Green Island Ice Arena Negotiating Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. It is Monday, January 12 at 4PM. I'll call to order this meeting of the climate action plan steering committee to order. All members of the body are present either online or in person. First, we have the approval of the minutes. I'm gonna recuse myself because I wasn't here. Do I have a motion on the minutes?

I make a motion to approve.

Motion to approve by Andrew Erickson. Second by second by Dorothy Leonard. Any discussion on the minutes? Seeing and hearing no discussion, please vote on the motion to approve. You can just signify by thumbs up or aye. That is unanimous. Alright. Thank you. Next we have notices and discussion. For anyone unfamiliar, notices and discussion is when we announce any events coming up or any updates we have from staff.

It is not a decision that is to be made. Lewis, would you like to go first?

I don't really have anything, but I wanted to allow our newly appointed member to introduce herself.

Yeah. Thanks, Lewis. So we do have a new committee member here for everyone online. I will let her introduce herself. She waited patiently for must have been a year to get on this committee. We're very excited to have you, Lauren. So if you wanna just briefly introduce yourself, that would be excellent.

Hi.

My name is Lauren Fortin. I have a master's of sustainable management from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, and I currently am a, sustainability analyst at Trip, HQ. And I'm really excited to be here, It was about a year that I was waiting to join, so I'm really excited.

Lauren, why did you want to join? You reached out to me on LinkedIn, I think, and I believe you're in my district as with interest in this committee. So you waited a long time.

I think my initial interest was I just wanted to get involved in the lacrosse sustainability scene. And I wasn't not sure where to start. I was doing some general research in committees and things I could join, clubs maybe. I stumbled upon this committee. I initially applied and here I am today.

Awesome. Well, welcome. We're glad to have you. Right to the action seats is a good way to go. Other notices and discussion items from anyone on the committee? Natalie Hennigan. Hennigan.

Thank you. La Crosse will be hosting the regional meeting of the Wisconsin Climate Action Navigators coming up in March. This is a network of organizations to provide technical assistance and support for climate action projects, and initiated through the state's Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy. So, Habitat La Crosse has deeply involved in WE CAN and attending their regional meetings. The one this month is in Milwaukee.

I think they're happening every other month this year. So, we will be hosting the March 1 in March. I think it's going to be an afternoon evening on the twenty fifth, and then a full day of programming and events on the twenty sixth. So I just wanted to get the save the date out there, but of course everyone on the steering committee will be invited and hope you're able to attend. Steph, looking at you, we might be trying to host at the Nature Place.

Natalie, will you send that by email? Or send out an invite, too? Awesome. Thank you. Making note of that. March. Anybody else? Items for notices and discussion? Okay. I see none.

We are going to move on then. This is our first agenda item, which is 26 dash zero zero two one, the annual code of ethics review. This code of ethics review is something we all need to say that we have read or promise to read immediately after this meeting every single year, and then I sign the paper certification form that goes to the clerk's office. This has got really important information on how we conduct business and all of the aspects that are important to public service in an individual basis. So I'll just have all of you raise your right hand, and I need you all to, by raising your right hand, agree to reading the code of ethics or promise that you have done so already by unanimous consent.

I'll just have everyone say aye. Aye. That means that you promise to read it immediately after this meeting if you have not done so already. Thank you. I will sign this certification and hand it to our staff after the meeting.

Back to our agenda. We have 26 dash zero zero one eight zoning for climate action update. I recognize I was not here at last month's meeting, so I will hand it over to Lewis to introduce.

Sure. I'm also not here. I went to a conference in Salt Lake City and had Tim sit in for me. And I reviewed the meeting video, and I there were some questions so I went over them with Leslie and she is online to go through some slides. Leslie, I can maybe have you share your screen otherwise I can try to pull the slides up quick either way.

Yeah. Lewis, if you wanna make her host temporarily or if you can there we go. And then right before you begin, Leslie, my understanding is there was an item approved at last month's meeting. Is that right? Chair vice chair. Do you wanna just quick bring us up to speed since we have a new person on the committee as well?

I would be delighted to, and Lewis can certainly fill in. But there was a discussion, well, I'm I'm I'm sure that the committee members have reviewed our climate action plan, and there are series of actions related to zoning. And with the zoning update happening within the city, it seemed like the ideal time to pursue some environmentally focused zoning changes related to those things outlined in our climate action plan. And so the committee talked and discussed that proposal that Lewis had brought forward and decided to support. It said there's a contract with Bolton and Mank for those services.

So this is file number 25Dash1420 of last month's agenda for reference. Okay. I'll add I'd

just like to add a few quick things. First of all, when we talked about the implementation plan last May, the there wasn't a lot of grant funding available. So doing projects was gonna be less likely of updating our zoning code. So focusing on our zoning code was gonna be like, there is a major aspect of our implementation plan this year. Yeah.

I have a lot of grant reporting to do, so I didn't quite get around to it. And since we had some money left in our operating budget and we were in a use it or lose it situation, I discussed with Leslie the possibility of helping out with the, our plugging our climate action into the zoning code update.

Thanks, Lewis. Go ahead, Leslie. Yeah. And if you wanna just sorry to interrupt. Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your title too.

Thanks, Leslie. We do have a raised hand here. Andrew?

I I do know one of the I'll say throughout the process so far, one of the larger voices has been the Friends of the Marsh and their interest in a marsh overlay zone or overlay district. Would that be probably more on the resilience side? And I guess because it's been brought up thus far, I I guess I don't know if that will be tackled by the consultant or if this is kind of a would fall under the realm of what what your services could provide. So maybe Lewis can can factor in. But I think the marsh is this really important resilience and kind of storm water management thing to to think about.

The friends of the of the planning department and, the consultant. So our our zoning code consultants. So I think, that's pretty much in hand. So this would be where filling in the gaps where the the the our our primary consultant isn't, you know, looking at, you know, TOD or something like that. So, yeah, I think I think the we've been working closely with the Friends of the Marsh on on on making sure that it is preserved.

Any follow-up, Andrew? Lewis, did you say TOD would be could be included in this or are there other consultants already working on that?

No. That's what's on the the top one on the right side.

Okay. Options that include modal

development. Our the challenge with transit oriented development I think is that it's mostly focused on light rail or bus rapid transit where City Of La Crosse doesn't have those types of things. So we have to look at how to scale those down or, you know, focus on walking two bus stops and and making the the pedestrian realm more pleasant to encourage busing but I think a cookie cutter TOD ordinance is gonna be hard to find that fits the size and and scale of La Crosse's transit network.

I wonder if we could leverage or focus on complete compact centers as part of the overlay districts or focus on the areas where there could be more multimodal development?

Sure. If you wanna share that with me, and I can pass along to Leslie. We can get some guidance there.

Others? Natalie? I'd also be curious to hear Councilmember Mendell and Lewis and your feedback on this. But I'm very interested in eventually the city adopting a deconstruction ordinance, but on the way to that, in demolition by neglect, mandatory recycling plans for new construction or rehab. And this has actually come up as well as the Heritage Preservation Commission considers what heritage related ordinances could be developed during this zoning code overhaul as well.

So again, open to feedback from the committee on what any sort of material reuse ordinances could be proposed.

Louis, do we have that in the climate action plan, right?

Yes. Or yeah. That area is tricky in the sense that it's maybe not directly a zoning code issue, but it could be. So how it works how that would work with an existing zoning code would be interesting. And maybe, Leslie has some examples of how we can require or at least strongly encourage sort of landfill diversion.

We happen to have a national who is asking the question. She hates me for that. So we have some good things to pull from that we can discuss. Thanks, Leslie. Others?

Andrew.

The first one is just

gonna be

reiterating the importance. I think this I'm glad to see the options for multimodal development. One thing I'm really hoping for is a ready to go indoor bike parking ordinance. And, also, our our continues to have people build bad bike parking. So hopefully that will be included.

And then my my question for you, Leslie, was on the checklist and incentives for sustainable new or remodeled large buildings. Is that would that I've heard stretch code referred to many times. Is that kind of like that? And then one of the climate action plan was about any city finance projects. So if they got TIF funding, that that then you could make that a requirement. And I think that would be interesting to see what

yeah. And for a little little bit of background, I tried to emulate Middleton's sustainable requirements for their tax increment finance district regulations. And then we did an overhaul of our TIF regulations. And after closer scrutiny a lot of that stuff didn't really stand up. So I think we kinda we need other resources or other sources of guidance. Yeah.

So we have TOD stretch code, public funding requirements. I am very interested in the EV ready ordinance. More on parking lots, we have lots of those. Obviously, Lee Lewis would connect Leslie with our parks department who I believe got funding for the tree preservation ordinance writing. I feel like they had recently received something.

Right. But as, yeah, as we discussed, the they're focused mostly on their public trees rather

than Oh, that's right.

Private development. So that's kind of hopefully so we will work with them to make sure that they're they they

Fit together? Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. They complement each other. Okay. Excellent. Well, this is a great proposed priority topics. If anyone wants to email Lewis and myself, you can always, get any other thoughts or input to to Leslie as well. Alright. I can't see online. Lewis, can you just double check that nobody's raising their hand? Okay. Leslie, I think you have more for us. I'll let you continue.

Thank you, Leslie. Are there any questions right now? I have one. As part of these services, do you all join council meetings to discuss when the time comes or is it outside of the scope?

Yeah I would say the idea is to plug into the existing zoning code process. That would be the part where the council would be engaged.

Okay got it. Excellent. We do have a question from Council President Dickinson.

I think I'm tag teaming at this moment because I do know the zoning process or assessment is planning a March collective meeting with council and city plan commission minimum. So if you just want to keep that in mind, I anticipate there'll be another one, but at least you know that it won't be on the exact council planning date. It will be an additional called by the council president. So somewhere in March, I've learned with the consultant, we have to also work within their schedule. So to mandate an exact date isn't realistic.

So just food for thought.

Thank you. Yeah. If you want to I'm sure Lewis will be aware of that when it comes. That would be great. Thank you. Alright. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much, Leslie. We appreciate you being here. Take care. Lewis, is there anything else on that item that you'd like to cover before we move on? Awesome. Very exciting. Next, we have 25Dash0010 request for funds to temporarily remove solar array on Fire Station Number 3 during

roof

replacement. We do have chief here. Lewis, do you wanna kinda queue up this item or would you like the chief?

I'll I'll let the chief bring up or share, and then I can add anything to that. Sure.

Alright. Welcome, chief Schott.

Hello there. What would you like to know specifically?

So maybe just a overview of the we see the request. We have the request attached, the cost estimate. Maybe overview what you are hoping for and why.

Alright. I'll do my best to give you the summary here. I am Jeff Schott. I've been the fire chief in the city of La Crosse here for a little over three years. Been a firefighter in the city for over twenty five years now. So I have watched all these solar panel arrays be placed on all of our four stations, two new construction and two remodels. The first solar array that went on Station 1 was a few years back, put it up on the same time or about a year later on Station 3. That station needs a new roof. That is located 1710 Losey Boulevard. We are currently in a capital improvement project.

We are right in the midst of it. We did not know if we were gonna have enough money to replace the roof. We do barely have enough money. That's gonna be about a 6 figure project between 100 to 125,000 alone just to replace that roof. All of our roofs are rubber, and they have about a twenty year lifespan. And we're right at that twenty years, and we do have some issues with the roof. If we're gonna stick about 750,000 into living quarters, we probably wanna make sure we have a good roof, so we need to replace that roof within the next year to year and a half. I would like it in the next six months. So in order to do that, we have to take off the solar array. Talking with Lewis over here has been very helpful in guiding me along with the resources from solar connection.

We're trying to get the best cost estimate of what it takes to get that off the roof and then back on the roof. I think the estimate that Lewis got today, which I'm very appreciative of, got that very quickly together. My requests were unanswered initially. So I think it's a lot less than $40,000. I think we can put that out for bidder for an RFP directly and associate that potentially with a roofing contractor to take care of that being that most of it's manual labor.

I could get into the great details of what might take specifically. I've been through two new construction builds and two remodels in the the last five years of my career. So I've unfortunately have too much of a handle on some of these things, but I definitely feel it's gonna be less than 40,000. And Lewis and I both agreed that I could pursue definitely some bidding process under the city's guidelines to see if we could get that done for much cheaper.

Yeah. Just to add to that, I think that was sort of our last minute. Once we got the actual that. And not that. We're options And reaching out to other other contractors. And I I think we can hopefully do that before the next meeting here. But yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Lewis.

And I just wanna extend anybody has any questions for me at all, I know I just spilled out a lot of information in a very short amount of time. Your time is very valuable. I just know that I think it's helpful to have these types of projects. But I think people understand generally from the public's perspective and from someone who's the fiscal manager for the fire department, we gotta be collectively responsible for this. And I just wanna get ahead of it before it becomes an ask in front of the council that we're short and over on a project. And if these funds are available, I'd be grateful and I think the taxpayers would so that we can continue on with these pursuits.

Thank you, chief shot. Do we have questions from this body? Or council president, you are also allowed. Any questions?

I just wanted to make one statement. I might have emailed this to the committee members, but just to reshare that the funds that we do have from our investment tax credits are partially from the solar panel installation on Fire Stations 4 And 2. So I think helping out the fire stations would be a good, an appropriate use.

Thanks, Lewis. Any questions? Just to note, if you want to make a statement on why you think we should or should not, we have to have a motion on the floor. But if there are any other questions, we can do that.

Yes. Alright. My question about processes. Do we need to have a motion before we, like, were to delay or not?

If there okay. Let me just read this quick. So it is technically a request. So before we make any, like, requests to delay or or what, you would wanna have a a motion, I believe. Unless I'm wrong, Lewis. That's my understanding.

No. I mean, that's that sounds fine. That sounds fair.

Did you have a question, though, on process, Andrew? Or just That was the question. Okay. Do you wanna make a motion or do you not?

Oh, council president? Thanks for inviting me. I did think of something that might be helpful in your decision. Chief Shot, do you have a time frame, and is there a critical time frame that needs to happen so that you can move forward with the combined like, the roofing project and knowing where your source is to pay for the solar movement?

The time frame would be in the next six months to a year. So it's not critical that we replace the roof while the remodel's going on. But as I said, we do have a current issue with the roof, in particular one corner. And, again, we're putting in an entirely new living quarters and it's right over the top. So the sooner the better, but it's not absolutely essential.

Perhaps I'm just a suggestion, perhaps rather than, making a motion and then referring it, you could just direct staff to work with the fire department to develop an RFP to get a better get the best possible price we can.

Okay. Does anybody wanna make that motion? Andrew?

I make a motion to direct staff to work with the fire department to get the best bid possible by whatever means necessary.

Thank you, Andrew. I don't need to restate that motion. Do I have a second?

I will second.

Casey Meehan seconds that. Now we can have discussion. Identical. Andrew, as the motioner, you have the floor.

I I, you know, I I I think I need a little bit more time to to to decide how I feel about paying for this. I some of these things are unavoidable, but the the 40,000 was kind of a jump scare. And the things that we could do with that funding to advance other sustainability projects looms large. And so I'm hopeful that there is a a better price out there and maybe combining it with the roofing contract makes a lot of sense since they're will already be up there. So I'm hoping that a rosier number will come through. Yeah. And I can also,

you know, ask around about other funding sources too and and see what we can do.

Other comments or discussion?

Natalie, go ahead. I'm definitely supportive of this project, and thank you, chief, for for sharing the context. Forgive me for, like, still having some blurriness around our funding sources, but I appreciate Lewis' comment about the energy savings and credits we are getting from the solar panels existing on city buildings in particular, fire department buildings. Can you clarify, though, is that that money isn't directly, like, funding this work, but it is going back into city coffers somehow that maybe you can better explain, like,

how this would be funded.

Sure. The I I put forward a resolution last fall to accept accept the the money money and put it towards just climate action plan implementation. So it's pretty broad. But, yeah, that's kinda where we're at.

Maybe, Louis, if it's okay, I'll I'll back up a little bit further. So most of the members have been here. This will be new for you, Lauren. So I'll just take a moment to step a little further back. So we had the ability to put solar panels on buildings as part of our Johnson Controls energy savings performance contract.

And through that performance contract, we had made quite a lot of energy upgrades. And so because of the inflation reduction act direct pay program, we were able to use the energy saving the money that we had put in, right, Louis, to go after direct pay dollars. And we we did go after direct pay dollars, and we got a number of dollars back. And so this is the pot pot of money. The direct pay dollars that we got back that were authorized to fund climate action projects is the pot of money that the fire department is requesting to use.

So to be clear, those solar panels are on there from the Johnson Controls performance contract. Does that make sense, Natalie? Does that help? Okay. So in in that way, I'll just, like, extend that on.

In that way, it's totally appropriate because we got this direct pay funding in part from that initiative. Now, certainly, I think it is reasonable to say, okay. Well, let's not put solar panels on a roof that needs to be replaced soon. So, like, let's be careful of of process and things like that. But I think I personally support this, and I would love to see the cost lower. Andrew, go ahead. Just some

questions about the Johnson Controls Inc. Contract. So there's nothing in in the contract that speaks to what happens when an asset needs to come off because of ongoing maintenance or anything like that?

I can review it again. I don't believe so. But typically, they'll I mean, when they install the solar panels, they'll look at the conditions of the roof and see if it's, you know, structurally sound and all that stuff. We had just replaced the city hall's roof, and then when we installed solar panels here and then, had to install new roofs on the library and the La Crosse Center for the those solar panels. And then the new solar panels on the La Crosse Center are on the new addition.

So those are also new roofs. So, Fire Station one and and three are the only, ones that have, older older roofs.

And then I'm trying to I know some about energy saving performance contracting, but we retain the utility, like a small portion of the utility savings. A lot of that goes back to payback Johnson Controls for their investment in the city of La Crosse. But we have over the last number of years saved money on utilities by these investments. Is that right? I guess I would ask that you explore if we can use utility savings to fund this project.

That's it. Thank you, Andrew. Anyone else? Okay. So the motion on the floor is to direct staff to put together an RFP to get the best bid possible. Did I miss anything? And, Lewis, before I have everybody vote, will this come back to us at all?

If if ultimately we end up using the climate action plan implementation funds, it this would be the deciding body. If it's other funds, then we'd go to that body.

Okay. So this vote will authorize the use of funds, or it will come back to us once an RFP

You're just giving me directions

to do an RFP. Okay. Andrew? I think my motion was just to explore options to reduce costs as opposed to telling them to write an RFP.

Is that what you need, Louis?

Yes, that sounds good. And we can omit any means necessary. That's fine. I understand if that wouldn't be good on the record.

All those in favor, please say aye or thumbs up online. Aye. All right. That is unanimous. Thank you, Chief Shot. I appreciate you spending an extra forty five minutes in this wonderful meeting. You're welcome anytime. Alright, next we have 20 six-twenty, presentation

of

the Low Cross County Sustainability Indicators Report with Dylan Constant. Constant. Welcome Dylan, this is great. Hello.

Hi you are. Hello, hello. Okay, so I'm Dylan Constant, County Planner. A little bit about me I guess. I don't think I've met a number of you, but I've been with La Crosse County about three years. I'm our sustainability guy. I help with day to day zoning administration, long range planning in 10 unincorporated towns. I'm also our lead on an 11 county CDBG housing region and administering those funds with Coolicap. And I'm on our community development, economic development team. And I'm also the smart bus person for now.

Yeah, putting on my sustainability person, sustainability guy hat. Hat. I'm kind of recycling a presentation given by Anders Olsen earlier, well I guess late last year. We do this update, this report every year since 2012. We're showing electricity, natural gas, paper, water use over time.

In the recent last few years, we've added a few more metrics to begin tracking. Some community level metrics that might be more interesting to you guys. They aren't really in this presentation. But this presentation kinda covers county usage of some of those electricity, natural gas, water, paper at different county buildings. Honors does his first every year so wanna give credit as well.

So I guess this presentation primarily goes through those four things. The sources of the county CO2 emissions. We have a county climate action plan that was completed May. So that climate action plan is made with the objective of being carbon neutral by 2050. So we're just kinda highlighting the source of our emissions for the information of to provide some information to the county board and now to you.

Those emission come from our vehicle fleets, the natural gas electricity in our buildings, our paper usage. There's some other community wide metrics like I said could be interesting to you. I can go over those later. Maybe highlight a couple of those like solid waste produced and taken in our landfill and how that's trended over time. Next slide please.

So vehicle fleet usage. You can see our highway department most of our fleet fuel or their fleet uses most of our fuel, diesel, gasoline. We have a little bit of CNG. The highway department uses mixed results with that. Will say sheriff's department is the next closest facilities and other that includes a number of other departments like surveyor, our court services, long term care facilities.

There's a bunch of departments that have a couple of vehicles here and there. Next slide please. So over time this kind of illustrates cost savings, cumulative cost savings and the difference from this year versus the beginning year of 2014. We saved cumulatively $75,000 on our fuel usage. You can see that trend line is pretty flat.

Based on thousands of gallons used. So that could be related to kind of the pricing of fuel over time more than the actual gallons that we've used. Next slide. Natural gas usage, law enforcement center is sort of our least efficient building among all county properties. We've got Hillview and Lakeview and law enforcement Those are all twenty four hour operating buildings so naturally they would use more.

But we do know that law enforcement centers may be a building we could target for some upgrades to reduce energy use, make that building more efficient. Then it's health the and human services building and really not much of the pie to the other buildings. Next slide please. You can see our natural gas And going a a a electricity. So you can see since 'eight when we began tracking that metric, 1,100,000 we projected or it's our estimate of what we saved.

That assumes these all are based on if we would have continued our seven level or eight level usage. So as things drop, it's like if we were still using at our eight, seven level. Andrew? Sorry.

Could you go back to the last slide with the breakdown of the buildings? So the Admin Building, that's the one down 6th Street? Yep. And the law enforcement center is the one just over here on 3rd And 4th in between them too? Mhmm. Okay. Are there buildings in there that you think have like a outsized impact? Don't know where Lakeview Lakeview in West Salem? Yeah. So I guess like looking at the buildings like if you divide its natural gas use by its square footage like is Hillview using like a lot per square foot versus like the administrative building seems incredible that it's only 2% of

your total use. So you're asking like energy use intensity per We have all that information, all of our billing for all 45 county meters in the EPA Energy Star portfolio. Those numbers numbers are there. I don't have them on hand but I still think it's law enforcement center. Okay. Well we can talk about it at another time.

Sure. Deep into the data.

Yeah that's geeky cool. Love that. It's all there. I can't wait to look. Why is your admin building so efficient?

I mean it's pretty much open like eight to five and we have a few night meetings so that's a big part of it. There were some significant building upgrades in like 2007, 2008 around the time we actually started tracking data. So we've kind of a while ago had kind of put in all the upgrades we could for that building. And then also our current facilities manager was hired on, he had expertise in scheduling for HVAC. So it's a timing thing how the HVAC is automated. I think that is a lot of our efficiency in that building. And then we have solar on there now.

So And I would just guess that the, like, Hillview, Lakeview, and the law enforcement center all have, like, kitchen stuff, like refrigeration and cooking, that's that's gonna use a lot of energy.

That's correct. And Lakeview, my understanding is there's a chiller system that relies on water. And I it's that's outside of my level of expertise but there's sort of an inefficient kind of chiller system that uses a lot of water. So there's some upgrades that could be done at these three big slices of the pie. Alright.

So electricity use, Honor's projecting. Oh yeah, the solar will grow to 11%. I believe that's because we're bringing the health and human services buildings array online. We used ARPADollar a couple years ago to fund some solar and installation was kind of staggered. And I think with the last of our six sites being now online in '25 that's where we'll see that jump from four percent in '24 to 11% in '25.

I think most of the installation was occurring in '24 at those other sites. So there was another site we were trying to get funded that would have brought us up to 15%. So we would figure out how to fund that in the future. We have a couple other locations maybe bring that to 18% of our electrical our electricity use being from from solar. The rest is from, Xcel Energy.

We get some natural gas from We Energies, but Xcel Energy is our primary energy provider probably like you guys. Think they're, you know, the only ones in Lacrosse, the city. So, you know, they have the ambition of being carbon neutral by 2050 as well. And the sooner they reach their goal, the sooner we can say that electricity from Excel is also cleaner. So here's the cost savings.

This one's almost twice what the cost savings from natural gas was. Cumulative savings over time, kind of interesting. Electricity use has actually gone down a little bit. That could be due to some remote work. A lot of health department human services works remote.

So this one annual CO2 emissions. So we started tracking our county footprint back in 2023 like our overall La Crosse County government carbon footprint. Ir to then then that. We haven't really transitioned our fleet away from gas and diesel, but that's kind of our first objective implementing the climate action plan going forward, looking at our fleets. We've got a cost benefit analysis tool when we're procuring vehicles to compare alternatives and quantify cost savings and emissions reductions.

So, we're gonna target that chunk, that fleet, that vehicle fuel chunk that hasn't really changed over time. Next. Annual paper usage kind of been flat since twenty nineteen-twenty twenty. Nothing's really actively being done to reduce that at this point. I think people are just naturally using less paper as things become more and more digital.

And it's a lot of savings in paper as you can see more than we've saved on natural gas. Cumulative energy savings. I mean, yeah, that's what we saved across those four categories since we started tracking data. And last year was record low electricity natural gas consumption. On-site solar is probably a big part of why electricity was a little lower. Weather could be a factor. Yeah, next slide please. There's Anders contact information. I think you guys worked with him as well right? Yeah.

I guess some of the community scale, community level metrics that he did this year I believe like solid waste. We actually land landfilled a lot more solid waste county wide. I believe we take waste from like five, six county area. So that's kind of an interesting metric. Not really sure why.

Landfill waste went up. That's really a hard trend to track because it's just heavy to there can be years where there's like a natural disaster or something and you get a huge tonnage in. So it's really hard to take much from that number going up and down every year. But our recycled waste municipal recycling looked like it was also down for whatever reason by a few couple thousand tons or something. So those are a couple of the community level metrics I can remember off the top of my head.

We also looked at on street off street bike facilities. Off street bike facilities in miles has been pretty flat for the last few years but on street has ticked up a little bit in the last couple of years. We looked at transit usage. That doesn't seem to have increased much in the last few years.

So those were some of

the community metrics related to sustainability that were in this report too.

Thank you, Dylan. Any questions? This is fascinating.

Yeah. Just wanted to say one of the things I of the reasons I wanted to bring Dylan here was just because I there was a really good county newsletter about the Grow Solar Lacrosse program, and that was a really good partnership with the county. And so I I also wanted to highlight some of their work. But with working with Dylan and the city of Onalaska to to do that program. I think we got some good results from that and shared that on our social media page.

That's awesome. Yes we definitely appreciate the partnership. Inspiring. It's exciting to see what you all are doing at the county. It's a different animal. It's a similar but different animal, isn't it?

Yeah. Absolutely. Another thing I'll plug is the downtown microgrid study that we partnered on this last year. Whether we can establish a microgrid. There might be cost savings from battery storage of energy during peak hours relying on that. And then if there were some sort of disastrous events, you know, flooding or whatever it may be that takes out the grid, we might be able to keep services online at all of our municipal buildings downtown. So that's just getting finalized. Yeah.

That's huge.

Yeah. We've got like a a final draft of that and are have to review it to give feedback. But I have asked Slipstream if they would present to this committee so they're open to presenting in the February meeting. So if Dylan wants to come for that, he's welcome to

Please join us. Yeah. That's fantastic.

And we worked with Casey as well on that with Western Technical College, and so that was it was a really great partnership amongst these these our downtown campuses.

That's fantastic. Energy backup and storage is huge. It's one of the biggest things local governments are looking at as it relates to resilience too. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for coming and presenting. I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll see you. Any last questions or comments for Dylan? All right, thank you so much.

Yes, thanks.

And at this time I believe Natalie has to leave. So for the record, please mark her. Thanks, Natalie. Our last agenda item is 20 six-twenty seven, discussion on the 2026 communication plan.

Agenda. So if you wanna pull it up on your own computers, I will pull it up on mine and at least we can kinda talk about the same things. Sure. Just give me one moment. Or if Casey or Dorothy wanna help me out, do you wanna do you have do either of you have the yeah.

Yeah. That'd be great. That would help me out.

Awesome. Thanks, Casey.

Great. So, yeah, this I worked with Paul Nicholas to kinda have a little bit more of a plan this year for our communications. Over the last few years, we've just kind of, been advantageous about what we're sharing. So, like, if another organization is sharing some information, we'll just share reshare that. But, we met in December to talk about, more of a plan for this year.

And we if you wanna go to the next slide. This just talks about why communication matters. The reason why a communication plan is important is just we wanna make sure that we're showing what's important to us and that we're making progress towards those goals. So next slide. Yeah, increase awareness of the goals, encourage voluntary behavior change, build trust through transparency, support other departments, and ensure equitable access to information.

The actions we looked at were in the the top 10 actions in the in the plan and are in our original implementation plan. And so we wanted to make sure we had we were focusing on actions that had measurable impacts or measurable outcomes. So we focused on EV adoption, electrification of our municipal fleet as a sort of corollary, use of renewable energy, expanding the urban tree canopy, and recycling and reducing water usage. Alright. So, yeah, we're the our communication is typically targeted towards residents, businesses, municipal employees, and developers, and property managers.

Next slide. Now this just talks about how we do that. And so yeah we came up with four campaign suggested slogans. So these are just kind of going over some of those metrics that we talked about that I mentioned earlier. One of the things I think is important too is learned from USDN was just the sorry, the urban sustainability directors network is that it helps to talk about the the co benefits rather than just the sustainability stuff.

So certainly, know, putting solar panels on your roof is gonna is good for the environment, but it's also gonna save you money over the long over the long term. So focusing on that or how, you know, planting a tree is gonna absorb carbon dioxide, but it's also gonna provide shade, reduce your if it's shading your house, you know, has the potential to reduce your energy bills because it heating bills or cooling bills, sorry. So if we can look at those sort of co benefits and focus on that, I think we're gonna have more of an impact. Leading by example. So talking about, for example, our wastewater treatment plant is getting an electric truck.

So I think that's a good opportunity to talk to them and have them share about their experience there. Next slide. So these are the location or the communication channels. So through our website and social media, utility bill inserts, press releases and other press, public events and workshops, and then partnering with schools, employers, and nonprofits. Overall, we've kind of come up with some ideas about how we work with other departments and have a list of tasks that we can share or that, you know, that that we'd assign.

So I haven't, you know, gone over these with the other departments, but it's just, again, ideas to review and then work with them on how best to implement. So yeah that's about it.

Thank you, Louis. Questions? Oh, Dorothy, go ahead.

Yeah. We're gonna work with well, I mean, the the sure. Yep. The the climate action plan has, you know, some baseline data, but, I mean, there's the urban forestry management plan from the parks department that we'll use as a resource, and I'm sure they're tracking their tree planting. So, yeah, that they'll be they'll be a resource for sharing that data.

Thanks Dorothy. Andrew.

Appreciate you taking some long talked about initiatives like I know particularly around riding the bus and some communication campaigns that have been brought up by former board members. You know even if not all of them are feasible in this first year, I think that, you know, it's good to try and activate these things. And yeah. So thank you for bringing it forward.

Yeah. I think it's also helping thank you for bringing up the transit stuff. It's also helping to, you know, kind of look at our our top 10 action for for transit is to increase bus frequency. That may not be something we can do, but there might be other ways that we can increase ridership that we're at least having some impact. The number of buses matters less than the number of riders.

So we gotta keep if that makes sense. But in terms of carbon reduction. So as long as we're, you know, measuring what's important and and trying to figure out ways to do that even if we can't achieve our top actions, that's so good.

Sure. Council President. I'm so excited to be here today.

I'm usually online without fail. So transit equity days, I think that's the right term, is February 4. I expect a notification to come out to detail all those things, but I figure it's appropriate to promote that at this moment. The other thing I would love to do, we spent almost an hour this morning at Board of Public Works learning about the wastewater treatment plant and stormwater management. It was fascinating.

I found out what a geek I am. So if you get a chance to watch that, those presentations are very visual, but also the speakers that go along with it were mind boggling. So I would encourage you to look that up this time. Once it gets posted as a video, I think you'll get attachments. If not, if you just look for the attachment, you can look at the the presentations in that format as well. But it was really very wildly interesting. Thank you.

And you can view those attachments attachments on on the the board Board of of public Public works, Works page?

Be under Legistar. And so the attachments are already there. The video takes a little bit of time but just looking at the attachments they're gorgeous and very informative and exciting and all the things they did that were so innovative. It's just really, really fascinating.

We do have an amazing wastewater treatment plant and I stand strong to my statement that anybody thinks they don't care about wastewater treatment plants until they go visit it or they hear about it, and everyone's obsessed because it is so cool. Phenomenal. Thanks, council president. Any other comments on the communications plan? Alright.

Thank you, Lewis. I look forward to seeing more of what comes of it. At this point in the agenda, we're at on just noting our next meeting. Any call for agenda items for next month, which is February 9 at 4PM. There's a note at that bottom of your agenda on the agenda, which may include the presentation from Slipstream on the microgrid visibility study, which will be awesome.

Very much looking we are at the end of our agenda. If there's no objection, I'll adjourn the meeting. Seeing and hearing none, we are adjourned at 05:11PM. Thank you.