Climate Action Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. I think we're going to go ahead and get started. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Navajo County Climate Action Committee meeting of 04/25/2025. And may I have the roll call, please?

Member Joseph?

Here.

Member Den Denitalli?

Here.

Member Norvaez

here

member Alessio present member Daisy here member trip member Reeves here vice chair Eisenberg present and chair Gallagher here, please join me if you are able and to stand and Pledge the flag All right. Thank you. We are going to move to public comment. This is an opportunity for anyone to address the Climate Action Committee regarding any subject over which the committee has jurisdiction but which is not posted today on our agenda. And we will limit those comments to three minutes.

Is there anyone in the audience who would like to comment? Is there anyone on the phone?

We do not have any callers.

All right. Great. Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and move on to our consent items. We have the approval of minutes from the regular meeting on 02/28/2025. Can I get a well, first I need to see if there's any public comment on the minutes? Seeing none. All right. Can I get someone to move the minutes, please?

Move to approve the minutes.

All right. We have a motion by Eisenberg.

I'll second. Second

by Dana Tale. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. We're going to move to our administrative items. We have 5A, a discussion and possible action regarding the Climate Action Committee proposed budget for fiscal year 'twenty five-'twenty six. And we will move to our staff report. I don't know if it's Mr. Gutierrez or Mr. Melendez who's going to kick us off, but Mr. Gutierrez, good morning, and take it away.

Thank you. Good morning. Moving along quickly this morning. So yeah. So I will be presenting on again, this is the second time around, on the fiscal year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six proposed climate action committee budget.

And as you've read, hopefully, in the staff report, the RCAP budget has increased. The budget for the CDC has increased in due, in large part, by the RCAP or developing the regional climate action and adaptation plan. It's increased the need for staff time and increased the responsibilities and obviously, the resources needed to get that RCAP moving, which in the last sixteen months has made a lot of progress. We're also going to talk a little bit about kind of the placeholder amounts that we've included for the environmental review. And as was mentioned at the February meeting, our proposed budget is kind of based on our understanding of what the next fiscal year might look like in terms of finishing the RCAP, administering the development of the environmental review, establishing a staff level working group amongst all jurisdictions and the request to look into options or possible new formations of the CAC and what they could look like once we start implementing the actions and measures from the RCAT.

So here's a look at the proposed budget. And I'm going read from the staff report just because it's clear and I don't have to just wing it. The proposed budget for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six is total of $664,898 This includes $160,498 in county staff cost, which is a 20% or $42,769 decrease from the original staff time cost estimate presented at the February meeting, February 28 CAC meeting. The budget was decreased to help alleviate municipal budget concerns, which we heard at that meeting. In addition to staff costs, the proposed budget estimates includes $15,600 for outside legal support to review the RCAP, the administrative screen check and final drafts of that RCAP, 10,000 for continued support by our EV charging equity tool consultant, Ari Balbarak, which includes trainings, support and any updates to that equity EV charging tool.

And $9,000 for the NAPA Climate Challenge, which has been an ongoing app that we've been kind of buying access to. The proposed budget includes a placeholder amount, as mentioned, for $400,000 for the preparation of an environmental review document for the RCAP and a placeholder for $66,800 in outside counsel support for review of all necessary secret documents as part of that environmental review. So, it's kind of broken down into two sections, as you can see, but really the overall, including the placeholder, is $664,898 And for the purposes of this proposed budget, the highest anticipated cost for environmental review of the RCAP has been used as the placeholder. And as you know, we've kind of postponed discussions about what level of sequel review we're going to do for now just to kind of move the budget along, but and to give jurisdictional staff the opportunity to review the what we're calling the administrative draft of the RCAP, which is due out in mid May. So, it's coming out real soon.

We've already met with a few jurisdictional staff and they understand that they'll be looking at that. But we were also asking the CAC members today to think about which staff from different departments might be able to give a look over of the R CAP, which is what we the CAC was kind of requesting at the February meeting was to look at the R CAP before deciding on the sequel review. Both things could happen at the same time, but we decided to pause any kind of decision on that sequel review just so we could get more eyes on the RCAP and the kind of the bigger picture of that plan. Let's see. Here's a breakdown of just Napa County staff time and costs broken down by the individual staff members who are part of administering Climate Action Committee and also part of working with consultants and staff on the RCAMP itself.

And it's broken down by percentage of time of yearly time and then percentage of hours spent or anticipated hours spent on the CAC and RCAP. And as was mentioned earlier, we did reduce the hours specifically of the principal planner position by looking at what we thought were the projects that we were going to be working on and kind of reducing the hours that we thought we could we would need for those specific projects. And there was an attachment to this agenda item, which kind of broke those hours down even more. So, here's the breakdown by jurisdiction of the total costs. As you can see here, it's the same percentage breakdown as has been seen in the past for the RCAP and for the previous CAC budgets.

For Napa County, we have a total of 219,416 For American Canyon, we have a total of $85,107 For Calistoga, $55,187 for Napa, a $198,805 for Saint Helena, $56,516 for the town of Yonville, 49,867 thousand dollars for a total of $664,898 And with that, yeah, I'll pass it over for questions and staff request that the CAC continue the discussion and vote to adopt the proposed budget for fiscal year twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much. Before I ask for questions, I wanted to ask you what practical effect does the 20% reduction in staff time have? I think that people should be cognizant that when they ask for something to be less, that that means less staff time, which means there's some work that is not necessarily going to be able to be completed. So I'm just curious if there's anything in particular that you are not going to be able to do, which makes sense, but I think everyone should be aware. Okay.

Yeah, I can start. One of the main things that drove down some of those hourly those hours that would be used was, up until this point, up until recently, all of the RCAP work that the county was doing was being charged to the CAC. And as the kind of administration of the RCAP project comes to an end and we start to think about implementation, many of those hours that were going towards the RCAP will be going towards implementation from the county staff on behalf of the county. And so that can be kind of reduced from the CAC budget administrative and charged more overhead to the county's general fund.

Okay. So that's principally where that is. Is there any other

Yeah. In addition, I think we had set aside hours for review of the environmental document environmental review document. So as you know, this past sixteen months with the RCAP, every memo, every, you know, every technical document is reviewed by staff, both county and city staff. It's broken down and hopefully, you know, presented in a staff report so the CAC members can understand what's going on. So it's those types of reviews that we've reduced in terms of hours.

Right? Some of them take longer than others, so we just kind of estimated ballpark what it could look like. We still don't have a specific scope of work for the environmental review because the CAC hasn't decided on the level of review. So there's also that we just kind of instead of putting the maximum number, we've kind of reduced it to the middle and not the lowest to reduce cost just a little bit somewhat. Also, the cost was reduced that much because our initial estimate, we were using staff billing hours from this year's pay rate, and this new budget has next year's pay rate, which has kind of increased staff pay by a bit.

Okay. All right. Well, I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood if, you know, there was something that obviously would be difficult to achieve with a 20% reduction. I also wanted to ask, do we have usage rates on the Napa Climate Challenge?

We do. I looked at we had about 60 new users in the past year. We did have a delayed community engagement aspect that we we did as part of the payment for the platform. We also had a portion of that budget was going towards community engagement. And due to kind of delays in in hiring from Bright Action Communities, There that that community engagement aspect was delayed, and so we have extended that con like, the contract for community engagement through June, to kind of line up better with the fiscal year as well.

Mhmm. I think we had about 120 or so individual users that had logged on and were active on the app in the last, like, nine months and 60 new users.

Okay. Okay. That's great.

I think And we do it's kind have sorry. We do have many with the kind of uptick in the community engagement strategies as well, we do have more events, challenges, kind of targeted specific events going on for that challenge as

That's great. Separate way would you know, and I don't know what to expect, like what is the expectation really of how many users there should be. But I guess you know, it's good to hear that the numbers are going up. Okay. Does anybody have any questions or clarifications on the like supervisor, member, what are oh, I'm going to go to Alessio and then Hillary. That trip will be next, so go ahead.

Oh, thank you. You for the presentation. And this PowerPoint will be available, I assume, after the meeting. It was helpful. It would have been nice, not to be critical, but to have that in advance because I was looking for I saw the graph, but I didn't see really, you know, the spreadsheet or anything else.

So this helped me helped answer some questions. In terms of well, let me just compliment being, you know, this is why we're working together because the shared cost really helps, as they say, rise all ships and us having a shared vision and shared cost so we're all saving some money while we're working on this important work together. I did have a question regarding the staff time. I'm going to do this on behalf of my city colleagues here, city of Napa because I know that Deborah Elliott's been very involved with CAC and has given her staff time. Are we accounting for that?

Yes.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you. And I think that's it for now. Thank you. Okay.

Member Tripp?

I just have two quick questions. Is the division of costs kind of consistent across all issues? And was that set up when the joint powers was set up percentages for each jurisdiction? Is it the same pretty much every year? And was that set up as part of the joint powers?

Yes. Yeah. And so any any task that we are working on based on the priorities that are set or any new additional tasks that that arise, like the foodware ordinance, for example, wasn't a priority last year. But then in addition to those three fiscal year priorities, there was that kind of additional work that was needed. And so all of those types of tasks are broken down through those percentage breakdowns.

But the percentages are

Those are

they're the same.

They're the same. That was really That stemmed from the joint powers agreement, yes.

Okay. And I want to compliment the staff work, which in my experience has been really good on this committee. And then I just had a simple practical question. Do you all have to submit I'm hoping you don't because it's so tedious, but do you have to submit time sheets or is there some way that you go back and look and see how much time actually got spent?

We do have to submit time sheets broken down by project costs depending on what we're working on. And part of that, the discussion also with the kind of transition of the county's administration of the RCAP project, now we have an additional charge code to to charge to county specific you know, county staff time on behalf of county work versus county staff time on behalf of the CAC and administering, like, the the meetings, administering the administration for the working group, the staff level working group, that would be, you know, towards the CAC. But anything on behalf of the county's implementation part of the RCAP would go to this kind of separate charge now.

Okay. That's a good distinction. And I may have missed this, but the administration now has moved entirely over to the county from the city of Napa. Is that right?

It has always been administered by the county. Okay. We work in close collaboration with the city and now with the staff working group with the other cities. But some of that reduction was due to some of the concerns that the county administering the RCAP would be would have a lot of burden while also increasing the need for staff, individual staff at the other jurisdictions. Uh-huh. And so we were trying to reduce some of the total administrative burden on the county for the RCAP to account for that increase in time and budget for the individual jurisdictional staff.

Okay. That makes sense. Thank you.

Member Eisenberg? Actually,

it's just a follow-up to Chair Gallagher's question. So I think that whenever we have these yearly subscriptions like the NAPA Climate Challenge and including the EV charging tool is that before we renew, we should look at what kind of usage and efficacy we are getting from these and just make sure that the thinking for next year on the EV charging tool just to know how much it is being used and if it is not being used, if we can do something to get it more used during the year so that we can have good end of the year results.

Did you want to I can just comment that at least for the EV charging tool, we have utilized it in house with the county. We found, eight individual sites that we wanna dig into deeper for, potential installation of EV charging throughout the county. There were, I think, three in the unincorporated jurisdiction, two in American Canyon, one in Yountville, and, well, one or two in Calistoga. So we're we are utilizing it. I'm not sure how widespread it's being used in the other jurisdictions or or through the public.

But, yeah, with the that additional kind of subscription script subscriptive cost for the the EV charging tool isn't for continual development of it, but it's for ongoing trainings or any other data requests to the consultant.

No, thank you. You're way ahead, but I was thinking of giving a whole year and evaluating.

Yes. And just to follow-up, we did have a staff level training February 28. That training has been recorded and we do have the video, which we're going to host on our SharePoint site and hopefully share it with jurisdictional staff. So we'll reach out to staff or if you have staff that are working on EV charging and could use that training, we have that video available. And I think having Ari on retainers, if we need additional training, in person training, or if one jurisdiction in particular or a few want to get together and look at that, he's available for that.

There's also kind of more fine grained data that each jurisdiction might have that could be introduced into the tool. The county has already kind of we've kind of grafted that data into the tool, but accessing that is another way that we kind of are bouncing ideas off of RE. So that's another reason why we have this line item in the budget this year.

It sounds like it's really important that we ask jurisdictional staff to really dig in and take the training and learn so that each jurisdiction can be figuring this out on their own and adding data to make the model better, right? So maybe we can have people kind of report each time we come together about how that's going in their jurisdictions. That would be helpful. So Member Joseph?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the report. And I regret the fact that I missed out on all the good stuff at the last meeting. But relative to the budget, I think including that $400,000 placeholder makes the most sense because we're only going to be charged what's actually expended. So it's not as if we're giving it away, we're reserving it.

And to the question of the environmental review and looking it over, I'm a little torn. There's a part of me that would prefer the initial study mitigated negative deck, not so much because of the savings in cost, but the savings in time. It's six to nine months versus a year to a year and a half. But as I understand it, the risk is if it's challenged, you end the most easiest approach if it's challenged as you say, okay, then we'll do a full EIR. And that option is obviously higher priced and almost doubles the time.

So you're confronted with a double or nothing kind of proposition. If you go for something that's quick, which I think is critical, you may end up spending just as much more time and more money if you're challenged. So there's a part of me that wishes we knew what the outcome would be before we started, but you don't get that option. So it seems like that, what is it, program environmental impact report is probably the safest risk even if it is a little longer and certainly more expensive. So for what it's worth, a long way of going to the point that I think the budget proposal makes sense and our share of it seems reasonable. So I'm on board.

Thank you for your comments, Member Joseph. I'll just note too, we will have a more in-depth conversation of the environmental review as we move along with that process. So for now, that $400,000 placeholder is for the purposes of this budget discussion, but we will absolutely dig into those comments and concerns at a future meeting.

Okay. Thank you.

When will we be like, what's our deadline for making that decision? Or is that a trick question?

It's kind of a trick question. There's no deadline, but I think the sooner, the better. Obviously, I think as I was looking back at past meetings, know, when this project was launched, there was a sense of urgency and a need to move forward and it really kind of covered the basis with the environmental review. And we've kind of been lowed by just actually doing the work, but now we're at this point where I think we can say, yeah, let's keep moving forward quickly. So, I think the faster that we can move on deciding the type of environment reviews can be great.

One, because then that gives our consultant the time to develop that scope of work and then we can review that and see what it looks like. So that's important. I think just having money budget to keep the project moving along is another reason why it makes sense to decide earlier. So there's no deadline, but the sooner we can talk about it and come to a decision, the better. The administrative draft of the RCAMP, which we'll talk about next, is going to come out in mid May, so really soon.

So, we're going to have these names of these jurisdictional staff that can review it and hopefully you all can talk to them and get their sense of what is in there, what it looks like and maybe come up with more questions about the environmental review, right? At our last meeting, we hadn't seen it. We didn't know what kind of what it really meant for the RCAP. So hopefully having staff look at this kind of first full draft will help with those discussions as well. So everything is kind of moving and kind of coming together now. But I would say, yeah, the sooner the better.

So the working group will also be discussing this piece of it as well. And hopefully you guys can come up together with a recommendation that I would say the soonest meeting you can get that to us would be great because we do need to decide, as you said.

Yeah. And I do think there were some concerns brought up at the February meeting about wanting to wait until we've seen the full administrative or the full public draft of the cap or waiting even waiting even until adopting, the our cap and that staff has has reviewed those comments and really wanna encourage the kind of simultaneous you know, we've come this far within the actual project of the RCAP, and it's very common to have, kind of simultaneous or or overlapping work with an environmental review document, you know, for a general plan or a hazard mitigation plan. Any other plan will have you know, you you kinda as you're getting towards the end of the the development of the plan, you start thinking about the environmental review, and they're kinda working simultaneously. That way, you

can Right.

Have that. So we do wanna move more quickly and and not and, you encourage, the members to do not think about wanting to wait until adopting the plan to start the environmental review because it would just push things even further out.

Right. So it sounds like we should have a sense of urgency about it. So I would say let's move it as quickly as we can. All right. Does anyone else have any questions or anything? And we are adopting the budget today, correct?

Yes. We're voting to it.

Okay. Go ahead, Member Narvaez.

Not a lot to say because a lot of things have already been answered, but I am comfortable with the proposed budget. I think the placeholder is perfect. There was a lot of questions, some concerns addressed in the last meeting. I think it would take more than one meeting to address. I think the placeholder is perfect. So I look forward to more discussion on that, along with the jurisdiction staff being able to look at those. But as far as the proposed budget, I'm comfortable with that. I appreciate the work on that.

Would you like to make a motion?

We'll make a motion to

I'll adopt the proposed second that, but maybe we could defer if there's any public comment.

Oh, right. I'm sorry.

I'll make

you a public comment on the proposed budget? And anything on the line?

We do not have any callers.

Okay. I have a motion by Narvaez. They

never want to talk about budget.

And all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Great. Got through 5A. All right. We will go to 5B, which is a presentation of the R CAP administrative draft review

Thank you. So as I just mentioned, the R CAP administrative draft will be ready in mid May, so it's coming up really soon. But we want to present kind of the review process for that administrative draft of the RCAP. We thought it was kind of a bigger deal than just an announcement, so we wouldn't have made it an agenda item just to kind of get in front of you. So here's kind of like the definition of the administrative draft, but the purpose of the upcoming administrative draft of the RCAP is for staff to review and refine the document internally at the administrative and staff level before the RCAP becomes a public draft.

The advent draft of the RCAP is expected to be ready in the May. And like I said, it's essentially the first full draft of RCAP written in a more accessible fashion versus the technical memos that we've presented been presented up to date. And we're bringing it up here for several reasons. First, because it's helpful to have the weight of council members behind the document to emphasize its urgency, importance, and relevance. I think we heard that from the working group as well, like it's great to have staff involved and planners involved, but planners can't necessarily tell other departments what to do.

So it's good to have counsel involved and say, yes, we want to move in this direction. Second, it's important to get staff insights, especially departments that are directly affected by the RCAP within the jurisdictions to get their insight into the RCAP and what they feel can and can't be done or, you know, where we can work on them. And those conversations with staff that can inform your thoughts on the CEQA and environmental review. Right? So this is kind of an important step in in the process.

So the draft is for is not for public release. Therefore, we cannot provide access to the CAC members as if if we would provide a CAC members access, that would be a public document and everyone would be able to see that. And RCAP is just not there yet. Right? So, don't want it to be public record but we do want the CAC to let jurisdictional staff know that it's available and we want them to review it or to take a look at it.

Okay. So, to ensure a coordinated and succinct review, we're only going to have a short window to review this to kind of keep the project on budget and moving quickly. So, the Napa County will host the administrative draft as a shared file on a Napa County SharePoint internal drive, and this will be the only copy of the administrative draft. So individually saved drafts from reviewers will not be accepted. So staff can't kind of download it, make comments, and then send it to us.

That just gets too overwhelming and we're trying to move things along quickly and hopefully we'll get comments from a lot of different people. So, the more we get just one set of comments, the better. So, access will be given by us, by accounting staff, but we will need names and emails to do that. Right? Someone won't just be able to click on a link.

We'll have to send the link directly to them. And potential reviewers can include city managers, legal counsel, agency staff, staff from agencies or departments that might take responsibility in implementing measures of the RCAP should probably be consulted. So, for example, representatives or staff from public works, planning, recycling and solid waste, transportation, etcetera, etcetera. Members of the all jurisdiction staff level working group, which has already met, and has members from each jurisdiction. And I think those those persons were, I think, sent down by city managers.

I'm not a 100% sure, but I think so. We've already met. We've already talked to them about the administrative draft and that it's something that they can expect to to look at. So, reviewers are really being asked to focus their comments on kind of very specific things, really ensuring that the document is evoking the proper tone, that the information is being communicated properly and the document is engaging and accessible to a diverse audience. We already have a lot of technical memorandums, meat of the sandwich is already kind of done, we've already kind of looked at it.

So now we want to see what it looks like altogether, how it's explained. Now there's pictures now, there's graphics. So do those make sense? Are they reading correctly? So that's kind of what we're asking staff that are going to review this draft to look at these types of things.

We've already kind of gone through the kind of harder questions around the actual measures and so there's no kind of time to refine those or really change those in a major way. We can't look at them and talk about them, but I think that work's already been done. We've kind of already passed that in terms of budget and time and consultant work, right? So really, we're just kind of tweaking kind of the kind of final legs of the R CAP. And all of the excuse me, I'll get to that later but everything that kind of makes up the RCAP is available on the website now.

All of the different memorandums that are represented, all the GHG measures, all the adaptation measures are all on the website now. So, the public can review those now if they want to get really deep. Once the public draft comes out, it will just be easier to digest, I think. So, just an FYI. So, in terms of timeline, we'll get the draft in the May.

We'll share that draft with staff that have been kind of shared with us. And then a week after, we'll check-in, see if anyone has questions, kind of prompt them to keep moving along. And week three, we'll kind of urge them to make their final comments, get them in before the deadline and have that nicely wrapped for our consultants to take a look at and make their changes. And as I said, the RCAP website has all of these supporting documents on there and we encourage individuals who are interested in reviewing the supporting background documents to look at the website, which has a link on this on here. I think you can also just search Napa County RCAP or Napa County Climate Action Plan and it will take us to the webpage which has a link to this project site.

And just some things that are on the website, there's ways to kind of drop an email and get more information on the project as it moves along. It has copies of the presentations given at four community meetings in 2024. There's a recording of a community meeting on there. There's a fact sheet and GHG inventory charts, the climate vulnerability assessment study, the GHG inventory, greenhouse gas emissions forecast, greenhouse gas emission measures, adaptation measures. There's a lot of information on the website now. If someone really wanted to get into it, you could do it right now. And yeah, and that's kind of it for now. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. Do I have any questions, comments? Member Eisenberg.

Thank you. I'm still just wondering, there was a plan to have the estimated financial cost to jurisdictions for the elements of the RCAM. Where are we in that process?

You mean for the cost funding analysis of the top 10 measures of Yes. We the subconsultants are completing those analyses right now. We are hoping to have them concurrently as we get our, as we get the admin draft cap. So we will have that released hopefully by the next meeting, I believe.

Okay. Thank you.

Member Alasio? I just want to thank staff for this presentation. It seems it's very thoughtful in terms of the process and practical. At the same time, I'm looking at the website and how it's linked to the county website and to this website. It's great. Looks really good. It's user friendly. Thank you for pointing that out, and I just want to commend you for good work. Thank you.

And anyone else? Okay. And I just wanted to check with everyone if you feel confident that you have people in your jurisdiction that you're going to be able to give the staff in terms of names, contact numbers, people kind of ready to go, teed up for this? Okay. Great. And that you would like that information sort of ASAP, correct? Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you, everybody.

You can send it directly to us and copy maybe your city managers. We have, as Jesse mentioned, we have we've met with the staff level working group, and so they are aware that this is coming down the pipeline. And we've also asked them to start thinking about any additional staff, so they should be aware of it. If you need to consult with city managers or or, you know, directors of the departments. They should be aware that this is coming down. But, yeah, please coordinate and send whoever needs to send it, whether it's you or those city managers, send them our way.

Okay. Member Joseph?

Yeah. I was just going to check with the logistics. I'll talk to the city manager on Monday, and we'll figure it out. Thanks. Okay.

Great. And thank you, everybody, for making sure that happens quickly. I think do we have any public comment? And on the phone?

We do not have any callers.

Okay. Well, wow. Moving pretty quickly here. Does anyone have any reports or announcements? Okay. Sure. Verizon Berg?

As long as them. As your time.

Yeah, we have time.

No, just want to say that the hydrogen fuel cell resiliency project in Calistoga began having our hydrogen tank filled yesterday and we will definitely be online in the next month and prepared for any PSPS emergency and be able to power Calistoga using clean hydrogen in the event of an emergency.

Wow, that's an incredible accomplishment. Congratulations. You're going have a ribbon cutting?

Pardon?

I said, you going to have a ribbon cutting?

Probably. Okay. I'll invite everybody. It's a big deal. I just spoke with the project manager yesterday.

A very big deal.

Everybody's excited. I spoke with the health, safety and emergency response Officer yesterday and it is safe and the filling has gone fine and it's safer than a gas station.

Thank you. Thank you and that was great news.

Does this mean Calistoga could go off the grid and just become the ultimate hippie commune?

That is the plan. No, actually, this is for emergency use. Well, yeah, we are. Peace. This is for emergency use in the event that PG and E has to shut off the power to Calistoga because of fire danger and so it's a microgrid that can still power all of Calistoga except for one block. Those people are mad.

Yeah, I bet.

It's PG and E switches that are the problem there. It's correctable. So, we can have full power for three days, partial power for a week, two weeks depending upon what we elect to energize. So it's pretty exciting and it's also fast where the diesel generators which we used to have which caused an incredible amount of pollution, noise will be gone and they took a couple hours to start up and shut down. This is automatically flipping a switch.

Wow. Congratulations.

Yeah. We're excited.

That's awesome. Great. Well, is a great note to go out on. Does anyone have any future agenda items?

I also have reports and announcements. Yes. Just letting the dice go right.

Mr. Mementis.

Report for NAPA Earth Day was April 12. It was a great turnout. Beautiful day out there. Several hundreds of people that came and many great vendors and speakers and opportunities to learn and share resources out there. We I was out there tabling for Napa County, and we were touting some several of the BayREN programs and and some home energy resiliency.

So it was a great opportunity to speak with members of the public. Announcement for our next sustainability workshop at the Napa County Library will be next Wednesday, April 30 from six to 7PM. There are flyers up here. I'll also share flyers via email to you all and to staff. The topic will be on home energy efficiency in 2025, which is ever more important with rising electricity rates and utility rates.

So we'll be talking about opportunities to make homes more energy efficient. That'll be at the Napa County Library here downtown at 6PM on Wednesday, April 30. I wanted to bring to attention a b three zero six, assembly bill three zero six, which has passed through the assembly unopposed. And at this point, it I'm not sure what the next steps are, but we will be working with our our legislative analyst to kinda figure out what the next steps. But a brief description of a b three zero six is that it would effectively ban local governments, cities, and counties in California from adopting local building energy codes.

So this would stop our ability to adopt reach codes for new buildings. And it was pushed through as a wildfire relief package of bills to help expedite redevelopment after natural disasters. And so there, you know, there are some benefits to it, but it as it's written, it would also it would also hinder the state code from updating as well from up until 2031. So we would be we would be operating under the current 2022 building code as it's written. As I mentioned, it's still under development.

It still could be amended to have different readings. So we will be working working with our legislative analyst to understand this bill more, also with the Bare End Codes and Standards team and the statewide codes and standards team to understand the bill more and keep up to date. And we will report back, and we can we can definitely bring in, you know, for a presentation if needed on on a b three zero six. With that, I I I am curious. This can we come back for further discussion or or talk check with staff.

We'll also probably check with the working group to see, which of you all which jurisdictions here are thinking about drafting, reach code in the next code cycle, which would start in 2020. It's the 2025 code that would go into effect for 01/01/2026 for this next three year code cycle. So I just ask, you know, kind of inquire to you all to check with staff to see, you know, if you are all all thinking of drafting or adopting a reach code or if we wanted to have another model reach code done through the CAC to then be widely adopted to see kind of who's thinking about those options so I can report back to the state wide team.

Do you have any more information besides it actually got through the assembly?

67 to zero. There were some abstentions, but it was it went through on, yeah, unopposed.

I'm not understanding that,

but Mainly

We'll talk to them.

Yeah. Mainly as to my understanding, mainly as it's pro housing, right? It's it's to expedite housing after a natural disaster, and no one wants to be anti housing. So that's kind of where it was. There was a lot of back and forth and up up to the vote, but, yeah. It it passed unopposed. But I I have some talking points where we'll be yeah. As I mentioned, we'll be analyzing this and and, you know, staying on top of it. So we're happy to report more on the next steps and on its status.

Remember Alessio, but let's also remember we can't really talk about it yet because it's not agendized.

Can I ask just a clarifying question? Yeah. And maybe did the city of Napa adopt a flex reach code and is that going to be in conflict?

I believe so. And it wouldn't be in conflict.

But that's always discussed but never happened.

And even if so, it wouldn't be in conflict because this would be the new code cycle, which updates every you know, as it's been every three years. So every three years, we would need to update a REACH code as well. There's there's many rumors floating around about the bill being amended. And, again, we can we can speak more on this at a you know, maybe a presentation for a future agenda item. But I just wanted to get it on all of your radar, A b three zero six, to look into more if you have staff to want to talk to.

Thank you. And maybe as a future attached to that, Boulder, Colorado did an incredible job in after their fire went through, rebuilding very quickly and rebuilding in terms of clean energy and resiliency. My daughter was on the board of a nonprofit organization, a trade organization that led that. And so maybe that might be a good presentation for us to think about. I was always impressed by it. So maybe that's a good future item.

Just one more Mhmm. Or kind of announcement and report and gauging this for the next meeting, May 20 the May 2025 meeting falls on Bottle Rock and Memorial Day weekend, which happened last year as well. And we we canceled that meeting and held a special meeting one week earlier. So I was proposing we do the same this year and not deal with Bottle Rock and Memorial Day traffic.

I think that might be a good idea. And do you know can you give us the date of the

prior? Sixteenth.

I knew you were gonna ask that. So

Bottle Rock is the twenty third, twenty fourth, twenty fifth. Okay. So the sixteenth. Is that the second? But there's two concerts, you guys. Right? That's one later, so that's also a very big, busy, lots of traffic as well.

Our Mother's Day weekend is Mother's Day is the eleventh also.

Okay. So what about the sixteenth?

I would really hope it wasn't the sixteenth. I can't make it on the sixteenth. I would be good any Friday after the sixteenth. I don't care when.

Okay. Why don't we do a poll?

You can do a poll.

We'll

send So that please keep an eye out for in your emails for a poll from us, and we will try to nail down a time.

I will tell you, it's actually incredibly convenient if we have for me, I don't know but anybody else, to have the meeting on Bottle Rock Friday because then I can come down on the bus, come to this meeting and then walk over to Bottle Rock, and I already have my three day pass. I encourage us all to do that. Go to Bottle Rock on Friday and come to our meeting and then walk over.

All right. We will include All Battle Rock Friday

on the poll right. Great. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your participation, for being here. We will go ahead and adjourn. I don't know when we will meet next.

A point of conflict or question on a future agenda item, we kind of talked about AB three zero

six.

So that's already on the

Yes. I think we've given direction on that one.

Thanks.

But is there anything else? All right. Then we are going to adjourn to a time to be determined in May by poll. All right. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Melendez and Mr. Gutierrez, for your work and your presentations today.