover all of the capital costs that we put in.

But I just missed that deadline, right?

And so we listened, we looked at the numbers, we looked, we heard all of the feedback, and what we did is we went back to the drawing board and looked at our entire concessions portfolio.

And of all the contra the concessions contracts, we grouped them into three separate buckets.

And today we're going to talk about the second group.

These are people who came to us and said we're stuck in this middle earth, as coined by Mr.

Washington.

We're stuck in this middle earth.

So although you've extended the terms, we can't get that benefit.

It's just beyond our reach, just based on a hard line in the sand, a date.

Furthermore, these concessionaires said to us, we were not able to enjoy the privilege of being at the at the airport some since 1995.

Fast forward to today, we have that special Middle Earth group before you.

And of those 28, we have a group of 14 before you today with the intention of coming back to ask for the remaining 14 to be amended.

The chart before you shows a listing of the joint venture partnerships that are that are included in this group two requested action.

And again, the remaining 14, not shown here, but on a subsequent slide, will come later.

This is just a recap of the groupings I spoke to you about.

Groups one, two, and three.

Group one we call old school, right?

Some have been at the airport since the beginning, which we love, right?

They've been part of all of the growth and the great experience we've had until now.

However, a lot of term has been enjoyed by these concessionaires.

And before January of 2024, and then the newbies, right?

All the new contracts moving forward.

Group three.

We provided a little more detail on the different groupings, although we're not asking for action today on group one.

Here is some additional context and further details, should you be interested.

Is there a focus today?

Again, lacking the legacy benefits of group one and the modernization of group three.

We can keep going.

Keep going.

So in alignment with vision 100, right?

We believe that right sizing group two would create that equity that we stand behind in the concessions department in Denver, at Denver.

More details on the joint ventures that are before you today here.

We have a lot of details about this, huh?

And a repeat of the list of 14 contracts asking for your approval.

If you want to this chart here highlights 14 before you today, and the ones that remain in white in the table, would be the next tranche to bring.

That's our overview and our request.

Can I answer any questions?

I thank you so much for the previous briefing.

I have no questions at this time.

Thank you.

Any folks have any questions?

Sure.

I do have a question.

Thank you.

And I do think it's great.

The slide presentation is really called middle earth.

Thank you.

It just made me chuckle.

One of the questions that I do have is when do you so these are coming through now?

When's the next tranche?

Do you expect to come through?

As soon as we said just processing or what is the it is.

It's just processing.

These are the ones that we had complete in a packet ready to bring before you there are several reasons, right?

That the other 14 didn't get left behind, but didn't make it into this batch.

We have concessionaires that are going through personal issues, medical issues, and that's about it.

Yeah.

30, 60 days.

Yeah, the next time we can get scheduled.

Yeah.

Um the next few months, we'll we'll bring the next group.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, and then would any of these concessionaires in this current tranche or in the next one be concessionaires that'll go into the Great Hall area as well, or those is that a different well, it's it's yet to be seen.

Who bids it very well could be, but the RFPs are out on the street right now for the Great Hall.

So we won't know if some of them will be the same until we get the bids and go through the selection process.

Maybe.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

I don't have any other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman.

Thank you.

Mayor Chair.

Uh thank you.

Uh I think I know the answer to this.

Um, when you're considering uh minority women-owned business enterprises, um, disability is not a consideration.

Is that is that correct?

For as far as a minority qualification.

You know, I would for a formal answer, I'd have to ask the DSBO office who assigns those goals.

Okay.

So if we can follow up with you, I'd be happy to.

And I did recently asked them, and they said um no.

Um, I uh my thought was uh in general the recent time I've been on council six years.

Uh, we've worked obviously with the airport quite uh uh quite a bit um over those six years.

Uh my thought was uh my thought out of ignorance was that there was no certification system for um or for disability uh owned businesses.

I've recently learned that there is one that the federal government recognizes disability in.

Um on their website, they also I just found this out last week.

Um also on their website they say that the state of Colorado also uses um disability in.

So I just thought that was uh you know an interesting comment.

Obviously, um it is such a niche that we don't even consider uh people with disabilities and uh 51% or greater uh owned businesses that are um owned by uh by people with disabilities.

Uh you already have a vendor that um that a concessionaire that has um multiple um locations at the airport that um qualifies for MWB under uh other category, but he would also qualify under the disability status.

So it just started making me think.

Well, wait a minute, I wonder if there are folks that um do qualify as a you know, so uh uh disability is also a civil rights protected class.

And so I just made me um uh wonder if um perhaps the airport had a category or a recognition process that isn't um uh dispo, but if you use Dispo, then I already know the answer.

Well thank you for that.

Yeah, we we'll take a look at that.

Um, we have um actually probably about a year and a half ago or so, uh, changed uh or added to one of our guiding principles, accessibility.

So EDIA or um equity uh diversity inclusion and accessibility.

Uh we've added that uh at the airport is one of our guiding principles.

So we will look at that.

We will talk to Dispo.

Um, I am aware of the disability category at the federal government.

Uh as a matter of fact, the veteran disability is a huge thing, and as a disabled veteran myself, I know about that pretty well.

So uh we'll take a look at that.

Yeah, in there, yeah.

So I think they have three certification categories.

One is disability, one is a veteran that uh who happens to have a disability or company 51% or greater owned by a veteran who has disability, and then a third category, someone has uh someone who's a veteran who has a service connected disabilities.

And um, and so uh it by recognizing disability in, we'd also mean um uh recognizing another uh principle that I know we have at the city, and that's um giving preference to those who served our country to give us the way of life that we have here in America.

So, yeah, thank you.

Thank you, you're welcome.

And I I would add in our discussions yesterday that one of the um, so in addition to the extension of the two years, I know part of the work of bringing these tranches to us was to have some ADA alignment, if I recall correctly from our conversation um yesterday.

So I think that's an important piece for you to know as well, Councilman Um Heinz.

And then I wanted to Pam, you if you if you are up to it to talk about the A B D B E and the S B E C because I it was uh very valuable to me, the way in which you provided the that insight, and I think it would be helpful for folks as well.

Thank you.

Yeah, uh, can we please go back to the slide with the first one of the first lists?

This one.

Yes, okay.

So what you'll see here um under the company name, it's the name of the joint venture, but the important part that we're talking about is the status, and it's either ACDBE Airport Concessions certified airport concessions disadvantaged business enterprise.

Um, all of our contracts at the airport require ACDBE goals and participation.

So we have several concessionaires who are a hundred percent ACDBE, and then the rest makeup of these joint ventures listed in the established goal.

You'll see the percentage.

Now those are gonna vary.

You'll see different um 36%, 30%, and those are based on the equity studies that the airport does every three years, um, to help us determine what the appropriate goals are.

The other acronym listed, SBEC, Small Business Enterprise Concession.

This is a program that is new to DAN since 2019, and it is a certification that small businesses can get in addition to ACDBE if they choose.

The important distinction is that this is race and gender neutral.

It is strictly based on size.

And several of the contracts before you are 100%, excuse me, 100% SBEC, meaning these are small businesses, and this is they are 100% owner of these concessions, which makes us super proud.

This program had it's become a regular part of concessions.

We launched it in 2019 as a pilot just to see if it would work.

It's been so successful that it's become part of who we are and what we'll continue to do.

Thank you for asking.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for taking the opportunity to highlight that because I did think it was valuable.

I think it's valuable for this committee to know as well.

I don't have any further questions.

There aren't other folks in the queue.

Um, and so if no one has any further questions, I'd ask for a motion to move this forward.

Thank you.

First and a second, I'll be dressing Hines.

Um, do we need a roll call vote?

I sure hope not.

Great.

Did you have any announcements that you wanted to make before?

Yes, uh very briefly, thank you, uh Chair Lewis and uh committee members.

Uh, just uh uh a couple items in terms of updates.

Last week, uh then uh along with the Denver Fire Department, uh, and uh Dottie celebrated the groundbreaking of a new fire station.

Uh the new station will uh address the growth around the airport uh and serving various neighborhoods like the Gateway Neighborhood, Mount Bellow, Green Valley Ranch.

Um council uh member Watson was there, also council uh member Gilmore uh was there and she spoke at the event.

Uh and so uh it was a great event, it was a great day as well.

Uh I'm also excited to share that earlier this week, and this was mentioned a little bit earlier about uh the Great Hall.

We are nearing completion of the Great Hall, as you all know.

Um, so earlier this week, Monday, we announced uh six dining and retail opportunities or requests for proposals uh for the Great Hall intended to uh transform the Great Hall.

And those opportunities uh are going to be located on level five when you come up from the A line right into the terminal.

Uh we are, of course, finalizing that build out.

Our aim is to attract uh local brands, national brands, regional brands.

Uh, and I think there's gonna be great interest uh in that.

The six RFPs included uh a grab and go cafe.

Uh that is a 100% SBEC opportunity.

We just talked about that.

Uh fast casual uh restaurant or casual dining with a bar, uh food hall, uh, travel convenience marketplace, which uh is another 100% AC or SBEC opportunity as well.

And so we're very excited about releasing those right now.

We will um bring in or uh proposals will be submitted, we'll evaluate those and decide who goes in.

And that is my update.

Beautiful.

I think we have a few questions, kind of soon.

Thank you, uh Madam Chair.

Grab and go in the South Mod, Mod 3, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yes, uh that's pre-TSA.

Correct.

And I could see that'd be a little problematic if somebody picks up drink or a water bottle that you can't take through security.

What I think is essential to have there, maybe, maybe this is there also, is a sit-down place where people waiting for arriving passengers and have lunch or dinner, breakfast while they're meeting for their parties to arrive.

That's something that's really been missing since the Great Hall renovation started.

There's a great out at Stapleton, also the old sky shift restaurant, you know, where you look out on the concourse, right?

But you know, people who arrive early and have time to kill when they're hungry, uh, or their party arrives on a prolonged flight and are hungry, just a nice sit-down place in the unsecured area.

Is that part of the absolute that that is one of the RFPs?

That's one of the um uh RFPs that we have put out, a sit-down uh casual dining place with a bar.

Um so that is one of them.

Um the grab and go piece, um, you know, people waiting and things like that, but also our employees too uh that may want to um get a grab and go go out to the plaza and things like that.

So I think the clientele for both um the sit-down and the grab and go will be pretty substantial.

And my impression has always been that grab and go is always better post security because that's where Harry and I might grab a bottle of water to make on the plane that we couldn't bring through.

Right.

That's true.

All right, thank you.

That's all.

Great, thank you.

Um would you all mind sending the information for the um RFB so that I might include it in my newsletters in case folks might be interested?

Okay.

Oh, just follow-up question.

It's okay.

That's okay.

No, um, I just wanted to touch on something else totally unrelated to this, which is the recent news around parking and the parking issues.

There, I think there's some confusion.

I know I hadn't contacted you when I went into a lot and there was no parking and I exited and paid.

Like, what is that the normal thing?

And do you have any answers to like that thousand dollar parking charges that people have that's been seen in the news?

If we could just speak to that.

Yeah, yeah, that that was a glitch from the contractor that manages uh parking.

Uh we have since resolved that.

Uh it was it was a glitch, uh, and uh uh it was unfortunate.

I hated to see that happen, uh, but uh we have resolved that.

And then on the other issue, if someone drives into the parking lot, there's no parking and parks out, or and comes out like is do they still get charged by parking?

Um I'll need to look into that one.

Um yeah, we'll we'll take a look into that one.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks for raising that.

We're all like, what?

I'll send you the news article later.

Okay, thank you.

Appreciate you, we'll get both the mayor.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you all so much for being here.

Really appreciatingly.

Appreciate you.

All right, take off.

Good luck.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, these folks are headed out.

We can get Hazards set up to talk to us about things.

Hello.

Thank you.

I see y'all.

Thank you.

Okay, folks, yeah.

Thank you.

Oh my man.

If you want to do it.

Great.

So this is a briefing from CASA regarding the office energy projects.

And so if you all could introduce yourselves and then you can jump into your presentation.

Hi everyone, good to see you again.

Uh Jonathan Rogers call me Johnny.

I'm the acting deputy director in Denver's Office of Climate Action.

Joined today with two of our uh leaders on our energy projects team.

Um Drew Halburn, senior energy project manager, Climate Action Division, and CASR.

Kimber Priest, uh Senior Energy Project Manager.

Kimber, you K-I-M-E-E-R.

Yes.

Okay, thank you for asking.

We're excited to be back and uh talking with you about another uh aspect of our work.

Always appreciate uh your feedback, your interest in how we are uh deploying taxpayer dollars into the community and and really in this case focus on how we uh lead by example um through our municipal facilities and operations.

Uh quick overview, remind the the CASER vision.

Together we build a carbon pollution free, sustainable, and climate resilient Denver for all.

Uh really emphasizing how do we as quickly and equitably as possible reduce our carbon emissions and maximize our investment in the community, uh really supporting uh climate vulnerable community members through our work.

Um as we talked about last time, we've got a long way to go to get to zero emissions and are really looking at uh all of the myriad strategies that we need to influence policy, really shift the status quo in terms of um, you know, what we're doing as a community uh that can really bend this curve to get us closer to zero.

And a big part of that is leading by example.

You know, we want to show what's possible.

We want to walk the walk through our work, you know, Denver's city facilities and operations.

We have a carbon footprint as well.

It is going to be more successful for us to inspire others in the community if we are doing that work as well.

And you know, no one's gonna let us uh recommend changes to building code or other policy work if we haven't uh shown that these things are possible and practical and really you know cost-effective and enabling of other other benefits.

Uh so at this point, I will take it over to Drew and Kimber to really talk through uh some of that work and welcome your questions, your feedback, your uh your interest, uh, and what we do and how we continue to do it.

Thanks, Johnny.

Thanks, Chair Council people uh for having us.

We really appreciate uh Johnny said the support over time inquiry into the work we're doing.

Um we think uh the ask is quite broad to make a large wholesale change and complex uh and complicated systems, um, but we think we have a uh view towards the future and a good idea of what we need to do to see those change uh come to fruition.

Excellent.

Well, there's not an explicit you know contract to approve or anything like that today.

So again, sorry, stealing your thunder a little bit, but when we do come to you with contracts, you know, this is indicative of the things that we are able to accomplish, and we appreciate your support and ensuring that we have the tools to be successful.

Thanks.

Uh so the point I really do want everybody to take away today is uh project work in sustainability is a lot more than just building more solar, right?

That's um kind of where uh the work started.

Uh, but as we uh achieve our goals, Excel achieves their goals of decarbonization, we have to look at ways of delivering that power, using that power uh more judiciously, um, and being ready for any uh change, whether it be weather related, system related, population related that we might face so that we can continue to deliver reliable, carbon-free, affordable energy where and when it's needed.

Uh, we work in four areas on the team.

Solar generation and storage uh is run by uh Noah Catafamo, public and EV charging is Rebecca Colson and Hayden Hogaboom.

Resilient city buildings is my colleague Kimber here and Allison.

And then on there on the bottom, uh thermal decarbonization.

And we think of our work as uh really taking three shapes.

One is we demonstrate uh the work that needs to be done so that others can eventually follow us.

We need to evaluate that work so we can then effectively communicate about the results of our projects.

Uh, when you are on the leading edge as the city of Denver is in general on climate work, uh, we are going to be doing things that are new.

That is exciting for people like me.

It is uh challenging and scary for some others, uh, but we need to be there to be able to help discover the challenges that are as yet unknown, coach others through the same process that we were we have been through, and you know, constantly evaluate.

Are we on the right path?

Are there other ways that we can achieve our desired outcomes?

We've been, you can go back for a second.

We've been historically in the demonstrate mode.

Uh, CASRA is a young agency.

Um we stood up uh quite a few projects uh very quickly as our internal processes have matured, our team has grown a little bit.

Um, our relationship with Dotti has uh deepened.

We're able to activate other folks around the city so that we can start to move some of our attention towards that evaluation and communication uh role that we see ourselves.

You know, projects really do touch everything that happens around us.

Um it is a bi-directional relationship.

Everything that we do in our projects group ideally is informing somebody else and helping them do their job.

We are also trying to take our cues from other folks who are engaged either in policy, community engagement, working with other agencies to help us shape our projects so that they could be most impactful.

The interagency support on there is something I really like to point out.

Um, our relationships that we can create in the other project management groups over in Department of Finance, everywhere else around the city, is how we're going to find our force multipliers and see this work get bigger.

We are a small team, we can only do so much, and we need a lot of others to kind of get uh get on the train, you know, trust us that we know where we're going.

Um, you know, we have uh built a lot of sorry, next slide, thank you.

Um our project culture uh is really focused on customer service.

We are a group that serves many different clients at any given moment, um, but we see that uh doing things right the first time, making sure we have a clear and relatively lofty goal we are trying to accomplish and we stick to it.

We don't compromise along the way.

Uh recognizing that for most of our projects, the people that are gonna interact with that, it's gonna be their only time interacting with the work that CASR does.

They may or may not know it, and so we better make a good impression.

And then finally, our partner agencies are really the key to our success.

Um, happy hosts make happy projects.

Uh, we have built that through being reliable and informed and trustworthy, responsive, action-oriented, all of these things that our partners are looking for, so they are not feeling like our projects are becoming their problems, right?

Um, and that extends not only during the projects but well after uh throughout the course of the life of the asset.

Uh, you can see our uh spreader projects.

I'm even gonna note this is only two of our four areas of work.

Uh, this is solar and storage and then EV and public charging.

We do not have our our buildings work on here yet.

Uh, and you can see we touch every district, every part of the city.

Um, we think some uniformity and um presence in every community is really important.

Um, kind of prove our mettle that we are investing in all parts of our community, um, as well as understanding the different challenges that are experienced in different parts of the city.

Our efforts in downtown look very different from that kind of first ring outside of downtown, and that looks much more different when we get into southeast, northeast, you know, these uh communities that were built at a different time, right?

Thank you.

We've uh through our work, we've identified internally that uh managing electrical demand is like the key to achieving full decarbonization or even getting really close to it.

All things uh cost pale in comparison to rebuilding our electric grid.

And so thinking about all the different ways that we are increasing that demand on the grid, as well as ways that we can shift that demand or decrease it.

They all add up to avoiding uh significant costs borne by the utility that then get passed on to ratepayers, right?

We are trying to encourage not only public investment, but trying to bring in private investment that can avoid those utility investments that then lead to higher rates.

I'm gonna go through each of those four project areas uh quickly.

Feel free to interrupt and ask questions.

Um, in our solar generation and battery energy storage work, um, we have been very successful in those projects.

Those were the first we got off the ground, starting with our renewable Denver community solar program.

So far, that program uh not only serves six commercial customers, but right now we're supporting over 300 Denver families.

We're recruiting 250 more families to enroll in the program.

We'll add another 250 more before we're done.

We have more than seven megawatts of solar already in operation.

Um we see we forecast about 13 million dollars in total bill savings provided to all of the various subscribers we have, and the vast lion share of that going to our low-income subscribers that we partner with through Energy Outreach Colorado and Denver Public Schools.

About 12 million of uh 12 million dollars of those savings we see going towards that group.

Uh, we have just moved into uh working on our what we call behind the meter projects or projects that directly serve city facilities, and that includes the city's first battery energy storage system that we commissioned uh two weeks ago.

Uh, for us, that's a pretty exciting threshold to pass through.

Um, we think that distributed batteries are the way we're going to solve a lot of the demand challenges by decoupling demand from supply.

Right now we need to generate the kilowatt hour that we need right when we need to use it, more or less.

When our renewables are more time-dependent, solar we produce during the day, wind largely gets produced during the night, there becomes a big mismatch.

And you might have seen this as the duck curve.

It's called a lot of different things.

A lot of research has come out of California on this, where they have high saturation.

We need to figure out ways that we can store that energy and use it when and where it's needed.

So getting our first battery commissioned is huge.

We're already seeing better than 50% peak demand reduction in that facility, and that's over at Green Valley Ranch Library.

If you want to go take a look at it, and that's all gonna lead us to our next uh areas of work, which is microgrids, that's one step up.

Much larger battery can serve many other purposes.

Um, so that's gonna be some work that's gonna prove what these larger capacity batteries can do and we can use to inform our utilities commission interventions to try and create rate tariffs that encourage that sort of investment from others.

And then finally, this all goes to this idea of a virtual power plant.

When we have these distributed resources all over the city, ideally the utility can call upon them as needed to dispatch their energy and be used whenever it might be needed, right?

So right now we do that through peaker plants by burning extra natural gas, pushing it through the transmission system, and then sending it out to our local distribution.

This is a totally different model where the power is being stored in those neighborhoods, in those commercial areas, and so we don't need additional transmission or distribution infrastructure to move that power around.

That's cool.

Really cool.

Also a way for like other people to invest and like make money by being a part of the utility network.

It's not just one company producing and selling, but it's a lot of different actors that are continuing to either maintain or or better yet, drive the price down of each unit of energy that we need to use at any given time.

We have some really great quotes here from our community solar program that we gathered from our partners at Energy Outreach Colorado.

Um they are universal, people really appreciate this if not for the actual dollar amount, like the sentiment that people are there to help them when they need.

Um and it gets them engaged in this clean energy revolution, right?

Like people need to feel like they're a part of it to think that the investments that others are making are worth it on their behalf.

Um, and so we think this, and we got one more slide that's similar to this, we think this really proves that point and love getting this feedback.

Um we do try to keep a little bit of an arm's length because that is a program managed by other folks, and we try not to complicate it for them.

Um, but we do love when we get this feedback and can share that with you.

For our public and fleet EV charging, we really focus around uh two priorities with one common thread between the two of them.

One is widespread, convenient and reliable public charging.

Um, so that means people see chargers all over the place.

They know they're gonna work when they want to go use them.

Uh they can afford the power that is provided to them, and it allows them uh some ability as individual actors to say, oh, I feel more confident that the charging is gonna be there in my neighborhood, even if it's not, I can't put it at my house quite yet.

Or I'm in a multifamily um building that uh is a much more challenging environment to build EV charging in.

And then on the fleet side, uh fast reliable and location focused.

So working with our fleet partners to understand where and when are you going to be getting vehicles?

Can we get out ahead of you and provide that charging ahead of time?

Uh, this is all about removing barriers, uh, real or perceived, so that people can make that decision to buy that next TV to even ask the question, is this something that's right for me?

Uh and then the one through line here is reliability, right?

Um things have to work.

That is that's the starting point for us.

And so we have stood up not only an EV charging asset management program, we have a similar one for our solar and battery work, so that we can make sure that the infrastructure we build is gonna work.

Um, that has to be the given.

If anybody is out there thinking, I'm not really sure if this is gonna work when I show up, like we have failed and we have a lot of um uh repairing to do uh for that interaction with our constituent.

Resilient city buildings.

Um, I don't think it's any surprise over the long course of history.

Um investments in operations and maintenance of large buildings has gone down.

Um other priorities come up, those things are more uh time-dependent and those get funded.

We understand how that goes.

I've been in buildings for a long time.

It's not just us, right?

This is everybody, but we can do something about our buildings.

Um, through Kimber's work, we've identified almost 80 systems that are well beyond uh their useful expected life.

Uh, we have many more, 350 systems that are going to be coming to the end of their useful life in this or the next decade that we need to be planning for.

Uh, our work combined with efforts in partnership with DODI to take on both low-hanging and high-hanging fruit, invasive, non-invasive operational changes we can make, are here to prove to others that we can reduce our energy costs, we can increase the reliability of our buildings, and we can improve the health and and safety of those systems in our buildings.

As things get old, they break, right?

And if something breaks and you haven't planned for the replacement, you are stuck with putting the same thing back in there.

And so we our folks don't have the opportunity to improve their systems even if they wanted to.

And so, by creative um ways of raising the funds for this, none of this is cheap.

Um, by creatively raising the funds, um, thinking about how those investments pay back over time, cost avoidance, um, we really see this as an opportunity to level up our buildings to both meet energized Denver ordinance requirements as well as like improve the actual conditions that not only our community comes and interacts with us in, but our colleagues around the city, our facility managers, the environment in which they work to do the work for the city.

And then the last item, renewable thermal, a real passion of mine.

Many of you may have heard that we um recently completed a report.

We call the Denver Downtown Ambient Loop.

Uh, this is rethinking district energy.

District energy for well over 100 years has been uh the most efficient way to especially heat, but now uh more recently cool dense downtown environments.

We have the oldest continuously operating steam system that's very cool.

Uh it also comes, you know, all things come with age, including leaks and failures and costs and all these other things.

So we really want to rethink instead of having two independent heating and cooling systems, can we unify those into a single system that works at a lower temperature, a lower pressure, um, can balance the input costs from the winter to the summer so that we drive down the input costs overall.

Right now we have to put fuel into the steam system to create the steam all year round when it's needed.

We have to put energy into the cooling system to cool buildings all year round when it's needed.

Um, but we actually, in a unified environment, we can take heat from one building that is excess, and we can put it into another building that needs it.

Uh, we can do the same thing with cooling, um, they are the same, and this one just is forwards, the other one is backwards.

Um, I also want to point out kind of four outcomes.

One, we have determined out of the 14 buildings that we looked at, those are city-owned facilities, starting at the convention center, working all the way over here, uh, and including the art museum and central library.

Um, that we can electrify those buildings in all, but we expect one case without having to modify the existing electrical uh service into that building.

That is a very expensive part.

If we have to upgrade electrical service, those will often make projects unfeasible, at least right now.

And we see that in our private partners also who are trying to do this work in their buildings.

Uh thermal resources exist.

We have the space and we have the thermal resources to run a system like this without having to burn anything at any time.

That's kind of the key point.

Through geothermal resources, sewer heat recovery, using the existing chilled water system, we can run a system like this today.

Uh, we get to reuse most of the existing building infrastructure.

We do not need to entirely change the concept of the HVAC systems in these buildings.

We just have to change the way the heat gets into them.

And then last uh overall demand reduction, I've modeled about 11 megawatts of overall demand reduction just for these buildings.

We think that turns into 50, 70, 100, you know, many times more if we look at a downtown-wide approach.

If this if this would ever be viable, and we really do want this to be a market based solution.

We want to show that it works, let other people invest in it and have a profitable business for somebody to run that is still low cost for the consumers.

One last thing, Johnny.

Just on the bottom left, we also took a kind of a 40,000-foot look at you know, is this the right idea?

Just because we're kind of energy nerds and we think this is really uh not only uh cool but also effective, like is it's the right solution based on other factors.

So we did try to look at who is this gonna disrupt by taking a certain approach.

Um, where is the cost going to be born?

Is this going to increase or decrease operating costs over time?

Um and through that um evaluation, we saw that the ambient loop does still look like it is at the top of the list.

There are some pros for other systems out there that I'm happy to discuss.

Um, but we still think when you look at everything combined, this sort of unified low temperature system uh is the future that we can accomplish right now.

And then just to close up, uh, you know, we really do think about the big picture.

It's not just checking boxes, it's proving that the reality we say is possible really is possible.

Um we also know that this is a long slog, and we cannot do it all tomorrow, but we have to start today to eventually get there.

Um we're investing wisely.

We want to, like I said, walk that walk.

Um, we want to find compelling community co-benefits.

So if we can provide something else alongside our capital project, we're gonna do that every single time.

Sometimes sometimes that's very direct, like providing shade over gigantic hot parking lots.

Sometimes it's more indirect by you know improving the air quality near a facility that has to you know run their boiler a lot in the winter, for example.

Um, but we really do think about that.

Um, recognize the importance of getting things right.

Again, we feel like we're in a no-fail environment.

Um, our projects have to work, they have to work the way we say they're gonna work, and it has to be the first time.

Uh, we want to enable others to act um by showing the way, supporting them, telling them about our successes and failures, even though there won't be any of those, as I just said.

Um, you know, be a partner recorded, right?

For sure.

Uh, be a partner through everybody's, you know, changes that they're gonna have to make to meet our carbon-free environment.

It is gonna require change from everybody.

The more support we can provide, the better experience people are gonna have, and that is gonna multiply.

Lastly, um, we know that we have to leverage our partnerships with stakeholders, that's both internal and external.

We have to be out there talking about these things, getting good press, um, because we need scale.

If we all if we stop at what we are able to accomplish just out of our little office, it won't be nothing, but it won't be enough.

And so we really need to see these things scale and get repeated by others to be able to tell the tale of our success.

I'll open for any questions.

Yeah, um, councilman Hank.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

Um, I have absolutely on board with uh we need to do a rapid and robust transition away from dinosaurs.

We keep digging them up and spin them in the air, and um, we're seeing some pretty um dramatic changes at this point because um, because some people are ignoring that or um intentionally um saying that scientists are wrong and this isn't happening.

So um that I uh so thank you.

Uh I'm the first elected official in uh in Denver's history use the wheelchair to get around.

The first one identifies as a member of the disability community.

So um I uh two things that you said, as you said, this is being recorded.

Um this is all about removing barriers, and this is a no-fail environment.

Um if you could go back to the slide with the EV charging stations.

Um I have uh I made the choice of I wanted to be the change I want to see in the world.

Um, two of those I don't think I could access at all.

Um the one in the top right, I think it could, um, but uh uh, but I oh so I want to uh be the change I see in the world.

So I actually purchased a fully electric vehicle.

By the way, I got some great um EV incentives.

So I bought a um a vehicle in uh on a two-year lease, they did eight hundred dollars for all two years of the lease, not $800 a month, $800.

So um uh that made it kind of an economic decision as well as uh um, you know, a Gandhi quote decision.

It's like Gandhi.

Um, and uh I think I said it, how about that?

I came up with that amazing quote all my own.

Um, but uh I will say uh just in the last two weeks, I it was the first time I actually blocked in.

Um there uh this is uh you know one of those large level three chargers, so all of those are level two, I think.

But um uh and um two of them were not functioning as a bank of four, two were not functioning, so the only the middle two were were working.

I was the only one there, so I came stopped.

Um that generally you can go from 10 to 80 percent in 20 minutes, 25 minutes, something like that.

So part started the charger.

Um there were no um, you know, like uh have access aisles.

So um I once I'm out of the car to you know, I have to plug in the charger.

So I've already assembled my wheelchair beside the car, so I might as well stay out until um coming back.

Well, someone else parked there, and I had to wait until they finished their charging before I could um before I could get back to my car.

Um, I could at least stop it from charging me idle fees, which is something else in case you don't have an electric vehicle.

If your car is uh charged and it's no longer drawing power, then there then there's a uh the vendor often will charge an idle fee, which is to encourage people to use a limited resource for only as long as they need.

Um but that's uh so I think that we're in my estimation, um, starting to see some some fail points.

Uh and I don't want um for us to at some point in the future know who the disability community is because they're the only ones using internal combustion engines because they can't have access to EV charging stations because we're not thinking about um access for everyone.

So the reason why I say I can't use two of those three spaces, one, uh, the left uh photo, there not only is it up a curve, but it's also has two structural barriers bollards that um is designed to protect the infrastructure.

Um, but it also prohibits me from getting full access to that space or the charger itself.

The lower right, I think also I couldn't access for the same bollards even though it's not up a curve.

Maybe I could go behind it.

I don't know exactly what the infrastructure is behind it.

Um and so the top right, I think I could get to, um, unless another vehicle parked because that one is looks like it's right in the middle of that space.

And if that if there's a car that parked close to it, I don't know if I could access it either.

So I point that out as an um you know, we can't all think about everything.

And uh producer, you're welcome to to take the slide back down.

Um we can't do it, thank you.

Um, we can't think about everything, um, but what we can once you know we can uh create awareness, and um, and I think that as we so the um the fine folks on city council did pass a new build um building code which requires new spaces to have some requirements.

Um I don't know many, the only um city owned electro vehicle charging station bank that I know that I've for sure could access is the one at the City Park Golf Course.

Um so I just I say that I don't know if I have um, you know, this is something that I've kind of chatted with Gaza about for a few years now.

Um and uh I I don't I'm not trying to kind of point the finger and say, I think we're continuing to fail, um, but I think there's an opportunity for us to lift everyone up and um as a government, I hope that we spend the people's money, all the people's money in a way that works for all the people, and so um not trying to say that I'm I'm screaming into the void, and I feel like I'm not being heard because I hear people in CAS are saying we hear you, we just don't know how to fix it.

So um, so anyway, just bringing that up, trying to be as gentle yet um educational as I possibly can.

We appreciate that.

We do um not only as required by code, but as a matter of our policy, like include a universally accessible stall in every one of our CASR uh installed charging sites.

We had to learn how to do that.

Um and working with HRCP, we share a floor with uh really helped us understand what the requirements are, what some strategies are that we could employ, and I think um you'll see the charges that we're finishing up towards the end of this year, we'll have better results.

You know, some of that is trying to just getting feedback and and understanding the real lived experience of folks compared to what ends up in the um accessibility board handbook, which is pictures that are only so helpful, um, and then eventually you know being able to go back and um repair update um previous locations that either were installed well before us or you know were before we had you know figured out how to be successful on that.

Yeah, and I don't know if um if you included those three photos because we thought they were um you know something that you want the the prize demonstration of what we could do um or I would encourage the the city park um uh you know photo that you be charging stations at City Park.

Uh I would even say that's a bit of a miss as well.

And I'll I'll share why.

Um just uh so civil rights is about equal access for the you know a protected class.

We've come up with uh America as a society is come up with several um groups of people that we believe are important to um because of past harms um that we want to we don't lift them up today.

So um and uh so you know people with disabilities are protected class, and um, and so the way the city park uh electrophicle charging bank works, there are four um chargers.

One of them is marked um with the international symbol of accessibility, the blue wheelchair logo that says only people who qualify have access to those spaces.

Um so of four, one of them is reserved for people with disabilities.

That's 25%.

Uh, between 10 and 12% of Colorado drivers uh um qualify for um for one of those uh placards or plates, 90% plaque or 10% plate, just in case you're interested.

And um, and so we are reserving 25% of spaces for 10 to 12% of Colorado drivers.

So I would say that's preferential access, not equal access.

Um so the idea of universal design where all the spaces are a little bit wider, really is you know, 100% of the people can access 100% of the spaces.

So I'm doing this because we're being recorded.

That's the camera that's on right now.

So really that's that so that we have this um, you know, uh documented.

Um so that's uh I I recognize where the direction for City Park golf course was going.

Um if we put all the spaces in a way that everyone can access them.

Um let's say there are four spaces, anyone can access any of the spaces, all four are taken.

Someone with a disability comes, they should wait.

That's what everyone else would do.

That's equal access.

So um, so that's my um my case for universal access, and that's why I believe City Council uh voted to adopt the building code that works for all new parking lots.

Obviously, we've got a whole bunch of legacy parking lots, not sure exactly what to do about them.

Um, but uh, but anyway, so a little bit longer um just um for the record.

So thank you.

No, and thank you, and we we appreciate that observation, and uh commend Drew's team as well of really documenting our approach or lessons or things so that we can create better standard guidelines for ourselves and for our partners, and then ultimately uh for the community so that we can just continue to improve, and uh your feedback and guidance is really helpful for us in terms of making sure each project is better than the last.

I will mention I probably um didn't do myself any favors on cropping the photo to get it into the right uh size because just out of frame is actually where the charger is for that universally accessible stall.

It's at the end of the hashed access aisle.

It's not bollard protected where the handles are.

I think we might have put some on the sides.

I didn't do the install.

So like I said, we've been really mindful of one taking the guidance that's available to us, um, looking at the results of our work and saying we could have done this or that better.

Um, and we're seeing that in our work this year.

Yeah, and um I'm love to you know, uh chat with you more about some of the thoughts that um you know the federal government um has pro-wagg uh the proposed right-of-way accessibility guidelines, which has some guidelines around um uh access to EV charging stations for people with disabilities.

Um who knows if this administration will uh move forward with that, or even if we will have a Department of Justice that uh enforces or considers um a dis you know a protected class like people with disabilities.

Um, but uh uh but I would say even I I think there's some limitations with the federal recommendation.

Interestingly, um we passed our building code before the state took action.

The state has now passed some legislation and they said I think it's 2026, um, the state shall adopt the federal guidelines, and so I think we're kind of going backwards at the state level too.

So um, to your point, I think Denver is um is leading and um and has the opportunity to continue to do so.

Maybe California is um a little bit ahead of us, but the challenge there is I don't think it's statewide.

I think it's um uh you know different municipalities have come up with their own regulation.

So um, so yeah, this is a really opportunity for the other to find, just as Azure is a beacon, um, you know, nationwide, as just as a as an agency, um, I think this is an opportunity for us to be a beacon too.

Thanks for that.

Yeah, thank you.

Councilwoman Abidres.

Thank you so much.

Um, this was great.

Thank you.

I appreciate learning about this.

I think something I have heard from community is like you're making us do all of these things.

What is the city doing?

Um, from and we just recently were working on composting together, which I think that was a big thing.

It's like we're making all of our residents compost, elderly, low-income, whoever, and our businesses are not happy that they have to maybe do that.

Some are very happy, I will say.

Um, and we're not doing that as a city.

If you go to Denver Park, we're not composting and recycling there anymore.

So I think it is really important with all those things that you said, and also I think generally we definitely trust the work and the expertise that you all have.

I think there's always like little bits of our lived history that is why we were elected to kind of point out people that may be left out on things.

But overall, I'm really proud of this work in particular that we're doing.

There is some things that I'd love to understand.

I believe one of the projects that is probably part of this work is at Harvard Gulch Rec Center.

Um, where does that power go to?

Does it power the rec center?

I'm just curious.

Yeah, great question.

That's part of our renewable Denver community solar program, and that was part of the first 10 projects we did.

It was started, I don't know, three, four years ago at this point already.

Um, the community solar program is a utilities commission created program that requires investor owned utilities to provide the service.

So typically you'll build solar, you connect it into an existing set of loads, a building, for example, and the solar will be used by the building first and then back feed into the grid, whatever's excess.

We just take the loads out of the equation there.

All this power goes directly into the grid.

Without getting too deep into, you know, electricity.

Yes, it does go to the the building that's right next door first.

It is the shortest pathway.

Uh, but this is all accounted for on kind of a grid scale, right?

And so um that gets uh all the power gets counted up as it gets uh put into the grid.

Our um vendor um through Energy Outreach Colorado and um CSP community solar platform.

Um they then assign all of those credits to our various subscribers, they tell Excel about it and it shows up on their bill.

So it is a little bit of accounting magic.

Um, sounds very confusing.

The simple version is our wire connects to the grid, we count every kilowatt hour, we get an equivalent number of bill credits.

A portion of that goes to the recenter to fully cover the rec center's needs, and then excess power is assigned to low-income families that we identify with Denver Public Schools and Energy Outreach Colorado.

That helps the Denver Public School, because that was kind of what I was wondering.

Who is getting the credits if there's any left?

Yeah.

So they're identified through the school system.

Yeah, so when we were designing the program, we had that big question of you know, is this something we work with council members and create, you know, an application form, but then we're deciding who does or does not get this benefit.

The partnership that Energy Outreach Colorado and Denver Public Schools have was one that we wanted to leverage because they already have an office that families can go to and say, you know, I'm behind on my bills, I'm struggling, you know, I need assistance, and then this becomes a tool in their toolbox.

There are other utility programs or state-funded programs and federally funded programs that Energy Outreach Colorado has access to.

This becomes yet another resource.

So that way we're not sending families to a place where there's, you know, only so much support that we can provide, and then the wait list builds up.

We're adding more resources to the folks that are trusted to deliver this uh benefit to our community members, and they've done a great job, and we're we're very pleased with that uh program.

So if you all were to reach out to your constituents, it's more of a hey, if you need help, energy outreach Colorado is the place to go, and they're the ones who aggregate all the various resources that are available to provide those uh those services.

I would love to see some data on that of how many families are getting help, how many dollars are we talking about with those credits and where those families are?

I think that would be great.

And then my last question, well, first of all, thank you, Kimber, for your work on like identifying the HVAC work that needs to be done.

Is this something that you've been doing for a long time?

Is this a new project that you've been working on?

Because I think that is amazing, and it will save us.

We're in a budget crisis.

Like these are the types of things that we need to be doing.

So thank you for doing that.

Yeah, um, thank you, Councilman.

Um, very we're very excited about this work.

Um, it started picking up steam in late September or end September 23.

And um we got contracts going so that all through 2024 and beginning of 2025, um, we had energy service companies uh do energy audits at all of our municipal buildings.

That's uh about 165 uh energy audits that were completed in that one year.

And so um we've also come to not only get a plan for compliance with Energy's Denver, but a plan for what that building needs, and also use um uh equity indicators and heat map identification or you know, high heat um areas to prioritize our work.

And um, so we tried to also show how we were doing that in our bond package.

Um, and so um this is work we've been doing since late 2023.

We've got the S the audits done, we know what we're going to do now, and we are starting the energy efficiency contracts, uh, well, they're going to be presented to council in a few months, a few weeks.

Um, and then uh we are working with our partners in Dotti to get those uh mechanical replacements in our buildings done.

Uh we will have to work at the pace of our funding, and so that's what we've been spending a lot of our time on.

Um, our resources have been somewhat limited with changes to um national policy and also resources here in Denver.

Um, but we will continue to work and identify that capital stack and work with our partners to get the get those replacements done.

I appreciate that.

I think that's really important work.

One thing that I noticed in even in just in this building, so I imagine it happens elsewhere, is that not everyone in this building has air conditioning.

So some of the courts workers are like having several fans.

It's like walking to like a time that we I thought we had passed.

And so I'm curious looking at the equipment that we need to replace.

Yes, and what about the people that still don't have air conditioning that are like city workers and things of that nature?

That is the great part of the work we've identified is um in these replacements, we're using heat pumps to electrify the equip the equipment, and um they have the capacity to do cooling, and so while we're doing this work, we're adding a feature that we did not have before.

In our bond package that we submitted, some of the energy usage actually showed up as negative change, and that's because that building was now receiving cooling, but overall the bond package gave energy savings and cost avoidance to the city.

What bond are you talking about?

I'm sorry, the um five written dipper bond package that we put together.

That's coming to the ballet in November.

Okay, interesting.

Yes, so that's not guaranteed money at all.

Yeah, no, no, and then I I apologize.

No, it's okay.

The scope of opportunity that we identified obviously exceeds what it really is going to be referred to voters, but it's enough to get us started.

And then we continue to invest through climate protection fund, whatever other resources are available, and then working with our facility teams where let's say you know it's we're building a new building or we're doing a renovation project.

How do we design it from the start so that we're contemplating these things and planning for the more efficient and pollution-free option, and just increasingly have that become status quo, or it doesn't need to be a standalone bond package with you know a line item for you know facility electrification?

It's just hey, this facility is due for replacement, we're gonna replace it with the thing that we know we need for the future.

So is that part of the facilities line item of the bond?

I think we can follow up with you and point out where we've seen stuff that would be dedicated to us to deploy through our um say kind of direct investment strategy, and others where we see that there are facility improvements that are being contemplated that we'll seek to influence positively.

Yeah, I think I would love to see the data on like what where those funds are allocated and what the dollar amount is.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you, City Chair.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, madam chair.

Uh I had a question a little bit about the projects um across the city.

You had talked about projects across the city.

What and maybe I missed it in the presentation.

What was uploaded to Legistar, there was a map of the projects, and I was just curious like in Southeast Denver and District 4.

What are those projects?

And is it possible?

You don't have them off the top of your head.

The producer can put up the uh I mean I can easily separate those and send you some details on them.

Oh, they're good, man.

Look at this.

Um those are quite 10.

Three of those four are UV charging projects as indicated by the little automobile.

Um two of those are future.

So if it's not in the little circle, that means it's a future project.

If it's in the circle, that means it's completed and in service.

Um, and I think the sun is gonna be um is that Thomas Jefferson High School?

That's over there.

Yeah, um, that would be our community solar project we just completed at um at the high school there.

Also, has EV charging on site.

Um, so mostly those other ones are gonna either be like uh parks and rec facility, the two in the bottom uh far right are Kennedy uh soccer complex and Kennedy Ballfield.

Um, or they're gonna be a library, we're partnering with uh Denver Public Libraries to identify locations where they're already doing projects so we can kind of swoop in and add um some maybe charging to those locations.

Um, and so I'd have to look up precisely what that one on the left is.

Actually, there's two libraries that are gonna be undergoing construction in the next year at Hampton, um, the Hampton branch in U Hills, Ross, Rue Hills uh library is gonna have construction.

So, we are engaged on a loss, okay, um, and to be timing so that we only disrupt the operation of the library once to time our work with dot use over there.

Okay, that's great.

Um, and tell me the difference between the red car and the yellow car, or just.

Great question.

Red is fleet, yellow is public.

Okay.

Um, out of curiosity.

So fleet means only city vehicles can charge there.

Correct.

Okay.

Are the fleet vehicles also tied into as like Denver Parks and Rec is looking to increase their um electrical vehicles?

Is that part of the fleet vehicles that are that are listed?

Yeah, I have the Huron and Lowry maintenance shops that are shown on here.

We meet with parks once a month specifically to talk about all things electrification, much more often just in the normal course business.

But they identify the locations where they were expecting to receive EVs first.

So the forestry location and Lowry.

And we've been working with them to identify what sort of charging do they need.

And then how, when, where can we get it built?

And so we've already started working on both of those projects, and I expect we'll be in design before the end of the year on those.

So we do try to reach out to each of the different agencies.

Our other teammates who work more specifically on mobility policy with the fleet managers, they're again informing our work to help point us in the right direction.

And then I have another question about just EV chargers in general.

Total or city owned?

City owned.

I know oftentimes you, you know, my sister, it's not me, but my sister just got an EV charger and she had the list of all of these charging stations available, but they weren't all public.

And some of them were you know private or in you know closed spaces that she wasn't able to access.

How do we how do we discern that?

Because I think we talk about like we have a lot of EV chargers.

Yeah, okay, then maybe you could talk a little bit more about it.

But I think the challenge is as we say we have all these EV chargers, but they're not all publicly accessible.

Yeah, that's a big part of our uh that specific group on our team trying to really help to clarify that information for our constituents.

You know, I drive an electric vehicle, you get the plug share or the charge point app or whatever, encounter the same exact problem of it, looks like wow, we've got hundreds of chargers across the city, but what can I actually access?

Um as of our most recent count, there's 150 public fast charging plugs in the city.

That's probably you know, maybe two to four plugs per location.

So let's say, you know, 75-ish locations out there that you can get a public fast charge.

We actually have a better ratio right now of the number of plugs per electric vehicle than we do gas stations, uh gas pumps per uh internal combustion engine vehicle.

There's just a lot more gas pumps, so it's much more ubiquitous in terms of seeing them.

That's the experience that we ultimately need to create for the public to uh shed away that kind of anxiety and that fear of I would get an EV, but where can I plug it in?

How do I know it's going to be reliable?

And getting people out of charging, you know, at the loading dock of their local grocery store in the back under a flickering light bulb, and into a oh, this is a convenient place where I can actually sit, read the paper, get a cup of coffee, like whatever it might be.

That customer experience, like Drew mentioned, it drives us from the projects that we build, it drives us in terms of the experience that we need to create uh for our community.

So we'll be looking at you know the pace of electric vehicle adoption and making sure that you know, for our own fleet adoption trends, we're staying ahead of it in terms of our charging needs, but very importantly for the public.

We want to uh continue to encourage Denverites to be able to adopt electric vehicles and do so with confidence.

Um, Colorado actually just surpassed California as the highest uh percent of EV of new EV registrations, which is really exciting, but we're only gonna maintain that leadership if our infrastructure uh keeps pace.

So I'm confident we'll do it, but we have to work on permitting communication and access to information uh in ways that are gonna be uh beneficial for members of the public.

Thanks.

That's oh go ahead.

As one of the 150 number that uh Johnny referenced, those are not city owned.

All the fast chargers are um owned by a charging company, Tesla or ChargePoint or something.

Um we are working on a public uh mapping layer that we can put on our website that shows all of the city-owned public facilities and that we can keep updated to kind of give people a little more access, but then finally, um, all of our public chargers, except for City Park Golf Course, are ChargePoint brand.

And so they're all available on the ChargePoint app, and that has I think probably a little more filtering ability to identify publicly accessible charging.

And fortunately, we're seeing more standardization in the industry as well, where you know, up till this point, there might be four different charging heads that would be used by your vehicle and by you know charger brand that you're going to, which just again creates more confusion of am I actually going to have the plug that I need at the place that I go to and will it be working?

So things are starting to standardize, and we'll see everyone is now adopting the North American charging standard, which was initiated by Tesla, and then that'll be the standard that we'll see in use going forward with more convenient adapters for uh legacy model uh vehicles as they as a conversion just happens over time.

Yeah, um, that's really helpful.

Um I do have another question around you said that we have the highest number of in Colorado of EV vehicle registrations, correct?

No, statewide is city or statewide percent.

And Denver is ahead of the statewide average.

So do you have conversations, interjurisdictional conversations with our with our um neighboring cities and counties?

Because I imagine you know, Denver, a leader, we have all of our charging stations.

What are the other counties doing?

Are they also on a plan?

Is there conversation for the region?

Yes, and that's really uh organized and led by the state, where they obtained uh substantial funding to help build out uh charging infrastructure corridors, so that way it's not like okay, great, we can charge in and around Denver, but you know, good luck getting to the mountains or to the western slope.

That connectivity is going to be really uh key to continued adoption.

And then the other uh really important stakeholder in this is Excel Energy.

They have also received uh substantial approvals and state law uh creating funding for them that can help to invest in and build out those networks.

So you need someone to you know be the station owner operator, but you need the utility infrastructure to actually bring the power and make sure that things are reliable.

So those are going hand in hand.

So there's the the statewide strategy as well as the localized um investment strategies, and uh last thing I'll say on this is as Drew mentioned, you know, downtown has a different uh need and use case as the next string, as the next ring, and you know, our different building types and configurations are uh are going to warrant um different approaches.

So we're looking at uh multifamily uh housing charging strategies, you know, support for single family homeowners, support for workplace charging, support for that public fast charging experience, and trying to come up with that uh portfolio of options, testing things and seeing what really works well and what's taking in the market and what creates the best customer experience, and then reinforcing those uh strategies as we go forward.

Speaking of state leadership, both Rebecca and Hayden on my team participate in the state.

I'm gonna get the name of the group wrong, but Charge Clean Colorado, I think is what it's called.

Um, that's a technical and administrative cohort uh that gets a lot of idea sharing between different jurisdictions and private actors to ideally increase penetration of chargers.

Okay, yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Um, I just have a few questions for you.

The first one is I was curious as to what a virtual power plant was.

Sure.

Um I laugh because I was a very big virtual power plant skeptic for a long time.

Um they seem very complicated and require a lot of individual to make the right decision at the right time.

Um, and I actually see a big a big shift in the model moving forward, but virtual power plants um as the need uh as the name kind of indicates, just take the place of a traditional power plant.

Okay.

So instead of having a single location where you are consuming a certain type of energy to spin a turbine to make electricity, um, that is happening kind of all over the place.

And through the Internet of Things, we can call upon that dispatchable power, it's often called, whenever it's needed, right?

And so everything is connected at this point.

And either a private company that operates one of these things or the utility itself can say, hey, we have this demand in this area, discharge if you can.

And those folks who are discharging at that time would get paid for the energy they're putting back onto the grid.

Oh, that's interesting.

So it's quite literally taking the jobs that would have been in an actual power plant, and you're kind of able to work and do the same thing from a remote location.

I would say it's more about the infrastructure than the jobs.

Okay.

Still need the people to be paying attention as to the health of systems.

Are they actually working as needed?

When do we need to call that dispatch out?

So I don't want to, I want to try to make some cloud, you know, I appreciate it.

Separation there.

Yeah, sorry, Jenny.

Yeah, it's if I could try to, you know, simplify.

So on a hot summer day, you know, as everyone gets home from work, turns on their air conditioners and whatnot, that's when we experience our peak on the system, the way that Excel Energy currently meets that peak is they turn on another power plant, you know, burn more gas.

Um, this is the alternative to that of because we have smart systems, we have batteries, we have, you know, people who might be plugging in a car.

You can actually send a signal that says, hey, you know, send us energy from your battery.

Now we don't need to turn on the power plant.

Wow.

So that's kind of the idea uh conceptually, but there are myriad technologies we can use, whether it's you know, solar power that was put into a battery stored and then is deployed for this purpose, just asking our car chargers to wait for an hour before they actually start pulling power from the grid, um, you know, toggling uh how quickly your air conditioner is running so that you know we actually reduce the amount of demand that's being pulled while trying to retain, you know, comfort for the individual.

Paying people uh for their you know participation in these programs and bringing flexibility to the grid.

Uh it's kind of a it's a very catch-all term for what are the things that we can do other than turn on that additional power plant at this moment.

Got it.

Thank you.

There was a recent, I don't want to call it a test, a demonstration in Southern California, I want to say three or four weeks ago, between like San Diego Power Authority, LADWP, the big utilities down there, where they um were able to run.

I'm just kind of remembering off the top of my head, like hundreds of thousands of homes off of um sending a signal out to a lot of small batteries around to say discharge power, and they didn't have to import power into those areas uh for well over an hour.

So it was really a demonstration at scale, uh, but it's really promising to seeing this more widespread for our work.

Um we are developing a micro grid at uh Central Park Rec Center that is gonna be a large battery deployment, and with the idea of being able to test that um dispatchability uh when Excel needed, can we show that it does what we think it does?

Ah, that's perfect to go into my next question.

So thank you for that.

Because I I was curious uh what kind of coordination you all have with Excel that are required for the micro micro grids.

Um we reached out really early on uh about this project to try and coordinate both the technical aspects of it.

We were trying to do some unique um interconnection um uh methods over at that, it's a just a unique site.

So we want to talk about hey, how can we keep your workers safe when you have linemen out there in certain conditions?

We also want to talk about our proposed operating conditions and say, hey, when we're in this mode, what do you want?

And the conversation didn't go as far as we needed it to at the time, and then so we will we will circle back around when we have a um, we will soon be filing for the interconnection of that device.

That'll be a more formal time for their engineers to get engaged, okay.

Um, and that's when I expect to get more response.

Okay.

Understood.

Um we'll we'll talk more.

Okay.

Uh so with the EV fleet charging, is there some kind of like master plan that you all have to determine that build out?

Yes and no.

Okay.

We're working on it.

I mean, there's we know how many vehicles are parked at each fleet site, kind of everywhere in the city.

We know how ready those vehicles are for electrification.

If it's, you know, mostly light duty vehicles, very easy to electrify.

It's cost parity, if not cost savings versus our uh internal combustion engine vehicles.

Uh-huh.

Other things like you know, solid waste, larger vehicles, they're more pilots.

Hey, we need to demonstrate that electric trash trucks can you know really do a full day's work um as we think about how this scales.

Certainly things like public safety, you know, police fire, things of that nature.

We have to make sure that the vehicles can respond to meet the needs of the community in an emergency.

And so we're working on pilots with those folks as well.

We have a consultant hired to go to every single facility, look at the layout, the existing electrical infrastructure, identify, you know, on a map.

Here's the parking stalls where we would install the first sets of chargers.

Here's how we would lay them out.

Here's the plan in terms of number of vehicles that live at this site and over time.

How do we uh how do we expand to meet meet those needs?

Do we need to do an electrical service upgrade?

If yes, where do we put the transformer?

So, yes, you know, in process, and uh it'll help us make sure that we're staying prioritized year over year and just chipping away the problem.

Okay, thank you.

I'd be curious as you all are building that out with that what the final project product ends up looking like um for you all.

But I I can't remember which of you mentioned this, but you mentioned something about fundraising, and I think it was in the context of the the optimization for the buildings.

Maybe I might be getting this wrong.

Is that correct?

Yeah, so okay.

Fundraising might have been uh non-building a capital stack.

Okay, understood.

Okay, and I don't have any more questions.

Okay, so whether that's grants or um, you know, we have a clean energy fund in Colorado that can tap not only their funds but also some larger lending institutions.

Can we identify both with you all as well as with the city attorney?

Um, like good strategies for us to do things that um don't impact the general fund or really even the climate protection fund, so that those funds can be used more steadily over time.

Yeah, because these are we are talking about like large um one-time investments that we need to pay for.

That that thank you for that.

It was very helpful because I was like, what about the six uses?

It doesn't qualify, but the capital stacks makes a lot more sense.

Um, and then you talked about the prediction of the the system life, and I was just curious.

Do you all have a program that you use to determine how long the shelf life is for the uh HVACs that you all mentioned?

Um, yes, thank you for the question.

It's it's not a program so much as guidelines from Ashray, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and air conditioning.

Okay, and I think I got that right.

Um, but I don't know if you got it wrong.

It just kept going.

Yeah, okay.

But uh so Ashray publishes guidelines for different kinds of equipment and you know, um, our energy service companies that perform the audits also have um their kind of expertise that they also put on top of that.

Okay.

And then a follow-up.

I I know you identified the 70, the almost 80 buildings.

The 300 are those are 300 plus, are those city-owned buildings?

So those are systems.

Or systems.

Yeah, we have heating cooling and ventilation, multiple systems in every building.

Great, perfect.

And then my final question is uh I understand CASER and I understand.

Um, what was the slide that you you all gave us?

Um the uh the CASAR and DOTI, but it feels like that that there should be some coordination of some sort with community planning and development.

And so I'm curious as to what that, if I assume it exists, but like what does that look like?

Yeah, it does.

On that slide, I was really trying to show just like the um work on the buildings that that is gonna get done.

Who is it gonna be executed by?

Some is going to be executed directly by CASER, some will be executed by DOTI, but we talk with um CPD partners, I mean, uh, at least every week, if not some of us more often, and those are in, you know, both for uh specific use cases, EV charging in in this scenario, for example.

How can we figure this out?

Um, or sometimes more general, just how do we increase the number of types of permits that are getting submitted and moved through and approved?

Perfect.

Wonderful.

Those are all my questions.

Did anyone have anything else?

Nope.

Well, um, we really appreciate you all coming to give us an opportunity here from you all.