shown on the screen. When the chair announces the item on which you wish to speak, click on the

raise hand feature in Zoom or star nine on your phone. When the chair calls your name to provide

public comment, if you're participating via phone, please press star six to unmute yourself.

For in-person attendees, please fill out a speaker card which you can find on the sign-in table to

left of the door. Now item number one is complete and we will move on to item number two, roll call.

Ms. Lee, can you take roll? Chair Hicks, here. Member Showalter, here. So we have a quorum and I've heard that

member Clark will arrive momentarily. We're now to item number three, approving the minutes. This would be the

CSC meeting minutes from November 6 of 2035.

Does anyone have any comments or questions about the meeting?

Would

would anyone like to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes?

So moved.

I'll second.

And Miss Lee, can you take a vote?

Certainly. Chair Hicks.

Yes.

Member Showalter.

Yes.

We're now on item number four, which is oral communications.

I don't know, it's oral communications from the public, and this portion of the meeting is reserved for people wishing to address the committee on any matter not on the agenda.

You are allowed to speak on any topic you'd like for up to three minutes.

state law prohibits the CSC from acting on non-agendized items. Would any member of the

public like to provide comment on an item that is not on the agenda? If so, please click the

raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone. And if you're here in person,

give a speaker call. So nobody is here in person to speak on this during public speaking.

Do we have anybody? Ms. Lynn, do we have anybody? No, no raised hands virtually. No virtual speakers. Okay, we will now close the oral communication item and move to our discussion and action items.

First, we have new business, first 5.1, which is a draft climate vulnerability assessment and scope of services to develop an integrated climate strategy comprised of decarbonization and resiliency.

This item will be presented by staff from the Sustainability Division and also Cascadia Consulting Group.

Ms. Lee will commence the presentation.

Thank you, Chair. I'm pleased to be here this evening to talk with the committee about the draft of our climate vulnerability assessment and also proposed amendments to our existing contract with Cascadia.

Next slide.

Just by way of a little bit of background, this project commenced at the end of 2024.

November 19th, Council approved the scope of work for Cascadia to undertake a climate vulnerability assessment.

In April of this year, we brought to the committee the framework, deliverables and focus areas that we would be pursuing within the vulnerability assessment.

And then in June of this year, we came to the committee with a preliminary kind of glimpse into what the CBA would look like.

We had a focused look at the heat data that we were analyzing.

And this evening, we are prepared to present to you the draft of the full vulnerability assessment.

Next slide.

The process of developing the CBA has been thorough.

We started with reviewing plans across the city that were already underway or that had been adopted.

understanding what the city's goals already were and analysis that had already been undertaken.

So, for example, the city has been active in planning for sea level rise.

And so our consultants were reviewing some of that work.

Next, the Cascadia and the team worked to develop what we call climate impact summaries,

just to start to understand by climate impact,

what would our future in Mountain View look like

with regards to climate change?

And today we're at this phase of being ready to present

the draft vulnerability assessment.

This includes our literature review,

what work has been done in other jurisdictions

around vulnerability assessment data

that has already been analyzed

regionally. The CVA contains maps of some of our vulnerabilities, and we have also worked with our

colleagues in departments across the city to vet the preliminary vulnerability assessment.

And then after this evening, depending on the direction from this committee,

the final stage would, of course, be bringing this to council for adoption,

and we will see what form that takes.

Next slide. And with that, I'd like to introduce Celine Fujikawa. She presented some data to you in June, the heat data specifically. And Ms. Fujikawa will walk us through the results of Cascadia's analysis.

Thank you, Ms. Lee, and good evening to Chair Hicks, Council Member Clark, and Council Member Showalter. Thanks for the opportunity to present tonight on the draft climate vulnerability assessment.

So I wanted to start off with talking a little bit about some of the goals of the CBA.

So the CBA was designed to do three main things.

The first was to identify where the climate risks are most significant within the city

and really looking at the Mountain View's people, infrastructure and services that are being impacted.

The second is to provide a strong foundation for future strategies that can be tailored to the city's specific vulnerabilities.

And then the third is to support cross-sector planning by highlighting what are the existing gaps,

as well as opportunities for cross-collaboration and partnerships to help the city move towards a more coordinated and better informed resilience planning effort.

Next slide.

And so this assessment really looks at four major things.

The first is how climate hazards are already affecting Mountain View's communities, infrastructure and services, and it builds directly on the city's existing resilience work rather than duplicating it.

I'm wanting to acknowledge that Mountain View has done a lot of incredible work and is an early leader in this space.

And so we wanted to highlight its sea level rising, planning, emergency preparedness efforts, as well as any ongoing infrastructure upgrades that are currently happening.

The CVA focuses on a sector-based approach to better understand where the risks are showing up across a variety of sectors, which include health, housing, transportation, the economy, as well as city operations.

And together we see these pieces providing a really strong foundation for, as I mentioned earlier, the future resilience planning across departments for the city.

Next slide.

And so I wanted to highlight the top hazards in Mountain View.

This might look a little familiar from our June CSE meeting.

So just wanted to highlight again, these are the four primary climate hazards that the

city is currently experiencing.

And so as we look to the future for extreme heat and air quality, projections show the

the city will be experiencing on average 23 extreme heat days, as well as 78 warm nights per year by late century.

And this is being compared to the historic baseline.

And just to define what an extreme heat day means, this basically means temperatures that rise above 91 degrees Fahrenheit.

and a warm night is defined as overnight temperatures that stay above 65 degrees Fahrenheit,

which offers little relief from the daytime heat.

We're also expecting to see more intense bursts of rainfall,

which can increase flooding in the low-lying areas within the city.

For wildfire risk, while Mountain View itself isn't in a designated burn zone,

We know that with increasing temperatures, hotter and drier conditions can elevate wildfire potential, especially those that are near the wildland urban interface, which is basically where homes and development meets or kind of the border of where the natural vegetation meets with developments.

And then for wildfire smoke, we know that regional wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity.

And we're also expecting to see more prolonged and frequent smoke events along with those wildfire events that are happening around the region.

And so we're going to be also seeing worsening air quality across the city.

Next slide.

And so I really wanted to just briefly touch on the climate sensitive populations.

So as many of you in this room know, climate change affects everybody, but not everyone is affected in the same way.

So certain groups tend to face higher average risks.

And this is due to factors like income, age, health, housing conditions, or even the type of work that they do.

And so while this doesn't mean that every individual within these categories are inherently vulnerable, we see from national and regional research and studies that there are really clear patterns of disproportionate impacts for a lot of these climate sensitive populations that you see here.

And so when someone falls into multiple categories, some of those risks can be compounded. And so, for example, if we think of an older adult who is low income, living with a disability and experiencing housing instability, this individual may face far greater challenges during extreme heat or ex-poke events.

And so it's really important to understand these overlapping vulnerabilities in order to help us better identify where the support and resources are most needed.

Next slide.

It looks like there was a download issue. I can change to a different format of the presentation.

It's okay. I think I can just maybe explain this slide. So this visual that was on the slide here is just pretty much talking about how we are assessing vulnerability as part of the CVA.

And so we're using a simple framework from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or also known as the IPCC, which is the leading international scientific body on climate change.

And so if you can think of this framework as three parts.

Okay, great.

So the first part of this is exposure.

And so this is really defined as how much of a system or population is experiencing a climate hazard, so something like heat or flooding.

The second part to this equation is sensitivity.

And so this is defined as how strongly that hazard was likely to affect people or that specific infrastructure or service.

And then third is adaptive capacity, which is the ability to prepare for, respond to, or recover from those impacts.

And so I can provide a quick example of what this may look like for Mountain View. And so, for example, neighborhoods with very high heat exposure that have many a higher like older adult population, but also has limited shade and cooling and transit access.

These tend to show a higher vulnerability compared to areas that may have similar heat exposure, but stronger access to cooling resources and other accessible services.

Next slide.

And so for this assessment, we organized this analysis into four key sectors.

The first being health and well-being.

The second is emergency management.

The third is economy. And the last is housing and infrastructure. And so these sectors really help us understand where the climate impacts show up across the different parts of the community.

and we also looked at the systems that cut across all sectors.

So for example, something like power distribution,

while we didn't look at or include power as a specific standalone sector,

we know that outages, when they happen, they affect every part of city operations.

And so instead what we did was we wove power-related considerations

throughout each sector, and we can continue to strengthen that narrative in the final report as well.

Next slide.

So before I dive into the summary of vulnerability across the sectors,

I wanted to just quickly pause here to see if there were any immediate questions about our methodology or any of the sectors.

any questions no we typically do our questions at the end though maybe you'll get some now

we just thought it was such a lengthy topic it's a lot of information so back to you we'll see

okay sounds good well i'll go ahead and dive into our first sector which is our health and

well-being sector. So this mainly looks at both physical health and mental health,

recognizing that climate hazards not only are heat-related illnesses or respiratory conditions,

but can also manifest into stress, anxiety, and impact overall well-being. And so we'll walk

through some of what we found across both of those subsectors. So here, this slide summarizes

the vulnerability across the health and well-being sector. And really, what we did here is we

condensed some of the scoring just to help make it a little bit more high-level and digestible

for this audience. And so this reflects, again, both the physical and mental health impacts.

And if you're interested in seeing a more detailed like hazard by hazard scoring, that information is included in both the executive summary and the draft full draft CVA document.

And so just to highlight, sorry, if you can go back one slide.

So I wanted to just highlight a few key takeaways for the sector.

So we found that extreme heat and wildfire smoke are the two biggest health threats for Mountain View.

Both hazards are already affecting residents today and are projected to worsen over time.

And this is going to cause an increased case of heat-related illness and respiratory issues.

We also know that when we think about heat and heat being combined with humidity, this also raises what the quote-unquote feels like temperature is.

So, for example, something like a 90 degree day with 75 percent degree or 75 percent humidity, which is not uncommon during the summers here.

I'm sure you've all experienced that temperature can actually feel like 109 degrees.

So we're seeing triple digits here.

And so that's actually well into the danger zone for heat-related illness, which makes outdoor and indoor conditions much more dangerous and sensitive for groups like older adults, young children, and people with pre-existing health conditions.

We're also seeing poor air quality near major roadways, so highways like Highway 101 and 82, where some of our lower cost housing options are located.

And so we also see some of the compounding impacts, such as existing asthma and cardiovascular risk for those that are maybe living within or close to these areas.

Another major finding from this sector was that we see impacts on our unhoused residents

who experience direct exposure to heat and smoke and have very little access to cooling

or clean air spaces.

And so I wanted to just highlight that while Mountain View has a lot of existing resources

like cooling centers and the heat resilience program, the access remains limited.

And so things like cooling centers can sometimes be hard to reach or have limited operation hours,

which we see as a significant gap in service, especially during heat waves where we're starting

to see a lot more warm nights that extend far into the night and after some of the operations

or the hours of operations for these cooling centers. Next slide.

And so some of the sensitive groups in Mountain View that face the greatest risk from extreme heat and worsening air quality include older adults and young children who are physiologically more sensitive to heat and poor air quality.

We also see our unhoused residents who faced prolonged outdoor exposure and are also seeing some that are experiencing unreliable access to cooling and clean indoor air.

We also see linguistically isolated households that are most vulnerable because they may not be able to receive alerts or resources maybe in languages that they understand.

People of color, which makes up nearly half of or over half of the city's population.

We're also seeing that there's a lot of studies, again, that are showing people of color who are more likely to live in hotter neighborhoods that have a higher baseline pollution levels.

We see low income households and renters, which make up a third of the population.

And those that are most sensitive are the ones that may lack access to cooling, air conditioning, insulation, or air filtration within their homes.

And then lastly are folks that are living people with disabilities.

And they may face some of those additional barriers to mobility, accessing some of these cooling centers, or receiving the emergency assistance that they need.

Next slide.

So to put some of these risks into perspective, here's some of the data from Santa Clara County Public Health Department.

We're seeing that between 2000 and 2020, there were approximately 437 heat-related hospitalizations that were directly tied to extreme heat, as well as over 1,800 emergency room visits for heat-related illness.

I wanted to note that these numbers are almost certainly undercounted and that heat-related illness is widely recognized as undiagnosed and underreported because heat is often not listed as the primary cause on medical records.

And so we see that a lot of many hospitalizations that are tied to dehydration, cardiac events, and respiratory issues sometimes are actually triggered and worsened by extreme heat, but they don't actually show up on the official heat-related statistics.

And so I just wanted to caveat that these numbers are here are likely to represent a floor, but not the full picture of heat impacts in Santa Clara County.

Next slide.

And so these projections give us a sense of how quickly conditions are changing in Mountain View.

And what's really striking here are the percentage increases.

Mountain View has historically just had had a handful of extreme heat days and warm nights each year.

But as you can see here, those numbers jump by hundreds of percent by mid to late century.

And so what this means is that residents aren't just getting a few more hot days. We're looking at a major shift in how often people experience dangerous heat, especially at night when the body needs to cool down.

And warm nights are especially important because they limit the body's ability to cool down, which increases the risk of heat-related illness.

Again, particularly in older adults, young children, pregnant people, and individuals that don't have reliable cooling within their homes.

And so these numbers are, you know, kind of shocking to see, but these really help illustrate why heat is one of the most significant and growing health risks for the community.

Next slide.

And so I wanted to highlight a few of the maps here that we did.

So we looked at the neighborhood level heat exposure and sensitive populations.

And here you kind of see where some of those sensitive populations overlap with the areas most hottest in Mountain View.

So what really stands out here is the South Mountain View, is it the Rangstorf?

Apologies if I'm mispronouncing it.

Shoreline and the Sylvan Park, which consistently shows the hottest conditions.

And so these areas tend to have older buildings, fewer trees, and more residents that are lower income or older, which can make these heat impacts much harder to manage.

We're also noticing that several schools sit within these hotter zones.

So kids are spending more time outdoors in areas that have higher heat exposure.

And when you overlay things like senior centers and neighborhoods with more older adults, you start to see this clear pattern of where the heat is hitting people the most artist.

And this really helps kind of point to where the investments and things like shade, cooling infrastructure and heat relief programs that could make the biggest difference.

Okay, that was a lot of information.

I wanted to just quickly pause here to see if there were any immediate questions about the health and well-being sector.

Are there questions?

Well, I have some questions about how you made the heat map.

When I look at what the, you know, the sort of severe heat areas, there aren't a lot of things to orient yourself on this map.

But for instance, there's this big blob in the Cuesta Park neighborhood. What is that?

Yeah, that's a really great question. So when we actually take a look at this map, so just maybe to

take a quick step back. So the underlying data for this is using Landsat data. So we look at land

surface temperatures based on a few events that happen. So when we see like a recorded

heat island effect or a heat wave day, we kind of look at what the those land surface temperatures

are. And so this is basically one of the days that Mountain View experienced an extreme heat day

to be able to see what are sort of those severe heat areas are within the city.

So that area within Cuesta Park is actually an artificial turf football field near the school.

So that's the St. Francis football field?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. That's fascinating. Okay.

What about Sylvan Park?

And Sylvan Park, it's very much the location of the mobile home parks.

They don't have as much shade.

And South Mountain View is Mountain View High School, essentially?

Yes, that's correct.

All right.

And is that, I'm going to jump on your question.

Is that plastic turf as well?

So it's a mix of both, I think, impervious surfaces,

so highly paved areas so like parking lots as well as turfed areas for the sylvan park area

i'd have to take a better closer look at the map um but oftentimes yeah it looks like there's a

pretty big like the more park mobile homes there's a lot of like sort of paved areas there that could

be causing that urban heat island effect that you're seeing on the map okay and then the one

in the in the ring store shoreline shoreline west area what's that sorry i'm kind of looking

so let's see just under the word rings on that map there's a there's a big blob that's you know

dark red. Yeah. I could take a look at that from the, in the draft in a second here. So maybe we

could, could we, is it okay? Sure. Keep going. Anyway, I just, you know, this is our town. We,

we actually really, all these neighborhoods and stuff. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It

would be nice to know what's at the heart of the hottest, you know, to see if there's a recurring

factor factors that we would you know not just the neighborhood i have a question too at this point

yeah back a few slides you said that um near uh roads and freeways heavily used roads and freeways

i don't remember your exact um there it is air quality is worsening near major roadways

so that surprised me a little because we've had a lot of cars for a long time

and they uh you know during covid they went down uh in number and now they've come back up but i

don't know that they they've increased and we're adding electric cars so i'm not saying that i'm

not implying that living right next to a freeway would should now be a great place to breathe and

live. But do you know, what do you attribute the worsening air quality near major roadways to?

Yeah, well, I think we took a look closely at our CalEnviroScreen data. And what we're seeing is

a really high percentage of diesel particulate matter actually higher in the 80th percentile

or greater. So we actually have a map for that in the draft CVA that is actually pretty compelling

to look at because we thought PM 2.5 was actually going to be higher, but it's actually diesel,

particular at Mallard, that is in the 80th percentile. And I think it could be a mix of

things. But, you know, for this specific CVA, we didn't necessarily look at air quality as like a

baseline, we mainly looked at it as sort of how do we see air quality as like this compounding

risk to heat? So when heat, extreme heat days are, when we have an extreme heat day,

how does the air quality worsen as part of that? And how does that sort of compound the health

related risks for those that are experiencing, you know, who have asthma or pre-existing health

conditions like respiratory illnesses. And so it could be a variety of reasons. And I think it

could just be the sudden increase after COVID of people returning back to driving and commuting

that could be see sort of the increase in commuters through those highways because of that.

Yeah, it's an interesting, I mean, all the bullet points there are interesting, but that one interests me in particular because there's a lot of housing and transportation related implications, you know, for how we should plan and where we put houses and do we keep what one of our residents' vegetative barriers between the housing and the freeway, where do we plant trees, related questions.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Okay.

Great.

So if we can skip ahead to emergency management.

Great.

So for emergency management, the sector is really about how the city prepares for and

responds to climate driven events and so how systems like emergency routes, communication

networks and our backup power is going to be impacted by during extreme conditions.

So for critical facilities, we're defining that as our fire stations, hospitals, schools,

and other essential community serving sites, since their ability to stay accessible and

operational is central to keeping people safe.

So I'll talk a little bit about how we looked at each hazard.

So as you can see here, again, extreme heat and wildfire smoke stand out to be some of

the biggest disruptors.

And this is because they have been seen to affect responder safety, as well as some of the cooling, existing cooling systems and indoor air quality.

At the same time, we're also seeing an influx of emergency calls that tend to increase during this time.

Critical facilities like hospitals and fire stations and medical centers are already working hard during extreme events.

And so many of these facilities actually sit in those hotter parts of the city.

And those higher baseline temperatures just pretty much will mean more energy demand, more cooling needs, and more stress on existing equipment.

We're also seeing flooding is less about the buildings themselves in this case, but more about the access.

And so we found that heavy rainfall can block key emergency routes and can make it harder to reach schools or clinics or stations during a response.

For wildfire smoke, we're just continuing to see this drive respiratory related emergency calls.

And even when wildfires burn far outside Mountain View, that can still put pressure on ambulance services and emergency rooms within the city.

So Mountain View currently has a really strong emergency management coordination and communication system.

But where there are existing gaps is the backup capacity.

This is where we still see the challenge here.

So things like redundant cooling, power, or air filtration systems at these critical facilities still remain limited.

and that just ultimately reduces the adaptive capacity during these prolonged heat events.

Next slide.

And so for here, we're really focused on those in the community that are most affected when these emergency systems are stressed.

So again, with our older adults and people who depend on medical equipment, these populations are especially vulnerable because they need continuous power and quick access to emergency care.

And even when there are short shortages, these can really become life-threatening for them.

We also see our first responders and outdoor emergency staff that face risk, high risk.

They're the ones that are out in the heat and doing a lot of this extended physical work during these events.

And so exposure inherently hits them a lot harder.

We also see students and child care providers that are particularly at these older campuses without modern cooling or ventilation.

They can experience higher indoor temperatures and poor air quality during some of these climate events.

We also see residents in flood-prone neighborhoods that are also at risk, and this is because road closures or any power outages can slow down emergency response and make it harder to reach critical services.

And then finally, our unhoused and low-income residents often feel the impacts first when cooling centers or clean air spaces are limited. And so they rely heavily on public facilities for safe shelter, cooling, and some of these clean air during these crises.

And so really across all of these groups, I would say that the common thread is that there's just overall limited access to safe indoor environments during extreme events, which can really lead to increased exposure and reduce their ability to cope during these events.

Next slide.

Next slide.

And so here we're talking or wanted to highlight the critical facilities and heat exposure

map.

So several of Mountain View's major critical facilities are again located in the hottest

parts of the city.

So for example, El Camino Health, Mountain View Hospital and fire stations two and four

all sit within the severe heat zones.

And so during prolonged heat, these buildings face just overall higher strain on cooling and HVAC systems, which can affect staff comfort, patient safety, and operational reliability.

We're also seeing a lot of schools and child care centers in these same areas.

Many of them are older buildings without modern ventilation, which means that they're more likely to overheat or experience poor indoor air quality during heat and smoke events.

And so some of these overlaps or some of the overlaps that you see here can really help the city identify where those upgrades like backup power needs to happen or improved ventilation and other cooling infrastructure that can have the biggest impact on these facilities.

Next slide.

When we're looking at critical facilities in the flood hazard zones, we're seeing some

pretty clear areas of concern.

So a few sites that I wanted to call out are the, again, El Camino Health, Mountain View

Hospital, Fire Station 5 that sit within or adjacent to the 100 and 500 year flood zones.

So when these areas flood, even temporarily, it could potentially delay emergency response, disrupt medical operations, or limit access to safe indoor spaces during the storms.

We also see the schools in the same regard in the same zones.

So schools like Montaloma Elementary and parts of Shoreline West area can also face some operational challenges when roads close or when facilities take on water.

And so all of this really helps, again, point the city towards where maintaining access roads and planning long term upgrades will really matter.

And so some of these overlaps, again, show where kind of those resilience investments can go the furthest in protecting some of these essential community services and community safety.

Okay. Any questions before we move on to economy?

So are there questions on that section? I have one question, you too.

So I have a question on when I read the full report and you kind of imply it here.

It talked about the area around McKelvey Park where we did like the Cuesta area as a flood hazard zone.

And we put in, gosh, I don't remember the technical name for it.

But it's intubation.

Thank you.

we put in a flood retention basin under McKelvey Park. So I'm wondering when it's cited as an

area that, you know, may be in trouble, whether, like, have we addressed that? Are you saying

there's additional troubles there? Have we addressed it in that area with that retention basin?

Because that didn't come up ever in the report, the retention basin. I'd like to hear that.

that has been addressed and we can just worry about the other areas,

but I'm wondering or whether you can get back to us on that.

Yeah. I mean, I think this is something that, um,

we can discuss a bit more maybe with the Ms. Lee's team about, um,

you know, some of the,

I think the importance of like adaptive capacity is, is,

is being able to, um,

kind of know what existing, um,

infrastructure upgrades there are to addressing some of these hazards.

And so we'll definitely make a note of that and we'll revisit this and

integrate that some of those findings in the final report.

I don't know, Miss Lee, if you have additional input on that.

Thank you. Thank you for the question, Chair.

The only thing I would add to what was already stated is that

prior to developing a resiliency strategy or kind of a list of resiliency actions,

typically what would follow a data-based climate vulnerability assessment would be ground-truthing.

So some level of community engagement, but also more on the ground kind of vetting of the data

analysis. So we focused the CVA, you know, we, we originally brought a full, like all the way

through to resiliency strategy proposal, and we pursued only the phase one of this. And so

this report is much more analyzing the data that indicates vulnerability. And then what would

happen next and prior to a resiliency strategy would be some ground truth. Okay. Yes. That may

be one item you want to check because the report had a good number of references to the potential

flooding in that area. And I thought that's one of the few areas we really address.

Any other questions? Okay. I'm pretty sure I know also that flooding at the hospital has been

addressed. So. That's great. Okay. Go ahead and move to the economy sector. So the sector really

looks at climate hazards and how they impact workers and local businesses within Mountain View,

as well as highlighting any broader economic impacts to the Mountain View's economic systems,

especially for industries that are outdoor and service-based.

So I'll go ahead and talk a little bit about our economy sector and some of the vulnerabilities

here. So for, as we look at climate hazards, we know that climate hazards don't just affect people

and infrastructure, but they also have this ripple effect on the city's economy as well.

And so as we know that with flooding risk, flooding actually poses the biggest risk

because it can disrupt operations, damage buildings, and interrupt access to key job

centers and where we see some of this. And we can talk about this in the next couple slides here

where the greatest vulnerabilities are when it comes to flooding. But I did also want to highlight

here for heat as even though it's a moderate vulnerability, we wanted to call out specific

groups that are most impacted by extreme heat. So outdoor and service workers,

service sector workers, including construction, landscaping, restaurant delivery, and custodial

staff. These groups face higher vulnerability just due to being outside and having to commute

and drive between places. And so the prolonged exposure to heat can reduce productivity,

increase more rest breaks that we're seeing, and also raise existing health risks and leading to

more risk to heat-related illnesses, as well as we see lost wages for hourly workers as well.

So for heat, high heat days can lead to measurable economic losses from fewer outdoor workers,

outdoor work hours to reduce consumer activity, especially in sectors that rely on more in-person

customer service. We also see that flood-prone businesses, areas that are containing

some of Mountain View's highest value assets, including some of the commercial corridors and

tech campuses, those are all within the floodplain. And so even with some of those short interruptions,

those can still have some costly impacts to employers and the local economy.

And then lastly, we know that small businesses are the least equipped to recover from climate

disruptions, especially because a lot of them have limited cash reserves or high operating costs. And

So these are in the economy sector, probably the most vulnerable.

And then we also know that larger employers have oftentimes more resources to integrate

climate resilience design and planning, but smaller ones still struggle without added support.

Next slide.

So I'll quickly go over this since I kind of touched on a lot of these different climate exposed populations for the economy sector.

But just to again name a few, we know that outdoor workers are often impacted by extreme heat and poor air quality.

As I mentioned, lower wage and hourly workers, as well as service industry employees that work in retail, restaurant and hospitality.

Sometimes work in older buildings that might have just like less modern cooling and ventilation.

And sometimes they can lose work hours during some of those heat waves or smoke events.

And then I mentioned earlier some of the businesses that were in those flood prone industrial and commercial zones,

especially those that are near Highway 101 and North Bay Shore can face those risks to

potential damage to equipment, inventory, and site access during those heavy storms.

And then we can go to the next slide.

And so I wanted to highlight here where we see the commercial and industrial areas that overlap

with the city's mapped flood zones and what this means for local businesses and economic activity.

So we see that a number of commercial and mixed-use offices, as well as industrial zones,

fall within the 100- and 500-year floodplain. And as I mentioned earlier, what this means for

these districts is that we could see potential building damage, access issues, or impacts to

operations during those major storms. North Bayshore in particularly especially stands out

as it hosts major corporate campuses and data centers, including areas along Charleston

landings and Marine Way that fall directly within those hazard zones, flood hazard zones.

These sites collectively represent more than $670 million in structural assets,

And that makes them just a lot more vulnerable in terms of where we see the highest value areas exposed to flood risk within the city.

And then we also see just kind of more of those commercial corridors, such as El Camino Real and Central Expressway, where some of those businesses may face temporary closures or costly interruptions if there were to be heavy storms that lead to those localized flooding that we might see.

Next slide.

And so I wanted to quickly recap some of those potential economic losses that I mentioned earlier.

So this table shows how when we look at specifically rising temperatures and extreme heat days, how that can directly impact outdoor workers and the city's economy.

And so by mid-century and late century, we see 12 extreme heat days that are expected each year.

And that's seven more than today.

And that leads to about $36 in lost wages per worker, which adds up to roughly about $125,000 in lost wages citywide each year by mid-century.

By late century, we're seeing this increase become even more significant.

So we see expect 23 extreme heat days, which translates to about $145 in lost wages per worker, which estimates to about $500,000 in total annual lost wages per year for all climate exposed workers within the city.

And so these estimates are conservative since they only reflect lost income from reduced work hours on very hot days.

And they don't actually capture the larger sort of economic ripple effects that happen.

So things like lower sales, slower times and like reduced productivity.

And I wanted to also just note that these estimates also reflect average wage loss per outdoor worker per year in 2025 dollars.

And so this really follows the National Climate Assessment and some of the methods that they use to calculate economic loss.

So we use the dollar value of the analysis year because projecting future wages can add a lot of uncertainty.

And so even with this conservative approach, we know definitely that rising temperatures are expected to lead to grow to more wages loss over time for the city.

Next slide.

Okay.

I'm going to quickly go into the housing and infrastructure section.

And so this section looks primarily at housing, transportation, and stormwater systems.

But for today, we're really just going to be hyper-focusing on the housing and transportation

only.

And if you're interested in seeing more of the stormwater findings, you can see that

section in the detailed CVA.

Next slide.

So this section looks at how climate hazards affects housing, transportation, and infrastructure.

As you can see here, extreme heat stands out as the biggest housing risk, especially for multifamily rentals and mobile home parks that are already struggling to stay cool.

And we also see that some of the air quality issues that are, again, more concentrated near those highways, where we see kind of more affordable units that are located there.

So there's a clear sort of parallel between air quality issues that are potentially impacting those that are living in those affordable units within those areas.

We also see flooding impacts to about 20-12% of homes within Mountain View, especially near creeks and the bay. And we also see heat and major storms also being a major disruption to transportation through potential warping of rails and flooding key corridors.

And I think across all of these topics, you'll see a range of vulnerability. And the reason for that is because the housing and infrastructure sector is so varied across the city.

And so we know that there's a lot of really great planned investments from the city that are really creating that strong starting point for this piece here. Next slide.

So some of the key climate sensitive populations here and other sensitive assets are renters

and residents in older multifamily buildings with limited control over weatherization or

repairs.

We also see mobile home residents, mobile home park residents that are currently living

in those hot zones or flood hazard zones.

And those are the ones that are facing a higher risk

of displacements after disasters.

Low-income households and residents

that are living near major roadways

are also experiencing higher pollution

and have fewer resources to adapt.

We also see that transit dependent riders and cyclists and as well as pedestrians are also at risk of facing potential service interruptions, unsafe heat and poor air quality during those extreme weather events.

And then lastly, we see residents that are living in those low lying neighborhoods near the creeks and the bay where flooding and high groundwater can damage homes and roads.

Next slide.

So for housing exposure to extreme heat, so this map shows where the hotter neighborhoods

coincide with vulnerable housing types, including rental units, mobile home parks, subsidized

housing and safe parking zones.

And so many of the multifamily and affordable housing buildings are actually located in

those above average heat zones where indoor temperatures can quickly climb during those

prolonged heat events. Mobile home parks such as Sunset Estates, New Frontier, and Sahara Mobile

Village sit in some of the hottest parts of the city, making them especially vulnerable during

extreme heat. And then for people living in vehicles, we or in older and poorly insulated

homes, they tend to face heightened health risks because they have limited access to cooling,

reliable cooling shade, and as well as indoor, or sorry, clean indoor air.

And so we see a lot of these vulnerable housing types overlap with high heat conditions. And so

this can really help inform the city to know kind of where to target some of those cooling strategies,

expanding existing tree canopy, as well as having more direct resilience programs to communicate to these communities where they are most at risk for these rising temperatures.

Next slide.

And so here, this map is showing the housing within the flood hazard zones.

And so we see here that a lot of the homes, 12% of the homes overlap with 100-year and 500-year flood zones.

Several mobile home parks, particularly near Highway 101 and Grant Road, fall within some of those zones.

And those are the ones that are facing a greater likelihood of flood-related damage or long-term displacement.

We also see subsidized and naturally affordable housing, much of which is located in the northern neighborhoods.

These are also areas where stormwater can overwhelm some of these older buildings and can cause potential flooding.

And then for the safe parking sites and nearby rental housing, we also see that these can be impacted by major storms, which can create additional challenges for residents who have limited resource or access to limited resources or alternative shelter options.

And so seeing kind of where these vulnerable housing types coincide within these flood hazard zones can really help the city target those mitigation efforts, as well as building, thinking about how we can do stronger building maintenance and support programs for communities that may have the hardest time recovering after a flood.

Next slide.

And so this map now is transitioning over to our transportation assets.

So we're looking here specifically at transit and active transportation to extreme heat.

So as you can see here, many of the hotter areas overlap with many bus stops and transit station rail lines and also other multi-use trails.

Many of the city's major transit corridors, which include El Camino Real, Central Expressway and Grant Road, run through some of the hotter surface temperature zones where shade is limited.

And so this can create uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe conditions for transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians during extreme heat events.

And we also see that people who rely on some of these transit and active transportation, especially those that don't have access to like air conditioned vehicles, tend to face higher risk of heat stress and reduce mobility during those hotter days.

Next slide.

And this is the map that shows parts of Mountain View's transportation system that overlap with those flood hazard zones.

As you can see here, many of the bus stops, transit stations, roads and rail lines sit within those 100-year floodplains.

So corridors like Shoreline, Charleston, Central Expressway and Grant Road are especially prone to temporary flooding, which can disrupt travel during those storm events.

We also see in the northwest mountain view a cluster of the NVGO Route D stops. Those also fall within the flood prone areas, making access less reliable when those storms hit.

across the city itself, about 16 miles of roadway and seven miles of multi-use trails

within the 100-year floodplain. And so these overlaps that you're seeing here can, again,

help highlight some of areas where we could do targeted drainage improvements, detours,

as well as thinking through more reliable transportation travel options that can

be the most important during these extreme heat weather events.

Okay, so I will pause here.

That was a lot of information here, so I just wanted to see if there are any questions.

Questions on this section?

Just a very brief one.

The maps were really helpful, and I saw in the appendix there's a list of the data sources

that were consulted. And I realized that these maps are kind of just in the presentation or in the

PDF are just screenshots. I didn't know if there are high resolution maps that

kind of show parcel by parcel that exist somewhere. If someone reaches out and they want to

look at some of these, do those exist somewhere or do we need to go pull it from the data sources

specifically? Yeah, I think to obtain the the parcel by parcel data, you would need to go

to the data source directly. We used the underlying data itself is using the original data,

but if you want to look at it kind of at that scale, then we would need to look at the

original source directly. Okay. Yeah, even even labeling streets so you can kind of tell what

what factors might be causing different things on the map be helpful um or major sites like schools

and so forth um you talked about uh business you know businesses being uh impacted by

heat and other factors flooding and so forth in a negative way do you ever think about

them being affected in a positive way the example being i notice on extra hot days

more people dining out in the evening probably not wanting to cook like a real surge in diners

um so you know i imagine there there may be both negative and positive impacts i don't know

during storms people buy umbrellas i'm just a different set of things so is that something you

ever look at um so a part of this analysis we didn't look at it from that point of view but we

did um as part of our study include kind of the daytime um populations as we know that like we

wanted to see sort of the differences between um daytime versus nighttime populations um

And so that could be something that we look at more from a risk perspective of like during those, you know, hotter days when we see a greater influx of people coming into the city or even just people being out and about like eating and dining outside.

that we could, even though I think it may have a positive impact on revenue, overall,

we're looking still kind of at the sort of the health aspect of that and where we could see,

you know, greater populations or greater risk of heat related illness, especially if there are

specifically during like those major heat waves that we're looking at. We're not really seeing a

lot of folks out and about typically right on days that are like 100 degrees or more.

But I think that's a really great point to, I think, acknowledge as part of the economy

sector.

And we can certainly discuss more internally about how we can maybe do some of that framing

in the narrative there.

that one oh yeah i i was just looking at my notes and i was wondering if um when you did

the diesel distribution modeling did that include the improvements that have been done to caltrain

uh no it did not okay because that that that is the equivalent of taking many many cars off the

ROAD. SO THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING TO UPDATE. OKAY. WE'LL MAKE A NOTE OF THAT.

ARE WE MENT TO QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? I GUESS WE'LL HAVE ANY COMMENTS.

WE STILL HAVE THE LAST PORTION OF THE PRESENTATION. I WANTED TO JUST ADD TO

RESPOND TO YOUR QUESTION ABOUT EL CAMINO IN PARTICULAR. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE THINK

about with vulnerability is not only the facility itself but access to it especially when it's

something like a critical health facility so even if the hospital itself does not flood if access to

it is limited related to flooding in the general neighborhood we would still would still sort of

surface as a vulnerability so but yes we actually we did take into account some of the flood

improvements at the hospital itself. And briefly, just to wrap up this item, if we could go to the

next slide. When we first talked about doing a climate vulnerability assessment with this

committee, we had a proposal to explore both vulnerability assessment as well as resiliency

planning. And what we decided to do was do the first phase of that work, bring to the committee

what our vulnerability looks like as a community with regards to climate change,

and then decide if we would like to engage in a phase two, which would be essentially

resiliency planning, taking into account this information that we have started to develop

and identify the highest value opportunities for the city to enhance our resiliency.

So contained within this item before your committee is a recommendation

for integrating resiliency planning into the decarbonization planning

that is already underway and was authorized in the original contract.

And what we would propose to do is marry the work, really,

and develop a climate strategy for the city that both identifies the synergies between

decarbonization work and resiliency, and also the tension points so that we can understand

when a resiliency priority might appear to be at odds with a decarbonization priority.

How can we think holistically about these two priorities and solve for those tensions?

Um, so staff is recommending, um, a more integrated approach to climate.

We do say in the field that it's all one issue, right?

It's all climate change, whether it's on the mitigation side of trying to reduce our emissions

very aggressively, or it's on the resiliency side where we recognize that some amount of

climate change is before us, uh, kind of no matter what we do.

So we would like to, or we're recommending to the committee that you direct us to bring to council for consideration a contract amendment to do that, where we would develop a fully integrated climate strategy.

We do have alternatives.

We could pursue adaptation or resiliency planning as a standalone effort.

We could continue with the decarbonization planning that's already underway and kind of have a parallel track of adaptation planning or resiliency planning.

or we could not pursue resiliency planning at this time

and move forward with the existing scope of work

that's underway in terms of the decarbonization planning alone.

So those are sort of the main options.

There are trade-offs to each of them.

I think if we do an integrated approach,

it actually could go faster than if we did two separate plans because we're writing a singular

plan instead of two. Of course, the fastest would be to not do resiliency planning and to focus on

decarbonization. So if we were to sort of map on a timeline, the fastest approach would be just

decarbonization. After that, an integrated strategy. And then maybe the longest timeline

would be for two separate plans, one related to decarbonization and one related to resiliency.

And I guess the other trade-offs are really how we take into account the ways that these issues

affect each other. You know, I sometimes give the example of our decarbonization efforts. If we are

increasingly trying to electrify, do we end up putting pressure on the grid? And does that have

resiliency implication? Whereas if we take a step back and we think about how these two issues could

interplay, you know, are there ways that we could pursue solutions that would address or mitigate

for negative consequences across the two kind of bodies of work, if you will? So I'm happy to

to take any questions about this. We have much more specific contract amendments that were

included in the memo, and I can walk you through those. Some are to do, we could go to the next

slide, actually. Some are to do this bigger integration that I was talking about. And then

there are a few things, minor, more minor enhancements to the decarbonization analysis

that we talked about at prior CSC meetings,

adding some contingency just to have a bit of flexibility

as we move forward in implementation.

And I think there is some also amendment related to

some of the additional vulnerability assessment

that was completed within this vulnerability assessment

around stormwater.

So the proposal is the staff recommended amendment would be for a contract amendment that would bring our total contract from $223,000 approximately to approximately $370,000.

And that would be for an integrated approach to climate planning.

If we can go to the next slide.

These are the recommendations for the committee to continue to give additional feedback on the CBA and to direct staff in terms of how to proceed with the resiliency and decarbonization planning.

and then specifically to comment on the contract amendment

that we would ultimately need to bring to council

because it would exceed the current contract amount

that is authorized under the city manager's signing authority.

Okay.

So now the presentation is done.

Let's see what I'm supposed to say.

But basically, it's time for questions on the overall presentation and on the three recommendations before you.

Questions from the committee.

And we'll save comments for afterwards.

But any questions we might have on those three recommendations or the presentation as a whole.

and if you'd like i can we have a slide that outlines the alternatives that i mentioned as

well uh-huh this slide kind of did yes exactly yeah i just like a little review of the nomenclature

here what okay by decarbonation decarbonization we mean things that lower our ghgs right yes

Okay, and by resilience, we mean things that make us better able to deal with the impacts of climate change, like what we would do for heat extremes, right?

Exactly. Okay. Thank you.

I'm looking through the report.

You remind me if we pursue the staff recommendation with the combined plans, what is the, I see

the cost implications, like do you have a sense for the timeline implications?

You touched on it a little bit.

I just didn't know if there was anything more concrete.

I think if we do not pursue resiliency planning, if we just bring the vulnerability assessment to council for adoption and then the decarbonization planning, that would likely be done by the end of 2026, the calendar year.

And then early 2027 is when we would anticipate being able to bring an integrated climate strategy.

and then I think probably one to two quarters later if we were to pursue

two standalone plans because we'd have to write two lengthy reports and much of the work would be

duplicated if we had to. I mean I'm fine with the recommendation I'm just trying to figure out

kind of when did we pursue that the integrated plans kind of when that might all wrap up it

sounds like some at some point in 2027 maybe first half of 27 ish okay

okay so again back to sort of principles what we're getting here what we're getting at here

is with the recommendation is you want to have a list of actions that the city should take right

That's what we're really shooting for. And so by doing both plans together, we get actions on on both things and on how they work together.

We come out with because some of them do work together. We come out with a much better action than if we we wait and do them separately.

That's essentially what you're saying, isn't it?

Exactly.

If we have two plans, then we'll have sort of two action plans that we would implement more in parallel versus a singular action plan that considers what is the best order to do all of the climate work?

And, you know, do we think about the grid first and then push to decarbonize more quickly?

You know, is there an order of operations across both sets of priorities that yields a more effective result in the end?

So doing it in an integrated fashion allows us to think through that.

OK, well, I know we've talked about this on the telephone and we've talked about it many times, but I don't see it up on the slide here.

And one of the things that I think is really vital is the collaboration opportunities that are both ongoing and that we feel should be developed.

and identifying those and talking about, you know, really what's the best thing for us to do

specifically as the city of Mountain View for our residents. And what's the best, you know,

what are the things that are better for us to, you know, collaborate on? And I really think that

a big part of this should be clarifying that. So there's kind of a chart that says, you know,

we're going to work with um svce on these things and or you know what but somehow delineates that

because i i think that um that's one of the major complexities and i i was mentioned a little bit in

here but not um not a lot and the collaboration um programs that we have ongoing are really massive

in some cases. So, you know, they're not afterthoughts. I think they really should

be integrated. So that's a big comment. Yeah, certainly. I mean, anecdotally,

we have had a few examples of this sort of pop up as we've been in discussions,

both in the resiliency arena and the decarbonization arena. So we've been trying

to think about how we could promote heat pumps. And then we've been thinking about

heat resiliency. You know, heat pumps are great because they offer an electric option for heating

a home as opposed to a furnace. They also offer cooling. And so they offer heat resiliency to the

community. So we were talking with the community services agency about doing work with our unhoused

population. We, at the last meeting, gave you an update about our heat resiliency pilot project

in partnership with CSA. But in those discussions, we also started talking about, well, could there

be a way to look at bringing heat pumps to older adults who maybe are more vulnerable to heat,

but also maybe can less ably afford to decarbonize their homes, or maybe they're,

I don't know, they have more fixed incomes. And so surfacing the multiple ways that we might be

able to collaborate with a given partner or kind of finding, you know, we might work with CSA

to support our unhoused and then being able to identify other ways that we could overlap with

their priorities as an organization. So building out more novel forms of collaboration. I think

if we think about our whole body of climate work at once, we can start to surface these

collaborative opportunities. Maybe we haven't worked together with a given organization in

that way before, but we have had partnership with them in another.

Well, I also think just inventorying them would be valuable. I mean, like there's that list at the

end of this that you mentioned of all the data sources. You know, that was very

interesting to see. Okay, well, we've already taken into account all of these things. That's

That's really valid. I think to, you know, to look at what are all the collaborative organizations, I mean, there's just a lot of them.

So, and they're really kind of incredible internal government consulting that we already, you know, we already have going.

Well, and we think of it both in terms of our own colleagues in other departments who are doing great work, but maybe we haven't thought about it as climate work.

They were doing resurfacing, but if they're putting in more pervious pavement, then they're addressing our future flood challenges.

So, you know, we think of it like in terms of all of our departments and the work that they're doing. And then we think of the outside organizations. So both and then other cities. You know, how can we as a region collaborate more effectively to climate impacts rarely are coalesced around a single jurisdiction.

It's the whole region that is facing this extreme heat vulnerability.

And if we think together how to create a network of support for all of our communities, it'll be much more effective.

And then another thing I wanted to comment on.

Wait, can we have comments?

We're just a question.

Okay, I've got some comments later.

So my main question in terms of the thing I'm having trouble figuring out or focusing on is how the resiliency, the decarbonization has, we've set a goal for ourselves.

And the resiliency, as far as I see, is we don't have a goal.

and and the decarbonization has been when you last presented it to us it there's really been

a sea change because of uh changes at the federal level and frankly at the state level too because

we can't do the clean cars and all this and there's greater focus on housing affordability now

and so we can't do reach codes and there's other things we can't do because we're focusing on

housing and not sustainability. So that a lot of the things we were relying on,

or that we were thinking of relying on to get to our decarbonization goals, we can't get to it,

we can't do anymore. And so I'm unclear on how, if we do both of them, are we really,

And they are, even if we do 2045, frankly, I think, given the rocky road ahead with, because I don't, I was not expecting our federal administration to knock down the climate work people were doing, the renewables and so forth, quite this much.

but I also don't just you know I'm hoping that we won't have this administration for long but

frankly my hopes are not I you know even if in 26 or 28 we don't some of that erodes I still

don't kind of the bottle's broken and I think it's gonna be hard to put the pieces back together

and once you do you may get a another similar administration so I think we're under a much

rockier road than when we set those goals to begin with. And I'm worried about council setting up a

bunch, some decarbonization, a set of steps and goals that we don't really have a road to get to.

We may, we've set ourselves up to do carbon offsets if we don't get there, but frankly,

we'd be punishing ourselves because people kept voting for Trump-like administrations,

which is not a good thing to punish people in Mountain View for.

And I don't know how the resiliency, these are projects without goals.

How does that help us do our decarbonization projects?

Because frankly, the projects I've seen are very small.

Like the heat pump thing is 120 heat pumps.

It did not cause that much decarbonization, but it was one of the things that was more reported on for the year.

So I'm afraid that with the sea change, we're losing our way.

And as a policymaker, it's my responsibility to respond to sea changes and make sure we're not losing our way.

So how do I also feel like we're doing a lot of planning and not a lot of actions.

And we're getting years into this. We first talked about this, I don't know, six years ago when we have not done much decarbonization.

So I don't want us to turn this, you know, our sustainability efforts into bean counting efforts.

I want to actually do projects. And I'm afraid I'm just how are we going to do that?

how are we going to actually do impactful projects that decarbonize or should we rethink our goals

so because i don't see us doing it all at this point it feels daunting so it feels like we're

not like as a policymaker it would not be um responsible for me to say that we're going to

do that and we're going to do carbon offsets under this new atmosphere i feel like it's

I feel like somewhere down the road, somebody's going to have to say that and it might as well

be me next. Yeah. I think I've mentioned at various times over the course of this project

that this is sort of the worst possible and maybe the best time to be trying to think through what

our approach should be because the ground is shifting beneath us. But in some ways, I think

that it's helping us to focus. So before we had very clear decarbonization goals, you know,

carbon neutrality by 2045, council adopted that before any of our team joined the city.

But, you know, we had marching orders to bring back to council a plan, an implementation plan

for how we would achieve that. And then resiliency has always been this topic that, you know,

followed decarbonization. There was earlier work on decarbonization and resiliency has

been slower to catch up, but also how do you set a goal for resiliency when our projections for what

the future climate would look like are constantly changing? So it seems sort of like a very solid

goal and then like an ill-defined or inability to even set a goal, really. I mean, we could set a

sea level rise goal, but to what temperature do we plan for? And how do we think about that?

now we see that they're kind of actually coming to be more in line because there's more

unpredictability. And it's caused us, I mean, you, I think, noticed in our

presentation last month, a proposal that we bring forward a five-year roadmap and that we really

focus our attention on what we can do now. And I think the same holds true for resiliency. We know

already that we're experiencing events and there have been extreme storms and floods and power

outages. So what can we do now, both for decarbonization to get us towards the long-term

goals? I might not be able to do the math to show you by what year we'll be able to reach carbon

neutrality right now, because there's so much volatility. And in the same way, I might not be

able to tell you, well, by 2040, we need to be able to hit 20 extreme heat days. You know,

that's our best guess as of now, but it will move. So the idea of this five-year plan or this five-year

roadmap is really, what can we do now? What sets us up to improve our resiliency, to move us forward

in our decarbonization planning? In the resiliency space, we think of it as a pathway. So, you know,

we would lay out sort of the actions that you would do and the order that you would do them in

as an adaptation pathway. And when you hit certain milestones, you know, you're building floods

certain number of times per year, or you have a certain number of heat events, then you move to

the next phase of implementing resiliency. It's like, I think I've mentioned it to one of you or

both some of you that it's kind of like just in time resiliency.

So we lay out a pathway of like what our process would look like to enhance the resiliency

of the community.

And then we would build in resiliency as the climate changes.

Same for decarbonization in some ways, it's a decarbonization pathway.

So what we're proposing is we would build a climate pathway and focus on the next five

years of that work, really.

We would have these longer term goals, decarbonization, we have that already set.

But I think our emphasis really should be in the near term.

What are right now the biggest opportunities that we see?

We've talked about legislative opportunities to work with other cities across the state.

You know, are there ways that we can solve financing, you know, find opportunities to pay for this work?

Financing.

Right. And can we build out collaborations?

Can we look at some of the other efforts that the city has underway to build more housing?

You know, we have all these other priorities, more parks.

Can they become resiliency features as well?

Could we build more resilient housing?

There are ways to cost effectively do that that are better for the long term.

So we are, we don't, we don't know.

It's really hard for me to tell you what 20 years out looks like.

At some points, I think we've had kind of higher levels of confidence about like, okay,

we have this pathway to decarbonization.

And I could tell you like, okay, by this year, we'll be here.

And then this year we'll be here.

And it just sort of a stepwise fashion.

But the amount of swing that we've seen this year, I just can't have that as much confidence.

But what I can tell you is that in the next five years, you know, that if we focus on what to do for both.

Are you saying, I don't know if, so are you saying as an answer to my question that we might focus, like you did mention, are you making, are you proposing another alternative or is this basically what you've recommended that you focus more on the five years?

Yeah, so our proposal would be for this climate strategy that is aiming at 2045.

That was the goal year that we reaffirmed at the last CSE meeting, but that would emphasize this five-year roadmap within it.

And as of now, we have direction from the committee to have this emphasis on the five-year decarbonization roadmap.

And our proposal would be that we should also integrate resiliency thinking into that so that it would be a five-year climate.

If I may, too, Miss Lee, I mean, for the resiliency aspect of it, too, I mean, one pathway for a goal is we want to mitigate some of those high vulnerabilities and see how low you get them.

if there's a guarantee, but that's another way to potentially look at how do we address

resiliency and are we doing anything about it?

So your answer to my question of how we're responding to the swings at the, or the major

changes at the federal and state level that frankly have gotten in the way of our decarbonization

strategy is that we should, you're saying we should more strongly plan for the next five years

and then see what happens. There could be new administration, new administrations,

there could be new inventions, et cetera, because that's something I would,

my major fear is about doing so much planning for a future that we know so little about.

Right. And so I would prefer, if that's what you're saying, that is what I would prefer.

Yes, exactly. The 2045 goal is already adopted by council. We wouldn't be undoing that. But

basically, our first step in getting to 2045 is this year or by extension, the next five years,

you know, like, we're going to get there one year at a time. And so what we're asking for

is permission to really put most of our effort into the next five years, this roadmap.

I'm glad you've clarified that because what I didn't want was a stack of papers that said what

we were going to do over the next 20 years when we probably would not be doing the things,

many of those things, because there would be too many changes.

Now, with resiliency, you know, obviously there would be this arc of like, here's typically

how we move down the pathway towards resiliency.

And then the next five years, these are the things that we would immediately focus on

based on the vulnerability assessment.

You know, we've seen sort of the initial highest areas of vulnerability.

And so our initial response would be to address the most vulnerable, the most extreme vulnerabilities that we have identified within the community.

So we're also doing that within other departments.

And there was some of this in the staff report.

How are you addressing overlap between, and overlap's a good thing.

um but like the one that stands out is that i mean you mentioned some but the one that stands

out is that we're doing biodiversity planning and active transportation which i think a good

part of that is shade trees um and you know so and parks and rack where some residents are arguing

for more green space and not so much, you know, AstroTurf and so forth. So how does what, it seems

like there's a huge overlap there. How does that work? Yeah, I mean, I think up until now, it has

been behind the scenes, just building relationships across the departments. We've talked with the

urban forestry manager and shared that we're doing this analysis. He asked to see the maps as soon as

they're ready because it can be one of the guiding posts for the forestry program to look at where we

see heat already occurring and see if there are tree planting opportunities within those areas.

Their decision won't solely be made based on that. Of course, they have, you know, are there

available locations for trees within those parts of the city? Are there other constraints? But it

can be more information for the departments. And so we've consulted with many of the departments

in even just this initial work to understand the vulnerability. And we would certainly

think about how to integrate resiliency, thinking, kind of mindset, and incorporating the information

that we've uncovered into future projects across different topic areas. So we would meet what we've

we've already met with Department of Housing staff and we would continue to share information

with their staff. When I was in San Mateo County, we talked about how to build more,

build more resilient housing because San Mateo County had a priority of building more housing

and it had a priority of addressing climate vulnerability. So we put out a whole toolkit

about how to address both our housing goals and our resiliency goals as an organization.

We worked with the Department of Housing to develop that so we could look for strategies like that that help us achieve building more housing, which is, of course, a priority, and how to build more resiliency.

You know, newer buildings have cooling more often.

They can actually be a source of resiliency.

I mean, I think this is getting into comments, but I think it's super important to not be, we could be working against each other, like asking for money when, frankly, the low-income people in our community that I talk to, they just want housing.

they don't want resiliency kits if that means that you're spending a lot of money on that and

not on house um so and the same for cooling people just want trees structures all over the place

but and i think you could help by talking to the departments you could work with them or against

them i just want to make sure that you have that perspective but now i'm going into comments so

are there other questions

Okay. So then now, now we're at the part where people publicly speak.

So are there any comments from the audience, either in person? Yes.

So I'd like to try to answer your question. So I think frustration you're feeling may stem from the fact that the question that your advisors, staff advisors, Cascadia, isn't the right visionary question.

So the right visionary question is, what has to happen to get us in 2045 or whatever the appropriate year is to the kind of greenhouse gas emissions and the kind of resiliency that we want to see?

The visionary answer is perhaps a set of scenarios of how there are probably multiple ways to get there.

All of them are hard, but you need to know what the possible 2045 realities are and then decide which one you want to pursue in five year steps.

But if you don't have that vision of 2045, I doubt that you'll be able to get a 2030, 2035, 2040 set of steps to achieve it.

One needs to begin with the end in mind.

And so that's, I think, where your frustration comes from, is that question has never been asked to my knowledge.

And I've been in this room for 15 years.

I was in this room when the first 2050 goal of being 80% below 2005 was set.

I was in the room when it was decided to have a 2045 goal.

I was here when we decided to do a 4.7% reduction every year.

I mean, I really track this all.

And the challenge is in the role that you play, you don't have the support you need to answer these really challenging visionary questions.

And so whatever you do with Cascadia or whatever consultancy you use in the future, I think

it's really important to focus on getting them to answer that question.

What does this world look like?

And just one quick example, vulnerability to soft stories and two-story old apartment

buildings will kill a lot of people if an earthquake comes along.

Climate change will kill a lot of people in a very different way.

It won't all happen on the same day.

It will happen over time.

Can you pull these two things together? Can you save people both from building collapse and from heat and smoke? Maybe you can. That should be part of the visionary answer that you need to hear.

So I see no more members in the audience. Are there virtual members of the public who want to speak?

Next we have Hala Alshawani.

Excuse me.

Who are now allowed to speak?

Yes, good evening, sustainability committee members and city staff.

I'm Hala Alshawani.

I'm a longtime resident in Mountain View.

I found the consultant presentation very interesting.

The three things that jumped out at me were very non-intuitive and not expected. Where they showed those really hot and dangerous places in Mountain View, they seemed to be in places that I would not have expected to see them, like the parks, Costa Park, Sullivan Park.

I think there was one other park. And the reason it seems like the root cause was mentioned in the consultant report, they were either plastic turf or lack of trees or the presence and or presence of, you know, concrete and cement.

And then the one by the freeway, which was interesting too, the diesel particulates and the polluted air, which also produces, of course, greenhouse gas emissions.

Those were really, really hot areas.

And when I was looking at that and listening to that, I was thinking these could be mitigated with policies that really should not be difficult to implement.

And I know the biodiversity plan that the forestry folks are working on definitely includes some of these mitigations.

so it's easy to to you know think of well plastic turf let's eliminate plastic turf

let's uh make it illegal to have plastic turf in mountain view i mean that's um that's a very

attainable uh solution to to lowering the the uh you know the danger in those parks and the schools

that we saw, increasing the number of green trees, green canopy.

I mean, that's another thing that I know the biodiversity plan has, the draft that I've

seen have definitely encouraged that and have some good suggestions about how and where

to do that.

That should be attainable.

And then keeping any green barrier that we have by the freeway.

That's something that we should really incorporate in our protection of trees and green canopy.

So you have these low-hanging fruit solutions that are already some of them being discussed in other departments.

So definitely collaborating and pushing really for them as solutions, as goals to attain very soon, sooner rather than later.

I think it could make some positive impact.

Thank you.

Do we have any other members of the public virtually?

No other of these hands.

Okay.

So we're back to the committee.

We'll close oral communications.

and it's time for committee discussion and a possible motion.

Do people want to start discussion?

Sure.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was really stuck when I read this,

that there aren't as many things that we have to, as many broad subjects that we have to work on

resilience as we might have thought. I mean, basically, we found out that cooling is a big

problem, right? Extreme heat days. We found that localized flooding can be, or actually,

I want to talk about that. I think localized flooding can be a big deal. And air pollution

from fires is a big deal.

So then I think that's just three things.

We've already managed sea level rise

or we're working on sea level rise.

So we have four topics.

That's not, we shouldn't, I mean,

we've identified them, that's good.

Then I think the other thing that we have to do

based on what the chair was talking about,

what you were talking about,

what we all know is that we can't count on the federal government to help us out along these

lines like we thought we could three or four years ago. The IRA and the BIL are pretty much

defunct. And so we need to look at what is within our kin. What can we do? And that is a very major

you know that's a kind of a major paradigm shift in a sense but it's one that I think is very

necessary and it's what you were talking about I think with focus so I think that that's what

we really need to worry about is what can we do and and the other thing is what can we do

not even five years down the road, what can we do next year? You know, I don't really think,

I mean, some of these things obviously will take longer, but some of them we could start

very, very soon. And, or we could just identify that they're part of our cooling process. For

instance, the heat pump thing. I mean, we all talk about heat pumps as if it's just about

decarbonization, but it's not because in a large part of the community, which was, you know, there

was that interesting chart about when all the housing was built, pretty much stuff that was

built in before the seventies didn't have any air conditioning. That's a lot of our, a lot of

our housing stock. Certainly the area I live in, I mean, everybody had to put it in. It didn't come

with it. And so upgrading to a heat pump does that. And I think we need to recognize that

that's another reason why we want to do that. Then another thing I want to talk about is

localized flooding. And there's basically two kinds of flooding that people typically talk about.

There's riverine and coastal flooding. That's the kind of flooding that occurs when water that's supposed to be in a stream or a bay gets out of it.

and that's the kind of flooding that somebody like San Clara Valley Water District deals with

or the Corps of Engineers deals with that's not what the City of Mountain View deals with

the kind of flooding we deal with is the kind of flooding that happens when the water doesn't get

into the creek properly in other words our storm water system isn't adequate storm or we have too

much paving or we don't have enough stuff to absorb it all of those things contribute to it

but stormwater systems are traditionally designed to handle a 10-year flood that's it and with this

intensification of rainfall we're going to have a lot of little bursts that function like more than

10-year storms but they are very very localized now the way we handle those now we do we we have

identified in our community what we call hot spots and they are areas where you know we know a storm

water storm drain doesn't work well or there's a low spot in a road or you know i mean um or just

or there's likely to be more brush there's a lot of reasons that you have them but but they're not

new um uh our public works department knows what they are and so does the water district they're

mapped. We don't have them on a map in here. That is a major flaw of this. We need to add

the hotspots. They are identified as part of the community rating system. So there is maps for

those. And we need to concentrate on that because when, I mean, it's true that we could have, you

know, some biblical flood that would, you know, wipe out houses, et cetera, et cetera.

And we may very well have that someday.

And that's what all the planning for the 100-year floodplain and the 500-year floodplain, it's

very, very, when it happens, it's awful.

But every year, every year we have localized flooding.

And the thing that's so important about this is if you have localized flooding on 101,

Well, what does that do? That means that everybody that's on 101 right there has to be diverted off of 101 and they have to go somewhere else or say on El Camino.

There's a number of places on El Camino. We have localized flooding. It's a big problem.

So we get on it fast. But I think that's something we're responsible for and we can work on.

And it's in our capital improvement project to work on our stormwater system.

So to me, that is the biggest hole in this vulnerability evaluation that I see.

And it's not something we can't plug.

We can, but it hasn't been plugged.

And I think it needs to be added into this.

And then the other thing I talked about a little when the question was really a comment about the collaboration.

I really do think that, you know, along the lines of this looking inward, you know, what we can do collaboratively with Silicon Valley Clean Energy, community services, that sort of stuff.

I mean, that's really powerful.

and that's what we should work on and again i don't think it's necessarily stuff we should be

doing in five years i think it's just stuff we should be either ratcheting up or doing next year

or the year after i mean i really i don't see why we have to wait and um and uh

then another thing i thought was interesting uh you know i've i've i've been a um

you know as a hydrologist i worry about weather etc i've always done that

i was really surprised to find out that they're claiming the average humidity in mountain view is

70 you know because can be 75 i watch the humidity at my house on a regular basis it's almost never

that high and so i wonder if this is something that varies throughout the community and it would

be interesting to know that um and uh because 75 is like yeah it's pretty high and i i mean a lot

of times i know when i look at the humidity it's it's in the 30 or 40 range so or maybe maybe we

have our meter in the wrong place anyway um but i would be interested as if this is this a you know

is this it but I did I did google it and the AI says said exactly what Cascadia said so

certainly somewhere it's you know it's 75 but that's uh that um that's a lot and um

and then another thing that um I wondered about is that that we didn't talk about it here

that is power outages.

It was mentioned a little bit,

but it wasn't talked about too extensively.

And I'm sort of curious about,

is that because we feel like

we don't have control over that?

Is that because it's not,

it hasn't been,

if you look at it statistically,

maybe it hasn't been that big an issue here

I mean, I just felt like I wasn't sure that that was handled well.

And I just wondered about it.

Because I've certainly had friends that live, for instance, in the Santa Cruz Mountains that have had their power cut off for like two weeks at a time.

And that is just, you know, that is just devastating.

But in our area, unless there's some damage to a part of the power grid, things typically go off for a couple hours at a time.

That's what people had.

It was a major complaint last year.

People had them off for a couple of days over and over again.

Okay.

Well, then anyway.

I'm not my neighbor.

I wonder about that, if the power outage thing is because, you know, as we move forward, we're all getting more electricity and we're oriented.

And and again, one of the things that we could maybe not make in super big in roads and but we could certainly set the course for is making sure that there's more.

we could be looking into microgrids

or particularly for our

critical facilities and also we could

be putting more emphasis in our community and with SVCE

on getting batteries. So those were

some things I kind of wondered about as vulnerabilities as the power

thing and the localized flooding. And then

But generally, I feel like the recommendation is reasonable.

I just really want to jump to the actions real fast.

I don't feel like we have to have, I don't feel like we need, we don't want to get into the perfect is the enemy of the good thing.

You know, I think that it's perfectly acceptable for us to, because we're at this on a regular basis, it's perfectly acceptable for us to try a program, get it started and find out that, oh, this part of it doesn't work.

And then we go back and we just fix it.

We don't need to set these programs in stone and just let them keep running and running and running if we know that there are parts of them that aren't working properly.

um so so i i'm much more for let's jumping in and get some of these things done um and also

i was fascinated by that heat and um i would really like a better explanation of what some

ground truthing of what is on the ground at those sites and is there a commonality because

I mean is it artificial turf are we finding that that's that's really you know a huge contributor

to to heat um uh to heat islands here well that's really interesting information and um we

could take action on that that you know has more than just heat implications so um

I would really hope the ground truth.

I guess that goes to a question.

What is ground truthing that you expect to do in the next phase?

I was wondering if Ms. Fujikoa could speak to what ground truthing looks like.

But, you know, we would meet with organizations that are directly serving the community.

So, for example, the day worker centers.

They have workers who throughout the year are trying to go out and do outdoor type work.

Are they experiencing loss in wages or heat impacts, things like that?

Same with the community services agency.

They're going door to door with working with people who live in their vehicles.

Are they experiencing some of the vulnerabilities that we see typically arise when we have extreme heat events?

and then it can be more detailed um looking at the localized flooding the stormwater issues

or that's what you would get i think with these listening sessions yes that's but but ground

truthing i mean usually ground truthing is somebody goes out and looks and says okay what's

in all those sites yeah what's in all those sites and um and uh and certainly our um our

it doesn't have to it can be somebody separate but it could it could very well to be done with our

um you know with our our parks department really briefly so like that's sustainability staff could

you just drive to every site and look at it you guys can go out on the satellite view

that's what i was doing yeah you can look at satellite views you go out on your bicycles i

mean there's so many different ways but but i mean it's just going out there and saying what's

really there right um i think that that especially on that heat map we yeah because certainly before

recommending resiliency strategies right like we would want to go to the hot spots that we see

and see what the conditions are on the ground if there are any differences from what the satellite

imagery reveals if there's just more information you know we've we've um on a previous sea level

rise vulnerability assessment we did this very detailed mapping of the flooding but you know

like there's an underpass that was just not caught on the map and so like water just goes right

through right and so you have to go there on the ground and see things like that you know people

were like well it floods there it's like well it shouldn't you know the map doesn't really say it

should um until you understand that there's little channels ways that the water can move so i don't

And Ms. Fujikawa, did you have anything to add to that?

I think Ms. Lee, you covered it well.

I think the maps are a really great tool to use,

especially the heat maps to kind of check that hotspot

to see if like, are those areas lacking shade, trees?

And I think also like visiting a lot of those mobile home parks

that are in within those high heat or flood risks

and being able to kind of do some of that ground truthing there.

So I think for that, it could look a variety of different ways.

And even with community engagement, we've oftentimes brought a lot of these heat and flood maps

to these listening sessions to help them do some of that ground truthing to say,

like, you know, these are areas where we do experience localized flooding that's not here on the map.

So I think that's a really critical part of the CVA that I feel like was a little bit limited in terms of the initial ground truthing, but we're hoping to do some more of that if we were to move towards a resilient strategy.

So do you mind if I just say, I usually speak last, but I'm since.

I was going to make a motion, so you should go ahead and say whatever you want to say.

In order to support, that's what I wanted to say. In order to support emotion, I'm feeling like I need a little tightening up. I'm basically supportive of doing a five-year plan that includes both.

But I feel like we also have the goals to get to 2045 and that I feel like the way it's presented in the staff recommendation.

I don't know how much vulnerability you're going to do and how much decarbonization.

I don't really know what I'm endorsing here.

And I feel like if we don't, you know, we keep marching towards, it's been on council for over five years. We're talking about another five years, so 10 years towards the 2045. And I don't have, maybe this is part of what Bruce was saying. I don't really know what our plan is to get there or if we have one. And I'm not comfortable with that.

So I'm not going to be able to. And now we're throwing vulnerability in with it. And there were many, many things said in terms of vulnerability. I don't know if we're going to take on mental health and health, which honestly, I don't think is something the city should do.

I, you know, I don't really know what I'm endorsing and I need it to be a little more defined than the way it is in this.

And I'm feeling that I'm fine with addressing vulnerability, but I think a lot of them in terms of the hotspots are very overlapping with other projects we're doing, which is good.

With other projects we're doing and things that residents really want.

We're having a lot of problems, for example, with parks.

in that we can't assess the fees.

As we densify, we should be producing more parks,

but we can no longer assess the fees we used to on developments.

So that's a problem.

That's going to come up.

We're going to have to address it.

It's going to come up with our revenue measure.

I don't know, and residents are going to be very opinionated about it.

When we endorse this tonight, I don't know,

are we saying we're going to put other things in a revenue measure that,

that what are they? Are they mental health things?

I don't know where we're going with this and I need it a little more defined

or I'm not going to be able to vote for it.

It's just too, it's too, I'm saying the same thing over and over again.

It's too loose.

We have a definite goal and we have no,

we haven't spelled out how we're getting there.

and now we're adding vulnerability in.

So we're doing more projects

and I don't know how many of them

are decarbonization projects.

And we've lost a lot of the ones we can do

because of the state and local,

the state and federal changes.

So I need things more defined

and maybe other community members

figure out how to define it more.

Chair, if I may,

I think one way to think of this

is that permission to pursue developing a plan

would bring more clarity

as to kind of what we were actually proposing.

And we would bring it back to this committee

and of course, council ultimately.

So this is really a contract amendment

to enable us to move forward into developing,

like actually fleshing out

what the next steps might look like.

And then we would come back to the committee

with an actual proposal of like, here's what we would think the next five years look like.

And at that point, I could answer like, is this a resiliency thing? Is it a decarbonization thing?

I mean, I'm hoping to shift the way we talk about it to being that this is our climate work.

But still, we can talk about how things address vulnerabilities more within our vulnerability

assessment, or they address our carbon neutrality goal. But this contract amendment that would go

to council, of course, and we could certainly refine it before it goes to council, would then

allow us to put some more structure to it, right? Like all we have is really the concept, and then

we're asking for permission to build it out. So then you could say, yes, this is a plan that the

council, the committee, and then ultimately, I would hope the council could feel comfortable

adopting, but, you know, we're asking for permission to be able to answer that question,

I guess. So I guess what I'm saying is that if we, if within that answer, we don't have,

so between now and if we are focusing primarily on the next five years, between now and 24,

35, we're 25% of the way there. If we don't have even, if the decarbonization projects don't

foresee even solving 25% of that, then when it's presented to me, I'm not going to be able to

support it. We can't put that off anymore. We either have to say we're not making it and we're

not doing carbon offsets because the atmosphere has changed on a federal level and we just can't

do it or we have to get 25 percent of the way there because otherwise we're making bad policy

and we're putting future councils in well they'll probably just say past councils made bad policy

but I don't feel like being but councils who didn't think about what they should have been

thinking about. I think earlier this year I would have been able to say fairly confidently that we

can get 25% of the way there in the next five years. I want to know, do you think we can or

can't? I mean, sure, maybe I'll vote for it tonight. But when I see that, I want some thought

into we can't have a 2045 goal and no goalposts between now and then. I'm just not going to

support that. Yeah, I mean, I think

right now, the math doesn't add up to us getting to carbon neutrality.

absent offsets by 2045. But, you know, in two weeks time, I'm meeting with cities from across

the state. We're doing a day long retreat with the local climate policy alliance gathering of cities

to talk about our legislative priorities for the fall session around electricity affordability.

Maybe we can talk about direct access and like changing all the ways we supply electricity to

our communities, there's room to make big progress at the state level, even beyond our borders,

which is even better as far as I'm concerned. If we could get 10% of the way there, but have that

statewide, that would actually enhance our outlook for the vulnerability side of the house. You know,

we're just going to be reducing emissions overall much more. So, um,

I think that things may evolve.

You know, we may have a North Star of a goal for carbon neutrality, but we may be looking

at the whole system.

You know, Member Showalter talked about flooding, and we think about flooding at the local level.

We've convened elected officials from across Santa Clara County to talk about flooding

as it crosses our jurisdictions.

We've been working with the Climate Collaborative.

Then there's Baycan, which is the whole Bay Area, looking at the same issue of flooding.

And we have to be able to move from all of these different levels.

It might not be that we hit a specific goal at our own city level, but we get farther at the regional level or the countywide level.

I think maybe there's a way for us to move from very specific goals, like focusing only on the goals and thinking about moving more towards thinking about the whole ecosystem and where can we make the most change in a given moment.

Well, that's really and that I think is what Councilmember Showalter was saying. I want more action now. I want less paperwork and more action now. So whatever this can do to do that, that, you know, that's what I would like.

I would also like more collaboration with other departments that are what you've been doing. But

I think there's certain traditional ways that parks have been planned, which includes a lot of

grayscaping and recreational facilities that now have rubberized surfaces and, you know,

the plastic grass, plastic turf. And I think they may have impacts on the wider community. And I

think our community, particularly in the Cuesta Park area, have been speaking up. I don't think

they want that, but I think that's the traditional way of planning suburban parks. I think that's

what our consultant has pushed. He hasn't pushed trees. He's pushed shade structures, and people

are livid about that. I think your engagement, sustainability staff's engagement with that

department could be very helpful. But I think if you go off and do things that are other projects

that are resiliency projects that are not engaged with them, then it could be not very helpful.

Yeah, it might feel in the shorter term more effective because we might appear to be going

faster. But if we're working at cross purposes over time, it doesn't work.

Yes. I guess I just viewed all this very differently.

I guess what I would tell me if I interpreted all this incorrectly. I viewed this

report as a preview of a broader and more comprehensive report instead of plans

and a request to amend the contract to basically integrate everything so that yes we're spending

more time um maybe a few extra months getting everything together but once that is all together

with all the actions and everything identified we'll be in a much better place to move more

quickly than we would have been had we done those things separately and in the meantime we're doing

all the other things like this isn't just because we're doing this and studying it doesn't mean that

all the other things that are going on those are those are those are all still happening

the chief sustainability officer there's a piece of the picture that you're missing what is that

which is that when you were not yet on this committee and when margaret was on we had a

meeting where we cut down the number of, we cut down, there was a discussion around doing a lot

of paperwork and not a lot of implementing a lot of projects. And so we kind of put the resiliency,

we said do the vulnerability report, but maybe we won't, I don't know how we do a deep dive into it

because we want, what Patches said? We want to see action. We're doing a lot of planning and no action

or little action.

So that's a piece.

And then on top of that,

we have what happened

at the federal and state level

so that making it even harder

to take decarbonization action.

So I think that's some

of where I'm coming from.

That makes sense.

I guess what I'm saying is doing this

does not take away

from all of the short-term actions

in the CIP

and all the other plans

that are going on

that are already in progress.

I don't view moving forward with this as somehow not allowing us to move quickly on all the other things which are coming up in, I only allotted two hours for this semester.

I am one, but that's what the counterpoint said, but that's okay.

I was trying to move us along since we're still on item one and our two hour window for this

committee meeting is expired. But I will, I'm happy to move the staff recommendation because

I think it makes sense if there are friendly amendments or other things that you would

like to attach to it, that's fine too. Just to kind of get things moving. But if we're,

if you're overall uncomfortable with this and you'd rather do separate plans then i'm happy to

hear that i mean i'm a little uncomfortable with it and i'm and the other thing i should say is i

you know i appreciate having some back and forth because this group discusses important things and

we have no ability to have a brown act group right so this is essentially kind of our discussion

place so i feel a little bit differently about this than i do about council meetings where if

If it were this important to me, I would pick two other people and go off and discuss it for several hours.

So, yeah, I was hoping we could come up with some quick tweaks that would make sure that we emphasized what Pat said, you know, actually doing.

I don't know what you mean about the decarbonization projects that are in the CIP.

I don't know.

I mean, the next item is decarbonization roadmap with many, many things to work on.

And then there's all the other.

You mean like the active transportation plan?

That and the urban forestry plan.

All the other things that are going to.

Okay.

Other projects.

I don't think of them as in the CIP, but other projects we have, yes.

Yeah, the recycled water plants.

So, Pat, you said getting things done.

Do you have any?

Yeah, I guess I would, you know, I would, you know, your motion.

You're making a motion?

I'm going to just.

Or you can make a motion.

I haven't made a motion.

So feel free.

Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, the motion is, I think it's really important that the, for

sure that the heat map be ground truth extensively and that sort of because because it seems like

so that's one thing because it seems like the extreme heat and the wildfire smoke

are really impacted by that and and then we want to get to actions the the goal should be

to get to actions that can be administered

or at least begun in the next year or two.

And that would be decarbonization actions?

No, resilience actions.

Oh, well, I will not vote for it

unless it's decarbonization.

Well, they should be both.

I mean, to me-

Well, I don't want to just name vulnerability

and not decarbonization.

Well, I mean, the decarbonization actions that we have long term going forward are we have the amended reach code, which recorded that already.

We did that already, but it's important.

We have.

What additional decarbonization actions are you talking about?

Last week, we sent a letter to the Air District to encourage them to continue moving forward with implementation of their appliance rule.

So the heat pump water heater program is meant to accelerate the transition to electric appliances.

We will be presenting later this evening about the EV charging proposal for multifamily properties,

which is hopefully helping to build out enough infrastructure to allow residents and multifamily to switch their transportation to decarbonize the transportation.

We have our general outreach programs, which have been focused around partnering with SVCE and promoting the rebate opportunities,

looking at legislative opportunities, working with the climate collaborative on regional grant applications.

We have three solar projects that are underway, each of the two gymnasiums at our middle schools and then at the senior center.

And we're vetting an additional three solar projects.

We have the fleet electrification plan that was our policy, excuse me, that was adopted by council in June.

And we've been working with departments to move forward and bring AV charging for our fleet so that we can transition that to be all electric.

And then we continue to look for decarbonization within our own city facilities.

So as heating systems fail, we're replacing them with electric.

Um, we early moved our landscaping, we're moving our landscaping tools, um, to be all

electric as well.

I think the city just announced its first park that is going to be serviced with all

electric landscaping equipment.

And we've been, um, bringing additional infrastructure to help with having charging capacity.

I just approved an invoice today to cover out of the sustainability action plan, um,

charging infrastructure for some of our landscaping equipment so that CSD can

service our parks with all electric tools. You know, eventually, you know,

we're transitioning as, um, vehicles, uh,

reach their end of life or not vehicles.

There's like a ride on mower, but, um, equipment and landscaping equipment.

Um, I mean, that's, that's some of our decarbonization work.

I think what I need is that this plan, the five-year plan, either has a plan, includes a plan, and says it's an attempt to get to 25% of the way there, or saying that we can't.

And if we can't, we have to reconsider the 2045 because we can't, you know, I mean, when I started where we will be since I started this two fifths of the way there.

And if we haven't gotten even five percent, then we're not making it.

And we have to say that.

So I want some since we have a reality check at the end.

I need some gold.

So you need some quantification for the decarbonization.

not for the resiliency i need some goalposts for the decarbonization and they can you we can not

meet them in five years that's fine but or you can tell me there's no way we can do it you know

or we're only going to get five percent of the way there anything but i need some i i need something

to say that we're doing because the charging stations it it's like

there are two different levels you can do them at it's 150 charging stations

home charging. That's hardly any. So if that's our plan for getting to carbon neutral at 2045,

we should just say right now we're not doing it. These are little tiny steps. And I wanted

to acknowledge it's fine if we're taking little tiny steps forward because the rest of the country

is taking big steps backward. So it's fine, but I want to be honest about it. I want to know it.

I don't want it to be obscure and then later pretend I didn't know what's happening because I do know what's happening.

I mean, I think I was just going to say I'm remembering the materials from the last meeting where the local strategies were listed and estimates were given around the carbon reduction potential with those strategies.

And then at various points, we've compared that to what would have been the carbon reduction potential, had some of the other, you know, strategies at the larger level than the local level, the state level and the federal level.

And I'm recalling that it is in the, you know, less than 5%.

So what we have identified so far as things that we can do locally, save offsets, you

know, other than offsets are not going to get us to 25% of the reduction in five years.

What I've also heard Ms. Lee say is that there are a lot of people who are as bothered by this as we are and having these kinds of hard conversations also to see what some of those bigger vision, bigger possibility items could be.

but they're not yet developed.

We don't yet know what they are

and what their reduction potential would be.

And I'm just wondering, is that fair?

Yeah, I think the final thing,

I mean, the Inflation Reduction Act went away in July.

So it's very recent.

Much of this change is significant and recent.

It's not even been six months.

the ev incentives within the ira only expired in october um so we don't have a plan yet um

but i will say in some ways it's not that we can't get to zero but at what price i think also

as part of the question we could certainly um just electrify every home in the community

but it's hard for us as staff to bring forward recommendations and we could get us to zero

Like I could get us to zero. We could get there through offsets. We could get there through subsidizing an electric vehicle for every household or paying the cost to electrify every household.

You know, those are ways that get us to zero. So mathematically, maybe I misspoke when I said that I can't see a pathway to it mathematically.

But it's hard as staff to bring forward a recommendation like that.

We have put our hat in the ring to participate in PG&E's pilot for neighborhood scale decarbonization, where the utility would pay the cost as opposed to investing in their natural gas upgrades.

But we have to be selected.

You know, we've raised our hand to participate.

But, you know, there are ways to get to zero. But if we do it all on our own, if we just say that the federal government has taken away quite a bit of our emission reduction potential, it would be extremely costly.

You know, we did sort of back of the envelope, and I think it was something like $750 million to electrify just the homes because PG&E says $50,000 per home to electrify it.

And of course, that will vary grossly.

But if we wanted to just think in very broad numbers or, you know, it's now without the Inflation Reduction Act, maybe it's $15,000 or $20,000 more per vehicle.

So we could bring forward strategies like that.

but it would swamp even our revenue measure.

Not all of those things would even be allowed

as things to fund through a revenue measure.

We'd have to identify different ways,

different revenue streams.

So what we've been trying to do is think through

where can we apply pressure in the system

to help things move more quickly

or to help them align better

so that we can be as efficient as possible with the resources that the city has,

which are admittedly limited.

Every city, no matter how affluent, of course, we still have limited resources and many priorities.

So how do we align our priorities so that we're trying to meet our housing priorities,

our green spaces priorities, and our climate priorities?

Being as efficient as possible with our resources.

we could bring forward a plan that could get us to 25% reduction in the next five years but

it would be extremely difficult to pay for it so I would just like since we have since we have a

goal that's 20 years out I need some accounting for whether we think we're making it or not

and I'm not well now I'm repeating this because I I think that if we're not making it we need to say

we're not making it early.

We need to be honest about it.

We could certainly share the results of our wedge.

I mean, we're not done with the wedge analysis.

That was only half of the local measures.

We can try to project out additional things,

even things that are more costly,

and share with the full council the results of that.

I think that's what we need to do.

Absolutely, yeah.

yeah i don't disagree with that at all okay i think i'm just i'm just from a strategic level

i'm trying to think okay we started with a goal of 2045 the world changed around us we can only

do so many things right now right and one of the things there are low hanging fruit and things that

we can absolutely do that we're already working on and that probably some things that we'll identify

through this but the other thing that you go the other thing that i think you do strategically when

you're in a position where you can't move forward like you want to do is you you take a step back

and you put the plan in place or do the analysis that you need so you there's a goal post but you

also need to know where you're currently starting from and have a strategy of how to get from here

to there both under the current world and then if the world changes again we don't have to go back

and redo this. We've got a whole set of things that we can very quickly start to implement on a

timeline. That's why I think it's, I'd much rather we take this extra few months while we're in a

not great position to put ourselves into a really good position for a world where hopefully,

and I'm not sure it will, but hopefully we'll be in a better scenario in two, three years.

And I would just like to add to that, the sustainability task force that met in 2016, 17,

there did put together a list of actions and decarbonization that went along with those

actions. But they didn't talk about vulnerability. Say it was all about, it was all about reducing

GHGs. I think they did say we should do a vulnerability assessment. And they did say we

should, and this is where we are. And to me, I look at vulnerability as adaptation. We're not

mitigating climate change with these actions. We're adapting to it. And I think as local leaders,

it's our job to identify what are the adaptation mechanisms and things that, as I said before,

are within our, you know, within our ability to do?

What are the things we can do that will make us all more comfortable

as we face this new reality?

And, you know, a big one I've pushed a lot has sea level rise.

And I'm very glad we're making really good progress on that.

But I think what this shows is that there are some others that are

really good on the caribbean.

going and um like like you know like the heat centers one of the things that the clothing

centers one of the things they brought up that's really obvious but we haven't done um and until

somebody tells you you need to do it you don't think it's obvious is we're gonna extend the

hours you know so we have to we're gonna have to put together a plan for okay how can we keep the

library open until 10 o'clock but it's just it's not it's not rocket science we can do it but um

so uh i just think that's where we are with this plan so we're talking about those um those

adaptations okay so you added something regarding you made the motion you added something regarding

the heat map heat map and we're adding something regarding quantification do you have of

some guess, some quantification of how much decarbonization we'll be able to do,

which may be a shifting policy landscape, but some...

Quantification of decarbonization expectations.

Okay, that's a good phrase.

And then the other thing I would like is to maximize overlap with our existing projects, because I would prefer that we do a job, that the job we do with Parks and Recs and the ATP and urban forestry and so forth, be informed by the work that you're doing, because I think that would be very helpful.

Absolutely. And then I believe member Showalter also mentioned adding more additional information about localized flooding.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think we need to add a map about localized flooding and hotspots and how we deal with that.

So will you accept the overlap with our?

Yes.

You phrased it better than me. With existing programs.

I'll accept it back.

Okay.

Okay.

Is that clear?

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

Now you can think about Chair Hicks.

Yes.

And Mersha Walter.

Yes.

Member Clark.

Yes.

Okay.

Now we move on to 5-2, which is local actions under consideration for the decarbonization

roadmap.

And this item will be presented by Sustainability Manager Rebecca Luck.

Thank you, Chair Hicks, and good evening to the members of the Council Sustainability

Committee and the public.

I'm here to provide an update on our decarbonization roadmap initiative.

I don't have a formal presentation tonight, as I want to keep this item brief given the

number of agenda items before you tonight.

However, we are going to display attachment four from a staff report as a point of reference.

So last month, we presented an initial list of local actions under consideration for the five-year decarbonization roadmap.

And the committee provided feedback, and we committed to returning today to show you how we incorporated that input.

At the November meeting, the committee identified several guiding principles for our roadmap.

One was the emphasis on substantial emission reduction actions.

Oh, yeah, the table.

It's scrolling on to the attachment.

Oh, sorry.

Okay.

So one of them was emphasis on substantial emissions, emission reduction actions, review the plan regularly every three to five years.

And as things change beyond our city of Mountain View borders, collaboration with Silicon Valley Clean Energy or other partners is crucial.

So that's another exciting principle that we took away from our meeting last month.

And identifying cost-saving actions as a priority.

And enhancing community education and outreach efforts.

Additionally, the committee wanted to include specific actions, and those have been incorporated in this updated list.

They're shown in bold, italicized.

one was explore the integration of autonomous vehicles particularly minibuses into transportation

into mountain views transportation systems so this measure has been incorporated into the expand and

electrified mountain view shuttle services another was to include groups to support outreach and

education and all actions that involve these efforts and so we've we've included it anywhere

in the table where we talk about outreach and marketing and education.

And another recommendation was to provide education on Mountain View's bicycle infrastructure.

So we've included that as part of the action under Explore Accelerated Implementation of

the Active Transportation Plan. And then for buildings, two new actions have been added as

result of last month's meeting which is enhanced permit streamlining for emission reduction

activities occurring in construction and explore integrating emission reduction actions into other

city policy and programs i just want to emphasize that the what was presented in november was a very

early draft of our initial action list and we're considering more ideas such as reach codes for

commercial buildings and programs that support multifamily building electrification and as

Miss Lee mentioned the last item the PG&E neighborhood decarbonization program

and as we progress in identifying these local actions some of the actions you see tonight may

be removed and others may be added allowing us to determine which the which best areas are to

focus on over the next five years to meet our 2045 decarbonization goals and we'll of course return

to the Council Sustainability Committee

throughout the next year

as we develop the five-year roadmap.

And we appreciate your ideas

as well as any members from the public.

Over the next few months,

you could feel free to reach out to me or Danielle

with any suggestions that you have.

And with that, I'll return back over to Chair Hicks.

Thank you.

All right, so now it's time to ask any committee questions.

Just a comment for later.

Okay. Any questions?

So my only question is about the structure of this.

So I assume we can just say yes to all of them and then you evaluate, not that you actually

go out and do all of them, then you evaluate which ones are the best next steps to take.

I assume that's what we're doing.

Okay.

Are there comments from members of the public in person?

Indeed.

I believe all of you received two documents from me.

One was a presentation I gave at Carbon Free Mountain View a week and a half ago, essentially sharing my concerns about the Cascadia report.

And then also there was an email about the dirty direct access energy that produces a very substantial amount of greenhouse gas emissions in Mountain View.

It has for decades.

One of the core recommendations of the 2017 task force was to find a way to make that electricity zero carbon, like Silicon Valley Clean Energy was at that time and like PG&E is now.

Now, the approach that was recommended back in 2017, 2018 was essentially to seek voluntary commitments from companies or entities that use direct access energy to choose a zero carbon direct access supplier.

And if they didn't do that, to change the business licensing fee so that they would pay more for business licensing than they were saving by using dirty energy.

this to me seems not as bold as ending the flow of pipe natural gas by 2045 but between those two

ideas neither of which cost the city any money and in fact the first idea could make the city money

I think you would solve that 25 percent in five years and I'm very disappointed that the carbon

neutral end of flow by 2045 was taken off the list of recommended items to study I think it

should go back on. In addition, I think that putting solar thermal hot water heaters on

apartment buildings to preheat the water that goes into their boilers could be a very effective thing

in our lovely solar climate as the country, as our environment warms. And I'm also disappointed

that the recommendation around time of sale, which was briefly discussed, but not really put forward

in a positive way, I can point it off the list. I don't know whether this is going to be, would be

a big deal. Berkeley won't be implementing it for another month, but I have a feeling that it should

be modeled because it is modelable. Many of the suggestions for, you know, what is the term and

table for, things we should do or we should be considering doing are not modelable. Simply,

there's no numbers associated with them. Cascadia didn't show their assumptions,

except for population, where I think they got the assumption wrong. And it's really hard for

me to say that this is the kind of analysis that you should be paying a third of a million dollars

for when they don't even show their assumptions. If this were a college class proposal and I were

a professor, I would flunk them. So that's my thoughts. Okay. Are there any virtual speakers?

Yes, Mary Day 2.

Mary, are you there?

Yes, just waiting for the unmute symbol.

I wanted to also echo the comment about considering a time of sale.

requirements for putting money aside as they do in Berkeley to help future owners electrify.

Parts of the Bay Area have much more complicated time of sale requirements as regards

sewage. So inspections are required and actual improvements, I believe, are required to be made

at time of sale in certain of the counties that have apparently really poor water quality. So

that is a pretty complicated thing to make happen. I'm assuming this is still in place.

that was is there, I don't know, five years ago when I was looking into this. So requiring people

to put money aside in an escrow account for electrification at time of sale. I realize

we're concerned about increasing the cost of housing, but it's a pretty, it would be a relatively

small number, I think what I've seen at Berkeley anyway, that they're being asked to set aside

to help future owners with.

So I feel pretty strongly

that this is a useful thing

to keep an eye on in Berkeley

and to start discussing and considering.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else online?

No one else.

Okay.

Chair Hicks may clarify

both the point of sale

and the end of flow of natural gas

were contained within attachment

for our apologies if we scrolled through it too quickly during the presentation, but it is,

both are still within the staff report. Yes, actually, I have a question regarding that. Is it,

now that several members of the public have brought it up, there's a list of 10 things above

the table. Are those included in the table or not? I don't know if I'm being clear on why I'm asking.

Yeah, page two.

On page two, yeah.

Right, staff report?

Yeah.

How are those included in the preliminary list that we showed at the last meeting?

We had discussion, and I think rather than trying to track all of the changes in real time, we committed to coming back to the committee, to inventory, to make sure that we captured all your additional feedback.

We didn't remove anything from the list, but those items are the things that were incorporated into the list to this expanded list.

So the 10 items are now put into the table, the colored table.

The first five are guiding principles that we took away from the meeting.

And then six through 10 are things that have been actually incorporated into the.

OK, so they're all included in some way, either as guiding principles or incorporated into the table.

Thank you for that clarification.

Maybe it was an additive activity, not a subtractive.

If you go down to the building table in the blue.

Okay, sex.

Sorry, stop, go up again.

For example, there was a recommendation to include groups in outreach and marketing.

So where it's bolded and italicized.

So we added, you know, that wasn't there before.

So those are the comments that were made during the meeting.

and then you show us how you incorporated the specific ones, but not the overall guiding principles.

And if you go down to building the first page, you could still have, yeah, explore time itself.

But then it was, you know, there was some feedback to consider establishing a regional partnership

for that instead of the city just doing it on its own.

And adopt a goal for end of flow of natural gases there.

Yeah, did not change.

And then we had these to ensure education includes contractors,

engage local community groups to assist in educating communities as well.

Okay.

Sorry if that wasn't steered up.

Clarification.

So now it's time for discussion, committee discussion and possible motion.

I had two suggestions.

It's okay.

So I thought a lot about the, because I don't just like saying, no, we shouldn't do this.

Instead, like thinking about something that might be, with respect to time of sale, something that might be replicable, not just here, but in other cities, without increasing the cost of housing and the administrative overhead with time of sale.

And one thought that I had, and this might just, maybe this doesn't make sense, but one thing that we could do is partner with an organization like SVCE on a trial, maybe like for a year or two to see how something goes.

and instead of a specific, like a traditional time of sale requirement,

one thing that we could do is set aside a bucket of funds

and maybe SVCE would be willing to match or cover some portion of it as part of a trial.

We could find the source of funds could be anything.

It could be from the property transfer tax.

It could be from any that we already collect at time of sale

and just have a pool of funds and then say,

okay, if you're a new homeowner,

because we know all the sales that occur,

and let's just say that sales under a certain threshold

do your number of X million dollars.

When those happen, the owners will publicize this,

but we can also send those folks a notice and say like,

hey, you qualify for this grant program to,

we'll match, we'll do,

you qualify for this set of funds to do energy upgrades,

as long as you're using them within a certain timeframe.

And SVCE already has,

and the reason I say partnering with someone like SVCE

is they already have either,

they can themselves or through a partner

kind of vet these very basic applications

just to confirm that folks are,

you know, using the money for heat pumps or other things.

And maybe something like that,

if we were just to do a pilot with them

for a year or something and we were to set aside the funds ourselves and maybe they can match or

at least they partner on the administration of it that might be more equitable and then you're not

you're not imposing a charge on the new homeowner it's it's something that if they're already kind

of paid for through either a property transfer tax or maybe we have grant funding from other

sources for this trial that might work um i don't know if this is a good idea or a bad idea it was

just kind of my play on like a version of time of sale that might be more palatable to certain

interest groups. Well, also, you know, we're both serving on Silicon Valley clean energy. We're

always looking at ways to kind of increase participation in our grant programs and the

electrification. I mean, that's really the goal is with any extra money we have this year, we're

not adding to that kitty but most years we do um we had quite a bit um we want to increase

participation is this a way to increase participation um so i i don't think that's

a bad idea to suggest um i mean i know if someone who you have purchased a new condo for

you know under some some threshold or whatever choose your choose your threshold but then you

If you get a letter in the mail and it's saying like you qualify for $2,500, $3,000 toward energy upgrades and here's a list of things, all you have to do is we know the property records through the county recorder.

So all we have to do is just make sure they're aware of it and then process that and see how it goes.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

It could almost be formatted like a matching rebate, like what we do with our heat pump water heaters now.

Something like that.

Certainly.

Yeah, we would include a measure like that and then fully design it out and actually implement it in the next.

Yeah, so I'm not suggesting kind of moving around.

I'm just saying that could be one play on it.

Thank you.

And then this is sort of a question, but it's also a comment.

You know, I wonder about the multifamily EV charging infrastructure and kind of how effective that is and what are the most effective ways to get people in apartment buildings to, you know, to buy electric cars?

Now, certainly having an electric charger in every carport, if you were building a new one, that's probably easy.

But for retrofits, I'm also wondering about how do we have any information about how people in multifamily homes utilize existing charging facilities around the community?

and to find out, you know, I mean, would it be better for us to have, like, build a gas station

that was essentially a supercharging station that everybody would go in and pay, I don't know,

10 bucks to charge their car or whatever was the amount. And it would charge their car in a half an

I mean, sometimes I wonder whether, you know, the road we're following is the best one.

And with these EV chargers in multifamily homes, it just seems like because of the incredible number of buildings that are involved, it's really a heavy lift.

so if there are other i'm just interested in are the um some of the other things we're doing

effective yeah i think explore actually i think exploring that would be

given that there are faster and faster chargers and they're starting and i'm not on top of all

of them but they're starting to put in faster chargers i used one yesterday or something

but it doesn't it's not faster on my car um i know where but i'm starting to see where they are

and how many of them there are they're not the ultimate five minute ones but they're much faster

so i do it does make me wonder about that but i have to say it's super handy to charge even very

slowly at home overnight overnight oh yeah yeah um and but i do wonder you know what's the bang

for the buck. And I also wonder why aren't we, and I think that Bruce Carney brought this up at

the last Carbon Free Mountain View meeting to some degree, why aren't we, well, he didn't say it this

way, but I'll say it this way. Why aren't we, given the atmosphere we're in now federally and so forth,

and no more clean car campaign, why don't we promote plug-in hybrids more? Because maybe that's

for a lot of people it's really the way to go to electrify then you lose your range anxiety

i don't have um all the answers we do have our final item this evening is a presentation at

a council yeah but but i do think kind of exploring what's the what's the best where's the biggest

bang for the buck? Is it encouraging more fast charging stations? Is it encouraging plug-in

hybrids? Anyway, we are moving. And I will simply, I will, you know, briefly say that we are thinking

of the pilot program for multifamily to address the current situation, you know, being cognizant,

and it's all funded through SVCE grant funds, being cognizant of the fact that we are where

we are now. The infrastructure that we have is what we have now. And what can we do right now

to start that transition to more electric.

Even a plug-in hybrid, if they don't have plugs

where they live in multifamily properties,

then it still doesn't work.

And so we're taking this small pilot to address the need.

We are very excited about the day

when we have fast chargers that are widely available,

but we don't have them yet.

And we don't want to wait and not take any action

until that technology is deployed.

But we aren't investing millions,

tens of millions of dollars into something that we know will be solved in a few years. We want to

just address the current need and start to shift, make early changes. So it might not be the long

term solution that ends up emerging the way that people that live in multifamilies ultimately

charge their vehicles. And we do hope that ultimately they will all be in electric vehicles.

But for now and the disparity that already exists between access to charging for people who are in single family homes and people who are in multifamily properties, it's addressing a need that already exists.

Just to add to that. Yeah, I think, you know, there's going to be a balance, you know, is what we're looking into.

And I can say for one, I had an EV and I lived in an apartment complex.

I returned my EV after having it for two years.

It was hard with small kids to try to find charging and wait for 40 minutes.

And I think their other part was the cost.

If you go to these fast chargers, some of them cost like 68 cents a kilowatt versus

you can charge at home for a lesser amount.

But yeah, I think, you know, the future is still kind of unfolding on how EV charging

is going to work.

But if we're working toward this goal, it's kind of like, well, what are the short-term

solutions that we could provide today for someone to jump into an EV tomorrow? Or do we want that

to be further out? Do we want them to jump in when the infrastructure is in place?

So back to this item, are there any more? So are there more comments?

I just have one more comment and then I'm having to make a motion or you can.

And I think this is a reach code, but Mr. Carney talked about, and rightly so, you know, from especially multifamily buildings, solar hot water heating.

And so just I'll give you an example of our building, which was built within the last 10 years.

We have a central gas fire boiler that serves hot water the entire complex.

It would be for our small HOA cost prohibitive to replace that early with something electric.

but one thing that would make a huge difference in the amount of water that we use is having those

dedicated return lines for recirculation pumps so that folks on the first floor don't have the

hot water turned on for two minutes waiting for hot water to get down to that level.

I think that's probably a reach code but which we can't do at the moment but in a multi-family

building that would make a huge difference if folks can't convert the the central heating uh or

the the central um boilers or something else just having recirculation pumps would make a huge

difference so maybe that's an idea for a grant program someday but and at our senior center we've

we started with solar hot water and now we're in the process of electrifying it but the solar hot

water was the first measure undertaken, of course.

I'm fine with the staff organization on this one.

I am too.

I just have four people brought up, mostly Mr. Kearney, but maybe I have one, additional

ideas to add.

So one was the solar thermal hot water.

One was from a past task force idea, which was eliminating emissions associated with direct access electricity, which I think, so you know what that one is.

Another would be, is there any possible program with what they're calling balcony solar or plug and play solar?

I don't know if there's any way to, that's getting a lot of airplay now, any way to incentivize that.

And then you just brought up recirculation.

So to add those as possibilities.

There's just something to think about.

Yeah.

Anyone ready to make a motion?

I think you first made the motion, right?

Yeah, I'll move this out for recommendation incorporating the comments that we've made.

Okay, I'll second. And I just like to also say that I fight and captured our discussion very well. And I remember it was one of those wandering ones.

Thank you.

Okay.

Chair Hicks.

Yes.

Member Showalter.

Yes.

Member Clark.

Yes.

Okay.

So now we're up to 5G, which is the electric vehicle charger rebate program for existing multifamily properties.

This item will be presented by Climate Fellow for Remy Grants.

Awesome.

Hey, everyone.

My name is Remy.

And, yeah, I will be presenting on our electric vehicle charger rebate program for existing multifamily properties.

So first of all, this program will be funded completely by the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Non-Competitive Member Agency Grant.

This was a grant from last year that assigned each of SCCE's member agencies a predetermined amount to spend on a decarbonization or resiliency project.

So the City of Mountain View's formula grant is $379,921.

dollars and on November 18th the city council approved stat to use this grant towards an

electric vehicle charger rebate program. Next slide please.

So as we've covered in previous meetings transportation accounts for roughly 58 percent

of Mountain View's annual greenhouse gas emissions. Most of these emissions under the transportation

sector are passenger gasoline powered vehicles. And also, as we've mentioned, multifamily residents

have a significantly lower rate of EV adoption compared to single-family residents in the city

of Mountain View. This is partially because single-family homes in Mountain View are far

more likely to have dedicated garages, and these garages have at least one standard 120 volt outlet,

giving some opportunity for charging installation. Next slide please.

So currently an estimated 13% of multifamily units in Mountain View have access to on-site EV charging.

It is worth noting that this charger availability is often limited per property.

There may be just a few chargers for any number of EVs or folks who are interested in purchasing an EV.

and incentives are available for properties to install EV charging,

most notably and consistently SVCE's rebate program got launched in 2022.

Currently, SVCE offers up to $100,000 to install EV charging at multifamily properties.

So as of recently, 10 sites in Mountain View have installed a total of 159 charging ports.

with an additional 114 ports in progress.

On average, SVCE rebates have covered around 66% of total project costs for properties.

However, through outreach that staff have conducted to property managers and owners,

we have still been hearing that this cost is still too high,

especially among competing priorities and lack of market saturation of EV charging and multifamily properties.

So our proposed Mountain View rebate adder will be stacked on top of SVCE rebates, kind of in a similar fashion to the heat pump water heater rebates, and will cover up to 100% of project costs for multifamily properties.

This partnership with SPCE will enable simple application process, low admin fees, and increased outreach capacity.

The program's goal is to encourage early adoption of EV charging stations, hopefully inspiring other multifamily properties to follow suit, drumming up a little bit of market competition as well.

And through the program, approximately 180 electric vehicle charging outlets or ports are expected to be installed.

Next slide, please.

So here is our proposed incentive chart.

We collaborated very closely with SCCE on creating these amounts.

So for level one or level two outlets, the current incentive is $4,500.

combining both SCCE and Mountain View for level two EV charging ports, which are have so far

been more popular in the program. It's 8,500 per port. And then for panel upgrades, SCCE offers an

additional 5,000 per project. And then Mountain View's amounts will also be eligible to cover

other project costs, such as panel upgrades, trenching, any other costs that aren't covered

in this chart. And yes, next slide, please. For the outreach portion of this program, we are

proposing to hire a property owner ambassador who will provide guidance and support to existing

multifamily property owners. They will assist property owners, managers by answering questions

and offering support throughout the process.

Ideally, this would be someone who has property management experience,

who has worked in this space, who maybe is a property manager or owner.

And of course, staff will also promote the rebate program through city events and communications.

So the proposed budget for the program is most of it going to the rebate funds, of course,

and then we propose to allocate $25,000 to the liaison and other outreach efforts.

A CCE may have a 4% admin fee. As of now, we think probably not, but if admin becomes burdensome,

this fee may be charged. Next slide please. So for going into the future, the rebate program is

expected to launch this spring and throughout the program, SVCE will share regular reports

so the city can track rebate reservations and any other project metrics. Towards the end of

the program, the city may consider using an evaluation process that would conduct

surveys to property managers, contractors, or tenants. And yes, that is all. Thank you.

So do committee members have questions?

This is for any multifamily property could qualify for the most part. I'm sure there are

some parameters, but it doesn't necessarily mean a rental property or a small condo property that's

that's older or something like that would qualify.

Wait, I don't know if I understand.

I think there are there are some especially some older

in Mountain View,

there's a lot of them are soft story structures.

There's there are both apartments there, the garden apartments.

And then some of those have been converted to condos.

And I guess the question was

to either version of those multifamily properties.

Yeah, condos would also qualify.

Yeah.

Any kind of multifamily like facility.

Okay.

Yeah.

We're trying to qualify under SVC program.

I assume it would just be the same.

Exactly.

Yeah.

We started this discussion during the last time.

Do you have additional questions?

No, it sounds great.

I was going to ask, can the ambassador promote plug-in hybrids, but I don't really see how they could.

There's not much.

But if you can think of a way for them to promote. Yeah, as well. I guess one question I have is

could could I've heard that there's a lot of these chargers that aren't functioning.

Is can this a rebate program be used to repair chargers or is that not expensive? I don't know

anything about great question. Oh, not functioning at apartments. Yeah. I mean, like existing

chargers that aren't functioning through? That's a great question. I can definitely ask if you can

get back to you. Yeah, it's a great question. I've heard people moaning around it.

Well, the general corporate ones, they often don't care, but that's another

thing. Yeah, that's another thing. Okay. Oh, no, I'll move the staff. Oh, we have to let the

public comment. Oh, sorry. We're not there yet. Okay, so any in-person people want to comment?

Is there anyone virtually who would like to comment?

Okay.

So Mary has her hand raised.

Mary.

Good evening.

I guess this is, I apologize, almost more of a question than a comment.

But I wonder about the effectiveness of putting at the extreme end one charger at, did we say however many chargers we can afford?

One charger at 20 apartments versus 10 chargers at two different apartments.

So I'm hoping staff is working with SVCE and kind of doing an analysis that sort of optimize the number of chargers that go in at different places.

It seems like it might be useful to try to work with a larger number of apartments and get more people exposed.

But that's just a guess.

And I'm hoping maybe there's some analysis to support a good answer to that question.

Thank you.

So that's a good question.

Are you going to do some analysis of what the, some question and answer on what the most, what the sort of optimal, you know, how many you have to put in before people have the confidence that they can actually buy a car and charge when they need to?

I think that's the kind of data that we might be able to glean after our initial thinking was to qualify participants in a very similar fashion to the existing SVCE program.

So however many they allow per building, we would just mirror all of the structure of their rebate and add to it.

But afterwards, if we do pursue a survey, we can try to find out, you know, different buildings may have pursued different levels of charging access.

and then we can start to answer that question it's very hard with such a small sample size

that may be a question that i should get silicon what information they may already have on that

question is there a maybe denise miss lynn or is there a cap on the level i think i thought i

on level two charge on level two charging there's a cap per property

18 for four cap for level two charging and there's no sir there's a cap for level two

um charging on the program um for until eight or until 18 and then on the outlets they're

they're removing the cap so there won't be there won't be any cap on how many out thickness also

that might kind of mess a little bit with how many charging you know that's also partially based on

that, but they found that people haven't been running up against that limit super often.

Okay. Thank you. Any other comments or are we ready for a motion?

Ready?

Okay.

Make a motion.

You want to make your motion, Pat?

Sure. I move the staff recommendation.

Second.

Chair Hicks.

Yes.

Member Showalter. Yes. Member Clark. Yes.

Okay. So now we are

to 5-4,

which is a verbal update on sustainability and resiliency

division progress. And this item will be

presented by sustainability division staff.

Ms. Lucky will commence the presentation.

Thank you, Chair Hicks. We do have a very short presentation, but I think we can give very brief highlights. We've subscribed fully to our water heater program, and so we'll be returning back to council to amend our agreement with Silicon Valley Clean Energy to add more funds to this program.

We do have budget to do that.

So it's more to amend our agreement with SVCE.

That's why we would be going to council probably in January.

And we've done a lot of outreach.

I don't want to make the presentation too long,

but we'll definitely come back and update you on all of our other programs as well.

We can include something in council connections, a brief update.

we got one of those in case yeah okay cool all right well thank you and

okay now we're to six which is committee staff comments questions and committee reports

i'm sorry i know this has gone gone i just have a few

do okay okay one i just want to share with everybody that they should check the plates

and the mercury news for this morning because it was this great article by paul rogers about um

the a2w salt pine and um how far along and what a great job is so that's one two um uh we did have

as um as as miss lee mentioned about a month ago we had a um sea level rise elected officials

meeting and there was sort of a kerfuffle and that i was the only um i was the only mountain

view council member there and uh that sort of sprang from uh we didn't um tackle the idea of

the brown act early enough to get it through uh the um the our staff and so um

so uh i would like to suggest that next year or the next time we have this meeting

we make it a special sustainability committee meeting and we just we just notice it as a meeting

and it's public.

And so, you know, that way all the sustainability members,

you know, will be able to come and participate

and other members could come.

They just wouldn't be able to participate.

But that would be my suggestion and request.

So I'd like staff to sort of think about that

as a way to handle the Brown Act issue.

Because it just seems like in the last year or so,

we've gotten much more strict.

The staff has gotten much more strict about carrying out the Brown Act, and we want to make sure that things are done properly.

But at the same time, we want people, you know, it's important for people to be able to take part.

So I'm going to bring that up.

And then another thing I would like us to think about sometime is the long-term establishment of an advisory board for sustainability.

I'm just going to drop that as a, you know, as a thought here.

But, you know, I really think that we sustainability and working on climate change, that is not something we're going to stop doing anytime soon.

And we know that we have several organizations in the community that have been very helpful with that.

And our sustainability task forces that we convened twice were very helpful.

but I just I think that it would it would function as a good source of volunteers for many of the

the efforts that we are going to have to continue to do for many many years and and also there's

just a lot of interest in the community so just wanted to drop that as a something I would like

my fellow um committee members to give some thought to so that's it thank you

Okay, any more updates?

Reports?

Questions?

Okay, in that case, we're now on item number seven.

It's adjournment.

This meeting is adjourned at 9.18 p.m.