Council Sustainability Committee Meeting – June 3, 2026
Council Sustainability Committee Meeting – June 3, 2026
The Council Sustainability Committee (CSC) met on June 3, 2026, to receive presentations on the decarbonization goal analysis and the sustainability action plan (SAP) progress. The committee heard public comments on utility tax funding, EV adoption assumptions, school outreach, and Bay Area Air District rules. No formal actions were taken other than approving meeting minutes, but a straw poll indicated support for a special committee meeting on sea level rise.
Consent Calendar
- The committee unanimously approved the meeting minutes from the prior session after a brief public comment period.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Bruce Carney (oral communications) proposed using the city's user utility tax (UUT) windfall—estimated at $2.8 million annually beyond the historical $4.8 million baseline—to fund incentives for electrification of vehicles and homes. He argued this could reach 80% of households over 20 years.
- Mr. Farney (on decarbonization analysis) criticized the model's assumption that EV sales rates would remain constant at 41% through 2045 and that heavy-duty EV adoption would reach only 10% by 2050. He urged deeper scrutiny of assumptions, arguing buildings would be the primary emissions challenge.
- Katie and Patrick (on decarbonization) advocated for better collaboration with school communities to reach families, suggesting a meta-structure with school champions for outreach on electrification and incentives.
- Rodadio (on decarbonization) detailed recent Bay Area Air District Board deliberations on Rule 9-6, noting a proposed nine-month delay and an estimated 38% exemption rate. He asked staff to update the goal analysis accordingly, plan for reach codes, estimate Mountain View’s exemption rate, and have council members send letters of support to air district representatives.
- Mary Daniel (on SAP) expressed support for continued funding of the city shuttle and multifamily EV charging incentives. He noted that only 30 of 35 water heater replacements at city facilities were heat pumps (86%), underscoring the need to maintain focus on building electrification.
- Patrick (on SAP) suggested using TelRAAM devices to count multimodal traffic and urged better data collection on bike lane usage.
Discussion Items
- Decarbonization Goal Analysis (Item 5.1): Sustainability staff (Ms. Lee and Ms. Lucky) presented results showing that with existing state/regional policies, Mountain View can achieve a 59% reduction in emissions by 2045; adding local actions yields 66%, leaving a significant gap to the 2045 carbon neutrality goal. Building electrification—driven by Bay Area Air District rules—could cut building emissions 92%. Local actions like EV charging expansion (22,000 metric tons reduction) and reach codes were highlighted. The model is dynamic and can be updated as policies and markets change. Staff emphasized that financing and funding strategies will be explored in the five-year plan, but the analysis did not address how to pay for actions. Committee members stressed the importance of financing, incentives, and dynamic modeling to adapt to gas price changes, EV adoption trends, and political shifts.
- Sustainability Action Plan (SAP) Progress (Item 5.2): Staff reported 91% of SAP actions are completed or ongoing, with 57 high-impact measures tracked. The remaining actions (urban forest plan, municipal decarbonization, TDM ordinance) are expected to be substantially complete by end of 2026. The sustainability fund has ~$2 million available for near-term investments. Staff proposed allocating $500,000 for heat pump water heater rebates, $500,000 for multifamily EV charging rebates, $200,000 for the community shuttle, $300,000 for city fleet EV charging, and $300,000–500,000 for solar/battery storage at key city facilities. The full SAP closeout is anticipated by July 2027. Committee members asked about data on bike lane usage, e-bike program effectiveness, and the need to continue cross-departmental collaboration.
Key Outcomes
- Meeting minutes approved unanimously.
- No formal vote on the decarbonization goal analysis or SAP progress; both were informational. Staff will return with a final five-year decarbonization plan later in 2026.
- Committee direction: Staff will incorporate feedback on financing, EV charging infrastructure, school outreach, and dynamic modeling into the five-year plan. The committee supported exploring the UUT windfall concept and sending letters of support to Bay Area Air District ahead of its October 2026 board decision.
- Straw poll: Committee members expressed support for holding a special CSC meeting on sea level rise (likely fall 2026) to avoid Brown Act constraints and enable broader participation; staff will return with a proposed date and logistics.
- Upcoming topics: Municipal decarbonization, EV charging (especially multifamily), and zoning incentives for decarbonization will be discussed in future meetings.
Meeting Transcript
That's great. So let's have a call to order. This meeting is being conducted with a virtual component. Anyone wishing to address the Council Sustainability Committee virtually may join the meeting on Zoom using the link or phone number and webinar ID shown on the screen. When I announce the item on which you wish to speak, click on the raise hand feature in Zoom or dial star nine on your phone. When I call your name to provide public comment, if you are participating via phone, please press star six and unmute yourself. And then for people in attendance, please fill out a speaker card, which you can find on the sign-in table to the left of the door. And so item one. Do we have any speaker cards? Roll call. Yeah. Okay. Oh, everybody's here. Um chair show on here. Member Clark or Member Hicks. Yeah, great. All right. And then we have item three, which is approve the win uh the minutes. Does anyone have any comments or questions about the meeting minutes? Okay, now. Thank you. If um, would anyone like to move a motion to approve the minutes? Second after public comment. Yeah, I think we need to have public. Okay. Is there any would you like to make public comment on the minutes? No, okay. Anybody online? Okay, so we can go ahead with the vote. All those in favor of approving the minutes? Aye. Aye. Okay, that passes unanimously. Now we come to item four, oral communications. Um, item four is oral communications from the public. This portion of the meeting is reserved for people wishing to address the committee on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak for on any topic for up to three minutes during this section. 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? Yes. Welcome. Thank you. I'm going to speak about a lot of different numbers, and so I thought it'd be kind to put them on a piece of paper so you could see them as I was talking about. Oh, so the last city council meeting, I commented on what I felt was a need for funding source to do wonderful things for sustainability. And just in the last couple of days, I've come up with one. So it is to say that the user utility tax, which has risen so rapidly the last few years, represents a windfall. Money that people have paid in order to get electricity and gas in their homes and businesses have done the same. The city has taken a 3% tax on all of that money, and as the price of gas and electricity have risen, the tax revenues have risen. In the past, 4.8 million dollars a year for natural gas and electricity was the city's take, and it went to the general fund. All that money is still going to the general fund.
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