Ready to start it up.

Righty.

Everything open here.

All right, we're going to start with a call to order.

This is the Rochester, Minnesota Sustainability and Resiliency Commission meeting on June 10th, 2026.

I'm going to start by um calling the role for attendance.

Seth Barons.

Present.

Amy Cockett, we know is is unavailable.

Amanda Holloway, present.

Terry Kinsey here.

Tason Quaid.

Present.

Edward Cohen.

Present.

Brian Morgan, present.

Leah Mario?

Present.

And Stuart Rassier.

You also know he's unable to attend.

All right.

So next we'll go to the minutes.

The minutes were part of your packet that you received from Kayla.

Thank you again, Kayla.

Um, were there any additions or corrections to the minutes?

Seeing none, can I get a motion to approve?

Motion to approve.

Second.

Thank you.

All in favor?

Good.

We all like the minutes.

Okay.

Next.

All right.

Open comment period.

Do we have anyone online?

You can check it while I read this.

This is an opportunity for the public to provide comments to the commission regarding items not on the agenda.

Is that what I need to change?

We have to fix that.

Any items.

Anyone can talk about whatever they want.

And under the purview of our commission, I guess.

The commission will not discuss or take action on them.

According to the advisory boards, committees, and commissions rules of procedure and operation.

Each speaker is limited to four minutes, and there is a 15-minute time limit for open comment period on our agenda.

Anyone like to make comments today?

Can you come to the table so it uh so we make sure we capture the audio?

Thank you.

So if you have extra copies, I'll fast those around.

And I hope with uh Edward and I said I could email these two ahead of time so we could oh thank you for doing them as a computer.

Okay, greetings, commission members.

My name is Mike Edward.

I'm here to read a letter on behalf of Zemmour Valley Audubon Society.

We presented letters at each of the basket meetings documented the rapid decline of many of our native species.

In our last letter, we indicated that we'd be presenting solutions to reverse these ecological declines.

And I want to share an inspiring inspiring example of what one city is doing and what Rochester could do as well.

Um TJ Gilmore of Liversville, Texas, lost us city's native habitat uh initiative primarily as a water conservation strategy, recognizing that Texas faces the same water scarcity challenges already playing out in the American West.

The city began converting road mediums and rights away from turf grass to native prairie plantings and purchased at 10 acre park in the city center and restored it to native grassland.

Using INAT was to track results scientifically, they documented the plant species growing from just 33 species to 142, with total wildlife taxa reaching 266, demonstrating measurable ecological impact.

A key principle guiding their work is that the city must model the behavior it wants its residents to adopt on the resident side.

Certified yards receive a sign, create uh neighborhood neighborhood visibility and sparking peer-to-peer advocacy.

Partner concluded the Native Plant Society of Texas, Matthew Gardner and Master Nature and Program Coraline is that education signage on neighbor to neighbor and so on's fool P needle far more effectively than top down mandates, gilmore beliefs, long-term maintenance costs are lower with NATO than conventional turf.

Though we did not present a full cost analysis accounting for upfront converged expenses.

Now, while Rochester's context differs from Woodfield, the model is instructive.

We are fortunate to have more water here, but that's not a reason to use it carelessly on turf grass and non native landscaping.

Native plants filter and absorb water, reduce runoff, and keep our waterways cleaner.

Benefits that matter here regardless of scarce, scarcity.

Rochester's approach should also emphasize native trees, shrubs, and shade tolerant plants and habitat diversity beyond one based on focus prairie program alone can provide.

Rochester should be a leader in ecological recovery.

We are home to the leading medical institution in the world.

We should have some of the healthiest habitats in the region.

There is already a foundation to build upon.

Residents can establish native plots on their own property and boulevards can be uh converted to nature NATO plannings, do a straightforward online, permit process.

These are manual steps, but the pace of the change needs to accelerate the garden grants program required resolution, and we have ready forward.

Yet the rate of native area conversion over the past several years has not matched the urgency of the problem.

Now, tell me before this permission is to help change that by setting clear goal, establishing the annual growth rate needed to meet them, measuring progress, and making adjustments when targets are not being met.

We appreciate your time and commitment to these issues, and we look forward to continuing this conversation.

Thank you.

Well no.

Okay.

Anyone online?

No.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so you can see that we have a very busy agenda today.

So we'll work to be efficient.

Our first item from old business is a discussion of the uh next iteration of the move toward a natural gas franchise fee or sustainable funding for sustainability might be a better way to put it.

How's that?

Um, and so you were given in your packet um a draft um memo or letter to city council regarding the pilot program to demonstrate the how we could utilize um more sustainability funds in the city.

So Ayla, wanna take it over from here?

Um sure.

Um, I don't have much, just an overview, I guess, of where we're at in the process.

So last month uh we presented kind of an overview of the franchise fee project, including kind of the results of our community engagement effort that we did earlier this year, kind of what we presented to council, uh feedback from city council, and then the potential pilot program concepts.

So we talked through some of the potential measures in pilot program one, and then the community grant idea for pilot program two.

Um we had some discussion around the proposed pilot programs, and you all provide feedback on your priorities and kind of some considerations around program design.

Um so now um the chair and the vice chair of SRC have drafted um the proposed recommendation report.

So this is your opportunity to kind of discuss that recommendation report, review, review, finalize, and approve um the report.

So with that, I that's all that I have for you all on this topic.

Um I can bring up the report and share that.

Did you get any comments prior to the meeting from any of the commissioners?

No, okay.

Just thought with Amy not here, she might have sent something.

Oh no, okay, that's fine.

All right.

So while you pull that up, did anyone from their review of this have any comments?

It is, I'm just gonna say for me that we we certainly wouldn't want it to go any longer.

We're already probably pushing it a little bit at two pages, but I think this is an important topic and uh opportunity.

Okay.

Looking at just like stop looking at me.

Did anybody have any uh questions, concerns, comments, additions, subtractions, word now?

Trying to remember everybody.

Okay.

Do you want to take a quick look at that?

So chime in, Ace, because we both had a chance, you know, looked at this before.

The you know, the the we try to use the buzzwords that were discussed as part of what we heard from the sustainability discussion.

Um, measurable outcomes, there's a lot about that in here.

Um the greenhouse gas goals, reducing energy cost burden, which is another thing that came up.

Um, and then informing the this is my favorite line.

Inform future sustainability investment strategies for the city of Rochester.

So I think it makes it clear the goal was to make it clear that this is this is a pilot, this is not do this, and then we're gonna go away.

This is an important thing.

Um, and then it was broken down into the two items we talked about before.

One was um electrification, energy efficiency incentive programs, and one was more community-based, where um there could be a chance to go.

How do we engage the community in our work?

Not everyone is as um engaged as our Zumbo Valley Audubon Society friends are in terms of um working with us and bringing stuff.

Uh so it talks about outcomes and accountability, community facing benefits.

So what are the benefits?

Equity and accessibility, which you know uh is an important topic.

Coordination with RPU, which is clearly very important, and then again, so it's that classic structural, tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, tell them what you just told them.

So to summarize again why um and again about the importance of transparency, equity, and visible community impacts.

And we're not taking a stance towards either of the proposed pilots saying, but rather saying continue exploring both of these and I like that approach.

Yeah, yep.

We support the overall franchise feed, but none of us have the actually say which model proper way to go with it.

But we're trying to get the city council brain to figure out the model and do something with it, maybe it'll be beneficial.

And I think they'll know from the outcomes.

I think you know, what one measurable outcome is if you put this out there, how many community groups want to engage?

That would be a very important outcome.

Yeah, to show, you know, at this at this now moment in time, how other people are engaged in this work as well.

And that's why I think you know, our approach right now is to include both the pilots to bring forward both of the pilots um to city council for for funding.

There's a big discussion on how we will give community buy improved various groups.

I think that's a great point.

Maybe we can talk more about that.

Um the sustainability plan reviewing that might be a good kind of way to start thinking about how to engage community groups later on the agenda.

We're talking about the sustainability plan and the community-led tactics and how to kind of engage with community groups on that.

So maybe that's a good kind of avenue into that topic.

I like to think of it as a carrot to actually bring in more community groups, identify more community groups.

Because one of our challenges, we don't have any trouble finding out what the city is doing and RPU and in terms of sustainability in the work plan.

We struggled last year to find the community stuff, and I think it ended up being a lot of intern Googling and um those of us that knew things and we did the best we could.

So it would be someone is not nearly so happy as our other um so I think that it to me that it's the other thing is we want to remove personally, maybe it's the personal, I'm gonna take the hat off as chair.

Personally, I think showing that we're supporting the community-led initiative says a lot because they do know where people are and they do know better the needs than we know just different sections of our populations that we interact with.

So I think it will I have to say the it it's off topic, but not there's been a lot of you know, at least on the Facebook side press about healthy home helpers.

I just sent you another one today.

Uh my ward councilman put it out there, right?

So the city put it out there.

I mean, it's so I do think that when you are putting out their resources for people, you're more likely to get them.

So it would give us something that we could put out there to different groups.

So maybe some of our groups that we already have good relationships with would help but to share it among their groups.

So I think of EarthFest as like every person that was at Earth Fest needs to know about this program, right?

Because that's a whole community of people that yeah, and I will say too, I think through the um gas franchisee engagement.

I developed a lot of connections with more broad community groups like Kawanas and Rotary and there's a whole spreadsheet of contacts that I have now.

And so that's kind of a list that I rely on as well to get information out.

So I think we're really developing these kind of channels of community contacts.

Yeah, I think the letter is well written.

No notes.

No notes.

Wow, that's high praise from Banda.

Just got a keen eye.

All right, no one else.

We don't need to be let's not drag this on.

Okay, so this would go to city council.

Do we know when it's gonna be discussed next?

Yeah, we're aiming for early August.

We have a few more just different pieces of it that we're talking through internally, but we're looking at early on.

Okay, so you'll send this.

We'll we this will be sent ahead of the council meeting and all but not too far ahead.

No, like usually if the council meetings on a Monday, we'll send it on the Thursday report.

Okay, yeah.

So we're approving it this month because I think by the time we get to next month's meeting, we probably will already be in the process of you know, this the council meeting will have already been scheduled, but it'll be a regular meeting this time and not um a study session since we already went first and then we'll know about that, make sure that we know so someone can go and maybe we'll point someone to speak.

Yes, since you would be able to speak with that one.

Okay.

Okay, great.

So with that, leave you the motion.

Yes.

I'll make a motion to approve the natural gas franchise speed funded pilot programs recommendation report as written.

Thank you.

Second, or second the motion.

Okay.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed?

Hearing none.

Okay, that's approved.

Wonderful.

All right.

So next, flipping back and forth between pages.

Next on our agenda is oh, helping home helpers update.

Yeah.

And I don't have you know a lot of specifics about this.

I'm happy to share whatever would be most helpful for you all to um to know, or if you have any specific questions, but we did launch the program in um.

And so we Kristen is one of our navigators, so she can talk about it as well.

I've been fascinated to hear feedback from the navigators, what they've been seeing in homes, talking with people about, so that's really interesting.

And then so I'm kind of taking on the the first part of it, which is from when someone completes an interest form, re-assessment phone call, getting things scheduled, and then kind of all the back end um pieces of it, and then Kristen and Tom are going out and doing the assessments, and then we're sending sending a follow-up report.

Um, and so we're kind of tag teaming the process right now.

I've had a lot of really great conversations with people over the phone.

Um I've been amazed at the level of interest in the program, which I'll talk about in a in a minute here.

I have the um the math, the GMS program that we've created for this.

Um but lots of great conversations over the phones.

I'm collecting kind of some you know more specific data from people saying this is what I'm most interested in.

And so we're kind of cataloging that, and then they're getting to talk even more with people out in the field.

Um so we'll talk yep a little bit about resident interest, some of our pilot sessions early on assessments, and then we can talk a little bit about outreach if you all want to continue to support um that end of it.

Um, my only question for you all is just if any of you who have participated in any phase of this program so far, if you have any um feedback for us, um, and then we can continue to provide updates as we kind of move through the program.

Here is um the switch, doesn't it?

It's the weather.

Here is the while you wait for that.

I will say that I was one of the volunteers, did the uh the mock phone call to set it up, and then had uh the visit and with the timer and everything else, got the report, got I've sent feedback, probably more a lot of feedback, but um, you know, and having done had done the RPU, it's very different than that.

So again, I think that's one of the concerns that I think everybody probably wondered.

It's it's much more like I think would lead people to that more than it doesn't copy it, right?

It's it's it's a little bit more self-directed, it's a little bit more um self-help, right?

At a at an afford at a sort of that initial affordable level that people can do to start to you know either change their thinking or figure out what they have to do next.

So yeah, so um we partnered with our GIS department at the city to create um a really robust and amazing tool that we're using to track participation.

It um is where all the data from the interest form goes.

We review it on there, our digital workbook that we're taking on iPads out to the assessments, all the data in that iPad is tracked through here as well.

So it'll be great for the end of the program, and we're pulling program data and metrics and sending it out to all of our partners and you know, quantifying energy savings and greenhouse gas emission reductions from the project.

Um, this is what the map looked like uh last week.

Um, the red trying, so you can see pretty even distribution across the city.

Um the red triangles are those that were requested that we hadn't had a chance to review.

The yellow circles were the ones that we've reviewed, and then the orange were those that had been scheduled, and then as of today, you can see I've made progress.

So this is what it looks like today.

And we were just checking before this.

I'm not sure about the study boundaries, not enough.

But you can see as of today, we've um we've reviewed and scheduled quite a few.

So we now have a majority of the assessments either reviewed or scheduled.

Um reviewed just means that we've reviewed and we've tried to contact the person.

You haven't gotten it, you haven't gotten hold of them or scheduled it yet.

But as you can see, a majority of folks are answering the phone and scheduling assessments.

I have been, I just have been so surprised how many people are answering, saying, yes, let's schedule this right now, and we're calling us back and saying, let's get scheduled.

So we are fully booked out right now for mid-July, and we have assessments through that every week through that.

I mean, at least uh for every week in July, probably about to schedule out into August starting tomorrow.

And I still have 30 unanswered interest forms in the inbox.

So I'm trying every exit uh here.

Okay.

Is it working?

Okay.

The X's on here are showing.

Oh, something did just happen.

Something did other nothing else went out except for this.

Could be the weather.

Just the owl.

Because this is still clicked in.

Oh, there.

Did that really have to be great?

Audubon guy when the sorry.

Um let me just do a quick again.

Hello.

Okay, should be good.

And we're still recording.

Okay.

Um so the okay, the X's are um if the uh city boundary was on here, which it has been up until this last time that we looked.

Um some of these Xs are people that have uh filled up the interest form that are outside of city limits.

And so we've sent them an email saying, you know, we're not offering the program for those that are outside of city limits.

Um, some of the other X's are people that um live in apartments that have requested.

So this is open to homeowners and renters, single family and multifamily up to four units, but not apartment buildings at this point.

So sometimes we'll get, you know, apartment 302 or apartment 36 or something like that, and that's not um an applicable housing type right now.

And then I think there's only one right now that we have kind of changed to a decline status because we've reached out three times and we haven't heard back.

So everyone else that we that is in our tracking spreadsheet right now, we've either contacted maybe one time or um has scheduled.

So we're really excited about that.

Um, and again, great conversations with people.

Um, people are very excited about the program.

Um we haven't had as many people say that they can't work with our availability, which is something that we were wondering about.

Are people going to be able to schedule on Monday mornings, Tuesday afternoons, or Wednesday mornings?

So that's been good.

Obviously, more availability.

We could schedule more, but we have limited um staff capacity.

Um other than that, here's kind of what we've done for outreach.

So the website, flyer, and I did go over this last month too, but I added it back in.

Social media, I paused.

We didn't even start the paid campaign.

I said, let's just wait on that.

So we're not moving forward with paid advertising right now because of program interest.

Um, we had a few mailers that DMC had um paid for in the DMC district.

It was, I think, right around 100 addresses.

Um not sure how you know really how useful those mailers were.

I have I've been asking every person during the phone call, how did you hear about the program?

It's the city magazine, that mailer that went out, and people are saying RPU, which I'm not sure if they're getting confused with the city magazine because we do have an ad coming out in the RPU plugged in, but I don't think it was in the RPU that went out the last time.

So I think people are confusing those two because they're used to seeing the plugs in, and then they got the city magazine, and we only send that out once a year.

Um, press release.

Well, this one last month.

So press release was the last month in May.

We will be including it in sustainability e newsletter.

I will be reaching out to the community partner contacts that I mentioned from the franchise fee uh engagement.

However, I've paused on that too just because it's a program interest.

And then we will be moving into the presentations and community meetings once we have you know a little bit more availability.

I saw it on was it a radio station or a TV station had an article about it on like you know, they post what their articles are on then online somewhere.

I know I saw one of those.

And you are getting social media because the city put it on there, and then I know at least my councilman did.

Hopefully, all the council people do, but yeah.

That's what you hear.

It's a good problem to have.

I think so too.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, not as many people kind of, you know, something else that I was wondering about is are people going to think it's a gimmick or you know, some sort of like we're gonna try to sell them something?

We'll don't we don't seem to be getting that sort of feedback.

I don't know if we're hearing that from people at the actual assessments, but people are seeming to know like, yep, I filled out this form and I've been waiting for your call.

So we've been having good luck so far with that.

Um I guess we'll stop there because I know we only have a few minutes for this item.

Edward are you um neighborhood organizations or a powerful resource?

And then maybe the less active in the summer, but they're still there.

I'm wondering could we overlay the neighborhood association boundaries on that map?

If we find a lot of people are joining in a certain neighborhood association, reach out to the uh the board because now you've got groups of people who might stand up in a meeting and craze the effort.

And as you said, you know, some of the best every I do this word of mouth.

Yes, neighborhood association contacts are part of the community contacts.

So that's a great point.

And we will um be reaching out to them.

I think it's something like 50 different contacts from neighborhood associations.

So we do have that list.

But again, your strategy right now is you don't want your wait list to be more than 50.

Right.

So yeah.

Have you thought about sort of ties into the pilot program of when you get close to that, having statistics by each council board?

How many people participated in the program by the time you get there to say this is another example of what we can do for sustainability.

That's because they're they're very much about accountability and numbers and all politics or local.

So it's definitely submitted to the plan.

Great tool.

Anything else?

It's very promoting looking out there.

I think there's sirens.

Okay.

Um anything else you need.

I have one question.

So you have two people who are working on that with the amount you're getting, is that gonna potentially open it up to more?

Yeah.

We are working towards the navigators kind of splitting off.

Um maybe not always being in pairs.

The other option would be to hire more.

I think with this being a pilot year and the level of onboarding that we've done and training for the navigators.

I think the bottom trying to hire more right now and do onboarding again gives me a little bit of heartburn.

And so I think we'll probably try to um get through these assessments kind of with the workforce that we have right now, but it is definitely something we can look at and something that we will certainly look at for next year.

Good point.

Anything else?

All right.

Well, congratulations.

I have to say, I enjoyed I you know, I thought I knew a lot, but I learned things and you know it gave me pause to think about the I did not realize that when you have a wall oven, which is what our house had, we moved in, it wasn't energy.

You could it's not energy store.

I I'm like, I know that I want a more efficient, you know, oven.

Try to use that with my husband.

Um, but but I but I do think that it was a lot of things that you know, you don't again this idea of of overlap because we want to we want to work with RPU on things.

We don't want them to think that this it is, I think it is complimentary and and also a good lead.

So I volunteered in uh common coming out blending.

Yes.

Cam, would you be willing to share an electronic version of the worksheet for the like a work with us?

I think that would be helpful just for us to like re-we know what's in the program.

And then we are sending for the final report.

We are sending a digital fillable PDF version to the resident.

So they have that with all of kind of like the next step, recommended actions and yeah.

Okay.

The next one, next item.

All right.

Okay.

So this is another outcome of some of the discussion from right from the uh natural gas franchise fee, which was the dashboard.

There are just in defense of our team here, there are dashboards up there.

I think it's just, you know, what could flesh it out without it being too much work and also bringing things together, maybe that are easier to find.

So you turn it over to you guys for what you want to present to us today.

Sure.

I'll take it off and then we're kind of tag to in the presentation.

Um, so part of the strategic city council's strategic priority of environmental stewardship.

Um, then they kind of set their action plan items and strategies under that overall environmental stewardship strategic priority.

One of those is a data-informed um decision.

We think if we have it in the presentation, the specific terminology, but essentially they've asked us to create a municipal sustainability dashboard, um, which tracks key metrics and progress over time.

Um, so we then heard about it again from city council when we went to present on the gas franchise fee, and they asked us to come with an update on our progress on that dashboard when we bring back the pilot programs.

So they kind of were like, we want an update on this as well.

And so we're kind of in tandem as we're developing the gas franchise fee pilot programs.

We're also putting together a framework on the municipal sustainability dashboard that they've asked us for.

So that's kind of how this ties into the broader timeline and and into the gas franchise fee project.

So we'll provide an update on our current reporting and dashboards, um, some research that Kristen did on dashboards from other Minnesota cities, and then kind of our proposed approach.

Um, our approach, we're we're proposing to leverage kind of the data collection that we already do.

We do a significant amount of annual data reporting, uh, collection and reporting.

And so it's essentially how do we not recreate the wheel with this, but but use things that we're already gathering and kind of bring it together for a sustainability municipal sustainability dashboard.

I do have several questions for you all on this.

So we'll probably go through the presentation and then maybe back to my specific questions that I'll let Terry take the lead on kind of how to bring up the conversation.

But I think we do have we're a little bit ahead, so yeah.

So I'm gonna have my phone up.

We've got a full hour left.

Yeah, and then it's this and then just one more item that's quick.

So um, yeah, we can see some good time.

So I might follow it, maybe you can let them through and then pass it back to me when we get to.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds great.

Kayla, say you did great job just overviewing what we're talking about.

And as far as I'm familiar with, I'm pretty sure you guys have heard this term over and over again, but I'm still just gonna quickly summarize what a municipal sustainability dashboard is, or at least what the city's looking for through the sustainability department, working um and standing with a lot of different departments across the city, we collect a lot of data throughout the year, and that is about water and waste and a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, transportation, fuel usage.

And so we have all this information in different areas, but city council has expressed that they really want it to be as easy and transparent and as accessible to community members as possible, which is wonderful.

Also, we just want to make it so it's accessible for staff to do as well, because as a department of one and a half, maybe um it's something that takes a lot more time and effort to do it well.

So we're just trying to see how we can balance those things.

And so that kind of goes into life and explored the specific language Kayla's talking about is right up there.

So just talking about optimizing the city services and assets and using data-informed decision making by launching a public-facing dashboard tracking emissions, waste, water, and city fleet.

And so we have a lot of this data, but we're definitely interested in you know, filling up any gaps that community members or the city council is really interested in having to show.

This next part, I'm just gonna breeze through it because I'm pretty sure you guys have heard about it a lot.

And the big thing we want today is to hear from you guys and what you think would be most impactful for community members to see on a digital platform online about greenhouse gas emissions, waste and everything sustainability.

So the city has a bunch of just real quick.

We do have, I think it's the August meeting typically we reserve for the annual update on all of these dashboards.

So we really dive into where's our progress on you know, regional indication kind of talked about greenhouse gas emissions at the beginning of the year, but we'll talk with that one again.

We'll go through our green step data.

So we're digging into the data in a future meeting.

So really the goal of this is just to say these are the dashboards and the data that they collect, not to get into the actual numbers.

Exactly.

And these slides have more information on than I'm actually going to say right now, but just to give you guys an overview.

This is yours.

So you're probably a little bit more familiar about what this has and community and city-led goals, initiatives, objectives, metrics, and that sort of thing.

So the sustainability.

For the sustainability plan, yes.

And then through the city, we also do B3 benchmarking, and this is working again with different departments around the city, um, RPU as well, trying to just get different metrics that are really focused on buildings and the water metering sort of data we can get from them.

It's water and then it's electricity and gas.

So for B3 and then city facilities energy.

And we have green step cities, which is very fun.

We did earlier a few months ago, and we are new subsidy again this year.

Yay, us.

And this is tracking a lot of metrics that goes a little broader than buildings.

And so it's talking about buildings, but also energy use all the way from proximity from homes to parkland and homes to trails, and also tree cover and all of those metrics.

And so we have a lot of data on that, which is really wonderful, kind of showing the intersectionality between sustainability and environmental health and well-being and those sort of things.

And so it also talks about fuel consumption.

We dove deep into figuring out exactly how many gallons of gas and diesel the city has used in their fleet, um, as well as looking at energy waste, stormwater, wastewater as well for Green Step.

And then we have regional indicators, which as you can see, they have a beautiful dashboard on their website about Rochester, just kind of showing the transformation throughout the years as Rochester is exploring more sustainability options.

And so it's talking about energy travel waste, and this is not necessarily refined to just the city.

Um, it's a little bit more broad, but of course, we can't have all the data from every vehicle.

It's also standardized in comparison with other communities around the area.

Yeah, it's specific to greenhouse gas emissions.

So it shows the breakdown in emissions between the different sectors.

So energy travel uh waste.

And this is the presentation that we had, right?

We had this in the beginning of the year though, yeah.

And then we have the EIC action plan report, energy energy.

I was saying, oh, it should probably, yeah.

And so this is another very broad Rochester-wide working with the school system, the city, Mayo.

I'm missing a lot of other people.

Yeah, Mark.

And so it is just a long-term plan about what stakeholders are gonna be involved and what.

And so this goes very deep into different goals and metrics.

As you can see, they have their own member adopted goals that are different from our sustainability plan for the city for the community.

So just having these different goals and ideas and metrics in different places kind of prompts us to look at the idea of a mean municipal sustainability dashboard.

And so these are what we have access to, which is awesome because we don't have to, I don't even know the phrase, remake the wheel.

Is that what it would make the wheel?

Um, we can take it from different areas and really make sure that we can have a comprehensive collection of data for community members to access.

Now I'm gonna hand it over to Kayla to talk about specifically what metrics we're considering taking from these different areas, which areas we might want to dive deeper into.

And just one more quick note on ESC.

Um, we did just go through, or have we all talked?

Have we talked about energy integration committee in this group?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Um, I think I had it on the agenda to have a meeting this summer to highlight it because we did just go through a big update.

So the energy integration committee had started, I don't know, Amanda, right, back in 2018.

And they put together this plan to say how can all of these major players in the energy space kind of come together and work on things collaboratively.

So city, county utilities, all those um different orgs, mail.

And they put together, they drafted this plan.

And then when I came on in 2024, I said, well, how much of this plan has been implemented?

So we kind of went through the plan, looked at the different strategies.

Turns out 95% of the plan was either completed or in progress.

So over the last year, the group has come together to kind of do a second phase two planning effort.

So that plan had was just finished and is being published and presented through a webinar uh later this month.

That was something I just got the info on that today.

And so I'll share that out via email for you all.

We're also sharing it with city council members to kind of say this is what the group has accomplished, and then this is what they're looking at for the next five-ish years.

And so, you know, supporting RPU's transition to 100% renewable electricity.

Um what else bubble to the top, thermal energy networks and geothermal, um workforce development, things like that.

There's quite a few different strategies in the new plan.

And so this is very specifically focused on energy and collaboration.

Oh, I forgot.

I'm not turning it over to Kayla yet.

Do you want to do the research for from other cities?

Yes.

So I was able to look at different city sustainability dashboards, um, mostly in Minnesota, although a few from around the country as well.

And the one that resided the most with me was Burnsville's.

And so that's what I'm going to talk about today.

Essentially, I think that between their layout, the accessibility of it, and the metrics that they have recorded.

Of course, it's not going to be the exact same as what we're looking for, but I think it is very similar to what could be really effective in our own community.

And so I have it linked here, but essentially when you go into it, it just has a general page where the first thing is offering rebates, which I think is a great opportunity because so much has to do with there's so many intersections when you spend money.

And so having that friends and center is really great.

And then these are the different topic areas that they focused on.

I think ours would look a bit different.

Um for starters, I don't think we would start with eight different categories again, just because of staff capacity and different goals and focus areas.

But this is what they went with, and then every different topic area when you click in.

For example, this is their fleet page.

This is really tiny, so don't worry about reading any of the words on it.

But the first thing you see is this dashboard of metrics on top.

And so this is showing where they're at, what their goal is, and a little bit of information about it.

And then it follows that when you scroll down a little bit, talking about what the goals the city has for that in particular, and it has metrics, it calls back to maybe a document that is city council backed, and then talks about a little bit more about the background of maybe transportation in that city.

And then when you scroll a little bit more, it talks about different initiatives that are occurring.

And so having the combination of these different aspects makes it a really great hub for people to go to to figure out resources.

So not only do you have the city metrics, but then you scroll and you can see what community members can have access to.

So for transportation, we can definitely have some educational items for us.

So it would be that our city is electrifying its fleet and that we got more electric vehicles in it this past year.

We can also talk about line scooters, e-bikes, active transportation, different initiatives that the city is doing that the community members might not know about or might not know how to participate.

And then at the bottom, we can have a beautiful area for links.

So community members can have a link that goes to a rebate for an e-bike or a link that shows the different ride zones for line scooters in Rochester and items like that.

Um, a link to have a rebate for an EV.

So just having the collection of the different things organized into this one heading section topic, I think would be a really great way for us to organize our own information, especially like I mentioned, just starting with a few sections, not that we have to write about and include everything the city has ever worked on, never wants to do, but just have a good starting point for people to look into this and get a pretty good idea of what we're doing.

And so kind of talking about the importance, I really appreciate the organization of it, the links, resources, having it be city focused, but also valuable for community members, community members to use as a resource, and then considerations that we talked about when we're talking about this dashboard, it's important to have something that not only do we think it's really great and valuable and comprehensive, but something that's very doable for city staff to keep track of.

Um, we can only send so many emails to get people to respond back to us sometimes.

And so just making it as doable as possible.

So that means pulling firm data we already have and then choosing a few others that we really want to pursue that data in a different way.

And now I'm going to hand it over to Kayla to talk about the presentation.

So I'll talk through our, I would say our very draft recommendation.

Um we really are looking to you all to see how this lands and see kind of what from the community's perspective, what is most useful to you all, or what would be most useful for a community member?

Kind of thinking that city council is accessed for this municipal dashboard.

So that means internal city municipal metrics.

Um, I think Kristen just shared a good example of another city that's kind of doing a crossover between sharing municipal metrics, but then also connecting it to back to what a community member can do.

And so I think that's kind of the place that I'm in right now is do we keep it municipal and just share out information about what we're doing at the city?

Or do we try to create something that is more community member facing and people can engage more with?

If we do that, then I think it expands or could potentially expand the number of metrics that we're reporting out on.

And so then that's where we get into the staff capacity side of it.

So I'll tell you all kind of what we're thinking.

None of this is set in stone.

And then I do have some specific questions for each topic area, and then some general questions.

So I'll let you kind of leave the discussion piece of it.

So they'll go through the recommendations, and we'll come back to each slide and give feedback in each area.

How does that sound?

Okay.

So when I so we're thinking first category would be transportation, um, with the main metrics here being city fleet fuel.

This would be annual fuel use and/or greenhouse gas emissions related to fuel use.

And then a lot of these are going to be trends or changes over time.

Uh, next electric vehicles, so number of electric vehicles and then change over time, or I'm sorry, percentage of overall fleet.

Um public EV charging, so the number of city-owned charging ports or stations, and then potentially annual charging sessions or KWH dispensed annually.

We're also potentially looking at bringing in some active transportation metrics into this section because you know, from city council's perspective, even though we don't directly manage active transportation, bike lanes, things like that within the sustainability division.

I think from community members' perspective or city council's perspective, it's kind of all the same.

And so looking at potentially massive bike lanes or tri and/or trails, um, looking at potentially annual lime scooter trips or maybe individual users, um, and then potentially number of RPU e-bike rebates issued on the e-bike side of things.

So, my question specifically on this one is should the metrics focus exclusively on municipal operations, or should they include more of those community transportation metrics like the lime scooters and the e-bike rebates?

So thinking about that.

Um, next overall category is the buildings and energy.

Um, first looking at municipal renewable electricity.

So this would be percent of municipal electricity from renewable sources.

This is the solar that we're installing on city facilities.

Umicipal electric and natural gas usage right now, these are split into two, which would be the actual um data, so KWH and therms, and then the trend over time.

But one of the questions that I did list on here is should the municipal electricity and natural gas remain separate, or should we combine these into you know building energy use and use something like BTUs, um, which is the conversion factor between the electricity and natural gas, or something like EUI energy use intensity that we can kind of report out on so that like do people really care about knowing municipal electricity and municipal gas, or should it be something that's more united?

Um, and then the last one on this is RPU's renewable electricity.

So the percent of overall electricity mixed from renewable sources.

This is kind of a progress tracking towards RPU's 2030 goal.

Um another question on this one is around greenhouse gas emissions.

Would it be a more meaningful metric to report out on municipal greenhouse gas emissions from our buildings and building energy use?

Or is it something more like B2Us or UI?

Um, and then do we feel like it's important to bring in more community-facing metrics into this topic area, um, such as RPU program participation in their rebate programs and things like that?

Or again, do we keep it really focused on the municipal side?

I'm gonna have to have you go back to the first topic and then respond to each one.

Go through because I cannot remember all of the things that you were saying that triggered projects in my way.

Yeah, why don't we we can go back through each?

Yeah, we're gonna go back through each one, and I'll reread the questions.

Or maybe I I can just I do think it's it's good to hear it all because I do think that viability of doing this is important.

So if we're going to think about what we want, we need to know everything that you're thinking you might do because there may have to be decisions made.

And then how do we kind of which ones are the most important?

Yeah.

So the note uh next overall topic area is three of four.

So we're at three or four is natural resources.

Um, again, not something that my team manages, but in the broad idea of sustainability, it is included.

So thinking about parkland, acres of city parkland, tree canopy, percentage of canopy cover, trees planted, so the net number of new trees planted um stormwater.

This could be number of stormwater projects installed or acres that are managed by stormwater uh management practices, and then drinking water, so annual drinking water.

Um questions around this one.

Should it be do you all agree that it should be net number of trees?

So trees planted versus trees removed, taking the net number.

Should air quality be included in this since we city council seems to be very interested in air quality.

We manage the air quality network.

So should there be something related to air quality?

And then again, should it be more focused on the municipal assets like parkland stormwater infrastructure, or should we make it more broad and include things like drinking water?

Um, and then how do we make that mean?

Well, should it be per capita or something like that?

I don't think just putting some sort of millions of gallons of water is really useful to people.

Um, okay, and then the last one here, the last one is kind of a catch-all right now.

Um, we have it titled Innovation Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives.

Um, waste and recycling is under this right now because it is a partnership with Elpsi County.

Um, you know, they're building the MIRF and kind of leading on uh diversion, recyclable diversion and um post diversion as well.

But we could look at tons of municipal trash and recycling.

Um something around like a policy highlights um where we can highlight policy items that are related to sustainability, such as the gas branches fee, the pilot programs, sustainable building guidelines, which will be coming next year, um potentially the EV charging related policy, and then maybe a space for project highlights, so things like our thermal energy network, our link BRT, all electric bus line.

So questions for this one is just should the waste be its own category or should it be included in this?

And then should we be including things like these one-time initiatives, such as the thermal energy network and like VRT on a dashboard like this?

Um, or just really probably send uh you know, these kind of annual reporting metrics.

So that's kind of an overview.

Um, just a quick timeline here.

We are kind of refining these um recommendations this month and next month, and then again returning to council kind of with not with a not necessarily a framework of the dashboard, but just with the recommendations for topic areas and metrics when we go back in August.

And then just overall questions, um, wondering what would be most meaningful and relevant to you all as community members for a municipal sustainability dashboard.

So knowing that it is more municipal on the metric side of things, but obviously accessed by residents.

So things like those resources that Kristen mentioned, would that be useful to have on the pages, kind of connecting back to what you can do as a resident?

And then how do we present these metrics in a way that feels useful as a community member, thinking, you know, about trends over time, um, or maybe per capita over you know, some extremely large number that doesn't necessarily make sense.

Um, and then again, how much or how little should we bring in these community indicators?

You know, we could bring in residential and commercial energy use, utility program participation, things like that.

Um, wanting to get your thoughts on a lot of different kind of pieces of this at this point because we really can take the feedback.

This is the moment where we really can take your feedback and and use it to create the final version of this.

Okay.

So while you go back to that, any overarching comments or suggestions?

Overarching comment, I think the most important thing to highlight is the progress that the city is making.

So anytime we're putting out statistics or numbers, we should show how that number is changing over time.

How are we improving in the different category that we're throwing up there?

How is our energy use going down at what rate in what sectors is the residential decrease to the best?

Is municipal going up more or maybe staying the same?

Where do we need to focus the efforts?

So overall, I think reporting that progress and making that clear for people to see is the most important thing.

Thank you.

Where possible if we can make metrics that I'll say are relatable or reflect how people are experiencing like air quality.

Is that number putting some kind of statistic to the experience we're having living in the community?

I think that matters.

Um if you can get community-wide data, great.

But if it's piecemeal, but like we have it in some places and not in others, it might be frustrating to try to track it in some places and estimate or try to come up with it in others.

I think that could be challenging.

And then where we have partner organizations that are providing the data, if it makes it easier, is it possible to just link?

Like, could we link over to RPU if they're tracking stuff or the county on trash or other organizations that already host that rather than trying to duplicate and then update their data?

Might be easier just to if anything that shows the strength of your partnerships more than calling them out on there is to have that link that says here are the people we're working with and their numbers.

When we face the city's growing, there's going to be more houses, there's going to be more structures.

So the total amount of gas use may go up.

But so will the number of buildings.

So do you strictly look at thermal consumption, or do you have some advisor in there that or her building or through cathode exit that's going down?

So that's one of the challenges that you're gonna have to face.

What do we show?

Um, because it would just show net news for one city, it's gonna keep growing.

Yeah, that's exactly what I wrote down.

Is it has to have some, we can't just have a numerator, it has to have some sort of denominator, right?

Because the growth is real, and yeah, the other thing I'd say is quality of data over quantity.

And if you can't get something from Lyme for the scooters and the bikes, like if it ends up being you're nagging them and there's no automatic report that comes, then don't do it, right?

It's their loss, and you know, you can say, well, we'd like to tell you this, but they're not cooperating, or you know, I think that's the you having had to make dashboard, isn't it gonna be a tableau of everybody's favorite dashboard thing?

That's what universities use, but it is, you know, and people will complain if it's not up to date.

It has to be, you know, it has to be numbers that you can get.

I think for everything that we have on this list right now, we do have we are mostly collecting this already, or it's easily accessible through RPU or a city department.

Okay.

Um, the top the only tough ones that pop out to me right now would potentially be a line, but we did some more downline in the C or yes, so potentially a line, and then what was the other potentially the waste data, but we do work with one company, I believe what one company, one or two companies for municipal services.

So we just work with those companies.

So you're thinking about municipal waste, not the whole, not like my trash.

I think it would be because we're already reporting.

So for regional indicators, we're reporting on community-wide emissions from those different sectors.

So I guess that is where the question comes in is yeah, do we keep this municipal and you know, right now it's framed as how is the city leading in these different topic areas?

So here's our municipal waste and diversion rates because we have regional indicators that show emissions for large sectors like building energy transportation and waste.

And I don't think we are going to get granular and dig into diversion rates for the I mean, waste is two percent of our overall emissions.

I don't think it really makes sense for us to get that granular for in the waste category.

We it's not our real house, it's related to the county.

That's right.

I think you can just link back to the regional leaders, like for municipal data.

Here's the link.

If you want to explore this further, is it fair to say with all of the constructions going on and hopefully there will be an end to it?

That all of greenhouse gas emissions and the field used by third party contractors are uh not being considered at this point.

I would say not being considered.

Yeah.

Any other overall comments?

I would just say one thing, even if it's even if the data, the metrics are focused on city, that oftentimes people will go, okay.

This is super interesting to know about the city, but what can I do?

And so I do think it would be appropriate or interesting at the bottom of each of these pages to either provide links to learn more about other areas, or if there's something that you want residents specifically to do, you know, that would be the place to do it is to try for each of these topic areas to provide some sort of action that somebody can take.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And along that same line, I was thinking like maybe we frame up the regional indicators, greenhouse gas, community-wide greenhouse gas at the top of each page and say, you know, for this one at transportation, it would be you know, transportation emissions account for 20% of Rochester's community-wide greenhouse gas inventory.

How is the city leading or what is the city doing in you know in the transportation sector?

Then we get into city fuel fleet fuel number of EV, you know, that kind of thing, but we're framing it as community at the top and then getting into municipal, and then we could do community researches at the bottom.

Like, how can you have you know how can you support our goals?

Here's the links kind of thing.

So it's we're kind of trying to mesh the two together without overcommitting on saying we're gonna, you know, um give updates on every single, you know, transportation related community initiative because that's really sustainability plans like a little bit more broad, you know.

So trying to keep this one a little bit tightened up.

Does that include uh vehicle procurement?

This right now has the number of electric vehicles in the city fleet and then the percentage of overall fleet is what we're recommending for this one.

You know, we just we still have building inspectors driving around in SUV.

A lot of those we are transitioning on TVs, those are at our building.

That would be valuable for people to know.

I think a lot of the community development ones are transitioning.

And I guess that gets to Ace's point about over time, right?

Because it doesn't, you don't know what you see until you because you only see this part.

The same person always drives to my neighborhood and they're the last person to get an EV.

I'll never think that the city has any EVs, but they may be in EDs in your neighborhood every day.

So any other overarching?

Yeah, just um I keep struggling to figure out how to frame this, but when we say city of Rochester, I think we all understand that that means actually city government, right?

And and services and you know, works and those are the things we're able to track.

And when we start talking about the regional indicators, like those are more citywide or countywide, which I think for a lot of people, there's more interest in because that's them, right?

The municipal factors are what you know city council, the yeah, is public works.

That's that they have no control over or input.

I just I think having some of those community-wide and regional indicators given, if, like you said, kind of like first spilling, or like this is what's happening big picture what's happening, and then getting into the new municipal metrics.

Okay, or if it's a dashboard of say five things, maybe one of those things is the a link to those regional, all those regional dashboards which have the overarching.

Okay.

I don't know.

And others may feel differently, but uh it's such a broad and entangled thing.

I don't know how you untangle it and have someone get the information that that they're interested in.

Yeah.

I think we don't you don't know what they mean when they say city.

Yes.

So one commissioner when they say city means I want to know about fire trucks, and one commissioner means I want that, yeah.

We're could sorry to work commissioners as council members, right?

Yeah, and another one means city means I want to know how many trees there are in all of Rochester.

Yes.

I think you won't know that until you talk to them, and there's probably some of both, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I don't think you can escape.

I mean, I think those those first three are really important and probably easy.

Those are like the easiest numbers to get.

I mean, you have to have easy data in this, all right.

Yeah, green stuff.

So or we manage it directly.

So you think about more overarching maps.

I don't know how hard it is to make maps, but like the bike infrastructure, buying a map of where bike infrastructure existed, and maybe plans of where bike infrastructure will be in the future.

That would be really nice digital and helpful.

And as someone who bikes a lot, there's a lot of work that needs to be done on uh Rochester biking infrastructure.

But car to get passed this close to me on the road, that's not a really good bike lane.

It's very dangerous.

There's a lot of that.

Or bike lanes will just disappear in the middle of a road and suddenly you're back on the sidewalk without any corner.

Um, but maps, I think overall will be a very helpful tool.

Then the other thing I'll say is you don't have to have everything when you start.

Right.

So you might want to go in with everything that you could do that's really high quality and let them add versus trying to be all inclusive right now.

Focus right now on everything that you could do if they said we want you to do this and we want it done by you know November, because November is an important date for our city council, right?

And our mayor, that you know, there's a time sensitivity to this, maybe.

And so we think you knew that you could get up there quickly.

Would I love to see like you know, some of the the farmers markety kind of things and the local food?

Absolutely.

Would I tell you to do that?

Absolutely not, but it it would be great to get there.

So you're you're gonna get feedback from them that may be totally out of what we're all thinking here.

And it may change in six months or eight months, too.

Yeah, yeah.

So maybe worth hedging.

I don't know how much you guys do that when it comes into election years, but yeah, no, that's true.

Well, it's gonna take time to build this, right?

Depends on what I think as far as what it looks like.

I think that will change over time.

I think we would probably get something up.

I mean, if it's text on page, we could get this done, but I don't think that's what a dashboard is.

No, it's not.

Some cities pay tens of thousands of dollars, you know, on you know, in the contracts for updated dashboards.

So there's a lot of you know, there's a wide range of what you could do here.

Who's going to create the code to do this?

I don't think it will, I don't think the first version of this will include we're thinking something pretty basic.

Also, well, we use Smartsheet, which is what we've used to create the sustainability plan dashboard, which does look like a real that you know, it moves and things like that.

However, that's not ADA accessible, so we've had to take all those off of the website made, which is why our sustainability plan dashboard is no longer linked and our energy integration committee plan dashboard is no longer on the website.

So there may be a situation where it is text on page and it's numbers and it's updated or some some sort of maybe.

I actually think I think opposite of that.

I think that you should say at the meeting that we would love to be doing this as a dashboard, but we need resources to have an ADA accessible system to replace this, which you guys can't be the only ones that we're using, right?

No, no, there's so and for now things have been taken down and replaced with just text and this is a chance to advocate for that.

Yeah.

That you if you want it to look like that, then you need to re for the whole city.

Um looking at the time.

Yeah, and did we have yeah, that number item, but I think there's something with a quick intro.

Yes.

Uh so I think it would be hard to go through all four of these now.

Are people willing to sort of just take a look?

Can you send these these particular four slides out?

I think it'd be easier for everyone, easier for you, Edward, if you could look at it, you know.

Yep.

You know, yeah, a more interactive and a more interactive format.

Here, yeah, we can send this out.

Send those out.

And if anybody has any.

And I think I did get, you know, good feedback from people around you know, the the balance between the municipal and community.

That's really what a lot of these questions are getting at.

Is okay, how much do we keep this internal knowing that it's community members that are accessing it?

And that's what who it's you know, supposed to be for.

So I think we talked through we talked it up, but yes, I think send it out for sure.

And that way, anybody that wants to look at particular sections and send feedback outside of the meeting to Kayla.

It would be easy, it'd be easier for me too, because I'm trying to go back and forth between all these.

I'm sorry, what will you be sending out the these images?

I I will send this out.

I will copy and paste it as text so that you can access it.

Because I think you have trouble with the PowerPoint slides, correct?

It depends.

My least favorite after BF.

Okay.

But for all of us, we're working perfectly well, and then you can all do track changes.

With the questions under each section, so that it's all just text.

Okay.

Under promise and over deliver.

Last word.

Right.

Okay.

All right.

Oh, our next favorite thing.

Okay.

I know we all remember this conversation last year.

Life is just about collective data.

It's just you know, but yeah, it it does it happen if you can't measure it.

Um, so as a reminder, our sustainability and resiliency community work plan, which we fought hard to get through city council.

Remember Amanda getting up there and talking about this and getting the vote.

Um, we are responsible for supporting the community engagement and the annual reporting related to community tactics.

So if you will recall, I'm gonna sort of just give you a little reminder that we tried dividing up different community groups and having people contacting them and trying to get data, and it was either you just not effective or um we don't have all the right contacts, and so it ended up that mostly it ended up being web searching and getting data by um the staff.

And so we have to come up with so there was a discussion.

Do you remember last year about like having a meeting and getting people to come and giving them lunch to collect the data?

And there's a question of whether people would even show up and if that is the best way.

So in July, um, if you can spend a little time thinking about strategies where we can truly engage the community and know what's happening for the work plan, and we'll probably end up sending that back out again with ideas about um what sort of community things we're talking about.

And it's hard to do it in this meeting, right?

Because we all know different things, but maybe we do our best to capture.

We want the community to be recognized for what they're contributing to the work plan.

So they do all the other data.

This is our part.

All right.

So does anybody remember these things we went through?

Some of you were new, you don't remember all this, but and some of them are pretty broad.

Yes.

We spent several months over last year first looking at all the community-led tactics.

So something like it would say something like, you know, support um local reuse businesses in town or something like that, straight from the sustainability plan.

So then we started to think, okay, who would be the community contact for this?

Um is there an organization that kind of leads on efforts like this, or there'd be something like increase access to locally grown food.

So then it's like, okay, who's the organization that is leading on this effort?

Um who is then the contact from that organization?

What is their contact information?

And then how do we get the information from that person?

Um, it's kind of the approach that we took last year.

There was a lot of manual work um related to that, and then outreach was tough as well.

Ultimately, we were trying to get them to complete a um smart sheet survey.

So it looked like a survey monkey kind of um tool that we were sending out.

Then we transitioned into like just um a phone call kind of transcript of the same questions, and then what we ended up with is our my summer intern last year going through websites and trying to just dig through the information on websites um to find the answers.

So, you know, it's one of those things where I think there's a lot of great work going on, and are the community groups necessarily.

I don't know that they're necessarily running to their website and updating their website every time they do something either.

And so it's one of those things where the sustainability plan is very broad.

We know that, and a very broad plan is really hard to report on.

So I think we're starting from a place that is challenging.

So I think we just do our best on this and maybe try a different approach this year.

That's for you all to kind of think through and brainstorm um next month, and then we'll we'll go from there, you know.

This is a tough one.

We all know this.

But you know, if we make progress every year, yeah, it'll get better.

Okay.

So yeah, that's just ahead of questions or thoughts on that before next month.

So should we come prepared with the contacts and the contact information?

Yeah, so I think I think that we don't have to do in the meeting.

I think we want people to come with ideas about how to get these contacts to respond with information.

I think that's the chat.

That's the actual challenge.

They're all busy.

Exactly.

These are a lot of nonprofits or small businesses and things like that.

It's just not easy.

So something that Kristen did this year for green step, which I thought made huge difference was when she sent out the um original emails asking, you know, it's like with the different uh metrics that we're looking for.

She put in what they had reported last year so that they had kind of a baseline of like, oh well, you know, yeah, it was you know 0.25 or something, so they don't submit some number that's like 52 million, and it's like, you know, just it's a so that they have a comparison of what they they submitted last year when they saw the email.

And I thought that got really great response.

Everybody responded really fast too.

Yeah.

If you have that started reporting.

And some of them we have self-reported from last year, but some most of them we researched, yeah.

Which we can still use that as a still use it, yeah.

Okay, all right.

Next staff staff updates.

Okay.

Um, we received an update update regarding the environmental justice thriving communities grant through the Minneapolis Foundation.

This is a grant that I submitted in January of 2025 to um uh fund the Healthy Home Helpers Program.

And then, as we all know, the administration the federal administration changed in in January of 2025, and then all the federal grant funding kind of got paused.

Um, I heard back two weeks ago that we're still in consideration for this grant money, it's uh EPA money.

Um, and so we are they said let us know if you're still interested.

Um, so we are kind of still in consideration for that funding, which would continue to fund the Healthy Home Helpers Program through next year, and fund a full-time staff position at the city to implement um healthy homes and air quality initiatives.

Limited term, so it would just be for the grant period, but it would fund a position.

Um we have been officially selected as a host site for the 2026-2027 Green Corps program.

Um, this green core position is technically a stormwater position.

So it will support sustainability and stormwater projects.

And I think it really nicely ties into kind of this um the um interest that the Audubon Society has had at these meetings.

We think it's a really great opportunity to kind of tie together sustainability and stormwater initiative.

So, you know, from community perspective, it doesn't really matter if it's me and sustainability or stormwater.

It really is all interconnected, it's interconnected in the sustainability plan, things like registered garden grants or litter vet better or adopted drain.

Those are all programs that obviously you all as commissioners have expressed interest in, community members and groups have expressed interest in.

And so I think having this Green Core member who will work in the sustainability division, I will manage the person, but they will focus on sustainability and stormwater will give us a really great kind of dedicated role to be able to tackle kind of how do we more thoughtfully um kind of intertwine these different concepts.

And the beauty of it is that we're all under Aaron's department in environmental services, and so we have this really nice kind of time of stormwater already.

Um air quality alliance.

So we have an uh the 2025 annual annual report up on the website.

Um it has been up there for a while.

I I just kind of I'm providing an update and staff updates, and we have air quality alliance um on this agenda, I think next month or the month after.

So we'll just kind of provide more of an update on air quality alliance and kind of what we've been up to this year.

So publishing the annual report from last year, uh sprint co-location of half of the sensors.

We've launched a community sensor host program this year.

So we can talk more about that in a push meeting.

Can I just yep?

The American Law Association gave Womstead County an F on its air quality.

Yes.

So I sent I think I sent that to you.

So I do think it's something that we have to understand how that how and why.

I think it's data from like three years ago.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't know how close you've looked.

I've only glanced at it, but you know, that's a interesting.

It seems like it may be something related to the the wildfires in.

I do remember the first year that I lived here was awful a lot because of wildfires.

But it is something that we probably we can say everything we want here, but if that ends up catching and people seeing it, nobody wants to get that.

We're all over achievers in this room.

Yeah, not a plus.

So it does mean we can just blame another thing on Canada.

I mean, that that's something that gives me pause about reporting on air quality in general, like how much of it as a city as a region is under our control.

And if there are, and I honestly don't know.

And if there are things that are in our control in the same way that electrification, that elite, that EV use, like we have some influence over.

That's great.

If it's a reflection of how many wildfires there were in Canada, then it's well maybe less help, how much less helpful and we can adjust for two.

Like I don't know, but I think we just have to keep that because I think it's it's really important to people.

And I think what is a meaningful air quality index, right?

And some of it is dumb stuff that makes the air quality bad.

So it's not anything any of us can we can't help that we live in a valley.

But we can impact how much local emissions settle in said value from Denver, you know.

Yeah.

That's a realistic part of it, but the wildfire part is the dominant piece, and there's nothing we can do on that.

So I just think we have to be careful how we say it just because I shocked that there hasn't been more attention paid to it.

Okay, next we talk at the healthy mom navigators are doing their assessments.

We will continue to provide updates on the program as we kind of move through the year.

Oh, um, our EV charging rates policy has been selected as um they contact me and wanted me to speak at this national webinar hosted by the electrification coalition.

So I'll be speaking at that on I think it's uh June 24th.

Cool.

Um, they thought they found out about it.

Well, if they talked to someone who said Rochester's policy, you should highlight that.

So I'm speaking at their webinar in a few weeks.

Um bike to work day is returning to Rochester on June 23rd.

June 23rd, is that okay?

That's a Tuesday.

I think it's Thursday of that week is this anyways.

Back to work day returns um and Tuesday, June 23rd.

And I'll be bug drone apps.

Yes.

Go ahead.

Good.

And then next month, we will be again talking about the community-led tactic reporting for the sustainability plan and diving a little bit deeper into air quality alliance, um, our initiatives from this year.

Um, events and meetings calendar, Tuesday, June 9th.

That was yesterday.

Wasn't that yesterday?

But yeah, there we go.

Uh for the first safe city nights uh tonight.

If it didn't get rained out, um, forward concert series at Cascade Lake Park, Wednesday, June 17th, forward concert series at Allendown Park, and then Tuesday, June 23rd, bike to work day in the morning.

There's no afternoons here.

Okay, no afternoon.

You don't get credit for it in the past.

I thought about thank you about sure.

And nothing for me.

Is there a website or place to find more information about bike to work?

Yes, the DMC page has a landing page for it.

Perfect.

All right, commissioner comments.

Um, Edward asked me to read this from the email.

Um, that there's a new experiential housing unit to be built downtown Rochester to study tech-enabled aging in place.

The home innovation lab initiative plans to start construction of a research residential unit and an experience center later this year at 724 First Avenue Southwest.

Which is next to the next to the YMCA.

So where that so um, and I think I heard about something about this in AARP about using technology more, and a lot of it had to do with things like turning off lights and things like that that people when they're sometimes aging in place forget to do, or turning off stoves, and there's all kinds of interesting stuff.

So Edward sent that.

The reason that it caught my attention was that it's actually gonna be a constructed structure.

And this might be a chance to showcase innovations in shell design, uh fenestration, you know, windows um to reduce energy demand winter and summer.

I didn't get a feel for how long it'll be up, but certainly at least one season.

So it just seems that if we could somehow introduce ourselves if we haven't already to say this commission exists, we're very interested in what you're doing, and um, you can share what you're building uh on the shell will be constructed because that too could be a teaching tool.

So we have to find out more about who's actually leading it because I don't know.

I don't either.

All right, huh?

And we have people in the right place.

Sound like a DMC.

Okay.

So maybe we can find out from the offer our services.

No, no.

Okay.

Shocked by that.

Well, it's just ozone.

You can separate that out from it separates out ozone in particular in the where an F and a D in the county.

I mean in Powell and then all that other stuff.

Yeah.

One would think they would account for that.

It's the American Lung Association.

I don't think of them as being anti-science.

Yeah.

I have not had a chance to really dig into it.

Anything else?

Right.

Motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

We'll just do anyway.

Vote all in favor.

Stand up, and that means you're great and all right.

Okay.

How are you?

It looks like it's no longer pouring.