Environmental Services Division - Regular Meeting

Alright. We'll go ahead and get started, and, hopefully, Rebecca will be able to join us. So we'll start with a call to order and do roll call. So Jill can start. Jill Dehaven. Shannon Blair, and then we can go online. Sue, if you wanna go.

Sue Barnes.

Herman. Joe Chandler.

Alright. Thanks, everyone. We'll go ahead and move on to item number two, which is public comment. This section of the agenda is reserved for comments from the public on items that are not otherwise included in this agenda. Yeah. And you can go ahead and step up if you want to. The microphone should be on. And as a reminder, we'll set a timer for thirty minutes. We don't have one on this.

Thirty minutes?

Or sorry, three minutes.

I'll take it.

I'll take it.

It'll be a long time. We don't have one on the screen, but Inhelka can I can do it on my phone? Yeah.

Okay. So Yeah. You're gonna time me? You don't have it on the screen?

No. But I'll tell you when you have thirty seconds left. You're gonna do it? I I can do it.

We haven't started yet, have we?

Tell me when you wanna go. Okay.

Hi. My name is Mike Dempsey. I live in White Rock. I hope to be on this board someday. I do. I know a lot about energy and energy security and many facets of energy. It's my favorite topic for reading on. That's not the reason I'm here. I'm here to ask if the I know you can't answer questions, but feel free to. How does the environmental sustainability board fit AstroTurf being put in on three ball fields in White Rock with their agenda?

Because you're taking up four or five acres of grass that turns carbon dioxide into oxygen and enriches soil and the soil the and soil astroturf? I know you don't have to say. I think it's completely upside down and if you don't agree that we don't need any astroturf, you you really have to justify that to yourself some way. It isn't it isn't a little thing. It's a big thing.

And all the grass in White Rock is now grass, beautiful grass, beautiful grass. And I don't want Astroturf on White Rock. My dog doesn't like Astroturfers. You're gonna have to rip it out sometimes. Sure, you got it on the football field, but you don't have it on Sullivan Field right next door. If you wanna put in AstroTurf, put it in in Los Alamos. We we don't want it. I don't want it in White Rock. And it's

Sixty seconds left.

Ecological. Thirty seconds?

Sixty.

Okay. It's non ecological to put astroturf in in place of real grass. Darra Field is one of the ones they wanna change. It's beautiful. It has the best grass in Overlook Park. It has the best grass. It's beautiful. And the little league field, no, they were they don't have to start practice early or late. The reason given is for the

Thirty seconds.

Girls softball team or the boys baseball team. I've never seen a boys baseball team down there. Girl softball team. So they can start training earlier. Well, Babe Ruth out of Cincinnati or Ohio or Pete Rose, they didn't get extra training be because it where they lived, it snowed around Chicago. So

Alright. Thank you. That time is up.

Thank you very much. I'm going to the Astroturf meeting now.

Thank you. Alright. Do we have any other public comment in the room? Nope. Okay. Is there anybody online?

Is there anyone online that would like to make a comment? I don't see anyone.

Okay. Alright. Well, thank you, everybody. We can move on to item number three, which is approval of today's agenda, for our May 15 meeting. Do we have a motion to approve or anything that we need to discuss first?

No? K. I so move to approve agenda for today.

Do we have a second?

I second.

Okay. Let's do a verbal since Herman and Joe don't have their cameras on. So all those in favor, guess we can start with Joe. Aye.

Aye.

Okay. Herman?

Aye.

Aye. Okay. Aye. Alright. So today's agenda for our May 15 meeting has been approved. We'll move on to item number four, which is approval of minutes, from the 04/17/2025 environmental sustainability board meeting. Any changes or anything that we need to discuss? Nope. Alright. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes from our April 17 meeting?

I move that we approve the ESB minutes from the 04/17/2025 meeting as presented.

I second.

I second.

Alright. We'll do another verbal approval then. Jill, do you wanna start?

Approve. Joe?

Yes. I approve.

Sue? Yes. Herman?

I approve.

Alright. And I also approve. Okay. Well, let's move on to item number five, which is board business. So we need to discuss and appoint liaison assignments.

We've had a couple folks kinda leave, and so I think it might be a good idea to reevaluate who is doing what, specifically board of public utilities. And Jesse and I had been doing that, though. It was mostly Jesse. So, yeah, I would like us to consider maybe doing, like, a rotation for board of public utilities because it is a fairly involved liaison appointment. And, Halka, do they meet every other Wednesday?

I think they meet almost every week except for Twice

a month.

Twice a month? Okay. Normally. Yeah. So

And they're long they could be long meetings. Yeah.

Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

For the for the utilities meetings that aren't on the third Wednesday of the month, that that actually gives makes it a just to say, a little bit easier because they're all recorded. So That's true. The the the it's it's tricky for the the one that's on the the day before this meeting because they often don't post their recordings. But the other ones are easier to do because they are recorded, and so you can watch them at your leisure. One question I would have is do the Utilities Board does the Utilities Board at this time want us, ESB members, to be giving them presentations on what we're doing?

Is that also involved in this liaison appointment?

Yes. I do believe they are interested in hearing from the liaison.

Okay.

But we I mean, if someone's schedule doesn't allow them to, they can always just type up something to be like, the chair could read it. We just have to be proactive and make sure that they're doing that. So I I guess I'm just saying that we don't have to necessarily go in person, or join via Zoom if folks' schedules don't allow it.

Well, I'd be willing to help out with this. I I did it for all four years of my previous tenure on this board. So I know what I'm getting into, and I'd be happy to help out. If someone can share their responsibilities, that would be awesome.

Okay. Yeah. I'm also happy to keep helping. My only request is that we do, like, a schedule because if I don't write it down, it's not gonna happen. I need I need, like, a calendar. And we and whoever else wants to be involved, maybe we can set up some sort of rotation, and do it that way.

Works for me.

Okay. Is anybody else interested in rotating? And, Rebecca, I know you just joined us. I'm not sure if you were able to listen, but, we're discussing liaison appointments, specifically board of public utilities since Jesse, is no longer, serving on the board. So

Thanks for the update. Yeah. My, computer was not letting me engage in any way, so I did a full restart. So I just missed everything. So I'll try to catch up here. At the moment, I think with the plastic bag working group, I'm probably at my capacity. But I'll you know, as that changes, I'll be able to join more.

Okay. Herman and Joe, I'm assuming your silence from both of you means that you probably don't have availability right now.

Yeah. I'm keep the payment. K. This is my last month on the utility board.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, on

the ESP. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well, why don't we Sue, you and I can do it for now. I believe we do have to vote and just make sure everyone approves.

So there was that board, and then the other task force that you all were invited to participate on was the economic Yeah. Equity working group under the inclusivity task force. So I will I mean, I I heard you all that you're all at capacity, but if this is something that you wanna pursue, you can it's an opportunity to do that.

Who sent that email again?

That was from James Wernicke. He invited you all to participate, and they meet the fourth Friday at 8AM. Can

do they did he include a description of it?

So the purpose is to discuss cost of living issues like housing So utilities, food, health care, employment, commuting, and identify what people are struggling with and how local government and the community can help and are helping and review progress.

And I've already shared with him health council and social services is already doing a lot of that. And I invited him to be part of the board. I think the real question for all of us is this is a very small board and this is a very long list of really prioritizing why do we need to be there. What is the outcome other than just general information? Because that actually could just be shared from a debrief standpoint. So

Yeah. I mean, I I think it's important we make an effort to participate in public utility in the on BPU or, yeah. BPU meetings. And we have pulled stuff off of here before that we didn't feel like was beneficial to us.

Yeah. So right now, we have liaisons to parks and rec, t board, board of public utilities after this and health council, and inclusivity task force is really a liaison to our So

Yeah. I think if someone had bandwidth, it would it would actually be interesting to have a liaison to the p and z just because of all the green building issues and and whatnot. So I do do we have a liaison for for that at this time?

We don't.

Yeah.

Well, we we are gonna have we will have one new member, hopefully, two, right, since Herman is at his term limit. So maybe when we when we have new folks join, we can ask them if that's something they're interested in. Okay. Alright. So it sounds like Sue and I can divide up the board of public utilities.

And then for the time being, we will pass on the invite to join the other task force. Okay. It's yeah. And then I don't see do we have to vote on the appointments, Angelica?

We could just to, and I put a recommended action

in the in your packet. Okay. Sorry. I'm

it's, like, right before Gary's presentation. Oh, perfect. Okay.

Alright. And then, I guess, before we do that, do we need to switch anything up? I mean, we will have to do transportation transportation board, board, but I think we should wait until we have new folks to do that as long as, Harman, you're okay serving for the next month on that board or being the liaison, I should say.

Yes. I am.

Okay. Alright. Sounds good. So it sounds like the only thing that we'll do is add Sue to the board of public utilities as a liaison.

You and Sue.

Well, I think I'm listed there already, but yeah. Are you? Okay. Sure. Alright. Sounds good. Do we can we have a motion for that then? It's on

Yeah. I I see it. And since it's me, I'll go ahead and say I move that the environmental Sustainability Board appoints member Sue Barnes the following liaison assignment, which is to the Board of Public Utilities, sharing that assignment with Chair Blair.

I second.

Alright. We'll start within the room.

I got lost in all that. Sorry. Approve.

Alright. I approve. I approve.

I approve.

I approve.

Alright. Joe? You're muted if you're talking. Joe, are you still there? It's just not Sorry.

I'm still here. Sorry.

Do you approve?

I do. I approve. Sorry.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. So I'll wait to.

Sharon, I just wanted to say we can convene by email to set up a schedule for this somehow. And, yeah, I'm just to I'm I'm actually out of town until the end of the month, but, can do things virtually before I

get there. Sounds good. I'll send you, or whoever gets to it first. I'll try and do it tonight. Otherwise, if you beat me to it, but we can plan on touching base before Monday. How about

Sounds good.

Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. Alright. We can move on to the next item of business, which is the Los Alamos County energy management program proposal and Net Zero Airport. And Gary Goddard is gonna be giving that presentation to us. So thank you, Gary. Yeah. And it should the mic should be on already. So

Testing. Okay. Mhmm. Hi. My name is Gary Goddard.

I am currently the airport manager at Los Alamos County. I've been here since September. And previously from that, I was over at Lantel doing energy management, building automation, and working with the sustainability team, including Shannon often. And and so this proposal does have elements of the airport in it, but that's on the last side So I wanna preface this by by saying that I did an audit with with Joe Close, who I used to also work with a long time ago. And we we found basically, we did an audit of this building just as an example and and a energy audit.

And so we looked at the HVAC equipment, and we looked at the building automation system. And what we found is is not atypical. We found that, you know, things were not necessarily optimized. They probably started off optimized. And, you know, after ten, twelve years, I can't remember exactly when the building was built.

But, you know, things just get out of out of whack. And so so what we found on the Muni Building is typical of what you you would find if you look at any commercial building. It's not it's not an indictment of the county and how they run their things. It's actually, you know, very, very typical. So for those of you who aren't don't work in the field, it may look like things are running worse than they than normal.

But this is pretty this is pretty typical. So and I was motivated by this partly because I did this at the lab, and it's and I could just tell that there was probably opportunities here. And so I just wanted to take a look. And and also, the climate action plan, calls for, building energy efficiency. And I just kinda wanted to take a look at how that was being done at the county and maybe I had something to offer.

And, and then I found out that Joe was, volunteering with, DPU, and, and he worked we worked together on this kind of stuff at the lab. So that made it gave me a few more resources and made it that much more fun to do. So next slide. So this is how we approached it. And this is kind of a a standard procedure for either recommissioning or they call it also continuous commissioning of building systems.

And so the first thing we did was we went in and we looked at the, the the utility records and kinda get a feel for how the building's performing compared to buildings of its kind. And and then we'll monitor that utility data. And and so immediately, we get came out that the the building energy use was a little bit higher than than it typically was for a building of this size, in particular, a lead building. And so pretty much knew that there was definitely opportunity there. You know, that was kind of like, oh, this is prob there's probably gonna be stuff there if we look for it.

And like I said, especially a a lead building. So so the process is to go through the basic the major equipment, the air handlers that provide the heating and cooling for the building, the heating hot water system, and just look and see how they're scheduled, how they're programmed to deliver the load where I mean, deliver heating and cooling where there's a load. It's very easy for buildings of this size to both heat and cool simultaneously. And everybody can be super comfort comfortable, but it could be both heating and cooling at the same time and using twice as much energy as it to without anybody knowing. You know, often a lot of things are are tenant driven.

You know, people are uncomfortable. They're too cold. They're too hot. And that's obviously a red flag that things aren't working optimally. But but it can be you know, everybody could be optimally comforted comfortable, and it's still using a lot of energy unnecessarily.

So we looked at at those things. So the approach was to, yeah, look at the utility data first, get an idea of where the building's at right now, and then go through the equipment, do analysis, a check with the equipment, make sure that it's operating well, and then tune the building back up to to be where it it performs the way it was meant to be designed designed to perform. And then after that, track what's going on, you know, monitor the utility data afterward and see how it performs and see if it performed, if we have made a dent in the energy consumption. So next slide. So this is basically what we did.

This is this is also We we did this pilot project on the Muni Building, but this is kind of a a a pathway kinda where I see that, you know, this is a suggestion or maybe how the county could go about doing this on other buildings. And, you know, we'd have a targeted energy audits, which is what we did on the Muni Building, and I'll cover some of the results of that in in the next slides. And we do pilot. We develop templates that we can use for subsequent buildings, possibly hire some interns to to help us with it or with oversight by Joe and myself as we go through those those templates and and guide the interns through through audits. And then this this third point here, pilot Brainbox AI.

I have a slide later about brain Brainbox, but it's basically a building automation engineer in AI form that will keep an eye on the equipment and the and basically look for anomalies, look for inefficient energy uses, and alert the facilities people to those to those problems. And and then, you know, this whole process is like, if we could do this on a few buildings, maybe we could determine whether the scope of this is large enough that it would support an energy management program solely funded through the savings of the program itself. So muni being a pilot building, we have other buildings like this at the at the county. And if we, you know, say we could save $30,000 on this billing per year by doing this kind of work, you know, you you can scale that up to a bunch of buildings and easily come up with a with a position paid by the by the work itself. So that's the goal.

This is just a suggestion, and this pilot program is just an exploration to see if that's actually true. Is that possible? Is this something that we could do? And the goal is not to just pay somebody, but to also achieve the climate action goals at the same time. We're saving energy.

We're optimizing the equipment, which reduces the run time of the equipment, which reduces the maintenance costs, and reduce it links in the lengthens the life of the equipment. People are more comfortable when systems are optimized. And And so, you know, this is, you know, can we come up with a system that does this, achieves the climate action goals, and can the whole thing be paid for and for itself? So this is kind of like the idea that I'm working with that we're exploring here. Next slide, please.

So this is the pilot project in the Munich that Joe and I did. And so first, we looked at the utility data and determined it was using about 25% higher energy consumption than a building, an average office building of its size. And like it says up there, it says despite, despite LEED gold certification, the operational inefficiencies have developed over time. And this is this is true for just about every building, whether it's LEED or not. I mean, you commission it.

Everything's running great. And then slowly, little things break and and entropy happens. And slowly over time, it becomes less less efficient. And so, you know, the typical practice is every five years or so, you recommission a building, bring it back up to its baseline, and then it deteriorates again. And then you do that again.

And so so this is kinda where we're entering the picture here is is is doing this audit, and we're checking out the equipment. And, you know, we found the all the items you can see in the right right column there. So the equipment was scheduled for to run Saturday and Sunday, and that probably wasn't necessary. And, and, the economizer economizer is the outdoor air damper that brings in fresh air from the outside. In a climate like Los Alamos, that's usually cool air.

So instead of using air conditioning, often you can use the outside air to cool to reach the the discharge air set point of the air handlers and cool the building. So those were those those were broken or disabled, and that had been going on for a while. The supplier temperature was fixed at 62 degrees. Best practices are that you adjust that according to the load. So there's programming fixes.

You can do that. Same thing with the static pressure, like how fast you run the fan speeds, how much air you produce. You can save a lot of energy for dialing that in and just getting the right amount of air that the the spaces need. Heating hot water loop was also running twenty four seven because of some broken speed controllers. And the building automation routers and and equipment is also pretty much aged out and need to be replaced.

Next slide. So we found all those things, and we basically corrected almost all of them. We're there's a few work orders in for training to fix a few of these things. But otherwise, you you know, a lot of this stuff was either low or no cost to fix. Changing the schedule, that's just a programming thing.

Economize the restoration. A lot of the wires were loose, and we just plugged them back in. And and then we have a few work orders to fix some physical broken things on the air handlers, but that should get done pretty quickly. We reviewed the building automation programming for supplier temperature reset and and duct static reset, which are optimization programs that were implemented, but they really weren't working very well. When we replaced the controllers, we had the new controllers replaced.

When we replaced those, the new controllers had better capabilities and better programming. So we made sure that those got implemented. And the boiler programming for not running twenty four seven, we we still have a work order in in for that, but that should get fixed fairly quickly. Next slide. So now, basically, what we've done is we've kind of rebaselined this building.

We've gotten it up to design specs. It should be operating or very soon operating how it's designed. And once we do that, we'd like to prevent that that entropy, that that whole degradation over, you know, three to five years or whatever it takes to recommission it. And this is one of the ways that we're proposing to do that. This is also just a proposal.

This is new technology. It's called Brainbox. And it's basically a system that monitors all the building automation points, and it looks for inefficiencies in the system. And it can actually write to the set points, both like the temperature, the discharge temperature, the air handlers, the pressure set points, and it can actually change them slightly and and then monitor and see if it's going in the right direction. If it's going in the right direction, it keeps it.

If it's not, it resets them back to where it was. So the whole idea is it learns how the system works, and it'll do continuous improvement. And it will also look for any of those problems. All the problems that we discovered in our audit should also the brain box should also be able to discover them and alert us with notifications that these are happening as well. And so we haven't worked with this before.

I've done a lot of reading about this in the past. I've been keeping an eye on this technology. And Trane, which is the company that the county uses for their building automation, recently acquired this company. So it would be a really easy thing to try out just on this building and see if, you know, its promises really are true or not. And, you know, I'm hopeful but skeptical.

So and so the idea also is that is that it it will it will do diagnostics diagnostics and and and find problems. It can correct some of the problems. It's not going to go up and replug in the wires. We still have to notify facilities. And facilities is pretty good about doing work orders in a timely manner.

And then it'll also perform do the performance tracking. How is it performing after Brainbox was implemented? And we can track that and we can look at the savings that's accrued from the implementation of Brainbox and rebaselining the building. Just the main idea of it is to keep it from deteriorating. Next slide.

So that was that's kind of where we're at with these are just things that I'm proposing, the ideas that I had. You know, it's kind of a pilot project to see if this is you know, if this pans out, maybe we could do a couple more buildings with audits, with the interns, and then we could, you know, evaluate the effectiveness of all that and see if we could scale it up. So it's a proposal. So I'm looking for the sustainability board questions, ideas, whether this makes sense or not. And, and I thought, you know, back to my sandbox. This is, the airport. And, so I had some ideas. I've been there for seven months and looking at how the building itself performs. It's you know, it was built in 1947. It's a cinder block.

It's not even filled cinder block, so it's just a bunch of thermal mass. It's got a lot of windows. It's, you know, got a lot of ceiling height. It's a terribly inefficient building, and and it uses a lot of natural gas for heating. It uses a fair amount of of electricity for cooling, but not nearly as much as the the gas for heating with all those windows.

I've done an energy audit on that. I'm still still have a little bit more to do. I've had kind of discussions with GPU, but not should need to follow-up with that about if they're gonna remove some of the solar panels out at the the landfill that maybe I could repurpose some to put them on the roof there. There's a huge flat roof there and very few obstructions on the roof, so I could fill it with solar panels, replace the the furnaces and the the cooling system with heat pump technology, split units, things like that that that I can run just on electricity. And and then install some more smart controls for for doing that.

I I have put in window shades on the south side that are automated, and I can tie them into I built put in a small building automation system in there to be able to that I can program them to open up in the morning, in the winter especially, allow the sun to come through, heat up the cinder block interior. When the cinder block gets saturated, then close the the shades and kind of retain some of that energy. So just playing around with those, you know, playing around with those ideas. I have can then track the effects of that and see if it's gonna be if it's worth the effort. But so these are some of the things that I'd like to I'd like to do on the airport.

Kinda would like to make them as sustainable as possible and and, you know, try to come up with justifications and, reductions of energy, return on investment analysis such that, they can either pay for themselves. But if it's, you know, if it's possible to put enough solar panels up there and heat pumps and the thing, it might, you know, end up being the first net zero airport in the in the state. It could be I mean, it's a pretty easy, fun little project. There's lots of huge airports in the state, so it's not really fair. So anyway, that's about that's about all I I have for my presentation, but I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much, Gary, for coming to talk to us.

I have a couple of questions, Are we running math on all of this?

Yeah. I'm a trained engineer, and we did lots of math.

Okay. I'm looking at the airport, and I'm thinking who uses the airport. And I just think it'd be an interesting I love the idea of a net zero. But, you know, what are we doing it for? You know? Would then just to showcase.

Yeah. And that's a good question. I mean, we're we're doing it anyway because the building is still occupied. So we're still running gas electric heat to heat it and cool it. There is not a lot of people who walk through there on a daily basis. You know? It might be on a bad day, maybe 10 people. You know? On a really bad day, maybe maybe two people. And on a really busy day, maybe 50 people. So there's not a lot of traffic through there. There's not and we have there's two offices there, my office and and so be a Syeda's office, and that's and that's about it. But we're heating and cooling the whole building

for Right.

You know, regardless. I

just think it'd be interesting to figure out what else could that building do. You know, if we could get to a net zero, what what do we wanna accomplish with that in terms of is there are there other applications besides using it as an airport space? And I know this is way out of my pay grade, I'm just thinking we have so much knowledge and so much understanding. I mean, you obviously are wickedly smart about how to do all this stuff. And so I'm wondering, is there a partnership with the university? Is there an opportunity to do a training program out there? I mean, I'm just trying to think

of Yeah, that's great. That's great. I mean, I really welcome those kind of ideas. We do have the civil air patrol has an office there, and they run programs on the weekends out there. The experimental aircraft association also runs programs out there.

I've recently applied to rent the space out for events, trying to make it a public space so that it can be used for for other things. So we're renting it out, free of charge, for small events, you know, maximum 50 people, that kind of thing. They could be book clubs, I don't know, chess tournaments, small events without alcohol, things like that. Try to get more community involvement and actually, you know, open it up to the public to do more things. So I think it's a great idea.

The the other piece is, and then I'll be quiet, New Mexico Tech, they are always looking for proof of concept, different thoughts around how to approach energy and whether it's geothermal or it's solar or it's whatever. Maybe there's just ways to test some theories while someone else pays, I guess, is my point.

I like that idea too. So are you talking about grant programs or

Yeah. Because they go after a lot of big federal grants and because almost all of their stuff, separate from the explosion pieces of New Mexico Tech, is very focused on next generation energy types, and they're doing lots of things in there on geothermal. But I just it's like I don't wanna waste what a cool project this could be for few people. You know? And and space is so prime up here. I'm just trying to brainstorm, basically.

Well, I think, you know, part of this idea is I'm on the New Mexico Pilots Association tourism board, and I'm trying to do things like put up a display board about all the hiking trails. There's a 100 miles of hiking trails right outside the door of the airport. I'm working with the NMPA on getting and the NM DOT tourism to get a grant to develop a kiosk that's about tourism and play local places to fly and the hiking stuff. So, you know, having you know, calling it a net zero is like another feather in its cap, you know, as far as tourism goes. Like, hey.

Let's go see the, you know, the the net zero the only net zero airport I know. Wouldn't be drawing drawing thousands, but it's still just another thing.

Anyone else have any questions?

Okay. I have to ask one more. On this

I And ir

protocols that kept them from question. Doing that? Because I know a lot of times to keep your LEED certification, you have to be able to prove that you're doing certain energy things. I'm just curious. This is a there's a reason why this town is called where discoveries are made. And so I'm always looking for ways to tie that in to, would you like to know? You know? USGBC, would you like to know? You got a building up here that's gold. Here's what we discovered. Is

Same thing. It was like, you know, it was built LEED. It got LEED certified, and I think it was LEED silver. And then and then, you know, the operations, a lot of the stuff that they put in never ended up working. So operations wise, it wasn't it wasn't lead in. And so I've seen this across the board at a a lot of lead buildings are this way. And it's so but, you know, statistically, I don't know really how that plays out. You know, experientially and empirically from what I've seen, that's true. Is that, you know, if you don't keep an eye on these things, they're very complex systems. And if you don't keep an eye on them, and it's a lot of work just to keep them running and keep all the equipment running and everybody comfortable.

And then to be thinking about, you know, hey. It's working. You know? It's like, how you know, is it working optimally? Well, maybe not. You know, it takes another level of effort. And, and so that I've seen that pretty typical in the buildings that I've seen. So

yeah. Sue, do you wanna go ahead?

Yeah. Just both of these projects are absolutely wonderful. So thank you for for doing them and bringing them to our attention. And I'm thinking about how we scale them. Is the Brainbox system applicable to all ages of buildings? Or it seems as though it integrates a lot with the technology in the building. So and some of our buildings are quite old. Is there a limit on where that can be used?

Yes. So the county uses a train building automation system, and this will integrate with all the train building automation systems. Not all the county buildings have automation systems. About 25 of them do have train building automation systems. A couple of them need to be upgraded just like we did this one. Had to be upgraded to be able to be compatible with the brain box to newer technology. And that's kind of in the works anyway because they're obsolete. So I think the county has about 50 buildings total, somewhere around that. So about half of them would be eligible for the Brainbox.

K. And the others could be audited by more labor intensive methods or Yeah. I'm assuming. Yeah.

Yeah. The same process we did on this, it would just be without the you know, you're basically looking are the is the equipment functioning as designed? And you can do that manually. You know? I did it at the airport. We don't have any building automation system except the one that I put in there. But Right. So

Excellent. Thank you.

You're

welcome. I have a couple questions.

Yeah.

Oh, I think Herman, do you wanna go first?

Yeah. I was just wondering if if there's an estimate of the the energy saving potential for all county buildings?

Well, I would say on this one, you know, if we start with the Muni Building, because that's what we know, you know, I would say that we probably between the scheduling and the economizer and the heating hot water system loop stuff, you know, we probably are gonna probably save around 20% of of the HVAC energy. Could be up to, you know, 35%, but I I wanna be conservative here. So and I don't know if this you know, if if the next building, you know, if we got lucky and found a lot of low hanging fruit here and, you know, and claim victory very easily, you know, if we go to the next building, I'm not you know, I can't say whether we'll find the same amount of stuff. But, you know, if we did, you know, you can kind of extrapolate from there. You know?

If, you know, if you say, you know, if you would you you kinda have to reduce that as savings per square foot and then and then and then scale it up by square foot. That's the way I would approach that that problem. So I don't know. Do you have any suggestions on how we would do that, Joe? Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, there's a potential for quite a bit of savings there. You know, I'm always hesitant to say numbers because everything kind of preliminary. And, you know, really, the proof is in the pudding when we do the MMB. You know, from a year from now, I will I will be able to tell you exactly normalized for weather, exactly how much energy the things that we just did save.

Thank you.

Yep. Rebecca, Joe, do either of you have any questions?

No questions. I'm pretty unfamiliar with this area, and I'm learning a ton. So listening and learning. Thank you so

much. Thanks.

So you can go ahead again.

Thank you. Yeah. I was just thinking I'm not sure if this is a question who this is a question for, maybe it's Angelica. But if we were interested in or the county was interested in having this kind of analysis and work done on all of its buildings or a bunch more of them, what would be the path forward? How would that work to scale this up and implement it?

That's a good question. I can look into it and get back to you.

Yes. Saving 20% of our energy in across the buildings, and of course, the Muni Building isn't the oldest of our buildings by any means. So we might be able to harvest even greater savings around other other buildings. It seems like it would be worth looking further into and expanding.

Alright. I do have a couple of questions. Sure. What like, what's your kind of jumping off of Sue's question, I guess. What would be the next building that you all would wanna look at?

You know, I've I've I've talked to people down at the PCS Building, and they they kinda think that there's a lot of things out of whack down there. So it might be another another candidate because of the impact on comfort. I mean, that's really ultimately the most important thing, right, is we're trying to make people comfortable with these things. You know, it because I'm in public works, I have a lot of you know, I'm down there, and I have a lot of connection with that building. So it might not be the peep the building that people are most uncomfortable at.

I don't really know. But that that would that would be the kind of path that I would go. I would say, you know, where are people most uncomfortable because, you know, that probably meet you know, indicates that the systems aren't running well. You could do an audit. You could fix that, and you could get people comfortable, you know, and save energy. Right? So Okay. That's the way I would go about it.

And then I don't know if you'll know the answer to this, but I'm not familiar with Lee at all, really. Is there not a recertification process where you have to prove that you've maintained some level of, I don't know, optimization?

There's the operational part of lead. I I don't know the details of that. Joe, you might be able to answer that. That exists. So I don't know if Cam's signed up

for it.

Okay. I guess that was more my question is why if it exists, you know, why aren't we recertifying this building to make sure we're keeping up with maintenance and optimization.

I do think there is a cycle. And to keep your to be able to keep calling this building a lead gold lead certified, you do have to go through this process. My guess is we didn't and we just used the original designation because they expect these buildings to fall out

of compliance. But

I don't know what the cycle is. It's I'm gonna guess it's ten years.

Okay. But I don't know that for sure. I don't know either. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I don't know, and, Hal, because that might be something that we could look into and check the status of the building and see.

You can do it online.

Oh, at on the lead website. Yeah.

On USGPC.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And

they will

give you the the determinations to maintain your lead certification. Okay. I don't know.

Okay. I think all of my other questions were pretty much answered. Okay. And it sounds like maybe from sustainability, we can just of support your efforts for, potentially doing more, countywide audits. And then I would love to have you come back in a year and tell us what you you know, if the improvements made any difference and what kind of energy and cost savings happened.

Yeah. Definitely. I'm very curious to see what's gonna what the numbers are gonna show.

Cool. Alright. Any final questions?

I was just gonna say most of the lead payback moments are in five year increments, cost versus savings. And it would be interesting to see where you are after a year. Because in theory, whatever you spend on a lead process, they put about a five year payback moment, which is part of the challenge of keeping the building up to whatever designation it is.

Right. Yeah. I mean, far as payback, it'll probably pay back in a month since I'm already paid for it.

So Right. Yeah. It doesn't count. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you so much, Gary, for taking the time and and coming to present to us. I really appreciate it.

Yeah. Thanks a lot. Alright.

Well, let's move on to item number six, which is reports. So I can go first with the chair report. Let's see here. So I do wanna remind everybody we have at least one vacancy to fill for Jesse's position. And then Herman, I think you are also terming out, so potentially too.

So just keep that in mind. If anybody any members of the public are interested in joining, the application is up on the website, so you could just search for boards and commissions and find it that way. Alright. And then I'll give kind of a I'll just do a really brief overview of, the boards and commissions luncheon, which was, last Thursday. So there's quite a few different things going on.

If anyone is interested in arts in public places, they have a few different projects, and I'm happy to talk offline too about what those are. And then I can give the the BPU update too since Jesse was not here. So they did get their budget approved for f y twenty six, and I believe the fiscal year starts in July. Right? Inhalica? Right. Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then they also got approval to for the Trinity Drive gas line and water line replacement project, so that's good news.

And then at one of the April meetings, Inhelka gave a presentation presentation on the Los Alamos County fleet conversion plan and the community wide EV charging plan. So the same plan that we or the same presentation that we got. I will say that Jennifer Hollingsworth, who was the BPU member who gave the report at the boards and commissions meeting, seemed very excited about that. So I think you know, I know Anne Helc is planning on doing regular updates with them, but, you know, that might be another way for us to collaborate with them on on EV stuff because they seemed interested and excited. So I think that's also good news that they're interested.

Let's see what else. Oh, they also approved an amendment for the ChargePoint software, which is what the EV charging stations use too. So and let's see. Probably the only other thing that is of potential interest, the code ordinances that were discussed at a previous meeting in March were approved, at the April 16 meeting for BPU. So, I'm sure if you are resident of Los Alamos County, you have been hearing about this, but those rates will will be effective, starting July 1.

Let's see what else. Think that was kind of it for the boards and commissions luncheon. And I don't think I have really anything else that I wanna go over. So alright. I also gave that. So we can move on to transportation board. Herman, do you have any updates? If you don't, I do have the updates that they gave at the board and commission luncheon so I can

Oh, yeah. I I attended the meeting. There were three topics. One of which was the Cannon Rim Trail going from being this project is going forward, and they want to start planning up to 90% of completion. And Cannon Rim Trail should be extended from Smith over to 15th Street and then further to 20th Street.

And it seems like everything is is is lined up and moving forward. So I was excited about that. The second topic was the Atomic City Transit SEER emission fleet transition plan. And, mean, we we just talked about fleet conversion last week in in ESP. I think one of the topics that was discussed more with transportation board was hydrogen to EV ratio, the buses that were ordered that have been delayed and and there's but still supposed to be coming.

And and the problem with with, battery electric buses and and the range for for servicing Los Alamos and and possible solutions to that. And the third topic was crossings. So it seems like there is a small but constant flow of of people asking for pedestrian crossings. And I think this is a reoccurring theme in at the transportation board. And the common issue is that most crossings that people are interested don't don't have enough people using it to warrant improvement of the crossing.

And it's a bit of a chicken egg problem, I think, that that people are, of course, not crossing Diamond or Trinity without a proper crossing. Therefore, you have few protestants, and therefore, the the crossing is not warranted. And there is this flowchart that they they use, and and I think that then there is an issue with with, not having enough pedestrian infrastructure to begin with to make it attractive and to to increase the need. And this was also in the in the discussion of the board members and public. K. Do you have anything to add, Shannon?

Well, I do have a question. So if I understand correctly, are we did we purchase or did the Atomic City Transit purchase hydrogen buses?

They ordered two EV buses, if if I'm not mistaken.

Okay. But not hydrogen. I was gonna say, where are we gonna fill those? Okay.

So there are there are options for for hydrogen, and there is is a plant and a source, and, you know, storage has to be figured out in infrastructure. But the the big advantage of of hydrogen is that you get more energy density and more energy onto the vehicle, and it can serve longer distances. So that's the big advantage, especially for for heavy equipment. So for the trash truck buses, school buses, this is an attractive alternative. Yeah. And if you have enough heavy vehicles to to warrant the infrastructure, this could actually be a a viable solution.

Interesting. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Herman. Alright. We can move on to parks and rec board. So I do have a couple updates that I think are relevant. So the PRB activated a bike park working group. So if Herman, this is not necessarily, like, a bicycle infrastructure in terms of, like, roads and stuff, but it's more more pointed towards, like, if designing and implementing a bike park in town. And there also is a working group for the North Mesa master plan, so that is of potential interest.

If anyone has comments or, you know, concerns about those, let me know, and I can pass it along to the to the PRB board. So, alright. We can move oh, are there any questions? Alright let's move on to Health Council. Jill.

So the Health Council spent a lot of energy at the last meeting really talking about suicide prevention and how we handle suicide nine eighty eight calls. And that has now percolated into there is a working group council for designing and building a roadmap of what are the needs up here that fall under social services, which of those needs need to be in a physical location? Do we need more than one physical location? And really creating basically a series of systems that start with approximately 34 contracts that the county now has that feeds social services. So what I'm watching is we're finally, maybe, hopefully, going to get our arms around systems up here and get away from reinventing wheels under social services because we have an enormous amount of nonprofits up here that definitely provide services, but we don't always know what they are.

And so I think hopefully the goal is by the end of the summer that we'll be able to discuss the actual logistics, services provided, and the needs and wants of brick and mortar.

And isn't May, I think? It is. Okay. Yes. Cool. Alright. Thanks, Jill. Alright. Counselor Herman, do you have any updates for us? Okay.

Good evening, chair and board members. Since we last met, there have been a couple of council meetings, the regular session council meeting on May 6 and the council work session meeting on the thirteenth. One of just a few highlights for you. There was an interesting proclamation I wanna share with you about the recognition of the Cerro Grande fire twenty five years ago, right about now. The county has invited the community to help us honor this moment by sharing memories, photos, or videos related to the Cerro Grande fire.

Submissions for this can be made through the county's online form by midnight tonight, and we invite everyone to join us on Tuesday, May 20 from 04:30 to 05:30 in Room 110 here in the Municipal Building to view the collection and remember the impact on our community. We also had an overview of the 2025 legislative session by Rep. Christine Chandler. The sixty day session had over 1,300 pieces of legislation introduced. The budget totaled nearly 10,800,000,000 which is a 6% increase over last year.

A few highlights. A historic behavioral health care package, which dedicates substantial funding to mental and behavioral health care, including $280,000,000 to expand infrastructure and access, with regional coordination was passed. Neither of the IPRA bills passed. The family leave, the Family Medical Leave Act didn't pass, but they will try that again next year. And we did receive capital outlay for Los Alamos County emergency operations for $750,000 and for the UNM Los Alamos student services building renovation for $75,000.

And I also wanted to update you on the local small business engagement working group. Councilors David Rieger, Randall Reidy, and I have been meeting with property owners to chat about LIDA for retail, attending Los Alamos Coalition meetings, and meeting with small business owners. Los Alamos County has recently signed an MOU with a group called Cities Work, which is the Institute for Justice's nonpartisan regulatory consulting initiative, who are committed to increasing economic opportunity and fostering entrepreneurship in cities across the country. They partner with cities to make it cheaper, faster, and simpler to start a business all free of charge. They identify the real world hurdles to starting a small business and offer comprehensive regulatory reform strategies based on these findings.

While this service is free, they pick the communities they want to work with, and Los Alamos County is by far the smallest that they have ever worked with. So, we're pretty excited for the county to begin working with CitiesWork and see what input they have for us. Our next county council regular session meeting is this coming Tuesday, May 20 here in this room or on Zoom. I hope folks can join us. Thank you. Any any questions?

Or

I do have a question. Sure. Is the the May 20 Cerro Grande event gonna be recorded if we can't attend? Do you know?

I don't know that. I I think it's kind of a room you walk into and kind of experience. Yeah. But I I'm not sure, to be honest. That's kinda what I envision.

But That makes sense.

You know, they're collecting photos, videos, audio clips Yeah. And different items. So I am not sure on that. I can find out and let you know if you want.

Yeah. I mean, I'd be interested if it was post like, even if they just put the photos, like the slideshow up somewhere. That'd be cool to see.

Sure. I spent some time today with Julie Williams, held the PIO for the county, and she was telling me that in going back through the archives, there were hundreds of letters that the county received from people all over the world who just sent their well wishes to the people of Los Alamos when it happened. Wow. You know, these these huge fires are kind of common now, but, well, I that's not true. But, I mean, they are very common now.

But back then, it was kind of the first one that was started certainly accidentally by the park service, and and it it was kind of an anomaly at the time. So I'm real interested to see what all pieces are are brought to to this event.

Yeah. So

Cool. Well, thank you for sharing.

Sure. Looks like the event is in this in Room 110.

110. Right.

So yeah. And it doesn't doesn't look like it'll be live streamed.

Okay. Cool.

But you're you're probably right. There'll probably be press there taking photos that'll end up in the local media. Yeah. So

Cool. Alright. Any other question? No. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. I don't think we have anybody from the inclusivity task force I don't think so. Here. Yeah. And I don't think okay. Yeah. Alright. So we can skip that. So we'll move on to working group reports and steering committee. So we'll start with Los Alamos Sustainability Alliance. Sue or Rebecca, do you all have updates?

I could give the update.

Or in health week?

Yeah. So we mostly discussed the water festival, the DPU water Festival that'll be held next Tuesday and Wednesday. And, we decided on the activity we're going to work on, which we're going to do a series of would you rather questions with the kids. So they like to move around, but we wanna keep it kind of structured. So we'll ask you a question like, would you rather compost everything or reuse everything?

And so you can move to the left side of the room or the right side of the room. So Abby helped create, like, a series of questions, and then we'll also debrief them on, you know, climate action and some of that. So just like a fun interactive. You only get to work with the students for, like, twenty minutes, so you wanna make it fun and engaging. And then we also have been working collectively on an extreme heat information that we can share with the community.

So Abby last summer had put together a series or a list of cooling stations with throughout the community, most of which are county facilities, but then we've also been working with emergency management and social services to, provide tips and resources that the for first responders would be able to give out brochures and some other items to people who might be experiencing extreme heat within the community. So it's it's a new effort, and we're excited about that. So we just we talked briefly about that, and we also talked about developing a welcoming kit for the community that could be given to them, like, the time where they sign up for utilities or they buy their home from a from a realtor or something. So working through some of that as well. Well.

And that's it.

Cool. Thanks, Angelica. Any questions? Nope. Alright. Let's move on to the education and outreach working group. So Sue and Do you have any updates?

I've I've only attended one of the one of the meetings on this, and that was last week. We had a an informational call. The the RFP has gone out for this project for collaborators, consultants to help us with education and outreach to the community about climate change. And there was an informational call last week where these consultants could call in with questions. We went through the RFP, and they could ask questions.

And I was impressed by the number of people who were on the call. A number there were, I would say, at least a couple dozen potential consultants interested in this proposal. So looking forward to the actual proposals coming in and seeing what what people have in mind to do to help us out with this project. And and Helica, you have more backstory. So if there's anything to add, go ahead.

No. So this is a council initiative. They want us to educate the community on, really encourage them to take action, take climate action. So that's the purpose of the RFP. Last Wednesday was the nonmandatory, pre proposal meeting. So, we yeah. We had a good attendance. We had, I think, over 30 people showed up. So it was well, that closes next Thursday so we'll see the actual applicants that we receive.

Cool. Alright. What about the community wide EV study working group? Any updates?

The only thing that I've been able to participate in is we did have a farmer's market table on this two weeks ago no, last week, actually, and where we specifically asked people if they were interested in having an EV, if they were interested in telling them a little bit about the EV charging project. And the reception was good. We got a number of nice comments from people. No one was opposed to the idea. There was some enthusiasm for folks and also just a lot of queries.

And I spent a fair bit of time fielding questions just about EV ownership and misunderstandings around EV charging issues and that sort of thing. But many people were quite receptive. And there was also a meeting a public meeting on that this past Monday, which I didn't attend, but Angelica did. So perhaps she can catch us up on that.

Yeah. So we had our visioning meeting on this past Monday, and we had a short presentation from Stantec, which was similar to what you all have heard. And we had three stations in this room, one where priorities you had for the plan, concerns you had about owning an EV. There was a station where you could put little dots on where you might want to see EV charging, and those those were the two. I don't recall the third station.

I don't think I got to visit it so much. But, the intent with that is the next step would be to have a survey that'll be coming out probably within the next week or two. We've reviewed that internally as staff, and that'll be published for the community to respond to using that survey information along with input from the county and in deciding what the weight of the criteria should be. We'll start to develop heat maps of of where these chargers should be within the community. We've been aligning this study with BPU's electrification study to make sure that our assumptions for EV projections are are the same, and just making sure that we're collaborating on that.

So, there's a lot of moving pieces, and, I think we're working on the draft coming to ESB BPU and the county council in October. So, but between now and then, there'll definitely be the survey. So and more updates from us from the working group. K. Sounds good.

Alright. Next item is the plastic bag fee research group. I can start, and then Rebecca and Herman, if you all wanna add anything. So we met with Las Cruces, I guess, the city of Las Cruces, their sustainability folks last Friday to learn about their fee and how they implemented it. It was it was very interesting.

I learned a lot. I don't wanna, spoil it because I think we're gonna kind of do a presentation at some point, but it was very informative and I think was really helpful to hear how they kind of manage it and the expectations that they have for vendors in in their area. So they did mention that they basically took the ordinance from Santa Fe and just implemented it in Las Cruces. So I would like to meet with Santa Fe with their sustainability folks and just learn how they implemented it and any lessons learned that they have. So we'll get that set up, and then we can meet with them.

Herman, Rebecca, do y'all wanna add anything?

No. I'm good.

Yeah. That covered the updates. I also, am still working on the legal updates. I finally remembered to put the Excel into our shared folder, and I'm gonna add a few. I have most of the New Mexico ones in there, so we'll have a good comparison. And we'll look at some other states as well.

Sounds good. And then in terms of the board, I think, we will set we need to set a kind of timeline for the rest of the remaining actions that we have, but we can expect some sort of presentation prob I don't know. Maybe next month or the month after. Probably next month because I think we set a six month time limit, and we're running out of time. So just be on the lookout for that, I guess. Any questions? Okay. Alright. I, next is BCity. We got that sent via email.

If you are interested, please read it. Then I think we can move on to item number seven, which is staff report. Okay.

Let's see.

Where did it go? Is it here? Yep. Okay.

So let's see. So our sustainability newsletter continues to grow in subscribers, so that's pretty fun and interesting. People are enjoying it or interested in it. EV infrastructure. So I keep telling you about this project where we're going to be installing the six new level two EV chargers out here at Municipal Building.

Like you had mentioned, BPU approved the charge point agreements. We're able to buy the equipment. And then so all of the design and everything has been completed and that went out for bid that should go out for bid this week or next week. So we're sending it to three on call contractors that we have already on call here at the county. So hoping, you know, depending on what that estimate comes back at, anything over 300,000 has to go to county council for approval.

So, hopefully, it's not over 300,000 because that's just an extra step. But if it is, we'll take it to council. And if not, then we'll get busy, getting to work with the installation. So they'll be right on the same row where the Level 3 is facing iris and we're excited about that. They'll be ADA compliant and and, you know, we'll be charging for those.

The flea conversion plan, I think you heard an update about that and about the education and outreach. So you all are helping me with my work, so thank you with that. Energy audits, so the county council also gave us funding to provide energy audit services to the community. So we'll be developing the scope of work for that. And now is the time if anybody is interested in helping with that.

That would be the the opportunity. Otherwise, I could possibly just bring the scope of work to the board, and you're welcome to review it, you know, during the work meeting. And then events. So just thank you to all of the volunteers, to all of you who helped at the county's Earth Day, and then Peak's Earth Day. And then we also signed up for Farmers Markets.

We'll be at Farmers Market the first Thursday of every month sharing a variety of information. So thank you for the board members who Sue, who came last Thursday. I appreciate that. And then upcoming, like I mentioned, we have the DPU water festival, and that's on Tuesday and Wednesday. So if you want to volunteer and help and have a fun day with a bunch of fourth graders from across the district, let me know.

We'll be at Fuller Lodge. You can pop in and out, and it's always a lot of fun to see the different activities. And then our next farmer's market be June 12. So I'm sorry. Second second Thursday of the month instead of first Thursday. So the residential sustainability report in April, so we've seen a 33% diversion rate. We did the county did a lot of special collections for the yard trimming. You can kinda see that reflected in the numbers here for yard trimming. It's a 15% increase over last year. Trash was down and recycle was down.

So just just to remind you all that we are still we're hauling our ways to the Valencia Landfill, which is a 120 miles away. So, you know, we'll be working a lot on trying to get the members of our public to reduce their waste, recycle, and then hopefully eventually get our food composting program up to keep that extra food waste out of there. Council did approve our work plan, I just put that in your packet for reference and, those are all my updates.

Thanks, Angelica. Any questions? No. Alright. So item number eight, preview of upcoming agenda items. I think the only thing that we have is the oh, go ahead, Herman.

I, yeah, I would like to to present on, the bicycle working group recommendations.

Okay. And you wanna do that next month. Right?

Yes.

Okay. Sounds good.

Hope so.

Alright. And then, hopefully, next month too, we'll have the plastic bag, fee. Just an update. Update. Update. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well, thanks, everybody. I think we can adjourn today's meeting. Have a good weekend and rest of the day.

Bye.