Tree Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Perfect. We just, we can't start committing it to rehab at least.

Oh yeah. So it's a room. Yeah.

Okay. And we'll do a couple of things before we start the presentation. Okay. You're not up first.

I didn't meet him. I'm coming over to say hi to myself. Rachel.

Rachel.

Oh, the Chad.

Yes.

Oh, the Chad.

I have that link in you.

It's good to meet you. I'm really excited that you came. I didn't realize that you were going to.

You're lucky to have Chad. Very busy man.

Long name, for sure.

Bye for dull moments. So Chad, you're the facility manager for the town of Erie?

Is that what that is? Okay.

How long have you been in that role? Three and a half years.

Okay. I have not been to Erie. It's the first time I've been there. It's beautiful. It really is. I know. I'm down by Chatfield Reservoir. Sorry for the tardy. Okay. All right.

I think we can get started.

Yes. Okay.

Oh, we are. All right. We are on mute. So we got to hear all that. Okay. Okay. So we have our quorum. And we are getting started. So I am calling us to order. Today is July 1st, 2026. I'm calling Sustainability Advisory Board meeting to order. Okay, so first thing we're going to do, we have roll call and verification. So we have Art, Anne, Mackenzie, and Will. Nice to meet you, Will and Anne. I will.

I do.

Okay. Okay, and then approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve?

I move to approve.

Approved. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Okay. And the previous meeting minutes were included in the agenda from last month. Can we get a motion to approve those?

I motion to approve.

Okay. Okay. All right, so moving on to the public comment. Oh, yes, somebody second the approval of the prior meeting minutes. Thank you, Will. Okay, moving on to public comment. Public comment is an opportunity for the public to address the advisory board on items of public interest within the board's jurisdiction, regardless of whether or not the topic is listed on the meeting agenda. If you would like to speak and have not said it in advance, please sign up now. Each speaker is provided a reasonable time to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting. Time limits are determined on the basis of the number of speakers, but is generally held to three minutes. As a reminder, public comment is not meant to be a discourse and board members do not engage in open dialogue or answer questions at this time. I'd like to open the public comment period or portion of the meeting and invite those who signed up to speak. Okay. I don't think we have any public comment. Right. Moving on to general business. So we will have today a presentation, thank you so much for coming, from the Stead School and Ambridge Energy presentation on resilience hubs. Do you guys wanna introduce yourselves and your presentation? I'd love it. Awesome, thank you.

I've been a teacher for 25 years, so standing up here is a lot easier for me than sitting. I hope that's okay. So I'm Rachel and Rachel Balcom. I'm the director of partnerships at the Stead School. I'm also an Erie resident. So I live in the air park. I've been here for about nine years. And I recently, partly from the now friends that I brought with me, I've learned a lot about solar and micro grids and resilience hubs that I did not use to know. And so in the midst of this work that I was doing for our students and on work-based learning and getting a microgrid at school, I met Ambridge and learned a lot more about this entire arena. And living, of course, here in Erie, I thought we need to get a resilience hub, right? And I should admit that living in Erie and working in Commerce City, I just hadn't, I mean, if I'm really honest, I hadn't been paying enough attention over the last number of years. And so I didn't have a sense of of all of the remarkable work that you all have done already. I wasn't surprised by it, but I just didn't have it in my head. And also, I've been friends with Emily Baer. I live right down the road from her, and we've done some work together before, some collaboration on things. And so I started digging into what you all are already doing, and I thought I would just love to have anything to do with a resilience hub you know, eventually being developed in Erie. And I realized that there are really different definitions of that. And I had a really awesome conversation with Erica about that. And she was like, do you mean like a little Rizley and Sombra? Do you mean like a holistic? And I was like, oh, the latter. I mean, a real one, you know, one that's actually having an effect. Okay, so... That's me in the middle. And then this is Ben and David, and you all have met them. Speaking about their participation with us, so part of the reason that I got... I don't know if that... Has any of you worked in public education? Okay. So it can be really, really challenging to get... partners, community members, anyone to be like, oh, I'm gonna come on the scene and do exactly what you need, part of it for free, right? It's fairly unusual in the public school space to have that happen. And so we started working with Ambers and when somebody above me hired them to build our micro grid, we entered the room and I said, by the way, you're gonna educate our students. And they were like, OK, we're going to educate your students. And they just completely took it on. And I've been impressed by them. And to be clear, they are not selling you anything right now. The first presentation that I created for various reasons, I think, made it look like that's what was happening. And part of that was that I asked to borrow their template. And that was totally my error. But they are here as a resource and just being willing to sort of talk about microgrids, et cetera. So that's why we're here. And I'm just going to skip to the end real quick and then come back. My shameless advocacy is what I said. I would absolutely love for there to be a resilience hub here to be involved in the creation of it, figuring out what that actually means here. Does that mean five of them? Does it mean one of them? I absolutely now understand. that there's this entire process that we are developing, that you all have developed, that Chad has developed at the community center. And we're not slowing things down right now. So I absolutely get that. So I'm going to go back up. So just talking about what we've done at Stead and We would love for you all and anybody else to come on. I had this great conversation with Heidi Ringer. So she is the head of all of work-based learning for Save Rain. And so I talked to her for a while today just about this idea that any new industries we as educators, as municipalities implement why wouldn't we work with students to do that? Like, why wouldn't we train them in those technologies moving forward? And so that's what we ended up doing. We knew that we were getting this animal sciences center. As a director of partnerships, part of what I do is work-based learning, internships, et cetera. And so, you know, Ambridge came in and was willing to design these modules to educate our students. So I'm just going to read this. So it's a Stead-Ambridge partnership. It powers the campus microgrids. This one exists already. This one we are just about to get $100,000 to build. and I'll talk about that funding so you know we as a public school we don't have any more money certainly than you know anybody else does for this stuff so there are that that question of funding is always an important question um so the project involves renewable energy for the animal sciences center um the outdoor classroom future agrivoltaics and an entire building for a resilience hub so we're talking about like a four to five year project For this project, and this is going to be important when we get to funding, we are working with Community College of Aurora, Build Strong, us, Ambridge, the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center, Mile High Youth Corps. So there are all of these different organizations that are coming together to make this happen. And it is in service to all of these priorities, resilience in general, the entire community of reunion. Where do they go when the power goes out? And like you all have spoken about with the Erie Community Center, the way that we think about Stead, it's 10 acres, the way that we think about it is, oh, this is, it's a place for the community. And so it's about what is the community facing public programming that we are creating already And then once we have a micro grid, I mean, we already have one, but once we have that capacity, then folks are going to want to come to STED. They're already going to know us at that time. OK, so students are learning alongside engineers and professionals. There's hands on training in systems and circuits, et cetera. There's real-time energy monitoring and analysis. So we're just getting this going. There's a screen in here that's going to give all sorts of data, which you will tell me right now, what is the data that we look at? Because it's not up yet.

Yeah, it's basically going to tell you the efficiency of the system, your battery storage capacity, what's the charging rates, and so a lot of information there in terms of, and I know you want to use it as an education platform too, so students will be able to see that and interact with that data. So yeah, that's pretty extensive what you can do with that data. Obviously, it's pretty wide open and no end in sight for data. I mean, you can add as much as you want. So yeah.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for that detail. So it's a living lab and training for careers and innovation. And then, as I mentioned, we're advancing status resilience. OK, so specifically, this is the infographic that's in the Animal Sciences Center. It's actually in production right now, but it will be there. So what has happened is that so. Who's that guy? So he did the he and his colleagues did these learning modules for our students. So when we opened the Animal Sciences Center, it was sort of a soft opening. It was students who were doing the tours and they were able to explain all of this and explain what happens with. the grid coming in when, that's the wrong word, but when there isn't enough power, the grid is back up. And then there's a generator and obviously the microgrid itself, which is DC. Actually, it's both, isn't it? This one.

It's DC, but it's powering AC loads in that building, right?

Cool. So I think Part of what I love about it, and of course, this is my lens as an educator, is that our students have learned every single part of how to do this thing. When I spoke with Heidi today, and I just want to underscore this, the goal is resilience. The goal is all sorts of access, including food access and a resilience hub, and connection with community. And if we can get our students to do it, why wouldn't we? For them to learn just solar technology right now, great. And what is going to happen in the future? I mean, you look at Department of Energy website right now, microgrids are everywhere. And for the most part, Heidi didn't know what they were, right? And I didn't know what they were a month and a half ago. And so including that and it being a priority at both the state and national level to me just makes a lot of sense for that to be what our students are doing. are learning. Okay, so funding. The first foundation all points north is where we're about to get, I'm pretty sure. I mean, until we get it. I'm pretty sure we're about to get 100 grand for the solar flower. And that's a live link. So for this kind of funding, I highly recommend them. They're out East and it's solar in particular, but they also just learned about microgrids through us. And so, and they're very, very compelled by it. And, you know, it makes a whole lot of sense. So other sources that we've been looking at, there's a lot of, OK, actually, there is zero funding at the state level right now, but there is potentially a lot of funding at the state level for micro grants through this legislation. So this legislation was set to expire in September. They just extended it. And and. we're waiting for money from the federal government in order to fund that at the state level. So hopefully that will happen. I mean, the good news is that microgrids and resilience hubs are a goal at the federal level still. And so our hope is that that will happen. And they have given out, I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars for resilience hubs already at the state level. So hopefully that will happen. And then I mentioned before having, so when we've applied for funding, all those organizations that I mentioned, they all gave us letters for that funding. So certainly if... the town of Erie, at St. Vrain School District, and Iconergy or whoever, right, or AIMBridge or, you know, whoever the organizations are, get together to do this together, it's much more likely to get funding. Yeah. I feel like there's probably something else I was going to say, but I'll come back to it.

Can I ask just a quick question? So what's the piece with the Agrivoltaic Project and the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center? Yeah, yes. For the room, that's Jeff Sillergarden. That is their founder. He also started the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center. They're doing cool stuff.

Yeah, thank you for that question. The original idea was that we were doing a regional solar training program at STED. And then what happened is that we learned about microgrids and we added microgrids to that. And there is a significant opportunity also with agrivoltaics to use microgrids.

And in fact, oh, thank you. Do you want to tell it? Sure. So agrivoltaics are the pairing of solar panels with agricultural land use. So it could be animal pairing or it could be, you know, food. Jack's Solar Garden is out in Longmont and they're on a high transmission line corridor with actually a handful of other farms nearby. And Byron, Jack's grandson, realized that to actually make the dollars and cents they needed to for the farm, they would have to just amplify their production. I think they were doing alfalfa at the time. And so he's got a really interesting background. Like he was... in africa for a long time kind of working in um diplomacy and in different spaces and so when he came back he's like all right let's we need to work on this um and i want to say he started in maybe 2018 or so maybe 2019 um but it's a it's a solar farm that also has agriculture and they have some animals that come through at times as well but they've also developed the colorado agrivoltaic learning center. And then they've also done some really incredible research with a lot of universities. Um, it's an amazing place. Like if you are interested in touring it, anybody, have you all seen it?

It's incredibly really cool.

Um, they're actually the only agrivoltaic CSA. At least they have been, there might be some more now. Um, to be in production. And then they do like an art residency in the summer and bring artists on site. They don't have a fence, a traditional fence around the solar garden, which is tough from a permitting perspective because of safety, it's high voltage. And so what they've done instead is like elderberry trees and like different bushes and things like that. So the birds are incredible. They have different heights of solar panels as well to do that research to find like what is the kale like and what is the squash plant like? So they've been able to do some really cool research on like what plants actually benefit from solar shade. Like the greens love it. But then some of the other ones, not so much. Right. Especially if there's like dew coming off as they rotate throughout the day. It's really awesome. It's really cool. That was much more of a response to your question. in my head that's what it was but i was like i'm going to oversimplify it and be wrong yeah okay it's a cool space great and from from byron's perspective in the colorado agrivoltaic learning center um i believe and i don't speak for him but my understanding is that he created that non-profit to really support policy to support agrivoltaics because it's not actually permitted everywhere so he's done a lot of work of talking with counties around the state and beyond to say, okay, how do we help you do this? In Weld County, I toured it with one of the county commissioners for Weld County, and they were really excited about that from a land use perspective and a resilience strategy because it actually, if we have extreme weather events, we have extreme heat, it reduces the need for irrigation, it protects from hail, it protects from extreme plumbing events. There's so many co-benefits to it.

Yeah, very cool.

Really cool, yeah.

So Allison Jackson, who is sort of the education guru at the Agricultural Learning Center, she actually attended some of Ambridge's education modules. And so they've continued being in the room about a year ago. And we were just talking about, you know, getting a solar training going. They said, oh, we're looking for a school to take over our technology. Right. And so they have. solar panels, six of them that are just waiting for us to be ready. And so that essentially is phase two. So after we get the flower, then phase two is we have a one acre farm and the entire back of it right now, I mean, there isn't any power, any work. close by or close enough. And then also, actually, it isn't planted yet. And so that is that part of the project is great. How do we then do that? And in fact, microgrids and agrovoltaics are a really great overlap as well.

Can I sideline you one more time? Sorry. Can you explain the Stead School? I mean, sure. That was a really significant oversight on my part. Thank you for pointing that out.

Science, technology, environment, agriculture, design. That's what it stands for. It's in Commerce City. It is in the Reunion neighborhood of Commerce City. So it's very close to the airport. And we are a public charter school. We're on 10 acres. We more or less focus on food systems. And What that means is that we have a remarkably holistic educational model because there isn't anything that you can't learn if you're studying food systems, right? So, I mean, absolutely everything relevant is to society. So we have CTE pathways. It used to be like vocational education. um thankfully we've gotten rid of that idea and now they're stackable so our students get often associates degrees certificates um in food science animal science plant science um environmental science and and and then we also have an ap program and i mean it's it's it's a regular very very cool hands-on public grade high school just nine through twelve okay Very good. Thank you. And so part of what we're doing is we're making our campus live so that our students are learning in this kind of project so that they're actually building things and actually doing things. The students that we got in the room for those educational modules were students who do not volunteer for things. And there were 25 of them who, by the way, were volunteering after school to come and learn this thing and didn't have to. And they wanted to learn electrical and they wanted to learn solar. And once they understood what microgrids are, they wanted to learn that too. Yeah. So that's what we're trying to do. We have a production greenhouse. So we're growing, they're learning hydroponics. And then of course we have a real farm. So they're learning that too. And we don't use pesticides.

I was just, I've heard about this before. I'm pretty sure. And she linked with like random high and what they're doing out there. You're pretty sure to say it again with the random high, how they're doing their, their CT pathways and things, their random pathways. The old random high school.

I have no idea.

Because I went through the AC rep program and they talked about this pretty extensively about their school. So that's where I was acquiring.

Yeah, I'll have to look it up.

Yeah. Yeah, we would like to go to school there.

Yes. Yes.

I mean, there's so many people who feel that way. Yeah, that's very cool. And it's project based and it's relevant. We have 100 community partners. It's great. Thank you. OK, sure. Thank you for asking the presentation. Yes. Which is pretty much almost done. I think one of the opportunities, Chad, when I spoke with you was this idea that, you know, you all are not doing a microgrid right now. And the idea of thinking about that possibility in the future so that the renovation of the community center is sort of set up for that is a potential opportunity. And so I think my I mean, this my direct question is, How do, and of course you all know all this and many of us don't, how do we move toward a resilience hub holistically defined in Erie? Like, where are you all with that? And with David and Ben here, are there questions that they can answer about microgrids, about what needs to be set up in the renovation for future microgrids, anything in that arena or anything else that you all wanna ask?

I guess I don't know that I understand what a holistic resilience hub actually is and does.

Yeah.

So maybe we could talk a little bit about that. That sounds juicy. Really? Hypothetically, it makes sense. But like, what does it actually mean?

You know? Do you want to take that or do you want me to start and then you can build on it? Whatever you prefer. Okay. I feel like what's most relevant at this table is the way that you talk about it.

And so. It's like what you want to put at the community center. Like, what is that?

Well, so we have to be careful about the community center conversation.

Right.

Yeah. Chad is here to talk about that and what's been explored. If we want to go down that route. But say it's, it's some other place. Let's say another, what is it? Community centers often are locations for resilience hubs because they already have so many of the components already integrated into their facility and into their operations, right? Their programs.

And it's a place that people go.

It's a place that people go. So when Rachel's talking about holistic definition of resilience hub, I really like the Urban Sustainability Director Network definition of resilience hub. They've done a lot of research in this space, but it's meant to be a blue sky facility. And what that means is it's a place where people go all the time. Right. When everything is perfect in the world, they are going to this facility and they are having an incredible time. And then what you do is you start to integrate certain resilient strategies into that facility. And so one of them is a microgrid so that when the power goes out, it is a it's a haven. It's a place where people can go. They still have air purification. They still have cooling. They still have heating. They still have, I mean, ideally, cooking abilities.

They still have the ability to take a shower.

How big is it?

There's a lot of different sizes. So the state is really looking at resilience hubs in lots of different shapes and forms and sizes. So it may be a rural community outside of Fort Collins. Right. That faces has faced a number of flooding events or fires or extreme events. Right. And we know that those are just going to increase in time with impacts of climate change. So the state is coming in and saying we want to help develop these all over the place. They can look lots of different ways. But here's the key things they need. They need to have resilience from a power perspective. They need to have programming. They need to be a safe place for all community members to go. They need to be communicated. They need to have the infrastructure in place as far as somebody that's there to kind of run the show. Usually there's boards that they recommend. It's not necessarily staff driven, right? It's actually a resilience board that would come in and say, here's what we need today for this to be a fully functioning resilience hub. Here's what we want to grow over time. And here's how it's going to evolve. And here's how we get input from people. our users and things like this. Because it's also going to be things like the 2013 flood where Erie says, all right, where were we resilient? Where were we greatly impacted? How do we want to navigate this and change it over time to reduce the impact on our community, right? Or as things evolve, temperatures increase, you know, that landscape is going to be changing. And so that resilience hub needs to be able to adapt as the climate does and the community and the community needs it.

I mean, is it like a shelter where people can go and stay for an extended period of time during a crisis or?

So that would be more of the older interpretation of Resilience Hub, right? It's a place that like you can open the doors, people can come when they need it. It's like a Red Cross shelter. And what's happening now with the Resilience Hub definition is it's evolving to more of this blue sky facility. where people are using it all the time, right? It's already integrating with the community because they're seeing that that's what you need for the facility to be a safe place for everyone to come when they really need those resources, right? Because it needs to be something they're familiar with. Like, oh, the community center, I'm going to go there. It's a place I'm already there all the time playing pickleball or playing basketball or my kids programming or yoga. I know they have these resources. I'm welcome there. And the community center is already a cold and heat shelter, right? But right now it's just the welcome area. It's just that lobby area. It's not the rest of the facility. So we already have some of these pieces and most communities do. Churches that open up when there's an extreme event. Maybe it's a school that's already identified as a Red Cross shelter. But most often I see resilience shelters, let's say, have maybe one piece or two pieces. They don't have the whole kind of all the, the whole grocery cart full of what you really need to have this holistic resilience hub that the state's really looking for and looking to invest in.

And building on that pun, we also at Stead are now a food pantry and food hub. And so that's the other part. If people are already used to coming there for their local food, which I think is also certainly a possibility anywhere else, including community centers, is, okay, we have farms all over the place. And so having those relationships already set up with you know, surrounding communities so that they know to come there for heat and cool and internet and food and fun and all, all the, all the things.

Okay. Thank you.

I guess my question would be when we're talking like micro grids is how, How valid is that with the uptime that this area has, right? Because you don't have a lot of outages in this area, from my understanding.

So hilariously, I just have to... So we were just talking about this. I'm sorry to interrupt you. The last four nights from nine o'clock until midnight, our power has been out.

In Erie?

Yes.

Yeah, our power is pretty regularly.

Yeah. And given that, I'm assuming that they're doing it on purpose.

Is it Excel?

Yes. Okay.

Is this served by Excel, or is this United Power? It depends. I'm talking about the community center.

United Power. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Please continue your point.

No, Excel is notorious for going out. And then I guess the other part would be, how do we, with such... Because it's a pretty good investment to be able to manage that because you're looking at anything past a four-hour time window with the batteries or whatever. You're going to be on a generator, right? And it sounded like you had a generator at this dead school as well. Does it back up for that? And you're trying to stay out of black starts or you want to be able to just keep it all? Okay.

There's always enough power in the microgrid to restart the generator and everything else. So the battery backup would restart that. It acts as kind of your default emergency.

You want the battery to pick up before the generator so the generator can key up. So I guess the other part would be how do you... really make that a financial boon for the city when we don't have that much downtime, when we have a resilient grid per se in this area. So not to say that you couldn't do it, but I'm wondering, do you work with local utilities to try to monetize these systems for grid sources, grid services, things of that nature? That will be my next question because you're not down that often. And even if you are down for a couple hours at the most. So having all of these expensive equipment put in in a place that's already kind of designated as a resiliency hub that already is able to function that way, there's going to have to be some other monetary benefits there, right? That's just kind of where my head goes with it.

Yeah, are you guys doing any battery contracts, sale and reserve program with Excel at the school? Or is it like standalone, it's its own system?

Stand alone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The system at Stead and typically what Average Energy would do is a non-grid interactive off-grid platform. So agrivoltaics, urban housing situations where you've got houses that are remote, they do have issues with the grid and they don't have any grid access in many cases. So the direct interaction with the grid from an interconnectivity standpoint is not something we're traditionally doing. We use the grid almost more as a backup for this.

I think you said urban housing. I think you meant rural.

Yeah, that's right. Rural housing. Yeah, thank you. That's right. So rural housing situations. So the reality is, from a cost standpoint, that's a very, I mean, it's a valid concern. And so the biggest, the thing we hear people talk about is, well, the grid doesn't go down very often. But we do see that it's going to become a bigger and bigger issue. The areas where these data centers are popping up for AI, there's a huge fight over power in those areas. And we're not going to put a microgrid in a power data center, but we can back up a situation where the power that the municipality or the city has taken and allocated back to a data center for power from a grid standpoint. then we can kind of backfill some of that. So I think it's become, we believe it's become a bigger and bigger issue, but it is a tough, it's a great conversation to have. I mean, if there's no power outages currently, other than in certain areas where people live, but here in the town, the cost-benefit analysis has to be done. Absolutely.

Well, the reason I bring that up with the difference between Excel and United Power is United Power just isn't a market, whereas Excel is not. So there is another play there if you wanted for the microgrid to serve as resource adequacy resource or unit for them to purchase. And I know that that's something that they're into. I'd also advise looking into DOLA. They have micro grid for community resilience. I don't know if you've done that one. I know that they're opening up another round of funding here this month, next month.

So that they're where I got the information in the presentation. Yeah.

The United Power is actually doing that specifically for their great partner. They're doing that for fire stations, fire in an area. So yeah, I just think there's, if it was a play for the town to use a micro grid at this, or sorry, I keep thinking we're at the community center at the community center. I think there would be different market drivers that we would need to evaluate to make that profitable because I'm just the resiliency play. I don't know if that's necessarily going to pay the bill on that. I think there would need to be, more levers to pull. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Chad has done so much research related to this space. I don't know, Chad, what you're thinking about. Because in my head, I'm thinking about the floatable tape project. Because you looked at battery pairing with that. It was very expensive. And that's United Power Territory. But then also all the work done. I don't know how much you want to go into what's been explored at the community center, just as far as equipment. And moving more towards all electric.

And I think that that's the key. When I hear resilience hub, I think it's kind of connotations that you brought for is that it's much more than just the facilities aspect. It's the programming and things like that. And that's where I feel like that would be much more vetting. To your point, that may be a board, not town staff managing that. But so I think that's where we need to be kind of a little bit sensitive to that because that's not really been explored. I think what this started with was several years ago, at that time, the town manager had sent a case study of, I think it was the North Aslan case. center in Fort Collins that had recently incorporated some of the microgrid technology. And so we began at least looking at that really from the standpoint of how do we make the community center more resilient not in the resilience hub standpoint, but from a facilities standpoint. So that's really what we've kind of explored. And we've looked at not just the community center, but other facilities like town hall. This is the first major building to be electrified from a mechanical standpoint. And The police department will be the second large one that we've gone to an all electric facility. That facility, you know, police department does have current solar and we would look to hopefully expand that down the road, not as part of this project, because typically when it comes to a renewables or a energy efficiency or resilience type of facility measures, we are going to need to partner with grant funding in a lot of cases to make them palatable because some of the payback periods for some of these technologies are not going to be palatable. I think that first marker is that fiscal responsibility has to pencil out. And previously, we've had kind of a threshold of what that is in that payback period. And some of these measures don't pencil out without grant funding. And that has been, you know, you mentioned DOLA. That's good to hear that there is actually going to be a cycle that's funded. We've seen, you know, some of those cycles dwindle. And in fact, this year, I think they may have one cycle, maybe two cycles for DOLA. So it's definitely not as readily available, and the microgrid one is interesting to check out. But I think that we've started with the electrification through Eric and Dean's work with beneficial electrification, where it makes sense. Again, it has to make financial sense. to do that in these cases that, as I've mentioned, it has. Erie Community Center, we have studied some measures, kind of the same approach to look at electrification of the mechanical equipment where possible. That one's a little bit unique because we have a pool and we have, you know, a domestic water system that just has to provide hot water when you need it. And so we've looked at it from the electrification standpoint and then the renewable standpoint and also studying battery backup for that facility as more of a transition for a long term purpose. power outage because that facility has been used as a, I think a secondary shelter facility. And I don't think it might've been the Marshall fire that it was at least on tap to be a secondary shelter for Red Cross. So, you know, we have had power outages at the ECC. They have been, to your point, you know, 20 minutes, a half an hour, maybe up to an hour and a half. Not seeing those extended power outages, fortunately. And it is in United Territory. So when Excel was doing the kind of widespread power outage, you know, planned power outages, we didn't see that at that center. So I think it's that approach is what we've looked at just based on funding available and what we've been able to match with grants. It's been kind of a phased approach of beneficial electrification, renewables to then offset the cost, the increased cost, because electric is more than gas still. And then where it makes sense, and Eric had mentioned the Northwater Reclamation Facility floatable tax, They did not pencil out to do battery storage just based on the peak demands out there. So those are the kind of the measures we've studied, but from a facility specific standpoint, not a resiliency hub as we've been describing it, which carries with it the many programs and, you know, I even think of job boards and things that are, you know, I think the community center is a hub. It has been a hub for the community since I've moved here, but not in the sense of having all those resources. And I think that would be a much larger conversation that would have to involve, you know, the recreation leadership and staff, because they're very much in touch with the programs they currently have and What would be needed for true resilience? Sorry, that was long-winded, but there's a lot there.

That's a great summary. To your question about cost, one of the things, obviously the first thing you look at is what are your critical loads? Instead, you don't look at this as the building. You're not going to microgrid power the entire building. community center most likely unless you want to get into some very very significant dollars you're talking you know hundreds of kilowatts of power what we the way we approach these projects is just very very piecemeal kind of phased approach what are the critical loads you want to support the microgrid cost could be we could put a microgrid in place to support that set of loads for the resiliency area of the building and if you're doing a renovation And I don't know if the renovation section becomes the new resiliency area of the community center, but that's when you can start to define those loads and understand the actual power requirements for those loads. And that drives down and gets you to much more specific microgrid size versus trying to power an entire building. And we don't, it's not something that we would be interested in doing anyway. That's a, that's a massive container size battery system. macro grid it's it's a it's a big it's a building building for your batteries yeah yeah so that it would be one when we talk to our clients about micro grids and resiliency it's it's the first question is how big of a section of this building what are the load requirements what are you trying to power and then we start to size it from there and you can it's probably less expensive Then you think, I don't know what you're thinking, but if you look at an entire building and you start to get into those types of microgrids, I mean, those are very, very expensive projects, half a million dollar and up kind of projects.

And it would be essential that a project of that size would be tied to the grid, right? For that efficiency piece and then being able to sell at a higher cost.

There's another play there too, though, if you do say use... You change over to electric water heating for the pool, use heat pumps, things like that. I know that the utilities are now looking for those equipment that can respond to events, especially United Power because they're in the SPP market. So if you had like a large... What's that? Southwest Power Pool. I apologize. So the Southwest Power Pool is instead of everybody just... buying their own generation and selling it. Now you have basically from like Idaho to like Kansas or across Kansas to Missouri, all the way down into like Texas, you have everybody shuttle putting their energy into a pool and then you can buy it to certain nodes for different prices. So that means we can now manipulate or, Yeah, manipulate the energy based on, you know, it's sunny down south, but we're cloudy, so we can buy that excess solar and put it up here. There's a snowstorm here, but in Missouri, there's nothing going on, so they can sell it here. It just got dark in the central time zone. We have a bunch of solar still kicking. We can send it there. So you see a lot of market fluctuations, so it turns more into like a dynamic stock market of energy. So with that, you have this new, which I think really leads to your education piece is that people need to know that because now there's a lot more financial opportunities for things like what you guys are talking about without even doing, say, batteries or anything like that. You can then have a resource in a heat pump or water heating that when everybody's turning it on and now the utility is getting stressed. They can call you or they can do an automatic switch to where you already have stored water to a certain degree. You can ride out without any electricity in that certain system for an hour or two to help alleviate grid pressure and they monetize you for that.

Providing peak shaving as a company that does this in another municipality is a giant pain though and comes with a lot of strings.

That's where the systems are coming online through the utility that they can do that themselves. And that's where they're starting. United Power, especially, that's what I just did, is they're putting those systems in place to where they can actually get into your systems and just call those events themselves. It's not an email or phone call, all that.

Yeah, I just mean it just comes with a lot of...

It does, and that's why it has to be certain entities, but the... From what I saw at United Power, what their monetization fee is going to be, basically, they're going to be paying your demand rate back per kilowatt that you can shave.

in some of our facilities. That's huge. That is huge.

So that's, you know, you're looking at some pretty significant dollars and I would definitely look at them. And if you're also doing a lot of solar, there is a potential to partner with them to do a grid type battery that they would then control to help absorb some of that and then add that resiliency piece. That's what they are doing with the pilot program right now for the fire station battery project is they're, they're testing a front of the meter battery. So United powers battery is, They dispatch it for good service whenever they want. Excel's looking like they're going to get an outage or something that's going to affect them. They'll leave the battery charged and allow that station to run through longer without giving in their backups. So they are looking at more options, and that's just their pilot program. And they're going to look to expand that here in the near future.

I do wonder, the floatable tank projects, I know that. It was a couple of years ago that the batteries were penciled out. And if United Power has a new program, it might be worth exploring because that's a huge solar project. I don't know where they want the batteries.

And the problem with everybody continuing to add solar is that it then saturates the market in the wrong time. Right. Because when everybody's in the market, everybody's got solar. Now those prices plunge for energy and nobody's nobody's coming on. But then everybody's solar goes away five o'clock. Now everybody's demanding that same amount of energy. And now we have to turn on peaker plants and coal plants and things of that nature. So, yeah. But that's also where the DRs can come in or distributed resources like a water pump or a water heater or things of that nature, electric water heaters, heat pumps, things of that nature where you can actually pre-cool your home when like two, three o'clock and then turn it up a little bit, let it ride through that time of day when everybody's kicking it off. Same thing with your water heating. You know, you have your, you heat up that, 50-gallon tank, it shuts off, you just drain that tank until 9 o'clock, then it can start to reheat that water again. There are a lot of opportunities in play in the education realm as well of how this is all coming together because the energy industry right now, you guys are taking advantage of this, I know that, is in a huge shift to being more dynamic. It's going away from the archaic machine to being more dynamic and trying to incentivize the end-of-line users to push energy back towards the grid. I love the play. I think batteries, obviously, everybody gets weirded out by batteries because they're so expensive, but the prices are dropping there.

Battery technology is changing right before our eyes. We have an entire group that we just sit and watch and just study the battery technologies. The standard lithium-ion battery is improving, and I think eventually it'll be replaced by something even more efficient and cost-effective. And then like you said, the intelligence of the system is critical, right? So it understands when to make moves back to the grid, to a generator, to battery, when to conserve, and what loads to power. So that kind of core, like a building management system interface is a big central part of what needs to be done as well. So yeah, you're right. It's because all the efficiency of software driving this stuff can make a huge difference.

Which is double-edged sword because you need the data centers to power that.

That's true. They're cloud-based systems. That's right.

We've talked a lot about the electrification piece. Sounds like that's something you've thought of a lot, but that's bigger, right? The holistic piece is bigger than just electrification and backup power. So if that's the bigger, longer-term piece, are there other things that we could do without that to get closer to a resilience hub?

specifically at the community center. Yeah. Yeah. I think as Chad mentioned, like it's really important to talk to the recreation staff leadership there.

I mean, I guess my question is like, are those conversations happening?

Yes, they are. And especially with the expansion conversation as well. I think we can bring in more resources. I don't know Chad's perspective on that, but it it's, I think we also need to move beyond the community center. Like I think we need to talk about churches. I think we need to talk about, You know, HOA clubhouses. And I mean, I don't see any reason why we couldn't take this model and really start to have that distributed energy as far as our resilience up throughout town as well. A change of community centers is a complex place to start. Yeah, I agree. But it's definitely on the radar.

Or Erie high school. I mean, and the guy whose name I forget at Erie high school wasn't interested in engaging, but then the woman at the district as a whole did. So it might, you know, it might take a little convincing, but I mean, for the same reason that community centers are schools are perfect place.

Interesting. Okay. Does anybody have any other questions, thoughts, things they want to discuss? This has been just fantastic.

Can I do a selfish plug for trying to tell us a little bit more about the project? The floatable tank. It's just so cool. And I think, does everybody know what a floatable tank? Yeah. So you had nods, but.

so uh this is a many years in the making project that's coming to fruition now but um it started with the idea of a grounding solar out at the uh north water reclamation facility and that was uh gonna occupy roughly five acres of you know kind of valuable real estate and then the conversation about potentially needing to expand the uh wastewater plant and also there was potential of a water treatment facility at some point as the town grows and to meet that need. So the real estate became much more valuable out there. And so when the concept, and again, this predates me, but the concept of solar at Northwater Reclamation Facility was first brought up, you know, to offset the largest energy consumer for the town is that site that Ground Mountain was initially, you know, considered. And at that time, Floatable Kitchen, photovoltaic so they thought the cost was just not going to pencil out that was I think at that time at least 2x maybe 3x more expensive than than ground mount solar so it just wasn't financially you know feasible however sometimes you know when things wait a little bit the cost to your point about things coming down technology coming down Um, and we, you know, uh, our partner, our economy identified a vendor who, this is what they do photo takes and the costs had come down enough that it became much more feasible. And so, uh, we started looking at a hundred percent offset and. DOLA, we actually received a DOLA grant to do kind of a phaser, a project, but not the full net zero that we were hoping for. We applied for some federal grants that, and also, you know, try to get it on a In the budget, Hickenlooper and Bennett were going to champion some projects like this. It didn't happen. And so what we're able to do right now is offset two meters out there. And overall, the system would be a 3.1 megawatt solar array. And we're, with this phase, doing 1.2 to offset two meters. The largest meter out there we still would love to tackle at some point. So, yeah, that project should be complete at the end of the summer. And we'll be offsetting, you know, it's a one, as I said, about 1.2 megawatt system.

Very cool. What percentage is coming back through the direct pay through the Inflation Reduction Act?

Up to 30%, I believe. Yes. So, you know, the... I'm trying to remember if that is actually a disadvantaged area.

I don't think it is.

That's huge. Yes, we just got that in before the policy agenda.

Very cool. The direct pay, as many of you know, which is to say it allows local governments to take advantage of a tax credit. for clean energy projects and of course solar panels qualifies along with a number of other things like electric vehicles and things like that that was rolled back with the trump administration but the last of the projects that could qualify they need to be submitted by july 4th a couple days from now um but it's a big deal because it allows us that we don't need a third party and going through a power purchase agreement which is what historically governments had to do And then that third party would negotiate their own financial benefit. And then what they would do to the town for that clean energy tax credit. It's cool. Well done. Chad is like, Chad has got so many like solar projects going on and massive expansion projects. So I appreciate you being here. It's great. Yeah.

Yeah. Not solar wise, but have you guys been looking into hydrogen generators at all? Backup generators. Yeah. We've been installing a bunch of them. They were great. Zero emissions. Yeah.

Where are you sourcing your nitrogen?

I don't source it. I don't know. That is not my job. That's something I'm... Yeah, I can find out, though. I mean, I can find out. But we use them in a lot of remote areas, and they're great.

There's also off-grid level 3 charger. Yes. I think are really interesting as well. If you have stuff to share.

I can bring in some stuff on the emergency donors.

Yeah, that'd be great.

They're great. OK, awesome. All right. But 730, we will wrap up with you guys, I think. Thank you so much for your presentation. This is really cool. And now I want to go back to high school, which is something I'd say. Thanks for letting us hang out. And maybe when my kid is grown, I'll send him.

There's one thing I was just burning in the back of my brain. I just want to make sure I say so. A lot of what we do, and the example of the microgrid at Stead School is an off-grid DC microgrid system powering AC loads. Anywhere you can, like in renovation projects and things like that, and you're actually putting in new resiliency hub capabilities, anywhere you can have the load sources be DC ready, Versus AC, you have a significant efficiency gain because everything coming in through solar and batteries, all DC power, right? It's DC, DC, DC. What we do is we invert that to power AC loads. So you'll see more and more DC appliances come out. There's DC refrigerators. Obviously, all of our computers are all DC. They're converted to go plug into the wall themselves. So all the PoE power over Ethernet infrastructure is all DC power. So I always talk to people about that because you don't realize how much you can gain from an efficiency standpoint in that overall system by just keeping the pure power DC all the way through to the low.

Even if you only have solar for, let's say, eight hours in winter, you're still going to have a greater efficiency.

Absolutely. There's like a 5% to 10% efficiency loss when you go from DC to AC. And some systems, it's back and forth because these are really, really DC ready. And so you're going DC to AC and back to DC because it's a computer that needs DC. So there's a lot of things that are already DC capable that are being inverted to AC now anyway. So I'm just, I want to throw that out there because I think a lot of new builds and then there's housing projects that are looking at DC ready appliances, DC infrastructure. And so you have this sort of nice efficient flow on these conversion losses. So that's one thing I wanted to get out there.

Lighting too. Yes.

LED lighting is all native.

You just mentioned when you're limited on solar, if you charge up your batteries and you have DC lighting, then you're using the battery storage energy more efficiently because it's in the nighttime when you don't have solar, now you're using DC ready lighting instead of having to convert it and lose that efficiency.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you.

And you all have my contact information. Yes, we do. Yes. I can never have a tour. It sounds amazing.

Yes.

Thank you so much. You might go to high school. I know, right? I know.

She's like, it's a high school.

Let's get an elementary school in there, shall we?

Work on that. We're expanding down to a middle. Okay, well, close enough.

Continue on.

She has your blessing.

Nice to meet you all. Thank you so much, you guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Take care. Thank you very much, Chad. Very exciting stuff. Rec Center's great. Big fan.

It has been.

I like clean water, too.

I moved here before I worked here, and it's always been. That's why your hub has been that since I moved here. It's just the hub of the community.

Absolutely.

We're there on Saturday.

type community seems like it's just kids everywhere i love it like we're just in and out and around and playing basketball and whatever one of the stories i love about chad is that he had a community garden plot before he had his house where the community garden was and closed on the house said we're running a vacancy so we're like okay well take a chance yeah we got a certain box yes i like it thank you so much for coming appreciate it thanks chad

Okay.

You want me to come to your side? Are you feeling all alone over there?

You feel like you're in a job interview? Yeah.

You could come over on this side.

You don't have to. It's good. But I appreciate you recognizing the awkwardness.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So council member updates.

We have no council member to update us. Do you have anything that you want to share?

I think that I don't know if you all followed along. I think the mineral rights conversation is really complicated.

It passed, right?

Yeah. And if you haven't had a chance to watch the meetings, I would highly recommend. I just finished a couple of days ago and I really appreciated the comments from residents. I appreciate the historical context. I appreciate it. what was negotiated in the contract. I think it's important to keep in mind, it's gray, right? Life is not often black and white. And so I think the presentations and even the study sessions leading up to it as well are just really, really interesting. So I don't know if you all have any comments about those. I think it's from a sustainability perspective, it's a big conversation. It's an important thing to look at. And what we've looked at initially from a greenhouse gas emissions reporting perspective, and we'll talk about this with the sustainability action plan, is that it will likely reduce our emissions on paper because of capping those wells. And the emissions from Draco are not within the town boundaries. So we don't actually have to report that. And that's, again, that's on paper. That's just kind of how the reporting works. But we know that If those emissions will impact our air quality in Erie, they will impact our communities. So lots of things to think about.

Yeah. Okay, staff liaison updates.

Let me see if I can get my computer on.

Great.

All right, so The sustainability action plan will be going to council on a study session on September 1st. If you all are available and can come, that would be fantastic to just have some representation in the room. We will have an updated draft soon. We're just kind of going back and forth on final edits and review. But you all will see that probably in the next week or two. And then we will get that up on an Engage Erie page and have the draft for resident review. So we really want to have that for the next month and a half before the September 1st and then probably after that as well. We're using a similar model to how the comprehensive plan was shared in draft form via the Engage Erie page as well. So just being able to get it in the hands of residents to see what it is and getting that feedback feels really important.

That's usually at 6.30, right? The September 1st one?

Yeah, unless there's a URA meeting. But I assume it's a study session. Oh, no, it might be 6.

Okay.

Study sessions are a little bit early. Okay. Yeah.

I'll look. Yeah.

I can double check when we're done here, too. We also just booked our Community Resilience Workshop pilot. We have two of those. I appreciate Mackenzie being willing to host one in her neighborhood today. we reached out to a handful of HOAs and we heard a little bit of interest, but really people are just busy. So there wasn't the capacity to really have one HOA champion, a full like workshop. And so what we decided today was to pivot towards two general events and then just invite Erie residents. So to back up a little bit, this is part of the resilience action plan of which Rachel had up on her slide. And we're moving into implementation. We're working with another set of students. They've been at the farmer's market with us and other events. You guys know them. But these workshops will be focused. They're going to be three hours. The first one is Monday, July 27th. And the second one is Tuesday, August 18th. um they're at the council chambers at this point um hopefully we won't have to move them but tbd and we're the plan is to kind of go through like a resilience um process of really explaining what is resilience a lot of the conversation we had today um resilience hubs are one of the identified strategies for sure in the plan they're a big port portion of it And then really kind of taking residents through a kind of workshop and a process of what does this look like for you? What does this look like for your neighbors, for your community? And really just trying to get people ultimately to start thinking more about it. And one of the big resilience strategies is social capital, right? It's those relationships. It's being able to recognize, you know, your community needs and being able to bring in those assets that you might have or others may have to fill those needs. at a really hyper-local scale. So I don't know if anyone has specific questions about that. We will share an agenda. Hopefully we'll have a flyer next week to distribute and we'll have a sign up link. So I believe the council can hold quite a few folks. So I don't believe we're going to cap it at anything small. So if you all make my request of you all is to then distribute that and just try to send out your neighbors, maybe your HOA board and say, Hey, who's, who's available and wants to come talk about resilience. We're also going to have dinner. So we're going to entice them with food.

Yeah.

website post out on social media about uh so far will you yeah we will yeah when we're ready good yeah okay we um again we're working with the students but we have to bring it back to our comms team before we put it out so probably like late next week hopefully okay um the turf rebate program is going wild where dylan is really um We are still in a stage two drought and that has proven really beneficial for people thinking about converting the landscape. We do have, we need to do some more advertising on our turf removal contract with Resource Central. So if you know anybody that's a good candidate, like let them know. We just plugged it in the newsletter, and then it's also going out in the utility bill flyer. So we're trying to spread the love on that program. It's expensive. So it needs to kind of be the right folks that really kind of want to... They don't want to be out there shoveling their turf. They'd rather have somebody come do that for them, which is legit. That's a lot of work. We're not all McKenzie's.

I mean, I was just... Most of my expense was I went a little bit overboard with my drip system. Like almost everything was covered by the program. Even the turf removal.

Oh, you did the turf removal with Resource Central.

Oh, cool. Awesome. I mean, most of it came back, but that is not their problem. I just can't kill the grass. I know. You're like, I'm not watering you.

Yes. I didn't realize you had done it. I thought you'd done it all yourself. Okay. So here's the program. So do you have any insight to share with the group on, I mean, what was the cost for you? How big was your area?

Them doing... Let's see. I have 300 square feet in my head. I don't know if that was how much I removed or...

Is that a minimum?

I did. Okay. But the fact that I bought gardens from them, part of the process was like, are you replacing turf? And I was like, yep. And they were like, would you like a discount on us removing it for you? I was like, yes, I would. Sweet. So it wasn't crazy. We were doing it to the Garden in a Box program. Central came out and took it out. And I think my only concern I had was like, I was like, well, my gardens are going to be here in a week. Are you going to come do the grass? Because I need that out by the time the plants get here. It ended up being fine.

Is there a minimum area?

For the turf rebate program or for the turf removal from Resource Central? Rebate. There is, yeah. I believe, I'm going to have to double check on the exact square footage.

Okay, I mean, I have the code up, but I can't read it.

I would assume with the turf removal from Resource Central, the more square footage you have, it could probably add up pretty quick. But that's great to hear that for a small project, it was not a big deal. And the rebate helped cover that. Yeah, the rebate.

It's huge. Covered pretty much everything. And I went to like Home Depot and I was like, I need these drippers and this drip line and like everything. No, I was like, well, I'm going over my budget here. But right. I mean, that's such a small drop compared to how large the project was.

Yeah.

Small job.

Yes. Small drop of water.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

And then events, I just want to do a plug. We are requesting a booth for sustainability at large. So all of us at the Eerie Fest on August 1st. So if folks want to come hang out, that would be awesome. I actually haven't attended, but I will this year. Decided about that. I will not be here. You won't be there. So when they have the balloons too, or is that different? Chambers, the balloons. And then we also have farmer's market coming up July 9th. And then I just wanted to plug the cleanup day in September. So that will be, I think we already have it on our calendar, but the second Saturday of September. And Art, you're always so good at handing out cookies. No comment.

No comment. I won't, I won't be here in July. So.

Okay. Got it.

No, hang out with me.

Okay.

Okay. Um, that's all I had just top of mind. Does anybody have other things that they've seen and we should chat about? Yeah. Okay. Plastic free July and the plastic free bingo card. It's in the newsletter. Um, it's a bingo card and then it's a bunch of different things to avoid plastics and to kind of change, you know, your own behaviors, going to bridge refill, refilling a jar, um, watching the... plastic video um and then we are asking folks to take photos and submit them to us after the end of the month and then or throughout depending on how quick you are and then we've got um three prizes um and then it's just it'll be raffle nice yeah yeah very cool yeah i have um a throwaway shop in boulder coming to my office as a pop-up shop

which is unfortunate because based on the name we can't access their website because they think it's explicit i have to be like nude foods is coming um look at it on your phone because you won't be able to get into it on your work laptop it's not appropriate i do like their signs they're on boulder that said do you shop the nude yeah yeah

Okay, bee watering station event swag.

Yeah, so I just 3D printed these at the library's day. They are bee waterers. The idea is you fill up a, these ones are for plastic bottles. I printed another one for a mason jar, but it was massive. And took length. It's reusable, but it's reusable. It's not single use. Classic Frigila is about single use, but this is usable.

As an avid 3D printer, I get it.

Just saying. I reached out to Erica and she's like, I don't love that it's plastic. Additionally, it would be taking a plastic bottle that would not be used anymore and giving it a second use. So upcycling, but... Fill the bottle up with water, screw these on top, flip it upside down, and these fill the little channels with water and give the bees somewhere to land so they can drink without drowning. Yes, I recently rescued a honeybee from a bucket of water that I had because it was thirsty and it almost drowned and I saved it. I felt very proud of myself. But these were... This one was $6.50 and this one was $3.20.

So much big charge to make those at the library?

You pay per gram. Ten cents per gram. So it's very cheap. It's really expensive for a 3D printed piece of plastic. Are you sure? Yeah. Ten cents per gram? How much is the filament per gram? I don't know. Yeah.

That's a surprise.

But you're saying you have a 3D printer.

Really?

Then my proposal here is that we use budget to buy a bunch of filament and print a bunch of these out as swag giveaways. That's a great idea. Because on Etsy, these are like $10.

I know. Yeah. I mean, you can get cheap filament on Etsy. Amazon.

The one thing is, if these are going outside, the UV will start to melt them. But it gets people not only reusing single-use plastic, but also thinking about bees and helping bees. I put bee water in my birdbath.

I like just a plain old piece of wood that you drill holes through. And you put it in your birdbath and it floats and they can go in and out. It's real cheap. I know that Tom Reed, he has them do the painting things with those little discs, those cookies. And we could do a whole bunch of cookies for hardly any money. And then drill them with some holes.

It's hard, too. I mean, I love all the options. I like this personally because I will always forget to refill the birdbath.

Yes. This one is more like... It stays with it for a little longer. Yeah. I love the idea. Big fan. Would you both say? All the things. You could have a little craft at your bee hotel workshop for making the little puddles.

Here's making the bee hotel itself. You can make a pool.

Make a pool for your house. I like it.

I don't have an ask right now. Just more of a would we be interested in Looking at options, I think I did see Ian today, the library manager, when I was there, and I was like, hey, I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but I did ask... Do you want to donate things? Well, not necessarily donate, but if we asked them, can you print out a hundred of these? And he was like, not really. It's meant for the community to use. Having them print out a bunch would mean that either I would have to be there to print it out, or at the very least someone there... in charge of the makerspace would need to be there to keep it unlocked and stuff um and then of course the the wear and tear of the actual machine itself but he suggested we could approach the makerspace um that's gofield farm so okay so yeah i will i still need to go over there and check things out yeah it's also a pollinator survey site that we should we should look at so Nice.

Very cool.

They're very cool.

How many of those are you trying to make?

Enough to pass out to people at all of our... Hundreds.

I wonder if it'd be worth it to look at injection molding. Because then you could have the mold and just pump it out. You know, thousands of them.

Yeah, because then we could 3D print the mold. And then, yeah.

There's a lot of rapid prototyping places that'll do it too. They'll make you a one-off mold that they'll give you by like a thousand of them. They'll bag them all out for you.

That's a good idea. In that case, can we do a different material instead of plastic? I don't know.

Metal is going to get hot. It's going to roast. I don't know. And just be a little bit more resilient in the heat.

Silicone might be expensive, though.

Yeah. At that point, we'd have to start looking at, like, I don't know how much injection molds would cost, but.

It's a really good idea, though.

This is looking at $320 per, although I did have aspirations of learning how to make my own models, and then we could make it smaller and cheaper. Yeah. Yeah, I will look at injection molds. Yeah, I think that's a really good idea. I'm seeing silicone.

We can sandcast it and use aluminum.

We could recycle aluminum.

And then if people don't want it anymore, they can take it to the recycling center. Sam says thank you for recycling this at the recycle center. Don't leave it next to the bin. Put it in the bin.

Please don't put your other non-metal items in the metal pin. Okay.

I'm going to run through this. Let's see. So the Saab Corner Contribution for August. We have a couple that are back, I think, that we have in the wings. But does anybody else want to write a Saab Corner Contribution for August?

This month was about transportation and sustainable transportation. What's the last one? Last one was on here.

I'm very behind on all of my. Yeah.

Anybody? Anybody? Okay.

So explain that to me. I guess I'm new.

I don't quite understand. We have a little blurb spot in the newsletter, which is the SAB corner is what it's called. And it's just a short one paragraph, two paragraphs blurb about sustainability or a project. Again, we've done some on pollinators. There have been some on

the microplastics yeah so it's just kind of any little topic that you might want to write two paragraphs about like last year I had a whole bunch about like did you know yeah that is a pollinator agave and gives us tequila you know like yeah it's just a little like community engagement piece sometimes there's a call to action most times it's a

And if you don't want to do it this month, that's totally fine. And if you just think of something, you can send it over and we'll just put it in the hopper and we'll just use it when we don't have anything else.

Yeah. Like if you want to write one, well about, um, Oh, my gosh. You could adapt your energy. The self-purchasing.

I'm trying to think about.

That would be amazing. It doesn't have to be short necessarily, and it could send two links. So if you wanted to do an introduction, then send it to a link that has more information.

That'd be a really cool one.

Ideally, like bigger groups like United Power, Department of Energy, you know.

I can't commit to August because I'm going to Florida.

That's okay. Think about it for the next few months.

I know there's a bunch of EV events and things like that in September anyway. I can probably do September because I know definitely Colorado's going to be doing events.

That'd be great.

I'll plug my old friends and say they have a car show going on.

Okay. We will look to you for September and we'll either pull one of the Older ones are, I'll write one up for August. Okay. August meeting attendees. I will not be here in August.

I will not either.

Okay. We'll also not be here in August. Yep. Okay. Karen, I think we'll be here. She indicated she would be back. Kathleen, I'm not sure about.

I will not be here either.

Okay.

I think I shall be here.

Okay. That may be enough for a quorum. Depends on... Karen indicated she would be here for August. Yes.

And then Megan.

And Megan. I forgot about Megan.

I need to check Megan, Kathleen, and then just one of them and you all help. Yep.

Okay. Upcoming public engagements. I was trying to get the calendar to open earlier and it was not working. There we go. Okay. So I don't know this off the top of my head like Karen does usually and see this market next market on the ninth, right?

Yeah, because they're not one on the 23rd. Um... I thought she had put all of these... Is it listed as the 23rd?

Well, I thought we were doing every other week. No. No. And we kind of changed around with, like, people being out and things like that. But I thought we had one later in July. I don't have it on my calendar right now.

I thought Karen had put them all out there. Oh, they're... Okay, so the 9th, she's got one for the farmer's market, but then she doesn't have any more in July. Mm-hmm.

There's the SAB presentation at the town.

The SAB presentation on the 28th, yep, at 6 p.m. And then the Erie Fest on the 1st, which I will also not be here for. And then the next farmer's market that Karen has in here on August 13th. And then August 27th.

Anybody make any of those?

Not to make any of those? I can. Kathleen was doing July. Okay.

Yeah, she was supposed to do the July one for sure. Yeah, I don't know. She said she's not feeling well tonight, which is why she isn't here. So she's feeling better by then, I guess.

And we need someone to present on the 28th.

Okay. That's what she said at the.

Okay.

I will not be in town, so I cannot help. I can help. Will you be around?

I'm out most of the beginning of August.

Okay. And are you around August 1st or no?

First.

August 1st.

First?

Yes. Saturday.

Time?

Saturday?

2 p.m. I think it's 2 to 6. Yeah, Saturday, August 1st.

Yeah, I could be around. Okay, that's good. 30th.

Oh, geez. Okay.

I may have a little jet lag.

Yeah. Okay. Well, if you're feeling up to it, then I'm a first. You can help out. Two to six is what the invite is. This calendar is super helpful. I really, really like it.

I'm like asking what it is. I know. It's not even looking over there.

It's all on the calendar. Perfect. Okay. Advisory board member updates. Anything from anyone? Okay.

I have one item of interest to me, and I don't know if it'll be of interest to anybody else, but I've been informed that the Earth Day, Arbor Day event this coming year will be at the community park and not at the park that we're currently in.

Tells you that.

I heard that from a couple of council members, and Karen told me she was aware that there was some kind of what And I would just like to say from a historical background, you know, I dealt with, I know it was probably 10 years ago when we finally moved it to the, where we are and were this last year at the rec center and, or across the street in that area. And that's where it's been for quite a long time. There was a period of time when we were told that the, They wanted it to go from park to park so that they could showcase all the different parks in town. And Mike Miguel at the time said, yeah, that's what they wanted to do. And so Brian O'Connor and I, we started saying, well, this is the ideal location. And I was told at this time that Luke Bollinger is the one that wants to move us to the downtown location. And so my point is that historically, I think, you know, it would be nice that somebody would ask us what our impression is or what we think about this. And I guess because I've already talked to a couple of council members who have been involved in these events for quite a while, some of them had the same issues that I have. So I just put together a little A little worksheet for everybody. Not that you have to have some work to do, but if you're going downtown or you look at the different parts, when you look at the setup area, the vendor setup, you know, that we have and have been able to operate at the current location, at Billion Park or Post Park or whatever we want to call that there.

And the downtown community park is at the...

That's the new one that they built off of. And so I put down some issues that I have with all of that. And the downtown community park, I can understand why we might want to have it as a location. And maybe ultimately it could be. But we have a large paved location, which is easy for vendors set up. with a parking lot that's easy for vendors to unload in and to deliver things to. And we have walkways that go all the way around for a lot of easy access for people. And we have a very well-established format. We've been doing it and have maps and it's all been working well. The downtown community park and standing there and looking at it with a couple of council members. First of all, the first couple of years that we did it at the park across from the rec center, before there was any paved area, we were setting up in the grass area. And at that time of the year, one year we had a snowstorm, you know, vertical snow, and you never know what you're going to have at that time of the year. But in the grass was not good. And then when it was soggy and muddy, it was not a good place to do it. So I don't know where we would be able to put on the actual program where the vendors would be in the new location. Now, there's a playground with – with things sticking out, you know, and that would be a solid area. There is a parking lot, which isn't that very, it isn't that large, but if we're going to have people come and park and unload and, you know, all of that, we wouldn't have the location to, to be positive towards all of that. Parking areas are, As far as food trucks, you know, where we have a separate location where we set it up, it all works well. I don't know where we would put the food trucks, depending on where we put the vendors and where we put people parking in the area. So that would not be quite as convenient.

How sure is this?

I was told that this is where it's going to be next year. Okay. My thought, well, and maybe you and Tom can chat, but if we are going to affect the process and have some input, it would be nice to be able to say, okay, well, what do you have in mind here? As far as the vendor parking, like I said, we had a separate lot for them. Visitor parking, we had multiple places over where we have been. There's very limited parking space. at the new park, especially if we're going to use it for a vendor setup. We have an alternate rain location across the street, which has worked well. And they're always saying, yeah, come back. We're happy to have you. I don't know where we could have anybody close in the proximity, you know, to move. If we move from where the downtown park is all the way over to the the other location, that's not convenient for the process, especially with Tom Reed or moving trees back and forth. I don't know, you know, because they set up a lot of stuff ahead of time. Pros for the The old location is well established and people expect it there. And I put a cell signal because by the rec center, there are four bars and they have a nice new tower that they built right outside there. If you look at your phone now, you'll see you have no bars. And in the park over there, there's only one barn. So if we had somebody saying, where do I go and where do I park? You know, the communication process, it may change. AT&T tells me they're not going to put in any more towers around here. But anyway, I think what we ought to do. We need to look at this and say, you know, do we want to at least present this and say, we'd like you to rethink it.

Yeah, I think Erica's got an action I'm going to talk to.

So I got an email from Tom Reed this afternoon, and it is about the same conversation. It's directed at our event coordinator for the town, asking a lot of the questions you have, including like, having the conversation, right? And being part of that. I don't have any additional information to add at this time. No one's told me that it's definitely moving other than some kind of peripheral conversations when we were organizing, like maybe this time, maybe like in the fall of last year. there was mention of, yes, we're probably going to want to move you guys to Coal Creek after this year, but I haven't had any definitive conversations since then. I think that some of the things just share that I don't know very well because I haven't organized an event at Coal Creek Park thus far, but like being part of the town fair and things like that they do have a pretty awesome setup for vendors because they already have power there's like there's a lot of power hookups that are already set up in the design of that park which is really nice um but i hear you on all the other things i mean i really appreciate you pulling this together and bringing it up because it's a big deal and i i agree also I think one of the challenges of the current location is also one of its assets because there's so many events happening at the ECC and in the community park. I think one of the challenges is parking for all those events, but it's also one of the reasons our birthday has been so successful is because there's kids that are like, Oh, what's going on? Let's walk over and check it out. Right. Totally. So, um, Yeah, I hear you. I will definitely follow up with Tom and then make sure that we circle back.

And one of the conversations we had about, you know, about us taking over more of the running of the program. Yeah. And, you know, we were told it's going to go ahead and be put into town calendar. And that has to be published and planned ahead of time. So before this gets too far down the road, so if somebody says, oh, yeah, it's already plugged in for this location. We need to start looking at that.

Have a conversation for sure.

Yeah.

So maybe we'll hear more from you next time.

She won't be here in August.

Oh, that's right. You can get in touch with us.

Yeah. You know how to find us. Yes. There you go. You're like, what are your intentions? Yes.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Obviously, your passion and organization is helpful for everybody.

And the historical context. You've been running this event as a tree advisory board member and as a SAB member. I mean, you've been at the events that have been rained out and snowed out. There hasn't been many, but there has been a few.

Mackenzie, did you have something else?

Yes. So when I was chatting with Ian, he asked about what our interest would be in partnering with the library and potentially the rec center. He hasn't had time to chat with them since they're about to have like their biggest event of the year. And he's like, I'll wait till you're done. And then we can chat about this, but about having a paper shredding event at the library. um so i think the the ask for us would be do we have budget and are we willing to share budget to help them with that cost and potentially share it with the rec center as well um and if we wanted to try to like hire an iron mountain or somebody to come out with a truck shredder um he was saying it was in the ballpark of 1200 which is not exorbitant, but is potentially more than they can put by themselves. Why do they want to do it? I just heard recycling. Let's do it. So we could, if we're interested, we could also look into seeing if any other kinds of recycling vendors would want to go.

yeah i mean that's we do those at work sometimes and it's like bringing all your old credit card bills and all your old stuff like that you you know your old taxes and like things that you shouldn't be throwing in the trash pretty successful

So we do shredding at the fall cleanup day. The fall cleanup. Yeah. So I wonder if Ian knows that. And then I would just be curious how we could avoid redundancies and maximize efficiencies. So I'd be curious to see what else he would want when he would want to host it. Because the spring would probably be less redundant with the fall event.

Mm-hmm.

And maybe aligned with like tax day or something.

So when we do it only in the fall, what does it cost for us to do it twice a year?

know the cost because that's paid for by Public Works. My understanding is that we don't do it twice a year because of space at the site. And so we do it as like a hazardous waste isn't, you know, hazardous waste is here in the fall now. But there was something that we were offsetting that we provided in the spring. And then we kind of compensated for not providing that with shredding in the fall. But there's no reason why we can't change that. I think that's just kind of what historically has been done. But now I believe we have hazardous waste just coming in the fall because they're limited in the events they can do.

And they're open every day or four days a week in Boulder. So you don't have to wait.

Yeah.

I wonder if I have any papers. Because I reached out to you about asking if Readwell could join the cleanup days. I wonder if... seeing if they'd be interested in joining this kind of event could be an easy way to test the waters there.

Yeah. I would just think about time. So it's not necessarily conflicting with some of the other longer sitting events.

Okay. Any other board member updates? Okay. Prior action items.

But do you want to do, Will, do you want to do a quick update on the pollinator garden event? Just the garden tours? Yeah. The garden tour from South. Oh. I guess they're not pollinating. I'm projecting on that.

All gardens are pollinator gardens. They should be.

We have like about a dozen folks come through. Eric was great and he's helping me understand what all our programs are and how to convey that to people. And, um, that went pretty well. Um, people came in through enthusiastic and, um, really excited about the turf program, um, for the most part. Um, yeah, I mean, there wasn't much else. I mean, there were some people that weren't necessarily residents that came through that that's always, you know, an issue, but, um, well, yeah.

We got six people to sign up for the newsletter through the whole process. That was pretty good.

Did they get bags? Did they get a bag?

Some of them. A lot of people are saying, I already have enough bags.

They took flyers and stuff.

Yeah, it was great. Will is a secret energy weapon for events. So just with his experience working with United Power and in the EV space, any questions, go to Will. Talk to Will right here. He could not be here right now.

If you have a question about your energy bill, well, it happens. That's funny. Yeah.

We can just have you have your own little booth. Q&A session.

I used to do that for a living. No, thank you.

But now you can do it for volunteer. Oh, yay. Yeah. It's different that way. Okay. Any other prior action items we need to cover? Anything?

I have just one last one. So there is a need for bylaws for all the boards. So right now we're getting updated draft of those bylaws. And then I will bring that to you all, probably come to you in the August or the September meeting. Can we ensure that they say virtual meetings are acceptable?

We will not accept until we can be virtual. Yeah.

I mean, they said they were working on changing them. They did for some of the boards. Specifically the Planning Commission, I believe. Maybe they haven't made the final decision. I think maybe it's going back to council. My understanding, though, is that there's some advocacy for the Planning Commission and some of the other... I don't know if it's Parks and Open Space or HPAB, but... What part of the bureaucracy requires this to be in person? like for it's a real question I think that's a good question I do not have an answer so yeah everything else in my life is virtual Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's tough, too, because, like, you were saying you're going to be gone in August, and you love to call it, right?

Yeah, I would totally be. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

But I think that is not an answer I have.

We will review them, and we will provide our comments back. Okay.

The goal is to have bylaws that are consistent for all the boards across the town. So there will be things that will be unique to SAB per the ordinance that adopted and developed SAB. But the rest of it, they're really trying to have. Yeah.

That's fine.

Yeah.

But stay tuned. We're coming. Cool. Okay. Next regular meeting we said is August 5th, 630. Right. Any last meeting or any last notes or things? Okay. The meeting is now adjourned. What time?

Well done.

8.16 p.m. on July 1st. Yeah, first.

Exactly.