Climate Action Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everybody.

Member Dizzy? Here. Member Lamatina? Here. Member Joseph? Here. Member Norbias?

Here.

Member Painter?

Here.

Member Tripp? Here. Member Reeves? Here. Chair Eisenberg?

Here. Okay. Please stand if you are able and join me in the pledge of allegiance. Facing the flag, put your right hand over your heart. Begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, And you'll excuse me. I have an education background. And that was the format we always used for the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom. So it's become a pet peeve of mine when it just seems random. Chair's prerogative.

And now, it's time for you to speak. In this time period, anyone may address the Climate Action Committee regarding any subject over which the committee has jurisdiction but which is not on today's posted agenda or an item on the consent calendar. Please confine yourselves to three minutes. So public comments are now open.

Greetings, committee members. Chris Bens with Napa Climate Now. I want to make sure that everybody got an invitation and a flyer for the fourth annual Napa Climate Summit. We'd love to see you all there. Chair Eisenberg has an excuse because he'll be in South America at his son's wedding. We have a great program. We're focused on resilience. And there's so much that's happening in NAPA. Some of it you may be aware of it, but some you may not. So, we want to get the word out to everyone about how we're moving forward to create a stronger, more resilient NAPA. And I'd like to thank committee member Painter and Ryan for helping put this program together. Hope to see you there.

Welcome.

Hi. Kevin Miller, City of Napa. Three items I wanted to go over. One is that will be presented in more detail at the the climate summit is earlier this month, the Napa City Council approved a $30,000,000 project that we've been working on for I said, told them sixteen years, anaerobic digestion to renewable natural gas system, which simply put is taking the biomethane off organics, cleaning it up, and running our natural gas trucks off the renewable natural gas. And to put put in perspective, I think we gave the bottom line during the presentation.

Over a ten year operation, that's the equivalent of taking over 21,000 vehicles off the road, passenger vehicles off the road. So it is definitely a part a big part of the city's climate action plan and activities. So we wanna celebrate that. Yes. A lot of things had to come together.

We had a $10,000,000 grant and also congressman Thompson authored the 2022 inflation reduction act, and we leveraged that. That had a 30% investment tax credit and a 10% credit for using domestic products, so they're using US steel in this. So a lot of things had to come together to make that viable. Second thing, wanted to introduce Tim Kittle. He he is being promoted as my my number two.

So if I can't make a meeting, you you might see him representing the city city of Napa in our programs in the future. And the last thing I was going to just mention is on March 19, we've invited a few people. We we do an annual between the city and the county and our operators. We do a recognition of the best recycling programs, businesses, schools, multifamily contractors. And next meeting, I'll bring you the list so you can see them if you'd like, but it's very popular and it's it's it's kinda trying to be very positive and be a positive reinforcement to our champions out there that are doing the best job recycling and composting.

Thank you. Are there any other public comments?

Good morning. Yvonne Baginski of NAPA. Several months ago, I reported to all of you that my home had gone all electric and people were asking me what my electric bill was like now. And so, I'm going to say that my electric bill for January was $238 and that is the same that it was last year when I was gas and electric. So, it didn't increase my electric bill like everybody thought it was.

I still don't have solar, but I want to report to you that my bill was almost identical. The difference was I used no gas, I just used electricity. And on that note, I want to bring up the practical information of the decisions that are made here and in all of your policy on your commissions and committees and councils. And I'm asking this group whether you'd be interested in hearing from the different organized environmental groups in the community about what they're doing in the community. Specifically, the Audubon Society, how your decisions impact wildlife, how your decisions impact the Sierra Club, how your decisions so there would be more of a bringing together integration.

I've sat through a lot of presentations here and a lot of the presentations have been dependent on graphs and pretty technical information. And I'm not as well versed in graphs and technical information. I failed math in school. So when I watch all of this, it's not really hitting home for me. But some of these stories of what is actually being done in our community do hit home for me. And I don't know whether you'd be of interest. I know that there are several groups that have put together presentations. I was asked to come before you and ask specifically whether you'd be interested in setting up a series of local groups who would come and talk about practical applications of some of the decisions you're making up here. So I'm bringing that to the table. Thank you.

Thank you. Other public comments?

So there was a nature based summit. My name is Chris Malin. I live in Napa, 2900 45 Atlas Peak Road. I'm also the executive director of a local nonprofit called the Institute for Conservation Advocacy Research and Education. And we've been working a lot on restoration in the Napa River and a lot of monitoring that we coordinate with the water boards.

But I came to you today because I've been talking about nature based solutions to climate change And the International Panel on Climate Change has said over and over in their yearly meetings that nature based solutions need to be a part of the climate problem, climate change problem that we have because they are the cheapest and fastest and most reliable way to manage carbon sequestration. And, of course, in that are all of our wildlife and the solution and mitigation for water quality issues. We know that the Napa River is polluted with sediment, legacy pesticides, mercury, nutrients which cause the toxic algae blooms, and pathogens. And there's been a lot of work to remedy that, but we have a long ways to go. So I attended, and one of your staff, the county staff also attended, the nature based summit that Wade Crowfoot put on for the state of California.

And it was an all day summit. And myself and another board member, Adam Pina, who's a member of the Mishawahwapo, attended it. And it really was inspiring. And it's nice to know that the state is a huge champion for nature based solutions to climate change. And they're putting a ton of state money into promoting this through Prop four.

I attended a webinar on Prop four yesterday, and also one of the county staff were there. And they want you to come with these projects. They want to give us money as long as we are collaborating in our communities, that we're building relationships, that we are coming up with multifaceted objectives to solving many problems like groundwater, like water quality issues, watershed health. So I really encourage that we move in that direction. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And thank you. When you heard the tone, wrapping it up promptly. That was great. Any other public comments?

Hearing none, any online?

We have no callers.

Thank you. We'll end public comments, which brings us to our consent calendar. There's one item on it. May I hear a motion to adopt the consent calendar?

I'll make that motion, Joseph.

Thank you. Thank you. Made by Joseph, seconded by Painter. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. And next is an information presentation, an update on the status of the draft regional climate adaptation plan and related CEQA documents. And our staff, Jesse, is here taking it. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning, everybody. Yeah. So today, I'm just gonna give a couple brief updates on the RCAP and the ISMND CEQA document. So we'll go over the ISMND, the RCAP, and adoption hearings.

So the initial study mitigated negative declaration or ISMND. It's been reviewed by staff, by the all staff working group, which is staff from each of the jurisdictions, legal counsel, and experts on staff in CEQA. So we've all reviewed it, given our comments to ASCENT, and they're currently working on that now. We did have a meeting, AB 52 consultation with the Yocha Dehi Winton Nation on February 12, a couple weeks ago. So AB 52 is where you have to consult with tribal entities to on, any projects that might have impact on cultural resources.

And their area of focus when we were having the conversation and kind of points of concern or interest really dealt with the waterways and protection of tribal cultural resources near waterways, so the Napa River specifically, but also like sea level rise in general. So we had a good conversation and kind of heard that and made some adjustments to the RCAP language, adding tribes and, you know, both recognized and not federally recognized tribes as partners to some of these measures that we're proposing in the RCAP. So meeting with them was, I think, effective and definitely kind of like a start to a collaboration and working relationship. And we're awaiting a response letter from them acknowledging the conversation. Once we have that letter, then we can move forward with the ISMND and moving towards a thirty day public comment period of the ISMND.

So we'll have to put that out, let all interested parties know. We'll have to put out a notice of intent in the newspaper. So it'll be a big public announcement that the ISMND is going be out there for review. Hopefully, we'll be able to bring the ISMND at least a small presentation here, which would also create an opportunity for people to comment public comment here. So that's in the works.

Before that even happens, though, we do need to finish up the RCAP because the ISMMD is going to be based on the final RCAP. So that's just kind of where we are with the ISMMD for now. So that leads me to the RCAP itself. Staff is still making comments on the draft RCAP or the admin draft RCAP. There's a lot of comments, a lot of staff comments, and we've worked with Ascent to kind of work through a lot of those. But there's a few that are still standing out. So, we're working through those. As soon as we have those, then the Senate can kind of put together the final draft. And then once that final draft is ready, they'll finish up the ISM and D. And they'll all kind of come out together at the same time.

So that's kind of what we expect. The final RCAP will also incorporate feedback and comments that were received back in August and September during the open house comment period and the kind of public comment for the RCAP. So we did incorporate a lot of those comments and feedback and concerns. We will put out a comment response sheet that shows all the different comments received and how staff and the senate are responding or have responded. There will be some technical responses and some kind of thematic responses.

As you might guess, you know, different groups a lot of times focus on the same measures or the same ideas. So you kind of combine them into a thematic response. There was also some comments that were just general comments, like this is great, or I don't like this. So we really can't do anything with that besides say thank you and acknowledging that. So we'll do that as well.

And what else? Yeah, I think that's good in terms of the RCAT. So wrapping up comments, as soon as we have a final, we'll put it out there with ISMND. And in terms of adoption hearings, saying waiting for the final RCAP in order to have a public draft ISMND. Once that's wrapped up, we'll receive comments on the ISMND.

We'll take that back, figure out if we need to respond to comments, how we need to respond to comments, how lengthy and if any changes will be needed to be made to the ISMND. Once that's done, we'll get a final. Once the final ISMND is done, we'll bring the final RCAP and final ISMND to the CAC for approval and endorsement. And that's kind of the first step before taking it on to the Board of Supervisors or the other jurisdictions on the JPA. And the plan is for each jurisdiction to hold adoption hearings for the RCAP and the ISMND.

Again, that's the plan now. With conversations, that could change. But right now, that's kind of the plan that we're thinking for that. And with that, I'll leave it for your discussion.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Gutierrez. Let's begin with public remarks. Are there any public comments or remarks on the presentation?

We have no callers.

Okay. Given that, from the committee is there anybody yes, Member Tripp.

I was just wanting to ask Mr. Gutierrez whether the public hearings at each jurisdiction because as you know, hearings have a very legal framework is that a requirement or just a good idea? In other words, would one hearing at this level suffice? I was just curious.

My understanding is that if the Board of Supervisors adopts it alone, it's really kind of just the county would be beholden to do what's in the plan. So if all the other jurisdictions don't do that, then they won't kind of be beholden to that. So I think it does make sense for each one to adopt. I've heard that if there's a possibility of everyone doing it at the same time, I don't know how that would work. But I think you're right. It's kind of an official kind of acceptance of what's in the RCAP and the ISMND.

Okay. So that would be beyond just passing a resolution. And then my other part is, I think that's an interesting idea, perhaps, to have a one big hearing, if that was a possibility. And I have no idea how anybody else feels, but that's just a thought.

Yeah. I don't know the technicalities of that or because there's like notices and there's different council meetings on different dates. So I don't know if that's actually feasible. But that's why it's like the idea is that they go kind of like take the RCAP on tour, so to speak. And hopefully, each jurisdiction will adopt based on how it's

presented. Other comments? Yes. Member Page.

Thank you, Member Tripp. That was a really good question. And I was trying to formalize in my mind how I would ask this, so you really helped with this. And that is, when you look at the timelines and the requirements under CEQA, when actually would the ISMND be adopted and by who? Is it just the county approval? Or is it open that each jurisdiction has to formally take that action? Because that's a little bit of, at least for me, an unusual process. So the more we can try to consolidate it, the better. I'm curious, maybe it's more of a legal question, how that CEQA document is approved.

Yeah, it's a great question. We can look into that. Other

comments? I do think that it's probably overly ambitious to imagine everything being covered at one time, especially, I mean, I know from a Calistoga perspective, it absolutely has to be local. Otherwise, no one will come. It's kind of a shame. We're not that far away.

But I like the idea of a road show and try to get as many presentations concentrated in a shorter period of time, which means you have to start thinking about that now, knowing how difficult it is to get things on the agenda for the various jurisdictions. But thank you for all your work. It's great. We're making progress. Okay.

Thank you. And our next presentation is on the proposed budget for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven. And once again, refer to staff.

Thank you. So, yeah, moving on. So this is our yearly kind of proposed budget for the CAC and kind of the administration of the CAC, but also like other projects. Like last year, we talked about the EV charging tool and things of that nature. So that's kind of what we're talking about during this presentation.

So I'll go over kind of county staff time and hours and rates that are proposed, the proposed budget itself, the shared costs amongst the jurisdictions, and some optional tasks to start really kind of thinking about for implementation plans and additional staff support. So here's a nice table of the county staff time that we estimate will be needed to support the CAC and also kind of finishing off the RCAP, facilitating the support and adoption of the RCAP and ISMND, continuing to coordinate with the all staff working group, developing and coordinating a regional implementation strategy, supporting the different municipalities on implementation, leading possibly development of model actions or programs or policies, monitoring the status of the RCAP and strategies and measures, and of course, providing administrative support for the CAC. So here's kind of a breakdown of the different staff time that we propose. The bulk of it would be principal planner, which would be me, and planner two, which is Ryan. But altogether, when you include kind of our higher level management, would be about 49% of staff time, which is like a half part time, full time employee FTE.

So again, this is kind of based on also last year's kind of workload. And here's the total cost, 134,455 for staff time. It's an 18% decrease from last fiscal year. And mainly, I think it's due to the change in the type of work this year. This fiscal year, there was a lot of reviewing of documents and coordinating with the all staff working group to review those documents.

A lot of back and forth, a lot of meeting together. As I mentioned, we're still reviewing the RCAB final comments. So there's a lot of that. And so once we kind of adopt the RCAB and the ISMND, we'll shift to implementation and thinking about implementation, prioritization, things like that. So there'll probably be less of that kind of intensive document review.

And also, last year, this fiscal year, we thought we would probably need more time for the initial study reviews, and we haven't. We didn't really need that much staff time. So that's where this 18% kind of comes from. We're also proposing also $10,000 for continued support for the EV charging tool. As we know, like, we put in Ryan put in an application, like a joint application with different jurisdictions to look at viable locations for EV charging.

So we'd like to continue doing that. So we'd like to keep Ari, Bob Barak on kind of retainer. Fiscal year, we did the same thing, and we haven't used any of that money this year. So in essence, we kind of would would or could carry this over. You will notice that there is we didn't add the climate action challenge to this year's proposed budget.

So staff's proposing to put a pause on that for now while we adopt the RCAP and pass the ISMND and kind of reevaluate kind of the best use and support for this type of platform. I think there was great support for the platform, especially with that high school challenge. But I think we want to get to more localized community engagement and figure that out. So I think staff thinks that pausing and kind of reevaluating how to best use a tool like that or best engage communities through climate action and sustainability would be better for this year. So we're not but that's maybe a point for discussion for you all.

And here's a cost breakdown by jurisdiction based on the JPA cost allocation. Napa County is 33% of the total, American Canyon twelve point eight, Calistoga 8.3%, Napa 29.9%, Saint Helena, 8.5% and Yountville, 7.5% of the total there. And I'll leave it up there for a second so you all can take a look. Okay. And this is an interesting kind of shift in terms of an optional task.

So we know we're gonna have shared costs, which we we just presented, is staff administration, the EV charging tool. But there's also the option of each municipality kind of creating their own implementation plan. We do wanna do a region wide implementation strategy, but an implementation plan would kind of dive deeper into, the needs and particulars of each municipality, like which departments, which staff, how much staff are going to be needed to implement these actions and actions that are really kind of pertinent to that specific jurisdiction. So that's where these would come in. And so the city of Napa has already kind of indicated that they would do their own individualized I mean, not separate, but like on their own separate one individualized implementation plan, kind of taking into account what I've just mentioned in terms of like very specific look at the measures and what's needed from their staff and what their capacity is.

Napa County is also working on developing one, so working with a sense to to get a scope of work. And we did get some costs, and this is where the $60,000 comes in. We did get a cost estimate from them. And again, it's just a very preliminary estimate that we got from them, same as the $60,000 here. So those are discussions, I think, that need to be had.

When you take the budget back to your jurisdictions, is not only the shared cost, but also how do you want to move forward with an implementation strategy, right? Like how could that look in terms of do you want to individualize? Do you need one that's that individualized? Or would a kind of broader one be Okay? And again, we don't know what that looks like right now.

But starting to think of what it could cost if we did want to go in that direction. And then we added additional county staff. If you don't have staff in your jurisdiction and you needed someone to work with us then to kind of develop these and kind of facilitate the kind of management of this particular task, this is how much we've kind of estimated staff time would be required for those. Okay. So here, what would be an individualized single municipality implementation plan?

What could it look like? So a tailored strategy and guidance document focusing the GHG reduction and climate adaptation measures that are applicable to each jurisdiction, defining roles and responsibilities, clarifying coordination needs, aligning the implementation with budgetary decisions, and informing department level work plans. So that's those are some of the kind of things that could come out from an individual implementation plan. So combining the shared cost with optional, you know, optional single municipality implementation plan and optional additional county support, this will be kind of a grand total for American Canyon, right? 94,381.

So you'd be going back to your counsel, to your leadership, and talking about this. Like shared costs, we go with those. And then what do you think about these other options? Calistoga, the grand total would be 87,881. St. Helena, 88,170. Youngville, 86,725. And again, these are kind of placeholders. So last year, this fiscal year, we also put a placeholder for the CEQA document. And we had put a placeholder of $400,000 just in case.

We ended up only contracting for $130,000 for the ISMND. So again, these are kind of the bigger numbers just in case if we wanted to move forward with this particular option. So from here, what staff is requesting is that you review the proposed budget. You facilitate conversations with your municipal city management and councils on the proposed budget. Facilitate conversations with those same entities on the optional implementation tasks and choosing kind of or thinking about the direction in which your jurisdiction wants to move forward in terms of implementation, starting those conversations.

And communicate with us, with staff before next month, if possible, so we could finalize budget to agree on here, and then return in March to vote and adopt a revised final budget. With that, leave it for discussion.

Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Are there public comments? Seeing none and none online.

We have no callers.

Thank you. So committee members. Yes, member Joseph. Yes, thank you

for the report. So I have a few questions. First on the climate challenge, if we don't provide that ongoing support, does that mean the app just is no longer available? So if I wanted to go log in and say, you know, what's going on? It would just go blank or what would happen?

Yeah. It's a good question. I'm not a 100% clear on that. Brian, But, do you have anything?

Believe so. There's also there's options for continuing just the platform and maintaining the platform for Napa County without the education and outreach component of the support from Bright Action Communities. I don't know if that would be the case if we decided not to fund the actual platform itself, if if that would be the case where people's profiles would cease to exist and have access to that but I can ask.

Okay, good because I can understand if we're not getting a lot of, you know, traction so to speak from the outreach efforts. It might still be useful to have that platform available online even if there aren't any updates and all that rather than to just say out of, you know, all of a sudden it's just gone. So that would be my concern relative to that platform. Then moving over to the optionals, you know, what struck me is that it was a flat $60,000 per jurisdiction and my initial reaction was for a smaller jurisdiction versus a larger, it seems like there ought to be some kind of difference in price. But now I'm wondering if Napa City, if they're pursuing their own approach, it may cost more to them than $60 or do we know that?

I'm trying to get a sense of is the $60 based on what Ascent thinks it would take for a relatively small jurisdiction or more cynically is this, you know, we expected $400 from this organization and we're gonna get it one way or the other and I apologize for being so obviously snarky but some of us are just prone that way. So, you know, I'm trying to get a sense of what does that $60 mean and then in my head I'm thinking okay for $75 can American Canyon put together an implementation plan for that or less and the first question in my head would be if there's going to be a county wide or an overall implementation plan, it seems like we might be able to tear off of that and craft something that works for American Canyon probably for less especially if we're pursuing the hiring of a part time sustainability person that person could ease, you know, we could bump up their hours and say, this is your new project and probably get more bang for our buck. So I'd like a little more nuts and bolts of that optional package. So those are my comments, questions.

Yes, Member Painter.

Thank you. I have a couple of comments. First, in terms of the options, those are really good questions. Think from the city of NAFA's perspective, we've worked hard to obviously build staff and create this. And so I think we have a level of existing internal infrastructure, if you will, to take this on.

But any questions or things that we can collaborate on, I'm sure we'd be happy to. The EV charging, I think, is really important as commitment. I do want to share that as a member of the MCE board, EV charging is a big commitment there. And the one issue that has come up over and over and Supervisor Alessio sits with me on the MCE board, she's been talking about this and that is maintenance existing EV chargers. That's something that we ought to be thinking about now and into the future so that the EV chargers that we have out there are actually operational.

So not to change the number from a budgetary perspective, but just putting the word maintenance into EV chargers, I think, would be beneficial. And the climate challenge, I think, has been a really interesting tool. If you can keep it there without a cost, I think that's fine. But personally, I think we will have some great opportunity for some very specific and targeted outreach to all of our communities that will be tied and based on the RCAP. So I'm more interested in moving in that direction.

But if you can keep it as something that is just there, terrific. And then the last comment that I'll make is just for us all to be aware that we don't have anything in the budget for any potential challenges to the CEQA document. So it's just sort of a be aware that we should all be thinking about. And hopefully, this is all going to continue the way we want it to continue. And that would be terrific. But we should be mindful of the fact that our budget is not contemplating. Thanks.

Thank you. Any more comments from the board? Oh, yes, Member Tripp.

I just wanted to thank staff. I really like the way this was laid out with the options because we all have such different sizes of staff and whatnot within our jurisdiction. So American Canyon and the city of Napa are so different from Yountville. So to have that option, and I don't know how the council my council colleagues will questions they might have. It was a very nice way to lay it out.

And I want to just ask you one more question. If because the county staff, in my view, have done an outstanding job on this. If we wanted to work with the county staff to develop a local implementation plan, because we are a smaller jurisdiction, so it's, you know, we don't have real industry, so it's going to be hopefully somewhat simpler. Is that an option to just work with county staff and then reimburse or pay however you would want to say the costs?

Yes, I definitely think that would be an option for sure. I think we need further discussion. And again, I think these are just ideas and there's a lot of ideas right now. And it's worth having all these conversations and hearing how we want to proceed.

So would that be something our staff should talk with you about, or how to

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Just so that we have the most well, I'll follow-up.

But Jamison's coming up. Maybe she might have some insight.

Doctor. Sorry not to butt in, but I just thought I would offer a couple of things. Yes, if you're interested in that kind of thing, I mean, I would say go ahead and approve the recommended budget for your town for that and that would provide for we would perform that work to the extent of our abilities and bill you back in the same way that we do for the Climate Action Committee. To Member Joseph's point about the $60,000 for the implementation plan, that's very much a placeholder number, very preliminary. It's not you know, anytime we put items in the budget that are optional, it's really trying to help you by saying this is the kind of the maximum that you might anticipate.

So to the extent you can get approval from your counsel to approve that now, it will save you having to go back later, but it doesn't commit you to that and doesn't mean it would cost that much. And I can tell you, we were a little surprised by those numbers as well, even the number for the unincorporated county was more than we expected. So, to the extent any municipality wants to do that, we will be going back to Ascent and having more developed conversations around it.

Okay. Yes, Member Reeves.

Maybe while you're still there, you can explain. I'm curious about what Member Painter was talking about implementation strategies and outreach. How much or can you give a round figure of how much money and effort are we going to spend this year kind of making an educational outreach to facilitate the jurisdictions being able to make implementation happen, And also, how much can we put towards making sure that the trades are trained and more partners in this effort so that people who take the call to action to change their living situations and their driving situations will be able to access knowledgeable people to help them do that?

Is that a question for me? Okay.

I guess I don't have the answer, so go ahead.

The question about how much education and outreach we're going to do this year, there's kind of multiple paths by which that outreach might occur. There's, of course, our county staff who are already doing a lot of that work. There is additional outreach that could occur through the staff that run the Napa Climate Challenge. We had some kind of discussions with them around that and kind of felt like that was not the best avenue for outreach, that we felt like that's really something that is best done on a super hyper local level. So, if the committee wanted to do more of that, I would recommend we put some budget to working with Napa County RCD because they have the best kind of connections with your municipal staff and people in your communities.

The folks that run Napa Climate Challenge are not far by any means, but just that one additional step separated from the county. So, county staff will do it. RCD could do it if you all were interested and wanted to fund that. Climate challenge folks, I don't think would be the best venue for that. So I don't know if I answered your question.

And I would just add one point to your secondary question for the workforce. That's a very important aspect of implementing the CAP is having a local workforce that can actually do most of this work. Through the Bay Renn Workforce Education and Training Program, we are developing a partnership with the county's Workforce Alliance of the North Bay.

Independent jurisdictions. I'm reluctant to even vote in favor of putting that $60,000 placeholder even though we may never use it and may never approve it. It just seems it feels contrary to what this organization is and I also share the concern that it's through Ascent. I don't Ascent knows what they're doing with the RCAP, but how we're going to implement something on an individual jurisdiction basis. It's far more important to take into our that we take the big ideas and then adapt it to our individual budget, our individual capacity to make changes.

Thank you.

If I may, thank you chair.

Me introduce you first. Vice chair Narvaez.

Thank you. Just

kind

of listening to the comments, spurred a couple other questions in particular to Director Pinner's comment on the secret portion. My concern is consistency across the board. So it looks like you're going to come back and let us know, you know, are we going to do that individual level or at the CAC level? It sounds like it might be at the CAC level. That seems to make more sense, but we're going to have more discussion on that.

So if we deviate too much, does that make us vulnerable from a CEQA perspective if we're gonna be up here with CEQA, with CAC, and then there's deviation? Like, what is that balance, right, to make sure that it's defensible, it's consistent? And then I do wanna say I do appreciate the options because every jurisdiction is different. We do have a contract consent. We have our focus areas in sustainability.

So they're we're doing things beyond CAC. That's why we we have this approach. So I do appreciate those options. At the same time, 60 per jurisdictions, you know, which, if a sense, doing the work, how much deviation per per per jurisdiction is there that it's 60,000, you know, per implementation. So I think preliminary, we look at the number, but realistically, I jointly, see that being should be a lower number to your concerns, right? But the big concern is consistency as it relates to the environmental portion of this. So I just want to make sure we're careful with as we implement it, we make sure that connection doesn't get lost and makes us vulnerable.

Member Jones.

Yes, and I wanted to follow-up on the implementation. The question I have is does the baseline budget include a cost for developing that county wide implementation plan or is that a separate cost or is it the reason for the $60,000 option that will adopt in our cap and then a cent or whomever works with each individual jurisdiction to develop an implementation plan. So that was because when my my original comment was, well, we're gonna have a county wide implementation plan and it should be relatively easy to kind of customize that for American Canyon. But if there isn't going to be that big countywide plan then that means you know each jurisdiction has to do something separate and then to Vice Chair Narvaez's concerns, what if we go too far out and trigger, if we go too far out, are we becoming a target for some type of litigation which is a bad thing versus being able to say hey, passed through the county level and we're not going too far astray from the RCAP and the implementation plan so we kind of have at least a stronger sense of legal safety than if we're doing it all on our own.

So I guess I'm getting confused. Like I said, I thought we would adopt the RCAP then we would adopt an implementation plan for the whole county and now we're thinking do you want to customize it for each jurisdiction. But if it isn't tiered like that, then that's a whole different story.

I think I would speak to the the idea behind doing multiple implementation plans for each jurisdiction is that there is some sentiment that they won't each jurisdiction from the working group wanted to have the flexibility to be able to implement and prioritize how they see fit. We agree. I think we you know, the the the implementation at each jurisdiction should be tailored to the need the specific needs and does that you know, priorities of the that jurisdiction. The methodology by which they ascent would facilitate the development of the implementation plan would be to sit with each of you know, formalized meetings and sit with each of the staff from each jurisdiction in, you know, maybe a longer workshop type of session and go through each of the measures and determine, you know, which of these is a priority, which departments within the jurisdictions would be affected and would need to be enlisted to actually implement these measures. So it would take kind of a, you know, maybe an all day type of workshop to sit down and go through, that type of prioritization and division of labor to then go back and then develop the plan.

So I think that's why even for the smaller jurisdictions, it might still be a similar level of effort in terms of developing that plan Even though it would seem like it might be a little bit easier, the kind of level of effort at each jurisdiction might be quite similar. So that's kind of the mentality that we have been moving forward.

Yeah and I would just add to that. I think we're thinking along the same lines as you all were maybe just expressing it slightly differently. I can't speak to the legal vulnerabilities but the idea of doing individual implementation plans was recognizing that each municipality is different, you have different, you know, departments. We all have a lot of the same departments but they have different names, they do slightly different things, different staff. It would be, you know, to do a countywide implementation plan would mean that we've all got to sit in meetings and your staff all have to sit in meetings.

Yountville staff have to sit in meetings about Calistoga, you know, what they're doing in their city to implement at their Public Works Department. So, the idea is to have the individual implementation plan really tailored to each municipalities based on your staffing, your interest, the things that are priority in your community. Creating the individual plans should not create additional legal vulnerability because it doesn't mean you're going like far afield and coming up with new or not doing certain things. There are going to be certain actions that make more sense in one municipality than another. So, implementation plan for unincorporated county is just that, for unincorporated county, but we will most definitely be borrowing from each other's implementation plans and taking advantage of the fact that one has already been done to use as a template for another.

So there will be some economies of scale for that reason.

Thank you. Yes, Member Painter.

Thank you for that. And this is a really good discussion. This is just maybe a proposal or an idea to think about as we move through our first step, which is adoption of the RCAP, is that maybe we include some sort of I don't know what the right term is a master implementation plan or some guidelines for implementation plan development that would be sort of that first tier that doesn't drill into the level of detail because one jurisdiction has more housing, one has more industrial this and that. But it would be a tool that we could develop as a part of the adoption of the RCAP that at least creates some kind of template. Yeah.

If I could just add on to that, you made me think of another thing which is what we're proposing here with the CAC doing them through the CAC is really kind of mostly for municipalities contractual benefit. It's so that each of you don't have to go, if you decide you wanted to do an implementation plan, you don't have to each go to Ascent or another of course, you're welcome to go to any consulting firm to do that or do it in house so that you don't have to do that individual contracting. That's why we're really proposing it through the CAC, but you don't have to do that by any means. You could go off and do it on your own with Ascent directly, you could contract with them directly or with some other firm entirely. The only reason for putting it through the CAC is the county already has these contracts, so, you know, as you know, there's just a lot of administrative burden to doing a new contract with anyone, so that's the point of doing it through the CAC.

But that's offered as a benefit to you, but you don't have to do it that way. I don't know if that does that make sense, hopefully.

I'd like to add my comment if I I think everything that everyone's saying makes sense. I think the tiering also makes sense, right? And also, maybe we don't need the dashboard right off the bat that could wait till later. And we really do need the matrices at first, like, of what an implementation like you said, kind of a template or the skeleton of what everyone kind of wants to move forward with. I think that will kind of require a lot of coordination, not just staff level, but decision makers, kind of deciding what that could look like, how much you want to fund at a particular time.

But it makes sense, and I think to your point, Cher, is that it defeats the purpose if we all kind of just go on our own, right? So I don't think that's going to happen. So when we talk about individualized plans, I don't think any of us think that it's going to be you go on your own and just do it on your own. I think county staff, as the lead agency for the CAC and the RCAP, I think will always be a resource and kind of a convening point. And staff is always available to help or guide.

And obviously, the bigger jurisdictions have more money, more staff, new staff. So I think the sharing of resources, I think, will go across the board. Ideas and, like we said, model ordinances or model programming, I think that's to be expected. But the idea of tearing off of whatever, the larger or the first one, I think makes a lot of sense.

So I'm wondering, do you have enough guidance on how to revise the budget to reflect everybody's concerns here on the board?

I would say unless one or more of you come to us and say, hey, we definitely don't want to do an implementation plan, you can take that off the thing. We would take it out for your jurisdiction and readjust your number. But unless any one of you tells us to do that, we'll put forward the same budget. Although I think we had heard some differences of opinion around the Napa Climate Challenge item specifically. Other than that, I think, you know, that's what Jesse referenced in his presentation over the coming weeks.

We hope that you all reach out to us individually and let us know, we are, you know, we think we do want to have some placeholder money for an implementation plan or if you're certain that you don't, you can let us know that and we'll take it out. I would say, again, for your own just it's never fun coming back in the middle of the year asking for additional budget for anything. So to the extent even if you decided to use that budget for something completely different but related to the CAC, you could. So it's mostly just to save you the hassle of having to go back to your counsels later and ask for more money. At least you've got enough to kind of in the pipeline to take care of the shared expenses and then these potential optional items.

So unless we hear from any one or more of you directly that, Hey, we do or we do not want the implementation plan or the additional support from county staff, we will leave it in there and it will be the same number for next month.

Is it possible to see a sample implementation plan from some other county, some other jurisdictions that just shows us what they look like that we can take that back to our staff and councils?

That's a really good question. City of Napa is working on an implementation plan right now. I can't speak for them but they at least have previously shared their willingness to share all of that with the committee. I don't know how far along they are with that, but certainly before you got to the point of like saying like, yes, we're in, again, I'll let them speak to that.

And it doesn't even have to be a local to Napa Yes, yeah. Just what an environmental implementation plan looks like.

Absolutely, we can get that from Ascenta and as Jesse referenced, you know, we asked them for a scope of work and budget and asked for it in short order, of course, so they had to do just really kind of rough ideas. And so they included some things they thought we might want, but we've already kind of said, We don't need a dashboard right now. So, for example, in unincorporated county, we are planning to move forward with an implementation plan for ourselves that we would certainly offer also to all of you. We already said, no, we don't need the dashboard right now. Let's pare it down and have something very basic to start with that we can add on to later.

Let's not start with something grand. Will let Deborah Elliott. Member Painter, did you want to it looked like you might want to elicit the feedback from okay.

Pardon? Oh, yes, sure. As your staff member. Yes. Yes. This is all by the way, just to clear things up, what we're not doing, this is not public remarks. This is utilizing the input from our county staffs and to help us understand everything. Just protocol.

Deborah Elliott from the City Of Napa. I just wanted to provide some context since it's been brought up a number of times. So yes, we are contracted with ASCENT, but we have not begun the implementation plan because we're waiting for the R CAP to be finalized and then we will know our measures and actions that we will want to implement. We based our request to them off of an implementation plan that they did for San Diego. So we thought that this looked like a really good way for Beyond Me to engage staff across, the city.

So I know there will be a lot of measures and actions that I don't have direct control over, but public works or planning or parks and rec, you know, any of those departments might own and need to factor into their budget into the coming years. So the idea with the implementation plan was really creating that, template where then we can sit down and look through all the actions. I think we are happy to share whatever we're able to and I think from the unincorporated county versus the city perspective, our city will look more like the other cities when we're implementing items. The unincorporated county will look different because they will be implementing a lot of those agricultural items that we won't have to consider. So that is, I think, hopefully answering some of the questions and some of the things that came up, but if I missed anything, please let me know.

And that implementation plan for the city of San Diego is public. It's online, so we can share the link to that so you can see kind of an example of what, that is. We will we can follow-up with that link after the meeting and you can use that in your at your discretion for your consideration of the budget.

Thank you. Yeah. That'd be great. Any other comments from the committee? Swiveling back and forth and don't see anything. And I've got to stop in the middle too. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation and thank you to all of our committee members for a really good discussion. Let us move Sure, on or sorry. Oh, you've got

Yes, sorry. Just before we leave, I guess, thoughts on the Napa climate challenge. Do we want to move with staff's recommendation to kind of pause for next fiscal year or kind of figure out, yeah, if we're going to go dark, we don't necessarily want to go dark. Like what yeah. Some a little bit of direction on that would be helpful.

If if there was a way to keep the app online and and, you know, so that your profiles and all that are still there, that would be nice for those who use it, you know, I think it it yeah, to keep that available maybe the the outreach efforts can go dark while we kind of retool but keeping the app available online would be handy and if you know, if that's presumably that would be a nominal fee because, you know, short of updating it, well, if we could keep it live, that would be good and hopefully not as expensive, my opinion.

Member Reeves?

I agree with member Joseph on that issue. I also would like to to ask the other members, do they have a feeling about partnering with RCD to do more outreach for the implementation of and just broadly education for each jurisdiction as they are contacted for it.

Comments? Member Preeter.

Want make a quick comment. Having served on the RCD board for sixteen years, obviously, maybe not biased, but have the greatest respect for their work. They could be a fantastic partner. The other opportunity in thinking about this is how they might access grant funds for implementation that could be separate from what we might be able to do. They've been successful on that in other areas.

We can't necessarily decide today if that's the right thing. But they're certainly, A, clearly knowledgeable about the issues in the community, have experience with outreach, and potentially have the ability to assist in any other grant funding that would particularly be focused on outreach and education.

Oh, sorry.

I would concur. You're not

oh, Member Mantry. Okay. It's Okay. So wait till you're recognized. Sit down. Sit down.

You say order, order.

Oh yeah.

All right. I've heard feedback from the community that the app is not very much used and that it may be because it doesn't contain a lot of local information. I just want to put that out there for consideration. Carry on.

Member Joseph, do you have a comment?

I've been intimidated.

I

would agree the climate challenge, I wouldn't want to go out on a limb because I don't know how much traction it's got but, you know if you can keep it online for those who do use it that would be useful. On RCD I do think they would be an ideal partner. They may not be ideal in every aspect of the RCAP, maybe electrification of cars and building and transportation might not be their forte as much, but I certainly think they have the credibility, the capacity to certainly focus on those areas that we've heard some public comment on that, you know, the natural environment is an element and I think that would be their strong suit completely. So I think they're a key player.

Comments?

Well, I'll say on the outreach is that I'd like to see what the outreach looks like to make sure that RCA is a great organization. I have a lot of respect for them. I love the work that they're doing. But the question to me is what does that outreach look like? And what is the responsibilities and the efforts that needs to be taking place while we do the outreach? Because there's also culture and language issues that may come up. We just want make sure that whoever we partner with can be aware of those issues. Not to say that they're not, but I'm not as familiar with RCD as Director of Painter. I just want to make sure that we keep that in mind.

Points well taken. I would just add that, yes, everyone would like to move forward with that, we can talk to RCD, get a scope, get a budget to actually do that. But I would say, you know, adopting the budget that Mr. Gutierrez laid out kind of also allows for that on an individual basis. I don't know if we pointed this out, but under the tables that listed each of your portion of the shared costs and then there was the optional cost for implementation, then there was another optional cost for additional Napa County staff support.

I think of that as like the a la carte part of the menu, like the shared costs are like you're all at a buffet and you're all going to pay the same or you're going to pay an amount based on, you know, your size, but maybe somebody wants dessert and somebody else doesn't. So that third category of costs is, you know, if Town of Yountville says, Oh, we need some help, you know, with Yaumpville days, doing some outreach at a Yaumpville days booth or something. Let's bring in the RCD for that or let's bring in County staff for that. That time would only be attributed to them, right? And so they would only be billed for that amount.

So that's where you can all get kind of more individualized, attention, if you will. You don't have to always do things as a group. So to the extent you all do want to work with the RCD, we'll work on a scope and budget and including that, But you also have the option of just, you know, kind of having a little bit here or a little bit there just for your own jurisdiction, if that's helpful. I just point that out. So, we could put the RCD in that category of costs as well.

Member Tripp.

This is just a process question, and I'm learning in my government position here that budgeting is such an important thing. But so I'm thinking what's being said is we need to come back at the next meeting with an basically agreement of our council on this budget, correct? Because it's a process that moves into the June. I mean, we have to adopt you need a budget, we need to take action. We need a budget too. So is that right? So you really need us to do something?

We need each of you to go back, as Jesse mentioned, to go back to your municipal your councils, your upper management, whomever, and say, hey, these are the proposed costs for Yountville. The base costs are this. Are you guys Okay with that? Check. The optional costs are this. Is your management Okay with that? Check or no. And come back to us and say, we're in on the shared costs and we're in on the optional costs. Or we're in on the shared costs and we're not in on the optional costs. That's really the only thing. The only yeah.

Okay. Just want to make sure I understood. Okay.

Is that clear Okay. For

do get that and I think all of us would like to at least understand the RCD option just to have some if there can be some work by staff on what they could provide, which, yeah, we would need more to even think about that. Further comments? Seeing none, as I said before, great discussion. Let's move on to another staff presentation. You guys get a lot of work today. And on the updating the CAC on the progress of climate action and sustainability activities for the unincorporated Napa County jurisdiction.

Yeah, I'll be taking this one. Hopefully slides can come up. Great. So today, I'll be this is kind of a standing item. We want to begin with the CAC for municipal updates on it doesn't have to be our cap related items.

It doesn't have to be the CAC priority items, which which I'll go over in just a minute, but just an update to showcase what the work is that we're already doing in our jurisdictions. You know, we come in and talk about, some of the work that we wanna do, and there's a short time for reports and announcements to showcase certain things coming up or work that's been done, but we wanted to really give a chance for municipal staff to to to be invited and share some of the great work that we're already doing. So we are gonna start off as Napa County staff to showcase some of the things that we've been doing from this that kind of stemmed from the CAC priorities. But again, and we will invite staff from other jurisdictions to come in and present. The city of Napa has volunteered to go next, And, but we would invite, you know, you all to volunteer your your staff to present on, anything.

So today, I will be going over our work on the reusable foodware and waste reduction ordinance, the EV charging planning and implementation work that we've been doing, and the building energy reach code implementation, as well as some considerations for reach codes moving forward in the wake of AB one hundred thirty legislation. So this graphic depicts a timeline of the work done thus far to develop, adopt, and implement a reusable foodware and waste reduction ordinance. Not shown on the timeline is some of the work leading up to the model ordinance development. The city of Calistoga had already adopted a similar ordinance, which helped to serve as the basis of the draft model ordinance. But then first up on the timeline in the 2024, the CAC approved a model ordinance for adoption by the member municipalities.

And at the 2024, after a little bit of of language refinement specific for county purposes, the county staff, took the, model ordinance to the board of supervisors for approval, and, they adopted in December 2024 with a planned effective date of 01/01/2026 of this year. And in early twenty twenty five, staff began to develop education and outreach materials for the ordinance to reach out to businesses, stakeholders, to prepare for, compliance with the ordinance. And in development of those materials, staff found some points of confusion, or possible confusion and and, some contradictory language there. So we preemptively began to amend that ordinance, the ordinance language to help clarify and streamline many of the regulations for understanding by the businesses, employers, and employees. And then we brought those proposed amendments to the board of supervisors last October 2025, and the board adopted the proposed amendments.

Staff then updated the ordinance educational materials to match those amended regulations. And in December, staff coordinated with other county divisions once again to meet on about the same to get on the same page about roles and responsibilities, who would be doing what and would be responsible for which parts of education, outreach, enforcement and so on and so forth. Staff also distributed a letter to just shy of 500 businesses within the unincorporated county to remind them, about the upcoming regulations, as well as in a one page info information sheet that spelled out some, you know, quick points of the upcoming regulations and then diverted them to the county website for more information. And then now into 2026, the ordinance is effective. However, staff are planning to begin enforcement in July since we were delayed with much of the outreach and education component of the ordinance.

We we are pushing that towards July 1 to begin enforcement, and staff have begun working with businesses, waste disposal services, employers and other stakeholders to prepare for the implementation and enforcement of the ordinance regulations. As we go on, staff will continue to work with businesses to help them comply as much as we can, especially as we're adjusting, you know, coming in rather with a heart than with a hard hand with enforcement, trying really as much as we can to to engage and and educate, and in partnership with the waste haulers within the county and public works solid waste staff as well as our environmental health division and code enforcement division. So I won't go into all of the specific requirements of this ordinance today. I just wanted to give, you know, the timeline of of our work done so far. But the specific requirements of the ordinance can be found at our website here or on the QR code to the right.

And just some quick hitters on the ordinance outreach to date. After the amended the amended ordinance in October, we updated the county website to reflect these new regulations. We have updated an ordinance overview toolkit at seven pages of resources trying to be as digestible as possible for employers who might not be fluent in government jargon. But that tool kit is a resource for employers to use to help train their employees. We also created an ADA accessible version of the toolkit to be compatible with assistive reading technologies.

That both versions of that are now also translated into Spanish for use and we are in the process of creating a brief English and Spanish version of a brief training video that businesses can use to help train their employees to implement these requirements. And the next steps, we will continue to work with stakeholders to prepare for compliance in preparation for the enforcement date on July 1 and continue hand in hand with enforcement with education. And now shifting gears to electric vehicle charging. Here's a brief recap of the progress of EV charging installations in Napa County. When the CAC had made EV charging a priority in 2024, there were 419 level two chargers and 57 DC fast chargers in the county.

And as of November 2025, just a few months ago, we were at 561 level two and seventy two DC fast chargers, showcasing a 3426% increase respectively. And just as a reminder, we shared in a presentation in November, but showing some of the expected needs of EV chargers by the California Air Resources Board, and they estimated that a total of by by the 2025, which we are already passed, a total of 63 DC fast chargers would would be needed, which we have now met for our with the 72 DC fast chargers. But a total of 1,288 level two chargers would would be estimated to be required to keep up with the demand for electric vehicles on the road, particularly particularly at workplaces and multifamily residential properties. So we have a lot of work to do still for level two charging as we discussed earlier, you know, especially with deployment of chargers but also maintenance of chargers. So I'll cover the timeline.

Again, this presentation was covered in November discussing the MCE EV charging technical assistance program, but I'll just recap with a quick timeline. A year ago in February 2025, we first heard from UC Berkeley a PhD student, Ari Balbirik, on his work on the EV equity road map tool. And we decided to move forward with contracting with him to expedite Napa County's participation in his in, deploying his tool. So we county staff worked with Paul Burek to develop county specific data and insights to assist with this, joint master application for e MCE's EV charging technical assistance program. Later that 2025, staff used the tool to find several initial publicly owned sites that might serve as a good candidate for EV charging locations and then coordinating with public works staff at each of the the municipalities that, of the initial sites chosen, were Calistoga, American Canyon, and Napa County sites.

We got approval from those public works staffs for the county to lead a joint application for the technical assistance program. After initially applying throughout the 2025, municipal programs municipal public work staff completed site questionnaires to prepare for site visits, and then MCE program staff, municipal public work staff, and county staff conducted site visits to investigate the various opportunities for solutions to EV charging. Leading up to now to the present, all site visits and site reports and cost estimates have been completed. Those reports are now in the hands of municipal public work staff who can use them at their discretion in developing RFPs or working directly with trusted vendors to install new chargers. And moving into building energy reach code efforts.

This is the last timeline of my presentation. But in the 2023, staff prepared a draft model ordinance, flex path reach code ordinance. And in October 2023, the CAC endorsed their recommendation for that model FlexPath Building Energy ReachCode for adoption by the member jurisdictions. In April 2024, county staff introduced the ordinance to the board. And after a few minor clarification points and questions, the board adopted the ordinance in July 2024 with an effective date thirty days after adoption.

And for some context into the energy code and reach codes, the energy code moves on a a triennial cadence. So every three years, the statewide energy code is is updated with the newest iteration of that being the 2025 building energy building code, including the building energy code, which goes into effect January 1 of the following year. So the twenty twenty five code is now in effect as of January year. But in late June twenty twenty five, governor Newsom signed a b one thirty into law, which effectively bans new residential reach codes or new residential building inner bill building energy codes at all by the state or by municipalities from 10/01/2025 through 06/01/2031. And then a few days later in July, the statewide building energy code was adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission, which now is in effect as of January 20 of this year.

So that and that adoption of the statewide code supersedes existing reach codes. So municipalities who had existing reach codes then would need to reinvestigate and readopt similar reach codes incorporated into the new code cycle. And the next few slides will be a little bit text heavy as I go into some of the considerations of AB 130 and potential next steps of reach codes moving forward, especially as they are big measures in the cap, in the RCAP to meeting our GHG reduction goals. And I'll preface this by saying I'm not a lawyer. Please consult with your own counsels about ReachCode adoption and moving forward with pathways towards ReachCodes.

However, in my discussions with the California statewide ReachCodes team and their outside legal review, the information in these slides presents possible pathways towards developing reach codes in the wake of AB 130 legislation. Historically, cities and counties act with the authority to adopt or change the building code for local conditions that are climate, geological, or topographical related. And this requires filing with the California Building Standards Commission and meeting statutory finding requirements. Cities and counties act within their authority to adopt more stringent energy efficiency and conservation measures for new construction by modifying existing building energy code. However, that REACH code must prove to be cost effective and result in a reduction of energy consumption levels.

And then that energy code, that REACH code must then file with the California Energy Commission for approval and after that approval it can be adopted and it can be effective. AB 130 was passed as part of a major housing package of bills to accelerate the development of residential buildings by a few methods, easing sequel requirements, restricting local building code amendments, and restricting homeowners associations overreach and a few other method methods to expedite the development of residential units. AB 130 legislation prohibits the California Building Standards Commission from considering, approving and adopting specifically residential new construction building standards from 10/01/2025 through 06/01/2031. So this would affect the triennial building energy code, for 2028, but not but not this current one, the 2025 code. Additionally, it would eliminate local jurisdictions' ability to modify and change because of local climate, geological, or topographical conditions.

However, built into AB 130, there are several pathways towards exemption. I won't read all of these but the two that are most applicable according to the statewide energy code team and the lawyers that they consulted with, the two main pathways that many jurisdictions who had building energy reach codes would move towards changing or modifying the building energy code which is substantially equivalent to the change or modification that were previously filed. So if a jurisdiction had a building reach code before that was in effect as of 09/30/2025 or before, they could pass a similar reach code showing that substantially equivalence. Or exemption number five, the change or modifications are necessary to implement local code amendments that are adopted to align with general plan approved with a general plan approved on or before 06/10/2025. And that would still permit mixed fuel residential construction consistent with federal law while also incentivizing all electric construction as part of an adopted greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy.

So that's a long way of saying if your general plan has goals and policies specific to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, you can apply for this except exemption under AB one thirty and and move towards passing a building energy reach code. With that said, our the Napa County 2,005 general plan, does have goals and policies which call for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. So the Napa County staff do plan to pursue exemption pathway number five by citing those goals and policies. For now, staff are uncertain which method of reach code to pursue for more stringent energy requirements, but are considering the similar FlexPath reach code that we had adopted previously, or more simply adopting Cal Green tier one or tier two code. And then additionally, again, this only applies to residential reach codes.

So the Napa County staff are also considering non residential flex path reach codes or or Cal Green tier one and tier two codes, EV charging reach codes for new development or remodels of parking structures or parking lots, water efficiency reach codes for commercial or other non residential buildings, and low embodied carbon or low carbon concrete for development. And that's all I have for you today. Happy to take questions. I know there's a lot of information, but

First, are there public comments? Seeing none from our committee. Oh, public comment. I'm sorry. You've got to be quicker around here.

So, in the February, unfortunately, my family lost our home. We're just now finishing up a build. And unbeknownst to me, there's a county code that says that the electrician has to set a timer on the front porch light for coming on every day. And I live out in the county, in the country, and it's like, why does my porch light have to come on? I have to pay that electricity.

And it's not just one porch light, it's like six porch lights. So, unfortunately, the electrician said it wrong and there's no way for me to go in and fix it. It's automatically set by county code that they have to set the timer. So now I have a call in to the electrician to come back because they set it for AM instead of PM. And every day I have to go out and turn it off because it bothers me so much that six lights are on at 06:30 in the morning for however long I run out there because I don't want it to go on any longer than it needs to.

And, yeah, so I don't live in the house yet. I live on a tiny house right next to it. So I see that light on in the morning and I

go, oh, I'm going to

go out there and turn it off. So, I just think that's kind of weird that we have to have a county mandated code that we have to have porch lights on in the county unincorporated area. That's a funny story.

Thank you. Perhaps staff can help, but I suspect the purpose of the code is that the lights turn off and don't stay on unnecessarily. So maybe it is a big discussion with the electrician. Okay, comments. Yes, member Lamatina.

I was just scratching my face.

Oh. It was a little itchy.

I'm sorry. Yeah, that's good. Other comments? Yes, Member Mampre.

Okay. I'll just say, thanks. That was a lot of information, really fast. And member Trip will remember that we heard about packaging at our Upper Valley Waste Management meeting this last time. And so it's wonderful that we're moving toward more biodegradable packaging because that is one of the biggest sources of litter along roadsides.

So nice double benefit there. And I also wanted to just chime in on the EV installation and the right to charge situation that exists in the state of California. So renters have a right to charge per state laws. However, renters have to pay the full cost of installation. And if the landlord prefers it, they have to pay the full cost of uninstalling when they move.

So this is kind of something that's very difficult for a renter to actually take advantage of because the financial burden is huge. And yet, it's something that is so important if we're ever going to have EV chargers for the people who really can benefit the most by having a cheaper solution for the energy that fuels their transportation. And I just want to raise that as a point of consideration for staff to think about how we might assist in that situation, maybe by providing some kind of grant program for renters to get that stuff installed, or maybe even preferably to that because of that loophole where the owner can demand that things be taken out. And if they say that upfront, the renter is especially going to be uninterested in installing something. But maybe there could be some crossover between commercial agencies and say, hey, if you want to improve the value of your property, maybe we could make a deal here kind of thing.

Because it is one of the most pernicious problems about getting EV charging in place. It'd be great to help renters with that situation. And yeah, I guess I have a question as to why we would have to have lights on in the evenings. And it would make more sense that we'd want them to be turned off by a specific time. And I've heard other members of the community complain about houses that leave their lights on into the late hours and have a ton of outdoor lighting out in the country.

And another thing of add on about that is that in addition to using energy, it changes habitat significantly to have lights on all the time. So I've seen research that it will deter mountain lions up to about a quarter mile to have a light on. They just won't come anywhere near it, for example. And so you may consider that a good thing if you're trying to protect livestock. But if you're not, you're having this impact on the range of an animal. And I would presume that would follow for a number of different types of animals. Also, birds migrating at night get confused between the stars and the lights, that sort of thing. So I'm all about dark sky policies. And that's just $02 from over here. Thanks.

Yeah, and I'll investigate that code requirement. I hadn't heard of that. I might imagine that that is a light pollution related code rather than an energy code, but I will clarify with our building department.

Okay. Thank you. Further comments from the committee? Oh. Member Payne.

Yeah. Thank you for the information. This is a great addition to the agenda to hear from each jurisdiction. It might also be interesting at some point to hear about things like the air boards requirements on heat pump water heaters, because that's something that ties back into what we talked about previously in terms of workforce training that we're all really interested in. So how we can learn about those efforts. And that's the one that comes to mind to me. There could be others. But that might be another item to add to the list of informational updates. Vice

Chair Narvaez, please.

Here we go. I came across something that was very fascinating that has to do with waste reduction in packaging. And some of you may be aware, but I came across this company that uses mycelium, that root structure of mushroom, and agricultural waste to, that binds together and creates a durable shock absorbent and a 100% compostable product that would replace polyurethane sorry. I cannot pronounce that very well. For packaging.

So I've there's some credit videos out there of how the company grows and puts it together and actually start reshipping in other countries. And might be for a future agenda item, or I can just share it with staff to see how that would fit here. Maybe we can just get a quick video or something just so we're aware of some really good alternatives because this goes right to back to our waste and it breaks down. So that way we can get rid of some of these really nasty packaging products. Thank you.

Thank you. Further comments? Okay. I have a couple of comments. One, looking at the references to AB 130, does the dual fuel regulation, do we think that what we have in the RCAP right now, which is requiring electrical ability but allowing people to pay the extra money and get gas, will that be consistent with the rules in AB one thirty?

If an AB one thirty exemption is met under those exemptions that were up on the screen, the reach code would still have to permit mixed fuel. So any reach code as part of implementation through the RCAP would still have to meet those requirements to be mixed fuel while still heavily incentivizing.

Well, that's what I think we have right now. Is that going to pass legal muster? Or do we know? Which is, right now, and it is an incentive program, which is you have to put in electrical capability, but if the developer wants gas too, then the developer may do that.

Well, through the from my understanding of the statewide code right now, new new builds have to be electric ready anyway. That's the baseline. For any reach codes in terms of it's more of an incentive of the you have to meet a certain in this case for the reach code, the flex path, you have to make the building 13% more energy efficient than a standard baseline building would be developed by the statewide code. That is possible by using mixed fuel, by using natural gas fuel. Okay.

However, you would have to then do several additional measures to the building of the home to make it hit that 13%

more Right.

The efficiency threshold, which could build the cost rather than if you had just done a heat pump or an all electric build. So that's kind of the incentive. It's it's not it's a financial incentive in that by building with mixed use, you have to probably spend more money to develop the the building to meet those thresholds. But if you don't build with natural gas, you can meet that threshold more easily and more cost effectively.

Okay. Thank you. The other thing I just want to share is Calistoga's experience with the foodware ordinance. And you are right at the position in the county, well, in a few months when the rubber hits the road, when you hit enforcement. I will be honest. It took us to get close to 100% took two years. There's a whole, I mean, much enforcement are you going to put into it? And that is a big question. I'm not asking you to answer it. I'm just providing some feedback.

And you really don't want to hurt your businesses. You're not out to get in big arguments, but you have to be persistent. You don't want to find people unless it is the last resort. And then you have to have the enforcement capacity and human resources to actually do it. So lots of education, be patient, as many visits as you can.

It is a hard road but a worthwhile one. As I said, it's taken a few years but we are really finding it's implemented now. So good luck and I hope that all the jurisdictions will be considering it. It really does make a difference. One other thing, we're already ready to do an update of it because some things change.

For example, our waste management now says you do not have to throw away paper coffee cups. They cannot but they don't compost. They now go in recycling. That's where they go now at least Valley. Well, know, nobody knows and the little pictures on the trash cans don't know.

Not that they have sentience, but and then just we're making a few other modifications that you might that if you're doing a new ordinance, might want to look at to make sure you don't have to do other changes. You really do have to maintain close I know you had in the plan to maintain close conversation with waste management, and that is really important because it is somewhat of a moving target. So encourage you, congratulate you and warn you. All

right. Thank you. And one point on the foodware ordinance that I will bring up in terms of the amendments we brought was just about that was rather than trying to define what define directly in the ordinance what is compostable, what's recyclable because those some some of those things change especially depending upon what your local waste hauler can actually accept. Exactly. Because if we are requiring something to be compostable but you're, you know, BPI certified compostable or other certification compostable but your waste hauler can accept it, it's still going to go into the landfill, the waste stream.

Yeah, we actually have that clause in it. Yeah. But it's more part of the education piece of telling people about paper coffee Mhmm. Yeah. Coated cups.

So we built it into the the update of the ordinance that it has this definition of compostable or recyclable, but also has to be accepted by your local waste hauler and waste provider so that it also reinforces the the engagement of a business or an event with their waste provider to ensure that, you know, there's there's a kind of constant communication there and back and forth of like, okay, as things change, as things are maybe now accepted by your waste hauler, you know, what can we do to make sure we're in compliance with this? So, you know, just reinforcing that that outreach component is extremely helpful.

Okay, any other comments? Yes.

A quick question. Getting back to AB130, I jumped the gun again. Is the Cal Green tier one or two adopting Cal Green tier one or tier two still kind of covered? Does AB 130 mess with that option or do you know?

From my understanding, yes, it would mess with that. If you Oh. Most of the so the statewide code was adopted. The Cal Green tier one and tier two are built into that code. But if you did not specifically adopt if a jurisdiction did not specifically adopt those as part of their adoption hearings generally or before 01/01/2026 and you don't meet one of those exceptions, it can be challenging and you might and again, I'm I'm not a lawyer but check with your counsel and see if you can go forward and readopt CalGreen tier one or two Okay.

Which is a very it's it's a more simplified pathway rather than developing a a FlexPath reach code or some other type of reach code because it is already built in as an an optional section in Calgary in the building energy code. But we are past the time frame where you could make

Yeah.

A further amendment to your building energy code. So if you haven't already adopted tier one or tier two by now, you would have to I believe you would still have to meet the exemption pathways.

Okay. Alright. We'll check with staff. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Melendez. There are no more comments. We'll move on to reports and announcements. Are there reports and announcements from the committee? Yes. Member Manfred.

I've got a couple of quick ones. Thank you. I just wanted to let people know that the Napa Valley Transportation Authority active transportation plan is now out for public review. So that's a big part of our climate solutions here is getting people to do more active transportation. And so if that's a concern of yours, you can comment on that now. The baseline data report will be out for public review very soon, in the next week or two, I think. So keep an eye out for that one. That's the foundation for Napa County's general plan, which is we're just starting the update process for and planning. Thank you, staff. The climate summit that Chris Benz mentioned is happening on the March 26.

And on the April 9, the North Bay Watershed Association will be hosting their biennial conference. The theme is meeting this moment in a climate of change, so very on point for our Climate Action Committee. And that event will be held at the College of Marin in Nevada. Right now, tickets are for sale for $60 for students and $150 for everyone else. And they do have a scholarship program for students. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes.

Member I of also wanted to mention another event, March 26. This is a speaker named Chris Shell, who is an urban ecologist. This is going to be at Copia, March 20 at 05:30PM. And he's talking about sort of the wildlife in our own backyards. And when we heard about sort of the notions of dark sky and light and homes, it does all kind of tie together. He's a really interesting speaker. I would encourage you to take a look at that. It's through an organization called the NAPA Center for Thought and Culture, March 20 at 05:30 at Copia.

Thank you. Any other announcements?

I would like to report we in I think I mentioned the announcement of it at the last CAC, but we held a joint training and forum for contractors with the counties of Sonoma and Marin at the Petaluma Veterans Hall. I don't remember the January 30, I believe, in the morning. We had about 70 attendees that served we had two contractors from Napa, which was great, and many more that served the Napa area. And we did, hands on training from two heat pump water heater manufacturers where the contractors were able to actually see hands on and and get to feel and and get kind of hands on experience of actually installing what installing a heat pump water heater would look like, as well as learning about many of the programs that they can leverage in terms of workforce development, financing, and and other incentive programs, as well as the air district's ruling which many of the contractors did not know about. So it is a very important point to make as well.

So very successful training and hope to do more in the future.

Thank you. And our last agenda item is any future agenda items from the committee?

Just what I mentioned earlier? Yes. I'll send it up.

Okay, Great. Alright. Thank you. And I declare this meeting adjourned at 11:19.