County Council - Session - Regular Meeting

Okay, I apologize for that being a little loud, but someone welcome everyone to the August 4th, 2026 County Council regular session. So tonight's meeting is gonna be in a hybrid format, meaning we'll have our presenters and council in person and also remotely on Zoom. So we'll be taking public comments on items not on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting here shortly. then we'll be also taking public comment for each item that we're discussing tonight. And we just ask that you keep your comments focused on the issue at hand tonight as we go through them. Then when we go through public comment, Mr. Real will be looking for commenters on Zoom, and we just Also ask that people have their name on Zoom so it can be properly addressed. And we also ask that people limit their comments to three minutes or as otherwise directed. And also just ask the comments be directed to the chair. So I think that's all the preliminary information. So Ms. Rael, is a counselor hand on line? I'm not seeing her online yet. Okay. So we'll just keep an eye for her if she is able to join. So she'll let me know that she was probably not attending tonight. So I think given that we have six, maybe we should take the role just to confirm. Counselor Cole.

Present. Counselor Rigor.

Here.

Counselor Hatheman. Here. Counselor Herman. Here. Counselor Neal Clinton. Here. Counselor Bridie. Here. We have six counselors present in chambers with counselor hand absent.

Yeah, let the record show we have six here present and counselor hand has been excused. So then we go on to item number two, which is pledge allegiance. So if you're willing and able, please join us in the pledge. Okay, so now we're on to the public comment item or items that are not on tonight's agenda. Do we have anyone present here in the council chambers that would like to make public comment for items that are not on the agenda? Please come forward and just ask that you state your name for the record.

My name is Laree, L-A-R-E Mitchell, and I would like you to consider changing all the streetlights to have a delayed red that prevents accidents. Also, the street lights on Trinity should all be green at the same time for 45 seconds. The side street should only be green for 20 seconds. It takes longer to get out of the town with the lights changing constantly than it does getting down the hill. A typical passenger car wastes one half to one fifth gallon of fuel for every hour it sits idling. Idling burns fuel incompletely. releasing high amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons directly into the air. Studies by the Department of Energy show that keeping an engine running while parked or waiting for more than 10 seconds uses more fuel and creates more total emissions than the brief burst caused by turning the car off and restarting it.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, do we have anyone else who wants public comment for items that are not on tonight's agenda? Not seeing anyone. Mr. Rauch, can you please check on the line for us?

If you're online and you'd like to make a public comment, please raise your hand.

No one online, Chair. Okay, thank you. So move on to item number four, which is approval of the agenda. Is there a councillor interested in making a motion on the agenda? Councillor Cole?

I move that we approve the agenda as presented. Is there a second? Second.

Okay, we have motion by Councilor Cole, second by Councilor Neal Clinton. Okay, not seeing any discussion on this item, we can go ahead and just do a show of hands. All those in favor, raise your hand. Okay, it was unanimous. So let's let record show the motion passes six to zero. So we're on to item number five, which is Presentations, Proclamations, and Recognitions. So 5A is 21813-26. It's the quarterly climate action plan implementation update. So I think we have Ms. Curley here to provide that update.

Good evening, County Council. Pleased to be here tonight to share what we've been working on this past quarter for a climate action plan. So just as a reminder of what brings us here tonight, some of what Council has adopted, starting with our 2026 Strategic Leadership Plan and our Environmental Stewardship Climate Action and Resiliency Goal. We also have a big goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, to become a carbon-neutral electric provider by 2040, and to phase out natural gas production for county operations by 2050 and for the community by 2070. In this next slide, I won't go over it right now unless you want me to, but we have a metrics page on our website, and that attachment is included in your packet. It's a dashboard of all of the 13 climate action items that we're working on this year and a measure of where we're at. So at a glance, we're working on year one and two metrics, and there's 13 total climate actions. We've completed one. Five are ongoing, meaning they restart every year. Four are in progress, and three are upcoming. On the right-hand side of this slide, you'll see all the members that are contributing to the climate action work within the county. So just a quick thank you to them. Next slide, please. Our completed action items, you probably recall we approved or accepted the fleet conversion plan and the community wide EV charging plan back in October. And since then, in FY26, the county transitioned five of our internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles. So two went to facilities, one went to parks, two to Department of Public Utilities, and then we added one hybrid to our motor pool. In FY27, our plan is to transition two to four EVs. And here's a list of where they may go to. Next slide. So some of our ongoing actions, like I mentioned, these kind of restart or continuous items that we'll work on over the next couple of decades or until we complete the climate action plan is expanding community partnerships. So we continue to nurture our local relationships and also our statewide relationships. And one item we've been working towards is extended producer responsibility. We've developed a statewide network of other communities that are interested in reducing waste at the state level. And then in our Department of Public Utilities, they continue to work on encouraging community energy efficiency and electrification retrofits. So here's a list of some of the items that they were able to work on this year, including updating their energy efficiency kit that's being distributed by PEAK. One of the beloved community events is the water... Water Festival at Fuller Lodge that's conducted by PEAC and DPU. And on the right is just a really fun picture of them displaying a, I forget, it just escaped me the name of it, but it's they're making popcorn using the induction stove. That's right. Next slide. So this is one of our community events that we helped support was the Hemis Mountain Trail Run. We collected 660 pounds of material, which doesn't seem like a lot, but we're really only collecting like cups and plates and things like that. So we were able to divert 90% of the material that day through composting and recycling. So it was a fruitful day. We've also collaborated with PEAK, our environmental services team, took some of the old trash carts that had been transitioned from regular trash carts to bear carts. So they needed a new purpose, and they turned them into rain barrels. So that was a collaboration with PEAK, environmental services, and Department of Public Utilities. Next slide. So this is a project near and dear to all of our hearts. We're all highly aware of what's happening at Foxtel Flats. They've begun construction. They've done some site clearing and grubbing. And this will really help us move the needle to achieving our carbon-free electricity and our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. We're continuing to promote electric vehicle adoption. So you've probably seen some of the construction at Mesa Public Library. This project is on track to be completed at the beginning of October. Our equipment is on site and the pads have been poured. So this presentation was made a few weeks ago and a lot has happened since then. But once it's done, we'll have two direct current fast chargers at Mesa Public Library. So we had one of our cap items was to promote EV adoption and convert the small municipal small engines, lawn garden equipment, golf carts to be fossil free within 10 years. So we've been doing some piloting and trying to understand how this works with operations. Some of the equipment that they tested were blowers, weed eaters, mowers, chainsaws, and trimmers. Although they have seen, so the battery equipment, it costs about $300 to $500 more initially. Annual operation and maintenance cost savings are about $175. So that's from reduced gas and maintenance costs. So this would result in a payback period of less than two years. So those are the pros of switching to electric tools and equipment. However, so for example, when you use them for a six to eight hour shift, the batteries are just really not sustainable. So on average, they're lasting about 40 to 60 minutes. So it's really hard to be constantly switching out equipment. So one of the recommendations is to use the battery operated equipment in hotspot areas that have like smaller environmental footprints. So not really for the big, big areas. But they would like to continue using them. We're just not quite ready yet to replace all of our equipment with electric. So I wanted to share some of our utilization. So we've installed all of the new chargers outside a municipal building. Those were, they just, they went live at the end of December. So we've had them now for eight months. And what you'll see on the right is a utilization table. And what we can see is that the trend for utilization is increasing slowly month over month. So the table on the left is a table of the financials and how much money we're able to collect. Unfortunately, we are operating at a loss, but as utilization continues to increase, hopefully that gap will begin to close. This is a really fun initiative and an important initiative, which is climate education campaigns. So as you recall, we, council has funded education, climate education. So we've hired a company to help us work on this. So the community chose and adopted the name give a shift. So give a shift to take climate action and change your behavior to a more environmentally friendly behavior. Some of the we've Our crew, what we're calling them, our little crew of worker bees, has expanded. So we've adopted Droppy on the far right. These are DPU's little icons. And Blinky. And we've adopted Prickles, who's the little prickly pear. She cares for the environment. Loopy is the close the loop, recycle, reduce, reuse. And then we have Scrappy, who is our apple, reminding us to keep food out of the landfill. And then the gear is mobility, so focused on walking, biking, carpooling, UV riding. So you'll start to see these more and more as we launch our campaigns. This launched at Earth Day and Water Festival. We did a climate action bingo, and we're also currently working on a pledge wall that you'll see at Science Fest and some other educational initiatives. So keep a lookout for all of that. Additionally with this that you'll start to see hopefully for the next update are metrics on how we're starting to see behavior change. All right. So what's actively underway right now? Another one of our climate actions is to adopt green building standards. So we wanted to take a step back before obviously making any big decisions and understand how our current building codes are performing in relation to what we'd like to see in terms of green building performance. So we have Eli Isaacson with us here tonight and he'll provide a more detailed overview on what that looks like next. So what's coming next? So We're finalizing, actually this is hot off the press as well. We're actually going to have a pre-proposal conference on Thursday, so day after tomorrow, to establish a food composting collection and management services. So we have been working on food composting for many, many years and we're coming to a good place with this. So hoping to share more with you all on that and what comes of that. We'll also be developing an RFP to conduct a vulnerability assessment and then also to provide energy audits. It was really difficult to find local companies and certified energy auditors, and we have a lead on some local companies that may be able to do that kind of work. Promoting green stormwater infrastructure and low-impact development, expanding mixed-use transit-oriented development policies, and supporting our local food systems. So these are all things that we're beginning to work on and towards. Environmental Sustainability Board. So they're focused on contributing to the completion of this plan or implementation of the plan. They most recently helped with the fleet conversion and community-wide charging plans. They helped develop their recommendation for the proposed plastic bag ordinance that you'll hear about tonight. And then we've done many education and outreach events as well. So with that, I will stand for questions.

Okay, so this is just an update tonight. So this part just is informational. So if there's any questions or comments from councillors, councillors,

Yeah, thank you, Chair. So we had a little briefing from the BPU about a month ago for Bob Gibson, and I was trying to get what is the technology we're going to do for this carbon zero electricity? So we have the solar panels, but how many batteries do we have to buy and how much will that system cost? And Bob didn't answer it. He said, hope some technology came along that we could use. But what is the estimate at current numbers? How much will that cost?

Chair Reidy and a phone a friend. Thank you, Philo.

You seem like you have to cover the nighttime, right? With the batteries?

Yeah, Chair Reidy and Councillor Rieger. We have 80 megawatt, four-hour battery, so you multiply that by four, 320 megawatt hours of energy stored. It doesn't cover the whole night with the lab and Sandia, but it covers our peak periods, primarily the Use it for peak shaving when energy is expensive. That's what our time of use rate is bracketed between the 5 and 11 p.m. The cost, you asked. Solar energy is $38 a megawatt hour. That's what's produced. Battery is different. You pay a monthly charge, and that's $13 a kilowatt hour. month so kilowatt times a thousand so then you know it's it's a there's not an it's a power purchase agreement so we pay a monthly charge for the battery to have that capacity to deliver every night or every day depending on how we use the battery the 320 megawatt hours well how how

So you're saying 320 megawatt hours is how much we need? Is stored.

So I guess if you just took the county alone, like our peak, we're peak at 20 megawatt hours. Yeah, and then you need 10 hours stored. The lab is in the 80s. 80 range on a peak right now. So collectively a hundred. So that covers like if we're all at peak, you know, 95 degree day, everyone's using air conditioners. when they get home from five to eight or whatever that, you know, that would last three hours and 20 or, you know, so many minutes.

So how many batteries do we have to buy? And, and is it really, I can't calculate hundreds of millions of dollars to buy enough batteries to, to go to complete zero.

Sure. Is that correct? That, that long-term storage is the technology that's emerging and we're looking at, other technologies to fill that gap. And also, but you don't have any numbers cause it's not even invented. It's, it's not available to, it's not available to buy.

So there's nothing you can buy that I could actually achieve the plan for any reasonable amount of money. If you have to use existing technology, it's going to be two or $300 million or something worth of batteries.

Or then we can even bond. You know, I could ask someone to put a, uh, number together to estimate. I couldn't tell you just standing here without looking at our full load profile to figure that out. But I can tell you that there is a lot of promising emerging technology that's out there that some of the other public power agencies are starting to demonstrate from One that's called an energy dome that uses compressed carbon dioxide, releases it into a dome, and then recompresses it. you know, when there's daytime solar excess energy. There's other, all the iron battery that's under development.

So there's quite a few utility scale research projects. Nobody has a number for what that costs or anything.

They show promising return on investment because you have to look at the energy return. You know, does it take... You put 100 in, do you get 50 back? Or do you, you know, the efficiency, round-trip efficiency, that's some of the things we're looking at.

But if you had to build it, it says 2040, so that's coming up pretty soon. If you had to build it with existing technology, would it cost $300 million?

I can't say that at this point. I do know we're... That number wrong? No, I think it depends how you amortize things over the years and how you're using it. So another example that we're looking at is geothermal energy that's a round-the-clock resource. So you do blended resources, not all battery. Battery is not the full solution. We're looking at nuclear, geothermal as other opportunities to meet those goals.

But none of that's underway at this time. I mean, it's just research projects that other people are doing, but there's nothing we can buy.

We have a project called Rototherm. They've actually drilled the pilot wells, and we're in the development stage to size up that project.

So that's the project in Idaho?

It's in Beaver, Utah. Utah.

Yeah.

Well, anyway... You can't give me a specific number because you don't know how much the technology will cost. And depends on the selected technology. Yes, sir. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions?

Yes. Thanks for your presentation. Um, so as we get closer to the food composting, um, How are we anticipating collecting food materials from the community? And I mean, people like me that want to compost and maybe don't have composting capabilities at my home. What are we anticipating?

Sure. Sure. Ready. Counselor Cole. So our initial thoughts. Our plan for that has been providing drop-off locations for residential customers. So having two centrally located convenience centers, for example, at Lemon Lot or the White Rock Overlook Collection Center would be an initial start to something like this. We're also, I think we've included in the RFP as well to look at long-term community expansion. So to start with, we'd like to start small and manageable and make sure the project would be feasible. So we would start mostly with commercial because there are some of our largest food producers within the community and offering the drop-off locations for residential. But those are still details that will need to be worked out.

Okay. I was just curious what you were thinking about. And are you thinking at all as residents, folks need to transport food waste, are you considering compostable bags or anything like that, providing those to members of the community?

I think those are in our initial plans to provide some education along with some tools that would help residents and businesses to participate successfully. Okay.

So you mentioned also in your presentation that you're looking at metrics for behavior change. So I'm assuming that might include EV adoption or energy efficiency progress, things like that. Yes, exactly. I'm looking forward to seeing how we measure that. So thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Councillor Cole.

Do we have any councillor or anyone?

Thank you, Chair. Quick question for you. On slide number 11, Juan, are you able to pull that one up? Thank you. I just had a quick question because I noticed that we were in the negative. So the question is, do you have an estimate? I can feel it coming. Sorry. Do you have an estimate as to when we'll be in the positive? Because on slide 11, we're in negative.

Chair Reidy, Councilor Neal-Clinton, we don't have those numbers yet. I know we have slightly changed the fee to this past July to start to close that gap. But until usage increases, it's going to be hard to close that gap for the financial deficit. So it's either raise the rates, which would be really unfavorable and not competitive to, you know, utilize those type of chargers or encourage usage of EV chargers and EV vehicles.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Councilor Newton. Councilor Abramowitz?

Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Ms. Grillet for working so consistently on this. I just think that this whole plan in its entirety and holistically is so important because there are so many costs to doing nothing for society at large. Costs that we all bear as citizens of this planet and we all need to do our part. So I'm really glad that we're ticking away at it and setting examples. And some of these things are long-term And we all just have to be patient a little bit and keep plugging away and keep encouraging and keep modifying behavior. I want to follow up on Councillor Neil Clinton's question. One way to increase utilization of our chargers, and we're going to have new ones at Mesa Public Library, is to accelerate the adoption of EVs in our county fleet. I'm still disappointed by the rate at which we're doing that. I understand the challenges. So I just want to keep saying that I would like us to do better than two to four. And it's two to four for all of next year. That bums me out. And I sure hope it's four, not two. And I wish it could be more. And then we could charge those at all our new chargers that we've put everywhere. Although I know a chunk of them are going to be out at the property cliffs. But so that's that point. Following up on Councilor Call's question about the composting, it sounds like the RFP that's about to go out will have the details of the program for the near term. I'm curious, is that term, is it going to be for a three-year contract, a five-year, one-year? Do you know yet? Maybe the procurement folks know that better.

Sure, righty, Councilor Havenman. I think with something that's such a big investment and we're trying to build a program, we're looking at longevity. So I imagine we'll try to aim for that seven-year procurement, but all those details haven't been worked out yet.

So then while this is still being developed and we've got time, I would certainly hope that if it's a seven-year plan, I hope that we don't commit ourselves to seven years of only having a couple drop-off places in the county. I would hope that it's a plan that says we want to socialize this a little bit, figure out what works, what doesn't work. providing education and compostable bags to residences if they're not composting at home already, which I do and I love doing it. But I would hope we'd get to the point where so many other places have done across the planet where you have curbside and you have a bin that's actually bigger than your trash bin and you put your compostables in there and it gets picked up. And I know that means more trucks and all the things. So I just hope that the RFP maybe takes that into account maybe in years five, six, seven.

Councilor Haveman, I think we read your mind, and we definitely wanted to include that in the RFP, so there are considerations for that.

Outstanding. Then I've got a question on some of the metrics. Okay. in the dashboard. Sure. Um, so for example, it's just, I think this whole dashboard thing is new to all of us. So I think, you know, at least for me, I'm still trying to learn. Um, cause I, cause I guess I look at it, I look at it and I see, okay, we'll just take T1.1, which is transportation 1.1 promote EV adoption. We're at 66%. Yet when you look at the graph, which looks like a rainbow, it It looks like it's only 50%, you know, as far as an image, but the number says 66. And then you got to look at the little legend and there's three different colors. I don't really understand what they mean. And I don't know how we can be at 66% of our goal of EV adoption when we've only We've only electrified a small percentage of our fleet so far. So maybe the goal is to, we've got the goal. And that was, you know, we've got the plan. So maybe that's what we've achieved.

Well, the goal is promote EV adoption.

Just to promote it.

Right. So that's one of the action items.

Is that community-wide or within the county?

Community-wide. Okay.

That's what I thought.

Right. And then the way Achieve-It works, we brought that exact point to them. Like the bar graph doesn't match that. where our minds think 50% is or 60% is. They can't do anything about that.

They is the software company that we do this with?

Right. Really? Okay. Yes, that's been a point we have brought to their attention. But this specific one is to promote EV adoption. So this is just to build campaigns that would promote EV adoption with the community. So, so far we've secured the vendor that's helping us with that. So that was, you know, a third of this work. And we're currently developing the campaigns right now. So once we issue those out to the community and share them out with community, we'll have met that goal for the year, but this is an ongoing goal. So this will renew year after year.

Yeah. And you know, the fact that we have charging stations available and accessible, maybe that could help, but I think that's all part of it all goes together. Although a lot of people who buy them here are going to, probably charge at home. I don't know, the lab needs to be a partner on this too, obviously, in the schools.

The lab has quite a robust EV charging network.

Yes, which is good. And then we're 0% on commuter trip reduction program. And that's just, is that because we just haven't had a chance yet? When I say we, staff and the ESB to work on this yet?

Right. So this is an initiative we'd like to start working on this year.

Okay. Okay. This year, meaning still in this calendar year.

Yeah.

So maybe next time we see this, we'll see some progress on that.

Yes.

Okay. And hopefully employees, is there going to be a plan like to, to, to incentivize employees to, um, carpool, take public transportation, because that's what we're talking about, right?

Yes. Yeah.

County employees.

What are the components to help incentivize commuter trip reduction?

Okay. All right. Well, thanks again. I appreciate everything you guys are doing.

You're welcome.

Okay. Thank you, Councilman. So let's see. I had a couple questions or comments. So one, both actually, Councilor Reeder and I would add, last session at NACA we went to had to do with the partnership and I think did share out the slides on the composting program that they had, which was basically part of the trash. Just put a special bag in and there was a robot that picked out the... So there's a scale difference, but it seems like It provides something aspirational that we could look at trying to do, whether or not it's just for our trash or regionally, since it is a big part. I mean, the other interesting thing was that they have a state law that says you can't put any yard waste in the trash. So obviously, solid waste is kind of an issue around the country, and different places have come up with other solutions. So I think it's always good to look at those. Then I guess I'll be the third one to comment about the EV charging. It seems like the EV charging doesn't even cover the cost of electricity. So if we have more people use it, we're not necessarily going to make it break even because it wasn't the infrastructure cost. It was like, if you look at the cost of electricity line item, unless that's changing because of time of use, no, maybe not. So I think that's something to look into when we look at this again. is what is the rationale? What's the reason? And so obviously some of the baseline costs I think are for like operating. But then, so I was curious about that. So Mr. Sheldon came up to try to answer that.

Just, yeah, Chair Reidy, part of the challenge with the EV charging is the demand charge. So you get a 60 kilowatt charger out there. they get charged this, that demand charge right up front. Okay. Uh, for one time use. So if we can get it used more often, it spreads it out. Okay. Over the month. So maybe we can report on that a little better. Yeah. We'll break out the demand charge versus electric usage.

That would be helpful. I think for seeing, cause I, that point was lost when, when you just look at that. Okay. Um, so that's good. Um, So another thing I wanted to ask about, especially with all the hot weather that's already been mentioned, but I was noticing that we do label the cooling centers at the county, and we've asked businesses if they're going to be a cooling center. But then it occurred to me that a lot of locations will not be open. It just stays warm late. They can come to a council meeting and listen here. on Tuesday nights till whenever we'll say talking as long as they need to stay cool. Um, but that isn't a general case. Right. So, um, have we looked at that? I was just curious about that. Um, so, cause it doesn't want, it's something that we've already kind of done. So it's not part of the metric. That's one of those mitigation things I know we've talked about and you've already kind of done part of it, but are we, are we evaluating that? Cause it seems like that is something I was trying to find it. I couldn't, find it. So it's probably in one of the other metrics that we don't have as a priority for this year.

Chair, righty. I don't even believe that was a cap item. It was an initiative because we understood this is a community need or something we wanted to get ahead of. But it's something that we can relook at and try to see how we can accommodate the nighttime

Yeah, right. Because I think that seems like that is an issue. And then with the, you know, increased heat, and we heard Mr. Shelton mention air conditioning, but so that's another issue with, you know, the whole people are buying more air conditioners or mini splits, right? Which the mini splits might be more efficient, but you're still using more power if all you had before was a fan.

Right.

So oh, and then I did want to clarify this 2040 carbon neutral goal. Isn't that one that existed before the Climate Action Plan? Because I thought we had debated about changing it. Isn't that a BPU, DPU goal from a while ago?

It's a county goal. These are county goals.

It's a county goal, but it was a utility goal before it was a county goal. We didn't change it. We didn't make it sooner or later.

I don't believe so. When we adopted the cap, all these goals were included as part of the cap.

So maybe Mr. Sullivan can answer that just for the record.

I don't remember this specific date, but it's probably been a decade as a DPU goal, but it's carried into the county's plan.

Right. I understand. So it's not something new. We've been working towards it for a while. Okay. Okay. I'm not seeing any other questions or comments.

I need to hand it over to Eli. Oh, that's right.

I tried to do this last week too. So we're not done yet.

Okay.

But do we want to take public comment on this item now or do you want to, we do have someone who wants to make public comments.

So yeah, just state your name for the record. Crystal Cheney. Um, I'm actually kind of passionate about the electric vehicle thing. Um, I have a plug in hybrid, um, You're saying that you're not even covering the cost of electricity. There is a reason I don't plug in when I come here. You're charging $0.23 a kilowatt hour. It's 11 at my house. That's more than 100% more than I pay at home. I would love to top off. It'd be great. It's just too expensive. Guys, you're pricing yourself out of existence here. Yeah, you don't have utilization. And the reaction is to increase the price to recover the cost? Lower it. make 10% on the electricity or whatever it is, you're going to get a lot more adoption. The other issue, and this is systemic and it's not something you can fix now, but maybe you can fix going forward, is you need to provide chargers where people are. I tried to get the county to put chargers on my commercial property in White Rock. I will donate the land. In fact, if you carve out the space, I'll put the chargers in if you give people a place to park. They thanked me for my offer, and that was the end of that. But you've got to have chargers. They need to be next to the grocery store. They need to be on the curb downtown, not stuck off in some place where, yes, visitors might have to go, where they can't do anything except sit there and watch their car charge. You know, again, that's a going forward thing. But for right now, just do an experiment. Do three months and lower the price down to barely over your cost of electricity and see what happens. Advertise it and see if people actually start using the chargers. Just not going to get adoption when you're charging more than 100%, more than I can charge at home for.

Okay. Mr. Lucini, anyone else here want to comment on the carpet? Please come up and just state your name again.

My name is Laree Mitchell. My question is, in 10 years, will I have to move because I cannot afford an EV? Is that all this town will be, is EV? I'm just posing a question to think about. Some of us, not everyone that lives up here is wealthy, and EVs are very expensive. So I just wanted to pose that, that many of us can't participate because we're not financially able. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, just to clarify, the plan is not requiring anyone to do anything as an integer. Okay. Any other comments? Mr. Rell, can you check online to see if there's any public comment? If you're online and you'd like to comment on this item, please raise your hand.

Not seeing anything, Chair.

Okay. Did you forget something you wanted to say?

I would like to have you all post that at Smith's, they accept all soft plastic bags, potato chips, grocery bags, potato chip bags, dog food bags, plastic mailers. Time up and not at both entrances at Smith's to the sides, put your plastic bags there. Telling us we can't use plastic bags isn't going to help. There are receptacles just inside the doors and If you pass an ordinance that apartments and homes have to have a recycle bin and at least request that they recycle paper and their cardboard, because where I live, we have, there's 70 apartments here and there's one tiny recycle bin. And I've requested numerous times for there to bring in the crusher boxes bin and I get no response from them. So I would just like that to be posed, but plastic, Saying we can't use plastic bags isn't going to change anything. Having everyone engage in recycling them and capturing them, they go out in a huge, because I used to work at Smith's, they go out in a huge plastic bag that they tie up. It goes out with all the crushed boxes. So they do get put somewhere. I don't know if they get recycled, but at least they're captured and they're not in the water supply. Okay, I'm done.

Okay, thank you.

I hope we can do something about the deer situation. Where we live, it's a little highway for them. Many come through with that god-awful fungus on them and relocating or doing something with that. Is there an ordinance here where you're not allowed to feed them?

That's correct.

There is? Yeah. A lot of people do anywhere where I live. We get bears, bobcats, and deer. Okay, anyway, I'm wondering about the compost. We already have a bear issue and we do not compost will compost invite bears.

Okay, well, we can, we'll address that question here. So thanks for the other questions, too. So we'll, we'll tackle the plastics one a little bit later. But yeah. Oh, yeah, that was okay. Some Miss Gurley, can you address the question about the wildlife? Because that's been topic for the composting. So I think the new one is the closed container. Is that now the new technology we're using? So you want to just explain that briefly?

Sure. So what we're planning to do is collect any food waste using a bear-resistant roll cart. So it won't be susceptible to bear attacks, or at least it'll be able to resist that in some way. including the drop-off locations will have bear-resistant collection containers as well. And the purpose of this RFP is to hire a company that would collect and manage the food composting for us off-site. So again, to reduce the human-bear interactions.

Yeah, because it won't be at the ecostation anymore. Right. Okay. Okay, so I think we're ready for Mr. Isaacson.

Thank you, Chair Reiting, members of the council. As Ms. Gurule mentioned in her presentation, one of the CAP guidelines goals or action items is to adopt green building standards. And as Angelica mentioned, before doing so, we thought it would be worthwhile to share a little bit about where the base codes have gone in recent cycles in capturing energy efficiency and requiring high performing buildings. So those codes that we currently use here at the county are the International Building Code, the IBC, the International Residential Code, the IRC, and the International Energy Conservation Code, the IECC. And I'll be referencing those codes quite a bit in my presentation. So next slide, please. So again, the CAP action BE 1.4 is adopt green building codes. So There's the base codes. Those are the IBC, the IRC, and the IECC that I just mentioned. But then many local jurisdictions adopt what are called reach codes or also sometimes references stretch codes that go beyond what these base building codes require. The intent of these codes is oftentimes to reduce fossil fuel consumption and improve energy performance in new buildings. And there are some communities in our area, such as Santa Fe, with the HERS ratings and other cities around the country, like Seattle, that do require or that have implemented and adopted local green building codes. Some of the impacts of these reach or stretch codes, they increase hard construction costs. I think those are understood. Oftentimes the additional performance is gained through additional air tightness in building envelopes, additional insulation in roofs and walls. also higher efficiency appliances and lighting and things like that. So all of that comes with a cost. They disproportionately burden smaller projects. Oftentimes it's these larger projects that have the economies of scale to absorb these added costs. And they only apply to new construction. And some remodeling, but again, it's only new construction, whether it's new buildings or changes to existing buildings. And where we see the largest source of building energy consumption happening is in our existing buildings. which are unaffected by these codes. And the performance gains, and I'll go into this in a little more detail, above the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code, which we have adopted here in Los Alamos County, are minimal and shrinking with every subsequent code cycle. And we can look at some of the trends of where our base codes are going. Next slide, please. So an alternative path to adopting green building codes that in many ways achieve a lot of the same goals is to continue to adopt the newer code cycles, whether it's the 2021 that we have now, the 2024, which is out, or, you know, and then we'll see these trends continue into 2027. And I suggest that this approach of simply adopting the base codes is not an approach of inaction, but it's one of precision, really letting these base codes do the heavy lifting for us in terms of achieving high-performance buildings and energy efficiency and investing those additional resources in things like education and implementation. So here's just a quick look at 20 years of continuous improvement in our base codes. So the ICC, the International Code Council, publishes new code additions every three years to triennial cycle. And each cycle since 2026 has really delivered measurable efficiency gains. So many folks are familiar with LEED, Leadership and Energy Efficient Design. That's what LEED stands for. And that really started around 2006. As we move forward into 2012, 2015, 2018, we see sort of adoption of things that were common in reach codes, things like blower door testing, tighter envelope requirements, LED lighting and other efficient fixtures. Those are now being implemented in these base codes, so they no longer need to adopt a reach code to get that same requirement and that same standard and efficiency. In 2021, which is the current code that's adopted by Los Alamos County, we see a 9.4% energy efficiency gain over the previous code cycle, which was 2018. And the 2024 builds on that to gain even almost 8% more energy efficiency over the 2021 cycle. And these numbers are coming from both ICC as well as DOE, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, works closely with ICC to do the testing and to come up with these efficiency numbers. So again, the 2021 IECC, that's the International Energy Conservation code. This is what we already require. Sort of key provisions included in this code include mandatory blower door testing. That's about air tightness in the building. Mandatory duct leakage testing. Again, this is all about efficiency of our systems. Our values, that's the amount of insulation in our walls, slabs, and ceilings. These have been tightened for zones, climate zones four and five. Los Alamos is climate zone five. Looking for 90% of lighting fixtures to be LED fixtures. And that's, again, a major improvement over just what was required a few years ago. And then windows in Los Alamos, looking at really the energy efficiency of our windows for the U-factor requirements. Those are also increased in the 2021 code. which is an improvement of the 2018 code. And this is really relevant here in Los Alamos because we have a heating dominant climate. So what was once a green code or in our stretch or reach codes is now, as I mentioned, included in our base codes. Things like blower door testing is now mandatory. Air tightness standards is now mandatory. Duct leakage testing is now mandatory. EV-ready conduit in our buildings is now mandatory. That's required by the New Mexico Administrative Code Sections 14.7.6.12 and 14.7.9.12 . Solar-ready design, that is not something that's been adopted. That's part of the appendix that the county did not recommend or did not adopt, excuse me, And the recommendation here would be adopt that in the future with our next code cycle adoption to adopt that appendix. But again, high performance installation is now a minimum code requirement. And LED lighting efficiency, which once was a green building incentive and part of a rebate program, is now effectively a standard in the codes. So, again, asking, you know, I know the CAP BE 1.4 was to adopt green building codes, but I think based off the improvements in efficiency in recent code cycles, I think it's a reasonable question to ask is, are reach codes still the best approach? And, you know, they do come with costs, right? There's added cost to redevelopment. The marginal performance gains of the reach codes versus the base codes is diminishing. There's requirements, there's a need to work with our local contractors and things like that to make sure they're aware of any local amendments or reach codes that are layered on top of the base codes. And as I mentioned, what we're seeing is this trend of improved energy efficiency is included in the 2024 IECC cycle, and we anticipate to see those gains continue into subsequent cycles such as the 2027 code. And so what is included in the 2024 code? Again, this is the cycle beyond what we've adopted. There's electrification readiness, battery storage readiness, credits for mechanical efficiency of our HVAC systems, expanded options for compliance, which provides a little more flexibility for builders to hit the performance targets, increased air tightness of doors and windows, and requiring all renovation lighting is upgraded to meet efficiency standards.

So that's what's in the 2024 cycle.

And this is just looking at sort of that trajectory that I mentioned of the energy efficiency gains compared to the 2026 code. So we saw a 5% increase between 2006 and 2009, 15 between 2006 and 2012, 22 between 06 and 15. And that continues to where you know, The 2024 code represents a 40% efficiency gain since 2006 and 17% efficiency improvement in 21 and 24 codes combined just compared to the 2018 code. And the 2024 is our next adoption target. However, we are waiting on direction from the state as to whether that code will be adopted and when. And so the recommendation is taking the following approach to cap goal BE 1.4 is to proceed not by adopting reach codes, but rather by educating the community, educating our contractors and applicants incentivizing energy efficiency in new construction and renovation, and setting up a system to track building performance by building a baseline for new construction energy performance consistent with CAP goal BE 1.2. And so with that, I'd be happy to take any questions.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Isaacson. We'll just take questions or comments. Councillor Hedman.

Thank you, Chair Reidy. Thanks, Mr. Isaacson. This was very informative and helpful. Can we put that last slide back up, please? On the incentivize, don't mandate. So what would, I mean, are some incentives under consideration out of your department right now?

So the incentives are, There's a few incentives, possibly, that might come out of my department. But I think in developing the list of incentives that we would be able to offer as a county, we would have to work really closely with DPU as well. And there are some... In talking with staff in the department, I'm not... Totally, it's not totally clear to me what the full slate of options are in terms of creating the incentives there. But I mean, I think some of the incentives are just naturally built into taking on these energy efficiency improvements in buildings. So you'll see a decrease in utility bills. both in terms of, you know, creating tighter buildings that aren't losing heat and cooling to the outside, lowering your overall consumption and things like that. So I think that there's a natural incentive built into doing some of these improvements. But in terms of offering incentive programs to applicants, we work closely with DPU to figure out what those are and what we have available to us as a county.

So if we had a new development going in, say it's a new elementary school, say it's a new small manufacturing business, say it's a new restaurant, and we want them to provide EV charging, or we want them to be at least solar ready, if not have solar panels on the roof already, if we want them to have water catchment, et cetera, some of the things that we would like to see community-wide, if we'd like to see them do more composting, Is there any kind of a way that we could monetarily incentivize this to happen? Because, you know, you're saying because you kind of said, well, we're going to incentivize, not penalize. But if there's no incentives other than, hey, thanks, then your first slide. You know, in your first slide, you said that that can be, you know, detrimental cost-wise for businesses to do those things or developers or builders. So I wonder about that. And then I also, well, I'll hold my next part. Thank you.

So, Chair Reidy. Councillor have them in. So the school is a little bit of a different example, just because the permitting for state buildings doesn't come through the county. So that's a little bit of a different animal. But in the example of a small manufacturing or a new, you know, mixed use or retail project restaurant, you know, we do have some incentives built into the land use code, for instance. The provision of EV charges does reduce your required parking, which is a savings to the developer or the owner of the property in that they can use more of their property for, you know, for the building and less for a sort of surface parking let's say so so though that is an example of some of the incentives we already offer um things like solar ready and things like that um again those would be i think if i could uh use my phone a friend i think that would probably be a question better answered by by mr shelton um but i think you know In some ways, I think we would like to see the development community see the cost advantages of doing some of these things, whether if they're not in a position to add solar into their project now, having that sort of built into having the conduit available and things like that would allow them to make that conversion much more cheaply if they include it in the sort of initial project rather than trying to retrofit. So some of the incentives are just incentives that we're hoping that through the education our applicants and our developers will see the advantages of including some of these energy efficiency features in their buildings on their own without having to provide a monetary incentive.

Sure. It's just like if you're building a new heck mill. if you're fortunate enough to build a new house, you're going to try to put in energy-efficient windows and high-efficiency heating, et cetera. But I guess on that line, you know, and we don't need to phone a friend unless other people want you to, but I just kind of meant that as an example. Like, if we're going to say we're going to incentivize, and I was just curious about what's the meat behind that, other than recognition and education. And then next... What can we do to encourage electrification and, for example, installation of heat pumps rather than gas furnaces? And related to that, then I guess is. you said we're kind of waiting for the state on the adoption of the 2024, which is now, you know, coming up on three years old code revision. Is that something that gets done by the state legislature or is that a office of the state engineer decision or? building people at the state? Who makes sure this gets adopted and what can we do to expedite that?

So the code adoption is led by Constructions Industries Division, BID. And the local jurisdictions don't adopt a code until after the state has adopted it. And so we really take their lead on future code cycle adoptions. And oftentimes those are three years Typically, we wait three years after the code is released to adopt it. So that's the 2027 timeframe. We have received some initial indications that the state of New Mexico may not adopt the 2024 and may go straight to the 2027. We've asked the CID for some clarification on that. I don't believe we've received it yet, but we did try to get that information ahead of tonight's presentation. Unfortunately, I can't provide much more detail than that at this time.

Okay. So I guess regardless, we, we as a community have a policy to try and goals to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce natural or eliminate natural gas usage by 2070, be carbon neutral by 2050, et cetera, et cetera. And really that means we need our buildings to be all electric. So, you know, the whole thing where like it, like if you do that just for the new buildings, then you still have the problem of the existing inventory. Well, I guess you could use that in earthquake areas, right? You know, it just takes a long time to get all the buildings to be earthquake resilient. So we just, I guess we just, I just, we just need to somehow keep plugging away at it and not saying you're not, I just kind of reminding that I think that's important. And we got to do what we can to figure out how to make sure that our new buildings don't have natural gas plugins in my in my perfect world. And that I don't see how we meet our goals if we don't do that anyway. So I'm not trying to be a dictator on that. Just saying that's what we need to do to meet our goals. Okay, that's all. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Do we have any other questions or comments? So I'm just curious about this 20-year comparison. So 20 years ago, were the building materials and methods available to get that 40% reduction that we see in the new building code? I mean, it's basically the 20, so the 2021. So could somebody have built a building in 2006 that would have been 40% more efficient or are there things we just didn't understand how to do 20 years ago?

That's a cherry. That's an excellent question. I think it's a combination of things. I think it is. Um, so remember these codes are minimum standards, right? And so back then the minimum standard resulted in a less energy efficient building. Um, there are new technologies available that, um, even we have some of them, a lot of us have them in our homes that are more energy efficient. So that's part of it as well. But I think, could you add, several inches more insulation to the outside of a building in 2006 and get some of that performance that we get now? Yes. You know, how readily available were some of the high efficiency heating and cooling systems? How available were the high efficiency lighting and things like that in 2006? You'd have to, you know, we'd have to go back and look at that. And then also there's a cost component to this as well, right? And so while Some of these 40% more, you may have been able to physically construct a building that was 40% more efficient in 2006. What was the cost associated with gaining that additional efficiency? And would somebody, unless they were very sort of motivated to achieve a very high performing building, would it be reasonable or feasible for them to build in that way? And so I think there's multiple factors that go into where that increased efficiency is is coming from um so i don't want to say you couldn't do it but i think there were some things that we've some advances we've made in the last 20 years that have made those buildings uh more financially feasible or more easily okay this one wants to add something to those two so let her before i ask my follow-on question that relates to not 20 years

I can't resist on this one because 20 years ago, I was an architect in private practice, and absolutely, it was possible. We were doing projects for schools that were exceeding the minimum standards by 40 or more percent, and sometimes even up to 60%. But you've got to keep in mind, you've got to think about the region, and you've got to think about what tools you had. And what we had available to us was geothermal. I would say solar has made leaps and bounds compared to the technology we had 20 years ago. But geothermal and all the insulating properties and other things, we've had that capability for 20 years. I do think there's more of a market on the residential for – because remember, residential construction doesn't require an architect, and a lot of it is more – off the shelf type stuff, products. And I do think that there is just so much more available for residential. Now there used to be 20 years ago.

Okay. So I don't want to go back 20 years now, but just go back five years. Right. So it seems like, again, there's probably, probably you could have done five, you know, five years ago, you could have done that. And I think it just seems like there is a societal consequence of like, we're using a lot more energy. The person's utility bills are a lot higher. They keep going up. So it just seems like I understand the logic of what you're saying, but somehow letting people know that you could save a lot of money is going to cost you more. And I think if the incentive is anything, is there some way for the county to facilitate, because I think there was a discussion about the unfortunate name tariff on bill financing, something like that. So on bill financing, where actually you, get more efficiency, and we assist in the financing because it is supporting your having lower bills and having a more efficient, you know, you have something that's got more value then as well. So I understand why you're suggesting this approach, but it seems like there has to be something else besides just, you know, it's a good idea. I think there has to be something more tangible for people to understand, yeah, you could actually invest Because it's not 20 years ago. It's not even five years ago, right? So the price structure, if you could have easily done this five years ago and saved a lot of money, it seems like, why are we? I understand that they're not requiring people. We're going to have that discussion very soon about not requiring people to do stuff, but letting people know that they can actually save a lot of money by doing this. It seems like it's a very important thing.

Chair Reddy, I wholeheartedly agree, and I think that's part of that education component to our residents as well as our contractors and other applicants that we're working with to really understand the tradeoffs of some of those initial higher costs with the payback over the life of the home or the product. And sort of seeing those lifecycle benefits to putting in high efficiency appliances, windows, et cetera. Yeah.

Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of thoughts. We do have energy efficient improvement program for income qualified that is underutilized. We try to promote it, but I just want to make sure that everybody knows we do have a program to assist people with energy efficiency upgrades to their home if they're income qualified. And so we'll continue to try to figure out how to promote that and get more use out of it. I would say that it is Our biggest challenge to what you suggest is the cost of construction. I actually don't know that it does pay off in a short enough amount of time for a lot of people. If they don't know, they're going to be here for that a lot in that house for a long time. We are seeing quite a bit of renovation activity on homes. So we're, you know, It's nice to see that people are improving their homes, but the more expensive it is and the more we drive up prices, the less people make any improvements. And so that doesn't really get us to our goal either. So it is a bit of an economic case that has to be studied. And we are looking at the on-bill financing, but it is not something that's – I mean, we're being targeted to pilot and figure it out, right? It's not coming to us as this is how you do it. We're coming to Los Alamos to help us figure it out. So I guess I just ask for your patience on that a little bit. Yeah.

Well, hypothetically, if it's like an improvement that's going to last 40 years, we could help finance it for, say, 15 even. Even for the subsequent owner, right? If it makes sense. I mean, if it actually saves people money, if it doesn't save anyone money, then it's not an economic arm that's going to work. Okay, I'm not seeing any other questions, comments, had enough discussion to talk about that. Do we have any public comment about this part? Looks like we have So just come up and state your name for the record again.

Chris Lucchini again. I did a commercial renovation down in Weyrock, which took far too long, 98% of which was my own fault, but it's a separate issue. Your comments on the economics of insulation. I'm extremely down with the whole green thing. My daughter is persuasive in a very irritating way on this. I disconnected the gas from my building. We have heat pumps. The insulation will never pay for itself, especially given the lack of the ability to insulate underneath the concrete slab, right? Can't be done. You know, as a design engineer, unless you design the entire building from scratch, so everything is properly insulated and works as a system, I could add R100 to my walls. It won't matter. The code went, during the time period that I was doing this, went from R38 to R60 for ceilings. I can't mechanically put R60 in my ceilings. There's not enough space. So economic reality has to actually be thoroughly understood. And yes, you can subsidize it and you can make something that's completely uneconomic maybe make sense. But that's what you're going to have to do. No rational person is going to go and retrofit their roof with R60. The costs are insane. You'll never get that money back on an existing build. On a new build, I don't know. Never done it. But I'm sure you've got design professionals that can research that. But it's not a small increase in cost. And the benefit, the way RFAC works, the benefit from going from R38 to R60 is not the ratio of those numbers. It's ever decreasing savings in heat transmission. So yeah, you very much need to look at the cost in opposing this. And then if that cost makes people not to do the renovation, you've lost.

Okay, I think I'm seeing anyone else. Maybe there's someone coming up. Okay.

Sue Barnes, 3406 Ridgeway Drive. It turns out that New York City passed a law banning natural gas hookups in new construction five years ago. Why can't we?

Okay, thank you, Ms. Marks. Seeing anyone else coming up? Chambers, Mr. Rock, can you? Oh, there's someone online.

Yes, there is, Chair. Just one second. Philip Gershke, you're now unmuted.

Thank you. It's Philip Gursky, 2025 East Hamas. I think that when the question of increased costs associated with newer efficiencies are compared against the availability of new housing for people who are at the entry levels of the process, one thing that has to be considered is if they cannot buy the houses because of the increased costs, the reduced operational expenses going forward aren't any benefit to them. So at least I think we need to compare what our goals are in various ranges and costs of housing and availability for people to get into housing initially and to compare that against the long-term values and trying to figure out which of these fairly, largely important goals on both sides, how you might manage the question of continuing to have new housing availability at entry levels that are more compatible with more people's ability compared to the longer term costs from some of the improvements by adopting each of the new rounds of base code

improvements uh thank you thank you miss kurski do we have anyone else on the line stephanie knockley you're now unmuted there can everyone hear me okay yes

I think this was a great discussion and a great presentation from the county. And I have a point that I think goes pretty nicely with Phil Gursky's point, actually. I haven't really heard anyone yet discuss emissions from transportation. And by increasing upfront construction costs, especially for smaller projects, we would be pushing more of our new housing and commercial development outside the county. And that means more driving. And those additional vehicle miles traveled with all of the greenhouse gas emissions produced really could offset or even outweigh the marginal efficiency gains we'd get from reach codes that would be applied to really just a relatively small number of new buildings. So I'd like us to be careful that whatever approach we go with doesn't accidentally increase GHGs by promoting sprawl and longer commutes. It might be more climate effective to keep adopting the latest base codes for building efficiency while focusing extra effort on infill development and existing building upgrades and reducing driving overall. I would love to see the county model, how many greenhouse gas emissions could be saved by building housing that can turn most of our commuters into residents. And that's all. Thank you.

Ms. Knackley, do we have anyone else online?

I'm not seeing anyone else, Chair.

Okay. So thank you both for the presentations tonight. And so we'll be having another update here before the end of the year, I assume. So thanks. Any other?

No.

Oh. Chair, we just wondered if you wanted us to address the comment on the gas ban. Oh. Would you like that, or would you like us just to take that to a future?

I think, yeah, that's probably a longer discussion maybe, but if you want to have a brief answer to the natural gas question.

Sure. The status of that, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is U.S. Court of Appeals, which is basically the West Coast states and Montana and Alaska and the Marinara Islands, ruled that local governments could not ban natural gas hookups because of something called the Energy Policy Conservation Act, which is a federal law, which the Ninth Circuit ruled preempted local governments under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution from enacting bans. There is a split in the circuits. The second District US Court of Appeals, which is New York, Vermont, and Connecticut, ruled differently. They ruled that this act did not preempt local governments from enacting natural gas bans. That's why New York has its law in California. And the Justice Department is currently suing the holdout counties in California who still have these ordinances. So what you have is a split in the circuits on a fundamental question of local government power versus the federal government power. When that happens, the case will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court for resolution. So we don't have that resolution yet. So it is still very much an open question. It is banned in the West Coast states. That is a presidential holding controlling there. It is allowed in the Second Circuit. For the rest of the circuits, like us, we don't know. But that issue will have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court at some time in the future. That's where we are with that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lebar.

Okay. So I think that means we're ready to go on to the consent agenda. So we're on item six, which is public comment for items on our consent agenda. So just items on the consent agenda right now. So We have any public comment, not seeing anyone present. Mr. Farrell, can you look online for us?

Chair, I'm not seeing any online either.

Okay, so is there a councillor interested in making a motion on a consent agenda? Councillor Neill and Clinton?

I move that council approve the items on the consent agenda as presented and that the motions and the staff reports be included for the record. Second.

Okay. So motion by Councillor Neill-Clinton, second by Councillor Herrmann. Do we have any discussion? Okay, not seeing any discussion, Ms. Cull the roll.

Councillor Haviman? Yes. Councillor Wrighty? Yes. Councillor Hand? Absent. Councillor Cull? Yes. Councillor Rigor?

Yes.

Councillor Herrmann? Yes. Councillor Neill-Clinton? Yes. Motion passes 6-0 with counselor hand absent.

Okay. Let the record show the motion passes unanimously among the counselors present here tonight. So now we're on to item number eight, which is introduction of ordinances. We have two ordinances to introduce tonight. So 8A is CO0760-26. It's introduction of Incorporated County Los Alamos Code Ordinance Number 02-385, Ordinance Mending Chapter 40, Article 3, Sections 40, 151, and 52 of the Code of the Incorporated County of Los Alamos pertaining to gas service rates. Is there a councillor willing to read this one into the record? Council Cole?

I introduce without prejudice Incorporated County of Los Alamos Code Ordinance Number 02-385, an ordinance amending Chapter 40, Article 3, Sections 40-151 and 40-152 of the Code of the Incorporated County of Los Alamos pertaining to gas service rates and ask the staff to assure that it is published as provided in the county charter.

Thank you, Councilor Cullinan. So 8B is OR1148-26. It's an introduction of Incorporated County of Los Alamos Ordinance Number 760, an ordinance adopting a local economic development project for public support of VE Holdings NMLLC, a domestic liability company, limited liability company to qualify to conduct business in the state of Mexico. And I did want to note that we have... an attachment here on the dais. The public lead a public benefit evaluation summary. So I guess if that can be transmitted to the press, then with that, so I'm just looking to see as our counselor would like to read this one into the record. Councilor.

Thank you, Chair. I introduce, without prejudice, Incorporated County of Los Alamos Ordinance Number 760, an ordinance adopting a local economic development project for public support of VE Holdings NMLLC, a domestic limited liability company qualified to conduct business in the state of New Mexico, and ask staff to assure that it is published as provided in the county charter.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Herman. And so both of these ordinance are scheduled to come back for initial public hearing in two weeks. No, three weeks, end of the month. Okay, so we're now on to item number nine, which is public hearings. We just have one tonight. 9A is RE0695-26. It's in the Corporate County of Los Alamos, resolution number 26-17. approving the issuance by the Public Finance Authority of not to exceed $230 million of its workforce housing revenue bonds on behalf of Madrone, Los Alamos Housing 1 LLC. So this is related to the Coyote Mesa project. So we have Mr. Osborne here.

Good evening, Chair Reidy, members of council, Dan Osborne, Housing Special Project Manager. Before you tonight is resolution number 2617, which requests council approval for the public finance authority, the Wisconsin-based bond issuer for the Coyote Mesa project, to issue the tax-exempt workforce housing revenue bonds in an amount not to exceed $230 million on behalf of Madrone. The bond proceeds will fund the transfer, construction, and development of the Coyote Mesa project. which will bring much-needed workforce housing to our community. This includes the 380 total units, of which 120 of those will be county deed restricted for folks making between 60 and 100 percent AMI, in addition to 98 state restricted units for households earning up to 120 percent AMI. The council approval tonight fulfills the statutory requirements under the Wisconsin law in Section 147F of the Federal International Revenue Code, which requires the local government to approve after a public hearing the private activity bonds so they can maintain their tax exempt status. This action carries zero financial liability for Los Alamos County, the owner, Excuse me. Revenue bonds are a special limited obligation paid solely by the borrower and will not constitute debt, financial liability to the county or to the state of New Mexico. Staff and the county manager recommend approval of Resolution 2617. And with that, I would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Osborne. So this is an action item. So we're just looking for any technical or clarifying questions from council. Councilor Rieger?

Thank you, Chair. So how many of these costs are associated with infrastructure, like we don't have enough electricity and we need to put in a substation? Are those kinds of costs included in this bond?

Yes, this bond will cover the entire construction of the project. So all infrastructure, buildings, amenities, the FF&E, the furniture inside the buildings, this bond covers everything.

The sewers and the roads and even if we need a substation out there, it'll probably be part of it.

Yes, I mean, as part of the development, we're working through all of the engineering, so they are anticipating the cost of upgrading any of the substations or any of the transformers going to the project. Those transformers would be part of this, would be paid for through this bond issuance.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Rieger. Any other questions? Questions? Okay. I'm not seeing any. Let's see if there's any public comment for this item. Is anyone present? Want to make public comment? Is anyone? Mr. Rell, can you look online for us?

I'm not seeing any hands raised online, Chair.

Okay. Is there a councillor interested in making a motion regarding this item? Councillor Nicklund?

I move that council adopt Incorporated County of Los Alamos resolution number 2617, a resolution approving the issuance by the public finance authority of not to exceed $230 million of its workforce housing revenue bonds on behalf of Madrone of Los Alamos Housing 1 LLC for purposes of section 147F. of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as amended, and Wisconsin Statute Section 66.0304, Parent 11, Parent A.

Okay, thank you. Okay. So we have a motion by Councillor Neill-Clinton, second by Councillor Cull. Do we have any discussion? I'll just say that you should, you know, being able to prove this tonight because we did hear the comment about wanting to have more housing in the county. And this is one that we've been looking forward to seeing progress on. So it's good to see this able to facilitate the project further. So I think with that, let's call the roll.

Councillor Cole. Yes. Councillor Regor.

Yes.

Councillor Hand. absent. Councillor Haffeman?

Yes.

Councillor Herman? Yes. Councillor Neal-Clinton?

Yes.

Councillor Wrighty?

Yes.

Motion passes 6-0 with Councillor Hand absent.

Let the record show the motion passes unanimously with councillors present. Chair Wrighty, council, thank you. Thank you. Okay, so now we're on to item 10, which is business. 10A is 21622-26. It's discussion and possible action on recommendation from Environmental Sustainability Board on proposed single-use plastic bag ordinance. So we have Mr. Hampton and Mr. Gurley back and forth.

Good evening, Chair Reidy, Council. Can we bring up, I think it's the fifth attachment, the memo? So we're going to do a brief summary of what happened. So in April, we were given the assignment of re-evaluating a new plastic bag, a single-use plastic bag, carry-out plastic bag ordinance. So as soon as we got the assignment, we created a work group of three of our members, and they came up with a draft ordinance based on similar ordinances in surrounding counties, municipalities. And we held a... We held a public meeting, and before that, it was heavily publicized, so we collected lots of public comments on email and Cognito, and we even had our intern, your intern, compile information based on comments made on the Los Alamos County Facebook pages. So even though there's a widespread support amongst the board for education outreach to create voluntary change in practices, ultimately we decided that we weren't gonna support this recommendation largely because those reasons up there, but a lot of it was because there was substantial public opposition to it. And other reasons were Other reasons were there was, there's still a little bit confusion about what the payback would be. It seems like a small benefit for causing, small payback for causing widespread division within the community over this issue. And so we've, We voted unanimously not to recommend it to council at this time. With that, would you guys like to ask us questions?

Okay, thank you. So I think we would entertain any technical or clarifying questions from council. Councilor Abbott?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Hampton, and the ESB. I did have a question either for the ESB or for County Attorney's Office. The draft ordinance has a Section 7 outline kind of what they call penalties, you know, the fines to businesses who didn't comply with a plastic bag ban if it was put into ordinance. Was there a reason the penalty section was drafted the way it is? And related to that, do we have any flexibility in the structuring of those fines?

Chair Reidy, Councilor Havman, most inquiries I hear about that have to do with each day being a separate violation. I mean, we have flexibility in that. We could provide a minimal penalty. We could provide the maximum penalty allowed in our general penalty provision. But often I hear issue taken with the each day is a separate violation. And the reason that's there is because of double jeopardy provisions. You can charge people If it was only the one-day violation, we could charge them only for that one day and couldn't charge them if they continue to do it day after day. If you don't have that day-to-day provision, double jeopardy kicks in and you can't prosecute people for the same crime arising from the same facts. unless each day is a violation. So without a day-to-day sort of violation clause in these penalty provisions, you know, say our fine is $30 for each day, and you don't have the day-to-day provision, you just end up paying a – your penalty ends up really being a license to sell plastic bags for quite a while because we can't charge you again for a long, long time. The day-to-day provision, that's why it's there. It's a double jeopardy issue that you see in most codes everywhere because of that. So it's how much you're going to penalize and all of that. I mean, you have a maximum you can do as a municipality in municipal court because you don't have jury trials there, and it's outlined in our general penalty provision. That's the maximum penalty we can impose. But beneath that, council can craft any – penalty it wants to. It could also do away with the day-to-day violation, but that would, I don't know if that would meet the ends you want from an enforcement provision, which is there for the people who simply refuse to comply.

Okay, thank you. So what I'm hearing you say is, yes, we're not locked in to the dollar amounts that are specified in those four or five cases, four or five incidents, or violation numbers, sequences, and we don't even have to have a day to day thing. We could say, if you don't comply, we will charge you the fine again, maybe after one week, you could make it weekly, not daily, could you not?

Counselor Haven, Chair Reidy, those kind of questions go to fundamental sort of constitutional law questions about criminal law. So I would really need to look at that. But I would say these day-to-day violation provisions are common and are seen in just about every municipal code throughout the United States because of the double jeopardy provisions that are associated with criminal law. So if we want to structure it differently, you may sacrifice – an effective enforcement mechanism, and basically you'll have a declawed CAT of an ordinance. But council, I can advise council on various ways to impose penalties, and it would then be up to council to decide how effective they want their ordinance to be when it comes to trying to enforce it.

Okay. I'll elaborate on some thoughts I have on that in the comments section then. That's my only question right now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, I have a couple of questions on the memo and the evaluation by the Environmental Sustainability Board. The public engagement summary and the comments that were received, can you explain the difference in those first two engagement processes? What's different about where we got 66% opposed and 28% supported versus 49% opposed and 43% supported. What's the difference in those two surveys?

So the large difference between the comments occurred because when we used the Facebook comments, they were overwhelmingly in opposition of the ordinance. But when we filtered out the Facebook comments and just used email and Cognito, then it was 49 to 43.

Oh, okay. So it wasn't two different evaluations. You just eliminated certain comments. Okay. That makes sense. I appreciate that. And do you know, did you look at how many comments were maybe made by the same person? Did you look at that at all?

Yes.

And did you count? So if somebody made five negative comments, did it come out as five negative comments or was it one comment from one person?

Yeah, we're not sure. My suspicion is they just looked at all the comments, regardless of how many times the person made the comments. A lot of the overwhelming portion of the opposition was made by probably some people doing multiple posts on the county Facebook pages.

Okay. Thank you. And then I saw the statement you made that the board had held a range of personal perspectives on this topic. Can you elaborate on that a little bit without necessarily naming any names?

Yeah. So, I mean, some people, we actually, we had one person who actually spoke out that they didn't think the ban was the right way to do it. In other words, creating a mandate. We had others that thought that it would be a distraction from actually completing the climate action plan, because which is what we want to focus on, which is what we want the community to focus on, right? I think there was, in the middle of the summary, there was like 10 or 12 different comments, kind of outranked, you know. Did any one stand out for you? Any others?

County Council. So I think just like the last time this bag ban came forward, the board, some of the board members wanted to support a bag ban. But hearing the overwhelming opposition from the community members, they felt like their job as ESB members is to represent their fellow community members. So they had to put their feelings aside to vote to represent the community's desires as well. So there was some desire from some of the members to move forward to bag ban. However, at the end of the day, they made the decisions that they made.

Thank you. And this comment about widespread community division, I can name a number of topics where we probably would have widespread community division. And what I'm hearing is that the concern was that it might impede progress on the climate action plan because, I don't know, might have more pushback or is that what I'm hearing correctly?

I think it's more of the economics where, I mean, plastic bags, for instance, that's 1% of the plastic waste problem. 45% is packaging. So there's major categories, single-use plastics. So if we're going to do something, I want to go back to the comment you made during Councillor Hamm's presentation, where you said that if you're going to go for plastic recycling, you're really not accomplishing anything because When plastic is recycled, it's not made back into those various plastic elements. It's basically made into tracks or other items that are used to do decking and fences. And they will eventually end up in the landfill and not that far in the future. So they didn't really see. So for causing the amount of public outcry about it, for less than 1%, it's kind of a return on investment for effort kind of thing.

Was there any thought about listening to the negatives, potentially empowering those negatives when it comes to trying to achieve goals in the climate action plan?

So I want to say that the comments were about that it would create a distraction within the community. I mean, we'd like people to focus on electrification, energy conservation, composting, things like that, as opposed to how much they hate the idea that we banned single-use plastic bags.

Okay. I think that's all the questions for now. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Councillor Cole. Do we have any other, Councillor Ritter? Well, just one question came to mind. What did you mean by 1% of our landfill plastic is the bags?

Yeah, well, of all plastic waste.

Of all the plastic waste in the county, the plastic little bags at the stores?

I didn't look at the county specifically. I was curious. I Googled it, right, because I'm thinking...

They studied this somewhere else and about 1% of the mass or something. Yeah.

And they studied nationally, internationally. And so I also looked at plastic bottles cause I was curious and in the United States, plastic bottles only slightly more than 1%. I thought that was a bigger problem internationally. It's more like, I think, uh, 10 to 15%, but, um, yeah, it's pretty consistently just 1%.

Thank you. Thank you. Um,

concern thank you chair um so i guess i always just looked at this like it sends a signal it that our county cares about plastic recycling and um uh you know the the people out there that feel like this is um something that we should not be doing. I really have always felt like their concern was not as much about the environment as their pocketbooks. You know, and I just, I always felt like this just sends... the right message that our county cares about recycling and plastics and that you have to really start someplace. But I guess this just isn't the place to start.

with recycling, I believe we have the highest recycling rate in the state. So we, we have believers we have, we have, we're already sending the message, but I want to go back to one of the decisions I saw a previous council make where they decided when they were actually asked by staff, do you want to go with a mandate elimination for natural gas? And that council decided not to include the mandate in the climate action plan. So I think that, There was a reason for that, right? And I don't think it sent the signal that the county doesn't want to eliminate natural gas and electrify. It just sent the signal that we don't want to mandate it. And I think this is similar. And I think we heard that in Mr. Isaacson's presentation also.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Herman. Do we have another? So I think it's in all the details, but I just want to mention, because it's come up about, well, this is like the third time this has come up, right? So I think it was actually, so Councillor Havenman was on the Environmental Sustainability Board when it came up the first time in more than 10 years ago. And I don't believe it actually made it to council because of the vote that time. So I thought it was important because we had asked for this, this time, so council had asked to have this evaluated. that we bring it back, you know, just to complete the discussion. So that's why I felt like it was a little different this time. And then the time in between, in 2019, there was a citizen petition that came and requested that we look at this. And the result of that actually was the food waste composting program that we're hopefully finally going to get going here pretty soon because we looked at like what's the, what's in the waste and said, well, there's a lot of food waste and that may be a more effective thing to look at. So I know that isn't really a question, but I just thought that that was a little, I mean, it's great. Your, your summary of what you had the discussion. And I listened to the, the different board members and it just seemed like the, it was that, is it fair to say that, people wanted to not ban, have us ban single-use plastic bags, but they were very much in favor of minimizing the number of bags somehow, right, with some approach, whether it be, you know, county providing bags or some other approaches. So it wasn't like people that voted against the ordinance really were against minimizing single-use bags. And even people that said they used them, they said they also used reusable bags. So is that, if I'm remembering correctly, the discussion about like how much people personally used them and said, you know, don't ban them because we try to minimize and we would just use some other bag. We'd have to buy a bag. So that is in a cost argument, but wasn't that, isn't that accurate as to what people said?

Yes, and we even had some individuals say that, They support elimination of single-use plastic bags, but they don't support the ban itself.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm thinking we're going to have some public comment.

One more thing I'd like to say is that there is strong support in Environmental Sustainability Board for doing more work on lowering the use of plastic within the county.

Okay. Okay, before we try to recycle. So right, reduce first and then reuse and recycle. Okay, do we have anyone present that wants to make public comment on this item?

Hello, I'm Joyce Anderson, and I've been coming to plastic bag meetings since 2015. Just to make a little correction, Councillor, in 2015, the council did unanimously decline a plastic bag ban after the ESB studied it. I know because I was there at every single meeting and I kept a very detailed journal and that day in my journal has a gold star. I'm just here today to, well, first I'd like to just thank the ESB for their work on putting together the presentation. It was very thorough and very well done. And the discussion that we had at the July 16th ESB meeting was very productive. I felt that a lot of good questions were raised and very thoughtful comments about this issue. But it is the third time that it's come up. People still don't want this and There are other bigger issues That the county is facing just sitting here tonight. I Just really kind of hit that home to me that you're working on what's bigger things so my only My only thing I would like to just say is I would encourage you and ask that you please accept the ESB's recommendation tonight to decline on a bag ban and let people make their choices, the best choices for them and their family and their situation. Everybody reuses their plastic bags because you have to bag garbage in Los Alamos, so you can use your little flimsy Smith's bag, or you can go out and buy a heavier weight hefty bag or a glad bag. Alternative bags like cloth or other heavier plastics have environmental impacts as well and economic impacts. There's no perfect solution. There are only trade-offs. And so I just very, very strongly feel that people need to have options to make their own best choices. And it's just the county shouldn't be dictating my consumer choices. So that's all. And thank you for your consideration tonight.

Thank you, Ms. Anderson. We have anyone else present that wants to make a comment?

Sue Barnes, 3406 Ridgeway again. So just to touch on something we haven't gone into in depth yet, but is important to me and was important to me when I was on the ESB considering this from the get-go. And several months ago, the ESB presented to you data on the total life cycle impacts of single-use plastic bags and the reusable alternatives. And there are now many studies that have looked at this. I've looked at many of those studies. I hope some of you have taken the time to do that as well. And the data are a real mixed bag.

Get it?

To ensure a beneficial impact of banning single-use plastic bags, we would have to shift our community to using particular types of bags a certain number of times and then dispose of those bags properly at the end of their life. And then we'd also have to somehow make up the difference for the bags that are being reused for other purposes versus bags people buy new then for their trash and their pet waste and other uses. And so for these reasons, I believe there's actually a strong likelihood that we could be doing more harm to the environment by passing this ordinance as we cannot control which reusable bags people choose, how many times they use them, or how they dispose of them. Perhaps we can help the community understand what better choices might be based on actual environmental criteria and let them decide on what, if any, changes they might want to make. We haven't really done anything in this area to date. So I ask you to please let this go. This, to me, really has the potential to do more harm than good. And I think that there are other things that we can work on that are clear win-win-wins. as opposed to this ordinance, which is not.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Barnes.

Anyone else?

Hi, Jody Benson, 3547 Pueblo Drive. Did anybody see the movie The Martian? Do you remember that movie? A lone man was left on Mars to survive on a dead planet that he was the only living thing on. And if you saw it here in Los Alamos, you remember that when he finally got to talk to somebody on earth his solution was we're gonna science the hell out of this and everybody in the audience stood and cheered i think it's time we look at the science i think the stuff that ms barnes was talking about those um are not The reusable shopping bags that people are given at schools, at the credit union, from the banks, from the county, those aren't the ones we're talking about. We're talking about single-use plastic shopping bags being replaced not by the alleged multiple-use, heavier-density bags. And I think this was in the ordinance, by the way, the bags that are going to be restricted. But... We're talking about low-hanging fruit here. This whole discussion today has been talking about all the things that the county is doing, all these things the county is doing. We have B-City. We have the buses. We have LIDA. We have food composting. We have trails. All of these are extremely expensive. An ordinance about a single-use plastic shopping bag is... Zero effort, zero cost. And I would say that what the ordinance should do is just mandate the stores charge for the single-use plastic shopping bag. You can have as many as you want. You can have eight, as I saw. Well, I saw someone in here having six single-use plastic shopping bags at Smith's today. You can have as many as you want. You just pay a quarter apiece. If they're that valuable, you can have them. The ordinance would just mandate Smiths, and I sent you the information on the Smiths bags, just mandate Smiths to charge for them. That's all. It's capitalism. Merchant. Merchant. and everybody can have what they want. But I wanna quote Councilor Haberman, and I really love what you've said about, if I can find it, it probably, oh yeah, you said that the plan, the development plan, is so important because so many costs in doing nothing for society. There are so many costs of doing nothing for society, a cost that we all bear as citizens of the planet. This is nothing. Let's just do it. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Benson. We have anyone else? Okay. We have someone else coming up.

I'm Lisa Shin. I'm at 63747 Street. I'm Chair Reedy, Council. I just feel like it's hard to keep up with all the ways you are increasing the cost of living for the middle-class residents and those on a fixed income in this community. I just found out today that one of my patients, this lovely young couple, they're moving to Georgia. They just cannot afford to live in Los Alamos anymore. They can't buy a house anywhere. cost of living is just too high. Someone else told me that he just feels like the message that the county is sending to him is, we don't want you here. And recently, I just found out that we don't have a laundromat in this town anymore. So it's getting very, it's becoming very unwelcome for middle class residents in this town. And I just feel like a plastic bag ban would be, it's terrible for our residents, those on a fixed income, those in our middle class, as well as our businesses. Because recycled bags and paper boxes raise expenses for our businesses, and they increase the grocery bill. In Santa Fe, there's a $0.10 option to purchase plastic bags, but this ordinance would eliminate them altogether. And you would force businesses to raise costs for their customers. By doing away with plastic bags at checkout, shoppers will simply purchase them on the shelf, which is also more expensive and does not achieve your goal of reducing plastic bags. Further, this ordinance will encourage more online shopping, which harms our local economy. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you, Dr. Shin. Do we have anyone else? Okay. Mr. Rao, can you look online for us?

Linda daily, you're now unmuted. Linda daily.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, wonderful. Linda Daly, 428 Estante Way. Frankly, I'm happy that council has decided to look at this issue again. It's been 10 years. A lot has changed in 10 years. Many, many more communities in our country and around the world have moved towards this type of a ban. One thing that has not changed, and in fact, you could very... much argue that our planet is getting worse. So on average, so thank you for looking at this again. On average, a person uses over 300 single-use plastic bags a year. That's not just grocery bags, but large bin liners, those Amazon-type mail-order bags, sandwich bags, and so on. That's a statistic that's been quoted by various public works departments and environmental groups. Those bags are difficult and costly to recycle, and most end up on landfill sites where they take a few hundred years to photodegrade. They break down into tiny toxic particles that contaminate the soil and waterways and enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them. We know this, we've heard this before, and yet we do nothing. I believe this ban is one of the easiest things that we can do as a caring and thoughtful community, and it will have a huge impact for our environment. More and more communities around the world, again, have taken this step because it's the right thing to do. We don't need single-use grocer bags. We have lived without them before, and we can live without them again. It will mean less waste, less litter, and for our children to inherit a less polluted earth. This is an easy opportunity to be good stewards of the earth. So please pass the single-use plastic ban ordinance. And I thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Daly. Ms. Farrelly, do we have anyone else?

If you're online and you'd like to comment on this item, please raise your hand. Not seeing anybody else, Chair.

Okay, thank you. I think we're ready for a motion. Councilor Edmond, did you want to make a motion?

Yes. Thank you, Chair. I move that council direct the county manager to develop a revised carryout plastic bag ordinance per attachment B and as amended, and I'd like to offer some amendments, and introduce this revised ordinance to council as soon as August 25th, but no later than September 8th. then follow this with a public hearing no later than September 29th. The amendments I would like to suggest to the attachment B draft ordinance. One is to delete the use the word or the phrase single use throughout the ordinance text. So it just says plastic carry out bags. In the title, I would suggest that we delete the part about encouraging retailers to charge a fee. I think we should leave that up to store owners and store managers on how they want to handle that. I would like to amend Section 7 regarding penalties. One, for the first violation, issue a citation and or warning and the owner shall then have one week to comply before being cited again. Two, for the second violation, a fine of not more than $100. Three, third violation, a fine of not more than $200. for the fourth violation and subsequent violations, a fine of not more than $300, period. Nothing, no other kind of punitive text. I would then modify paragraph B and replace the word day with week. so that it would then read, each week an owner of a retail establishment violates this article shall constitute a separate violation. My reasoning for that last one is so that Businesses have time to comply if they inadvertently or mistakenly, maybe due to some staff changes or inventory or who knows what, if they just didn't comply, I'm just not a fan of them being smacked with another fine. immediately, you know, 24 hours later and on and on for the next seven days. I think they should get a week to comply because our goal is compliance with this, not revenue generation. I think then it also gives whoever's enforcing this ordinance, you know, it takes away the obligation to go out the next day. It gives them a little bit of a buffer time to do that. That's my rationale on that. So that's my motion. Okay, thank you.

So to have any discussion, you'd have a second. Second. Okay, so we have motion on the floor. So now we can have discussion. We have any questions from counselors about the motion or comments? the councilors understand what we're potentially going to be voting on?

Yeah, I think councils and boards have reviewed this many times, and I don't think that's... You don't need a law for everything, like our animal feeding ordinance that I voted against quite a while ago. We just don't need a law for everything. We try to convince people the best way to do it. I always reuse my bags, but that's a personal choice, and you just try to spread that. But you don't need a law for everything you think ought to be a certain way. So I think this is an unnecessary intervention that we should skip. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Council Rieger. Do we have any other council to call?

Yeah, I like the amendments. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I don't use the plastic bags at Smith's. And yet, I guess that means I'm subsidizing other people who get to use those. And according to Smith's, those cost seven and a half cents a piece. So I kind of like the remark that was made about charging people for those, but unfortunately that doesn't eliminate the plastic bags. I like the idea of recycling, but unfortunately that doesn't get rid of plastic bags. Smith's is currently going through 40,000 plastic bags every week. In this town in Los Alamos, 40,000. And, you know, I don't know who's using those. I don't use them. It's it just that number boggles my mind. And that came from an assistant manager at Smith's. I think we've tried education. We've been trying it since 2015. You can argue it's probably made some impact because the overwhelming opposition back in 2015 is now kind of split. And I suspect, and don't take this negatively, but I suspect that a lot of people that are opposed to a plastic bag dam shop in Santa Fe and don't get plastic bags down there. and shop in a lot of locations where you don't get plastic bags. You adjust, you change your habits, and you do it for the right reasons. And so I plan to vote for this ordinance for the right reasons.

Okay, thank you. That's a constant call. Do you have any other, do you want to make some more comments, Councilor Edmond? Please go ahead.

Yes, I just wanted a chance to comment, please, since all I did so far was give my motion. I would like to first say that I'm really grateful to the members of the ESB. Thank you for being here tonight as well and giving their time offering a recommendation to council. I listened to the July 16th meeting in its entirety, and I respect your votes to not recommend a plastic bag ordinance. Our county boards are comprised of citizens who volunteer to make recommendations to council. The council takes that input into account along with other factors to ultimately make policy decisions for the county. As a member of the ESB from 2013 to 2015, I was one of the yes votes for a plastic bag ban and a fee on paper bags. The recommendation failed by just one vote, four to three, but that was a long time ago. More and more countries, states, provinces, counties, and cities have since implemented plastic bag bans with certain caveats and exceptions, just like we have in this draft ordinance. I'd like to remind people there are nine exceptions in this ordinance that help protect small businesses and our consumers. In fact, one in three Americans, 116 million people, live in a place with a plastic bag ban. Over two billion people from across the globe. The ESB noted that education and voluntary behavior change are top priorities. But that's what was decided back in 2015, and not enough has changed. I think that's partly because plastic bags are addictive, and when stores give them out, we don't have to do anything. Someone is paying that price, though. Nothing is really free. And I think we can do both. We can have a ban on carry-out plastic bags and provide more education and resources to help people reuse and reduce as part of everyday behavior so that it becomes second nature to take in a canvas bag or a box from home so that our kids grow up not knowing any different and later wondering why this was such a big deal in the first place. We can do other things too. We can pursue countywide composting. We can encourage the state to enact the extended producer responsibility program, just as 35 other states have already done. We continue our focus on achieving the objectives in the climate action plan. There was a suggestion from the ESB to expand plastic bag collection and recycling options. That suggestion, to me, implies that the use of bags will not diminish, even with more education. As Councillor Cole said, and I just want to reiterate it, Smith's doles out about 40,000 plastic bags a week. That's 5,700 a day, almost 2.1 million bags per year just here in Los Alamos. It's been said this will cause hardship to people on tight budgets. But there's also the cost to our environment that's borne by everyone, from the pollution caused by producing, distributing, and disposing of these bags that are typically used once or twice. The bags are a commodity and can be purchased. And for better or worse, they are quite inexpensive. Depending on the brand and box size, they mostly range from $0.04 to $0.11 per bag. with most options ranging around seven cents per bag. If you buy the low price option and you have five waste baskets at home that you think you need a liner for, that's 260 bags a year at five cents plus gross receipts tax, that's $14 per year or just over a dollar per month for five waste baskets in your home. If you need them for dog poop when out on the trail or at the park, then the county or really the taxpayer already provides these for a free as a public service to all. I think we can do this. We are not being revolutionary. We are following the lead of so many places across the planet. That includes cities right here in New Mexico, Santa Fe, Taos, Bernalillo, Las Cruces, Carlsbad, Silver City. It includes 12 states, over 500 cities here in the United States. Over 91 countries have bans, including the EU, Canada, and all the provinces in Australia. It's time to check the box on this low-hanging fruit and keep making progress on all of our other sustainability and environmental objectives. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Haveman. So we have any other, Councilor McClendon, do you have a comment?

I just want to reiterate, I want to make sure I'm clear on this. The recommendation from the board was to not, am I correct? Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Newton. Councilor?

Thank you, Chair. So we all know that these plastic bags are just one piece of a much larger challenge in front of us. Reusing plastic bags simply delays when they become waste. It doesn't prevent it. I have tremendous respect for our Environmental Sustainability Board But I just firmly believe that this county should be setting an example for environmental sustainability, and this is the right thing to do.

Thank you, Council Herman. So would bioplastics be not allowed? Because it doesn't say anything about that in here. Just look at the definition.

Chair Reidy, are you asking for clarification on the amendments I made for the ordinance?

Yeah, the single use, I believe, are not made of things like bioplastic in general, but there are bioplastic. I mean, some bags are labeled as compostable, which might be industrially compostable. But I'm just telling you to clarify that we're voting on anything that is any kind of plastic would be not allowed.

Well, I think the ordinance needs to clearly state carry out bags. So, for example, the produce bags provided at grocery stores for the lettuce that might be wet or the broccoli and the zucchini, those are still used. The markets can choose to provide those or not provide those. That's up to the grocery store retailer. But this ordinance would not ban those. It's the carry-out bags. And please note the exceptions. Carry-out for food, for take-out food is still permissible. plastic bags for pharmaceuticals is still permissible. Bulk products like, you know, or meat and fish, that's still permissible. It's the carryout bags that this ordinance, as drafted, is addressing. Does that answer your question? And I didn't modify that in my amendments or in my motion.

I think it helps. So, yeah, I guess just... Yeah, so I'm having a lot of difficulty with going forward with this ordinance given, I guess, what the ESB discussed and the input. I understand it's not scientific. I understand that the first way to solve is not to have the bags in the first place. The fact that people are just saying, it just is creating a lot of ill will with people with our sustainability initiatives. So I'm not gonna support the motion. It's good to have another discussion about it. And I guess the only other thing I looked up was, yeah, there's a lot of places, but in terms of the United States, only about 25% of the people live somewhere where plastic bags are banned. So I wasn't surprised to hear that Mexico has banned in some places. I think that Albuquerque went and reversed that ban. So obviously, it's something that people get concerned about. Ideally, we wouldn't be having single-use plastics. And we had the whole discussion about, well, there's other options. The recycling isn't really recycling because you're turning it into different material. And I ask just the clarification because I think the bioplastics do not break down into, as far as I understand, they break down into their molecular components. They don't break down into nanoparticles of plastic that are harmful, but I could be corrected on that. So I think, and I think that the definition includes various organic plastics. So, yeah. I appreciate the reduction in the penalty part. I don't think that was the major problem with the ordinance that people had. I think it was just the concept of, and it's the same thing with the natural gas that we decided not to have a ban. We just start trying to promote reduction of natural gas. That was the whole discussion we just had about the, you know, the building code too. So I'm not going to support the motion. So there's no other comments. I think we're ready to call the roll.

Councilor Herman? Yes. Councilor Haviman?

Yes.

Councilor Cole? Yes. Councilor Ragoor?

No.

Councilor Neal-Clinton? No. Councilor Reiting?

No.

Motion comes out in a tie, three to three.

So the motion fails due to not getting, you have to get four votes to pass. So I guess let the record show that councilors Evaman, Herman, and Cole voted in support of the motion. So I think with that, we're ready to take a short break and come back in 10 minutes. So that'll be about 8.32. Peace out. Okay, so we're back in session. So we're on to item 11, which is council business. 11A is general council business. 11A1 is 21832-26, discussion and possible approval of Los Alamos County policy resolution to the National League of Cities. So... We're going to have Ms. Duran online to present for its, yeah.

Good evening, Chair Reidy. This is Danielle Duran. I'm, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, great. I'm sorry. I'm still in my car. I wasn't sure if I had enough time to drive home from the IPRA meeting for this presentation. So I just I have before you the it's a resolution supporting either a grant program or other funding mechanism to support communities that host or are near DOE facilities and have infrastructure that is stressed as a result of that relationship. I think this body passed a resolution or passed approval for a resolution that was very similar to be presented to the National Association of Counties. In a similar vein, this will be presented to the Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources Committee of the National League of Cities to be voted upon. Because this is the third year that it is a resolution before that body, I believe it should not face really any opposition from the membership of that committee. I do have support from Carol Smith, who is a city councilor from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as well as a couple of other members, although they're not listed in the document that you have in front of you. Um, so, uh, in order to present this on behalf of Los Alamos County, I am asking the council to please vote to support this resolution being presented to be voted upon by that committee. And then eventually by the voting body of the national league of cities. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Duran. Thank you for being available to join us remotely. So yes, this is very similar to the one we've supported to the National Association of Counties. And we just, I think, voted on that pretty recently also. So do counselors have any technical or clarifying questions about supporting the resolution or not? Okay, not seeing any. Is there any public comment on this item?

I don't know when chambers Mr. L. Can you check online for us online and you'd like to comment on this item, please raise your hand.

Not seeing anything chair. Okay, so was there a councillor interested in making a motion regarding the resolution? Okay, council call.

I move that council approve the submission of the policy proposal as agreed upon to the National League of Cities policy process for consideration.

Do we have a second? Second. So we have a motion by Councillor Cole, second by Councillor Haffeman. Is there any discussion on the motion to support the resolution? I'm not seeing any. Can you please call the roll?

Councillor Neill-Clinton. Yes. Councillor Herman. Yes. Councillor Riding. Yes. Councillor Regor.

Yes.

Councillor Haviman. Yes. Councillor Cole. Yes. Motion passes 6-0 with Councillor Hand absent.

So let the record show the motion passes unanimously with those present here this evening. So the next item is 11A2-21978-26. It's a discussion and possible action on New Mexico County, State of New Mexico statutory amendments. So this is an item that I think mentioned a couple meetings ago that, and so there's a little bit of a timeline in here in the package. So Mexico County has had a group working on I'm making some basically updates to basically bring it to the 21st century, some language. There was also the part about salaries for county elected officials. used to be in the statutes, and then there was a constitutional amendment that passed that took that away. So this is to remove that, to make sure there's no issue with what's in conflict. And then there's a number of other changes that probably are not quite so neutral to Los Alamos County, and in particular, the incorporated county status. So I'll be at the New Mexico County's board meeting on Thursday afternoon. And this will be one of the things we're voting on. And so I wanted to make sure that we were aware of it. And that, in particular, if I should be not supporting it, that I have that we discussed it, and that I can say that, you know, our council doesn't support for these reasons. So I think we did have one thing we wanted to put up that isn't in the package. Israel, so Hopefully it'll be big enough for us all to read. So this section is probably the most relevant part because it deals with incorporated counties and the fact that we can create a charter and then the charter can have a lot of different things in it that aren't necessarily allowed for other counties. So I don't know if, Mr. Liebherr, did you want to highlight anything with regard to this text or the examples that you provided?

Yes, Chair and Council. In reviewing these proposed statutory amendments and in talking with or being involved in discussions with counties generally, it is kind of clear to me that there are 33 counties and 32 of them, they're all the same. They're all regulated the same. But this constitutional provision that allows us to exist conflicts with what these other 32 counties are governed by. And if you look at these amendments, they fail to recognize that by making these amendments, they're gonna, by gaining clarity for these other 32 counties, they're gonna create more confusion and more ambiguity about this county. And there are simple, or they're not simple, but these proposed amendments, if crafted correctly, which will take some effort, could create clarity for all the counties, including this county. by recognizing what this constitutional amendment that allows us to exist and grants us the constitutional powers of self-government that we have. They can reconcile these things. We're just the one in the 33, so I don't think there's a real recognition of how different we are. My experience in conversing with, they tend to, They tend to talk about us as an H-class county, which is a statutory definition. We are an H-class county, but it's the least meaningful classification there is. They don't sort of are cognizant of what an incorporated county is, that we have all the powers of the municipality, that we don't necessarily have the same elected offices of other counties. We do not have an elected treasurer. We do not have an elected surveyor, I think. And this is specifically allowed by this amendment. This is granted to the citizens of incorporated counties so they can organize their government like they want to. We have a sheriff who doesn't have law enforcement powers. In theory, the charter could be amended to abolish the office of the sheriff. But when you look at these amendments, especially say the class H amendment they're making, they list as elected officials of Los Alamos County, a treasurer. We don't have one, right? And that's completely legitimate. So I think there's work that needs to be done to make these amendments applicable to incorporated counties. And if they don't make those amendments, it's going to create more legal confusion that's unnecessary. And I think we need to get their ear to make them aware of who we are and how we operate. And I think this is a step to doing that. So there are amendments that can be made to these proposals that would make the law coherent for all the counties, and then we'll just take some effort, and our office is willing to help with that endeavor. So that's kind of what I would say about these proposed amendments. They just fail to recognize... what we are, and our constitutional powers. And by failing to recognize that, they create more confusion for this county.

And so the other thing, just the hope that the meeting on Thursday afternoon goes well, I think, is that the idea is if council votes to basically support asking for clarification in whatever changes are made, that we would let the Mexico counties know that we're proposing this before I show up on Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock so they're not surprised that because there are certain changes that are probably well overdue and then other things that probably most counties agree with and so we just have to get them to recognize that it's not just for not asking for arbitrary reasons. We're asking because this creates a conflict that's more than just potential. So that was, I think, Councillor Rieger, you've listened to some of these same things. Did you want to add anything to any of that?

Is this going to come up as one vote on the whole block of everything? And there's a few items we don't like, or is it, will it be broken down into votes on each section?

For what we're going to do right now? No, when you get there. I think it's going to probably be for the whole thing.

There was a lot of stuff in there that was like cleanup that was very minor and then there were some things that were bad for us. It's unfortunate to vote against the whole thing.

There might be a possibility of amending it to say adding language to recognize and incorporate counties and that our county attorney would be happy to work with them to come up with a language. So I think we could support if it was included address that incorporated counties do exist and that we need to have some language added also, if we're going to make these, all these other changes.

So do you have an amendment in mind that you're going to propose or is that by tomorrow morning?

Um, I think the amendment would be me to recognize, I mean, the basic one that we recognize what we're just looking at. Um, so that'd be, so before I go on Thursday, if we assume we approve this, then there would be some language I would show up with. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. I neither. So, yeah. Uh, That's pretty technical stuff, but I think it's important that I could have gone and just voted no without saying anything, but I think that wouldn't be productive. So I think if we want to get the right thing in there, and I think if this idea is that this law of good changes, we would like to not block that. We would like to facilitate the changes happening, but not create problems for Los Alamos County. So... Any other questions about any of this? No? Okay. Let's see if there's any public comment. I'm not seeing anyone in chambers. Mr. Rao, can you look online?

If you'd like to comment on this item, please raise your hand. No hands, Chair.

Okay, so is there a councillor interested in making the motion? I guess it's the one that's kind of long, but it would be helpful to have that motion that's in the council.

Thank you, Chair. I move that council through its chair respectfully object to the proposed statutory changes Because many of the changes, assumedly unintentionally, number one, conflicts with Los Alamos County's charter that was lawfully adopted pursuant to Article 10, Section 5 of the state constitution establishing incorporated counties. Number two, conflicts with an incorporated county's statutory powers. as a municipality as provided for in Article 10, Section 5 of the state constitution, incorporated counties. Number three, fails to recognize that incorporated counties do not have the same elected officials as other counties as allowed by Article 10, Section 5 of the state constitution and as provided in this county's charter. Number four, improperly burdens the rights of self-government provided to the citizens of an incorporated county granted by Article 10, Section 5, and Article 10, Section 6, municipal home rule of the state constitution.

Thank you, Councilor Herman. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Kate, can you please call the roll?

Chair, to verify, we have a motion by Councillor Herman and a second by Councillor Cole. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. Councillor Wrighty? Yes. Councillor Ragoor?

Yes.

Councillor Cole? Yes. Councillor Haveman?

Yes.

Councillor Neal-Clinton? Yes. Councillor Herman? Yes. Motion passes 6-0 with Councillor Hand absent.

Let the record show the motion passes unanimously with those present tonight. So thank you for that. And look forward to be able to report that the item has been resolved at the next meeting. Okay, so now we're on to 11B appointments. We don't have an appointment tonight. 11C, board and commission vacancy report. 11C1 is the actual report 21183-26. So there's a report attached, and I think we're down to very few vacancies. So even the health council only has two vacancies. That means they must have 13 members. Let's see, do we have any 11D as board and commissioner reports? Do we have any reports tonight? Yeah, we only met last week, so. Let's see. So 11E is the county manager report. Did you have anything you wanted to alert us to tonight?

Just a friendly reminder, this weekend is fair and rodeo weekend.

Yes, that's correct.

And the craft fair.

Yes, craft fair is back on the same weekend. That's good. Okay. 11F, council chair report. Just a couple of things. There was a consent order scoping meeting. So they hired an auditor to, I guess, the first audit of the consent order that governs the cleanup for Los Alamos legacy sites. And we had, I think, four of us attending that meeting and providing some comments on where we saw, I guess, strengths and areas needing improvement on the consent order. And then I had the weekly meetings last Friday. That's all I had. Okay, 11g, counselor expenses. Imagine if we don't have any counselor expenses I'm aware of. Okay, 11h, preview upcoming items. So we have 11h122002-26, particular report of upcoming agenda items. Obviously, we have public hearings coming up on the ordinances we introduced tonight. Is there anything else that counselors want to highlight or request for a future meeting? Okay. Item 12 was counselor comments. Do we have any counselor comments tonight? Well, I guess my only comment would be the thing that's just behind us that the screen observes, obscures, that we could have used a little bit earlier. So every difference of opinion is not a difference in principle. I think that's what it says. So that's always good to keep track of that, remember that. And I guess item number 13 is German. If there's no objections, we are adjourned.