Planning Commission - workshop

Good evening, welcome to the Tuesday July 14 2026 city planning Commission working session, I will call this meeting to order. And then the next item on our agenda is public comment, this is the first opportunity for individuals to speak for up to three minutes. If you'd like to make a comment, please press star nine if on phone or use the raise hand feature and zoom. For phone access, call 877-853-5247, enter meeting ID at 7766341226. City staff will identify callers by the last three digits of their phone number or by name. If on Zoom and you will hear an announcement when it's your turn to speak, please move to a quiet area, mute any background noise, and please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments. Are there any of our attendees who would like to speak?

All right.

Seeing none, I will close the first public comment and we will move on to agenda item 3A, solid waste regulations overview, where we will have a staff presentation from solid waste manager, Sarah Mason. Welcome, fourth Sarah.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for joining.

Thanks for joining, Manager Mason. Just by way of introduction, this is the second of two presentations that were requested by the Planning Commission to understand impacts to developments by solid waste requirements and fire code requirements. We previously had a presentation here, I think last working session, by the fire marshal and the fire chief. And so Sarah is joining to give the companion part to that.

Thank you, Hank. Will I be sharing my screen? Is it to do the presentation? Okay. Sorry. Let me get that. Are you able to see my screen? Yeah, looks great. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Good evening, commissioners. I am happy to see one of many Sarahs and others here. Thank you. My name is Sarah Mason. I'm the solid waste manager for the city and our public services department. I have been in this current role since February of this year, and I've been with the city of Ann Arbor since the end of 2021. I previously worked for another municipality for 15 years in the same arena of solid waste, recycling, waste reduction. So not new to trash, but I was living in Texas and I got tired of heat and humidity and decided to give the cold a chance. So I've been very happy to be here and part of the city for the past almost five years. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening and speak with you all about what we look for when we're doing the review of a site plan from a solid waste perspective. It's a topic that touches all of the projects I think that you all review as well. And I'm hopeful that this will be useful to you as you look at future projects and plans. To start, I wanted to just give a small overview of the solid waste unit and the work that we do. Our overall goal and mission is to provide safe and efficient solid waste services and also opportunities for diversion and resource recovery to all of the residents and businesses within the city of Ann Arbor. I'll point out that We're a little bit unique compared to some other municipalities because we have given ourselves authority for managing all of that material for all customer types. And so that's all trash, all recycling, all compost for all residential multifamily commercial customers. So many municipalities really focus on single family homes defined as some number of units or less when it comes to solid waste collection. And that's provided by the city either directly or through contract. So Ann Arbor is a little bit unique in that we do have a bigger, more global view. I think that's to our advantage. It helps ensure that we're able to meet our waste diversion goals, our sustainability goals in terms of vehicles on the road and associated emissions. So the work that my unit does is broken up into a few different responsible areas. We have our collection operations. And so, as I mentioned, we're responsible for the collection of all solid waste. We do that through a combination of city crews and trucks, as well as through contracted collections. In those contracts, we have commercial refuse, so commercial trash collection, recycle cart collection, as well as operating contracts for the city-owned compost facility, transfer station, and drop-off station. And then we also own the land that the MRF is on, and we lease that out for operation and processing. We have a pretty big focus on sustainability. We have an overall goal to reduce total tons to landfill by responsibly handling as much material as possible. Recycling is mandatory for all customers within the city and it has been for a very long time. And then finally, we're looking at the long range plan of do we have enough capacity? Do we have equipment? Do we have staff to manage the materials generated today and into the future. And then we also look at the new developments coming online to ensure that they're going to be able to provide solid waste service for their future tenants or residents. And one thing that is just sort of a guarantee is that if you have a building and you have people in it, you're going to have trash. So it does need to be planned for and accounted for. And many times it's an after fact. And then that just leads to a lot of challenges on an ongoing basis. Okay. Sorry, a little bit more about our equipment and our team, so all of the services and programs and outreach that I mentioned are managed by the great group of people in the middle of this slide. I also wanted to just show that we do operate several different types of equipment so. I guess starting clockwise we have a front load collection truck that's that's emptying a dumpster right below, that is a very small rear load truck that we use for parks collection. And then, if you're moving clockwise around, we have a side load operator that does all of your cart collection for trash carts and compost carts. And then the top is another rear load, a full size rear load truck that's used to empty recycle carts and also we have some small rear load dumpsters that we use in some of the alleys downtown to provide greater capacity. I think it's important that you know, solid waste in our outreach, we really are a connection between like, I'm not even able to estimate how many of individual actions that occur on a daily and annual basis and our overall citywide environmental performance. We are trying to encourage everyone each time that they have something to throw out, whether it's from their business or their home, to put it in the right bin and help us meet our goals. So when we think about the regulatory framework for solid waste collections, we fall into a few different areas when it's related to plan review and development. So chapter 26 of the city code of ordinances is the solid waste chapter. So that outlines all the definitions and requirements for all solid waste services. This is where we have the authority for all the solid waste collection within the city. And it talks about our right to contract out exclusive franchise collection for different material streams, and then also provide those services with city crews and trucks. Chapter 26 gives us the ability to have a separate rules document that's the solid waste regulations. And this is a document that goes into more specific detail. So that's where a lot of the details around development are found because the regulations document is something that can be updated an annual basis or more frequently as needed to adjust as so very specific things go in there to adjust as things may change or we need to be flexible whereas doing an update to chapter 26 in the code does require a little bit more formal and lengthy process we also have within the public services standard specifications article 12 there are the details around what a dumpster enclosure needs to look like what dimensions it needs to be the thickness of the concrete, the turning radius of the truck, clearances for the truck. Those types of details are found within that document. And then finally, Chapter 55, which I know you all are very familiar with. That is where we find information on screening requirements and where dumpsters need to be placed and how they need to be screened from view. So I mentioned this briefly, but within Chapter 26 there, it does state that the city shall provide the administrative approval process for the location of solid waste containers for customers, including physical improvements needed around dumpster enclosures, pads, that kind of thing. So more specifically around containers, there are references for container storage within chapter 26 dumpster placement in the regulations and closure designs in article 12 as I mentioned in vehicle access also in article 12 of the standard specifications so what do you what are we looking for petitioners to submit when they submit their site plan for development we are looking for them to include these required pieces of information we need them to provide an estimate of the expected waste generation. There are different references. There are reference numbers provided by the EPA, by CalRecycle, by some other state agencies. We have some that we will recommend to people. But essentially, if you are going to have dwelling units, you can use a per bedroom per day, you know, pounds per person or pounds per bedroom per day generation. If you were a restaurant, you would be looking at a different number. If you were a retail office, you would be looking at a different number because each of those different types of uses has a different expected trash generation capacity. And then because we do require recycling, we require that once you calculate that full number, you divide it out into what's expected to be in the trash container and the recycling container. And then we want to ensure that enough capacity is being provided for that expected generation. And the capacity can be based on, it's based on the size of the container and the number of collections. So it may just be that you need only say one dumpster, one time a week, and that would meet your capacity needs. It's possible that if you only want to have one dumpster, you may need to have two tips a week or two dumpsters in order to meet that capacity needs. So there's different, variables within that equation that you can modify to ensure that you have enough capacity. We're also looking to see where the containers are going to be stored and if they meet the screening requirements. We're also looking for So where are your containers going to be stored may or may not also be the point of collection, so if, especially if you're a cart based customer, you may be storing those containers inside and then bringing them to the curb for collection or is very becoming very common and some of the larger buildings, they will utilize a trash chute that has a rollaway dumpster that then they're bringing out to the curb for collection. But we want to know where those containers are going to be stored and then also where are they going to be collected because we're trying to ensure that there's adequate space for all of the containers that you'd need to meet your capacity. We're also looking for a solid waste narrative that tells us how many days a week you're expecting your trash and recycling and compost if applicable, which is not a mandatory program yet. So that's more of a voluntary option. How many days a week, are you expecting those containers to need to be serviced we want you to clearly state who's going to be servicing them. Also, the property owner is responsible for keeping the containers accessible free of snow and ice, so that we can get to them in the winter, they need to put up no parking signs if there's an area. near where the containers are going to be stored that may reasonably be used as a parking space. So those are the types of things we're looking for in the solid waste narrative. And then the final requirement is looking for the swept path analysis to show that there's enough room for the truck to get into the site, service the containers, and then leave the site. So I expanded quite a bit on those requirements. This just shows a little bit more detail of the things that we're looking for. I think one of the things that were, you know, that comes up a lot in conversation is around our backing distance. We do have a 30 foot maximum backing distance and we do require forward facing access to public streets. We do this because backing in our line of work is probably the most dangerous activity that we do. And we would like to not have to back. The next best thing we can do is limit the backing that we do have to do in all circumstances. You know, our trucks and crews are at every customer's house or business every single week. Maybe twice a week so that's a lot of opportunity for accidents and incidents to occur, and we just want to try to improve the safety of all of that by ensuring that we have that forward facing access when we leave the property. Another thing that is not requirement, but that we're also taking into consideration is we're looking for whether or not the plan being proposed reflects reasonable human behavior. We know that there are things that can be put on paper that look like, oh, this is great if everybody does it just like this every single time. And we believe from our actual lived observation of servicing containers that people are not so reliable to do it exactly right every single time. So we're looking to see if what's being proposed will actually align with what we believe is a reasonable behavior from the future residents. So another sort of topic I think that gets some interest is how do we decide Let me say first for commercial customers it's assumed that you will likely be a dumpster customer unless otherwise requested most commercial properties have enough waste generation that they necessitate a dumpster for their collection, but when we look at residential customers there's. a conversation about whether or not they should be serviced with a dumpster or with carts. And so in one of the more recent revisions to the solid waste regulations, we did put in a table to help try to make that a little bit clearer. So this is just a cut and paste from that document, which I think you were provided. A couple months ago when the discussion first came up, I sent Manager Kelly some information to share with you all. So this table just looks at the dwelling unit style. Is that detached or attached? Is it on a public street or a private street? And then does it have enough street frontage to support the carts? So the top photo here shows the three carts really beautifully spaced out. We didn't stage this. This was just a photo we found. You know, if someone had their carts, we really like to have three feet between the carts because as you can see in the photo below, The way that cart is serviced, I'm sure you've observed this, that arm goes out and needs to be able to grab the cart, tip it, and then put it back down, ideally without bumping into the carts on either side of it. So we're wanting to know, do you have enough street furniture to support the number of carts needed for your development? And then is that street accessible to our truck? So if you go through this decision tree matrix, you'll be able to determine if your property or a proposed project could support CART or if they would need to have a dumpster for collection. I just wanted to throw in a couple of photos of just real world examples, and then I'm happy to get into questions and discussion, which I think is where we'll be. But we did have a photographer come and take some photos for us last fall because the ones we had were very old. And so we wanted some fresh ones. And Part of what we wanted to do was showcase some of the areas where we service, where we have some challenges. So you can see here, the carts have to be placed on the sidewalk instead of in the street. There's no room for in the street. This side of the street where the cars are located, that no parking sign says no parking Monday, 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. But this photo was taken on Monday at 9, 17 a.m. which is within six to 10. So again, human behavior and what people are going to do. You know, one of the things we may have to look at in the future would be more parking or alternate side street parking to try to facilitate solid waste collection. But just keep in mind that, you know, That really only works if people comply with the signs as posted and for us street space where curb carts need to go as often where cars are parked and then that makes it very challenging for us to be able to service those containers so. The next slide I want to show you. It's just a well-known sort of challenge we have. This is a condo, an established condo development that's been here, I think maybe like 20 years. And when it was designed, they were given curb carts. I think the property would actually like to have a dumpster, but they have a whole like process they would need to go through in order to facilitate that. So what we have is that these carts are stacked in such a way that whichever cart is in front is the one that's able to be serviced. because our drivers are not getting out of the truck to pull the cart to the curb. So we're actually looking at potentially splitting the service days. So there's one cart out at a time to try to resolve this issue. But this is just kind of some of the things where like maybe what it looked like in the proposed design and the way it's playing out in reality are not really lining up with our service conditions. Looking to the future, I just will say that my team is really committed to staying abreast of what's new in our industry. What are people doing? How is it working for them? One example is New York City. For those who follow trash issues, sort of famously just recent in the past few years went to containerizing all their trash from having bags on the street. They're piloting a few different types of containers and a few different types of collection trucks. So We're looking at that. We're following what people are doing. We want to be able to be flexible, keeping in mind that we can only be so nimble given that the cost of our equipment is pretty substantial. So we need a certain density of customers before we can make really an investment in a piece of equipment to try out a different collection methodology. But yeah, we look forward to continuing to work with the developer community and with staff as the city changes, our layout changes, and our housing types change so that we can ensure that we have continued safe and efficient collection for everybody. So that is the end of my slides. I will stop sharing, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Manager Mason. We will open it up now to commissioner questions. Anyone wanna kick us off? Sarah Mills, Commissioner Mills, and then Commissioner Weatherby. Great, thank you.

I'm curious, I know you noted that the amount of space that's dedicated to solid waste, I don't know what the right terms are, apologies. depend on, in part, on how many times there is collection. I'm curious about, like, who determines that? Like, how is it charged? Because there's trade-offs there, spatial trade-offs. And I'm really curious about how that conversation goes and what the ramifications are for the property owner of choosing a more frequent pickup. Yeah.

Thank you. That's a great question. So just, I guess, so just... What am I trying to say? Before I answer your question, solid waste, you can think of it as like a nesting situation. So solid waste is defined as trash, recyclables and compost. So that was the right term. So you were great. That's yes.

And the whole field is materials management, right? Like that's another synonym that includes all of the things.

Absolutely. Yes. And a more current term to our industry. Yes. So solid waste sanitation sort of language term. of the past a bit, and materials management or resource recovery a little more modern. So yes. But to answer your question around the frequency of collection and cost. So it's required that everyone have trash collection at least once a week. And recycling collection at present is provided to all customers at no cost. So that's funded through the solid waste millage. And on the trash side, we provide single family or single dwelling collection once a week by the city, multi-dwelling. If the customer owns their own dumpster, they'll have once a week collection provided by the city. If they need additional collection more than once a week, they will have to pay for that. And that is provided at present by our commercial refuse contractor. So, and then for commercial customers, they pay directly for their trash collection.

And that is all like they choose their contractor or there is, it is like single source collection.

Correct. We have an exclusive franchise for commercial trash collection. So all commercial businesses within the city are required to use that contract for their trash collection. And that is for regular household and commercial waste. So that is not inclusive of construction and demolition material. That is an open market. So that is up to the customer to hire who they would like for that waste stream. But for your regular...

day-to-day commercial and household trash that is handled through the exclusive franchise okay one more question then i'll stop if that's okay commissioner hammersmith um this is i don't okay in grad school i lived in the city where you were charged by the trash bag like you had to purchase special colored trash bags and that's what you used. And I'm curious, it certainly changed my behavior then. I don't know, but I also like, don't know if that then leads to more contamination of recycling stream or like if, if that's something that we've considered how, if there's any information about like how that might reduce the all of the stuff and encourage reuse or, you know, yeah. Yeah.

Yes, so that type of model is called like pay as you throw. So it can be done a couple of different ways, either buying stickers or buying bags or paying for a different sized cart. So a smaller cart versus a larger cart be less expensive or more expensive. I don't know for bag-based programs, I'm not sure if that would increase the contamination. I do know that that has been a little bit of a unintended consequence for cart-based programs. Sometimes they're modeled such that you are paying for your trash cart and that is on a sliding scale based on the size of your cart, but you may just get a large recycle cart at no charge. So then you're somewhat incentivized to put what you want in the recycle cart. So I will say here, we've had a really strong recycling program for a very long time. We were one of the first in the country to have a curbside program. I think our opportunity there is more on that reduction side. On the household side, we've been doing a lot of messaging around trying to encourage folks to just think about the items that they're purchasing and reduce the reliance on single-use disposable items, even if they're recyclable. And then on the commercial side, we've been doing a lot of outreach and we're working on some new programming. We think we're maybe missing, there's so much cardboard. And we do see that some of that, that's a great recycled material. We do see that some of that may be ending up in the trash. So we're doing a lot of outreach to try. And then on the commercial side, because they are paying directly for trash, if they can move that to the recycling stream, then they do get that cost benefit.

Commissioner Weatherby.

All right. Well, thank you. This is super helpful. I have a couple of questions sort of. And thank you to everyone in the department, because I know this is not easy and it's a super important piece of making cities run. And one of those behind the scenes things that you only notice when You know, nobody says, oh, I get my cart picked up every day, but everybody, an hour after their cart's supposed to be picked up normally, they're on C-Click Fix going, my cart wasn't picked up. So, but I have a couple of questions. So one, I think you answered compost for multifamily. I know that's come up before and that is available, but not mandatory. Is that correct?

Correct. At this time, we do have a contractor that's a subcontractor to our commercial trash franchise that some communities have chosen. Or you can also request city compost collection for multifamily. And we have a review process available. The intention with the process we've set up is to ensure that there's enough folks at that site who are interested in utilizing a cart before we give them one. Because if you're putting food scrap in a cart, there's an even higher burden to ensure that that cart's collected. So we wouldn't really be able to skip it. So if it's being really underutilized, that's not a super efficient collection for us. We want to make sure that there's enough people so that when we're coming to tip the cart you know it's half full there's actually something in there it's not just a little bit at the bottom or worse being used as a trash cart which could also happen if you don't have enough of the residents they're interested in. And committed to wanting to use the compost cart for food scrap so we have also been working on a drop off program that I will admit has taken a little bit longer than we'd hoped. But we have some containers that we're looking to deploy and we're positioning five as a pilot to use that as a way to bring more accessible food scrap collection to multifamily residents.

Okay, I know I have a friend in Chicago and he. subscribes to a compost program where like you get a bucket and then you can take your or the bucket gets picked up or something you know that makes it more manageable for like one person here one person there one you know yeah but i know it's tricky and you don't necessarily want a lot of compost sitting in a apartment if it's not a regular thing right But I know that's something that has come up of people wanting to do compost, but being in a multifamily and not having it available. The other question I had, so there are some areas that seem, so like downtown on State Street in front of like the Target area, there's a ton of bins that are just out the whole time. that seems to me to be like a better dumpster place where they're somewhere else. But of course, you know, the assumption that it always goes somewhere else is tricky. And I assume those are there for a reason, but then like we had a development come before us where they wanted the carts and then it was required that they have dumpsters. And then that changed a lot of the configuration. So I guess I'm a little confused about sort of... The one on State Street actually is the one that kind of confuses me the most because like, why are there carts there? And I assume there's a reason.

Yes, there is. And I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, I see them myself and I've had a lot of discussion about them. That... So... I'll start by saying those carts are there for those businesses because there is no other option for them. So for future development, that is the kind of thing we would like to avoid. So there are things that are in practice today because the buildings have been there for decades and collection methodologies have changed or the types of businesses have changed. Yes. So the thing with the alley that is somewhat behind those businesses right there on that section of state is not accessible by a vehicle. So you couldn't put a dumpster there because our truck wouldn't be able to get to it. And then their other option for them would be maybe to walk to the Bell Tower alley or the alley on Washington behind, I guess, what was Buffalo Wild Wings. There's like some dumpsters over there. And those just feel a little bit far, especially when you think about taking the trash out in the winter, like business have to take their trash out kind of frequently. So they do have those carts. And I'm not sure if they are there all the time or if it seems like they're there all the time, but they are allowed to be out there more of the time than they have to be pulled in. So I've never not seen them there.

Right. Yeah. five years but it doesn't mean they're not in there but um but so is that something that like your area would flag in say a nearby development that would say hey i know this isn't it's not your development but if we could put you know i mean i know everybody doesn't nobody wants somebody else's trash basically, I guess, you know, or their solid waste. So, but, but that's something like, I mean, that's a space that I know and I see, and I walked by there today and, you know, noticed it again. But like when you're looking at a proposal, does it, are you looking just at that one or are there other, like, are there things that, could be flagged like, hey, this is an area with a lot of solid waste issues. If we could do a specific space for solid waste for the neighborhood or whatever. Or are you just evaluating, you know, the one space? I mean, I can see rationale for either one. So it's not, it's just a question.

We are... Doing both, but not really in the way that you're suggesting. So we are looking at just that site and the trash needs for that site. But what we are considering is if a proposal before us we think is going to add significant service time, we are thinking about that in the whole. So we have had some developments that say that They would like carts and for us to service all of the carts the way that it would be configured. We know that our service time in there is going to say be close to two hours of time. That feels like an un like an imbalance versus like a consolidated collection where maybe we're in and out of there and I don't know, 15, 30 minutes, depending on how many dumpsters there are. So we are thinking about our routes and kind of like the time it takes to service and the impact it may have on like our overall system. But we're not looking at, say, a development's ability to resolve an issue with an existing property. I will mention that in that State Street scenario, we have been talking about it very recently it just comes up from time to time and thinking about if there's something we could do to screen the carts because right now there really isn't another way to provide them trash and recycle but maybe we could make it look a little um less messy, I will say, because I think it does look, I mean, I could be open about that. I think it looks messy myself. So I think if there's something we could do in that area to improve it, we are looking at some options. So, okay. That's awesome.

And just, do I have the, just another few questions? All right. So speaking of screening, one of the things that I've noticed a lot is that in places where there is good screening, often like the doors are open across a sidewalk and they just stay open across the sidewalk or the dumpster doesn't get kind of pushed back all the way and so it impedes the sidewalk. And that's something that's because I'm primarily a pedestrian, I like notice that a lot. And are there, you know, we can see click fix it, we can do, but like, is that I think that goes back to what will people do? I mean, the easiest thing for a place is to have it open so that people can throw their trash in and not, like are those screening mechanisms, is that something that you all recommend or is it just like, hey, in our regulations, it must be screened per chapter 55?

Correct. So the screening requirement, as I understand it, is in Chapter 55. And our dumpster specifications in Article 12 do require gates on the enclosures. But I think it's to meet that requirement of screening. I don't know that we necessarily need a gate. And it is the property, it's the customer's responsibility, the property, the business owner, that's there or the owner to you know close them and open them so um i think that's something else that so that's a enforcement issue not a not anything okay but if you Oh, I was just going to say, I'm sorry to interrupt. If you see a situation where the dumpster isn't pushed in either recycle or trash, because if it's like, it could be a business dumpster, it might be a WM dumpster or one of ours that do let us know, because that is something that we can address. That is the driver's responsibility.

Okay. Um, and then, uh, let's see. So Adam street, which was your example there, um, with the, that's so tight. Is that something like, could some of those smaller streets, they just have a lot going on on those streets. Um, but, uh, is that something where like a smaller truck would work or is it, is it that it, the problem remains, which is really that the carts are in the, on the sidewalk rather than in the street. Like, is that, Is there room for smaller carts and some of the smaller areas like smaller streets or is it that kind of residential is the bigger trucks and And that's just how it is. I mean, that's, that's more of just I recognize that street and it is problematic because You know, I see a lot of people like in wheelchairs trying to get down Adams and it's not pretty because it's, there's no space there. And I mean, I think that maybe I'm answering my own question. That's sort of an overall issue, not just solid waste, not just is, it just is an issue on those streets.

It could be an overall issue. I will say to your question about like, could we utilize a different collection vehicle in that area or a different collection methodology? That's, we run into a little bit of like a chicken or egg scenario because in order to really make it work, the investment that we have to make in our equipment to make that cost effective. You need a certain density of customers that you could use that equipment to service. And so that makes, I think it's just where it's gonna, it's a slower moving evolution because of that. Um, unless you make a system wide change, which is what many, you know, programs and industry did. A lot of collection used to be manual. And then it moved to the automated collection in large part because it increased worker safety significantly.

I was going to say, it's great. It's also very cool. And then just one last comment, which is, so around my neighborhood, the dumpster pickup is at 545 on Monday mornings. And that's not great. And, you know, people on occasion put in a thing and say, hey, you know, it's 5.45 in the morning, you know, bang, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, bang, beep, beep, beep. You know, it's not ideal. I don't know if it's the university. I don't know if it's the city. I don't know because it's 5.45 in the morning and I'm not about to run out and try to chase trucks down. But are there times where they're, shouldn't be pickups are there times where they're you know i know like when it's hot out when it's icy you want to get people you know trucks out of the way but like as we have more i know that's a that's a thing people complain about in apartments it's a thing you know like it as we do sort of densify some of this does include a lot of sort of side issues like noise and smells and things that um but are there times when they're not supposed to do pickup or is it just like hey we start at five and we go like is that a is that a thing that that sort of the city noise rules and regulations encompass or or is it more of just like When this crew starts, they start, and that's what happens.

Thank you for bringing up the noise in the early collection. I am glad that you mentioned that. As we densify, the recommendation, unfortunately, will probably be to bring collection even earlier. because the later it gets in the morning, the harder it is to have a trash truck be on the road when you have other motorists and cyclists and pedestrians. Some of the areas just become unserviceable. To answer your question directly, yes, there's some guidance around when collection can occur. It can start earlier in alleys downtown and then in the rest of downtown and then outside of that. So it's sort of tiered right now. But I will say that we're starting to see the reason that there was that earlier time, I don't before my tenure with the city. But my understanding of the industry tells me that the reason downtown has an earlier time is because that was the densest part. And as we start to see similar development in other parts of the city, we're running into challenges being able to service, you know, at those later times in the morning, which is 7 a.m. or later, because it just starts to get very crowded and it's really challenging to get in and do it. before the rest of the traffic takes hold.

Interesting. So, and I'm sorry, I'm taking up all the time here. I really like solid waste. It's very fascinating to me. So, so things like beeping on the trucks, which I know like the university has the, the air puffs, not the beeps and things like, you know, maybe putting some sound dead meat, like, I don't know what are options, but as we move forward, maybe just, maybe there's some things because really the beeping and the clanging, like the, the beeping is probably the worst because they will back up for 29 feet. And so there's a lot of backing up. And, and so just, I think from a, a sort of, perspective of somebody who lives around a lot of dumpsters, apparently like that can be a lot. So, okay.

I'm seeing my time. Sorry. Yes. I am very understanding of that. And, um, we, we have had some discussions with our safety team about like maybe what we could do on the backup. We have to have the backup alarm, um, because its purpose is to prevent us from, you know. Right, but there are more modern backup alarms. So we have had some of those discussions. And then just generally, I would say that that's something that maybe should be taken into consideration for the design of buildings. Is where's the collection going to be? Is it going to be underneath? Is there something that you could do to provide better soundproofing? Because you know, as we become a more urban type city, that noise is, it won't just be from, you know, solid waste collection trucks. There will just generally be potentially more noise. So something for consideration. That's awesome. Thank you.

All right. I'm going to give us 10 more minutes for this discussion. Awesome.

Hi. That was lovely. I agree. Not just because your name is Sarah, that was super helpful. I learned a lot and Yes, I'm in public health, so I concur with Commissioner Weatherby that you all do work that is potentially invisible, but so essential. And I, for one, very much appreciate it, and I think many of us do. So I think, okay, I was trying to keep my questions on the more specific side, but we'll see, because I think I have like six to seven that are hopefully quite targeted. So I'm going to try to go in order. So on slide two... just to keep me organized. You were talking about the service goal, and I was curious, is the University of Michigan considered a user or customer? I was curious because when we were talking with the fire department, fire marshal, we had learned that the university does utilize city fire service, if I remember correctly. So I was curious for solid waste, is the university considered a customer or are they separate?

They are not a customer or a user. They have their own solid waste department, trucks and collection crews. I will say that they are a great partner for us on a lot of our waste reduction, especially around student move out and that type of thing. But we don't provide service to them and they do not provide service to us.

Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. And then I was curious. So this is just to confirm, this is in the city of Ann Arbor, the service school, like the catchment area for your department, your unit is city of Ann Arbor, not townships. Is that correct?

Correct.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right. First two questions down. Okay. The other one was you mentioned the MRF. Is that the material recovery facility? And then I'm curious for that. Is that just recycling? I've never been there. It sounds cool. But what what does it recover from?

Yes. So that is a processing facility for all the single stream recycling that's collected by our trucks and crews. It's leased and operated by Recycle Ann Arbor. Generally, a MRF or material recovery facility, that's exactly right. What happens is you bring in all of that commingled material. It runs across a line made up of screens and belts and different types of equipment and some manual sorting to take what was recycled. like a mix of trail mix and then sort it back out into pretzels and peanuts and M&Ms or whatever, and then bail it and sell it for, to be remade into new things.

Thank you. That was a very good description. So, okay, great. So under the umbrella of solid waste, the material recovery facility just handles the recyclables section. Is that right? It doesn't do the trap because I was thinking from earlier was like in my head, solid waste is the umbrella. It includes trash, recyclables and compost. And so the material recovery facility MRF is only recyclables.

That's correct. Yes. But the city's facility out where my office is, our Wheeler Service Center that's out on Stone School Road and Platt and Ellsworth, located there, that is where the MRF is located. The city also owns a transfer station that we contract the operation of. That's where all the trash goes. And so a transfer station basically If you have six or seven garbage trucks, which you think of as a garbage truck, get consolidated and put on a tractor trailer and then hauled to the landfill. So it's just a consolidation point for trash. And then also on that property, the city owns a compost facility that we contract the operation of. So all of our yard material and food scrap go to the city's compost facility. So on that campus, pretty much everything we collect goes to one of those three facilities.

Excellent. Okay. And that's all housed largely at the Wheeler Service Center.

Yes.

Fabulous. Okay. Thank you. Amazing. Then I'm distracted too, because I did Community Academy this year and I did the tour there and it was really fun. Okay. Awesome. So then my next question was on slide four. Oh yeah. The regulatory framework. Really helpful to understand that a bit better. So similar to the working session where we had the fire marshal and the fire chief talking, they were sharing that some of those regulations that they were adhering to kind of come from international, federal, or state regulations. So I was curious for solid waste management, these regulations, I think we were mainly talking about like at the city level. And so I was curious, are any of those from larger organizations more structural federal or international codes or regulations. I just, I don't know anything about solid waste. So I was like, just curious.

This is great. I mean, I made my career in this, so happy to talk about it. So generally within the United States, the EPA has delegated the authority for solid waste to states. So yes, we are in, there are some federal regulations around solid waste and But everything that we do has to be in compliance with the Michigan EGLE regulations for solid waste. So yes. And then it trickles down into local specific regulations.

Great. Thank you. That's helpful. Also in case like a resident is like, I have, I want to change this. I'd be like, then go talk to EGLE. Great. Slash you all. Perfect. Then the next question I had was, okay, slide 11. I also really, I agree. I really appreciate the pictures. I think they helped contextualize some of the really nice things and some of the challenges that you and your staff encounter. So for Cy 11, that was the one, was this the condo where they were kind of, you had the trash and then the recycling kind of staggered. So I think you'd mentioned that it would be basically the property owner and would, if they wanted to do a dumpster, that would be kind of challenging for them. And so that there was discussion around like splitting service days, like maybe trash is picked up on one day, so that they're out and then the recycle are out a different day. So I was curious, just on a more macro level, what does that look like for a property owner if The earlier design of a building or a property stipulated the carts, but they would like to change it to a dumpster. Is it a very challenging process? What does that overall look like?

I think those are really good questions that I will be up front and say I don't know all of the details around because I'm not super well versed in... all of the planning requirements and what triggers what. But I will say that generally, the specifications that we have for building a dumpster enclosure, it's a pretty sturdy enclosure. So there is some investment there. It's a cinder block and concrete thing that you need to be able to put on your property. I know that in this example case, we had had some discussions in the past few years of if there would have room. We feel like they may have room and that we could access it and they have an interest, but it's just up to them to decide if that's a, you know, an improvement project they would want to take on. And then I'm not able to say what else that might impact because it's outside of really my area.

No, that's helpful. Thank you. All right. We're coming up on my last three questions, hopefully. I appreciate your patience on this. You also mentioned that the cost of equipment is quite substantial. And I was assuming you were talking about mainly like the trucks. I was also curious, how many... For the city of Ann Arbor, it's like 120k approximately people. I was really curious how many employees are out there at five in the morning collecting solid waste. I can just only imagine the logistical energy that goes into organizing that. And so I was just curious if you have a ballpark number, how many city employees are doing that?

Yeah, so, well, I have a fantastic team. I've got two field supervisors and 19 technicians that are our drivers. And they do all residential trash, all residential compost, multifamily trash and dumpsters, and all recycled dumpsters across the city, as well as collections from parks and streetside downtown cans and some other miscellaneous things. But then in addition to that, we contract out our commercial trash And I can't speak to how many trucks they have on the road for our collection. And then we also contract out all recycled cart collections. So there are other folks out doing collections beyond our staff. But for the city team, we have the 19 drivers and two supervisors.

Fabulous. Please extend my kudos to them because that is a lot of work for not necessarily a lot of people. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Penultimate question. So art fair is a little top of mind. I live near downtown. I am a grad student at School of Public Health. So I walk through downtown into the Diag basically every day. And so I saw art fair prep. And so I was curious, how does your... I don't know if the correct word is like deployment or how does your logistical operations change for very large events? These include art fair, but also just top of the park, football games, things like that. Is there something you'd like us as residents to know about how that changes? Is there anything we can do to help make your job easier slash just like something you're like, I wish more people knew.

I don't know that there's, I guess when it comes to events, so for the event itself or permanent events as part of their permit, they are required to manage like trash related to the event itself. but because a lot of folks are coming into town for those events, there is additional trash just generated across the board. So we have specific to art fair in the past few years, we've worked with our commercial trash hauler to increase collection. Sometimes we add an extra container in areas where there's a lot of customers that are like in the food and beverage industry. So they've just got a lot of extra business trash being generated. And then for my staff and our pedestrian cans, we'll often have some extra folks come in and do an extra, maybe an extra day of collection to just help manage any of that material that might be overflowing. Gotcha.

Thank you. And then my last question was, I think in response to one of the previous commissioners' questions, you were mentioning it might be helpful for design of buildings to help take that into account when we're thinking about the design. And so I was wondering... You're a solid waste nerd. Do you know of a city, a municipality that you're like, they do their solid waste collection or they design things in a way that make it really advantageous for multiple players? And I wish more people knew about this city handling it really well. Just wanted to give you an option if that's a thing. Sometimes I'm like, oh, this city does a great job on public health and I'd love to learn more. Yeah.

yeah there's I mean there's several communities that lead in the solid waste area, I would say that most of my knowledge is around those that have really excellent like diversion programs and like metrics so. The city of Seattle has a really robust report reporting program they were one of the first in the country to have a three cart system for their residential customers and to make that mandatory and to do enforcement. So we look to them. I mentioned earlier that I've been following closely like containerization in New York because the way that they did trash there for the longest was running three shifts and bags on the street. And you just had folks coming by all the time picking up the bags. So as they move to those containers, they're trying out different things that I think could be an option for us potentially in the future if there was enough, like I was mentioning earlier, density of customers that that service type would benefit. So, yeah, I, I've been really fortunate. I'll say that, um, you know, my colleagues across the country, fellow solid waste nerds really love to talk trash. So that is a great part of it. Um, you know, I've, I've made a lot of contacts and, and I do try to follow and, and interesting things are happening, um, in lots of places. I'll say that generally, um, solid waste management is hyperlocal because the design of your city, the culture of your city, your access to markets, like all impact what you're able to collect, what you're able to say, sell on the recycling market, what you're able to do with your compost, which is also impacted, you know, by your climate and the market for the finished product. So, um, you, you, The great thing about that is you never know when you're going to learn something interesting from a community that, you know, might be similar to you or could be very different from you. So we do try to keep an eye out. And, you know, I'm very happy to copy something that someone's done well. So, yeah.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time and for all this info and for answering all of my questions. I'll let it go back to Commissioner Hammerschmidt.

Thank you. And I just want one last thing before we need to move on. I'm going to try to ask this fast. So we've heard recently, especially recently from a couple of developers, I think one with the story project on Oxford and one with a condo complex off Dexter, I think. Basically, I'm paraphrasing, but like fire and solid waste are sort of scapegoats for like why they've designed their site plan the way that they're designed in ways that we don't necessarily think like maximizes the full potential of the site. So I'm curious how early you're brought in to the process. And then if you have any comments on what I just said, like if you've heard that before from developers that like you're making it really hard for me to design like most efficient site possible.

I haven't heard that specifically. I mean, I know that generally area for trash is sort of non-revenue generating. So this has been a problem historically just within the industry as we've tried to add recycling programs to buildings that were never built. to accommodate two separate types of containers. So I don't think this is necessarily anything new or necessarily unique to Ann Arbor. I will say that in terms of when we get involved, You know manager kelly's been great we're part of early staff meetings were invited to pre submittal meetings. When it when it's been requested we're happy to have a one on one meeting with the developer and with planning staff if there's certain issues to talk through that's actually been really effective in some instances where we've been able to say. you know, they will ask, we're not telling them what they should do, but they would say like, well, if we did this and we added mirrors and lights and would that work for you? Could you back up in this space? And then, you know, we're able to talk through what might work. So I would say that we're pretty open and are coming in early on these projects. And I don't think we're telling anyone you know, exactly what they have to do. So, yeah.

Thank you very much for this great presentation. This was really helpful, I think, for all of us. And I will move us on to agenda item number 3B, the Bryant Geothermal Project. We will have another presentation.

Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Manager Mason. I think You are the least. Thank you for the opportunity. And there is a brief description of this item in your agenda this evening. Thank you to Dr. Stultz for joining us, Director of our Office of Sustainability and Innovations. I also have available for promotion the Director of our Sustainable Energy Utility, Shoshana Lenski, as well as technical staff supporting Dr. Stultz in this project. who can be promoted as needed. And I just want to point out that planner Jill Thatcher is joining us this evening. She will be quarterbacking this project on our team for the public project. As we mentioned, this comes to you not as a site plan per se, but under what we refer to as a public project. And that is required for a public project I believe it's a Council resolution from sometime in the 1980s that request public projects go through the same process as private development, so we will be walking through this, it will have an internal review from solid waste, from you know parks, from all of the required reviewers, so I just wanted to point out that that is why Jill is here and I So that's the extent of what I have to offer by way of introduction.

Thank you, Manager Kelly. Appreciate it. And Jill, excited about the journey we're going on together. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. I know, I think, Shana and me have a few others that if it's possible to elevate, it would be great. I see in the background, Greg and Taylor, if possible. If not possible, so be it. But just wanted to refer everyone. So hi, everyone. I'm excited to talk to you a little bit about this geothermal project. And I'm going to pull up some slides here in the background. This is part of our ongoing work in the Bryant neighborhood to create America's first carbon neutral existing neighborhood. We know that it's big, bold and audacious, but we also know it's exactly what we have to do in our field. So bear with me for one second. So I pull this over. I'm going to give kind of an overview. As Manager Kelly stated, we are early in process. Let me give you a little bit of background about how we got to where we got and what we have some discussion as we'd really like to hear from you on. So just green light, thumbs up or OK sign. You can see the slides, right? Great family fun. Let's go. OK, so you all know I've seen you before. I thank you so much for your service. We have an audacious greenhouse gas emissions, global carbon neutrality by 2030 in a just and equitable way. And of course, guiding that is an understanding of where our emissions come from. And in Ann Arbor, we are a little bit different than the national average, where transportation emissions often are the largest source of emissions. For us, it's buildings. Two thirds of our emissions come from our built environment. And that matters a lot, of course, as we're thinking about how to decarbonize. And when you look at that sector, what you can see on the slide is within the building sector itself, we've got 54 percent of the emissions are coming from electric and 46 percent are coming from fossil gas, which is largely used to heat our homes or to cook our food. So we're working incredibly hard on the electric side. There's many initiatives we've talked about. The sustainable energy utility, of course. We are advocating for changes in the base generation portfolio. So whenever you turn on the lights, it's coming from renewables. We advocate at the state level. We're involved in public service commission cases. We're generating ourselves through Solarize. We incentivize. We are working the electric side. And I see paths to success on decarbonizing electric. The part that's often challenging is the fossil gas. It's the heating side. Nationally, electrification makes a lot of sense in heating. We happen to be in one of the small climates where our gas rates are so low and our electric rates so high that traditional electrification of space heating tends to lead to an increase in energy burden. So we're in this quagmire of how to solve it. And this is just the world that we live in. And I wish sometimes that I was in the South where the economics were fundamentally different. And we're working on different rate making principles. different approaches to the Public Service Commission. We are tackling this from lots of different perspectives. And one of those perspectives is thinking about alternative ways to heat and cool space. And that is through geothermal systems. So as part of our work in the Bryant neighborhood, we have secured funding to do the energy efficiency work. We've done drainage work, abatement. We really worked with the residents to understand what they were worried about, as well as what they saw as their strengths that we can enhance. And we sought funding to help make those improvements. So indoor air quality, roof replacements, right? It doesn't matter if you put insulation in the wall, if you've got a hole in your roof and all your energy is leaking out. So we've been successful in kind of solving these different elements, or at least we have forward momentum in handling things like weatherization and appliance electrification and energy efficiency work and flood mitigation. What we struggled with was the thing I led with. How are we going to handle heating in a neighborhood that's suffering from extreme energy poverty? And through conversations, we said, well, could geothermal play a role? And so we did a bunch of analysis and we applied for US Department of Energy grant in, don't hold me to this, I think 2022 for a planning grant. It was a national competition and we won. We were one of 11 cities that did win. And the idea was to get funding to work with your community, with your labor organizations, and of course, with technical experts to figure out what could be possible, not with individual geothermal systems. Shoshana with us, she has geothermal at her home. It's a very powerful system. It makes sense in many cases for individual homes. But what we were exploring is a networked geothermal system. So think lots of households, whatever street you happen to be sitting on, imagine all of those houses connected to one system. That's what we're talking about, a network geothermal system here. So we won this funding to design the system, and we did, and we discovered that stacking this with solar and the energy efficiency work and the other things we're doing could in fact lead to a stabilization of costs in the neighborhood, and we could potentially decarbonize heating. Now, of course, we would need funding to do so. And DOE moved into a second phase where they decided to award up to five communities $10 million to start the implementation process. Surprise, we won, which I'll share in a moment. So all of this, though, I want to name has been done with the community itself, right? It's not as if we just sort of like said, hey, let's experiment with geothermal in a neighborhood where this isn't a part of the conversation. We actually worked the entire process sans maybe the first year. This has been part of the discussion. Different ways to heat and cool with geothermal being what sort of landed and resonated the most with the residents. So we worked with University of Michigan students to design models. We did hand holding. We actually walked and saw. We've had geothermal installed at the Bryant Community Center where we invited the residents out. and showed them what was happening and talked about the fact that it is loud we talked about the fact that your street will be torn up when this happens right we're not trying to pretend that this is a magic wand technology that's going to get installed in one day in one hour and not be disruptive it is of course going to be disruptive but it also is fundamentally a replacement for the gas system in this neighborhood right so think about that gas infrastructure that We tear up our streets all through Ann Arbor right now to replace those pipes. It's the same basic concept for geothermal, right? Except for these geothermal assets last up to 100 years once we put them in. So we designed the system with the public, with labor. So our trade unions were with us on this project design. Certainly our electrical union, but also our plumbers and pipefitters. And we were thinking about workforce development and how this could be an opportunity for kind of a just transition for plumbers and pipefitters who lay pipe. geothermal has pipe. So how do we help bring them in? So our proposal certainly had money to install the system, but it also had money to the trades to be able to integrate this into their workforce development curriculum, which they are actively doing. And we secured funding for them to install a geothermal system at the Union Hall so that that can be a part of hands-on training for the next generation of geothermal laborers in the space. So we won this funding. As happened, you may have heard with the change in administration, a lot of things got real murky for a while there. So we were alerted. in, gosh, what, October of 24 that we won. And then we sat for 13 months trying to see if it was going to be preserved. So we knew we had won, but we didn't know if we could move. We didn't have the signed agreements. It was sort of this like stagnant space. And then last year, November one, we got notice, go and go fast. So here we are. Right. Downside is all of our all of our bids, everything that we had in our package is outdated. Right. I mean, the world has just changed so much. The trade wars, the cost of materials, labor expenses. So we've been spending the reason we're not we weren't with you two months after is we did dust everything off. We had to go look at design work. We had to update pricing. So all of that has been in motion. Where we are today is we have redesigned the system modestly. So I'm going to show it to you. Here's Bryant. The heat map, this is the heat map. It's showing basically energy use and the different colors. Let me go with the lines first. The way we designed the system was a connected line that could be built almost in stubs and the stubs being the colors. So the park is in the middle. Let me see if I can get my cursor over here. This is Arbor Oaks Park City property. This is Bryant Elementary School, and we got a playground right here. In a second, I'll show you where the well field will go. But basically for the first phase, which is the phase we have the funding to support, the well field is going to be in the park. At the end of the day, you won't know there's a well field under your feet. It's going to be the green space. And we're working with the residents and parks department to design what the space looks like. I want to talk to you about the one piece of infrastructure that will be above ground, because that's a space we want to get ahead of with planning commission and really understand what you're looking for. And that's going to be a pump house. Not super big, but it's an addition into the space. But the idea is you have a shared well field here. So you basically all of those boreholes into the ground go in this park, and then you stub out. So that yellow line comes out and serves this northern region. And we're going to build it so that it basically stops but can connect out. So as more funding becomes available, we build and continue. But first phase, everything shaded is what we're proposing to connect to the system. If economics are on our side, we'll keep building out. But this is what we think we can do based on the updated pricing, cost estimates, material supply, all the good stuff. So we're going to build a proposal is to get the red loop, the yellow loop, the green loop, and the blue loop as highlighted to build out. They're all connected because it's a redundant system. So heaven forbid the blue loop go down for some reason, which is highly unlikely, but you need to have heat no matter what. Because we built it this way, the blue loop's connected to the green loop. So there's a redundant. a redundancy here. And because all of the energy is coming from the well field, you don't lose heating capacity in any way, shape, or form. So this is the idea of a network system. So this is roughly 100 homes that could be connected to the system. So that's the design that we have. And I have a lot more technical slides that you'll be seeing over the time. And if you have questions, I can pull them up. So when we did the initial design, we designed two well fields because we wanted to pick up the whole neighborhood. And we ideally wanted to pick up the elementary school and build to eventually go down south and pick up Wheeler Service Center and Sarah's incredible team and all the work that they're doing. Not yet. Right. That's we're building this to basically like a modular system that can scale out and grow. possibly even move into other areas. But first phase is this well field. And because we've downscaled to instead of 262 homes to 100 homes, we think we can keep it largely in this footprint of the park itself, the green space. So the questions that we wanted to talk to you a little bit about, I'm almost at the end here, is the pump house. So we've been talking to Parks about lots of things. Certainly, if you don't know this area, this is a playground and there's a basketball court. The basketball court is in really rough shape. The residents would like a new basketball court. If we do any well-field work here, we're going to upgrade the basketball court. It's just a public benefit. It makes sense. The playground itself is okay, but there's some improvements. Parks has done an ADA study. We have we've committed to making those improvements, right? There's a path that goes around here. It's not leveled. We need to make sure it's accessible for folks. There isn't lighting in the park. We're going to be adding lighting to the park to make sure it's safe at all hours. So those are some of the things we've been talking about. And then we're looking at a pump house, because that is the only piece of above ground infrastructure we're really going to talk to parks in depth about. Everything else is underground. It's utilities. They're running under the street. We're working with engineering and public works, our various utilities, to make sure everything is intersecting. We've got all the maps. We're running that to ground. The pump house itself will not be super large, I think. And I can ask Taylor to confirm. I think something like 10 by 10, 10 by 12, right? Like it's literally the motors and the basics in there. So we're looking at either. And ideal for us would be something like over here because it's kind of shielded out of the way. Not sure if that's going to be the winner with parks. So we're also looking at something like here in the park itself. That adds impervious surface. So we have some... green space here, some rain gardens, all of that's going to be returned. We've already talked to stormwater about that, possibly even enhanced with better species that we know of now. And we'll have to do some stormwater retention over here by the facility itself too. I'd like to do solar on this facility. I'm open to doing art, like whatever we want to do. But that really is the main, like that's the visual difference. Otherwise, this looks exactly like a park, just a park that's been improved when we're done. You don't see You just don't see the well fields. Just like you don't see the gas system. You don't see the pipes running under your feet. So just wanted to brief you on where we were. And then last slide. I know we've said this, but I wanted to make it explicit. We are coordinating across the board. Shoshana and I are excited to be doing this project. This geothermal system will be owned by the Sustainable Energy Utility. It will be a city asset. This will be our first geothermal asset under the SEU. That's exciting. But Shoshana and I aren't developers. shocker. So this is all new to us, right? Figuring out the process and what we have to submit and how we have to submit it. And so I'm so thankful to folks like Manager Kelly and Brett Leonard and all of the various departments that are helping us navigate the space. It is different, right? We're not building a building that people are going to occupy. We don't need solid waste on the site. There isn't waste, right? So we're having to kind of like figure out how we fit into processes. So we're working with planning and with parks, we're working with engineering, we're working with our utilities. Of course, we're constantly engaging in the public. In fact, if you happen to be free Thursday night, not this week, but next week, you can come out and do a walking tour with us of the improvements that have happened in Bryant. You can see the solar. You can talk to residents who had home improvements, right? Like we're really staying centered in what the community wants. But that also means there has to be a lot more coordination because it's not just us unilaterally saying, hey, planning commission, what do you want? We'll just go do it. We have to make sure it aligns with what the community actually wants in that space because at the end of the day, this is their backyard. They need to feel safe, secure, and really see the benefits of it. So we're sort of in this space. Delight, it's like truly delightful and sometimes overwhelming space. So I just wanted to share that with you. Get any thoughts, reactions, any heartburn, or if you have things, hey, Missy and Shoshana, make sure you think about when you come to us next time. We'd really like to know that. Feel free to treat us like toddlers in this space because this is new to us too. That is a lot. If Shoshana's elevated, I'll pause really quick and see if she wants to add anything. You covered it, Missy.

Thank you very much, Dr. Stultz. Okay, I'm going to open us up for discussion. I do want to say you do need solid waste though, because there is trash in park. So I don't know if you're relocating trash cans.

No, I don't think we plan like that's going to be the footprint that parks wants. So, cause it already has it. I think it just comes back in.

Yeah. Then I'll just say, okay. Yeah. Okay. So you might not need it, but we do have trash. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Whatever's already there is coming back.

It's just, we're not because the building isn't occupied. Right. Like you go in and check it out. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Okay. Mr. Mills, why don't you kick us off?

Thank you. Two questions and then a suggestion. First question is, What does a pump house look like?

What do you want it to look like, Sarah?

I mean, does it look like a garden shed? I mean, legitimately, I don't know what it looks like. I'm thinking that it looks like a garden shed.

That's an open question, right? And that's something we're talking about internally and want input on is what should it look like? We know what it needs to do functionally, which is like, how is this equipment? And how we want it sort of architecturally to fit in is the open question.

Yeah. And I do think you can start with like a garden shed concept if you like need to figure out what's like a base just to put in your head.

Yeah. Like it could look like that. I mean, I guess from my perspective is does it look more like that or more like a garbage enclosure? Like, I mean, are we talking that it has a roof? You know what I mean? Like I just have zero sense of sorry that it's an enclosed space.

Google. OK. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be an enclosed space. you know, we will have equipment in there that we don't want people playing with.

Yeah. And from my perspective, like, well, you would hear this, like the aesthetics are not something that we typically deal with. And so sometimes in some districts we care about materials, but not citywide generally. Like, so it's in our downtown where there's some material characteristics. So Um, yeah, I, the next question is because you mentioned, I appreciate the way that you took your, did your engagement and talk about like, it's not going to be overnight, but you mentioned sound. I wasn't sure if you were referring to construction or ongoing sound and thinking then about where this is in relationship to how noisy it is and what time of day and how like sound is, is

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know Greg's with us and he's part of our civil team. So we can answer this. The basic answer is you're not going to be able to hear it for about a day. I mean this. Okay.

Yeah.

Greg, do you want to add anything there?

Are you talking about the pump house?

Yeah.

Yeah. There, I mean, Walker's kind of in charge of that, but from what I hear, it's going to be very, very, very minor, if anything.

Okay. Yeah. That's super. I assumed that you were talking about- It was the construction noise, right?

It's when you're drilling, there is noise, right? Like when you're tearing up a street and when you're drilling a pot, like that's the noise. But luckily, you know, we have geothermal at Bryant. And so you can hear the engines functioning if you're standing beside it a little bit. It's like a hum, but not from an outside. Like I don't think you can hear this outside.

Great. And then again, staff- planning staff is going to be super helpful in walking you through. The last time I remember doing something like this, it was for Argo. They were thinking about their accessible canoe launch and redoing their parking lot. And so some of the things that may be helpful for us, again, some things like we did say, yes, anybody else would have to have a curb cut that conformed to this situation but we got a unique property there and so like but i think some of it is if there's something that wouldn't comply in terms of setback distances or like you were saying there's no trash they're like there's not a bathroom in this thing so like Right. I think that that also parking is something that's going to come.

I mean, we don't have parking requirements, but like what you don't even have to park like it's walking in because you don't.

I was going to say, like, I don't know what the access requirements are for maintenance. So those might be things that may come up because this is a very unique facility. It sounds like also makes me wonder. I'm making a wild suggestion that staff can like throw daggers at with me, with their eyes. But I feel like a year or two ago, we differentiated in our code between public utilities and private utilities and electric utilities because what we call public utilities are actually, right?

Not necessarily.

And I think that some things are essential services. They are facilities that are not in the right of way, but are considered essential services. And I don't know how, well, first of all, like, I don't know how that might factor in here or if this is particularly as there are more assets from this public utility facility that is the SEU, like legit public utility that is the SEU, that may be on private property or out of the public right of way, I should say. Like maybe that's a better way to say it. Like whether we need to think through what that looks like or not. So that's not so much for you. I mean, it is a little bit for you guys because this is something that you're going to come up with potentially in the future. But like, I would just flag that, that

Yeah. Jill, I'm happy to take that one too offline because these will stub to the houses, right? Like they have to connect into the houses, but the majority of the run isn't the right way. We, we on the roads, right? Like we can, that's where the run is going to be. And then I'll share with you really quick.

While you're pulling that up, Missy, I think to the central services question that you are alluding to Commissioner Mills, If we were working, for example, with the RIDE or another central service operator and they wanted to develop a facility, we would consider it potentially exempt. But because we are initiating this as a city, it goes through the public project process. So if your question perhaps was, is the public project process necessary or applicable here? It is because of that distinction.

Okay. Got it. Interesting. That's helpful. Okay. That's it. Thank you.

All right. Commissioner Weatherby or Commissioner Bassini?

Commissioner Bassini? Yeah, I had a question. Again, thank you for all of this very... Excellent information. A lot of good insights also in terms of the medium and long term goals here. So I was also appreciate Commissioner Mills question of like, well, what could it look like? I was wondering, so a pump house. like this could it include and i'm not sure if this is the correct language but um things like i guess amenities so like a bathroom a space for there's the space where the public should not be because there are items that are you know experts should be dealing with but could it also potentially be designed in a way that allows it to be a gathering space or a spot for people to utilize um It's okay if not, I'm just also trying to better understand the range of options of what something like a pump house could look like.

Yeah, I don't think in an absolute that it couldn't be those things. I think for this project, all cards on table, fully transparent, it's very price sensitive. So we do not have the kind of flexibility to build more community space in the project, trying to make everything pencil, acknowledging what we're trying to do is get energy poverty reduced in the neighborhood. So every additional cost has to be recovered. The grant, I didn't share this, but the grant is at max a 50% match. Right? So we have to bring 50% of the capital to the table. And that's got to be recovered unless we can magically find more grant funding. Also in this neighborhood, the community center is right at the edge of the park too. So we already do have a community space that we wouldn't want to take away from because we've really leaned in with our partner community action network to activate the neighborhood to really like they have stepped up in a way that I didn't give them enough credit for. I don't think I've given them any credit in this presentation. You know, from an organization, a nonprofit that really does a lot of social service provision, I give Derek Miller, hands down, almost all the credit for this project, because he stepped into a space that wasn't their traditional space and said, yes, of course, climate action is part of social service provision. And so he's really owned this. And I would hate to detract from the space and the community building he's doing and Fay and others at the community center are doing. So probably not in this project, but in the future, I think that's a very interesting thing that we should be thinking about in space we're creating as a government is how do we capitalize on multiple co-benefits as opposed to one use case. Same thing with the roof. A roof should never just be a roof that provides shelter. It should generate food. It should generate energy. It could be reflective, right? I think that's an ethos that we hold. So I very much appreciate it.

Thank you. And that's dovetails really well into I think my other question, which was, it sounds like your office has done a very intentional job of not just partnering, but like having that strong connection with people in the neighborhood. And I was curious, moving forward, what are the plans to maintain that level of community engagement and just communication, informing residents of not just the noise, but kind of the plan, especially as A lot of people are probably there for the long term, but there are people who might move in and are new residents. So I was curious what the plan is there.

Yeah, great question. So the grant itself is a three-year grant program. And as part of it, we have funding for our community engagement for CAM to hire a community engagement person. They already have. They've been on the project. But to keep them. So community engagement is not subservient once you get into design and technical work. That has to continue. And I don't know if the folks really know this, but the Bryant residents hired my community engagement person. So Jordan Larson, he's on our community engagement team. And I got our finalists down to two people. And then they had to interview at Bryant. And the residents picked the winner that I hired. So Jordan right now is in like, we're in the Bryant project. I mean, we have to spend a lot of money from our grants fast. Jordan's there every single day. He works from the community center. He's at food distribution sites. Shoshana and I talked to him multiple times a day checking in on the project because it's just at a critical juncture. that's not he's not going to be there every single day once we get past this like npsc push he'll go back to what he was before which was two days a week he works at the community center with residents so that's going to continue and we have the funding to make sure that continues but i also want to name we're not just doing this in bryant we started in pittsfield village uh they are at sort of like where bryant was three years ago in community co-design of what they want their sustainability work to be. So we're trying to do this in Bryant because this matters, right? And we have to center equity in the work. And Bryant isn't the only neighborhood that needs support. So we're trying to figure out how we can replicate this on other spaces too.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And thank you and your office for all that you're doing. This is very exciting.

Thank you.

so I had a couple questions one I was thinking oh you could have a pump house and there could be slides off of it or something like that but probably some nice artwork I'll put a slip and slide in the park for like opening day yeah probably some nice artwork would be good or something like that but I guess my question and I always hate asking this question sort of at the beginning when it's exciting and things are happening it's What if this doesn't work? What if geothermal turns out not to be the right thing? What if the city is going to own or the SEU will own this and we'll just cross that bridge when it comes to it, that people can like the houses could be just have a whatever, hopefully not a gas furnace, hopefully something even better put in down the road or like, how does that work? for the people who, you know, who are converting to this and then they go to sell their house or like how, I mean, I think sometimes it'll be better and sometimes it won't be. And, but how does that, like, I trust that you've thought that far ahead, but I just, it's a question that I always wonder about when it's something new and exciting. Absolutely.

I'm going to pass this to her with the preface that we didn't get to this point lightly. You know, we've been doing a lot of analysis and modeling. We've been looking at the economics and the technology. We brought out contractors. We've been in homes. Like we've, we've, there's a lot of intentionality and we continue to be really diligent and we struggle like we struggle every day with we have to make sure this works and so we do have per doe and i'll let you talk about the seo element but per our dt uh doe award we have exits right if we don't hit something we exit a marker that's critical for success Shoshana, do you want to take it from?

Because it's like we want shiny new thing, but we don't want this neighborhood to be a guinea pig for something. Yeah.

And it's also not shiny and new. It's new to us. But, you know, if we were in Europe, if we were in other parts of the country, I mean, like there's one in Massachusetts. We just didn't do this. Like we double down on gas as opposed to geo. So we're not really worried about geo not working. You know, certainly the economics running utility, a brand new service like that's that's hard. But I don't think we stay up at night worrying about geo. a technology that's really proven, but Shoshana.

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, I think that, you know, there's sort of low to no risk that the technology doesn't work because it is a proven technology that, you know, we've talked to communities around the globe really that have network geothermal systems serving tens of thousands of residents, right? So it's really not a question of technically will the system work, but I think you raised an important question about sort of residents' willingness and desire to participate in what happens when people move in and out. And one of the important facets of the sustainable energy utility that was part of the voter authorization is that it is an optional utility and that people must have the option to come and to go. So you can imagine maybe there's a household that has signed up for this. And after five years, they're like, I don't like this geothermal heat stuff. Right. Or they or they sell their home. And the next person that comes in is like, I want my gas furnace, you know, and and Two things to that. One is, I think, in general, we feel that that's low likelihood that that's going to happen often because these are fantastic systems that once people get them, they're going to realize, like, oh, this is a better technology and it is a better experience for comfort and it's quieter and it's cheaper or same cost, right? So all of those things, like, we don't expect that to happen, but there may be people who want to. They will need to have an option to exit. What I'll say in this case is that... the exit from geothermal will be harder because they will have a big, like they won't have a gas furnace anymore. They will have their geothermal heat pump. And if they wanted to exit, the options would look like, well, one, probably the easiest option that I expect most people would take is you'd switch to like an air source heat pump if for some reason somebody wanted to get off geothermal. And two would be to reconnect to gas, but that's going to be a lot of work. a new furnace and reconnecting a disconnected gas line, a service line. And we don't know what the long-term future of gas in the city will be and what will still be available in however many years. And maybe some other future heating option as well down the line. There's always going to be resistive heating, electric resistive heating as an option if somebody wanted to just disconnect and put a bunch of radiators around their house. That's not going to be an efficient choice, but it would be an option available.

Because I know we've gone to a heat pump, and it is much more expensive for us than our gas was. And I just don't want to leave people in that position who... Yeah, just don't want to leave people in that position if they don't have to be. But if they choose to be, that's different.

Yeah, it will be optional. Absolutely. I'm so sorry, Sean. I think one of the things about the Bryant project that's important is we are talking today about the geo, but the project is about all of it, right? It's full decarbonization. So it's been... This is a lesson learned, and I wish I could go back and do this work 20 years ago when we had the time. That would have been really nice to have had. If an energy bill, if the energy bill looked like this, what we basically done at Bryant is come in and say, okay, here's energy efficiency. And it probably dropped even more. And then we did a little bit of appliance electrification. And then if we go geo, that's an electric rate increase, but you still have the savings. Except for we did in the wrong order, right? Like we should have done, we should have done like electrification and had it go up and then suddenly it drops. Instead, we took a neighborhood that struggled historically with energy poverty and we're like, hey, like your prices dropped and now they went back up. But guess what? They didn't, they're not going to go up as much as they were before. So you win. But that's not how we think. The sequencing has been really important. The downside is I can get an insulation contractor in six weeks to do all the work I need. I got to take two years for the geothermal system. It's just timing and how this functions. But if you think about the Bryant Project 2 as being educational for all of us about how this work looks, how and where we could deploy geothermal, where it doesn't make sense, but where it does make sense, and how you stagger that with other improvements. We are going to hit this target of a decarbonized neighborhood, and we are going to learn so much about what we should do going forward and how we shouldn't do this going forward. And that's kind of priceless in truth. I don't think we would know that if we weren't in it at the moment.

Thank you.

Are you done? Do you have more questions? No. OK. Shockingly. OK, I'll go. This is so awesome. Thank you all for being here and for this presentation. It's been so exciting. Okay. So the pump house, I don't even, I don't know that it's necessarily even in our purview, like where it should be or whatever, but I have opinions if you want to hear them just from like looking at a map. Cause I admittedly have not actually been to the park. And you, you said to see that you're planning on like solar. Oh yeah. I want solar in the pump house, right. Cause it uses a little bit of electric, but not a lot. So it needs to be, so I was just looking at a map, like where is the place that would make sense? What if you put it like by this playground I'm seeing, but then somehow on like at least one of the walls made it like chalk paint and then kids could use it too. Like my kids at the park all the time are like constantly drawing on things with like chalk. I don't know. That's literally my only suggestion for you. Solar's great. If it looks like a garden shed, I think that's, fine and just like looks like a park but i don't think we necessarily are going to tell you like no you shouldn't locate it wherever you think is best to locate it within the park uh what also what is a geo i saw on that same slide what's a geo field vault oh fine that's not a structure is it do you want to say that's just one

Yeah, I'll let Taylor or Greg jump in with this, but it is a structure, but it's like a small structure, right? And vaults can be, they can be underground or they can be above ground. I believe in our system, they're designed to be above ground. Greg, you want to correct me if I'm wrong on that?

Yeah, this is Taylor. Yeah, you're correct. It'd be like a two by two covered vault. So you'd see the lid on the surface. of the ground, but that's where we would locate valves and control controllers for the system itself.

Okay, so is it like flush to the ground?

Yeah, it would be flush to the ground.

Okay, cool. So not like a big, huge transformer or anything like that. I'm sorry if I missed this, but like how far in the process are you? like what has been done, I think of solar,

Oh, well, for the geothermal project itself, we are in the design, right?

Like we've got the whole, the whole, sorry. Yes.

Like for the whole thing, like what, gosh, every minute of every day, because we have, that's, I mean, I don't mean that in just, I mean, seriously are, we have a $3.1 million Michigan public service commission grant that has to be extended by mid August. So like we have dozens of contractors every day doing work in Bryant. Uh, so yeah, I don't know, Shashani, we're at like, what, 50-some?

We have 50 customers signed up for the SEU solar and storage. So we're halfway to our target for getting 100 customers this year. Of those, I think we're at 15 systems installed. And so others are sort of in the process of permitting and interconnection and planning, and they're getting new roofs before they get the solar and all the other work. But we're on track to have 100 installations of solar and storage in the neighborhood by the end of the year.

Were those 100 sort of what's shown on that map of the colors? Are those approximately the 100? Yeah. Or is that more than 100?

No. So the solar doesn't necessarily overlap with the same residents who will get the geothermal. The geothermal is really selected based on proximity to the central well field, to that park, and where those loops are going to be built, so the distribution. The solar, every home in the neighborhood is eligible, and it was sort of a free-for-all. We said, basically, we got funding to do 100 of these. Come sign up if you're interested. There's a few like eligibility checks that not literally everybody who wants it can get it, but something like 90% of people who want it are eligible. And so that may be anywhere in the neighborhood. Obviously, where there's overlap, to Missy's point about kind of sequencing and stacking all of these folks who get the solar, that's going to be a big help when they get geothermal because that solar energy will be covering some of that increased electricity. usage. But it is it will be harder sort of economically for people who are who are switching without the solar. But the homes, you know, some some homes were too shaded, for example, or they just are not interested in the solar.

And for the broad project, I was reading our June report, which we're finalizing to submit to the funder. We have over 100 homes that have received improvements in the neighborhood. And in June alone, we completed, did not start, but completed eight solar projects, three appliance upgrades, like in the home, like full appliance upgrades, 25 roof replacements, 10 electrical jobs, and over a dozen weatherization installations.

Wow.

That's amazing.

So are these, is it sort of like a menu? Are there people that are doing everything? Like, how does it, like, how do you, is it, do you just have to be like sort of assessed for it's like, I'm interested. And then somebody comes out and they're like, here's the things we think make the most sense for you. That's right.

We have a deorganization assessment that the residents actually helped us create. And it looks at health and safety. And of course, like traditional things we're talking about, like weatherization and solar potential. and households go through that assessment. We talk to them. We have an evaluator from the University of Michigan that's also making sure, you know, like people are heard, that the process is reflective of needs, that there were true improvements in people's quality of life, not just, you know, the energy metric at the end. So that also takes place on the front end. We sit down with them to understand pain points, strengths, et cetera, and then we give them a basically a decarbonization roadmap and we say, here are the options of things that we can fund a hundred percent. How do you like, do these look good? Do you have any problems with it, et cetera? And then we assign the job to the contractors and they'll coordinate when they come on site with the individual homeowner or renter or landlord, depending on, you know, ownership structure. And then we're, we're managing those contractors, right? Like get in there, get it done. Give me your paperwork. So it's a, It's chaos.

Missy, can I just add, I just want to add one thing to what you said, because you talked about these improvements being grant funded and free to the residents. And I just do want to make sure to clarify for the SCU, for the solar that is part of the SCU, they are paying a rate. And so that is, in many ways, it's a slightly different evaluation process. Obviously, the HOMA energy assessment will tell them like, you know, solar might be a good option for you. But we are doing an evaluation that actually looks at the financial sort of energy bill impacts for residents of the solar based on their individual household energy usage patterns and based on what this like the solar potential at their house, right, shading and orientation and so forth. And then they are making that decision for the solar. Thank you. Yeah, it's important.

If I wanted a decarbonization assessment of my house, is that a service that your department offers already?

The Home Energy Advisor provides it for free. Everyone in the city of Ann Arbor can get a free decarbonization assessment. And then that assessment will link you to all of the rebates and programs we have to help you pay for improvements identified.

Okay. I have one more question. And this is the SEU broadly. We had a petitioner recently. I think I remember who, but I'm not going to say because I'm not positive. That was just like,

Yeah, we're not doing like, you know, we're not going to do solar.

We're not going to do because you can't make me. But, you know, we signed up to be part of the SEU. I don't that. Can you clarify like at what stage you're at right now with people like that? That's not really you can't really. He signed up to be part of like an like an information list or something. Right. Like you can't just. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.

So right now, only residents in the Bryant neighborhood can sign up to actually receive service for the rest because that's our pilot. It's our initial operations for the rest of the city. There is an expression of interest form. It's not a commitment of any type. It is simply, you know, put me on your newsletter and I'm letting you know that I am interested in this. And later this fall will be sort of transitioning that from expression of interest to actual intake. We'll tell you what the rates are. We'll start evaluating your solar potential and actually start to sign people up for elsewhere in the city.

OK. Awesome. Any last questions or comments? Thank you guys so much for your time, for the presentation, for the incredibly hard work that you're doing. It's amazing.

Game work. Thanks for being a part of it, everybody. We appreciate your work. Oh, Sarah's not letting us leave. I'm sorry.

And it's all Commissioner Hammerschmidt's fault because she said, is there any more questions? And the question that she asked at the end was actually more perspective than this Bryant one, which is if we do have petitioners before us where we can't we do not require rooftop solar, but we often ask, why do you have a whole bunch of flat roof without something on it? There's no there's no green roof. Should we encourage them to sign up for your list? Is that like regardless of how many units there are? Yeah. Is that a good idea?

Yes, please. Yes. We are looking to serve all kinds of different properties, high rises, multifamily, detached, all of the above. And so, yes, encourage them to sign up.

And one of the things my team is working on is a sustainability component that goes into every petition that comes forward where they might say, I'm not doing solar, but we're going to ask them explicit questions. So the planning commission doesn't have to start from zero. We want to have all seven strategies of A20 presented and ask the petitioners to respond. Are you thinking about, are you doing? So that's a starting point. The team has been working on that. I should come forward in the coming months.

And finally, because I haven't muted fully, if they ask about like the same thing is true for battery storage, not just solar. Should we point them your way if they're interested in such things? Yes.

Awesome. Thank you. We didn't talk about that. Brian's getting solar and storage, like the households that are signing up. Sorry, we didn't name that explicitly. Okay.

That's even more, I knew that, but that's, I'm glad you said that. That's even more, that's even more useful, especially when we're talking about like energy justice.

All right.

Thank you guys so much. I will move us to our next item, which is the second opportunity for individuals to speak for up to three minutes with public comment. So if I'm not going to read the whole thing again, if there's anyone who, On our Zoom that would like to make a comment, you can press the raise hand feature and you'll have up to three minutes, but you don't have to.

I don't see any hands raised.

All right. With that. Oh, and no communication has been received or attached to the agenda for this meeting. That is also on the script. So I will say that. And with that, the meeting is adjourned.

Stay cool, everyone. Bye. Bye.