Tree Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

It is 6.35 p.m. on June 3rd, and I'm calling to order the meeting of the Sustainability Advisory Board. Verification of quorum present. We have Megan Anders, Will Thomas, Mackenzie McCloskey, Karen Winkler. We do have a quorum. Also present is staff liaison Erica Thorley. Absent are Art Henderlong, Ann Walsh, and Kathleen Teal. First approval of agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening? I motion. Mackenzie motion. Second?

Second.

Will seconds? All in favor? Aye. Any nos? Okay. So approved. Approval of previous meeting minutes. We are approving the Sustainability Advisory Board April 29th, 2026 meeting minutes, which was a special meeting called for predominantly the recommendation of applicants for vacant positions. Do I have a motion to approve McKenzie motions? Can I second, even though I'm facilitating? Yes. All right. I second. All in favor? Well, these two weren't here. I don't know how it works. I mean, we have a quorum.

They can abstain because they didn't read them. I wouldn't want you to abstain, but then you would still, I think you would still have the approval.

I think so, because anyone can abstain. The quorum is for the meeting, right? Form is to hold the meeting. It's not necessary. Anyone can abstain from any vote if they want to. So I think it still varies. So I think those minutes should still be approved. If Michelle feels that that's not voting, we'll just have to table it. But they still will never vote on it. All right. Well, we're going to say that they are approved, unless we get direction otherwise. Public comment, we have no public, so we have no comment. General business, advisory board welcome and officer elections. So welcome, Megan. Welcome, Will. Thank you. Nice to have you as part of the board. I'm excited to have you guys give input and bring stuff to the table that we can all consider and how we can best support the town of Erie sustainability plan and yeah. And jumping right in, we need to hold officer elections. So the officer appointments are for one year. Oh, maybe you should also, maybe in the welcome, I should clarify too. So According to the appointments and the appointments that were done for vacated positions, I show your term as being through April of 2027.

Yes. Because you were filling Rinaldo's term.

position which he had um given his resignation for okay and then will i show you as serving until april of 2029 which is the a three-year term so in 2027 mckenzie art and megan will be up for reapplying so that's right right okay um so but the officer elections are the officer terms are one year so um we have chair vice chair and secretary currently i'm serving as chair and is serving as vice chair mckenzie is serving as secretary I'm going to put it out there to Mackenzie. Do you wish to continue serving as secretary? I'd love to. Okay. So I would recommend that we keep Mackenzie as secretary. Vice chair and chair, I am happy to continue. You are also happy to throw in your name in the hat if you would like to be considered for chair or vice chair as well. Okay.

I think it sounds great for you to stay as chair.

Now, how about vice chair? So Anne is not here. She cannot say whether or not she wants to be vice chair. Can we vote it anyway? We can. I was not able to confer with her. She is feeling ill, so it was a last minute that she's not going to be here. I am not going to be at July's meeting, so the vice chair will need to run that meeting. If Anne is vice chair and is not able to be at the meeting, what do we do for running? Do you know who runs the meeting?

I would assume that secretary or someone else could take lead with the conversation, but we'd have to just confirm that with the clerk's office. Do you know?

i don't know i would assume that that would be okay because the important part is forum so do we vote anna's vice chair without her being here to say whether or not she even wants that and revisit it if she doesn't or you know i'm not quite sure uncharted territory

Any opinions?

The vice chair's role is basically to run the meeting in the absence of the chair. There isn't really much that goes into the position itself other than being able to commit to being at the meetings. So, I mean, you know, yeah. Yeah.

I'm thinking it would probably be best to table that until the next meeting.

So we either vote Anne in or if one of you two would like to be considered for vice chair, we can vote you in. But we need to hold the elections tonight.

You said you don't know if Anne wants to do it.

No. She gave no feedback or input into anything she wanted to say for the meeting.

So I have a question. So if we write him And in the next week, she says, no, can we have the election next week at that point?

The next meeting?

Next meeting, sorry.

I guess, I don't know. Like I said, unchartered.

I would assume that would be fine. If anyone wanted to vote her in and then have a conversation and see what she thinks and then have a new vote, depending on the direction she goes at the July meeting.

Okay. And we will go ahead and vote Anne in. despite her not giving consent. That'll make her to be sick. All right. So chair, myself, Ann Walsh as vice chair and Mackenzie McCloskey as secretary.

Wait a second.

Yes, I guess I need a motion. So my motion is to approve the appointments of chair, vice chair, and secretary as being Karen Winkler, Ann Walsh, and Mackenzie McCloskey. Do I have a second? Mackenzie seconds. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. Okay. We have Councillor Passeramelli with us. Hello. Do you have any updates for us?

Nothing. We talked about windmill sale yesterday. And potential effect for the town is what we are getting and what is on the table. But no decision yet. It will be on the 16th.

June 16th. Yeah, I'm comfortable giving a summary of last night's meeting.

The summary?

Yeah.

So Civitas is SM Energy. And what they have come up with is in exchange of some mineral rights from India, there is, I don't remember the exact, acres of land. There's some land next to the airport on the county line, which was like a potential transfer plus 4.5 million in cash and 27 or 29 million all wells that will be closed as part of this study.

And that's spread throughout Erie's planning area that they'd be plugged and abandoned?

No, no, it's only in the Draco pad.

It's only in the Draco pad?

Yeah. Where our wells are there, which the minerals will be extracted.

So... question for you that in the contract it talks about like the the mineral rights area is close to 4 000 acres what are what is this land swap that that's the mineral area but the land area is how big is that because there was no real map they just talked about yeah it's lots and there's nothing it's um

It's not the area-wise. I think they go under the shale and how much they can access. And if we can go through that or not, there are some restrictions.

Right, for the mineral rights portion. But is there, other than citing the blocks and the tracks that were the actual property that the town is getting in exchange for those mineral rights, how large of a property is that that the town is gaining?

in exchange for income i have to look at but there is three tracks i think one was uh 200 acres to 38 acres something like that okay i can check that i don't have it in front of that's okay i just wondered That land is on the county line next to the Leon World and closer to the airport. And some of the uses were like airport-related businesses. It's not open space. It has to be zoned commercial later on. And Julian was not there to give what it could be used for. but it's just land-based. But again, land can have some potential use and also it can appreciate later on. There might be some benefits to it.

So it says we're purchasing this from Freddo, is that correct? These tracts of land, and they're going to be zoned for transfer.

It's an exchange. Okay.

Or exchanging mineral rights for the tracks of the land?

Yeah. Okay. And some cash was also put in there as part of the contract.

Okay. From them or from us? From them. Okay. And then this is all to determine what it will be zoned as?

The land is probably zoned as not agricultural, not open space. But we have to properly zone it if we needed to use it for any commercial.

OK.

But that will be our land. That will do us.

I think it kind of abuts what's already zoned like light industrial, right? Most of that area over there is zoned light industrial.

But yesterday, I don't think they mentioned industry. They mentioned something like ag.

Is there any idea of what the LEN would be used for?

Because it's very adjacent to the airport, like airport hangers, maybe one thing. Nothing, no plans. It's just an exchange, and the town can decide later on what to do with that, if at all the council approves.

OK.

I didn't have a chance to watch the meeting. How long was it?

Not bad. We finished at 8.

Okay.

It's a study session, so the work might work much easier. And the moderation was more of they collected all the questions from the public. And Meredith, she just read out the questions. And some were going back to the executive sessions, and that we skipped. But the contract itself was discussed.

Okay. Thank you.

Voting will be on the 16th, yeah. The council will approve it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Staff liaison updates.

Yes. Just a couple of housekeeping things, and we'll talk about this a little bit more. But because of how everything worked out timing-wise with new appointments and missing some meetings, Our interim town manager has asked that staff liaisons put in budget requests minus 5% from the 26 budget for 27 for boards. So I will submit that for you all. And then as Karen and I discussed earlier, the conversation for you will be kind of have you want to allocate those funds. I'm going to put them in just kind of based on the general buckets that you all have from 2026. So ecocycle environmental education programming, which is a huge chunk of your budget, say $8,000.

We are going to talk about that like in full after your updates too. Okay. Yeah.

Perfect. So just want to let you all know that. And then the board presentations are in July. So we will kind of, and I've also exchanged emails about just kind of streamlining that template. So all the boards have really similar presentations moving forward. There's been a lot of effort to streamline board conversations kind of work plans, processes, all of those things from staff perspective and from senior leadership and the town manager's office. So I expect some things will still be kind of being changed, especially with like the appointment process, things like that, just being able to document more of this information. I know you all were there at the training earlier A good day. But yes, so stay tuned for that. And I'll try to keep you all in the loop as best I can. And then we are installing the last seven ports of the Charger head grant and the match for Town Hall soon. That's really exciting. EPR also just sent an update, so they extended producer responsibility from the state legislation that they will be starting to implement some of their programs. And one thing they did announce via email this week was that if HOAs or contracts with haulers are already approved through EPR, you will start to see those reimbursements or that discount for your recycling. So it sounds like it's really on the contract with the haulers right now on when folks will actually see those discounts. So something to ask. I've just thought of you with your HOA, just making sure.

If haulers, like if I reach out to a hauler and say, hi, I only want I don't want any trash collection. I just want recycling. Does that mean that they will offer it to me for free or do they still have the ability to say, no, you need to sign up for trash? I have no idea.

Yeah. Good question. I think in theory they could provide you just a recycling can, but I would imagine there's going to be some kind of administration fees that they attach to that. So whether there's like a billing or invoice cost or something.

Yeah.

I will find out and report back. Sounds great. Flush and Flow, we've had three more signups for the Flush and Flow toilet replacement program, which is really exciting. We did deliver 50 mailers to the Old Town area to try to get people aware of the program. So if you know folks that have old toilets in their home, it has to be more than 1.6 gallons per flush to qualify. It's a cool program.

Is that just a replacement program for any, like that the town of Erie rebates back for any toilet that's over 1.6?

I'll do it and all the toilets for free.

Amazing.

How does one tell what their flush rate is?

You should look at the back of your bottle. Yeah. Okay. If it's not, you could probably look at it to make a model.

We unfortunately replaced our toilets on our dime not too long ago. So that's great, but that's a great program.

It was super easy. They actually had me measure the toilets and tell me essentially if the toilets that I had qualified and they were like, okay, well, three of your toilets qualify. So we will bring three toilets that fit and just come and do it in one day rather than come, say you're approved and then come back another day to install it. So it was very nice. Yeah.

So did you just target Old Town because the homes are older? It's really open to, like, that's the only site. That's also a disproportionately impacted zone if we were to have some.

So we've also been targeting our mobile home communities as well. Okay. We've gotten some feedback from some other municipalities that are participating in the program and have been for a few years. And when they actually have formal income qualified requirements, it's really hard to get people to participate and go through the whole process. Yeah, it's a process. Yeah. Great. Yeah. But it's not a requirement. It's open to anyone. We're just targeting those groups.

Okay.

Drought stage two was declared. It is voluntary restrictions. There is a ton of work happening right now. Dylan is busting his butt with different subgroups to kind of look at communication and drought plan update and all the various things. Um, so if you have feedback, you see communication and you're like, Oh, that should be better. Or I have questions about this or my neighbors are having questions, questions about X, Y, and Z reach out to us. We'd love to get that feedback. It seems in general, people are super supportive of it. Um, so really exciting. Um, some of our neighbors have gone beyond the stage two. So for example, the city of Aspen, the town of Aspen, I'm not sure how they define themselves. Um, they have gone beyond. So the planet Aspen, um, they're actually not allowing folks, residents to fill pools or hot tubs with city water, which is pretty exciting to hear that. Um, But also, I think, didn't Breckenridge just do something? I haven't been following that. I wouldn't be surprised.

I have a video recorded for my YouTube about how I'm killing my lawn. And I did all the math of like, this is how much water my lawn uses and why you should kill your lawn too. Could I bounce that off of you? Yeah, 100%. I did just see your canning video as well. great i'm kind of all over the place i got lots of topics it's awesome we are also thinking about it maybe i'll use your existing map oh yes yeah mine was um my lawn is 2137 square feet and in order to keep it alive and thriving i would have needed to use 62 000 gallons of water which is if you think of a, an average size community pool with like a deep end, that's like 45,000 gallons. So I've got, 15,000 gallons to spare. I could fill an entire community pool and have more left over. Are you talking about over the course of a season? Over the course of a season, yeah. And I did the math. I'm also saving $500. Which means I get the math. $500 towards more garden beds.

Is that for typical temperatures?

I didn't say anything about temperatures. I did talk about, I know you've mentioned in the past, turf has the advantage of being like a a natural air conditioning like it it's a good way to cool the area down so i'm interested to see if i notice that throughout the summer what are you going to replace it with i'm not doing anything this year i think next year i'm going to try and do um native grasses that use like half an inch to a quarter of an inch every two weeks. Gotcha.

Are you, is that like standard just grass? Bluegrass. Okay.

Yeah. It was already on the decline between rabbit damage, chicken damage, dog damage. My own damage because I forgot to water it. So I'm just using this as an excuse to say, yay, drought restrictions, I can get on board.

So if you have time, Northern Water is doing a garden project. event. Um, I believe it's June 12th. It's in the newsletter. And if you haven't been up there, it's worth driving up there because they have a bunch of examples of low water turf grasses. Um, the dog tub, the town of 31, I believe is there. Um, there's a few others, I believe at Clover as well. So there's some really cool options. Dog tub is like really bumpy and

I figured that I could do it next year because we're supposed to get the El Nino this winter. So I'm like, oh, well, then we'll have plenty of water to waste on all these, not waste, but use on all these seeds to get them established. Yeah, absolutely.

We do have waivers for new landscape as well. Because like you said, it is really important for us to have vegetation in Erie because of the the air quality improvements, the state island reduction effect, you know, general soil health, vegetation ecosystems, like all of the above. So we do have waivers to support folks that need to water trees to get established or, you know, low water turf varieties.

I figured if we're already kind of in a restriction, I didn't want to ask for a waiver. I just wanted to be like, I'll just let it die. It'll make it easier to establish the native grass next year is how I tell myself. Maybe you can cut, do sod, cut it, flip it, compost it. Oh, good idea.

Yeah.

I mean, I've already taken out a good chunk for more garden beds. I'm saving $500 and I leveled that towards more.

A couple of things on that. So the turf replacement rebate program is going bonkers. We just asked for additional funding from our water utilities director and he was very excited to support. So we will have more funding than we did initially budget for, which is great. Yeah, I mean, we're going to go from 120,000 to 50,000 more. so it was just good we have a lot of participation right now and the average project is uh going to the maximum so that two thousand dollar rebate so if you know folks have them look at projects submit project pros proposals can't talk today it's been a whole day of talking i recycle colorado um and get their projects approved before they get started

Would it be beneficial at the farmer's markets to have pictures of like our Erie's buzzing gardens that have pictures of people that have replaced their front lawns?

Pictures are typically not that good of an example. Most of the pictures are kind of zoomed in like on certain plants or it's not a...

Well, I could take a picture of my before and my after.

I could take a picture of, because I did that program because I got it from a place up in northern Colorado where we used, like, drought-resistant grass. It's, like, a combination of different seeds to, like, only have to water, like, I think we water it once a week. Nice. Yeah. So, I could take a picture of my lawn.

Yeah. Great. We can go down this rabbit hole a bit. I was just at the Recycle Colorado conference the last couple of days and everyone organics, Compost Colorado, handful of other soil composting companies were there. And the water conservation strategy of compost is incredible. It just really can dramatically increase the water absorption of the landscape and then retention as well. So being able to really avoid, you know, and having the once a week watering. Really exciting. Thank you. Okay. A couple other things. The last turf replacement project, just wanted to plug this for Will and Megan. It's a 24,000 square foot turf replacement project at the service center, the Leon A World Service Center. And that is moving forward. I believe we're close to a final design. We still have two grants to support that project. Is it really exciting? And then there's going to be some education plaques and it's going to be a garden, various gardens that folks can actually tour to get ideas of what a waterways landscape could look like in their yard. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. The resilience action plan, the resilience action plan capstone students are moving into implementation of that plan. If you haven't checked it out, it's on the website. It was adopted in March by council. And they are going to be reaching out to try and find a few HOAs. two to three, to do a pilot workshop series and to go through a resilience development plan process as an HOA or as a neighborhood. I think their plan right now is to have at least two HOAs and then one non-HOA neighborhood like Old Town, Farmsy and Bolts. So if you are interested, reach out, send me an email and we can start talking about what that will look like. It's ideally going to be a three to four hour workshop. And then we'll take notes. It's going to be very much an iterative process. And the idea is that it would be the start to really intentional resilience planning. And I say that with, the full understanding that there's probably HOAs that have been doing stuff like this, but I think from the town's perspective, this will be kind of our first foray into really intentional resilience planning and then developing a template that'll ideally be on the website for other neighborhoods and HOAs to go to and to say, Oh, well, how do we host a workshop? How do we start these conversations?

So how are they soliciting for, um,

involvement from HOAs is it just probably gonna just reach out to a few HOAs initially see if there's interest what the scheduling looks like their bulk of their time on their capstone project is this summer so they'll be working near 40 hours a week for June July and August so time's gonna be our challenge um and then the hope is that creating that template documenting the process we'll be able to have that available see what it looks like moving forward cool yeah Uh, events kick off. We can talk about that more to you. Um, I know there's a farmer's market tomorrow. Who is planning on being there? Erin McKenzie. Perfect.

I don't think I'm on there. I will mark myself.

All right. Caleb and Dylan will be there. And then that's all I got. Is there anything I missed?

No, I think, well, we're going to talk about budget next. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about what Erica mentioned. So next up is the budget, budget recap of 2026. So just to give you, especially for you, Will and Megan. So our budget for 2026 is $11,000. And the, the board approved expenditures across a couple of different categories for expenditures up to $11,000. The bulk of our budget has historically gone to eco-cycle programming. That is for programming within the schools that are across all of the Erie schools that are in the feeder system. In the Weld Park? In the Weld Park, because the schools on the Boulder Valley School District side, their program is paid by the school district itself, whereas on the St. Brains side, it is not. So this has been... an important priority for SAB to ensure a level playing field with having all kids within Erie receive educational programming and EcoCycle has been the provider. So rounding up that, The cost of that programming, they run programming in the spring and the fall, is $4,000. So we have budgeted $8,000 out of the $11,000 for 2026 to go towards that programming. They have already done the spring programming, and I believe Erica just received an invoice from them. Their fall programming will also be that $4,000 chunk. So the other categories that we had approved expenditures in our community fruit rescue, and that is a joint SAB and TAB Tree Advisory Board initiative to continue to expand community fruit rescues program. They're a Boulder based fruit rescue nonprofit that has been around for a very long time, but they have been expanding east and they expanded into Erie last season. They harvest fruit from landowners They will even harvest from town properties. Basically, it's a way of ensuring that fruit that is just not being harvested by other means is getting into the hands of food insecure families and individuals. They also provide the non-human grade food to families. Lovin' Arms, and there's a couple other boulder-based farm animal sanctuaries. So anyway, we were really excited to be able to bring that to Erie last year, and we will continue that this year. Their harvest season has not yet begun, but we've already started talking to them about how to help promote that and try to drum up volunteers for their harvest leader program and for their volunteers that actually harvest. So, That is our share of that. And we split it 50-50 with the tree advisory board because it kind of overlaps. And it's been fun to look for initiatives where we can collaborate with other town boards. So $750 of our budget and $750 of their budget is going towards that for 2026. And that will subsidize up to 12 projects. harvests within erie so last year was our inaugural year wouldn't really know what to expect and we ended up with i think five harvests there were more that were scheduled but because of timing and fruit not being ripe or not being the right time um they didn't happen but i was kind of excited to get more than one because it was sort of the first year and um hoping with the amount of public engagement and information that we've been able to share since last year into this season and with us being at the farmers markets. And also we talked to a lot of people about it at the town fair as well in Arbor and Earth Day. So that's another one of the buckets. Then we also budget a substantial amount for pollinator surveys. And so I'm going to circle back to that because the only other category that we budgeted for were basically outreach materials and things for public events and engagements. So basically think marketing materials, swag, that kind of stuff. And then Arbor and the Arbor and Earth Day event, the prizes and the equipment and materials that went along with that. So yeah, mckenzie we haven't yet made any expenditures in 2026 for the pollinator surveys do you anticipate needing using the budget that we've voted on and set aside if we want to allocate it elsewhere i can cover the surveys

What do you mean you can cover the survey?

So the budget was so that we could hire the Butterfly Pavilion to do those surveys. I can just do those surveys. It's not going to be as high quality because I'm not an entomologist, a hobby entomologist.

And so refresh my memory. How many surveys would that have covered for hiring them?

I don't remember. We didn't make any promises to them on that budget. I figured we would reach out if and when we needed survey support.

think if memory serves it was more of a we would do as much as we could and use that money to supplement um you know i don't want to sacrifice quality the quality of the survey just to i mean we we have some we have some leeway in our buckets for 2026 i think um But I think it would be good to be thinking about when that money would hit, when that expenditure would hit. Would it be in 2026? Would we be using those funds?

It could. But if we want to use the budget elsewhere, maybe the surveys. There are only three... four identified areas that I'm surveying. So it's certainly not a broad swath of Erie. It's just little pockets.

So when you're talking about the survey, are you going out and just seeing how many pollinators are in these certain areas and kind of extrapolating data from that?

Yeah.

And what kind of data points are you hitting on?

I'm getting what the weather is, like what the temperature is, what time I'm there, what the wind is like. I note down what flowers are blooming, obviously the date, because that affects if there are spring pollinators out or like summer pollinators. And then I keep track of as many as I can. how many of what pollinator I see. And it's all ballpark. If I see a bush just completely covered in honeybees, I'm going to be like, ah, 20 honeybees. And sometimes my notes say unknown bug, which is apparently also fine.

Are you doing like video captures or things like that?

Yeah. And then I use iNaturalist to help me identify what it is. Like often it'll tell me it is some kind of bee. It's like, okay, well. I knew that. It would be nice if I could get more detail, but granted my picture was like, stop. Yeah.

So you're doing this a few times a season and then how long does each one take approximately?

It depends on how big the area is and how many things are blooming. Like I did a round of surveys recently last month or maybe even the month before and it was like way too early so one of the gardens um had like one plant blooming and i think i saw one bug and it was a yellow jacket and i was like okay um the next place had also nothing blooming um but that was also where friends of coal creek is planning on revamping and replanting more stuff um I think I saw bugs, but it was pretty minimal. And then the next one that I went to, I only did three that day because I forgot I can count my front yard as a pollinator survey. That one didn't have anything blooming in the garden itself, but there was like a big bush next to it that was just alive with activity. So that one had a bunch of bugs there. And so that one had a lot. And so if there's like absolutely no signs of life, it'll take me like 10 minutes to be like, yep. There's nothing here, but if there's like a lot of activity, it can take me like half an hour, 45 minutes. I'm doing more this weekend if anyone is interested in looking at some bugs.

How many do you do per site that you're looking at? Like how many times do you go back to the same site to kind of get a holistic picture of?

Beginning and end of the season is like bare minimum. I will try to do a little bit more just so that since I'm not perfect at what I'm doing, I don't actually know like when the best time is like I try to do it in the morning when they're most active. But you know, I got a job. So right. Yeah, the more the more I go, the Better quality is kind of how I'm explaining it to myself.

How would the butterfly pavilion do that differently? Would they have multiple times that they go out to the same place if they're doing surveys? Or what would that look like compared to what you would do?

I think it is relatively the same. They're just qualified and I'm not.

Okay.

I am about to submit my final things for getting my pollinator stewardship certification though. So that's great. Then I can put a little picture in my email signature.

So when would be the last time that you would be surveying? Like how late into the season? August, September. Yeah.

Is there potential to like get community involvement and have like, you know, put on a Facebook post or something of like, hey, take some pictures of this area and see if we can like crowdsource some of this?

Yeah, so if we get community members to use iNaturalist, it's called community science. And so if anyone in Erie sees a bug, identifies it on iNaturalist and logs that data, we can look and see what bugs are in Erie, not just specifically the bugs that are, or the pollinators that are in these pollinator gardens that I'm surveying. That one is a little bit harder because, It's a lot bigger. It's harder to define, like, this is eerie. Stop looking at bugs outside of this line. And that data is just harder to look at. But I did get some, like, three interested people last year who wanted to help with surveys. I got their info, like, at the end of the season, though, and it was like, okay, I'll reach out next year. Yeah. So I haven't reached out yet because I have only really just started. When I'm doing the surveys this weekend, I am hoping that I will have enough foresight and focus that I can make a video of how to do a pollinator survey so that then they can anyone who volunteers i can be like okay here's how you do it would you like to adopt the erie community garden or the thomas reservoir garden and then just do it as you can or whatever okay so well i think we'll keep on track with just saying that we've got that earmarked and

They've already, they already voted that. And then you can just keep us updated as to whether or not you think how that goes. Yeah.

How much was that budget that we set aside? 1,800. 1,800. Okay. I think that was probably three surveys. So yeah, we definitely intended to supplement with doing it ourselves.

Okay. So something that we didn't budget for because we were out of budget was the cleanup days waste diversion sponsorship. And that is to sponsor the recycling of mattresses and tires. And historically, we have helped with that as a waste diversion initiative. I think that those programs are great. They're very well received. And it would be nice to be able to go back to supporting them if we have the budget for that. So maybe we can kind of look at that as it gets closer to the fall cleanup. We did not have budget for that for the spring cleanup that already happened.

How much would that be?

Um, I think it was $250 per event. Yeah.

It's half. What we think you need getting is half of the mattresses and half of the tires. And then we've been flexible with the actual reality of that. So half of the mattresses is 300. Um, and then the tires vary because that's a relatively new thing. So it'll depend on how many tires people bring. I'm just going to try to find the invoice for this year. Okay.

But that may have gone wrong. Don't you guys have a cap on the number of tires and mattresses that you will take? It's not really like an open-ended, like, what if you ended up with $1,000 worth of mattresses?

Like, is there a... We have a cap on our mattresses and what we sponsor, but not on the tires.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's been an interesting... Just whatever fits in the truck.

They'll come back and get another truck. They'll come back? Okay, great.

And that's just one time a year?

Well, there's a spring cleanup and a fall cleanup, but the tires are only done... Tires are done both. Is it the mattresses that are only done once then? No. Oh, I'm thinking of shredding. I'm thinking of shredding.

Yeah, shredding is one event, and then hazardous waste is one event as well.

Yeah, so mattresses and tires are at both the spring and the fall cleanup.

And the tire collection from this last event in May was $718. Okay.

So the pollinator survey line item is not the only wiggle room that we have to be able to support the fall cleanup. We budgeted for... We basically looked at community fruit rescue, pollinator surveys, ecocycle programming, and then whatever was left over, we threw into the outreach materials for events and engagement bucket, and that was $520, and the Arbor and Earth Day event, which was $250. Arbor and Earth Day was largely covered by the forestry and sustainability town staff budgets. So we actually did not use $250. So, you know, we have some, I think we have a little bit of wiggle room or to be able to support the cleanup, the waste diversion. But I just wanted to kind of, especially for you guys, to take you through what the budget was initially, what was voted on, what those buckets were. And I can also send you a link to that document as well so that you have that. But that's kind of where we landed when we voted previously.

Could you maybe explain to me a little bit more about what the EcoCycle does in these program events?

So, in fact, it just came out today, but earlier Erica forwarded all of us the spring recap of the programs that EcoCycle held in the schools. So that will give you a breakdown of all the different programs, the grade levels, how many participants they had. EcoCycle has a variety of different programming. They're not just waste diversion. They have programmings on water quality, water conservation. But largely, they're programming for the younger grades are, well, in some schools, you know, if they have compost, it might be compost, but it's basically recycling. And they do It's not, the schools have to want to have them come in. So, you know, whether or not they present to all the grades or what programs they present is going to differ a little bit from school to school based on what teachers and the administration of the school think. says they have time to fit into their curriculum. But I don't, let me see if I can pull up.

I guess I'll have four minutes, mainly like K through six.

No, well, no, they actually do middle school programmings and high school as well. Those are not quite as common. Not that they're not as popular, but you're going to see more in like the, they might even have some preschool, but yeah, K through six. But they do middle school programming as well and a few high school programs.

The high school, I think she said they do more lunch. Lunch.

So they're not coming into the classroom per se, but they may come and do a lunch monitor.

Yeah.

Yeah. A lunch program.

Because their schedules are a lot less flexible. Right.

Than elementary school. Exactly. Right.

I, so I have a kiddo who's at Red Hawk, and every time someone from EcoCycle comes in, I hear about it. And I'm told exactly who came as if I know them all by name. Yes, great person. It's fantastic to not have all the... you go everything information come from me, but come from other sources to kind of support my wildness. The programs are great.

I mean, and so I have a 21 year old and her freshman year of, of college, she called me and she's like, do you remember that eco cycle programming where they had the flyer of what? And I lo and behold was able to dig it out for her for a freshman year. sustainability project that she was doing. So the fact that it does stick with them is, I think, so great and so important to have that programming in there. Now, wouldn't it be great if like St. Brain Valley School District just... covered that cost like Boulder Valley does, but they don't.

Does Boulder Valley bring in EcoCycle or do they build their own programs? No, they bring in EcoCycle. Okay. Yeah.

And I think several... meetings ago, this might have been last year actually, we talked about school programming because Anne was very passionate about school programming. And after like tossing around a few ideas just very briefly in that one meeting, the consensus kind of was we could reinvent the wheel, but EcoCycle, I mean, that's their bag. I mean, they've got these great programs. They have it down to a science and you're not really limited to, they have a whole host of programming options. So if there's something beyond what they are doing when they come into the schools routinely with the different grade levels, because they kind of have that mapped out with what programs work best with what age groups and et cetera. But there's all sorts of programmings that they could do, even like above and beyond that. So yeah. Some of it is, is there a resource out there already that does this well so that we're not reinventing the wheel if we're talking about wanting more school programming or different types of school programming? It's quite possible that those programs already exist. Yeah.

One of the really cool things I like about EcoCycle too is because they'll follow the kids. So they'll track, you know, what programs are brought in. They have programs that they'll build on as far as complexity, but they'll also try to match the curriculum for that grade. And then they don't repeat, right? So they know, oh, we talked to them in first grade and we talked about waste diversion. We haven't done water conservation yet, but we haven't done, you know, other topics. Okay. They have a lot of programming and even just emailing with Kim or from EcoCycle recently, they're working on more complex water programming because we support water programming from staff side from the Water Utility Fund. It's relatively new and we didn't have anybody partake in that this last semester where you guys used all of your funding on other programming that students and teachers were interested in. so no students or teachers took up the the water conservation site yes okay we'll try again for the fall semester but yeah it could be a capacity thing maybe we weren't in a drought quite yet although it was pretty dry winter there might be some more interest this fall yes after a whole summer of talking about it you know

do we know if there are going to be any like free recycling programs that are covered by EPR?

Yeah. Karen and I talked about this earlier today. So we have basically allocated all of our funding for Erie to the Boulder County recycling program. And they're going to be implementing not only our funding, but also a handful of five. I think there's five municipalities that they're facilitating as far as the education and outreach and, And part of that is because it was really complicated to do multiple entities. So we talked to EcoCycle about, can we do a portion to you all and a portion to Boulder County? They're in the same building, but they are different entities. And so that proved to be pretty difficult. So we decided just from simplicity, let's go with Boulder County. It's also nice because most of our materials are going to Boulder and they're MRF. And so it's really nice to have streamlined communication between and efforts from their perspective. Plus, they did really well, I think. All of their signage and things like that, if you haven't seen it, it's great. But there is an opportunity to maybe change that starting for 2028. So what we've agreed on is for half of this year and all of 2027. So long answer short, no, there's not an opportunity, as far as I know, to pay for ecocycle programming through EPR funds. there could be in the future. EPR is still very much new territory. I was just talking with Boulder County Household Hazardous Waste Facility today, and they are seeing huge increases in cost, specifically lithium batteries that have gone from 21 cents a pound to over $5 a pound. And the interesting piece is that in 2028, EPR will be helping with batteries and recycling and collection. How do we kind of hold on until these markets are ready? Because EPR is very much just like evolution. We're starting with residential. We'll be going to institutions, you know, other entities over the next few years.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I kind of asked Erica because I, you know, that's a huge question. the EcoCycle programming is a huge part of our budget. And so without knowing, like, are we going to be getting reimbursed for that? Are we not going to be getting reimbursed for that? Should we continue to prioritize EcoCycle programming? So my takeaway from my conversation with Erica is that if we are going to prioritize it, then we would need to continue to fund it through 2020, at least 2027's budget. But it also sounded like, and stop me if I'm wrong, that we have to submit our budget next month, July. And that is just, we are just going to mimic the budget that we've already have for 2026.

Yeah, so what has been asked is that I submit for you all a budget request for 2027. Bye. the end of this week. And it's requested that there's a 5% reduction. The town is doing that across the board. That's the request right now based on tax revenue projections. And so my plan, and again, welcome to feedback, is to basically take what you all submitted for 2026 and take 5% off. And then you all can have a discussion at your next meeting or two to decide exactly kind of how you want to allocate those funds. And then it goes to council ultimately to decide, you know, is this an appropriate funding amount for sustainability advisory board? So it still could change, but that's kind of what's been asked at this point from our town management office.

Yeah.

Okay. I know that puts the two of you in a little bit of a precarious situation, having to think about spending money on your first meeting. But I think within the next couple of meetings, we probably need to come together as a board to definitively say how we want those buckets to look for 2027.

Are you planning to slow set sponsorships?

That's a great question, and I don't have an answer. Do you, Will? It gets complicated. I know talking about the women in leadership event, we've talked about sponsorships and it has to be, there's a lot of criteria as far as what's appropriate and what's not. So I don't know, and that's in this in regards to like an item, right? Like giveaway items or event materials, not necessarily the monetary piece.

So like even like having an event that's co-opted by another, by some local entity. I'm thinking like United Power, Excel, Partners Energy, co-opt that and have, they're talking about energy sustainability and then we can bring in other pieces of it as well. I'm wondering if that fits or if that's not kosher.

That's an interesting conversation because partners in energy we work with all the time and they'll pay for mailers for certain programming and things like that. There's no issue with that. I think if there was a monetary exchange to an advisory board or to a town department or something, that's where it gets really tricky.

Planning an event with another entity like that wouldn't be as big of an issue?

That's an interesting question because for events, we have vendors, right? And they may come in and bring resources and give away items and materials and think that's not an issue. Like if you, let's say United Power wants to sponsor a food truck or something, I don't know how that would land. We'd have to ask our legal team just to make sure.

But it raises a good opportunity for out-of-the-box thinking that way.

Can I give you that action item to learn more? Sure. Yeah.

I know you guys are always looking for ways to do community engagement, things of that nature.

They're also great with sending us light bulb kits.

Yeah.

Yes. Oh, that's Excel.

That's Excel. Oh, yeah. That's Excel. And I always thought that it also came down to, is there any gain by that partnership with anyone, any member of the advisory board? Like a conflict of interest? Yeah, a conflict of interest. Like if I were to gain, like, I can't even think of an example because my brain is right. But if for some reason there was some sort of incentivized program and I stood to gain from having that relationship or that partnership for that event, then that would be, there would be a conflict of interest that we would not want to go there.

Yeah, we would want to go to the clerk's office to get a formal response if there was a situation like that. I think the general best practice is to just abstain, right? So if there is a vote on something and you have a conflict of interest, you know, where someone could see this recording and say, oh, that's not okay. You know, Karen's part of that business or Will works for that company, for example. It's just safe practice. Just like step out of the room. Just refrain from any input on that. It does get tricky. Yeah. I mean, we've seen that on this board. Yeah. Yeah. we had a person actually resign because of a conflict of interest. They had started a new business. And so we just want to be careful with that. But the details, I would go to the clerk's office. Yeah.

Okay. So I guess I need a motion to approve the budget of Would we say 10,250? 10,450 is 5% less. OK. For the 2027 Sustainability Advisory Board budget. Megan motions to approve. Seconds? Second. I can see seconds. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Erica.

Yeah.

Yeah. Really crept up on me because I feel like we've only met twice since the beginning of the year.

It was hard not having a meeting.

Yeah. Okay. So this kind of dovetails nicely into talking about what do we want the priorities for Sustainability Advisory Board to be in 2027? And we used to have this Trello board, and we can no longer access it. So I designed a OneNote notebook that has some of the current initiatives and some of the initiatives that we talked about in previous meetings. this is just an idea brainstorming type board um i sent you guys well i i shared it with all of you but i also sent you guys the link for it um in case it's probably buried in your inbox because i did it a long time ago that i shared it so anyway there is a link there um But some of the things that we talked about were school programming. I mentioned that Anne was kind of passionate about that. The pollinator district. which is really sort of a multi-year thing. It's gonna take five years around to get to the point where Erie would possibly be considered for an actual pollinator district certification. So that's all the things that have been going on and all the things that McKenzie's been doing is leading up to that certification. Community fruit rescue was another one of those initiatives. And then there were a few initiatives that Art had brought to the table, which were engines off signage at schools. And also he just mentioned to us recently the idea of running a poster contest. So I think as we move forward as a new board, I think we need to determine where we want to focus our energy, time, and funds if it comes down to something that needs a monetary expenditure to go towards. And we've talked about a lot of ideas, but I think what we settled on is the idea that for every initiative that SAB has, there needs to be a point person for it. So that, you know, we can, if you say we're going to prioritize something, we have someone who can help move that forward. So with that in mind, I would love for you guys to look at that, see what's already there. And again, these are not set in stone initiatives. This is brainstorming. And And add to it, if you if there are things that you feel that we should be prioritizing when and that that doesn't, it can be not necessarily a large initiative and maybe in your mind, you'd like to see more materials included about certain things when we table events. Whether it be a farmer's market, Arbor and Earth Day, cleanup days, whatever. So I think that, you know, we're almost halfway through the year already. And it would be good to take, start having more conversations about what we want, how we want to shape the board and, for the remainder of the year and for into 2027. So I'd love to hear from you guys on that.

Is there an overarching mission statement? Did I just not read that? I must have missed it.

There is. So are you talking about like our like SABS mission statement?

Right. So I'm trying to get a scope here. Yeah. Where we're trying to like focus our energy.

So we have a very vague mission statement. I think it's vague. That is right on the Sustainability Advisory Board's web page. If I could get connected, I could show you. But I asked Megan. I've been having trouble with the Internet lately. Didn't like her computer today. The whole time. But I think in a nutshell, we exist to support the sustainability initiatives of the town of Erie to advise them on feedback from the public, from constituents on what programming is being offered, and then to educate the public on what it is that Erie's sustainability plan and mission is. So we form a supportive role in helping to ensure that the community is educated on And that we have programs that are beneficial for the community by working in conjunction with sustainability staff on their defined sustainability plan. Mackenzie, you want to add to that?

It's partially vague because when the board was created, there was no sustainability division. So there has been some interesting what do now because they're already doing a great job.

So I think there's a lot of leeway in that. When you think about sustainability and sustainability programs, I mean, that can be anything from waste diversion to water usage to the pollinator efforts that I think that the nice thing about the advisory board is the members kind of drive the programs that we want to put the time, energy and budget into either bringing to Erie or helping to promote and support. if that's something that's already being tackled from a town perspective. So for instance, like the community fruit rescue, and that was definitely a passion project of mine and of Jason, who's the chair. of the Tree Advisory Board. I had known about this organization through a coworker and a client. And it was just, I thought it was just so cool. And we just happened to be sitting around at an Arburn, it was an Arburn Earth Day planning session meeting. And we got to talking about like, how great would that be if they came out into Erie? Because they've only historically ever been Boulder and Boulder County. And one thing led to another and they were like, we'd love to come to Erie. And so it just, it's sort of spiraled. So it was a passion project meets something that is in the sustainability world meets having a point person who wanted to drive it. So, you know, I think that we have a lot of leeway in the things that we do and because there's so much that it falls under that sustainability umbrella that can still work into, you know, I mean, maybe it's something transportation related, maybe it's something, you know, there's so many different things it could be. I think that it's driven by the members who want to see those things, you know, Be fleshed out. And, and then obviously, you know, the support of the full board to say, yeah, that sounds like it fits. It sounds like you're passionate about that and it would be a great thing for the community. And how do we make that happen? Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah.

So that's why I would love, you know, to know what you guys are both passionate about, because I think I think the thing that differentiates this board is that, like, we are historically a board of doers. Like, yeah, we could sit back and we could just say, OK, we're going to have eco cycle programming and that's what our budget is going to be. And we're going to show up at farmers markets and Arbor and Earth Day and, you know, hand out flyers. And and maybe that's. maybe that's it but as a board we can make it be so much more um just depending on the interests of the board members to to champion those things that are in the sustainability world so

OK, perfect. So do we want to talk about those now or do we put them on the OneNote? So I think in the interest of time.

Yeah, that's why I was like, I'm not too sure. I was like, let's put it. So look, go ahead and take a look at what's out there. Feel free to add it. You should have edit access to it. OneNote is pretty. I mean, I never used it before I did this. And it was pretty easy for me to figure out how to throw stuff up on a page. So, yeah, it doesn't have to look pretty. And if there's something that if we get to a point where there's something that you would like to talk specifically to, I put it on the agenda. And that way we can devote time to talking about that at a future meeting. Okay, perfect. That would be great. And do that.

Keep myself thrilled. And do we have another area like energies, like advisory board or anything like that? If I start talking about like energy program or anything like that?

We don't. I would be interested in that.

I am super interested in like renewable energies and how to get those in and like electric trash trucks.

You're on the right board. That would be us. The thing that I wrote down is energy conservation and adult education around energy conservation.

I know that most people would save money right now if they changed one thing with their energy bill.

Yes. And another thing that we talked about, we've talked about previously, is the idea that, you know, we might be poised to really help facilitate workshops either held at the community center or the library is great because it's basically you just check out the room on your library card and there's no cost. So if you can, you know, if you know of groups that want to do workshops, we've partnered with Friends of Coal Creek. to get them to come in and do a Firewise landscaping workshop. I know that the sustainability division did something with solar at the library last year, or was it solar? We did a heat pump. Heat pump, okay. And so again, those are great. Those are perfect opportunities for people for us to partner with other groups or hold it ourselves or however we want to do that. So if, like you said, you're interested in putting together something for adult education on a particular topic, And I think that, you know, that that is a perfect dovetail into our board and being able to do something like that. And I think that would be really great because I feel like a large part of our role is public engagement.

Yeah.

Perfect. Yeah. And I think energy, there's a lot of wasted energy. And I think we can really do a lot around that space just for people's knowledge.

Yeah.

That it doesn't most of the time cost them anything or actually save some money.

What does it cost somebody here? Saves them. What'd you say? What specifically you're talking about?

Just in general of like wasted energy or the way that people utilize their energy in their homes or things like that. Even just like programs that United has, or I don't know, it sells programs very well. Cause I'm on the wild side, but there's ways that you can save money by just doing peak on and off hours, which is huge. How, what that means really is, for people to understand what peak hours are and why why is it important that we spread out our energy load is huge to understand too as the the grid is it's a i know i was like i can't we can't get started because i got excited when you started saying things so we're going to table and i could be their own special meeting

So, yeah, so I'm psyched because it sounds like you both have definite areas that you're passionate about. And, you know, would love to hear how we can move towards being able to support things like that with the board. Because it really comes down to what the members of the board are passionate about. Because there's a lot that it could be. Yeah.

We are doing a lot in that space. So it's just important to just, you know, do like a check-in on the energy efficiency audits that we advertise, some of the partners in energy stuff we're doing, some of the big solar projects that are underway, you know, things like that. And then if like diving into a specific topic, that would be awesome. Like Mackenzie's done a lot of pollinator, any hotel workshops, but also just general pollinator workshops. And it's really cool. I think the important part is just Mackenzie's there on behalf of herself as an individual, not on behalf of the board. If you want to come on behalf of the board, that's a little bit different situation where you would need to get like full board approval and make sure that we really vet kind of what you're sharing, how you're sharing it. how it's tying into the other things that the town's working on and focusing on. Okay. Yeah.

Good to know.

Yeah. Yeah.

The first step is to get those ideas out and on. Yeah. So perfect. That's a great first step.

Yeah. Because the area in particular gets really complicated, you know, because, you know, it's a flow chart of, Hey, great to meet you. Where do you live? Right. Oh, are you in Boulder County? In Weld County? Are you United? Are you Excel? There's also multiple water providers too. We also have Black Hills Energy. We also have a cell as a gas provider. So it gets complicated and we try really hard not to just promote one program for one group of people in town. We try to really promote things that are available to everyone. And that's kind of how our rebates step in is really to kind of fill the gaps because specifically like Boulder County has a ton of rebates available. We don't necessarily have that on our Weld County side. And so we try to fill in the void to make sure there's more of an equity across the entire town for all residents. So it gets tricky and we get a lot of feedback from our communications team of like, Nope. We're going to advertise that here.

Like you said, like heat pumps and then just explain the technology overall instead of like, this is what you can save or anything like that. That would be more, that's where we'd want to maybe have them co-opt into the, like have partners in energy come in and be a partner on that type of deal.

And invite like United and Excel or invite Weld and Blur. Yeah. Try to make it, as general high level for everyone. And then you can kind of go into the specifics and try to have equal representation for both. Yeah, exactly.

Or sometimes you can bring in advocacy groups who talk about these generally things.

Yeah. So partnering with like Solar United Neighbors or partnering with the Colorado Renewable Energy Society, even those types of things, bringing in other people is really helpful too. Yeah. Yeah.

There's so much opportunity. There is indeed. Okay, so moving on from budget and priorities, we do have some public engagement opportunities coming up, and I kind of looked ahead. From now until the end of the year, we have some farmers markets where we don't have anyone from SAB helping to staff those with the sustainability division. There is an opportunity for us to table with sustainability at the June 28th. Are you guys familiar with CoCreate Erie? They're the maker space over at Schofield. open space. They're leasing the Quonset hut that was refurbished to have a maker space in Erie. This is their second, they have a garden tour. It's their fundraiser, but sustainability tabled it last year. And I think felt that it was a good opportunity to get in front of people.

That's where I got most of the volunteers for the pollinator surveys. Did you really?

So that is coming up on June 28th. I will not be able to make it. I'm out of town. So if anyone would like to, are you there or is Emma?

It's on my calendar.

Okay. So if anyone is available and would like to do that, that is from, and I did not write down the, I don't know that I had, I know the time. Do you know what time it is?

It's the 28th from 10. I have on my calendar 10 to 3. Okay. I can't imagine.

I don't think it's that long. I feel like the way they run it is that everybody meets at Schofield Farm to get their maps and information about the tour. And then they kind of go out and do the tour.

Yeah, last year it was at the community center. I don't know what the plan is here. So I think the pulled up is...

I mean, you wouldn't be there that whole time.

VIP admission is 8 to 12. General admission is 9 to 12. So it's actually earlier. Right? Yeah, 2026.

Okay, well, if there's anyone who wants to do that, that morning. That's one of the things that would be a good opportunity for us to help table at what time was it to a to new home.

They say the garden. So that one. So I would imagine we could wrap up at 12 I will also be out of town.

I'd love to show there's more.

Oh, good. I was like, that sounds so cool. I think I can do that one. Yeah, I'm kind of bummed because I was out of town last last year when they had it. And so I didn't.

Yeah.

So 12th, 20, 20, 20. OK, so there's also an opportunity to table at the farmer's market on August 27th. Then there's the fall cleanup event on September 12th. And are you guys going to do Erie Fest again on August 1st? That's Being Better Neighbors. It's their event. We were there last year. I don't know if we've confirmed. Okay. So possibly August 1st, the Erie Fest, which is put on by Being Better Neighbors. that may be an opportunity to table there as well.

I'll do the 28th event if you want us to, if you could email me some more information on that, I'd be grateful.

Great, August. Okay, so in that, in looking ahead, do you think there are any other, we have the other farmers markets covered between me, Mackenzie and Kathleen. There's only one in July. There's two in June. There's two in August. But one of them Kathleen was filling. So it was just for August. It's just the one on the 27th. I can do that one. You need just one person or multiple people?

At least one.

Because we're not tabling solely. Like we're with the sustainability division. So chances are, you know, there'll be one at least. Well, there'll be at least one person from sustainability. So. Okay.

um so yeah so like Mackenzie and I will be at the farmer's market both of us tomorrow with with Caleb but the more the merrier so yeah I was gonna say I can help tomorrow too um if needed um and I think I can do the the 27th and I can do the first if that is if we do it so so you could do um you could do the 27th I should be able to do the 27th I am you know my calendar correctly

What was the other event? The fall cleanup is slated for September 12th. And I can probably do that. I mean, that's going, we don't have to decide that now, but I just wanted to put that out there. Those would be our remaining public engagement that I know about for now. And I gave you both access to a calendar called I think it's just called Sav Calendar. And I front loaded those engagements and anything. Basically, I front loaded the meetings, which are always the first Wednesday of each month. And then what events that i know of so that you could you could see that and have that information okay so and is the cleanup in the morning yes it's like early it's eight to one two one one yeah shorten it okay which just sounds like it's shortened with very little concern so that was great

I'm worried about that.

Yeah. Well, it seems like everyone lines up real early anyway. Oh, yeah.

It's rush and then there's a lull and it trickles. I definitely need to make it to this one because I got paged. I was on call during the spring one. And so I was like, oh, there's a fire. I'll be back in an hour. And then it was like, 5 p.m. I was like, well, I just finished putting out the fire. Sorry. It's okay. Not a literal fire.

Oh. I just said that because I thought you meant a literal fire.

No, no, no.

Figurative fire. That did pop into my mind. I'm like, I don't think she's, I have a friend who's a firefighter. So I was like, no, I don't think Mackenzie is too. Nope. I was going to ask you at the end. Tell me more. Okay, great. And I'll revisit the whole fall cleanup thing when it gets closer. July meeting attendees and topics is our next item. And I will not be present at the July meeting. Do any of you know if you have an obligation where you can't be here in July? I will not be here. Okay. Art will not be here either. But I think I'll be here. You will be here. We've been asked if we would like to have a gal named Rachel Balcom. She is with the Steed School in Commerce City. And the Steed School is partnering on a project with Ambridge Energy, which is a Colorado company. they are pursuing a resiliency hub as part of their, the state school is kind of a STEM school. She reached out originally to Councilor Baer and then eventually to Councilor Passeramelli and asked for the opportunity to come in and present on what they're doing Erie has extensively looked at resiliency hubs. So we've also invited Chad Alexander to that meeting. He is the facilities manager for the town of Erie. So he has said he's also going to come to that meeting to kind of talk about what Erie's already looked at, challenges and whatnot. So she is going to come in in July and Bamde will be missing it. but I'll watch the meeting recording to, to see. And if you would like to watch the meeting recording, if you can't be at the meeting, Rachel Balcom, B-A-L-C-K-O-M or yeah, I think so. Um, I'm going to send a follow-up email to you all with some links to the Steed School, um, to also to the particular, um, DC micro grid that they're developing and to aim aim bridge energy so that you have a little bit of, and she needs to provide her actual presentation to me prior to meeting. So it can go into the agenda packet. So it'll be a part, the full presentation will be a part of your agenda packet, but you won't see that until right before the meeting. So that's happening in July. Um, And is there anything else, if there's anything else, I'm not going to say is there, if there's anything else between now and when about a week before the July meeting is when I need to give the agenda to the town clerk, always feel free to reach out to me if there's something in particular you would like to see go on the agenda. Otherwise, I usually just work with Erica on either things that we know or have to be put on the agenda or are coming down the pipeline. So that's the timeline for that. Any other advisory board member updates, Mackenzie?

Yes, I've got a slew of them. So the planting for pollinators presentation I did at the library and the bee hotel workshop, both of them went really well. We now no longer have any more bee hotels. We gave out all the remaining 15 of them. So that could be maybe something we use the pollinator survey budget for us to get more of those for next spring.

Are you going to have any fall workshops on harvesting?

Yes, but that doesn't require anything else. It's just okay. We're going to harvest the bees and put them in the fridge. Okay.

Could you do a bee hotel workshop in the fall now?

I could, but you don't, usually the fall you're taking down the bee hotels and putting it away. So I don't know. It might be weird to be like, here's your hotel. Don't, don't put it out until the spring.

Hmm.

timing wise, it might be better to be like, now's the time to put it out, get jazzed. Um, but I mean, I'm, I'm doing like a soft pitch for that in the fall. Yeah. Come help me harvest my bees. Right. These are the bees. We clean them up. We put them in the fridge, come back in the spring and we'll do more hotels. Um, Yeah, I am planning on also making the harvesting of the bees video on YouTube for the people that can't make the workshop. They are planning on emailing the people that came to the workshops and be like, hey, there's a follow up if you want to join. I know not everyone will be able to join, so I want to have more material so that they're not like, what do I do with these guys? The Planting for Pollinators presentation, I included a lot of plugs for Friends of Coal Creek, the Eerie Buzzing Gardens, the Turf Replacement Rebate, and the Resource Central Garden in a Box.

When was that presentation? Because we got a couple of map submissions. And I hadn't seen any map submissions for a long time. I had a big QR that was like, put it on there.

Elisa in particular said that she went and it was great. So, and then she submitted her card.

Yeah. I think that was the 9th of May. um so yeah it felt a little bit of like plants also you should do all these things right um that's great yeah i wanted to have time to send um or like at least like fact check some of the things that i was saying um with claudia from the tree board since she's a master gardener but i just i didn't have time to organize that beforehand um And this weekend I'll be doing the pollinator surveys. We do have some leftover materials to make seed bombs. We have, I used up all the seed mix, but we have clay and seedlings mix. Should I mix my own collected seeds into seed bombs for fall giveaways or should I package those into seed packets? I do think I am opinionated that fall should be the seed bombs because that's when it's best to chuck them out because they will sit out and overwinter. And that's actually how they do well. They need that cold stratification in order to germinate. But giving them out at Earth Day, Arbor Day felt a little bit late because I kept handing them out and being like, yeah, throw this out before the last spring snow. Which we probably already passed.

Yeah, I think I differ to you. Seed bombs are more effort and time. They are, but they're cute.

And you can chuck them. And I got a slingshot. You just put seeds in a ball of clay?

With a little bit of seedling starter mix to just give them a little boost so it's not all a rock. Nice. Okay. Cute and really fun. And with a slingshot, you can get some distance on them.

The important stuff.

Yeah. Can cross the street behind my house into the empty field beyond. Okay. Well, if I were to do that, not that I've done that.

I know.

No, of course not.

I didn't hear anything.

All right, cool. Other updates? That's it. All right. Well, I don't know that we have any prior action items to talk about. I did not see any from the last couple of minutes. So our next regular meeting will be on Wednesday, July 1st at 630 p.m. And our meeting is officially adjourned. Thank you.