Perfect.

Well, welcome everyone.

I'll call the meeting to order.

It is January 14th, 2026, 4:30 PM.

And we will go through roll call first.

We have some new members.

No, we'll be doing introductions in a bit, but Liam Arroyo present.

Seth Barons.

Edward Cohen.

Amy Cockett?

Here.

Amanda Holloway is present.

Tara Kinsey here.

Casey Asa McQueen here.

Brian Morgan.

Here.

And Stuart Rath.

Sure.

Excellent.

All right.

Liam.

Stuart.

Thank you.

And I understand that our consultants have a time, a bit of a time crunch.

So I'm going to make a motion to actually change the order of the agenda to move our new business five B so the discussion about regional indicators.

That we move that to first.

And then we'll proceed through the agenda as it's scheduled.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All right.

So we'll just kick things off with regional indicators and then we'll do uh introductions and celebrations of it.

All right.

And so question.

So we have our consultants online here.

Um start with a presentation from LHB and ask members to hold their questions until the end of the presentation.

We'll have some time for a question and answer.

And then commissioner comment period.

So if anyone has thoughts or feedback that they'd like to share about this discussion item.

Question for our consultants online.

Do you all want me to go through the slides on my end, or would you prefer to share your screen?

I think I think it would be easiest if we could share our screen if that's okay, Kayla.

Sure.

Can you please turn on sharing for this meeting?

Yes, you should be good to go.

Thank you.

Okay.

Can everyone see that there?

Now I see.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Well, thank you so much for inviting us.

Uh we've been here uh a few times, and so we're really happy to have the opportunity to share again this year.

Um I'll just do a quick intro for our team.

I'm Laureen Colburn with LHB.

I'm an architect and our climate solutions leader.

We are located in Minneapolis and Duluth.

And here with me is Becky Alexander, our technical advisor for the Regional Indicators Initiative, and Ingrid Sokup, our research assistant for the Regional Indicators Initiative and many other climate action projects.

We are very excited about that.

And we'd love to hear what else you're working on, but I know we are short on time, so we'll see if that if there's any time in that QA portion.

Um Ingrid has about 30 minutes of content and um the slide link is included in the packet that I believe Kayla provided.

And new this year is that it is an online interactive platform.

So you will be able to click through it yourself later on and engage with the data in a new way.

Any questions before I turn it over to Ingrid?

No, okay, thank you.

All right.

Well.

Thanks so much, Maureen.

I'll start sharing again.

Um so yeah, like Maureen mentioned, the slides are interactive this year.

And um, if that link wasn't shared in the packet, we will be sure to share with Kayla after the meeting.

Okay.

So before we get started, we want to recognize that the work that you're doing to reduce emissions in Rochester is really important.

Climate change is already impacting Minnesotans.

We're seeing more extreme rainstorms that flood streets and damage homes and hotter summers that put our health at risk and increase energy costs for families.

Acting now will help us protect our communities and our natural resources, both within our lifetimes and for future generations.

As we go through the slides today, consider ways that you can keep using this data to support your current and future projects.

How can it help continue to inform your work?

And how can it help you reach out to your community and get them to act too?

So with that, today we'll be sharing insights on the energy travel and waste data that Rochester collects for us and we analyze, along with how those sectors impact your community's greenhouse gas emissions.

So we've discussed this in previous years, but really briefly.

Energy data includes the electricity, gas, and other fuels that are used within Rochester's boundaries.

We get gas and electricity data from your energy utilities and data on other fuels like coal or propane, for example, from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the US Census.

Travel data includes the vehicle miles traveled inside city boundaries as reported by Minnesota's Department of Transportation.

While that energy and travel data is specific to Rochester, waste numbers come from countywide data that's then assigned to each city based on population.

So that's a little bit less reflective of city specific action.

And then finally, we use guidance from a national emissions reporting framework, the U.S.

community protocol, to translate the energy travel and waste data into greenhouse gas emissions.

I know that's a lot, but if you're interested in learning any more about our methodology, it is linked here on the slides, and you can go into all the detail you want.

Okay, so a little bit of an exciting update from last year.

We now have data for 87 cities on the Regional Indicators Initiative website, and that represents over half of Minnesota's population.

I think when we talked last year it was about 75.

So cool.

Some have major interstates with a lot of commuters passing through, some have big industries or universities, and some are mostly residential.

So in Rochester's case, most of the city's emissions are coming from energy use.

Let's see if we can find you here on the so, due to Rochester's location, there's a lot less pass-through traffic than in some of those other metro area communities that are shown.

Again, because of these different city profiles, it is most valuable to track against yourself over time rather than comparing to other cities.

Oops.

So here we see your emissions breakdown in pie chart form.

In 2024, 76% of Rochester's emissions were from energy, while 22% were from travel, and a small percentage was from waste.

Like Maureen brought up RPU's ambitious 2030 renewables goal are an area of opportunity.

Today's slides like previous years will mostly look at how Rochester's emissions have changed over time.

So let's start with the big picture.

Here we see the trends in emissions from building energy in orange, vehicle travel in green, and waste in purple.

We've worked with Rochester for a long time, and you're one of the handful of cities that we have data back to 2007 for.

So that gives us a really good sense of the changes over time.

And good news, Rochester's total emissions have decreased by 29% since 2007.

For those of you that follow this data, you're like every year, total emissions decreased by 4% between 2023 and 2024.

We've shown a graph in the past, I think we showed it last year, that compares your progress to your 50% emissions reduction goal by 2030.

And while our new slides format makes that a little bit tricky, we can share a PNG of that now and send it out after the presentation.

So here's what that looks like.

The city has been making really good progress towards their 2030 goal.

And if you achieve your target of 100% renewable electricity by 2030, you will have no trouble meeting it.

So this bar in 2030 represents that if everything else stayed the same, but you achieved your electricity goal, you would still exceed it.

Like previous years, we'll dig into some of the reasons for Rochester's progress throughout the slides.

So you can also see how Rochester's emissions from each sector, electricity, heating fuels, travel and waste have changed over time.

Again, the next few slides will get into the details, but we always like looking at this big picture first to emphasize how these sectors compare.

Starting on the leftmost panel, emissions from electricity have decreased by 43% since 2007, with businesses dropping more than homes.

Emissions from heating fuel use have also decreased since 2007, but you see that they're kind of variable over time due to the weather and Rochester's peaking plants.

We'll get into that more later.

Like previous years, we'll use the term gas or utility gas throughout these slides instead of natural gas, an acknowledgement that this is a fossil fuel.

This heating fuels category, though, also includes the other types of fuels we burn for heat, like coal, propane, wood, etc.

Emissions from homes have dropped more than businesses, but again, these are both variable over time.

Travel emissions have increased by 12% since 2007, but you'll see that that was slowed by the pandemic with that little dip in emissions in 2020.

Waste emissions are really small compared to these other sectors, but they've decreased by 15% since 2007.

So, as promised, let's get into some of these details, starting with the energy sector.

This pie chart shows the four different sources of Rochester's energy emissions.

We've got electricity use in these more muted slices, and then also homes and businesses, where homes are in yellow and businesses are in orange.

In 2024, more emissions came from electricity use than heating fuel use, and businesses emitted more than homes.

We are often asked where multifamily housing fits in this breakdown, since apartments are kind of between homes and businesses.

And that really depends on how building energy meters are set up.

So if each unit has its own meter, they're considered residential, but if not, they're typically grouped with commercial.

Okay, so we just saw in the last slide that electricity emissions, this orange line here, were higher than heating fuel emissions, the yellow line in 2024.

And that's been true since before we started tracking data for Rochester.

However, you'll also notice that electricity emissions have decreased since 2007, while heating fuel emissions are about the same, actually increasing over time, but they're more variable.

There was a big drop in Rochester's electricity emissions in 2020 when Simpa's electricity that's provided got a lot cleaner.

We expect that soon these two lines will cross, and heating fuels will be a larger source of emissions than electricity.

That is partially because electricity is expected to keep getting cleaner in the future, thanks to the efforts of the state, your municipal utility, and the supporting community.

State law requires that all electricity sold in Minnesota must be carbon free by 2040, but as you know, RPU is committed to 100% renewable electricity by 2030, represented by that dotted line.

The residents and businesses in Rochester can help RPU reach the standard and help your community be more resilient by investing in local renewables.

Small local renewable projects can get online faster than big utility projects, which can sometimes take a long time to approve, and they can help spread out renewable energy across our state.

Those local projects can also offer key resilience benefits for your community, keeping essential buildings operating when the power goes out, and helping lower electricity bills for residents and businesses.

The other thing that this graph is telling us is that gas isn't getting cleaner over time, shown by that flat yellow line.

So systems like a gas furnace, a gas stove, or a gas water heater that are installed today won't get cleaner over their lifetime, while an electric system will.

Okay.

Another reason that electricity emissions are getting lower is because Rochester's electricity use has decreased over time.

So when we combine that with how much cleaner your electricity has gotten, Rochester's total electricity emissions have dropped by 43% since 2007.

So we can take a little bit of a closer look at those electricity use trends.

And we see that businesses use quite a bit more than homes, but they've also made more progress in reducing their use.

But the population of Rochester has increased pretty significantly since 2007 by like 23%.

So well, electricity use has grown.

Electricity use per resident has not.

Okay, so that wraps up the discussion on electricity.

I hope wait until the end.

Yeah, can I keep going?

That sounds good.

All right.

So we'll move on to heating fuels.

And this graph shows the heating fuel use over time in Rochester's homes, the yellow line, and businesses, industry institutions, that orange line.

Since Rochester has several large commercial industrial users, it makes sense that heating fuel use in businesses is greater than heating fuel use in homes.

These gray bars show how cold each year was, where the higher the bar is, the colder the year.

In general, we need more gas in cold years to keep our buildings warm.

And you can see that the gas use in homes, this yellow line follows those trends fairly closely.

As you know, we're part of an architecture and engineering firm, and we've seen that buildings that can keep heat in using effective insulation and sealing all those little gaps from the outside, also use a lot less energy.

These types of improvements can be used in existing homes to lower energy bills, which is extremely important for families with a limited income.

Lower energy bills means families don't have to choose between staying warm and staying fed, especially during those really cold months.

Gas use in businesses doesn't follow those trends as closely.

That could be because of a couple different factors, potentially because Rochester has some loads that are always required in businesses, regardless of the weather, like fuel used to power equipment, for example.

It could also be because of some variable trends in the business and job market for the years.

So one area where it can be useful to compare your data to other cities is energy use per household.

So here we see the electricity in orange, gas in yellow, and other heating fuel use, mostly wood and propane in light yellow, that the average household uses across different Minnesota cities.

The median in this data set is Fadness Heights, where each home used around 80 million BTU of energy in 2024.

So Rochester's homes use less than the median.

We recently did an analysis of this type of data, and we found that cities with energy efficient homes tended to have smaller home sizes and more apartments.

So this graph is pretty consistent with that.

Lauderdale on the far left has an average home size around just 1,100 square feet, while North Oaks on the far right has an average home size around 4,000 square feet.

Those findings aren't really surprising, but what was surprising was that cities with more new homes were not more efficient than cities with older homes.

That could be because new homes tend to be bigger, but it's also showing us that Minnesota's residential energy code has been hasn't been making as much progress over time.

Thanks to new legislation, we're now on a pathway to having a much stronger code.

But in the meantime, anything you can do as a city to encourage smaller homes with good insulation with good air sealing will be impactful.

This graph also tells us that across the state, homes are relying on gas as their primary energy source.

We found through our work that only 10 to 30% of Minnesota homes use electric heating.

And in some cities, inefficient and expensive electric resistance heating is more common than efficient electric systems like heat pumps.

Cities that do have a relatively high percentage of their homes efficiently electrically heated also have lower total energy use.

So that supports our recommendation in helping to support residents in switching from gas to electric.

So we'll go to travel and waste here in just a second, but before that, I think we'll show some insights on water.

And this is off of our the RAI website, which we can also make sure is shared with Kayla.

So let's take a quick look at Rochester's water usage from 2007 to 2024.

As a reminder, the emissions from treating and distributing water are accounted for in our energy numbers.

And this the water numbers that are shown here only include the water that's provided by Rochester public utilities, not other big users that might have their own permits.

So in recent years, we see that the city's homes and businesses are using a similar amount of water as each other.

Since 2007, Rochester's overall water consumption has decreased by 10%.

Again, that's despite that big increase in population, though, and a 10% increase in jobs.

So the water used per capita and per job have decreased even more significantly than that.

And we can see that if we were to normalize per capita per day on the website or per job per day.

So now that decrease is even more evident.

All right.

So that wraps up the energy and water discussion.

Let's move on to talking about travel.

Towards the start of this presentation, we saw that travel accounts for only about a quarter of Rochester's total emissions, and noted that that could be because of Rochester's location outside the metro.

As a reminder, our methodology counts the travel from everyone driving inside your community, regardless of whether they're a resident or they're just passing through.

So this pie chart shows the percent of miles driven on each road type in Rochester, including local, county, federal, and a very, very small amount of state roads.

We sometimes hear from cities that it is challenging to reduce emissions from commuter traffic, in your case, especially on interstates.

There's action being taken on a state level to address this.

Minnesota has a goal of reducing miles traveled per resident by 14% by 2040.

One of the ways that the state has backed this up is by requiring projects that are expected to increase travel, like a new interstate addition, something like that, to also invest in projects that reduce driving, like public transit or sidewalks or trails.

So if you're thinking about pursuing any clean transportation projects in the future, that might be a possible funding source to look into.

Okay, so let's keep digging in.

Over time, the miles driven in Rochester have increased.

Between 2007 and 2019, we see a steady increase in vehicle miles traveled until the pandemic in 2020, when miles dropped pretty dramatically.

They've been slowly increasing since rose by 3% between 2023 and 2024, but aren't to prepandemic levels.

Rochester's travel trends are likely due to a combination of factors, including that significant population increase over this time.

We'll see how Rochester's vehicle trends per capita compare to other Minnesota cities next.

The pollution that's released by each mile we drive has steadily decreased over time.

That means new cars are able to get further for each gallon of fuel.

Together, those factors mean that Rochester's travel emissions have increased by 12% since 2007.

As a little side note here, you can see that this emissions per mile line is flat from 2023 to 2024.

That's because the fuel economy data we use hasn't hasn't been published yet for 2024.

So we're using placeholder data from 2023.

Once it's released, we'll update that on the website and in the slide deck, and there will likely be a small change, probably no more than 3% to your total emissions numbers.

There are a couple other spots that were using placeholder data, but this is the most impactful.

Another question we get a lot from communities is how electric vehicles impact emissions per mile, that gray line.

EVs use electricity instead of fossil fuels, and we've already established that electricity is getting cleaner while fossil fuel isn't.

Right now, the percent of EVs on the road is very small, but switching to EVs is a key strategy for reducing travel emissions.

Okay, so another place where it can be helpful to compare between cities is in how your miles traveled per resident have changed over time.

This graph works like this.

These green lines are other Minnesota communities, while the black line is Rochester.

2006 starts at zero for everybody, and then increases or decreases depending on how much more or less people are traveling compared to 2006.

In the big picture, we see that in most communities, travel stayed roughly the same between 2006 and 2019 for most of these communities, like within a 10% increase or a 10% decrease.

And then in 2020, when the pandemic happened and people started traveling less, we see a big drop, followed by an increase in 2021.

In some cities, that line has stayed flat since then, and for others, it's increased back towards pre-pandemic levels.

Rochester is at the higher end of this data set, meaning that travel has increased more than other Minnesota cities since 2006.

But if we were to start at 2016 instead, or 2016 is now the zero, and we're seeing how it's increased or decreased since then.

Rochester is closer to the other cities in this data set.

So some of those earlier years might have had exceptionally low travel.

After the pandemic, between 2020 and 2024, this is an interesting story too.

Let's see if I can get it to face.

After the pandemic, Rochester's line has a similar steepness to those other cities.

So travel is increasing at a similar rate post-pandemic to other communities.

Okay.

And now our final sector waste.

As a reminder, the waste data for cities comes from county data assigned to cities based on their share of the county's population.

This graph shows the pounds of waste recycled, landfilled, and incinerated per person per day.

The recycled category includes both recycling and organics.

So first, the good news, the percent of waste that's recycled has gone up since 2007.

As the percent of waste that's recycled versus incinerated or landfilled changes, so do the emissions per ton of waste.

In general, recycling or composting creates less emissions than landfilling or burning.

However, this graph also shows that Rochester is producing more waste over time.

Well, waste isn't being land filled anymore, or maybe there's a very small amount of landfilling, more waste is being incinerated than was in 2007.

Okay, so now we'll close out with a couple thoughts, and then uh might have a couple minutes for questions.

So first, Rochester is not alone in planning for and acting on climate change.

Public policy and private investment continue to move us in the right direction.

This graph is from a project that we worked on a couple of years ago with the city of Minnetonka.

These white dots show historic emissions, and then this dark line at the top that extends to 2050 shows a scenario where the city grows in populations, population and jobs, but everything else stays the same.

The city's goals are shown as these two black stars.

These colored wedges show how existing policies and market trends, things like improvements to building codes or electricity glimming cleaner will drop the community's total emissions closer and closer to their goals.

Local action can help make sure these wadges happen and close the rest of the gap by doing things like making sure all new buildings are meeting code, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds.

Investing in local renewable energy to help your utility become carbon-free.

Finding opportunities to decrease vehicle travel, maybe through that funding source that we mentioned earlier.

Supporting residents in making their homes more weatherized, switching from gas to electric equipment, and supporting your residents and commuters in adopting electric vehicles.

We also encourage you to use your own data, like you have been to help plan and take actions that are high impact for Rochester, and track the impact of your projects over time using data.

So thank you so much for your time today.

Yeah.

I'll open it up for questions or Kayla or something.

What's the source of the data for your gasoline vehicle fuels?

Becky, do you want to take that question?

Sure.

So we get the vehicle miles traveled as our primary raw data source from the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

We then have to divide those miles traveled into the different vehicle types that are traveling on our roads.

So the passenger cars, the light trucks, the medium and heavy duty vehicles, and we do that based on some statewide data that's available.

We then have to make assumptions as well about the fuels that are being used by in those vehicles, which is also based on statewide data.

And then also have to make some assumptions about the average fuel economy for each of the vehicle types.

So we have uh fuel economy for passenger cars, for light trucks, for the different vehicle types.

And then uh and that fuel economy data is a national number that gets published, and that's the one that Ingrid said we're still waiting on the next number for.

So that series of data sets gets us to a um total gasoline used, which then we can translate into emissions.

Amy.

I'm surprised that you found that Rochester was using less electricity.

I think how many of us have every every kind of electrical gadget there is in electric cars.

I realize you said the residential is up 8%, but I'm surprised it's at that low.

Yes, and that you're so kind of on the you're on the lower end of that graph when it comes to residential energy use per household as well.

And part of that too can be related to the weather in Rochester versus other areas of the state.

But of course, we'd expect that to impact your gas numbers probably more than your electricity.

And I just asked one more question.

You had the measures of travel.

Um Rochester was really the outline on top.

And I was just wondering, are you only measuring the travel within the city?

So for instance, if you're in Blaine, as soon as you go outside of the city of going to shop your Acura, whereas maybe in the city that's as large footprint as ours, you don't have to leave the city to do the shopping and going to work in our login.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And we do see um much higher percentages of admissions of carbon footprints being from travel and some of these um suburban inner and outer ring suburbs where there's a lot of people commuting through to go to work or to go grocery shopping, potentially even in a different city, um, whereas Rochester it feels like is a little bit more self-contained.

So it seems like you're on the lower end of travel emissions in general, but it's been increasing a little bit more quickly than other cities over time, which could just have to do with you know regional changes and regional growth and changes in travel patterns as well.

But they listed Rochester, you're listening, Rochester is the highest in travel.

That's why that's why I wondered if it's because it's all within the city, whereas people live in a suburb as soon as they get outside a bunch of the city, it doesn't count.

So the opposite of what I said.

I'm I'm uh thinking that what we're referencing though is the highest growth.

Is that where you're thinking of that line diagram?

But we could pull up, and I don't know, Ingrid, if this is easy for you to pull up on the regional indicators website, not in the slide deck we have, but we could just take a look at the travel um just the travel normalized per person and see how Rochester does compare to some of the other cities when it when it comes to that metric.

And yeah, Amy, if I may, that the slides towards the end of the deck showing that black line of Rochester.

Yeah, we remember what was yes, was measuring the change in miles traveled.

But earlier they had slides about the actual miles traveled compared to other.

So Rochester is higher in terms of changing what we but our baseline miles travel.

So it's like a second order, a delta.

Thank you.

Yeah, but Ingrid.

It would be nice if that was going the other direction.

Right.

What Ingrid's showing here is that of all of these lines are also other cities, and we have a lot more cities on this graph.

So it's very hard to read, but you can see Rochester is among the lower clump of cities down here when it comes to total vehicle miles traveled when you normalize it by a city population.

Thank you.

Yeah, let's start.

A question around the baseline.

So a lot has changed since 2007 in business communities and methodologies for calculating all this.

Um, would you provide a little bit more context around the rationale for uh a 2007 baseline?

And why not some a data point or a year that's more representative of like methodologies or aligned like a science-based target of 2015?

Can you rephrase that or provide a little bit more detail on that question?

Yeah, so a lot has changed the methodologies.

We've had a lot of um like IPC parents agreements, a lot of things have happened since 2007 for a baseline for data.

Um, and if you look like SBTI and other organizations, they they look for baselines in 2015, no later than or no earlier than 2015.

Um your kind of thoughts on why that baseline should be consider other baselines.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's a good question.

So we have it back to 2007 because we began collecting Rochester's data in 2010.

And so we started out with, I think we started out with 2008 through 2010, and then we started adding in uh as far back as we could go.

There had been, you know, a statewide goal, and I can't remember if Rochester School was ever based on 2005, but we were kind of trying to get back as close to that baseline year for goals as we could.

When we are using it as a point of comparison here, other cities we only have back to 2015 or 2021, even.

And so they have different data sets.

Our goal is just to show you as much data as we can for your city, and then totally up to you, of course, if you're setting goals, what year you set as your baseline goal.

And if you're doing reports, maybe you don't say we changed this much since 2007.

Maybe you say we changed this much since 2015 or 2018.

Um, in terms of methodological changes, I will just note that we are always making sure we're going backwards.

So if there is a methodological change in any of our data sources, we're applying that to all previous years as well.

So we're doing the best we can to provide a consistent series of data over time.

Um obviously that's dependent on the data sources as well, but that's the question.

Um obviously, as you mentioned a couple times, depending on the size and specific community, the trends are going to be different.

So, my question would be how do we compare to similarly sized or structured like cities in when it comes to stats like vehicle travel, change in a vehicle, travel uh vehicle miles for resident and energy use for households.

Yeah.

So we we like to look at especially energy use per household because we feel like that's a little bit of a fairer one where you're not dealing with commuter traffic or whether you're a job center or not, it's it's hard to kind of take those variables out of some of the travel metrics.

So that graph that Ingrid shared related to residential energy consumption per household.

Rochester is on kind of the more efficient end of the spectrum.

Again, that can be partially due to weather, but likely also due to your amount, uh, your the size of your homes and a higher percentage of multifamily homes than in some of the other types of cities that we um evaluate.

The other thing that we've um looked at is like how the percentage of a city's homes that use electric heating, and especially we're looking for like the efficient heat pump heating rather than the electric resistance heating.

Um, that's another uh metric that we like to take a look at.

And generally the cities that are farther on that efficient side of the graph do have higher percentages of electric heating.

Um you can, if you're interested in some of these other questions, go to the website, the slide deck, maybe, but definitely the website and the way that Ingrid showed and do some exploration and based on your knowledge of Rochester, you and surrounding communities or peer communities, you might be able to glean some other insights and we'd love to hear what you find out from the data.

Ingrid, yeah, you noted that one of the important metrics in building energy use is ensuring that new construction was meeting building code.

And as an aside, you said that that's harder than you think.

I was wondering if you could expand a bit on the challenges inherent in that and what tactics the communities are using or that you you know of to start to address some of those challenges.

Yeah, and Becky, I think you can speak more to the what communities are doing to address these challenges.

But I do want to note like we always want to think that 100% of homes and 100% of businesses are meeting energy code, right?

And research in Minnesota tells us that maybe only three out of four commercial buildings are actually meeting energy code.

Um Becky, maybe you want to add a little bit about how we can improve that.

Yeah, and it's it's maybe a little more nuanced in the sense that energy code, and some of you may be really familiar with this, has a lot of different requirements.

And so some buildings are meeting or some requirements, maybe are met by all buildings, and the code officials are really great at checking those off.

And then there are others that some buildings are missing or and some are getting, and maybe there are there's one or two that is really hard or that um code officials are frequently missing, or design teams and and owners are frequently missing.

So the idea that we can increase energy savings by increasing enforcement of the energy code is one that's supported by this research and has been programs have been um pilot tested and I think actually just rolled out.

Um I think the Center for Energy and Environment is supporting city supporting code officials specifically in helping um get additional energy code enforcement.

These types of programs can take a couple of different forms.

One example is having like a checklist of the top um energy saving opportunities that are often missed in code that could just be handed off to an experienced code official, and that might be enough.

Um other cities, maybe especially smaller cities where the person enforcing the energy code is also doing a million other jobs might benefit from uh um a third party more assistance with that energy code um enforcement.

And as Ingrid noted, as the energy code is continuing to get more and more aggressive on a faster timeline than it had in the past, it will be even harder for city officials to keep up with that.

So getting some additional support would be helpful.

Well, I know LHB had some time constraints.

Um so wanna say a big thank you to Maureen, Ingrid and Becky for um walking us through the data.

It's super fascinating.

It's really exciting to see that we have quite a few years worth and some you know interesting trends that we can show.

So um thank you again for your work and uh for the presentation today.

We're really appreciated.

Thank you so much for having us.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, goodbye.

Have a good evening.

Take care.

All right.

So now we're gonna walk our way back through the agenda um to the very beginning.

And uh we'll do some welcome introductions and recognition.

Yeah, so welcome again, everybody.

It's exciting.

Um we have some new members with us, and also um a bit bittersweet in that when we uh last meeting with us as well.

Okay, we're really excited to say for what's next to we all.

And if you're not going terribly far away, then continuing our tradition, we have old Abe Donut.

Can you hold that with light one?

You've got the interruption.

Oh, they're awesome.

Yes, is there I didn't know donuts?

Everything there.

What is that one?

I'll actually purple the purple one.

Okay, I think this one is on the blueberry.

I don't like the blue.

Oh my gosh, this is a lot.

I know.

That was awesome.

Yeah, Sarah, what's next for you?

Um, I'm willing to share sustainability coordinator for this.

Oh congratulations.

They've dropped every city.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so since Sarah's leaving and we have two new members, we thought that it would be a great time to eat some donuts and just kind of go around the room and introduce yourself.

Um, maybe have long admission.

You may not even have to see it.

I can kick things off.

Um, so many following.

I'm current chair of the commission and my day job.

So I'm uh director of Mayo Clinics Office of Sustainability.

So I've been um on the SRC since its inception, so about two years, and I was with uh the energy commission for a little three year that uh Brian, do you want to go?

Sure.

Um June 1st.

Um Brian Morgan, I jumped on the Sys was it, the Energy Commission in 2016 and did eight years of American board now here.

I think enough that stuff.

When you're on the energy commission.

Oh, I didn't really have the box.

I'm trying to check all the boxes, like every committee button.

That's like we'll sustainability ego.

I'm an engineer by day.

I work in primarily manufacturing and industrial stuff.

I do a lot of sustainability.

I'm Leah Morio.

I believe my official rules used to liaison member.

Yeah.

Something like that.

So I'm here.

A lot of it is I'm just very interested in getting more involved in government local beyond.

I'm finished out my last year of high school here, planning to go into college for political science, still come back here for meetings and everything.

As long as I can and just learn more about things, get involved.

I'm passionate about building sustainable future, even if I'm not necessarily the most knowledgeable yet.

So I figured this would be something that would provide me with a lot of good information on context and just context for how government functions in general.

What school do you go to?

I currently do all my classes through TFCO at RCTC.

I'm Aaron Luxin.

I work for the City of Rochester as our deputy public works director.

I've been involved with the SRC for oh, 18 months, maybe a little over a year and a half.

So the sustainability division uh about that time was moved underneath the public works department.

So within the group that I work with, we have the sustainability division, the wastewater collection and treatment uh utility, our stormwater utility, flood control um utility as well.

And so uh there was a strategic kind of move to bring sustainability within that to make sure that we're incorporating sustainability in all of our infrastructure projects and development review and and supporting um there's a lot of connections there with sustainability and our our uh uh just adaptability to changing climate and infrastructure management projects and things like that.

So um it's been a great 18 months.

So but I'm gonna go grab napkins following.

Uh my name's Casey McQuaid.

I also go by Ace.

I've been on this commission since April of last year.

So I'm relatively new still.

Uh I work at uh as an engineer for a company that manufactured electronics for medical and military equipment primarily.

Um I'm driven by wanting to reclaim developed lands and rewild and increased biodiversity and how to sustain myself, not only on a uh local level, just at my my own property, but being here and helping the city to achieve similar goals in a way.

That's that's that's why I'm here is to help promote those types of uh actions.

Yeah.

Um Seth Barons, I'm the current uh co-chair or vice chair, I should say, of the commission.

Um, I've been a commissioner since for a little over two and two years.

Um my professional job is as a project architect for HGA uh with our office in town here.

Um, and an interest in sustainability and energy use as it relates to our built environment and um and um new buildings, particularly commercial and institutional.

Um I'm Terry Goskenzie.

I think I've been on almost two years now, and I've lived in Rochester just a little bit longer than that.

My husband and I retired here, but my prior life was as a biomedical researcher and a vice president for research and president at a university.

So I did a lot of work on um working with students and their passion for sustainability as well as sustainability projects at a university scale and research in this area in a lot of different ways in terms of promoting that and working with federal and state government to fund that kind of work.

Then at the city for quickly coming up on two years.

Um it was interesting because Sarah and I were reflecting earlier today, and I came on at the city in May of 2024, and Sarah came on beginning of September.

So she's been here almost as long as I have been here.

So well, Miss H.

Dearly, I just wanted to take a minute to thank Sarah for all of her work for SRC and just kind of helping with these meetings, follow-up supporting you all and supporting um the work of the sustainability commission for the last 18 months.

Really, really great work, but organizing anything.

About our work in 2025, and it really was focused on EV charging and EV policy that we passed.

All of the research behind that really great work.

So Sarah's Sarah's been really fundamental in kind of all of the background research and getting us to the point where we can really take a policy item forward.

So both on EV charging and she's laid great foundations for us on the natural gas branches conversation.

So and I hope that you were remembered and since ideas that you're doing in Northfield, but we can try to have in your spare time.

I'm Amy Covet.

I'm remembered with the League of Man Motors and then retired for 29 years as the lobbyist from State County.

So I know a lot about the waste energy facility.

It's one of my jobs just getting money for that year after year and preventing everybody in Hanford County who hits burners from wrecking ours.

So I really very interested in this, I also like to uh go to CR Club meetings.

And I'm just so thrilled that our city finally has a sustainability commission and has great employees.

So we're lucky.

Um Edward Cohen, uh we heard about 15 years ago, moved here with my wife at that time.

Um my background since uh Brescibook holidays, college days, I was interested in the energy crisis on Earth Day, and it stuck with me.

Um I worked 26 years for the state and both in their energy office and their environmental office.

I live citywide.

Um education airports in Indianapolis through the 350.org.

Um I rehabbed five different houses in my life, bad traditions, like weatherization crews, uh trained energy artists, data energy audits for years.

And um when I moved here a year after I moved here, I became I was invited to be on the energy commission, served on it for six years, uh chaired it for the two maximum year old out during that time when we created the uh energy action plan.

And then when the sustainability uh commission for the energy commission transitioned out, they formed a task force that I was on that.

I served in the lively neighborhoods or how that neighborhood was using uh because that's really my interest in residential conservation energy efficiency.

So it's someone's position.

What was it?

September, October last year.

Um agreed to take on full full study starting out.

Um my name's Stuart Raster and uh new today.

I appreciate the the opportunity to serve on this commission.

Um my background is I do consulting um helping companies be better corporate citizens, and doing that since 2007, uh, when I started with an organization called Sasha's office sustainability uh based out of San Francisco.

Um started working with clients like Walmart and McDonald's and uh really kind of got my sustainability credentials with them.

Um started to work uh again all through Bothery work with the organization now called New York City called accountability, which is more focused on sort of sisters strategy and standards around sustainability.

Um from there uh went to Boston College at the Center for Corporate Citizenship.

Most of us didn't go to school to do this and learn about sustainability, so worked and educating uh professionals in the CFR.

Um my wife and I moved from Boston uh here to Rockwester.

Um I'm a surgeon of man.

Um, and I started my own uh same consulting firm.

Um so I uh work with companies doing the same type of work, uh figuring out ways to do you know climate strategy, corporate giving strategies, uh working on programs, projects, a lot of kind of I would say it's kind of two components to it for our strategy and planning, uh, and then the other component to it is communications and reporting.

And your clients, many of them here in Rochester, or are you none of them are in Roger?

So yeah, changed that all it is, yeah, it's all um sort of national with some local footprints.

But um I think recent ones include Red Robin, um at company Red Um out of Pennsylvania to the kind of work.

Um, and then the second piece to this is I you know I often talk about um we don't have a science problem, we have a people problem.

Um science around sustainability, um we have a challenges you can overcome and really it's it's got training, it's not engagement.

Um it's not change and change management.

Um, and it's really about those components, right?

Uh getting people and organizations to do things different.

So we'll have insights to help us.

I'm happy to happy to be here.

Um we will move in.

Thanks for the introductions and welcome to our new members and uh we wish Sarah all the best.

Yes.

Um we're gonna move along in our agenda and we'll um approve the minutes.

So we met in December.

We had some discussion about our annual report, which I know has been sent now to um city council.

Uh, and then we also had a preview of our uh work plan that we will also revisit today.

Is there a motion to approve the December minutes?

So moved.

Second seconds, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, please say nay.

All right, the motion passes and the minutes approved.

All right.

Um, so now we'll move into old business and um we have just a little bit of time to talk about the 2026 sustainability division.

All right, we do have one member after.

Yes, thank you.

Sorry about that.

Um, so we do have an opportunity for the public to provide comments to the commission.

Uh typically these are um regarding items that are not on the agenda, and we have one person joining us online.

Chris, do you have any a desire to make a public comment?

I don't think thank you.

Well, thanks for joining us anyway.

All right.

Now we'll move on to discussion about the uh 2026 sustainability edition one.

And well, Kayla's pulling that up with really quick when we sent the annual reports, the SRCN report, as well as the um sustainability community action planning or report progress, the feedback uh was just the uh appreciation very thorough.

Um they were amazed at the the progress that had been made, and I think when you look at the breadth of all the work that got done, you know, it really pulled out you know um the great work of this commission and and the community around the um community action um report.

So, anyways, I wanted to make sure I relayed that feedback um from some council members and administration.

So awesome.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

Well, and I did attach the final versions to the packet as requested at the um December meeting or both thinking.

I don't think we have too much to add on this item.

I don't know if you want me to give a summary or you two.

Okay, sure.

So last month we kind of provided uh high-level overview of the 2026 work plan.

We went through all, I believe 15 priority items.

We have quite a lot on the docket for this year, 18 priority items.

Um, and then also recognizing that at the bottom of the work plan is the SRC month by month calendar.

And so this shows you when all of these items will come back to you in more detail throughout the year.

Um, so recognizing that you know, this is just a high-level overview, kind of our guiding document, um, subject to change if there are you know items that come up.

Um specifically the schedule subject to shifting a little bit, but we have also started a practice where in staff updates we put the agenda items for the following month.

So trying to give everyone a little bit of kind of a preview as we move through the year.

Um, and I did uh make the change that Edward suggested last month, which was adding the greenhouse gas reduction impact to each of the priority items.

So that is if you saw the updated work plan in your packet this month, you can see that change was made.

So under each of the items, we have that listed.

I don't have anything else to add.

So we have just a few minutes um where we can provide some commissioner comments.

I think maybe the best way to do this is just to run around the room and see uh if there are um comments.

Edward, do you want to kick us off?

Do you have any comments on uh work plan?

I it was an enormous document to begin with, but maybe that points to how much lines are used to do.

That you have your you'll have to have your fingers in so many pies.

That was the one thing that jumped out of me.

Yeah, I will say I think Sarah's done some great work to set us up for success.

She is leaving after tomorrow.

But we were just kind of reflecting earlier today about just kind of where things were at when she started and then where things are now as far as organization.

That's organization of our files of our SOPs, of our, you know, kind of tracking tools, just general organization.

I think of the sustainability division is ninth day from where it was 18 months ago.

And so we I think she's just really laid great groundwork for us to take this work and move it forward.

I will also say that we are in the interview and hiring process currently for the 2026 sustainability associate.

So this is the joint position between the city and DMC that we bring on each year, our 2025 sustainability associate Nolan, who has been working up until now.

Um his last week is next week.

And so we are rehired for that position.

So that's a little bit more support that we'll have coming up.

But certainly, you know, I think you brought up a good point last month of the ranking of the greenhouse gas emission um impact on each of the items.

And I think you know, that's something that Aaron and I will continue to talk about is just um you know, the the kind of ranking and priority list of these items.

So I think we're set up nicely to make progress on all of them.

2025, we accomplished all of the items in the work plan, the ones that we didn't, it was because of you know, some change outside of our control and some shifting.

Um, so so I'm hopeful for the work plan for this year.

Seems like a lot, but we have 11 and a half months left.

There's 18 things.

I'm hoping that you can off lows, maybe some to somebody else.

This is just overwhelming.

Well, you are you're listed as pretty much calling the shots or directing, not all of them.

Right.

And I think there is a role for everyone to play.

I will say also there's a lot of collaboration between you know the city, um, DMC, also the county.

I know the new sustainability coordinator at the county is going to be a represent uh representative in quite a few of the items that you know we had on the work line.

So I think there is support there.

Sure, I know you're new, but any comments that you want to share.

Uh uh well to echo and I think it's came out uh when we did the onboarding.

Similarly, like there is a lot here, uh, such understanding the prior the priorities and resources and like risk reward um schedule had we move forward would be great.

Yeah, I really appreciate um the how you have it laid out and um highlighting the various roles and responsibilities I think will be helpful too to keep us keep everybody organized.

When do we start?

I I was wondering the same thing, just the prioritization.

I assume they're numbered more or less on the order of how valuable they are to the city or to you.

Okay.

Yeah, I would say generally, yes.

Yeah.

I think everything I've been thinking has been said or something.

I'm just curious to know how I can help.

A lot on there, and I want to step off and do what I can with it.

Okay, right.

Yeah, no, no further comment that hasn't already been stated.

It's ambitious.

That's a good thing.

The only thing that popped in my head was at the mayor's state of the city address or whatever they call it, Amy was there as well.

I was looking at it with a different perspective, thinking about what we were working on and put into the back of my mind that where we find places that align with some of the mayor's priority could help us.

And I know it's going to sell on self-serving, but it's not.

She made a big deal about multimodal transportation and the real challenges in this city.

She even said it, you know.

I know this is really hard about bikes and pedestrians and everything.

And so I felt like where we can tie into her priorities that maybe we can get a little bit more, whether it's moral support or visibility, then we shouldn't hesitate to ask for that.

It just seemed like one where I'm not I'm perfectly happy to send her a letter of what we're doing and what we'd like her to do.

So and I think we built it into the schedule to have our new, well, give them a few months to a few additional months to settle in, but then bring our moat shift coordinator, our new mode shift coordinator at the city to one of these meetings to kind of speak to those.

And I um those ideas.

And I think as we went through the greenhouse gas inventory, I had Sarah add a note to send that to him and you know, just make sure that we are kind of keeping a pulse on how we can support his work and vice versa.

Yeah.

Well, we are looking for approval of the work plan today.

So open it up for approval and please don't leave or die or save.

Nobody else will do this.

I will approval.

Because they win a lot or can I ask one uh for like just uh question?

Do all of our commissions do a similar type of document that we could sort of compare and contrast like other people's priorities instead of doing in silos other ways that we can I don't there's a lot of I think there's um a lot of room for growth across you know to for more continuity across all of the boards and commissions.

Okay.

Yeah, I would say I think we're leading the way.

Well, yeah, I guess I have Terry point there opportunities to figure out other where other priorities, whether it's mayors or other comments um and piggyback.

Yeah, that's how I would create real change.

So Amy, I moved anybody else.

Second A seconded.

Uh, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, nay.

All right.

So motion passes, and the sustainability division work plan is moved.

We have uh we all have our work out for us.

All right.

We'll move into um officer elections for 2026.

Um just a little bit of high-level information.

Uh the uh chair and vice chairs, but we'll be nominating and electing today, give their one-year terms, so they start in February and run through January.

Um, typically what we've done is as a chair or vice chair, attend um some planning meetings to help develop the meeting agenda with Kayla.

Um, the vice chair will lead in the chair's absence.

Um, and each role, the chair and the vice chair hold one vote, the same as all of our members.

Um, so we each have have one vote.

Um, before we roll into this, I know in the packet that we had shared uh a nomination and just wanted to share an update that since the packet was published.

Seth has withdrawn his name for the chair.

So I really appreciate you being thoughtful and transparent about that.

Um, but I'll offer you a moment to you know share.

Thanks, Amanda.

I just wanted to share that the work of this group and our responsibility for our communities is really important to me.

And it's been a real privilege serving as vice chair of the past year and supporting the work that we all care so much about um in taking inventory of my own priorities, responsibilities at work, my responsibilities towards my family.

I felt that I'm just don't have the capacity to lead this group in the manner of which I think it deserves.

Um, so respectfully withdrawing my nomination for to serve as chair of the group.

So continue to serve as a commissioner through the end of um my term, and look forward to continuing our work together and supporting the elected chair and vice chair in whatever way I'm able to.

Well, I want to personally thank you for serving as vice chair.

You've done a fantastic job.

So it's been uh a real honor to work with you the past two years as vice chair, and uh as we just discussed, we've accomplished an awful lot of work.

So um brought a word for you and like that.

You're gonna have half a minute.

Uh so given that update, the chair position um is open, and um, so nominations are open and will be uh decided by majority vote.

I know Amy's for consideration, Terry Kenzie is chair.

I think um since I have watched her the past year and a half or almost two years, uh she is really an excellent advocate.

I mean, not only does she know our stuff, but she has got to know our community almost aggressively.

She's everywhere I've ever been, plus times two.

And so she knows all the power brokers.

I think that she is such an excellent advocate, and of all of us is probably the most active person.

So I'd love to see her as our chair.

So I move, Terry.

Uh, they will, but um, Terry, maybe I'll give you just a moment to respond.

Um, I'm honored by your super kind words and you you all make it easy to want to be a part of this group for the new people.

These are like the best people in the world.

And if I can be helpful, uh in to facilitate this group, I won't say leading because we're all a team and serving our city and our world, we need it.

I'm happy to do it.

Excellent.

So shoes to fill.

Are there any other nominations for chair?

Did you want a second?

Yeah, oh yeah.

I would second this report.

Just to add to the discussion before there is a votering thing, just wanted to again say thank you to both of you.

It's been great to work with with both of you as the chair and vice chair, just to echo what you said, Amanda.

I think we've accomplished quite a lot in 2025.

And I think you know, that really came from the organization for both of you and those meetings and strategy and thinking through agendas and how to, you know, when to bring things forward and how to bring things forward and how to frame up discussion.

And so just wanted to say thank you both for all the extra time that you put in for SRC in 2025 and before that.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

My pleasure.

So we have a nomination for chair, Terry Kinsey.

Do we want to vote on that first?

Yeah, so you have a motion on the second.

So yeah, there's any discussion.

Any other nominations for chair?

Maybe closed.

So hearing none, uh, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, please say no.

All right.

Welcome aboard.

Or new chair.

Past chair is a real thing, and past vice chair is a real thing, right?

Well, I didn't around.

Yeah, so I termed all yeah, yes.

No, we're not working.

Yes, yeah.

Um, so we'll do the same process for uh vice chair.

And um I would like to move or nominate uh Ace McQuaid.

So Ace came forward and raised his hand and uh said that he wanted to be more involved in the sustainability resiliency commission and more involved with um shaping the future of the community, which I appreciate um you volunteering to do that.

So I would like to nominate uh Ace for what to serve as vice chair.

Do I speak now or is there a second person?

Yeah, respond.

Yeah, we think you'll be for to respond.

I believe in the importance of the work this commission is doing.

I see a lot of potential in Rochester as a leader in the state of Minnesota and really for the entire country of what we can do when we really set our minds to it.

That ambitious goal of hitting carbon-free energy uh generation by 2030, is wonderful.

I think there's a lot more that can be done, and I want to help forward that as much as I can.

So I'd be glad to take a vice chair role.

I second that nomination.

Excellent.

Are there any other uh nominations for vice chair?

All in favor to say aye.

Aye.

Okay, any opposed say nay.

Congratulations.

All right.

The last note, I will be prejudicing and onboarding the new Karen Vice Chair in between this meeting and the test meeting.

And then we do meet monthly.

I think we put that on here.

Yeah, so we meet monthly.

Um, so I'll send you all the information.

Is it a regular cadence like like this, but just on a different day of the month?

Yep.

And we'll see if the time we have works, or if we need to find another time, but it'll be so the last week of the month because it's the first week of the month that I send the packet up.

So we meet one week before the packet gets sent.

So excellent.

Um we've already covered uh regional indicators, our presentation.

And so next on the agenda is staff updates.

Okay.

All right, so just a quick update on the natural gas franchise fee project.

So we have um launched the website.

So we have a website live, and we're moving into the community engagement phase of the project.

And so we have several uh ways that residents and and businesses can engage engage in this project, both in-person sessions um and virtual sessions.

We also have the project website page.

We have a community feedback form on the website.

So if a resident or community member is not able to make any of either the virtual or in-person listening sessions to provide feedback, the community feedback form, which is linked from the project website page has all of the same questions that that person would be providing feedback on at the virtual or in-person sessions.

We also have an option on the website page for someone to request city staff come to their meeting and present on this topic.

Surprise, it's me.

So if anyone wants me to wants me to come up and speak with you know their community group, or if you know of any community groups that might be interested in a presentation, we are trying to cast a wide net with this, so please let me know or share that link with them.

And this will be the focus of our February meeting at SRC.

A question of what will be the deadline for the decision for the year.

Yes.

So we're in the engagement phase from now until I would say early to mid-March.

I'm working with our consultants at WSB to kind of draft and finalize an overview of all of the feedback gathered during that engagement period by the end of March, and then we'll be presenting that to City Council at a study session in mid-April with the staff recommendation on the project.

So based on the city council direction at that time, it could then move through a process of approval.

We all should go to these so that it's not just the anti-tax people speaking.

So make sure you find one you can go to.

And today, AILA already signed up for if you're downtown, March 3rd, which is a Tuesday.

The link commitment voters and the library will be having their third lunch with local leaders.

This vocal leader is Kayla, and should be talking about the franchise fee.

So I'm sure put that one in your calendar, but it's probably better to do the other ones where your vote is counted or something.

This is just kind of an informational.

Yeah, I'll probably, yeah, I'll connect with you on that.

Okay, so we'll talk more about this at our next meeting.

Um we publish the latest edition of the sustainability e-newsletter.

Um so thank you, Sarah.

Um, and just a reminder that if you aren't signed up for this email list, um, please do so at our website and share widely with anyone that you know.

This is really the way for residents to be in the know about everything sustainability related.

We include info from our utility, um, the county, state, federal articles.

So, really the best way to events, things like that.

So, best way to keep in touch.

Um, we applied for the MPCA's local climate action implementation grant for the Healthy Air and Homes program, which we're launching later this year.

So, this is kind of the other large initiative in the first half of 2026, in addition to franchise fees.

Um, so this program will train um residents to become healthy homes and energy navigators, providing in-home consultations, distributing healthy homes kids, and then connecting residents with um resources for energy efficiency, weatherization, healthy homes, radon, things like that.

And this will be the focus of our March meeting.

Um a reminder that winter salt week is coming up here in a few weeks.

Do you know, Erin?

It's the last week in January.

Last week in January.

Okay.

And so this includes um workshops, events, things like that to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of salt on roads.

So we linked the website there if you'd like um more information.

This is Sarah's last meeting with the city of Brochester.

She's transitioning to Northfield where she will serve as the sustainability coordinator.

So congratulations again.

Um, and then just that the last note about the SRC annual report and the sustainability plan annual report were sent to city council on your behalf who approved those at the last meeting, and they are attached to this month's packet.

Someone had requested the final versions of those.

And then again, February meeting topics include um large majority will be the natural gas franchise fee, um, your feedback on that project, and then uh we'll talk about the sustainability spotlight.

So getting a CRC members to sign up for the next few of those, which is the article that you all write that is included in the sustainability newsletter.

The next one is due in March.

So timely to talk about it in February.

Stuart, you can write about what businesses should contract you for.

Some businesses in Rochester following.

And then here is our events and meetings calendar.

So some awareness around the winter salt week events and then the franchise fee virtual and in-person sessions.

So our first virtual session for franchise fee engagement is Friday, January 50th at noon virtual session.

The in-person session is Tuesday, February 3rd from 4 30 to 6 30 at the public library auditorium.

And then the second virtual session is Thursday, February 12th at 6 30 in the evening.

So hopefully you can make one of those or all of them.

Thanks, Kayla.

We um have just a short period of time for commissioner comments.

So this is an opportunity to either share some updates or things that weren't on the agenda that you'd like to bring forward.

So I'll open that up if there are any uh commissioner comments.

Actually, I will uh just kick off talking about the um franchise fee.

So Kayla will be our featured speaker for the next green drinks event uh that's happening on January 29th, and just um finalize our meeting locations.

We will be meeting at No Rios Cafe this time.

Uh so hope you can join us and Kayla will talk about the franchise fees.

Any other uh commissioner comments or announcements?

I want to just ask about the franchise fee.

Can you give us some little um talking points?

Because we all all want to be advocating for this before people go because I think the most obvious response is going to be I don't want my tags to go up.

So is it on?

I would say this document is probably the um the best overview of the project.

And this wasn't finalized when the packet was published, so I can send this out via email.

Um it's an overview of of the project.

Um I would say it is a long-term stable funding source for environmental priorities, both internally um for the municipality and for the community.

Um, and you know, I would say it isn't it isn't a tax, um, it's a fee on natural gas bills.

So it kind of spreads the revenue and the fee across all natural gas users rather than relying solely on property taxes.

If we could just have not the list, but at least the number of Minnesota cities that already do this, so it doesn't look like we're an out there.

There is one source that said over 395 communities had this.

Um we looked, I looked at over 100 and I looked in detail over 100, so I'm comfortable saying that we've over.

Oh, but we've researched each like fees in depth for over 100 cities.

Um, I did not have time to go through every single city and can you wait in between like two or three.

If you go on the website, Sarah put together a really great graph.

I think it has what, like 62.

Yes, 62 different cities.

And it shows and it's specific to residential natural gas cities that have a flat fee and shows all the different rates in all these cities and then what the averages across all the cities.

So you can look at that to see.

We also have a breakdown on the website of all the cities that she researched, and then the percentage of cities that have a flat fee that have a usage-based fee, a perk learn fee, um, and then the third type of fee is a percentage of revenue, which is we're not considering that in Rochester, but kind of a breakdown of the different fee types that all of the cities have that's this fairly easy to find on the city website.

Rochester Mn.gov slash franchise fee.

Okay, so I think do we think it would help if we had some talking points about what the money will be?

Oh, it will benefit the people who are gonna add this extra fee on your guys' room.

Certainly.

Yeah, I would say that that's not good on the website, and it is on the overview document.

Um would it be helpful if I send something out via email?

It's always helpful to send things up.

So I thought this was good, but then I had okay and answered this question.

I would say for most questions, direct people to the website.

Um, we've spent a lot of work, you know, really putting together content on the website.

We have you know FAQs that are that will be up on that site um relatively soon.

We have you know, proposed or potential fee levels.

We have um estimated bill and monthly bill impacts for all of the levels.

So that is really the place um where people can find the facts about the project.

Thank you.

And then my contact information is on there as well.

Awesome.

I just got people I talk to who will be interested.

They're not gonna have time for me, perhaps go to the website, but an email at least will be a link to my information, right?

Okay, yes.

So I sent out quite a few of those emails yesterday that kind of encourage people to share the information.

So I will just send that to all of us, RC.

And that has basically here are all the ways that you can engage with the project.

Is it the website, attend a meeting, fill out the online form, request a presentation?

The least we can all do is be advocates.

We need the work and we can just talk.

All right, I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Okay.

Thanks everybody.

Okay.

Let's see who we have.