Good afternoon, and welcome to Pittsburgh City Council's cable cast post agenda on the climate action plan for March 10th, twenty twenty-six.

We have uh Yvette Mongola Winston, director of the Department of City Planning, and Flora Marion, Assistant Director of Sustainability and Resilience in the Department of City Planning.

Welcome.

And I'll turn it over to the two of you to introduce yourselves and for um a brief presentation.

So just want to recognize that they um do an extensive amount of work across many areas.

So hopefully today is an overview and just beginning of a continuous conversation about where we're headed.

So floor.

Okay, is it showing?

Great.

So good afternoon, council members and public online.

Thank you for joining us today on this session on an update on the Climate Action Plan 3.0.

My name is Flor Merriam.

I have worked for the City for over 8 years and have been leading the sustainability and resilience division for a little over two and a half years.

As you can hear, I am an immigrant from France.

I have been in Pittsburgh for over 17 years.

I have now a custom French in their accent, so feel free to ask me to repeat a sentence or to slow down.

That's fine.

Okay, we are good to go.

So as the director uh touched on already, uh, since several council members are newer since the climate action plan updates three years ago, and as well as the director and member of my teams, uh, we will focus today on making council members and Pittsburghers more familiar with our division's work on the climate action plan and the project happening across the city.

We start by introducing the sustainability and resilience team, then we look at the how climate change is affecting Pittsburgh, what the climate action plan is, uh, how it fits in a broader planning framework, and what our team is responsible for implementing.

Uh, we share concrete progress in each of the chapters of the plan and close with next steps and practical actions for the residents.

I'm only moved once, so there is just a delay.

Okay, here it is.

It's good, it's gonna force me to be slow when I present, so it's not good.

Uh so who is leading climate action uh in Pittsburgh?

Well, since our department strategic plan in 2024, climate justice is a core value of the department.

So the answer to this question is all of us at DCP.

Uh my team is surrounded by many talented colleagues, and we value the collaboration with them.

Uh specifically, uh we have a core team focused on sustainability and resilience.

Uh, Matt is leading planning for energy, Aftin is covering waste, Isabella grows our green space, Kyla is addressing stormwater issues, Alice collecting data, and Maria is focusing on other adaptation.

Together, we advanced the city strategy for environmental protection, climate mitigation and adaptation, and addressing hazards that disproportionately affect our vulnerable communities.

Um the climate work is citywide.

We collaborate closely with DOMI, public works, parks and recs, innovation and performance, uh, the office of the mayor and OMB to deploy climate action.

It's truly an all hands-on-deck effort.

Uh I also want to take a minute here to act on the many local institutions and over 250 nonprofits working in this space.

Uh, the climate action plan update the mayor is proposing will be an opportunity to explore the collective success uh on climate action in Pittsburgh.

Um, I'm happy to come back at the table with many of those partners if we want to focus on uh one topic more precisely, but it was hard today to choose one or two partners to join me to talk uh with you here.

So, climate change impact in Pittsburgh.

Um, I want to take a minute here uh to look at how climate change is already impacting us.

It's real, it's happening, and it's impacting our daily life.

Uh this is a picture of the April 29th uh windstorm that really impacting Pittsburgh severely last year.

The impacts are here.

Precipitation are getting more intense.

In fact, they are more 30% more intense that in the 70s.

Uh this picture down here is uh from just this Saturday.

I don't know if you remember the day started really beautifully with sunshine and warm temperature, and then we had a downpour in the afternoon.

And this intensity is just happening more and more.

Uh similarly, we still have uh uh very intense snowfall, but overall you can see the trend line on the snow uh snowchart on the top corner, top right corner.

It's snowing less and less.

Uh, there is less snow coverage uh in Pittsburgh.

In fact, uh, as I mentioned, I've been here for 17 years uh coming from France, and I remember uh being surprised by how long the winter were, the snow was falling, and there was no on the on the floor for several weeks in a row.

We've not really seen slow staying overwinter in several years now.

Um that's because the temperature are rising uh in Pittsburgh, they are 3.4 Fahrenheit warmer now than they were in the 70s.

Uh you will also notice that it's getting staying warmer uh deeper into the fall.

Uh summer heat is lingering, and the nights are less cold.

There's uh 17 less nights that are freezing night in Pittsburgh.

Uh this last chart is showing you that winter, the blue colon is a season that is really warming the most by a fire fire night.

But you can see that spring, fall, and summer are also uh uh uh warmer than before.

So all of these uh uh changes are increasing the risk of hazard frequency and magnitudes.

Uh sorry, the legend is a little small here.

But the first chart is a number of tornadoes by decade, and you can see clearly that the last colon uh see a huge spike in tornadoes, and this is only for 2020-24.

So the decade is not over yet, and yet we are surpassing the averages of the decades in the past.

The next chart in grid is uh flood count.

Uh, you can see those also uh trending uh trending uh higher.

Uh we have river flooding, but we also have flash flooding risk in Pittsburgh.

And then uh finally, all of these uh changes are uh impacting our slopes, uh our risk of landslide are increasing.

Uh, this is our five-year average expenditure uh for the last 15 years, and you can see uh here again that we're spending more and more childless landslides.

So I know we are unfortunately facing many crises colliding, uh, but these changes are costly and disruptive.

Housing, energy, human rights, and uh sit at the climate, sorry, climate sit at the nexus of housing, energy, and human rights crisis, and if we don't solve for this tension, uh it's only gonna get worse.

So we should not sideline climate solution when we're thinking about those other crises.

Uh I also want uh to bring to your attention that the American public overwhelmingly supports climate solutions.

Uh the complicated first chart uh in black and white is a charge from nature, and you can see the lighter uh color dot is actual support for uh narrative supporting climate solutions, and the darker color dots are both what the public perceives their peer to think and what policymakers perceive support to be for climate action.

So the conclusion of this chart is the public is demanding and supporting climate action, so we should not affect to be bold on making those choices.

I also wanted to point that uh 41% of Americans are very concerned about environmental issues.

This is the highest they've ever been.

So we can be bold on climate.

So now I will introduce uh what the climate action is.

Sorry, I am turning my pages here.

So the climate action plan 3.0 is our roadmap for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and improving Pittsburgh overall resilience, health, and quality of life.

It was adopted by Council in 2018.

It's a guiding document for decision making.

It is organized in seven chapters: uh GAG inventory, energy, building efficiency, transportation and land use, waste, food and urban agriculture, and ecosystem.

So this is a heavy slide, sorry about that.

This highlight the primary goals of each of the chapters.

Um we want to be tracking our uh data annually, we want to reduce our emission uh by 50% by 2030.

We would like to power the city with 100% clean electricity by 2030, uh, reduce energy and water consumption by 50% by 2030.

Uh, we want to reduce on-road transportation emissions by 50%.

Uh we want to get to zero waste uh landfill by 2030.

Zero is actually mean 90% reduction, it's not a pure zero.

Yes.

Uh and uh we want to improve our local food system, and uh our goal is to increase our carbon sequestration.

So now I want to focus a little bit on uh how the this plan relates to the other local plans.

Uh so the like I mentioned, the plan was adopted in 2018, and since then the city has issued reports and plans to build on some of the strategy listed in the climate action plan.

So we have taken a deeper dive on specific topic to address climate action.

I also want to point out that the state SPC and PRT also passed a climate action plan in 2024, with some of them having net zero goal by 2050 or 2045.

So this is great context that we should leverage when we do our climate action update.

Those plans were passed in 2024.

There is also a lot of local planning effort happening right now this year.

The city has plans, the county has some plans, and SPC also released the final climate action plans.

So there will be a great opportunity to leverage the findings, both from engagement and recommendations to leverage in our next update.

So now we'll dive into the role of the sustainability and resilience specifically.

So our mission is to advance uh Pittsburgh's vision for environmental protections, climate change mitigation and adaptation, develop strategies to address the impact of climate hazard on vulnerable residents and communities.

We're currently focusing on renewable energy, energy efficiency, EVs, greenways, stormwater, compost, and adaptation.

And how do we do that?

Where we listen, we uh listen to our communities and to our teams.

Uh, we do some research either internally, working with our local university or getting technical assistance.

Uh, we develop plans, uh, either implementation strategy or funding strategy, we help implementations, and then we also amplify.

Uh we go back to our communities to share the successes, we also share them uh regionally with other partners and nationally, so we can learn from each other.

Um I want to highlight some of the partnership and collaboration we've had uh uh sorted by the chapter.

So in food and urban agriculture, we work with Sparks and RECs and uh we develop we helped uh improve the adopt a lot program.

Uh in the ecosystem chapter, we work with public works, environmental services, real estate and finance, uh the Office of Emergency Hazard Management, and uh Pittsburgh Water on energy.

We work on benchmarking with the building owners, we work with public works on utility management, and we uh work with 26 partners with WIPEC.

Uh for buildings, we have uh uh public works and we do some benchmarking, we report our data to many partners, uh, we work on different projects on transportation with PRT, DOMI, and PPA, and then I can see.

And on waste, we work mostly with environmental services and with Connect.

Here is a map of the engagement that the team has done uh just in 2024 and up to today.

Uh, as you can see on this map, there is pins almost everywhere in Pittsburgh.

Uh we've engaged with your communities on climate action uh all year long.

Climate is not uh uh avoiding anybody, and every Pittsburgh is impacted by climate change.

So now I want to dive on the progress the team has done on the climate action plan.

Uh so this uh section is structured with uh the title of the chapter, uh the primary goal of the chapter, and then uh one of the strategies that the project is linked to is highlighted in blue.

So while we have not uh reported annually on our GHG inventory up until now, we recently got gained access to uh Clearview 2.0, which is an interactive dashboard online.

You can find it on our web page.

Uh and this tool uh will make it easier for us to track our emissions.

So we're very hopeful to be able to report annually going forward.

In fact, we sent data requests to our utilities uh and transportation partner to get the data, and uh we're actively engaging with many of them, so we're hoping to get some information uh back to you next month.

Uh it's been unfortunately difficult to get information from the gas utilities, and we would love to work with you if you have any suggestion on making this happen.

So we collect this data to share it back with our public, but we also use it to benchmark against our peer.

So we share it with uh the CDP or AC2 Petty to obtain score annually.

Uh we recently joined a lead for cities uh at the beginning of last year.

It was a one-year program for us to uh report more in depth on our policies and programs, and we just submitted the data.

We think we're going to get gold.

This is not official, so don't share it yet, but we're waiting for the the writer uh reported from lead for cities uh in the coming months too.

With regards to energy generation and distribution, I want to highlight two projects.

This consortium regroup 26 participants to purchase power in bulk on the wholesale market.

This gives us budget stability because we don't buy all of our energy at once, but we purchase it in blocks, so we can choose the best moment in time to do those purchases.

In 2024, we were already more than half of our electricity was coming from clean energy, and this model is going to help us achieve our 230 goal of 100%, provided that the grid situation with the data center and how they will be powered get results.

There's lots of pressure on the electricity market right now, so they could influence our likelihood to reach this goal.

So meanwhile, we are also investigating installing solar panels on city facilities.

We're specifically looking at the forestry divisions to put ground-mounted panels.

We receive federal funding for this project.

It's on pause right now, but we're hoping to get an answer very quickly.

And this site should provide more than 129% of the site electricity consumption.

With regard to building energy efficiency, we uh opened Medic 4 earlier this year.

Uh this is one of our first buildings complying with the net zero ready ordinance.

Uh it's a very uh low energy using building, but it's also most importantly uh a very comfortable, high quality building for the occupants.

Uh so it's really by following this ordinance, we're increasing the quality of the buildings we give to our city staff, therefore supporting them and doing their job.

It's also developing a local scale workforce.

Every building that is uh being uh built or redesigned for the city is with this requirement require the workforce to match this need, and so with receiving this training on our buildings, we're helping other business owners uh get access to this talent.

Uh you also probably notice streetlight being changed in your neighborhood.

Uh this is a massive project for the city.

35,000 street lights are being replaced.

Uh people are reaching out to ask us uh how we design this ordinance, and we're happy to share this information with them.

We were in the news.

Uh and this will save maybe a million.

We're estimating a million dollars a year once it's completed.

Uh I'm hoping this is gonna alleviate some pressure on the budget, but I'm also hoping we find a way to maybe reinvest some of this fund in energy efficiency projects for the city.

We are also working on building an energy efficiency uh towards helping our residents.

Uh during the last administration with uh Duken Light, uh rebuilding together Pittsburgh Action Housing.

Uh we developed energize Pittsburgh.

Um this pilot uh is closing now.

40 households received uh additional energy efficiency or electrification measures.

This is an additive program.

So those candidates who are selected for other programs like uh stabilization or home repair or weatherization.

Most of the federal programs have a cap of funding, and so the contractor coming in to intervene in the home are limited in all of the intervention they're doing and have to prioritize the requirement of those programs.

So by bringing in this additional source of funding, we're able to leverage them being in the house and maybe demolishing a wall or intervening one way or another to add another layer and therefore reducing the energy burden of this uh this household.

It's been very successful from the resident to the contractors, and we're really looking forward to continue working with this administration and the council to identify new funding.

We're also working with Duken Lite and GBA to increase the to develop a process for the utility to uh quantify how uh infrastructure investment in neighborhood could be uh leveraged at the PUC level.

Um chapter four, which is focused on transportation and land use.

Uh obviously, transportation uh work is led by DOMI.

We also have a transportation uh planner in our integrated planning team.

Our team did work on two projects.

We are uh helping DOMI with the EV charger infrastructure.

Uh we are following the EV task force recommendation and we deploy 100 chargers at 21 sites uh across the city.

Uh for your information, there's already 12,000 EVs in Pittsburgh, and the number of ownership increased by 40% uh since 2024.

So there is a demand for it.

This funding is thanks to a federal grant that is on pause right now, but is being resolved in the court, and we're hoping to get the funding really soon.

As soon as funding becomes available again, the team is ready to bring those chargers to your neighborhood.

We also work with Bike Pittsburgh and RMI to evaluate locations for potential EV charging stations for e-bikes near multifamily buildings.

Those residents have more difficult to charge cars or access those bikes and they will benefit from it the most.

So we have some site to proposing the next iteration of POGO.

On waste and resource recovery, we conducted a composting pilot several years ago that we already reported on.

So I wanted to update you on the next phase of this project.

We created what's called an ITQ so we could put our local composter on the ready-to-go list so that they are already on contract with the city.

So whenever we decide uh to run uh a next iteration of the composting pilot, they're already on contract with the city, so we can really activate these resources very quickly.

We also run a pilot uh with our vendors for uh environmental and social governance practices evaluation.

Uh so we asked some of our vendors to voluntarily report this information to us through a platform called Clupify.

We just changed their name actually.

Uh but they were um a PGH lab uh startup several years ago, and we kept working with them.

And this pilot helped us identify how we could potentially ask sustainability questions to city vendors and ultimately in the future uh use this data to select our vendor beyond just looking at cost or quality of the project, but seeing how the business itself is incorporating sustainability in their work.

And then finally, um the plastic collaborative reach out to us recently with some proposed update to the city sustainable event guide, and so we worked with them and hoping to put it back on the uh DPW environmental services website.

Uh on food and agriculture, uh the this is not work done by the team, nonetheless, it's helping the climate action plan.

So I'm happy to highlight the work here.

Uh the city has revamped the adopt a lot program to uh increase access to uh and uh um increase access to the program to the the residents of the city and specifically it's expanding the definition of approved garden elements.

They also updated the list term, and so we're really hoping that this new change will bring more uh urban farm in the city.

And I also want to highlight that Pittsburgh has three city farmers uh that are really advancing uh access to local food and helping manage the food markets in Pittsburgh.

And then finally, getting to the last chapter of the climate action plan.

I want to highlight a couple of projects.

Uh, one of them is our data-driven tree planting for urban resilience.

Uh so we created a data-driven replicable approach focused on implementing a tree planting program that increases the tree canopy where it is the most needed in the city.

And it's fostering long-term community care and maintenance of the trees.

Uh so this tree canopy strategy maximized climate resilience benefit to the community that are the most vulnerable.

With this grant funding, we were able to deploy the strategy on a file site, and we planted 148 trees there.

Uh, what is really special with this project is that we had funding to really do strong public engagement, and those tree planting event turned into block party.

There was music, food truck, uh, the community coming together with city staff to plant those trees, and it really made uh climate uh climate action really concrete for those neighborhoods.

In fact, the team is looking forward to go back in the spring while the trees are budding to see uh how the neighborhood has been transferred by those pilots.

This project is uh such a leading project that we received an award, a smart city award just last week.

We also worked on the greenway expansion over the last year.

Um so the city has uh over 10,000 city-owned vacant parcels that were uh saved for study.

Some of them have been in the system for 40 years.

And so by analyzing those parcels carefully, we were able to release 7,000 of them back to the market, but also identify 300 3,000 of them that uh should not be put on the market and should be preserved for greenways.

Uh by doing so, we're reducing a risk to properties and we're increasing uh recreational areas for Pittsburgh.

And last but not least, uh, we work with Waterno Alliance to develop a framework for green infrastructure deployment.

Uh we have a lot of flooding and water quality challenges in Pittsburgh, and so we develop uh a framework that uh uh prioritize and identify funding for area risk combined through overflow, uh flood risk and environmental injustice across Pittsburgh.

Uh we did the framework on the last year, and now we're piloting uh a site in Lincoln Lamington, working with the communities to identify vacant lot that would be best suited for green green infrastructure.

This was a lot of information.

Uh I'm happy to uh take some questions at the end.

We're also happy to meet uh one-on-one in briefing or coming back to the table to discuss this in more detail.

Uh so our next steps.

Uh we will continue to learn research plan and support project and policy implementation.

Uh we are actively doing engagement for our greenway and stormwater.

Uh we are doing research with several technical assistance partners.

I want to give a shout out to the PGS lab uh program where we are currently looking into doing thermal imaging of some of our neighborhoods with drone so we could identify homes that might need intervention.

Uh we have an RFP out for our zero waste and compost plan.

Uh if you're a consultant working in this space, please take a look at it quickly so you can uh uh give us your proposal before we close the RFP, and we will start working on outlining how we want to tackle the the climate action update that the mayor mentioned in his campaign.

Uh we will continue to support project and implementation.

Uh like I mentioned, we're looking forward to voting at the EVs, um, the solar panels, uh, those programs around energy burden and uh greenways.

In fact, we will come back to the table this year with some legislation around the greenways and stormwater code updates.

Uh and then finally, we I want to amplify all of the sustainability work happening in the region.

Green Building Alliance is having the material and resource week right now.

Two of our city staff are talking at this event.

Uh, energy week is happening at CMU next week.

Uh Pete is having the elemental summit in April, and then finally, Sebal of the City staff will be speaking at the National Adaptation Forum in May.

Uh, there's a lot more event climate happening in Pittsburgh.

So feel free to reach out or look online, and we're happy to connect you.

Um, I hope that seeing all of this action inspired us on in the room and online.

And so I want to leave uh this discussion with some recommendations for action for our residents that you can uh pass along uh during your your discussions.

Uh so first, we would like all of Pittsburgh to make a plan for emergency.

Uh, ready.gov is a website that will provide guidelines on how to be prepared in case of emergency.

Uh EarthMont is coming up in April.

There will be a lot of volunteering opportunity.

So uh find out if you want to help a cleanup or plant some trees.

There's gonna be a lot of events that you can feel like you're contributing to the solutions.

Uh I also recommend to talk with your employers if there is a sustainability or recycling pilot at your work, and maybe you can launch an initiative if nothing is happening just yet.

Uh we should all grow native plants for pollinator.

It's better for nature and it's easier to maintain.

Uh and in the same vein, uh, we need to slow down our water in our neighborhood.

So if you have the space for a rain garden or rain barrel, uh, we encourage you to look into it.

You can get a free energy audit with Duke and Light, and after that, you may be able to access rebates to electrify or deploy more energy efficiency in your home.

If you are able, you can also look at PA poor switch to switch to green energy or install solar panel on your home.

And then finally, if your vehicle is starting to age, maybe you should consider switching to an electric vehicle or maybe any bike.

Thank you so much for your time today.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm happy to answer some questions now and coming back later to for a deeper dive.

Thank you so very much, Assistant Director Marion and um director.

Would you have anything to add now, or do you want to wait for questions?

Um, I think for me, this is uh an amazing recap of you know the various aspects of the work.

And for somebody who's not deep in this world, I think having those tangible actions for residents is a lot of what matters in the neighborhoods, what we can be doing to make slight incremental progress.

So thank you.

Great.

I do want to note that for the record that council member Barbara Borwerk has joined us.

And before I turn it over to her for some questions, um, I wanted to just state that the intention here has been over the years to hold periodic post-agenda hearings on the climate action plan.

Because I was a li, I just happened to be elected for the first time in 2018 when the last iteration of the plan was updated.

The intention was to hold one every year to sort of hold our own feet to the fire and say where are we today or this year versus our goals or 2025 or 2030, etc.

or 2050 goals.

It hasn't exactly been an annual update, which you know has to do with factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, another big um uh shocks and stressors that came our way.

But um, but I think this is a really helpful recap, especially as we're looking to 4.0 and um and understanding you know where we are, where we need to collect more information and what action items we know we need, in addition to then putting, you know, uh another another plan together.

So I know I have a lot of questions, but I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Councilmember Warwick to ask whatever questions she has and anyone else who might join us after.

Yeah, thank you.

Um and yeah, thanks for all your work and the comprehensive presentation.

Um thing I wanted to start with and just ask you about is you know, around specifically around transit, right?

That's um an area of of key interest for me, and I know for a lot of folks, um, you know, reducing our reliance on cars obviously is something that we can do.

It's good, you know, it's it's good for the climate, it's improves air quality, you know, reduces emissions emissions, reduces noise, you know, improves health.

Um we're doing a lot of work with DOME around uh, you know, the vision zero safe streets, right?

Like making our streets more walkable, more bikeable, just making them safer.

Um, but one area where I feel like we are lagging, and I'm curious if if city planning has looked into this at all is I don't want to say we're lagging, like there so um the availability of uh POGO bikes around the city.

So obviously we can't, you know, we don't have control over PRT.

Although I will say I feel that the city of Pittsburgh should have a seat on the PRT board, and that as a city we should be far more engaged with PRT than we are.

I feel like historically there's kind of been this like not so much so in the past years, but kind of like, oh, that's that's the county, that's PRT.

We don't have any, we can't help, you know, nothing we can do.

Um but so aside from the partnership with PRT, you know, recently AHN announced that it was pulling their support for the Pogo bikes.

Um they are giving them a little bit of a runway of about a year, but still that's very disappointing, you know.

And I I mean, I I am a firm believer, those bikes the you know, now that they're that they're e-bikes for the most part are so popular, and over the years I have seen um a change, like the more stations that are available, the more types of people you see using them.

Like if they are there, people ride them.

And that seems to be so um just you know, with regards to transit, I don't know if you wanted to speak at all to that, to sort of what you're looking at at city planning and how you're kind of bringing together the players.

Uh so I will re-emphasize these uh EV study we did.

We had the opportunity uh to work with RMI, uh not EV, sorry.

They reach out about EVs and we actually uh focused on e-bikes because really, like you said, uh the more we have them, the more diverse the population using them is, and the more we see them wrong.

So it seemed really important to us uh to to look into increasing this access.

So I know that Bag PGH has a map of uh station they want to roll out now, uh but we identify uh three stations that are outside of the Bondary that would really significantly significantly increase ridership.

And um and Dumi and Bag PGH were really uh uh thankful for this today, uh data coming to them.

Uh we have a transportation planner that is not on my team.

I don't know if Andrew Brieftuina is there too.

Um yes.

Um yeah, I want to add a couple of things actually because um I actually have a very close um partnership with Pogo with their organization and what they're trying to do.

And I happen to have taken one of their um community rides in Hazelwood, and I was impressed by how they have changed the culture by being intentional about teaching more people to you know get comfortable with bikes and so forth.

So I think this has raised for me what we can do to support them and getting more of those stations, especially at places that um have less transit options and when they're reliable on one primary road, like second avenue.

And also in the context of the comp plan, because we are thinking about how people get around better and have more options that we're not working in a vacuum with what's happening at PRT, you know, and so I'm trying to keep in the big picture of how we manage like investment and transportation for people who are here today.

But hopefully as we grow, we're gonna need more of it and not take it away.

So I think it's something that we need to look at closer.

Yeah, I I I definitely feel I mean, as far as pogo, you know, we talk a lot about our large nonprofits making contributions.

I mean, whether you look at you know, Oakland-based uh, you know, whether that be the universities or the hospitals, I mean to have more pogo bikes around the city makes everybody, you know, whether it's students, whether it's healthcare workers, right?

It really makes it much easier for people to get to and from their kind of you know core locations.

Yeah.

Um and I, you know, it it would be nice to see the contribution there because it is a funding issue, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So I think if they if Pogo had 40 million dollars, I mean that was a conversation I had maybe three or years ago.

We could have a pogo station within a five-minute walk of every house in Pittsburgh, and that would completely change the landscape for transportation in this.

We would be a bike city, like within you know, four years.

So I think that's something we can dig more into near term and explore what are other potential funding sources and so forth.

Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, as as it's sometimes hard, you know, with the nonprofits, there's like smaller nonprofits, there's sort of this idea of like, well, you're kind of in charge of figuring out your own funding.

But you know, this one is really critical and the service they provide the city, you know, is whatever we can do to make sure that they have picture issue and not about the organization itself.

Yeah, yeah.

Um the next uh sort of yeah, the street lights, what a great win.

Kudos to Domi on that, really.

And I love that they can be adjusted from uh from a computer that is I've never seen them dimmed.

I didn't know that was the the north side I think it's complete.

So all of the North Side has the street light.

Uh the West Sign is well underway as well as the Hill District, and I think they're slowly moving uh east now.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's really super.

I've had a number of residents say, oh, hey, it's a little bright, and then like the next day it's dimmed.

It's very convenient.

I'll do another plug here.

If you uh indeed go to the street light change near your house, uh con street one one and indicate the intersection specifically, you need to tell them which streetlight you want to adjust it.

If they don't have the information, they cannot do uh the adjustment for you, but they are really uh available to make those changes.

So CONS311.

Yeah, yeah.

Um I did want to add so a little bit, so this is kind of on the topic of EVs with it with relation to DPW and you know what sort of DPW as a partner in you know reducing litter.

Um it it just feels to me like there, and I I know it's a very high mountain to climb, but if it does feel like DPW could be doing more, but I don't know if that's a funding issue, if it's a training issue, if it's right, like you know, just whether it's cleaning up litter just as a matter of course, whether it's putting more recycling cans and trash cans around, but then also of course collecting those kids, right?

Um then the other part of the question is I have heard some concerns around the EVs with garbage garbage trucks recycling trucks about whether those are working out like as vehicles.

So I can give you a quick update here.

Uh so our fleet team uh were uh on the leading edge of EV adoption.

So we did work with uh um a manufacturer of EV trucks, and it's true that we have gone through a long pilot to really adjust through to make sure they are safe for all drivers and our residents.

Uh it has taken some time, but it's important to do the work.

Uh we are a city of innovation, so I think it's important that we don't just wait for products to be perfect for us to use.

It's also part of our world as leaders to uh start those first contracts and work with the manufacturer and and get the product right.

Uh and I want to congratulate the manufacturer and the fleet team.

They've been and DPW will be driving those trucks.

They work together over the years to get those trucks where they need to be, and I think uh they are almost ready to roll out and we should see them collecting garbage in Pittsburgh in 2026.

Um let's see what else do I have.

Oh, yeah, my last so um I had a uh an interesting conversation.

I don't know if you know Lucy Um De Barbero.

Yeah, so we had yeah, she's with energy efficiency empowerment.

So they raise money so that um nonprofits that do affordable housing like HI Rising Tide, whatnot can can make those houses energy efficient, right?

So she helps raise those additional funds.

Um and she and I were talking about a home the idea of a home energy score um you know for houses in Pittsburgh for selling houses.

But anyway, but it it was it's an interesting idea.

And what I wanted to ask just sort of legislatively what are things that council sh could be doing, right?

That we could be that that then are also something that we could actually implement.

Because it's one thing to pass legislation, it's another thing to actually do the thing, right?

Yes.

So uh the home energy score is uh a platform from the EPA.

Um so it's a stable tool.

So we with the current context is difficult to know if these resources will stay available, but they're this been developed many years ago.

Uh it's been used in several cities.

Uh I think we can avoid it out in a way that it's not uh adding any burden on anyone.

So uh I and I think it's really important for uh for buyers, for home buyers to know how much house uh costs and even for renters, quite frankly.

That's that's a different uh another layer to tackle.

But uh utility uh bills are getting higher, and people should have the information uh before they uh sign a lease or uh a buyer house to to what they should be expecting to be spending in in hitting and cooling that house.

So uh it's not an easy month to clear, but I'm happy to work with you on that because I truly uh uh support the the idea of this transparency.

Yeah, it would be that that would be something interesting to sort of talk with realtors and talk with you know, maybe even landlords and how we could how you would even you know where would that even go, you know, as yeah, I I don't know if you uh remember but several years ago we uh added uh information about solar panels and grid feature on the on home in the MLS list.

So uh I'm sure we can build on this initiative and see how we could uh add a home energy score.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um I don't think I have any other questions.

Um yeah.

And you know, more tree bl I just have tree planting with a star, like yes, more as much tree planting as we can do.

So anyway, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And I have a few questions as well.

Uh I'll start with uh this is uh clearly a plan that we are implementing and working on.

Can you just for those who are curious about how this fits into our yet-to-be finished comprehensive plan sequencing, yes, integrated, yes, uh external to that, you know, how it how it talks and relates to that.

Yes, I will start and then look to floor for additional detail.

Um our um proposed approach, and I think was always an understanding that the comp plan would lay the groundwork for updating the climate action plan.

So that is still an um I wanted to say this actually after you made your opening remarks that moving forward, it's our intention to do these updates once a year, definitely.

And um part of that will be um as there are comp plan moments about the specific topic, also opportunities to engage on that.

So it is our intention that once there's a way forward on the comp plan financially, that the next stage is working on a a proposed land use plan and recommended policies, those recommended policies will help inform the the launching of updating the climate action plan and our hopeful timeline is um the spring into summer and having a you know a completed plan that goes to planning commission late summer, early fall.

And so the hope would be that if we can achieve that timeline, then we would have the comp plan groundwork, and then the climate action plan would follow immediately thereafter or yeah, a short time after.

Yes, the the climate action plan can really rely on the public engagement information collected during the comprehensive plan process.

The public doesn't care if we ask them uh for residency for five years or 20 years ahead.

They already share their concerns.

So we have all of these valuable information.

So we will leverage that uh for the climate action plan update.

And we should offer one more thing too.

That there is a um, I'm not sure how familiar or how much you participated in the plan last year, which I obviously wasn't here.

But um there is a report of the state of um sustainability and resilience in Pittsburgh, and we'd be happy to share, send that along, whatever makes sense that captures a lot of the hard data, at least um for context of what we know so far.

So great.

And so um, I mean, I I really appreciate that you're not going to try to then mine the exact same information from the same people in a separate process when they've already attended these meetings and whatnot.

That said, I want to I want to make sure to ask how is city planning at large, our engagement specialists, and you know, sustainability and resilience as we're developing plans, ensuring that those who are most impacted for whom social determinants of health are felt most acutely, for whom environmental justice is sort of the most pertinent, that those community members and voices are um at the table are being heard.

Um so it is my hope in the way that we've been designing a proposed um way forward on our engagement to the finish line here to get a comprehensive plan that we are integrating those voices now in there is specifically a um sustainability and resilience working group, let's say, which had certain you know, community organizations, members, other types of agencies um participating that it is to flesh that out now and to get that participation to ensure like we're getting the broadest um you know interests at the table so that they are on board as soon as we get restarted to work through the recommendations and make sure we're not missing anything because at the end of the day, part of this process is going to be identifying metrics by which we're measuring progress, which will be um captured in digital dashboard.

So in my ideal world, this sustainability working group has the right parties involved in these last six months so that as we identify metrics, we are choosing metrics that are really the tangible things we want to measure progress on and so that it can really be a tool for um tracking change and also making decisions over time.

So and I would um love to get your feedback on you know, just making sure that we have the right voices at the table.

So terrific.

I I will add to that that both uh the tree planting project and the rain reclaim green infrastructure project have a very strong focus on our vulnerable community.

So those frameworks have been developed to make sure that we are uh addressing uh HIT risk in those veneer areas the most or the flooding risk in this is in this neighborhood.

At the same time, when we use data to identify the general areas on the city, we are actively going to the communities to identify the precise location.

We are not coming and dictating the data saying this to need to go there, so we'll make it happen.

We don't do this type of work.

We go to the community and tell them we think tree planting would be beneficial here.

Where do you think it makes the most sense visually the experience in this neighborhood?

And those uh those strategies have been very successful in those projects, and so it's all going to continue doing that in the future.

And that's really important too, because it's not just soliciting or mining information, it is actually then generative, it's actually giving something tangible while hopefully building trust.

I I don't know, I don't know.

We we'll have to talk to the forestry team and see if the trust building is is is a co-benefit as well.

But one would hope that then that engenders more sort of trust building with the city in the future for future planning, future activities, future projects, different understanding of what we're working on.

Okay.

Um and then also on the plan, you know, there's so many different, as you illustrated, so many different climate action plans from the state to the SPC to the county.

And um is there a way that our next plan can sort of visualize or acknowledge these other plans and where they overlap and how and how ours is like embedded almost in that one, which is embedded in that one, so that someone like me who takes an interest in this, right, and I care, I'm probably not gonna go read every single climate action plan out there.

So I want to know how ours fits into theirs.

Uh yes.

So um the the animation session just started uh two and a half months ago.

So I think we want to dive more into detail on what specifically uh is a strategy you want to take for the climate action plan.

However, my background is science and efficiency.

So I truly have this intention of not wasting time or redoing any work and really uh grounding our next step in all of the step extent around with by our partners.

Uh and I agree with you that uh maybe mapping uh those strategies that are uh shared in all of those plans uh visually could be a way to to really communicate to the public that we are all working in one direction.

Uh maybe we take the lead and go further on some of those topics, but we really want to be aligning so that when we seek funding or when we started putting strategy, they could almost be seamless between city, county, and the region.

Like P climate doesn't care about our legislative boundaries, uh our residents are uh so many people say they're from Pittsburgh, but they're from the region.

So we really need to work together to improve coalition for everyone overall.

Um well, it's really helpful.

And then the uh pivoting a little bit, I um I know that the best talking about costs a little bit.

So one is we know that we can sometimes we have to spend money to save money, especially as it relates to energy efficiency.

I think the LED street lights are a perfect example.

If that's one million dollars, that can be reinvested.

I agree with you.

Hopefully, back into, I know we really have so many financial needs of the city right now.

I know just as well as everybody, but um, but it would be amazing if that could sort of be dedicated to additional, almost like a revolving fund, right?

Like additional costs that will reduce that will reduce energy and result in additional financial savings down the line, and again and again and again.

But um is there another, I feel like there's another part of the messaging missing.

Is there a way to quantify either with specific examples like just in flooding or just with landslides, the um costs of climate change to the city if we do nothing, right?

If we're on the status quo path, what is it costing us?

And so therefore, like, yes, we have to do this to spend money to save money, but also what is it costing us if we do nothing?

Yes, there's definitely many models and study on the cost of doing nothing, and it's getting dire and dire.

Uh sustainability is good business.

Uh the the argument in the past that maybe it was more expensive to do some of this work is really disappearing more and more.

Uh I I don't have numbers right now, but I'm happy to come back to you.

Uh we have some of this number quantified already for some of the some of the project, but we should have that comprehensively.

Remember attending a joint post agenda or whatever they called it, a hearing with county council where um a group for the Center for Climate Integrity had quantified like what flooding had cost Allegheny County as a whole.

And it'd be great to have kind of that similar data for Pittsburgh.

Because people see this, people see the storms, people experience the whimstorms, what is that costing us?

As not just the people who live in the city, but like the city government.

And so therefore we need to, you know, yes, adaptation, resilience, and then spending money on what all are pretty like significant role that we can play to offset the emissions that we're um that we would otherwise be contributing.

Yes, yeah, like in this slide we had the the actual city costs from the landslide, but we're happy to continue exploring and quantifying the cost.

Yeah.

Uh there's economic costs to businesses that are slow down when these events are interrupting businesses.

There's health cost.

Uh, there was a study recently uh linking air pollution to this in Pittsburgh.

Uh so all of these impact that maybe are not traditional metrics uh are more and are more and more important to keep track of because they're increasing.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And then sort of related to costs, but more on you know, business owners, um, especially residents, we know that uh cost of living is a is going up, is increasing for everybody and um electricity costs are just even ducaine light and utilities it's out of their hands, right?

It's at the sort of like regional electric electric um level.

So is there anything that we can do as for a sort of a multi-solver effect as we are in yes, embarking in energy efficiency retrofits and yes, you know, um all everything that we heard today.

Is there any are there any kind of even spitballing creative ideas that you've had amongst yourselves around um ways that individuals can get, you know, can see those savings, can get a tax rebate for X, Y, and Z so that can be contributed to, you know, if they make those um retrofits at their home.

I was even just visiting with a West Oakland resident yesterday saying, like, what happened to all of the funding so that I can repair my home and my fourth generation homeowners can repair their homes.

We know whole home repair was something that now county executive in a Morado and others champion at the state level when they were state reps, when it's not federal funding, it's harder to get that money dedicated.

I know that there's county level interest in that, but like the the simple version of this question that I've just rambled on and on about is what can we do to help reduce individuals and business owners' electricity costs or utility costs.

Um is there anything that can be done and embedded in this plan that kind of solves both?

I think there is an opportunity to for us to participate more at the uh public uh utility commission, the PUC, uh even PGM uh at the state level, all of those electricity decisions are being made outside of our framework, but we have a voice.

Uh we're the second city of the state, and so I think if we uh organize uh to be more vocal about uh how we want to support our residents is a very uh important first step.

I wanna highlight again the free energy audits from Duke and Light, where people could get a basin of the intervention they need to do in their homes.

Uh and with electricity uh costs increasing uh very uh sharply and with no sign of slowing down, uh it's going to make sense to spend this little bit of investment uh if you're able to to save on your energy bills later.

And if you uh for our vulnerable community, there are several programs.

Uh there's more demand that there is uh a funding available, but you should nonetheless apply to those funding so we get a sense of the population that needs access to those funds, and we can be creative in fundraising to to augment those programs.

Yeah, great.

So we should take a bigger, a stronger role.

I mean, we know Governor Shipiro has been vocal around the PGAM issues, and you know, maybe cities can organize as well to be a be a voice and um uh yeah, that's great.

That's great.

Um I think that the only other question I had was um what are our opportunities around our own city-owned buildings and city assets.

So when I first joined the city, one of my first projects was an inventory of uh our buildings and a prioritization list, and how could we meet this 2030 goal?

And uh the conclusion of that study was that we need to be retrofitting uh 15 building was five years ago that we need to retrofit 15 buildings a year to meet our 50% energy reduction goal by 2030.

Uh COVID happened, um many events happened, so we are definitely not doing 15 buildings a year.

So the the chance of meeting our 2030 goal by 2030 are very slim.

However, I do think we can uh very rapidly have a plan to make this happen.

So by 2030, we are very confident we identify the funding source, we identify the strategy so that we can tackle those buildings.

Uh we um one of uh example that I think would be really important for the city to tackle is one of our largest buildings is the one we're sitting in, the city building, city county building.

It's a wonderful historical building, it's using a lot of energy uh our window licking, uh most of our life could be changed.

There's other intervention that will benefit everybody uh both for uh indoor quality and for energy savings.

And if we could uh find a way to work with the county to uh leverage uh guaranteed energy saving act, which is a state uh act that allow us to do uh energy efficiency as a service, so that would uh would not need tax uh tax funding from the taxpayers.

We have the city and the county working together in the biggest building, so we could see significant energy saving uh on this building.

Uh the county is using Giza for their buildings, the state is using Giza for their building, Philadelphia is using Giza for their building.

I am confident that we can find a way to use this tool for retrofitting our buildings.

Uh and in addition to that, I really wanna highlight that uh Pittsburgh has old building, that is true for our residents.

That is also true for ourselves.

Uh our fire stations or divisions or police stations are very old buildings that don't really meet the need of uh of the occupants, and uh our workers will benefit greatly of having uh their working condition improved while we are saving energy.

So I really think creatively how we can fund those retrofits would benefit our bank account.

It would also benefit our staff and also our residents coming to our buildings.

And you know, I think that's exactly right because we have this building, but then we also have so many buildings.

We have the list, right?

We have the ordered list of like which one needs it first.

It's it's a lot of our DPW buildings, it's our fire stations, it's our police, you know, stations.

So we know in addition to the C C B which ones need the retrofits, and if we can make them energy retrofits all together and use the future savings to pay up for the upfront costs in part, yeah, it takes money up front.

But um, I also see the opportunity for um a workforce development piece in here too.

I know we had gone for an APA grant that would have included that for housing.

I think the same is true for any kind of an energy retrofit project is how do we work with um workforce development agencies to help train the next the next generation of um of like of contractors of of skilled trades of all sorts that are aware of you know energy efficiency and what what buildings are put the pot building potential um that we have.

So um this is definitely a priority of mine over the next few years.

I'm really looking forward to sort of digging in and seeing how we can make this happen.

I know it feels impossible during the like financial squeeze that we're in, but I think we have to keep on looking to the future and see what what's next and not just um being mired in the present.

So really appreciate you know the work that you've done up until now to quantify it and looking forward to working with you.

Um I don't think I have any questions, Councilmember Warwick, thank you for attending.

Um hope my colleagues will tune in.

Uh we're tuning in or we'll tune in later.

I'm sure that some of them are watching from their offices.

And um anything else that either of you would like to add that we didn't get a chance to cover in a detail.

Um sorry.

Um you just mentioned the financial squeeze, and so I want to take this uh opportunity to thank the council for not considering uh removing staff during those discussions, specifically the the sustainability staff.

I have I've lost peers in some of the my network that lost their job because situation being difficult across the country.

So we're truly grateful that uh council recognize the importance of this work.

And I also want to thank my family, my friends and staff for all of the support uh today to prepare for this meeting today.

Uh I was delighted to share all of the great work we're doing and happy to continue working with all of you on that.

Thank you very much.

Um yes, like second to all those.

But also something you said just struck me in terms of I think for me, uh you know, especially being new to the to the department and what I'm hoping um we can work on is to the degree that we can one, put things in the comp plan that are gonna make help us make decisions about those investments.

So if you're saying, yes, we know we have a bunch of buildings to invest in, but like are there criteria around which ones get to go first?

Like, is that something that could be one of the recommendations in the comp plan?

And so I'm just trying to think through like what are things that are gonna be useful for government that we can put in the plan now.

So as you think of those things, please like email us, raise them.

And then number two, um, you know, while today I think we see floor's team as doing an incredible breadth of work.

Um, and I think now if we can begin to maybe like focus, if we're you know, if we need to focus on a couple key measures to to advance in like if we say reducing energy costs or getting more bikes or whatever it is, like I feel like there is an exercise of like identifying a handful of things that we want to make on make progress on quicker so that we can invest more energy in like finding funding, getting the partners in place, like so just um now that you've kind of seen like so many things that are um possible, I do recognize that there's a finite amount of money, there's a finite amount of people bandwidth.

Um can we work together to figure out like what are the most important things to the city right now so that you know in 2026 we're gonna focus on this thing and then twenty twenty twenty-seven so forth and so on.

So it would be helpful, I think, to have more discussions about that.

Yeah, and and to the point that you made, director, when you were um were interviewing you uh publicly at this table, you had mentioned you know Chattanooga and just how impressive, right?

That city is and leveraging its outdoor recreation assets and we have similar assets, right?

It strikes me that as we're creating these priorities, yes, it's about the the cost savings.

Yes, it's about the the cost savings.

And yes, it's about the um sheer amount of climate emission reductions that we can achieve, or energy reductions, or um, you know, waste reduction.

But also it seems like the ones that are the biggest thing for the buck also have that sort of like tangible publicly accessible component, whether it's a green way that is now accessible, and now we have a signage to show like, oh, like look at this thing here that we never knew existed, or the pogo bikes expanding, or the things that like people who live here and visitors can feel and experience.

Well, I didn't they may she didn't make it to council.

But yesterday my eighteen-year-old who's a freshman in college shadowed me and like, you know, was trying to see how the city government works, and we're talking about downtown and PDP's recent downtown meeting and the state of the and um young people are making the point that like there needs to be more free things to do, right?

And places to be, and like we've heard about third places like spent, so I had to explain to Gabby what third places are, you know.

But somewhere where you can like yeah, hang out, experience the city, not have to pay for things, so forth and so on.

And so all of this work is I think helping to, you know, is playing into that, even though it's not as obvious.

And so um a lot of these strategies are hopefully helping the bigger picture goals around revitalizing downtown and our neighborhoods and um, but it just made me think of her because I thought of, you know, there was like two open, she's like, there's nothing to do downtown, right?

And for certain people.

And um so young people need places where they can hang out and experience nature and do fun things, you know.

So thank you both.

Thank you all.

Thank you, everyone in the department and in the office um for your work prepping here today, whose voices might not have been heard, but we're certainly came through.

And um, I will move to well, I will adjourn this meeting, this post agenda meeting.

Thank you so very much again.

Thank you.