City Council - Special Meeting

June 9th in the special meeting of the City Council of the City of Louisville, Colorado. Can we get a roll call vote? A roll call.

Mayor Pro Tem Hamilton. Here. Council Member Kern. Present. Council Member Cooperman.

Here.

Council Member Fahey. Here. Council Member Hefner.

Here.

Mayor Lay.

Here.

Council Member Dickinson.

Here. Thank you. Would you join with me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. We've got a couple of items of regular business tonight. The first is a presentation from ICLEI and staff regarding wedge analysis, greenhouse gas emissions modeling project, and sustainability action plan next steps. Who's going to be leading off?

Is it me?

Want me to start?

Okay, cool. All right. Hold on, y'all. I'm going to share a screen so our consultant, Jenny, who's joining us online can follow along. All right, Jenny, are you seeing this? Looks great. All right. Good evening, council members. My name is Hannah Miller, and I'm your sustainability manager. Tonight, I'm joined by the rest of our sustainability division. Thank you. Joined by the rest of our sustainability division and then our consultant, Jenny Nitzke, who's a senior program officer at ICLEI USA. We're going to be going over our wedge analysis results and sustainability action plan next steps. For our agenda today, we'll go over, again, the ICLEI USA wedge analysis results, a purpose statement that helps guide our sustainability division, cover some policy in motion and set some realistic expectations, and then move into discussion and direction for the sustainability action plan. Next, I'll hand it off to Jenny to get started.

Thanks, Hannah. Good evening, members of council. As Hannah said, my name is Jenny Nitzke, and I am a sustainability senior program officer with ICLEI USA. Just so you know, I'm based in Grand Junction here in our beautiful state of Colorado. So I'm very happy to be working with Hannah and the city of Louisville on this. I'm here to talk about the wedge analysis that we conducted for you all. And so thank you in advance for allowing me to speak with you this evening. Next slide, please. So just a bit about our organization so that you all know who we are, who's talking to you. Since 1991, ICLEI or Local Governments for Sustainability, USA has led the nation's largest network of local governments committed to sustainability and climate action. We're an independent 501 nonprofit founded in Massachusetts and headquartered in Denver with staff working in communities across the country. As an affiliate office of the global ICLEI network, we connect to more than 2,500 local and regional governments in 125 countries. Led by and for local governments, we meet communities where they are and provide tools, expertise, and peer connections they need to advance their climate and sustainability work forward. Next slide, please. And you can tap one more time. Perfect. So as you know, we're here today to look at your emissions trajectory and identify the ways in which you can meet your adopted goals. All of our modeling was based around Louisville's adopted goal to reduce emissions 60% below the 2016 baseline by 2030. In order to accurately model, we had to account for growth in your community. Louisville's average annual growth rate is a compound annual growth rate of 0.5%. This value is supported by the Community Development Department and aligns with the recently adopted 2026 Comprehensive Plan. Louisville's emissions were projected based on population growth exclusively. This allows for a simplified projection of future emissions. This is due to various reasons, including reducing complexity and avoiding the burden of defending projections in later years. ICLEI USA also does this in light of rapidly changing federal and state policy. Other scaling factors like fuel efficiency standards and grid intensity values have been modeled in the findings from our emissions accounting and modeling platform, ClearPath 2.0, of which you are seeing the dashboard from right now. The population growth forecast shown by the red dashed line only, again, takes into account population growth and does not consider policy change that is out of Louisville's span of control, such as the decarbonization goal from Xcel Energy. Based on population growth, it is expected that without any intervention, your emissions will increase by 7% from your 2016 levels. And then I'll go over a few other things that you're seeing on the screen just in case it's too small to read. The green dashed line headed in a downwards trajectory shows your emissions reduction goal of 60%. The white solid line shows your reported emissions trend. The white dots show your emissions in 2016, 2021, and 2024. Along the x-axis, it displays the year. And along the y-axis, you're looking at 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. This is the unit in which greenhouse gas emissions is measured. CO2e is an accumulation of the different greenhouse gases, like methane and nitrous oxide, that have been converted to carbon dioxide to provide an apples to apples comparison. The yellow wedge and the green wedge that you're seeing, those are the modeled energy and buildings emission reduction targets and the transportation. So yellow is buildings and energy, green is transportation. I'll get into what those mean more when we get to the modeling, but those are just carried over from the other stages of what we've done. Next slide, please. So I just wanted to show you some comparison to show you that you are in good company. When comparing Louisville's emissions with other communities, you can see that you are in a similar boat with many of your neighbors. Your emissions trajectory is relatively headed in a downwards direction, but more aggressive approach to implementation is needed to meet your goals, as is likely the case for all of these communities shown below, and honestly, most American cities and towns. You can see that in 2016, you had 12 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per person. In 2021, it was 10. And in 2024, it was actually 11. But that is only because of population decline. The emissions reduced overall this year compared to 2021. But due to population decline, it led to an increase in emissions per capita. But fret not, your emissions are still in a downward trajectory. And you can see some of the other communities, their calculation based on population and their emissions in the year affiliated either 2021 or 2024 from some other Western United States communities. Next slide, please. Go back just one. Go the other direction.

Perfect. Oh, slide seven.

Perfect. Thanks. So now that we know where you are and where you're headed, let's talk about how to reduce your emissions while accounting for growth. Because as I mentioned, Louisville has that 0.5% growth rate. So reaching the 60% reduction goal would require both offsetting the 7% increase in emissions from population growth and then additionally reducing by 60% of 2016 emissions. The modeled actions, which I will go over in a little bit, but you also should be able to see in your packets, that achieves a 91% reduction. of your goal, of the total needed reduction, resulting in 2030 emissions that are 54% below your 2016 levels. For comparison to the previous slide, this is equal to about five metric tons of CO2e per person per year. So in your packets, additionally, you'll be able to see the adoption rate of each of the different strategies. That is located in a spreadsheet. Adoption rates are also noted on page five of the report, which is located in your packet as well. Not page five of your packet, but page five of the report somewhere in your packet. It is under something labeled strategy analysis. So next, I will show you the dashboard, which is a visual representation of what I was talking about and how meeting these targets set in the platform will help you to close the gap towards your adopted goal of 60% emission reduction. Next slide. Okay, so as you can see on the screen, this pathway gets you to 91% of your goal. 91% of your 60% goal is equal to about 54% reductions. So that's where that 54% is coming from, even though you see 91% on your screen. The pathway gap shows that the modeling leaves you with about 9% remaining to meet your goal of 60%. This is seen in the light gray that the arrow is pointing towards. So you can see there's a really small amount left in that pathway gap. The energy mix accounts for a reduction in emissions that contributes 49% towards reaching your goal. The energy mix reductions are mostly shown in yellow, but 12% of the energy mix emissions reductions are allocated to other sectors like transportation and buildings and energy use to ensure that reductions are not double counted. Waste and nature-based solution strategies are also included on this page, but they make up a very small portion of your reduction. You can see that they are in between the yellow and blue wedges. There's a very small darker area and that is where both again waste and nature-based solutions are located. Next slide. So I'll go over a bit more of what we modeled. So to align with the Council-adopted science-based emissions reduction target, the following actions have been identified as priority goals through 2030 and beyond. Although progress has already begun on many of these initiatives, an increased pace and scale of implementation will be necessary to deliver the required emissions reductions. So I'll go through each of these strategies in case they are too small for you to read. Again, you can also find this information on page five of the report. These strategies were determined by us at ICLEI USA based on our review of the Adopted Sustainability Action Plan. So first is the buildings and energy use reduction. By 2030, 50% more of residential and commercial buildings will have undergone energy retrofits for increased heating and cooling efficiency and updated to more energy efficient appliances from 2016 levels. Next is heat pump installation. By 2030, 75% of single family and commercial buildings and 65% of multifamily buildings that used natural gas heating in 2016 will have installed a heat pump. Next is reducing vehicle miles traveled or VMT. By 2030, VMT will be reduced through an additional cumulative 26% shift to walking and cycling, carpooling, and working from home. Additionally, vehicle miles traveled will be reduced by another 10% through planning that makes work, shopping, services, and recreation more accessible to where people live. Louisville is already working towards this with the adoption of the Comprehensive Plan, which supports multi-modality shifts. Next is clean electricity generation. By 2030, if Excel meets their goal to reduce emissions by 80% from 2005 levels, that will contribute to almost half of the projected emissions reductions. Next is electrifying personal transportation. By 2030, 50% of gasoline and diesel personal vehicles will shift to electric. Next is electrifying and increasing the efficiency of heavy-duty vehicles. By 2030, 20% of heavy-duty vehicles will be electrified and 10% will reduce fuel use due to more efficient driving. Next is increasing composting and recycling. By 2030, 60% of waste that was sent to landfills in 2016 will shift to recycling at 50% and composting at 10%. And finally, we have increasing the tree canopy. By 2030, in alignment with Boulder County's goals, Louisville will achieve 25% tree canopy cover or an additional 11% from 2016 levels. And you can see an asterisk on some of these strategies, those indicate that clean electricity generation is a critical component to the emissions reduction potential of those strategies. Next slide please. So here you can see those same strategies, but instead of a description, you can see the 2030 anticipated emissions reductions. As you can see from the higher numbers on the right hand column, anything that's related to electrification, renewable energy, and changing transportation modes are going to be the most critical to reducing your emissions. I want to briefly explain the numbers that you're seeing and the phrasing that I used about shifting and just make sure that that is clear to you all. So the numbers that you are seeing in the individual target columns within the spreadsheet, those and the aggregated numbers that I just mentioned are what I'm going to explain. So it's all about the shift. The percent that you see under target is the percent of additional adoption by 2030. So for example, if 5% of people were already walking and biking in 2016, your baseline year, a 10% target would mean that in 2030, 15% of people are now walking and biking. So it's always about the shift. So if I said 50% more than in 2016, if in 2016 you had zero, then you would need a 50% adoption. If you had 10%, then your total would need to be 60%. So happy to talk more about that, but hopefully that provides some clarification about the numbers that I just shared. And I did want to talk about one specific strategy explanation, the improved urban planning. Sometimes that can cause some confusion. So I just want to make sure that that is understood. It means that you will achieve a 10 percent reduction in VMT by making jobs, shopping, et cetera, closer to where people live. So it's all about the about how you're planning your cities. You'll see in that target column, it says a 50% target, but what that means is that 50% of trips are affected and each affected trip is 20% shorter than otherwise, resulting in 10% overall VMT reduction. Okay, next slide please. So I want to talk about some high impact actions that you can take in order to help meet the goals set that align with these strategies to help you get to your emission reduction goals. If we think about what is within the span of Louisville's control, whether that be council or staff or even community members, it's really the last five bullet points where you need to focus. That first one, reducing emissions from electricity and having Excel put more clean energy on the grid, as I mentioned, is exceptionally important. However, that is not within your control. So that is not a place that you need to worry about. Right now, it's really thinking about what can you focus on. So things like helping with the adoption of heat pumps, whether that's with your commercial or your residential or your own buildings, building electrification and building efficiency implementation across all sectors. Installing solar on rooftops, balconies, other open parcels, wherever they fit in well. Additionally, shifting transportation modes, whether it's to EVs, biking, walking, or public transportation, and then composting and planting trees. These are not in necessarily an exact order, but they are relatively in order of how impactful they will be. So just to wrap up, the strategies modeled can be used to reach a 54% emissions reduction in Louisville by 2030 from the 2016 baseline after accounting for population growth. Clean electricity generation, heat pump installation, personal vehicle electrification, and reducing vehicle miles traveled are by far the most impactful subsectors to address, contributing to over 90% of your projected emissions reductions. I do want to caveat that Xcel Energy's commitment to an 80% emission reduction by 2030 from their 2005 baseline is essential to achieving the expected reductions in emissions from anything in the electrification sector, whether that's in buildings or transportation. If this were to be delayed or changed, emissions from electrified buildings and transportation would be higher than what is modeled here. Conversely, if they do beat their goal, if they are able to achieve it faster, your likelihood of achieving your originally intended goal also would increase. Many of the remaining measures, including existing efficiency retrofits, heavy-duty electrification, waste reduction, increasing tree canopy, will have smaller impacts, but still contribute to the overall goal of achieving emissions reduction by 2030. What I really want to drive home is something that you all already know. Now is the time to continue and even more so expedite the implementation of projects, programs, and policies that affect each of these sectors. This will be needed in order to reach the greenhouse gas emissions reduction that has been ratified by city council. This work is definitely going to take collective action from you, your neighbors, the private sector, and individual behavior shift. While a lot of this work needs to be done by external forces, it is within your span of control to implement much of the work that will help you to get to your goals. So we know what needs to be done. Now policies, programs, and projects need to be implemented in order to enact meaningful change. And with that, before we get into questions, I do want to pass it back over to Hannah to discuss the sustainability action plan next steps. And I will look forward to your questions. Thank you all so much.

Thanks, Jenny. All right. Jumping back in. So first I do want to highlight, introduce my team over here. So we have Logan Johnson, our sustainability specialist. He's been with us almost two years. And then in week two, we have Anna Brooks over here. She is our liaison between Dr. Cogg and the city of Louisville, really looking to launch those programs within our community, which will help further electrification, energy efficiencies within our residential and commercial sector. So I just want to jump into our purpose statement. This is again found in your packet, but also on the one pager for the sustainability division. We use this statement to help guide our work along with the adopted climate action goals where we envision a carbon neutral future with a 60% reduction in emissions by 2030. As you heard this evening, we want to achieve this by creating programs, hosting events that enhance community wellbeing and setting an example that motivates collective climate action across our community. So we have some policy in motion. We are looking at the Dr. Cog Powerhead Colorado or PACO initiative. You might have seen some commercials recently if you've been watching any sporting events. The communications campaign for Powerhead Colorado is in full swing. We have Anna on board. We're looking at incentives for commercial and residential entities within our community and across that Dr. Cog region, which is 59 states. jurisdictions. We have won $600,000 to support that within our community. We also have citywide support. So again, highlighting our comprehensive plan that was recently adopted, then shifting into our development code update that we're going to be working on, highlighting our Highway 42 underpass, and then also the open space mitigation efforts that are ongoing. Really just showing how sustainability initiatives can be spearheaded across the organization and don't just live within sustainability. This is not an all-inclusive list. There are many other things going on across the organization as well. And then one item that Jenny highlighted is the need to shift personal transport to electric vehicles. One key metric that we're going to look at as we start tracking that is electric vehicle adoption. Within 2025, 12% of Louisville vehicle registrations were EV. And then Colorado is the top state for EV adoption. So we are moving in the right direction. I do want to highlight some realistic expectations. So to achieve meaningful progress, it will require changes in behavior, just as Jenny mentioned, from residents, businesses, and the broader Louisville community, but also our neighbors as well. This will come alongside continued support from the city and really encourage community participation and collaboration, which will be critical to advance these initiatives that we're discussing this evening. And then, as I mentioned as well, many sustainability initiatives are already underway across the organization and already happening within our community. We just want to really highlight the efforts that are ongoing and we want to encourage more shifts as Jenny mentioned as well in our community. The city's ongoing work to strengthen our planning efforts and advanced implementation really demonstrates the meaningful steps we are working towards. And again, showcasing sustainability across the organization within our division, but how we're all working together as a team. I do want to cover some sustainability action plan next steps as y'all move into discussion and direction. So we have the potential to reallocate funding this evening of $63,000 towards implementation where we would not proceed with a sustainability action plan update, or we could proceed with a sustainability action plan update prioritizing that planning initiative. I do want to mention that a sustainability action plan, they are not all created equal. This is the first step in which I took to create a sustainability action plan. I think it's really important to establish a data baseline. This is a newer thing, I would say. So when it comes to our previous greenhouse gas inventories, we have a 2016, a 2021, and a 2024. We've conditioned that data so that they are comparable apples to apples. And then this wedge analysis is the next step to establish where we are and where we need to go. And that's how we ended up here this evening. So in April, we met with city council to see if there was interest for a preliminary meeting on this subject. I then brought the topic to LSAB in May, where there was unanimous support for the reallocation. And now here we are in June presenting those findings of our wedge analysis. And then in July, pending direction, staff would bring a proposal to LSAB to look at program funding and reallocation. And then in August with LSAP support, we would reinvest those funds into our already existing programs. I really feel that we have the existing program infrastructure right now that if we were to reallocate, we can move into implementation relatively quickly. And now we're available for questions.

Thank you very much. Why don't we start there with questions? I expect we have some. Yes, Council Member Fahey.

I'm curious if you have any statistics about how the grants or the gifts to fire marshal fire rebuilders, did that affect the percentage of homes in Louisville that have like heat pumps and solar systems and that?

Can't answer specifically unless Diana and Sam might have that metric. But from what I understand, quite a bit of the homes did build to all electric. But I can't necessarily look back in the data and see that, if that makes sense.

Okay. Thank you.

Council Member Cooperman.

Yeah. I guess first I was going to ask, so there was a little table that had a comparison of carbon emissions per capita for different cities. I was a little bit curious why Superior is so much lower. I'm wondering if that has to do with just there being a lot more commercial in Louisville. And I'm also curious, if you took a city that Like, like Boulder, maybe that is, you know, sort of at the forefront of these efforts. What do you have any idea what their numbers look like?

Jenny, you want to take this?

Yeah. Well, first of all, about Boulder, I do not have their information. We went with other ICLEI member communities, and Boulder is one, but we do not have their data in our platform. And therefore, we could not ask them for permission to share their data with you all. But that is something I can look into. I can reach out to my contacts at Boulder and see if they have information. their greenhouse gas emissions numbers, which I'm sure they do, and their population, so I can identify, you know, where they're sitting so that you can compare yourself to them. In terms of superiors number, yeah, I'm not sure what the build-out of the community is like, if they're more residential than you all, but I believe they do have a smaller population and therefore maybe less ability for commercial or industry to, or highways or something like that and have smaller VMT, I'm not sure. But that's something that we could follow up with Superior on as well. Hannah, I'm not sure if you have anything else to add to that.

I can chime in Hannah if that's helpful. So I did just a quick Google search for Boulder and according to their dashboard right now, They are at 17.5 per capita on metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

Great. Then I just had two questions about the modeling. So you talked about the growth assumption towards the beginning. Does that make some assumption about residential versus commercial growth, or is there not really some kind of assumption like that as part of the 0.5%?

It's just a 0.5% purely population growth. So however the state demographer or your planning department determines that is how that is registered. I would guess that it is just residential. I would not assume that there is any commercial additives to that. But I would maybe defer to your leadership if I am incorrect.

That's fine. And then I was just wondering, in the pathway that you model, why do you leave the 9% gap? I'm just wondering why you didn't model a pathway that gets us all the way there.

Yeah, that's a great question. I did at first, and it was a very ambitious goal. Looking at things like 100% heat pump adoption, and we did not want to come forward with something that would look untenable or unrealistic um so we tried to find somewhere in the middle uh that was still ambitious that would get you most of the way there but didn't involve a hundred percent adoption just due to our knowledge of feasibility of that okay and maybe i'll ask one more um

You know, you talked about the strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And a primary one is electric vehicle adoption. And I'm just curious, what do you see as things that the city can do to advance that particular goal?

That's also a great question. I think it depends on the makeup of your community, but we've seen strategies such as providing rebates for all community members and have it be tiered based off of income to help reduce the upfront costs of electric vehicles. installing EV charging stations really strategically, providing some type of rebate or working with your utility to provide a rebate for at-home charging, thinking about the increase in cost of electricity, working with your utility on trying to reduce the cost of electricity, depending on the time of use. If somebody has an electric vehicle, there are lots of different strategies related to that. But we like to recommend incentive-based approaches rather than disciplinary-based approaches.

Thank you very much.

And then Councilmember Cooperman, I would mention too that we are working towards installing EV charging stations across the city. So we're working with the internal decar plan to do some of those at city facilities that would be public facing in some areas. And then we're also working with Boulder County to explore and help them implement a grant that they have for installing EV charging stations across the county as well. So help break down some barriers to EV charging that we can look at in the future.

Councilmember Hefter.

Yeah, thanks. I just want to pick up where Councilmember Cooperman left off. So I'm looking at Table 2 here in the memo. And it looks to me like about roughly half of the total reductions in the 2030 pathway are entirely dependent on Excel. And then about 82% of the total is either entirely dependent or partly dependent on Excel. Was there an effort to look at sort of what percentage of these reductions are things that the city of Louisville has within its control that we can really make meaningful progress? I mean, it seems like half we can't really do much about aside from lobbying. A big chunk of the rest with the asterisks is here. Excel needs to do its part. And then there's sort of some remaining things that are within our control. Is that roughly accurate?

You're definitely correct about the roughly half, the 49%, that is related to decarbonization of your grid. Some of the things like heat pump installation, electrifying personal transport, even with a less clean grid, those transitions are still important. So even if Excel isn't meeting their goal, I can show you some data. I can get it to Hannah to show you, but even with a dirtier grid, transitioning to heat pumps and electric vehicles is still going to reduce more emissions than people driving internal combustion engine vehicles or using gas-powered furnaces. So even without Excel's role in this, those strategies... Pardon, there's a dog in my house barking. I hope you can't hear it. But even those strategies without Excel's work are still important for you to invest in.

Got it. Thanks. And then I think the corresponding question is just in the emissions graph, the red dotted line, which is labeled if we do nothing, the we on that label is like the sort of collective we, including the state and Excel and lots of others. It's not we, the city of Louisville.

It's only population growth that is incorporated into that. So that has nothing to do with Xcel energy or anything else that's just based off of anticipated population growth.

But in that scenario for the emissions per capita, is that based on Xcel meeting its goals, not meeting its goals, a hypothetical utility that's not Xcel? How are the electric utility emissions factored in?

they are not factored into that red dotted line. You can see that in that table, that figure that you're looking at, that yellow wedge and that green wedge decreasing, those are impacted by Excel's emissions factor and the greening of the grid. But it's really just based off of where you are currently. So if nothing changed, from your 2016 emissions factor, 0.5% every year to 2030 on a linear scale, increasing that amount of vehicle miles traveled, increasing those amount of square feet that are heated or cooled, but staying the same with that emissions factor.

So it assumes Excel has the same emissions profiles it had in 2016? Yes. Thank you.

Council Member Heffner, I will mention that Excel gave us updated information a few days ago that the grid for 2025 is at 53% clean energy. In 2024, when we did our inventory, that was when we were sitting around 48%. So we are seeing forward progress in our collaboration with Excel.

So I guess the follow-up is based on those numbers. The red line, in fact, is lower because they've already come down from their 2016 numbers.

I would think the red line, think of that as only population growth. I would think that when you're looking at the white dotted line, that when we do an inventory again, Excel's progress will be factored into that as it has throughout 2016, 2021, and 2024 for those report cards. Think of an inventory as a report card.

But when you say only population growth, we're talking about population growth times some emissions factor associated with Excel.

Yes.

That is a decade.

Yeah. So it's banking on, it's focusing back on 2016 when it was much dirtier.

Yeah. So I guess my point is actually that red line is quite a bit closer to the white line if you were to update it for a decade of progress.

I would think so. Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong, if you think otherwise.

Yeah, I believe so. But it's really, yeah, we don't factor that in because of so many variables. And so this is, yeah, just population growth. I think Hannah is correct in that if you're looking at where that white dotted, the white solid line with those dots is. that is just the representative of what you're actually doing. And that is the trajectory that you're headed towards. You could almost ignore that red dashed line. That was just to show you the importance of doing work, which you already know.

yeah thanks i'll just end with one one final point which is it seems to me the red line is is entitled if we do nothing but if we stop tomorrow doing anything we would not somehow bounce up to that red line um because we know based on current data the red line is if you were to start this graph in 2026 instead of 2016 the red line would would start in a much lower place i think if i'm hearing everybody correctly

Yes, that is correct. But since we are doing, we wanted to compare to your baseline. We did start from 2016, but yes, that is correct.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Yes, Council Member Kerr.

Great. Thank you. So just a couple of things, just clarifying points. So one of the questions that you had asked, and I just wanted to understand, was talking about taking the $63,000 allocated to updating the action plan. What was going to be entailed in that for $68,000? What would we be missing if you didn't do that?

So if we don't proceed with the sustainability action plan, we will not have a formal plan. deliverable that looks much like the sustainability action plan that you currently have from 2016 and 2020. Instead, I think the memo that you have in your packet serving as the wedge analysis is a key portion of the sustainability action plan, but you would be missing out on a deliverable that says sustainability action plan with strategies outlined much of what you see in here, just further spelled out.

Thank you for that. And are we also, were things already taken into account, because I wasn't sure that I was clear seeing it in here, the internal decarbonization that we've, you know, some of what we've done, but we've got a lot more going, but it's actually, you know, a lot of it's been budgeted and planned. Does that, is it already taken into account that we're going to be making some of those changes?

So in a community-wide inventory, your local government operations are factored in. So in your 2016, 2021, and 2024 white dots, the emissions related to our local government operations are included in that calculation. We're going to be further breaking that out at a different time. I would say that further action for internal decarb is not anticipated, so we don't have it further built into here. And when we're looking at a full emission reduction for internal decarb, it does sit relatively low. I think if I ran the calculation, it sits around a max 3% emission reduction from our community-wide totals that we have pictured here.

So based on that, some of the information we received on the amount of metric tons of CO2 emission reductions that are possible with some changes, if that was a separate line item, it would fall kind of in the increased tree canopy area roughly. About that much impact?

Yeah, I would say based on our current emissions, think of a 3% reduction. I don't have that number. I'm not great at math on the spot. And they would fall mostly within your building energy use sector. So again, in that yellow wedge that we're looking at, that's where that 3% reduction would largely come from. Okay.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Other questions? Okay. We have some decisions to make, I gather. Yeah, maybe that would be good to do. Do we have any public comments? Okay. Let's do those first.

We do. First up is Alec Benz, followed by Kevin Lombardo.

Good evening Council Members. My name is Alex Bentz. I'm a Louisville resident and a member of the Louisville Sustainability Advisory Board. I'm here today to speak on behalf of LSAP's position on the reallocation of funding for the Sustainability Action Plan. The Board is in unanimous agreement that the previously approved funding for the Sustainability Action Plan would be better suited to support the implementation of existing climate programs. Louisville Sustainability Division has done a wonderful job with the short and long-term planning efforts to develop a strategic roadmap for our climate-related needs and actions. Given resource constraints at this point in time, the funding would create the most value if immediate reallocation focused our efforts towards achieving those greenhouse gas reduction goals. To keep this brief, our overall emissions reductions have begun to plateau. The city is not currently on track to meet its long-term targets, and without significant investments in these actionable programs, it's highly improbable that the city achieves its current 60% reduction goal. While the purpose of this position is not to take a deep dive into alternatives, it's imperative that our elected leaders understand that the Sustainability Division and LSAAB would be most effective at achieving these goals with a full reallocation for immediate use for mitigation, electrification, and decarbonization. The roadmap has already been built. It's time to stop planning the route and start driving it. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up is Kevin Lombardo followed by John Cowley.

Hello. Excuse me. Kevin Lombardo, resident of Louisville. Let's see. Yeah, obviously I support reallocating the $63,000 to doing something rather than developing a website or a document that's going to sit on a website that no one's going to read and to which no one is held accountable. In terms of this goal, we have before us a report that I cannot imagine is a surprise to anybody, any of you, because you've been advised on it by LSAT, by the sustainability division, by residents. We've all been up here telling you what you need to do. So you know what you need to do. You need to focus on building efficiency and electrification. And each and every time energy codes come up to this council, you vote for the less aggressive option every single time. You've removed appendices, the RC appendix. You've allowed commercial entities to continue using natural gas. You've passed on an all-electric building code. you know what you need to do. You just need to do it. We need policy that supports these goals. And I don't know if it's a whole mindset shift for all of you or what, but that's what we need to achieve this. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin.

Next up is John Cowley.

Hello, everybody. I haven't spoken to you for a while. I'm John Cowley, Louisville resident, Ward 3. I'm certainly supporting everything you've heard, but I wanted to bring up a little history to put this in context. Back in two years ago, April in 2024, the city council, you guys passed resolutions 18 and 19. Resolution 18 is where you committed to the 60% reduction in emissions. And resolution 19 is where you joined with Xcel Energy's partners in energy. who wrote a memo of understanding to support the sustainability division to pull off the actual actions needed to get to the goal. You probably don't remember, but Part of what Excel said they would help us do is electrify 870 commercial and residential buildings a year. And their commitment was to help us for a year and a half. They also had a goal of 720 electric vehicle additions a year. And they had a goal of 138 solar installations a year. Clearly, none of that happened. If it had happened, by now we would be a good way towards the goal. But we are nowhere closer to the goal. What's missing is the commitment and realizing that it's hard. So Louisville is, the internal decar plan says we're going to electrify seven or eight city buildings. It's been three years. In October, it will have been three years since you made that commitment. There are no city buildings electrified. The point is, if the goal is to get hundreds of buildings electrified, it's got to be done smarter. And I'm here to promote that. And you're the people with the smarts to figure out how to make this happen faster. It's not easy. And sustainability will need all your support. Oh, 36 seconds. Here's a comparison I want to make. We emit about 200,000 metric tons of CO2 a year. That's a number. Just say an automobile is two metric tons. That's 100,000 automobiles piled up in community park, 100,000 automobiles every year is the weight of our emissions of CO2. It's not something we can dismiss. We have to get going. Thank you.

Thank you, John. Any other? Okay. Excuse me. It appears that there's about $63,000 that is remaining of the $100,000 that was appropriated. Is that correct? And really the question is whether to do a sustainability action plan update or to allocate it to try to achieve something Tangible, more tangible perhaps than additional planning. And I don't know whether there's any, I'll take a quick poll. Does anybody have any interest in allocating those funds toward doing an SAP update? Okay, well, that's simple. So at least, because I hear the, and I really appreciate what is obviously a very sobering wedge analysis. I guess the question is, now is, do you need additional guidance from us apart from Would you like additional guidance from us apart from just a decision up or down whether to reallocate?

So thank you. One thing I'd like to note was originally this night was scheduled to do the wedge analysis, but then also have this as a joint meeting with LSAB. Upon seeing the wedge analysis and working with the sustainability division, we opted to reschedule the LSAB joint meeting for a later date. We wanted council to be able to take in the wedge analysis and then really put some thought into where do we go from here based upon the key takeaways and what's required to meet the targets. Just acknowledging that those were science-based targets, not necessarily based upon... attainability, but for the sustainability division and looking and moving forward and for LSAT as well, just needing to understand is it that we need to reevaluate the targets? Is it that there's a desire to reevaluate some of the policies that have been implemented? Is it the desire to stay status quo and continue as we are, just recognizing that those lines will continue to diverge most likely? And so we're kind of at a tipping point for sustainability to understand what is the direction that council wants to go. That is not an expectation that we get that response tonight, which is why we chose to defer the LSAT meeting for a later date, because we didn't want to put council on the spot of having to answer questions that we didn't feel like you'd be prepared to answer. So at this point in time, we'd ask council to take this information in. And then when you're ready to be at a point to have further discussions about it, then we can have a follow-up discussion to determine where we go from here. I'd also like to note, too, I know that Tiffany submitted an email today as part of public comment, and that's it. Thank you. Hannah, is there anything you'd like to add?

No, I think that was great. Thank you all.

I appreciate the comments. And I appreciate members of sustainability advisory board being here tonight and offering some thoughts to us. Obviously, we're going to we are going to need some time to digest. This not an inordinate amount of time, but I think to have a really good fruitful discussion with you, I think that's that's a wise move and I think it's a better use of your and our time in our. your time, our time, our time together to do it that way. I don't know whether other council members have thoughts right now initially, but I can tell you that at least for my part, and I think probably others too, we will wrestle with the data that had been provided very ably. I really appreciate that. I appreciate the consultant providing PB, John Gerstle, input on this too and we'll we'll come back together, but is there any other comment that folks would like to make yes councilmember.

PB, John Gerstle, yeah first maybe one question, so the $63,000 would we. PB, John Gerstle, sort of hold off on determining how that would be used until we have a further discussion or we put that towards existing programming.

The recommendation be to go back to LSAT is my understanding to have those discussions to for recommendation and bring back that back to Council to give a recommendation as to how those funds would be programmed or. Conversely, you could also give staff direction of go back to Elsa because of the dollar amount and then staff could just implement updating the programs and not need to bring it back to Council for direction.

I don't know about that. I like the idea of having discussions between staff and LSAB and then making a decision at that level rather than having it come back to us with just more delay. Yes, Council Member Hester.

Yeah, I support that suggestion just given the relatively small amount of money left. and the limited areas where we can really have an impact, I'm happy to leave this to the wise minds of LSAAB and our staff, especially given all the other important things we have coming up on our agenda through the summer and into the fall.

Okay. General agreement. Council Member Kern.

Thanks. I'd actually like it if maybe we were at least given an update before it went into effect. There's so many good new programs that have come forward. And although the 63,000 isn't a lot, where that does make a big impact is on people's everyday lives when you can help them buy down the price of a cold climate air source heat pump. And I'm very specific, not just calling it a heat pump, because I would like everybody here to buy the cold climate air source heat pumps, please. There is a very big difference, and hopefully part of the education of the Power Ahead program will help everybody, including installers, understand how critical that is for our climate. But that as well as e-bikes. A lot of the programs now are only for the absolute lowest income. We have a lot of people who are, you know, 50%, 60% AMI that can't afford a $3,000 e-bike. And that's a really small lift for us with the $63,000 to help them get there. so i was kind of thinking that maybe that could be part of the discussion that you that lsab have and uh like those those dollars although not big can directly impact co2 emissions but the people who are living here as well i'd love to see that thank you i mean there's nothing certainly nothing holding staff back from letting us know what's going on there i'll

PB, John Gerstle:" defer to good judgment about I think I think my my understanding of our consensus is that we'll leave it to staffs good judgment about where the allocate that money, hoping that it goes to stuff that has the most punch. Fair enough. Okay. Thank you again. And by the way, I think just a quick... Oh, well, before we get to Council Member Coopman, I just wanted to ask Council Member Kern to pass back our appreciation to Dr. Codd for...

The power head program.

Yes. Yeah. In her time with us. We really appreciate that. That's a really good. Yes. Council member Cooper.

Thank you. I just wanted to make one comment about the sustainability action plan. In the staff report, it's suggested that if we take the direction that we suggested tonight, so to not update it, that the sustainability action plan would sort of no longer necessarily be a guiding document for our sustainability division. And, I don't know, I would push back on that to some extent. You know, I feel like there is still a lot of good information and ideas in that action plan, even if it's a little bit out of date. You know, it's not specifically tuned for... just sort of climate action. But again, I think there's good material in there that we should still pay attention to. It is lacking, I think, in two areas. One is that it says nothing about air pollution or air quality. And the other thing is that it has very little about climate adaptation. But I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you.

Thanks. Any other comments? Thanks again. Appreciate all the good information and sobering or not. And it's sobering. So thanks. And we look forward to the meeting with LSAT coming up. We'll get that and put together a meeting. I think that'll be useful. And with staff, with council, with LSAT, that we can make some progress and have some good, solid discussion about what needs to be done from here. Thanks. All right. Is there anything else on this?

OK. Do you have enough direction?

Okay, I just want to make sure all right. upcoming agenda items and identification of new ones I don't know there's actually a presentation on this or not, we have in the packet a. Our. forecast.

So I have on the screen a current forecast. As noted, this is very dynamic and changes almost daily. So even from what was posted in the agenda last Thursday, there have been some changes. A couple of changes that I would like to note is that for the meeting on – Going to July 21st on consent, we've added the joint agreement between the city of Louisville and Boulder ODM. We have the final IGA for Louisville to join Boulder ODM. Currently, we have this on consent because we've talked about it quite a bit. If council would like us to change it to regular, we can. We do have some other items on the regular agenda for that night, which will include second readings for any potential ballot initiatives. And then also looking ahead to July 28th, we are requesting an executive session for personnel matter. This is related to the city manager and city attorney reviews. And then also on August 4th, we have community development trestle strategy final presentation on housing strategic framework. This was phase two of the scope of work presentation. related to Trestle strategy, evaluating options for the $2 million that are programmed for affordable housing. And then I also just want to call out that on July 28th, we're looking at the first reading related to the inclusionary housing ordinance update. And then also on August 18th, we would have the second reading for that. So at this point in time, we are happy to answer any questions about any of the items that are on the upcoming agenda. And then also note that there is council summer break between June 22nd to July 10th.

Questions or go ahead. Council member Cooper. One little clarification.

I thought that the inclusion or housing ordinance is not quasi judicial, but it's in bold. Is that just a mistake?

It's a mistake.

Yes. And then the pond liner, is that still on for?

Yeah, that's on June 16th. It'll be on consent. It does include a budget amendment. We are recommending that we not fill the pond. However, we are expecting completion in the fall. So at that point in time, we would reevaluate whether or not, from a water supply perspective, if we feel like we have enough supplies that we could fill the pond. But at this point in time, we would not recommend filling the pond.

And in advance of that, could you try to provide that information about what our legal obligations are regarding that pond?

Yes. Yeah.

Thank you.

Staff has reviewed the subdivision agreement associated with that. We can't, at this point in time, we haven't found like a legal obligation. It is incorporated into the golf course itself. And then also, you know, it's been a longstanding element of the neighborhood and there is an affinity to having the pond there. And so staff would not recommend at this point in time. And it also does serve a stormwater purpose. purpose to some extent as well. It's a pass-through, but it does serve that purpose.

I'm going to have one, but is there anybody else on council that has any changes, questions, additions, subtractions, good advice, bad advice? Doesn't sound like. I would like to put on our next week's agenda the question of whether to submit a motion for leave to submit an amicus brief and attach an amicus brief in the case that's currently filed by the Town of Superior and the Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County against Jeff Coe and I guess the airport director of the Rocky Mountain Metro Airport. Just by way of a little bit of background, I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, but I have studied a little bit the Decision that's at issue. There's a question There's this lawsuit that was brought by superior Had to do among other things with what steps could and couldn't be taken to require noise abatement by the operator of our mma and that is jefferson county um none of what we're what i'm interested and this is purely his background i'm arguing uh i'm just trying to lay a little bit of foundation here for the decision about whether we put it on or not because um If we do choose to put it on the agenda, the city attorney had indicated in the conversation that I had with her last week that she might be able to at least provide us with some information. So rather than just simply say, hey, do we want to do it or not, give a little bit of background. Nobody is interested in, and I think we have as a council expressly decided not to engage in litigation against Rocky Mountain Metro Airport or the county of a kind that Boulder County and Superior engaged in. We're not interested to be a party to that. And frankly, we don't even need to express an opinion whether one or the other party should win or lose. What a third party can do is to, under certain circumstances, ask the... Supreme Court, when a case is being appealed to submit a brief that is a friend of the court brief, amicus curiae is the term, to encourage the court to hear the issue, the lawsuit that was decided in the Court of Appeals does not have an appeal by right. The parties who want to appeal it can't just ask the Supreme Court just to put it on the calendar. the court has to actually agree to hear the case. And the particular issue that I think we have an interest in considering providing amicus support, asking the Supreme Court to hear, has to do with something called... proprietors' rights. And without going into detail, there are some rights that an operator of an airport has that are not preempted by federal law. And the real question that this particular case brought up is that the court said, yeah, they exist, and The operator at the airport can, in fact, regulate, for example, noise at the airport. They can choose to do that. But can state courts force them through an injunction to do that? No. So there are rights there and not necessarily remedies for someone, particularly a municipality, not just a... personal and individual, but a municipality for saying you should enter, you should exercise these rights. So it's really unclear if a right exists, whether indeed it can be enforced in the courts or not. And the Court of Appeals said no, but that's one of the issues that's going to be raised on appeal. And although our interests aren't necessarily the same as superiors, which is among other reasons why we're not in that lawsuit, There may be some reason to want a court, the Supreme Court, to resolve the issue in case we ever might want to seek injunctive relief under another set of circumstances. I think that's one thing that's leading a number of different municipalities to file amicus briefs. We understand that the city of Broomfield is going to do it. I think the city of Lafayette is going to consider this next week. We may be able to get a copy of the amicus brief that's prepared by, going to be prepared or in the process of being prepared by city of Broomfield. to review, and it may be enough to say, oh, we like that amicus, and we'll sign on to it. Alternatively, we may get that and say, no, we don't want to sign on to it, but we might be willing to do something else in filing something with the court. So right now, I just am interested in, I guess the last thing I'd say is we have certainly had many calls, many emails, many discussions, I think probably all of us at various times. Certainly, I have gotten a lot of feedback from the constituents throughout the city to want to do something to try to protect the health and safety and welfare of our city from some of the noise and potential environmental impacts of RMMA. And this is one such step that we can take to make sure that we understand what rights the RMA actually has in this and who can require those to be enforced and how. So regardless of what one thinks about this lawsuit, I think it's a good, solid, appropriate question for us to be discussing amongst ourselves. Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Since it's not on the agenda tonight, I'm not going to go into great detail. But when I'm looking at the advanced agenda, I see that the RMMA amicus brief is on there for next week. It's page 49 of 52 of our packet. And I don't think anyone from council suggested that we take it off. So I think we're good to move forward with it on there. I see the city manager has her microphone.

This was a placeholder because we knew that the mayor was going to bring this up. And so we put it as a placeholder just so that staff had an awareness of it. We were relying on direction tonight from council as to whether or not to actually move forward.

Got it. It was an effort not to be presumptuous about just putting it on there, I think. The way we typically do things. I see. So if we have a consensus that we can discuss this matter next Tuesday, that's great. And, you know, I can make a motion to that effect if need be, but. Yes, Council Member Hathaway.

Yeah, two things. One, I think we should join in a brief submitted by one of our neighboring communities if they prepare one and get it to us before next week's meeting. That's point one. Point two is I do think it's taking a side in the litigation. Those who are happy with the Court of Appeals decision probably are not going to be lining up. to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider that decision. Right, typically you only ask the Supreme Court to reconsider if you're unhappy with the decision of the Court of Appeals. I personally think it's worth consideration, and I'd like to see the issue resolved, but I don't think we should say too strongly that it's equivalent to taking no position, just given if you were thrilled with the decision by the Court of Appeals, you probably wouldn't take this step.

Oh, save discussion about that. I mean, I'm not going to disagree with you sake of argument here.

But just to be clear, I think we should. I mean, it's in our interest to see this resolved in the direction Superior is arguing. But I do think that's the message we'd be sending.

I mean, a court, what's interesting is a court could decide those rights don't exist. It is possible. Advocating that they be addressed certainly is important, but I'm not sure that necessarily the court might not pull back on them. So at any rate, we can take off the idea that it's not going to help in some respects, but the point of it is not to help one party, it's to potentially deal with rights that might inure to our benefit at some point in the future.

Agreed, thanks.

If folks are okay with hearing this next week, do we have all of us in agreement for that or not?

Yeah. So will we be able to have the appropriate legal advice or representatives who can give us that legal advice here to advise us? Because I think if we're going to have a discussion, we should understand the full implications. And I think we need to have understanding, too, of the potential language of a brief. And I want to make sure that we like I wouldn't. disagree with signing on with Broomfield, but I think we have to really look out for all of the the implications of this and I think if we're gonna discuss that in full we might want to make sure and I and I don't know if our municipal attorney has If you know, she feels that she has the expertise to advise us or if somebody else needs to be doing that my understanding

is that with what we're doing tonight and putting it on that agenda, she can prepare kind of pros and cons of doing this. She can provide some language. if you will, for us to consider or conceptually what we might be wanting to be careful of when we do get the brief from Broomfield. The timing is the weird part, right? Because my understanding is it is on the 12th, that is Friday, that is the due date for the plaintiffs to submit their request or petition for certiorari, that discretionary review. That's going to happen then. Nobody's going to know what they're appealing technically until then. We have a good idea, but we don't know for sure. So that happens then. If that happens then, we have every reason to believe it will, we would have seven days to file this motion for leave to submit an amicus brief. Our meeting is next Tuesday. My understanding from... Broomfield is that they are going to file their motion, similar motion, for leave to file their amicus brief and to file, attach the amicus brief on Wednesday, the 17th. They're not going to wait till Friday, they're going to do it the 17th. In all likelihood, they'll have a copy of their materials that we can look at no later than the 16th. I think that's pretty clear. I don't know that they're going to have it by the time our packet goes out this week. Because technically, they won't have seen the brief of, or excuse me, they won't have seen the petition that the plaintiffs or the appellant is going to file until the next day. So the idea that I think is probably the best is that we'd supplement whatever... our city attorney wants to provide in terms of pluses and minuses, and in terms of implications, which I think would be really good for all of us to have, that we would supplement that as we sometimes do with materials that come in in the meantime before Tuesday.

Yes. How will our city attorney know what even to recommend to us when we don't even know exactly what's being appealed until Friday? And this would have to be done in time for our packet to be submitted Thursday or Friday. Is that correct?

Yeah. And again, I asked that of her because it is very strange timing. I think... Certainly, there's a question of whether to submit an amicus brief at all to explain what that process is, which is something that could be done irrespective of what the issue is. I think based on what she said, she can certainly suggest some of the things we might want to watch out for based on the issue that has been discussed in advance of the filing of the appeal of this petition. I think we know, because she talks to the other lawyers, the issues that are likely to be appealed. We don't have anything that's been filed yet. She won't have anything that's been filed yet. But she said... knowing that this is on the agenda for next week, she could provide us with some information, and then she will be at the meeting next Tuesday to answer questions more specifically. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

So I just we've been talking about an agenda item not on the agenda for about like 15 plus minutes and I'm starting to get uncomfortable with that. You know there's a lot of variables that are unknown at this point in time and I think information that council will need but right now we just need to decide are we going to talk about it next Tuesday or not right I mean we're like discussing the item and it's not on the agenda.

I think what we're discussing is whether it should go on there, but I and I'm trying to assure or reassure people based on what I've heard from the city attorney, but But let me do it very simply and just move that we put that, the question of whether we submit an amicus brief in the case Superior and Bocco versus Jeffco and RMMA on our agenda next week and ask the city attorney to provide whatever information she can provide in advance and whatever information she can provide, obviously, at the meeting itself.

yes that's a motion uh i hear your motion let me ask a clarifying question which is does your motion include anyone in the city preparing our own brief or is it just the question of whether to join someone else's um i would say it anyone else is a bit broad i think

What I would say is it's not merely a question of whether to join or not join. It may be a question of even if we choose not to join but still want to submit, then making a decision as to whether to submit.

That's fine with me as long as we're clear we're not giving direction to staff to go off and draft us a brief by next Tuesday. Correct.

Yeah, and I have no interest in that.

I guess I misunderstood. I thought that you said that if we put this on the agenda for next week, that Kathleen would be given the direction to draft something to bring to us. And you just said no, and Council Member Hafner asked that.

What we wouldn't be doing is giving her a direction to draft a brief. what we'd be asking her to do, what she would, because I said the same thing, right? I said, well, if we don't direct you to write a brief, then what can you do in the meantime? And she said, well, I can provide some preparatory information pluses and minuses, you know, explanation of the process. I can do that. And I said, oh, all right. So, because that was a request that Mayor Pro Tem had made that when we were talking about this, and I think others would like to know more about it too. So that's the distinct, it may seem a small distinction, but it is, as Council Member Heffner said, it is not providing direction to draft a brief. Okay. All right. I know it's motion. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion further? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. And then I just want to take one moment of privilege to say thank you to the city and to Brandy and all of the others who worked so hard on Pride. this weekend, the Pride Festival, and everybody in the city who worked on any aspect of the Summerfest and cleaning that up and preparing, it was just wonderful. It's a wonderful weekend. Those who joined on Friday, on the dinner on Main. I know there are some here at the table who did. City personnel were involved in kind of working on that and supporting it and cleaning it up. So thank you. All right. Motion to adjourn. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?