Environmental Services Division - Regular Meeting

Hi. Alright. Well, we have quorum, so we can go ahead and get started, with the April 17 environmental sustainability board meeting. Let's take roll call. Jill, do you wanna start?

Jill DeHaven. Sue Barnes.

Shannon Blair.

Herman.

Herman. Herman.

Alright. And we are missing Joseph Chandler, Rebecca Paley Williams, and Jesse Derringer. Alright. We can move on to item number two then. Do we have any public comments? Just a reminder that this section of the agenda is reserved for comments from the public on items that are not otherwise included in this agenda. Angelica, do we have any

be your time if you wanted just to you don't have to. Okay. Sounds good. No pressure. No. There's public comment online. Alright. Sounds good.

Okay. So we can move on to item number three, which is approval of today's agenda for the April 17 meeting. Do I have a motion to approve?

Or A motion to approve.

Okay. I'll second.

Alright. All those in favor, let's say okay. Herman apparently can raise his hand. Perfect. Alright. So today's agenda for the April 17 meeting has been approved. Alright. We can move on to item number four, which is approval of minutes. So approval of our 03/20/2025 board minutes.

I moved to approve.

Okay. Do we have any edits? I didn't have any.

I I have one Okay. Under under b four. So b working groups and steering committee reports for plastic bag research working group member reported that the blast plastic bag working group What?

You got cut off.

Okay. So I I guess I

don't know what we do with that.

But Do you have the error. The text in Helica? Mhmm.

Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. Then I move that we approve the minutes of the March 20 meeting as amended. Second.

Alright. All those in favor? Alright. Minutes from the March 20 meeting approved. Alright. We can move on to item number five, which is board business. So Angelica's gonna give us an introduction to the fleet conversion plan and community wide EV charging plan.

K. Bear with me as I try to juggle both of these. K. Alright. Well, good evening, board members.

Tonight, I'm gonna present to you the fleet conversion study and the community wide EV charging plan. I'm gonna just just do it from here since I have to switch slides as well. And to give you some background on how this project came to be, this study was first recommended by the LARES task force and later reinforced as a priority in the county's climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support EV adoption by expanding access to charging infrastructure. This study was included as a budget option and funded by county council during this last f y twenty five budget cycle. So tonight's presentation will walk you through the goals and the scope of the study and outline how we'll assess opportunities for fleet electrification and community charging, and also how we plan to gather input from the board council and then the broader community.

See. So our main purpose, as I mentioned, is to conduct this study is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from infrastructure for the county and the community. As part of this process, we will be engaging the county partners and community members to ensure our approach and recommendations are in alignment with the needs of our community. So this is just a high level overview of our team. The county has hired Stantec to perform this study.

They're experts in this field. And then from the county side, it's myself, Pete Mondragon, Mariano Montoya, and Mariano Valdez from the Department of Public Utilities. And then we have our very own Sue Barnes who is also sitting and helping with the steering committee. So our first task focuses on the county fleet. At this point Stantec will conduct industry review of all the available electric vehicle electric vehicle options and assess if they are capable of meeting the current county operations.

For example, police police units that, you know, go off roading, is there an equivalent unit that could be used for that? Or the wild land fire trucks, is there an equivalent that, you know, an electric equivalent that we can still use and meet operational purpose. So that's part of that assessment. They will also review available technology manufacturers and charging and fueling equipment. So Stantec will focus on understanding how the fleet operates, and to do this we will be they will be conducting site visits, collecting data regarding usage of our current fleet, and reviewing, our vehicle and equipment policies.

Also understanding the needs of the facilities that may be impacted by this. So daily utilization and requirements of vehicles will be evaluated to ensure that there is an EV equivalent, as I mentioned, to make sure it satisfies the county's operational needs. So if there is not currently an EV equivalent available, Stantec may suggest phasing out certain vehicles over time. So the objective is to understand how chargers will be required at the different facilities to minimize capital costs associated with implementation of chargers. So once these steps are completed, the focus group meetings will be planned with internal county staff and we've already started to meet with some of our critical critical departments like DPU, police, and fire.

We met with them this week to understand their vehicle constraints. Okay. So so understanding the vehicle requirements will help Stantec to identify the energy requirements. With this information, Stantec will develop a base case and a zero emission case to understand how greenhouse gas emissions will reduce over time. Is that this one?

Yeah so this is that bottom left chart. Stantec will also perform a financial analysis of costs to implement the infrastructure and, they'll also provide, available funding options. As part of the community wide EV charging plan, there are three main the contextual scan and assessment, the technical analysis, and the implementation plan. We'll go over these more in the next slides. So Stantec will perform a contextual scan to ensure their recommendations align with our current federal, state, and local policies such as the New Mexico Clean Car Rule and DPUs Electrification Study that's currently happening.

It's currently in progress so we want to make sure we're marrying those studies. As part of the technical analysis process for citing EV infrastructure, there's three main components that will be part of the evaluation criteria. One, demand will be evaluated to understand where adoption is now and where it's heading. So we'll look at land use and travel patterns, suitability factors like existing utility and transportation infrastructure as well as sensitive land uses that we would want to avoid. And then finally, equity will be considered to include disadvantaged and underserved communities within the county.

So a major driver for this project aside from the Climate Action Plan is the New Mexico Clean Car Rule which goes into effect in 2026. So it establishes sales targets for zero emission vehicles and it's expected expected that 80 per 82% of all light duty vehicles well, guess by 2032, 8082% of all light duty zero emission emission vehicles. So Stantec sales will provide a range of adoption scenarios to plan for this implementation. So this slide is an example from a previous stent Stantec project and it has a conservative and an aggressive adoption scenarios and it's broken out into five year increments. Increments.

So the goal as part of this process, the goal is to estimate the total number of EVs that will correspond to the total number of charging stations. So this is another example of a study, that performed for West Hartford, Connecticut. So once we know the numbers then Stantec can project where it makes sense to cite the EV infrastructure. So Stantec will incorporate all the inputs previously mentioned to develop a heat map, and also community engagement engagement will be integrated throughout this process to understand where the community would like to see EV charging infrastructure. This is another example of a heat map.

So this at a high level is our engagement plan. I'll just turn your eye to the community visioning meeting, that we're planning to host on May 12. So mark your calendars if you're available. It will start at 03:30 and go till, I think, six or 06:30. And our plan is to have, two presentations, one closer to the beginning and then with just some open free flowing conversation and stations where the community can ask questions, and then we'll present, we'll provide another present presentation around five 05:32.

So it's it's a different approach and I'm I'm really eager to see how it'll turn out. And then there's opportunities. Of course, the board will be presented with the draft plan just to gather your feedback, and we're also planning to present to the Board of Public Utilities and County Council. Alright. So these are just this is just a high level overview of the project deliverables that I already mentioned tonight and then this is a high level project timeline.

So you can see, we kicked off in early February and then we had a county council project kickoff in March, and then the public visioning meeting will be in May. And the goal is to complete this entire process by the end of the year with the final presented to counsel by then. So as I mentioned, the community visioning session with the public is May 12 and then, we'll be doing a fleet and facilities existing conditions assessment where they actually come out to the county and review, just final reviews because they have a lot of our site plans and information that they've been analyzing. They'll review our our current plans and policies, and then also the contextual scan that I mentioned. So you can see it's a complex scope with lots of moving pieces, and at this point I'm happy to take any questions that you might have.

Yes? Don't forget to unmute.

If it's green, you're on.

You go.

Sorry. It looked green from here. Is there any impact on all of this to the current administration federally?

In terms of the grants that are available, yes, I do think there will be some impact but there are still other funding options that we could look at. The other municipalities are using like a it's called infrastructure service models where you would maybe pay a company, like, a a monthly subscription to provide the infrastructure instead of the county the money for all of the infrastructure.

Right.

So there we'll be looking at the other other funding solutions as well.

And is there any partnering, another, like, public private nonprofit stuff. I mean, there will be a lot of new construction up here over the next five years. So I'm just curious if there's any conversations going on with the developers on because I know a lot of the developers are planning to do a lot of this stuff on their own.

If you have a suggestion of who we should be talking with. Well,

I I think just, you know, the the process of the county when projects come through is to start in one door and then at some point end up at planning and zoning. So maybe just making sure all those stops are understand or maybe even have a copy of this because private sector always wants to save money. Money. So if they thought they didn't have to build as much as they're thinking for every project that they're looking at, that would be a good thing. So I just think making all the departments aware in the county because because developers will always touch at least three or four departments within the county as they push the projects through.

Yeah. To circle back just to your first question about partnering, we are hoping that this would give us a general and sometime more specific overview of where we might develop EV infrastructure Uh-huh. With the heat maps and things like that. Yeah. It will be easier, no doubt, for us to develop infrastructure on county owned property.

But,

you know, we're definitely willing and wanting to approach those private county

the DP Road, that's county land, but it's gonna going to be privately developed. 20th Street, that's county land, but it's privately developed. So those were the two that came to mind. I'm sure they'd be happy to see the county will cough up some money for that.

I think Herman has a question.

Hi, Herman.

Hey. So we want to have an equivalency of existing capabilities. I was just wondering if the counter reviews the actual need, or are we taking what has been established a while ago? I was just wondering how current that is.

Well, so we're meeting there. Stantec is meeting with county folks one on one, like I had mentioned, DPU, fire, and police to see if, you know, an alternative would work. So, yeah, we're we're taking a current, pulse on what's needed.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Sue, do you have any questions? No? Okay. I do see Kok Young has her hand up.

Hi, Kok Kyung.

Oh, maybe she's on me

to talk.

Oh. Okay. There you go. You should

be able to talk now.

Okay. I I had to answer a phone call, so I didn't see the entire presentation. My question is when you convert the county fleets in the conversion, does it include school buses?

So school are not part of the county's fleet, but we are working with LAPS to make sure that we have plans within our electrical infrastructure as they start to convert.

Okay. Thanks.

You're welcome. Alright. I have

a couple questions. Thank you, Anhelka, for giving So us the

at some point, I'm not sure what page it was on. I guess page 10, they talk about demand suitability and equity. I'm wondering kind of what the like, what's the metric for equity? What are they measuring? Yes.

We haven't developed the actual criteria yet, but that's a good that's a good question.

Okay. Yeah. Maybe I'm curious what you all end up, like, looking at and deciding because that I think that is something that is important when we think about, like, access to charging and costs and etcetera, making sure everyone has access to it. Okay. And then my other question is, like because you gave this presentation last month to counsel. Right?

Yes. Stantec gave it to counsel.

Okay. What was the vibe from counsel?

I think in all fairness there were I mean, there wasn't they asked for the study, it was just a quick introduction and I think in all fairness they had a full agenda so there wasn't a whole lot of questions that were asked.

Okay. Yeah. I'm sure, like, further on when it's more developed, I'll have more questions and insight into stuff.

I think so. And some of them were kind of about funding and also about partners, making sure we were including they wanted to know who was being included in the study. So

Yeah. Makes sense.

Yeah. Cool.

Alright. Anyone have any other questions? Nope. Alright. Well, thanks, Angelica.

You're welcome.

We can move on then to the next item on our agenda under board business, which is reviewing the plans for Earth Day twenty twenty five.

K. Sorry. So I'll just say we're we got our tent. We got our little giveaways. We got so taking your feedback from the pictures we decided to use on the little screen cleaners and the new the tent design, had to kinda pivot there because the image wasn't such the quality that we needed for such a large image, but it's still beautiful.

It's still clouds and most alamos trees, and it looks gorgeous, so I think it's gonna be exciting. We'll So have our new tent. Our giveaways are ready, and then the game that we had come up with as a group, the activity. So it's gonna be the five categories, what you can do in your home for energy, recycling, recycling, reduce reuse, having a conversation, a climate conversation, transportation, and the third the fifth one is, like, food matters. So your food choices and then also reducing food waste and composting.

So we'll give people we'll have a marble and they can make a pledge to take climate action in one or all, whichever they decide to do, so we'll just kinda let it let let it free flow, and then at the end, we'll have, poster boards where we can they can take a picture and say, like, I pledge to take climate action. We can share that on social media to try to motivate others, encourage others to also take climate action. So that's what we'll have specifically at our booth, and then we should have a little flyer to be able to invite people to the community visioning meeting for the EV EV workshop. So we need help with the game, help to hand out those flyers. And then Josh Levings from environmental services will be right by us, so he'll do the recycle game.

We can help him with that. And then we have the zero waste station where we help people sort all of their trash. And that's not too busy of an area, but sometimes you'll find people kinda just scratching their head like, where does this wra go? So, you know, so that's where we need help that day. So if you would like to volunteer, I think several of you in this room have volunteered, and if you want to, please join us.

So we'll be having an event here on on Earth Day which is next Tuesday. We'll be showing movies in here, environmental awareness, short films and then we have a lot of different organizations coming out to share information with employees so excited about all of it. Cool. Any questions or

concerns? Did you did you get my email about the short video?

Yes.

Glitch? Okay. So let me know what you want me to do. I don't know how to get it on YouTube.

Maybe just the USB.

Let's

just stick with that.

I'll do that.

We have volunteers for the whole time?

Are we good? Mostly. Yeah. Okay. I think so. Because part of the Lassa group has volunteered as well. Okay. Awesome. So it's a fun day.

Yeah. It is fun. If you're going, bring a jacket because sometimes it's freezing. That's what that area

loses sun,

so it gets really cold. Yeah.

I mean, that's called spring.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's a it's it's just I'm excited because this is our first time, debuting all of our materials and just curious to see how the community will react to it. I think just the number one thing is, you know, the number one thing we can do is just start talking about it, encouraging people and letting them express to you. Ask questions. So I imagine we'll get a lot of those good conversations that day.

Yeah. It might be worthwhile for us to spend a few minutes reviewing the cap, like, on our own

Yeah. Just so we have I can have it there too. I'll print it.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good idea.

Yeah. So if you think of anything from here to then, let me know.

Otherwise, it should be great. Cool. Sounds good.

Yeah. They normally sell food at the event. Jill, will this be your first Earth Day with us?

No.

No? Okay. Yeah. It's pretty nice, though.

So Yeah. I'm excited. It'll be fun. Cool. Alright. Let's move on then to reports. Sure. And we can start with me. So I did wanna let I'm sure everyone kind of picked up on this, but I did wanna let everyone know that, Jesse Derringer has stepped down, due to, some other commitments. So we will have a position on the board opening. If you know of anybody who's interested, we encourage you to apply. I don't know, Inhelica, when that will be posted. But

You can apply anytime.

Okay. So So just go to the the board and commission website, and then the application should be open there. But, yeah, I enjoyed having Jesse on the board. He is so technical and asks a lot of great questions, so he will be missed. Alright.

I also, met with, Gary Goddard, who's the new manager of the airport. He I worked with him previously, and he is trying to do some really cool NetZero stuff at the airport. So I asked him to come give us a presentation. I think he'll come next month. And he's also been doing some other energy audit efforts, I guess, in the county auditing buildings, including this building.

And he has a report that he's prepared, so I think he's gonna talk about that as well as some of the other stuff that he's doing at the airport. And then I also would like him to give us a tour of the airport because that sounds like fun to me. So I'll send out a scheduling poll, and we can schedule a time to go out to the airport and see what they have done, what they're gonna do, and kind what his ideas are.

And

then Sue was talking about this before we started, but I wanted to remind everybody about the natural gas working group. So and Helga did send out an email asking for volunteers. It sounds like now you don't have to go to all three days. You can just go to one. So, take a look at the dates again. And if your schedule allows, it would probably be a good way to get involved in stuff. And I think that's it on my end. Anybody have any questions for me?

I was just, excuse me, gonna, I guess, back up to the board position. We had some interest. We had some people come through, you know, that I I think I sent you. And at the time, we didn't have any position open, so maybe just go back to some of those folks because they they reached out to us. So always a good sign.

Yeah. And we can also use Earth Day as a way to recruit folks too.

I have some little invitations, like, recruitment invitations.

Because Herman's also his term is up in August, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. So sad that Herman's leaving. You have

a sad face over here at Herman.

But we'll have a couple. So alright. Let's move on then to report on board of public utilities. I did not go. Jesse's not here. Say that the time of use rate passed. It did? Okay. Yes. We might try to maybe find a new person to be the liaison. We could talk about that next meeting.

Or maybe my suggestion, because it's such a heavy lift, would be to like rotate.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's just

too much for one person.

Okay. Yeah. I think that's a good idea too.

Because they're also looking for input from our board to theirs and, yeah, I think that's important for us to have that voice.

Yeah. Okay. Can we add that to the next agenda to discuss that? There's a Alright. Next is Tboard. Herman, do you have a report?

I do not.

Okay. I also don't have a Parks and Rec board report. Can I just say

for PRB Parks and Rec board, that they are doing an artificial turf study? Oh, we should probably get involved in that. And I know that they were doing like I don't I'm not sure when it closed. I'm not sure if we've missed the mark yet, but I do wanna just let you know that that's happening. I haven't seen anything. It's been posted all over, like, the

baseball fields and Oh, I don't go down there.

Anhawk Shelton.

Yeah. It's all over. So they have definitely done a good job with that. I was surprised. I was like, oh, there it is.

But Okay. Yeah. The ones, like, Overlook or what baseball field? Overlook. Okay. Alright. That's good to know. Remember when oh, we had a talk. I think I was the only one there by I cannot remember their name. She's a scientist at Lantel, and she did a talk on artificial turf and kind of the heating that happens from it versus, like, the water use benefits. Yeah. Wait. I don't know what date that was, but I'm sure we could find it. Do you remember that, Angelica?

I do. I'm trying to so they did a public input process. I could probably back if

Yeah.

It was a while ago.

Dina was still here. This there's a second artificial turf survey.

Okay.

Let me see when that closes just for you all real quick. You could keep going.

Okay. Joel, do you have any health council updates?

So health council is gonna actually participate in Earth Day this year.

Oh, cool.

Finally we all finally said, oh gosh, health of everybody is part of an Earth Day moment. So they they, I, we will be doing the Earth Day event with a table on Saturday. They are still They have the working group that is going through the list of needs and wants for social services for specific facility. My working title is called Community care center, so c three, because I like acronyms, and I can remember them. We should have that pulled together ready present.

The plan is, we'll be presenting that to council probably the end of the summer, with, needs it wants, potential size, and, then the county will take it from there to create. It's pretty exciting work, actually.

Cool. Thanks, Jill. Counselor Herman, do you have any updates for us?

A couple of things.

Okay. Sure.

Thank you very much. Let's see. I wasn't here at the last meeting, so I want to just give you guys an update of some things that have happened. We passed we approved an ordinance, an amendment to an ordinance that addresses distracted driving. That's been a big topic here in the county.

And this one states that it was decided to remove radio microphones in a vehicle mounted radio from the definition of handheld mobile devices. Along those lines, they also, we also approved an ordinance to implement automated speed enforcement measures to enhance existing traffic regulations and improve traffic public safety. And basically, it's speed cameras that are going to be purchased and put around town, and they will move them around a little bit, I guess. The real purpose of those is to modify behavior so that people drive safer. So let's see.

Some other interesting things. There is an institute for justice, which is a nonpartisan let me find it here, regulatory group. The part of this that we're interested in is called cities work, and they go into communities and they take a look at how people start businesses in a town and how easy or difficult that is. And we approved engaging with this group. It's actually free for people to do this.

And they come in and they just take a look at what it would take to make it cheaper, faster, and simpler to start a small business. So we're all very excited about that. Also passed a motion to continue working on the MRA plan. So that's that's great stuff. And I just wanna say that I'm excited about Earth Day and the EV charging. So that's it.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Alright. Kokyoung, do you have any updates for the inclusivity task force?

Yes. Do you want anything on BCD too? Don Britton isn't here, but I can

Yeah. You I can. That's okay. You wanna give it at the same time? That works.

Okay. So the BCD is going to have a a native flood sale to raise money for some of our expenses on May 17. It's gonna be held at peak from nine to noon. And in order to prepare for that, we're gonna have a work party next Wednesday at the Unitarian Church where we will be able to dig out a lot of native plants for free. And that will be, like, from 05:30 to seven, and I'm gonna make desserts to feed people. Alright? For the inter inclusivity task force, we just had a meeting yesterday. Is that yesterday? No. Yeah.

So yesterday and we'll be meeting every three weeks from now on on a Wednesday from 12:15 to about 01:45. And for each of our future meeting, we had a presentation from Craig Martin about accessibility of Los Alamos Trails, what have been done and what else needs to be done. And it's a very good presentation. If the video is up, I can, you know, give you a link to that. And for every meeting from now on, we would like to invite somebody from the county to give us a presentation about what they are doing or their department is doing for inclusivity.

So we have created several working groups, and each of our working groups are going out to gather data from the community and having and also recruiting members from outside the task force to work on this, the working groups. That's it.

Alright. Thanks, Kokyoung. Sue, do you wanna give us the Los Alamos Sustainability Alliance updates?

Sure. We met, last week, April 8, and went over Earth Day preparations, got a chance to see all the wonderful swag and and posters and so forth that, Angelica and the graphic design team have come up with. They're really awesome. As always our sustainability newsletter that is mostly Angelica's sustainability newsletter could really use input in the way of any kind of articles or any content at all for this monthly newsletter that goes out to the community. We so discussed got input by along those same lines the Los Alamos Daily Post, one of one of the members of the sustainability alignment is Kristen Lasky from the Post.

She's been with us forever. And she says that Carol Clark at the Post would like to restart the page in the paper on sustainability. There used I don't know if people remember but there used to be sort of a weekly or maybe monthly solid page devoted to sustainability content and they'd like to start that back up again. So that will need content as well. So we have a great opportunity there to get I mean, that paper goes out to everybody in the community.

So that's a really good opportunity to get information out on, whatever we wanna tell them about. And then in addition to the Earth Day events for the county and, and at the Nature Center, there's also going to be youth eco club summit, climate summit at the high school on April 25. It's pretty much a all day thing, primarily organized by the eco club and also Citizens Climate Lobby, Sarah Mason. And students will be working on climate change with outdoor activities, presentations and group work, and so forth. I'm going to be there and Helc is going to be there.

You're still coming, Jill. Jill's coming too. Jill. Oh, Joe's gonna participate also. Right? So along with some other other I I believe counselor Reidy will also be there too. So it should be a very very interesting day. There's actually students high school age students coming from all over Northern New Mexico it sounds like. So not just us but also Summit Santa Fe and Taos and Las Vegas and maybe some other places as well. So it should be pretty cool. That's it. Did

the post have say when they wanted to start back up the sustainability page?

I guess as soon as soon as possible. Give them some.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I I can help with that.

Okay.

I'd be happy to write something.

And then the other thought was to have it be part of I mean, since we're already doing the sustainability newsletter to have, you know, put it have that be a that could be similar content, the same content, whatever Yeah. Just to make it easier.

Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. Sure. Yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

Thanks, Sue. Alright. Jill, do you have any updates for the education and outreach working group?

So, yes. I'm going to the Youth Climate Summit. I reached out to the environmental, educator at the high school per your recommendation, and we had a very nice conversation about kind of what could be helpful to them. And so I'm gonna go do the summit, but then after the summit, I volunteered to work with the environmental club that's really kind of behind this and put together a kind of end of year project that they could do. And really, I'm just going to keep them out of the bar ditch. That's about it.

They're going

to come up with their ideas and so forth. But they were very pleased that the interest from the county to reach out to their students. And so I'm excited to see what all of this is and some of the classes. I think I'm doing the Master Gardener help or something. I don't know.

Saw. One thing I want to recommend if you haven't watched this Netflix show called Buy Now, it is a powerful program on what is the lowest hanging fruit of climate change, and it's all about consumerism. It's well worth I think it's an hour long. And I actually said this to the instructor at the high school, and so that may be a point that we take, is what if the students could get together and form a no bye week or a no bye day or whatever, and actually build momentum for the next fall semester to where if you could, you know, we have the possibilities of actually measuring impact already in place. And so if you haven't watched the movie, it will make you never want to buy anything again after you after you watch that.

So, anyway, it's a good good conversations.

Alright. Cool. Thank you. Sue, do you wanna give a update on the community wide steering? I feel like we had a good overview.

Oh, we had an excellent overview. I we just met again this this afternoon, and, really, we're just hammering out the details for the the public meeting that will occur in a few weeks. And, hopefully, we can get lots of people out for that.

Okay. Sounds good. Alright. So for the plastic bag research working group, we did meet again and decided that with Angelica's suggestion that we were gonna reach out to the, I guess, the equivalent of Angelica but in Las Cruces. So we're gonna have a meeting with them because they have a a plastic bag rule, I guess. I don't wanna say a ban. Fee. Fee. Yeah. Ordinance.

Yeah. And just kind of talk through how they got it implemented, what the community feedback has been, pros and cons of it, and then we can include that in our research. And I also think it's helpful to have another community in in New Mexico too instead of, like I don't know. Everything I could we were finding was, like, Seattle or Boulder or something. So Herman, do you wanna add anything?

No. Okay.

Sounds good.

I think it's

mostly about lessons learned, isn't it?

Yeah. I thought Santa Fe had a had a plastic

They do. So I I I also was hoping to reach out to somebody there. I they I'm I'm pretty sure too they did it in, like, stages, which I think would be helpful. So that way, you're not throwing people into it, and you can kinda get used to it, if that, ends up being how we what we go with. But I'll yeah. I do plan on reaching out to somebody there. If anyone has contacts in Santa Fe, let me know. I do. Okay. Maybe we should do that too. Okay. I can email them too. Whatever is easier. K. Alright.

So we already got the BCity report. We can move on to staff report. Okay. Okay. So

let's see. We have our newsletter. You all know about about that. And then the county I had mentioned, so county council approved our charge point amendment to purchase six level two EV chargers, that we plan to place here in front of municipal building. Building.

So they'll have ADA accessibility and some fire, protection controls such as bollards and emergency shutoffs, in case of an emergency. And then so we're working on that. We hope to have it out to bid by end of the month and then, you know, maybe start construction this summer. So we're excited for all of that. You heard an update about the fleet conversion plan and community wide charging plan.

We finalized the scope of work for the education and outreach pro request for proposals, and hopefully we will advertise next week on that. We also had gone back and forth on how we should approach energy audits within the community. And just for some context, there's about eight certified energy auditors within the state, so that's not very many. And in order to receive some of the federal tax rebates, you have to have, like, a certified audit. So we wanna make sure that we're conducting the right sort of energy audit.

So if people made upgrades on their homes, then it would be applicable. So we had thought we had gone through a few different, like, what should we do? Could we hire, like, student interns that would do this type of work? But there's a lot of liability if, you know something were to happen in the home to either the employee or the person or the home. So just to avoid that, we were we got permission to go out for bid as well for this.

So if anybody I think there was some interest on the board for energy audits. We'll be starting to develop that scope of work. So that's myself and Abby Hayward developing that scope of work, and then we'll send that out to bid too. So that'll take time. We're planning to meet with David Best who works at Santa Fe Community College to kinda understand what that training program looks like and, you know, do they maybe wanna partner?

Could they be the vendor? Like, we don't know, but we're we're exploring that as well. And then we talked about Earth Day for the county and for Peak and the community visioning meeting. So if you're able or willing to help for those, please let me know. And then what we haven't really talked about, but please keep this on your on your agendas, is the DPU Water Festival, which is May 20 through the twenty first.

So utilities hires, has a contract with Peak to put on energy conservation education, and this is one of their big events that they put on. So we've been invited to participate. And depending on how our activity goes for Earth Day, I was thinking we can reuse that with the with the students. So we'll figure out a way to make it fun and engaging for them. And if it's not appropriate, then we'll pivot to something else.

So we've done jeopardy with the kids that they loved. We've done lots of little things, so it's just a fun way for us to share what we're doing. And then the residential sustainability report for March. So I think you'll see what is off the charts is the yard trimming. There's 94% increase in March, and that's because the environmental services staff is trying to assist with preparing yards to be, you know, resilient to preventing any forest fires or, you know, maintaining that defensible space around our home.

So they're doing special yard trimming collections right now. So you can it's a noticeable noticeable increase. And, other than that, I'll stop there.

Thank you. And, Halka, any questions?

Is there any updates on either the comp composting or the regional landfill?

So they are conducting a regional landfill feasibility study. Haven't heard anything about that. And then the food composting, we're still working through the bureaucracy on that.

So Could the board support at all with the food composting?

I don't think so.

K. There might be a opportunity to and I can do this since I sit on both boards, but, you know, the health council, one of the things we're looking at is how to do a better job of providing food for folks that need to bridge paydays or whatever. And we also have a number of students at UNMLA that need food support for their families. And it might be interesting just to see if the two organizations couldn't work together along with all the restaurants in town, because restaurants are almost always very interested in as long as they don't have to do it, you know, if somebody could start to pick up foods and stuff that are still perfectly good food, it's just they have to operate at a certain standard. I would guess natural grocers would be open to that.

Don't know about Smith's because it's a franchise moment bigger than than natural grocers. But just a thought because the food pantry I mean, that right now, that's just buying new stuff and, you know, hoping for the best in a lot of canned goods and not a lot of fresh stuff. And then also with the start of the farmer's market, that might be an interesting conversation with him as well.

Yeah. Definitely. Kokyong, did you wanna say something about the

Yes. I have been collecting the leftover breakfast food from Holiday Inn Mhmm. Or Gaia's pantry twice a week. And now parents from the Barronka Mesa School has offered to collect the leftover from lunch and bring them to me. And now we have added a freezer, so anything that perishable food goes into the refrigerator, and any leftover from the refrigerator goes into the freezer.

And at the end of the month, whatever is left in the freezer goes to the woman's shelter, homeless shelter in Espanola. So let's see what else. I go to the coop every Friday and ask them for produce that they cannot sell, like bananas that starting to turn black because it got too cold, but it's still very edible. And I will collect them. Usually, I get about 30 pounds of food a week Wow. To recycle.

Cool. And, Ko Gyeong, remind me the guy's pantry is at the Unitarian Church. Right?

There are three three boxes. One is for nonperishable food in a big I think it's, like, 15 cubic foot of storage. The refrigerator is about three cubic foot, and the freezer is about three cubic foot feet. And the the freezer and refrigerator is just outside the door Okay. Of the church. The pantry is in the middle of the parking lot in an island.

Okay. Cool. Well, it sounds like maybe you all could connect on that. Yeah.

Yes.

Cool. Alright. Let's see. Preview of upcoming agenda items. So Gary's gonna come give a talk about his efforts next time. If anybody has any other ideas, please let Angelica and I know. Yeah. I think we can adjourn the quickest meeting we've ever had. Thanks, everybody.

Bye, Herman.

Bye, Herman.