Climate Action Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. We are calling to order the special meeting of Friday, 11/21/2025 of the Navajo County Climate Action Committee. Will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, if you can stand furyable. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. Thank you, everyone. Oh, we didn't do the roll call yet. I'm sorry. I don't know if you could do that.

Member LaMatina? Here. Member Joseph?

Here.

Member Eisenberg?

Here.

Member Gift? Present. Member Painter? Here. Member Alessia?

Present.

Member Daisy?

Here.

Member Tripp? Here. Member Reeves? Chair Gallagher?

Here.

Let the record reflect members' Nervais and Summers are excused.

Okay. Thank you. We are going to go to our public comment period. Is there anyone in the room who would like to address the Climate Action Committee on any subject over which we have jurisdiction, but is not on the agenda today? Hello, mister Miller. Hello. Good morning.

Good morning. It's been a very busy season last couple of months, I just wanted to update the committee on a few things that that do actually impact different parts of the whole county of Napa. One is our recycling and composting facility owned by the city of Napa, formal name is materials diversion facility. As of last month, we are also processing all the single stream recyclables from the City of American Canyon Recology and also from Vallejo Recology. So while it's owned by the City of Napa, it really does serve the whole region, and we we we received the recyclables from Berryessa, we received the commercial food waste from Up Valley, so in one way or another we touched all of Napa County.

So I think that good to know that we had a public tour of the facility on October 18. We had a 165 people show up and excuse me, a 165 people sign up and a 135 people show up. So that was very well attended. We had special tours for kids versus adults. I think that went over very, very well.

On October 25, Saturday, October 25, there was a regional DEA drugs and medical sharps collection events throughout Napa County. The one in the city of Napa, which we do at the Kaiser Clinic parking lot in Napa, we received over 400 pounds of medications and we received almost 400 pounds of medical sharps. And so that was just the one location. There were five other locations throughout Napa County. So that was very successful as well.

And then the last point I'll mention, this past Sunday, we celebrated America Recycles Day as we have done for the last ten years. We do a coat, costume, and shoe drive, and that resulted in 835 excuse me, 800 985 coats that we donate to the Salvation Army. They give them out to local residents and to needy families at their Thanksgiving dinner. They've come to kind of depend on that and it's really a feature of helping disadvantaged populations. We received 180 coats, excuse me, costumes where we do a costume exchange every year, so next Halloween.

We don't track it but we know that disadvantaged families certainly benefit from that. And the idea here is reuse. We want to promote reuse. And the other one was shoes. So we've received eleven eighty three pairs of shoes in just a four hour event, about three fifty more than last year. So definitely the community was responding to that need. Of those, 255 of them were gleaned off by a representative from Community Projects Thrift Store. So that is saying local reuse and benefiting that organization. So I would consider that a win win win for the environment and our community.

Thank you so much Mr. Miller. Good news.

You. I'm just going to leave this with we have year round options for medications and medical sharps so people miss the event.

Great, thank you. All right, we have our consent item for A. Does anyone have any public comment on the consent item? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve.

I'll move, Joseph. Second,

Painter. All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? All right, thank you. So we'll move to our administrative items. Administrative item A, receive a presentation by Jenna Tenney on MCE energy efficiency and sustainability programs. And I'll go ahead and turn it over to staff and to Ms. Tenney.

Yeah, I think you did a great job of introducing Jenna. So take it away, Jenna.

Great. Thank you so much. I wanna say thank you to everyone for allowing me to attend virtually today. Typically, we do attend in person, but our staff member who often attend these meetings is is out this week. So we really appreciate it and your flexibility. I'm Jenna Tenney. I'm MCE's director of communications and community engagement, and I will just be giving a a brief overview of MCE and a quick update and then happy to take questions. So I'm going to share my screen. Alright. And can we see my screen?

Not yet.

Oh, there

we go. Great.

So MCE, who are we? Climate change is something that impacts us all. We are seeing it actively across our member communities. It's something that I know is impacting Napa, with the increasing extreme weather events and wildfires. We're also seeing, you know, record setting heat or unseasonably cool weather as we've had this year.

Flooding and drought, these things are all impacting us. And we do have ways that we can address that, and that's part of what MCE is here to do. So who are we, and and what are we offering? Our vision is to lead California to an equitable, clean, affordable, and reliable energy economy by serving as a model for community based renewable energy, energy efficiency, and cutting edge clean tech products and programs. Our mission is to confront the climate crisis by eliminating fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions, producing renewable energy, and creating equitable community benefit.

So, really, what does all of that mean? We are a community choice agency. We are here to serve the community as a not for profit local electricity provider, offering cleaner renewable energy choices to our customers and a variety of programs and services that benefit them from improving indoor air quality, reducing bills, increasing the safety of their home. We are here to address climate change, but do it in a way that really benefits our customers directly. As a not for profit public agency, we are governed by a a board of 34 elected officials.

They represent the 38 member communities that we serve across four Bay Area counties, including all of Napa County. The way that our service works is that you, the customer, benefit from cleaner air, stable rates, choice between MCE and PG and E, and within those two providers, choice of how much renewable electricity you'd like to receive as well as local control. As I mentioned, our board of local elected officials, is what governs what we do, sets our rates, determines our programs, and that is you all sitting here. And, our constituents are able to talk to you directly at meetings like this and also at our regular board of directors meetings and committee meetings. PG and E still delivers the electricity, maintains the lines, and sends bills to customers.

So customers will continue to receive their PG and E bill. They pay it the same as they always would, but they would see MCE as a line item on that bill. MCE buys and builds fossil free energy for our customers, and we do that through our two service options two main service options, which are our default service, light green, which is a minimum 60% renewable. Last year, we were almost 70 in 2024. And our MCE deep green service option, which is 100% renewable largely through California wind and solar energy.

You can compare this to PG and E service option, which is only 33% renewable. I mentioned that PG and E continues to do all of the billing and delivery services. So you can see here a sample bill. This is a bill for a customer who only has PG and E service, so they're not receiving services through MCE. They would have a line item that says, PG and E electric charges.

And with MCE, you get a new line item. So you would see PG and E electric delivery charges and MCE electric generation charges. So this is really important because a lot of times folks will look at their bill maybe for the first time when they have an abnormal month. Maybe their bill's a little bit higher, maybe because they did something unusual. Maybe they got a portable AC, or maybe they were just running their system longer, or maybe all of a sudden they have they purchased an electric vehicle and and they're using electricity that way. Could be a variety of different ways. Typically, it's a change in in usage. They'll look at their bill, and they'll see, oh, MCE is on here. What's MCE? And we do get a lot of calls about that, and our customer service center is in house.

They're excellent. They are MCE staff members who can help answer these questions for folks. And we just help them understand that that line item is a replacement charge, not an additional charge. So they will see another page on their bill where it will indicate what PG and E would have charged for electric generation, and you can compare that to what MCE is charging for electric generation. And that's the best way to compare the two service options.

We also, as an electric service provider, offer the same discount programs that PG and E does. So Carifera and medical baseline allowance are all provided in full to MCE customers. You don't need to reapply. You just follow the regular process that you do with PG and E. This also includes additional payment programs that have really, been developed over the last several years as a response to, the COVID pandemic, which is the California Rare Ridge payment program, percentage of income, payment plan, as well as PG and E employee discounts, and there are actually a number of other discount programs.

And MCE works really hard to educate our customers about these programs through our own messaging and mailers, but also through our community partners, helping, folks who are already community based organizations who are already in the community providing services understand how to help educate those customers about those same sir about these services so that they can apply these these discount programs to their bill. Some of them are month discount programs. Some of them are forgiveness programs if you're paying a regular amount towards your bills. So it's a really great way for customers who are struggling with these higher energy prices to address that concern. We also offer a variety of community benefits.

So you can see here a snapshot of what MCE enrollment rates look like across Napa County. So this first column here is the average enrollment for just general MCE service, around 90% average enrollment, across the county. And then we have our deep green percentage, which you could see is between 68%, in in the county, and that that's pretty consistent with MCE's general average as well. And our metric tons of c o two reduced across communities. In Napa County over the last year, we supported 10 community events, including the Napa Climate Now job fair, Napa County bike fest.

And this event here that you can see a photo of is the Napa youth summit that we attended. We work really hard to educate youth both about climate change and renewable energy, but also to help them understand a little bit more about the industry and the workforce opportunities that are available as well. We do offer an internship program, and so that's part of that outreach, helping reach youth across our service area so that they can participate in in these career opportunities with MCE and beyond. So one one option that we have to participate is through our EV charging program. This is an opportunity to modernize, for your property with discounted upgrades.

So this is a charging station that we installed at the city of Calistoga. These charging stations are available at workplaces and multifamily properties. So we do a free property assessment to identify the most efficient and cost effective EV charging solution for you. That could include how many charging stations, where to put them, things like that. And, customers can receive up to $4,500 for each charger and can be layered with other rebates as well.

So we're happy to help walk you through that program if that's something that's of interest. We've installed about a 150 charging stations across Napa County and and all of the communities therein. Another opportunity is to slash electricity costs through our energy management program. So this is a sample, case study from Transhero Family Estates. They saved, $200,000 in incentives and and yearly bill reductions from reduced energy use.

So they are seeing a 4.5% reduction on annual electricity bills with over a 100 property improvement recommendations. So, again, this is a a free assessment, and you can save money on your energy costs. The idea here is we take a holistic look at the facility both in terms of, you know, hard upgrades that you can do, whether that's something as easy as, you know, switching light bulbs to LEDs, or doing other things like refrigeration upgrades or heating upgrades. But there are a lot of changes that you can make just with behavioral shifts about when you use electricity or when you're running certain appliances and things like that that can save you money without actually investing any additional money into specific hard upgrades. So it's a really great service that allows us to work with folks as they are able to work through this.

What is also interesting about this is you can do the behavioral changes, get those savings, and then reinvest those savings into other hard upgrades that are going to save you money in the long term. Another opportunity here is to use our contractor finder tool and our rebate and incentive finder tool. So these are for primarily residential customers and help them navigate this complicated landscape. There are a lot of incentives and rebates that are out there for customers, but a lot of times folks don't know how to access them or what they are, which ones stack, how they go together. So MCE's new tools help folks find that and also find licensed embedded contractors who can perform this work as well.

I know that for myself. I've done a couple upgrades here at my home, and it was really, helpful for me to know that I have a list of contractors who I can trust to perform these services. So lastly, just to wrap up, MCE over our first fifteen years of service, which we are celebrating this year, has helped customers eliminate 500,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. We have been 95% carbon free since 2022. We've committed $4,500,000,000 to new renewable energy projects, including 3,300,000 labor hours and 7,000 jobs supported across those projects.

We have been 60% renewable since 2017 and do have a 100% renewable option, and we've invested 400,000,000 in MCE's member communities directly since 2010, including through 48 megawatts of new local renewable projects built in our service area with 50% local hire and prevailing wage requirements. So as I mentioned at the beginning, MCE is really about combating climate change while making sure that we are benefiting our communities directly, both largely communities and workforce as well as directly customers who are receiving incentives and rebates from MCE. And that is my presentation for today. And I believe you all also have some printouts in front of you that cover our impacts over the last year specific to each jurisdiction as well.

Have And I'm happy to take any questions. Much. Alright. Thank you. I'm just gonna see if there's any public comment on the presentation. And seeing none, we'll bring it back to the committee. If anyone has and we're going to start with Member Painter.

Thank you. Thank you, Jenna. I raised my hand pretty quickly because I've actually served on the MCE board since February 2023. It's a really robust board. It's an amazing organization. I've learned a great deal. I'm happy to meet or talk individually with anybody who wants to learn more. So I just want to thank Jenna for that really thorough summary. It's really helpful for us to learn this so we can share it with our constituents and communities. These sheets that you got, I actually asked Jenna to provide because we got them at our retreat in October.

And I thought it was really helpful to see these summary dollars and to see what's happening in our own communities. And sometimes you lose sight of are we actually making a difference? And I really think we are making difference. So thank you, Jenna, for pulling all of this together and doing this. I know it's additional work. I think doing it remotely is terrific. And it saves on your spending money on gas, etcetera, to get here. I just want to say briefly next steps. I've been involved in the annual climate summit that I'm sure some of you have attended. March 26 will be our next climate summit.

And the focus on that will be resiliency, both from the perspective of land based things that we've done as well as community based resiliency. And we will have MCE there talking about the green workforce development options. That, I think, at least for me, is a big focus area over the next few years to look at who our local contractors are to do this work and where is our workforce. And those are big issues to tackle. So anyone interested in learning more, feel free to talk to me.

Thank you. Member Tripp and then Member Joseph.

Thank you for the great presentation. I was so impressed when you initially organization came to the Auntsville Town Council and was able to really point out that any excess revenue I don't want to say profits that come to your organization go back to the community, which isn't necessarily true of a publicly held company like PG and E. But my question is, and I spent in the late '90s a short stint at Kennecke Wind Power when they were first building and installing what they called wind plants. And what we always had to think about is what was the cost of generation of wind versus, at the time, it was a lot of natural gas. So I was just curious overall, that was very interesting, your starting slide about the PG and E bill.

In general, what is your cost to generation for renewables, which would be wind, solar, versus the cost, say, at PG and E? Or are we basically talking the same generation costs? And that's a broad question, But thank you for the nice presentation.

Yeah. So MCE's generation rates are lower than PG and E's and actually have always been lower than PG and E's. Not necessarily significantly, but they have been. When we talk about what customers when we talk about bills, we talk about the bottom line, the actual cost that customers pay, which includes MCE's generation rates. It includes the PG and E delivery charges, and then it also includes what's referred to as the PG and E exit fee.

And those costs can together are what make up the electric side of the bill. So when we talk to customers about the cost comparison between MCE and PG and E, that's that's what we're actually talking about because that's what customers care about the most. So because MCE is charred MCE customers are charged that exit fee, we our costs are right now slightly more expensive than PG and E, and we don't guarantee that we're going to be less expensive. We we provide you a choice, and we do keep our rates stable. So MC has not changed our standard rates since 2023.

But we have been less expensive than PG and E about 50% of the time. So it's it's kind of half and half which one you're gonna get. But, again, by participating in MCE, you're getting all of these additional benefits of working with a not for profit local community based organization. So the answer is our generation rates are always lower, but the total bill cost isn't.

Okay. And then one other really quick question because others want to, of course, ask you. But I saw that there's like seven or 8% of people sign up for the total green, or your most green option. And why is that? Are they if you sign up for that and say the wind isn't blowing and there's no generation or the sun, what are you agreeing to and why is that lower? And that's more of a curiosity.

Yeah. So that service option is slightly more expensive and it is an opt up option. So you have to take action to do that. We do find that for voluntary enrollment energy programs, the the standard sort of industry adoption rate is about 2%. So our board did approve a deep green default pilot.

I can't remember the exact year, but it was it was a couple years ago. And we did that for about eight months and then realized that we were so successful that we were gonna have to pause it because we weren't able to actually procure a 100% renewable energy enough to to meet those needs. So that's part of the reason that that number is as high as it is. But customers do pay a slight premium. It's, for the average customer, probably about $6 a month on their bill.

And the question about what that service actually is. So, electricity, renewable energy percentage is accounted for over the over the entire year. So when a customer chooses Deep Green, what they are choosing to do is pay a slight premium to ensure that MCE purchases a 100% renew enough a 100% renewable electricity over the course of the year to cover their electric load. So that's that's what that service option is. We also half of the premium that customers pay, so that's now 1.25¢ per kilowatt hour, half of that goes into a dedicated fund for local projects and programs as well.

So you know that as a Deep Green customer, you are creating additionality directly in your community.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you. Remember Joseph?

I have a couple of questions. One, I noticed that American Canyon's light green rate is lower than everyone else's. And so I'm curious to see if you have any insights because we've been building a lot of newer homes and if they start with the default MCE light green, we ought to be having a higher rate. So that's my first question.

Sure. So I can't say definitively. If you are building a lot of newer homes, every customer that moves in receives notices letting them know that they would default to MCE service. So they do have the option to opt out. So it's possible that when folks are moving into their homes, they're actually getting notifications and choosing to opt out. Mhmm. So it could be that. I I would have to go back and look at the enrollment stats for the community over time because it is possible that that number is going up. And there was just a higher opt out when the community was enrolled initially. So I can't say for certain, but those are some possibilities.

Okay. And then the second one really relates to the next page in our packet that talks about the power content of renewable and non renewable and it's a methodology question which is why is small hydro considered renewable but large hydro isn't and even though nuclear fission isn't the best thing in the world, it it is non fossil fuel at least. And so I'm wondering how did we divvy up the categories?

So it's California, the CPUC, that's that's how they do that, the California Energy Commission, the CPUC. So it's California state. But to your point, the large hydro and the nuclear, while not considered renewable, are considered carbon free. So they do help reduce greenhouse gas emissions even if they don't go that toward that renewable percentage.

Okay.

That makes sense because I would periodically see PG and E saying they're 95% fossil free, which according to this is totally legit because of the methodology. Okay, I appreciate it. If the state came up with it, I understand it may not make sense, but we have to live with it. Thank you.

Thank you. Member Eisenberg.

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation. I have a question. I received an email about another MCE program related to charging electric cars, MCE Sync and I was wondering if you could explain exactly what that is.

Absolutely. MCE Sync is a managed charging app. So it's an app that you would download, and you use it in sync with your electric vehicle, MCE Sync. And, it helps dictate when your vehicle is charging to best align with both both the lowest cost hours of the day as well as the highest renewable hours of the day, which often are the same. So there there are a lot of different ways that you can sort of manage your charging to do that.

You can do it manually. Oftentimes, you can program. If you have a level two charger in your home, you can program that, or you can maybe program it directly in the app with your vehicle. But MCE sync does that for you as well. So it's it's an alternative way of doing that, but you also receive credits, from MCE for participating in that.

So it's it's sort of a behavioral change program, but it's it's also automated so that customers can kind of just plug in their vehicle, put their preferences in the MCE sync app, and then it will charge their vehicle, as I said, with the lowest cost and highest renewable hours to help address grid concerns and you receive financial credits for that for participating.

Thank you. And seeing that Calistoga is only at 7% deep green, I'm going to sign up for Deep Green quickly. How many more people do I need to sign up to get to the 8% that St. Helena and Janesville are at?

Oh, that's a good question. I'd have to look at the customer enrollment but I think 100 is a good number to shoot for.

Got

it. Thank you. Member Alessio.

Jenna, thank you for this presentation. Being also on the board, a fairly new member on the board I joined this year, appointed by the Board of Supervisors, I'm on the learning curve, I will say, but I'm very impressed. In terms of the programs that you just described in the question to Member Eisenberg, and I'm happy to share this, we had a meeting last night and there's a graph that shows the programs for each county and the jurisdictions within the county that are participating in these programs. NAPA gets an A plus because, City of NAPA, because they're participating in all. The rest of us, including the county, we're participating in, I think, about half, including the MCE Sync program.

So it does show that Calistoga and all of us are part of the Sync program, the EV Rebate program, the EV Charging program, and most of us on the energy storage, Calistoga is not marked here on the energy storage, but you have your own phenomenal energy, I don't

know

what

you call it. Resiliency Center.

Thank you, Resiliency Center. But there are some opportunities for American Canyon, Calistoga, St. Helena, Yountville and the county. It's multifamily energy savings, it's flex market commercial efficiency, small business energy advantage, and strategic energy management. Those, Jen, I'm wondering what's the best way that we outreach and we connect to see if there's opportunity there for the rest of us to catch up with the city of Napa in this aspect. What would the best way Would that be, have you presenting at the councils or for you to reach out to the different building planning environmental service departments among the jurisdictions here?

Mariela Herrick, who I believe a lot of you may know, is our staff contact for the NAPA jurisdictions. So she she works directly with staff across the jurisdictions to be in touch with them regularly, providing updates, and and letting them know what opportunities are available to them. We also just had our community power coalition meeting last week and and provided some opportunities there and some more insight into ways to participate, which staff were invited to. I think there's there's a lot of ways that that we can participate. Some of the programs are a little bit more targeted.

So for example, small business energy advantage is available throughout our service area, but we are targeting certain communities first. So not necessarily behind the curve on anything. Right? It's just a little bit of time to to get the programs up. But we always encourage you to reach out to our staff, to Mariela, who can connect you with the programs team. And if it's helpful to present to councils to share more about these programs, we're definitely happy to do that. Or if there are specific staff members who you want us to connect to, we're happy to do that as well. So it's really about what is going to be most effective for your communities. We're here to help.

Thank you. Because we're all a little bit competitive. I'm especially competitive. We're going to see what we can do more on the county respects and the other jurisdictions as I get to represent those jurisdictions here. But we're a big team here in Napa County and we strive for excellence always.

I will say that on the subject of the cost, there is a page on MCE. If you look up MCE Clean Energy Compare Rates, it'll show you light green, deep green, and PG and E comparison. So the average cost it shows there, it shows for light green, which is 60% renewable, MCE has been committed in achieving that. On the average, it's 176.77 a month. For 100% renewable through MCE, it's $102.34 so there's a little bit of a bump there.

And then for PG and E, is 23% renewable, it's $175.21 It's very, very minor over a year. It's basically $18 more for MCE to go light green and have that 60% renewable. It's a little bit more for deep green. It's $85 a year, but there's a lot more community benefit and renewable energy. So I guess it kind of depends on where you fall on that.

I will also say that MCE has not increased their rates in the last couple of years. They're not going to increase their rates this next year. It's already been discussed and there might be something else that might come back to MCE customers. That's to be determined and agendized. There's a little bit of talk about that. But I just want to thank Mariela and Sebastian too. They both have attended recent town halls that I've had here, one with Member Painter. We had one and Sebastian was there. And they really are experts at our disposal that we can use to help educate ourselves and our communities. So I just want to end on that.

Thank you again, Jenna.

Thank you so much. I hope we get to use some of that competitive spirit.

Anyone else up here? Okay. I wanted to ask just a quick question about the charging stations. So we put in 150 through Napa County. Is each jurisdiction responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of that, or how does that work?

So the the facility that puts in the charging stations would either be responsible or they their contract with the vendor to install the charging stations could have the vendor responsible. So it just depends on what the facility wants to do. And, again, this is this applies to workplaces and multifamily. So it could be, you know, the city offices, but it could be any any workplace across the jurisdiction. So that 150 number was across all of Napa County and the jurisdictions for cities or workplaces or multifamily across the board.

So it it just depends on which vendor you select and if they include maintenance as part of their So,

you know, I think it's common to run into a station that's just inoperable. And so as a community member, it sounds like it might take a little bit of time to figure out who's actually responsible for that. So I guess you would if it's in a public place, you'd go to the local jurisdiction itself, or if it's out of business, you walk in and ask, I guess. So it's just a little tricky because I noticed that sometimes it's difficult to know how to get someone to respond to a station that's actually down and maybe has been down for a while.

Yeah. Unfortunately, EV charging providers are a little bit like solar providers where there were a lot of them, and some of them went out of business. And it it kind of resulted in some issues. I think that's stabilized quite a bit since then. And and so folks are are finding they're a little bit more reliable. But for those that were installed a couple years ago, we we still have those those issues. But yes, great suggestion to go to the business or the jurisdiction and see if there's something that can be done.

Yeah. So if we start to see more deep green customers, does MCE now have more capacity to fill those number? Okay. And then I guess I was wondering too just if MCE has any you know, has been talking about any ideas around how to increase the number of deep green customers. I think a lot of people just don't understand they have that option and what that means and may see the extra cost, maybe not understand you know, that they're paying the extra cost, but they're doing something really positive in terms of using 100% renewable and benefiting the community.

So I don't know if there have been campaigns or other things we could be amplifying to encourage more deep green.

Yeah. Absolutely. So we have done campaigns in other jurisdictions. It could be so, like, for the city of Lafayette, they had their, I think it was their their fiftieth anniversary, and they ran, this campaign, give the gift of green. And it was a public campaign that we partnered with, Sustainable Lafayette to really go out into the community at all of the festivals and things like that and say, hey.

You know, for the city's fiftieth anniversary, like, consider giving the gift of green and sign up for deep green, and here's how you can do it. So we've we've done campaigns like that. We did one in El Cerrito as well. And we've also done sort of more specific campaigns with the city of Fair or the town of Fairfax. They have done this twice where they allocated, $6,000 to cover the cost of the deep green premium for a 100 new sign ups for a year.

The first time they did this, they had a grant from the air district to do And most recently, the city allocated the money. So, that's something where the intent is you cover it for a year, and then the customer realizes, you know, they they enjoy the service and it's easy to use. And so they they just continue to stay on that service. So those are a couple of things that we've done, but we're certainly happy to speak with specific jurisdictions and help you come up with a strategy if that's something you're interested in.

Great. Thank you. That sounds like something we might want to talk about. All right. All right. Well, thank you so much, Jenna. We really appreciate you being here and answering our questions and look forward to partnering with you.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. All right. Alright, we're going to go ahead and move on. We are going to receive another presentation from staff regarding the status of EV charging infrastructure in the county and a joint application to the MCE EV charging technical assistance and rebate program. So we're going to move right in and do more with MCE.

Thanks, Chair. Good morning. Yeah, so we're going to get into MCE quite a bit, but really kind of we're looking at the overall of scope of EV charging in Napa County and all the jurisdictions. But first, I want to acknowledge that this presentation was prepared by Rand Melendez, who can't be here to present, so I'll be presenting for him. But he will join us towards the end for Q and A since he's kind of the guy who put this together and has a lot of intel.

So today we're going go over an update on the number of EV chargers currently installed in the Napa County, MCE's EV charging technical assistance program and our efforts for a joint application to get technical assistance, and then next steps and funding available. To start, we'll cover an update on the number of EV chargers in Napa County. So we're looking at oops, I think maybe we skipped one. Oh, no. Cut that one out.

So, this was pulled from the State of California, the Climate Energy Commission, I mean, Energy Commission, and it shows the total number of light duty vehicles ending in 2024 that were zero emission. So as you can see on the top left, there are a little more than 6,600 kind of zero emission vehicles, the majority of which were battery electric and plug in hybrid, and a couple eight fuel cell vehicles. And then to the right, you'll see the total number of light duty vehicles in the county. Moving on to sales for the year, in terms of cumulative sales, you'll see that light duty vehicles, zero emission vehicles were about a little more than 8,000. And year to date, there's almost a thousand that were sold in 2025.

And if you look at the right side down at the bottom there, that encompasses about 28% of total light duty vehicle sales. And we do have information that in California, for year sales in 2025, it was about twenty four percent zero emission vehicles. So Napa is doing better than the state in terms of percentage of zero emission vehicles sold. So that's a I think that's pretty much a win for us. Okay, this one's an important one.

So electric vehicle chargers. This shows the state of California, right? And here we see that the state of California has over 200,000 EV chargers as of November 2025. Los Angeles County alone accounts for nearly 85,000 of those total chargers in the state, including 3,775 DC fast chargers. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Clara County, has the most EV chargers with 1,229 DC fast chargers and 32,400 level two chargers.

So that's an impressive number for Santa Clara. Napa County, the total public and shared private electric vehicle charging ports are about 863, including 783 level two chargers and 80 DC fast chargers. Okay, so this is the total number of EV chargers in Napa. So we're going highlight the estimated number of chargers needed in Napa County according to an analysis completed by the California Error Resources Board. Firstly, the data on the left do not exactly match the CEC data from the previous slides.

These numbers come directly from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL, which is a division of the U. S. Department of Energy. The county's GIS team helped pull this data together, and since the Energy Commission data only shows countywide data and doesn't specify which jurisdictions where in the jurisdictions charges are located, we use the NREL data. Staff are aware of these differences and are investigating the data to get a more accurate picture of the number of charges in the NAPA jurisdictions.

So the first column in white is the number of existing charges in the different jurisdictions and the total number. And the numbers highlighted in yellow in the graph show the estimated number of chargers needed to meet anticipated demand from that analysis by the California Air Resources Board by the end of this year. So these numbers come from CARB and the number of charges needed in each county by 2025 and each year after. So in yellow, basically, this is the number that was set by CARB of anticipated need, right? So then they're broken down by jurisdiction and by population size.

The numbers highlighted in red and green on the right show the number of additional charges needed by each jurisdiction by the end of next month. So, if we wanted to meet demand, in total, we'd have to install seven twenty seven additional level two chargers, right, based on that analysis done by CARB. So these numbers are kind of the the orange and green are kind of the differences needed, and it looks like Napa City has plenty of DC fast chargers. Napa County, you know, has plenty of, level two chargers, but overall, there's definitely work to be done in terms of installing chargers in general, but level two specifically for countywide. So now we're going get into the MCE EV charging technical assistance program and our work to submit a joint application with other jurisdictions.

As part of the MCE program, participants can receive no cost technical assistance to scope out EV charging solutions at identified sites, cost estimates for charging solutions both before and after MCE rebates, and once participants decide to move forward with installing EV charging using one of MCE's approved vendors, they can receive up to $4,500 per level two charging port for up to 20 ports per site through MCE's EV charging rebate program. This slide highlights the incentive amounts for EV charging installations in MCE's territories. All Napa County jurisdictions have opted up to the Deep Green Plan through MCE, so we could receive $4,500 per level two EV charging port for up to 20 ports per site. These incentive amounts are stackable with other EV charging incentive programs available through the Air District Charge Program and other statewide funding programs. So now we'll highlight the site selection and application process that we've completed.

So using the EV equity mapping tool developed by UC Berkeley PhD candidate Ari Bal Barak, which the CAC approved funding for earlier this calendar year, staff began an exercise to find priority sites to focus on for implementing EV charging infrastructure. For this joint MCE EV charging technical assistance program application, county staff focused initially on sites owned by public agencies for improved simplicity of implementing charging infrastructure on our own properties. Additional considerations were for sites near multifamily housing or facilities that provided services to multifamily housing needs, like the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency, sites with low access to public charging, and parks and recreational sites where EV drivers might want to enjoy the outdoors or recreational activities while charging. So, is a look at the tool. Here is an example where you'll notice on the sliding scales to the left shows areas with at least six multifamily residents and six renters.

And again, we were able to slide those scales up and down to kind of find the areas that made the most sense for potential port or EV charging. We also looked at the electrical grid load capacity, and it's set to 420 kilowatts capacity here, which would provide enough electricity for about 21 EV charging ports. And as you can see, you can't see it, but below, there was also, we were able to check off public parks, which is why they're highlighted here in green. After using the EV equity mapping tool to narrow down the list of initial sites, staff used the PG and E grid resources integration portal, or GRIP, tool and contacted PG and E staff to validate whether a site would have enough electrical capacity to handle the additional electrical load of new EV chargers. In the image here, you'll see an example of a 1,420 kilowatt capacity line leading to the Calistoga Police Department facility.

This would theoretically provide enough power for about 70 level two chargers or nine DC fast chargers. After confirming electrical load capacity, staff used aerial satellite imagery to analyze the number of parking spots viable for EV charging to come up with a number of recommended charging ports per site. And as seen on this table, with this data, staff made initial recommendations for the number of chargers to include at each site for a joint technical assistance program application to MCE. These recommendations were ambitious for sustainability goals, but didn't necessarily reflect the realities of fiscal considerations for each municipality. So these are kind of just hypothetical numbers based on the capacity and where they were.

After finalizing our initial recommendations, county sustainability staff contacted Department of Public Works staff, representatives in American Canyon, Calistoga and Napa County to gauge interest in participating in a joint application to the TA program. To note, staff focused on sites in American Canyon, Calistoga and Napa County sites that were within the city of Napa. Staff at the cities of Napa and Saint Helena have already completed MCE program applications for other municipal owned sites. So for this exercise, county staff did not investigate sites in these jurisdictions. Additionally, sites located within Yountville did not fit the criteria which staff used to determine this initial list of priority sites.

However, staff would like to ensure Yountville and other sites can be prioritized for future EV charging planning efforts. Once the initial sites were selected by county staff, we reached out to Department of Public Works for staff for each of the selected sites to see if they would be interested in moving forward with a joint technical assistance application. Everyone was on board with at least some of the sites. Jurisdictional staff provided local insight and decided that some of the initial circuit sites would not be good candidates for this round of technical assistance, so those sites were removed. Once the decisions on sites were finalized, county staff completed a joint master application for the program and got in contact with staff from ClearResult, the consultant for MCE who provides the free technical assistance.

ClearResult staff provided a building and electrical questionnaire for public work staff to complete that would serve as the basis for the site visits and site reports and cost estimate reports. After receiving the building and electrical questionnaires and following up with any supplemental questions, program staff schedule site visits for each selected site. Site visits involved providing a comprehensive evaluation of the site's suitability for EV charging, including the electrical capacity and equipment at each site, parking spaces most suitable for EV charging, proximity of electrical infrastructure to the parking spaces and any other information needed for developing site plans. So here are a few images or photographs of site visits at the American Canyon Parks Foundation future Napa River Ecology Center and at the Napa County HHSA buildings. After the site visits, ClearResult will provide site reports and cost estimates for each site, highlighting the opportunities to install EV charging at each site and the expected costs before and after MCE incentives.

The site reports include details about the existing site conditions that inform the solution, charging solution scopes with the number of chargers by type and location, a template bid request be used by contractors to submit bids for installation, and an appendix with a list of defined terms that were used in the document. Cost estimates include summaries for each charging solution option, the number of each type of charger, level two or DC fast chargers, the estimated cost for hardware and design and construction any available MCE EV charging incentive dollars to offset project costs net project cost estimates cost per port estimates. So, so far, we've completed visits for six sites and received reports on two of

those

sites. Sites with a completed site visit are highlighted in green here, while sites with a completed report are highlighted in blue. Three sites highlighted in pink have completed site questionnaires but are still awaiting scheduled visits. And the three sites highlighted in orange are no longer included in the initial site selection for various reasons. Once our reports have been finalized, staff plan to reach out to jurisdictional staff to explore opportunities to apply for funding together to get these projects across the finish line and installed.

In addition to the incentives through MCE, staff have identified a few other programs to help with funding the EV charging solutions. So this table shows the programs that offer incentive funds to help municipalities, businesses and multifamily residential sites afford EV charging infrastructure. So some of those programs are obviously MCE's EV charging rebates, communities in charge incentives, Bay Area Air District's Charge program, and Cal EVIP Fast Charge California project. And you can see the different level of incentives there on the table. Here are a couple of hypothetical scenarios of EV charging installations and the funding we could use to implement the projects.

The first is 20 level two chargers installed at a multifamily site. We could leverage the 4,500 per port for all 20 chargers through MCE funding, dollars 8,000 per port through the Communities in Charge funding, and $5,000 per port through the Air District's Charge program, assuming the Air District moves to fund the program again, resulting in a total incentive of $350,000 This would likely fund this caliber of project. The second example is installation of 10 DC fast chargers at a public site. Leveraging the CalEVP program funding and potential air district charge program dollars, we could possibly receive up to one five point million dollars in incentives. Many of these programs fill up fast for applicants, so it's good to have shovel ready projects at hand to apply to them quickly once funding becomes available.

By utilizing MCE's no cost, no obligation technical assistance, we can develop a pipeline of shovel ready EV charging projects to submit joint applications for funding to be able to reach our EV charging goals. And that's the end of our presentation and we are happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Do I have any public comment on the presentation? And, yes.

Is Ryan on the line? Great.

We've got Deborah coming on up.

Good morning, Deborah Elliott from the City of Napa. I just wanted to note, as I mentioned, we submitted we worked with MCE in 2024 to evaluate two sites. And in late twenty twenty four, we applied for and were awarded almost $1,000,000 in federal funding to install fast chargers in Downtown Napa. It's federal funding, so we're going through obligation now and we have our fingers crossed that we will get that funding eventually. So, just wanted to update you on that.

Great. Thank you, Deborah. And Ryan, are you there?

Yeah. Hi. Good morning, everyone. I'm just here to help answer any questions they Okay. Come

Is there anything you wanted to add before we keep going with questions?

Nothing so far. Okay,

great. Thanks. Member Joseph.

Yes, I have a couple of questions. Starting with the gap between where we're at now and what we have to do in thirty days or less, it seems so dramatic that you would, I would assume that there's a whole lot of complaining that we're getting. Mean so anecdotally is there getting a lot of customer pushback saying where the heck are all my chargers? I don't even want to drive my electric vehicle car because I don't have it. So I guess that's my first point.

The fact that we are so far from where we're supposed to be it would seem like there ought to be something terrible happening versus this is a model that somebody plugged in some variables, came up with a number, spit it out and said there you have it, you're not close. So I'm trying to get a reality check is what I'm asking for. That's my first question.

Brian, do you have anything?

Yeah. Can maybe answer. I I think anecdotally, you know, we don't necessarily hear that there is not enough charging for folks pub like in the public. Maybe, you know, in in little pockets Yeah. Here and there, we might we might see that, but, you know, people aren't necessarily voicing that so loudly.

I think the biggest gap where we you know, realistically that we are hearing is like multifamily charging opportunities as well. I've I've heard anecdotally of of people who have chosen to get a hybrid or or a gas vehicle instead of a plug in hybrid or an EV because their apartment complex does not have charging. Alright. So the the numbers from the carb analysis, yeah, it was a model to ideal, you know, to show like what is needed. Realistically, EV adoption is beginning to especially with the federal tax credits going away, we saw a big spike in EV sales or EV tax credits that were taken advantage of, you know, late late this fall or earlier this fall.

But, yeah, I think I think anecdotally, the largest gap we would maybe see is multifamily housing, which also is kind of one of the harder markets to hit for EV charging.

Okay. Thank you. And then the other question related to some of the rebates. I think I heard you say for the l two hypothetical those rebates are enough to cover most of the cost or maybe not and then I guess the real question is how much of those rebates or what percentage of the actual cost will the rebates for levels two and level three cover do we estimate?

That's a good question. That was a question I posed in my own head when we were going I through this call that I had not don't know if Jesse or Ryan are prepared to answer that off the top of their head, but Ryan is that part of presumably the analysis that NCE does, come up with the total cost estimate and then we know the rebate amount and we can calculate the difference of what municipalities would have to make up themselves.

Right. Exactly. So the the know, and it it is just a cost estimate, you know, boots on the ground cost could be a little bit higher or lower depending on electrical or construction or trenching or any, you know, any other number of costs associated with that project. But with the cost estimate, NCE provides a total cost estimate and then an adjusted if there are level two and or level one incentives available through MCE for that project. They would include the kind of the incentive adjusted cost in that in their proposal or in their cost estimate.

They those do not include other outside incentives so that charge the the air district's charge program or the communities in charge program, like those level two incentives wouldn't be included in that. But if we, you know, if we applied for funding or or had funding available for those those charters, then we could bring that into the cost estimate when we're scoping out a project. And as far as, you know, if those costs or if those incentives would cover the entire project, it is just so variable dependent upon the project. Whether or not you, you know, most projects will include some type of ADA compliance requirements, which, you know, is kind of a whole separate beast of of a project where where you're included not just the regular charging and and infrastructural, but different, you know, depending on how far electrical capacity is from the parking spaces that you're looking at at installing the chargers depending on, you know, what types if you need to bring in additional power to supply the chargers, you know, those those costs can increase pretty quickly. So it is just, you know, highly variable.

I've I've heard figures of on the average of about $10,000 per port to install, you know, again, so that's that's on average, but some can be, you know, that can climb very quickly depending on how complicated a project can be.

Okay, thanks. It sounds like there's enough variables that you almost have to be really passionate about the concept to plow through all the, not so much red tape, but all the headaches that can come from doing something like this. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. First I have Vice Chair Eisenberg and then Member Tripp.

Thank you. Know, looking at the current installed chargers, and I looked at the numbers for Calistoga, and obviously the overwhelming majority are on private property run by the resorts. And the great lack is in public publicly available chargers and I think that's really important when we look at projected needs that it differentiate between the resort chargers and the chargers that are available to the general public. And then second question, I'll just get this one out of the way really fast, which is I didn't see a link to presentation on the agenda and I would definitely like to have a copy of the presentation.

Okay.

We'll provide that, right?

Yeah.

Okay. All right. I'm sorry, Member Tripp?

I wanted to thank Ryan. That was an excellent presentation, including a slide to try to reconcile data discrepancies, which brings you know, is very great for transparency. And I think you said the numbers about the estimates of what we need. Is that the California Air Resources Board, the CARB? Doctor.

Yes, yes, that was the CARB analysis. Was done a while back.

Doctor. Okay, and my guess is that's by population and, I don't know, some other factors. But one of the things that always occurs to me, especially for Yountville, is the number of people who visit. And I'm doubtful that the car numbers take into account what is basically a tourist area. And we have such a big opportunity to encourage people not to be driving gas vehicles up and down 29.

I'm not arguing with the numbers. I'm just wondering, is there any way to take into account the numbers of visitors that might want to use charging stations? And so that was basically question other than to compliment you on the nice presentation. And that's a lot of work to get these grants. It's a huge amount of work. But I think it really says something because it's really boots on the ground or wheels on the ground. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, thank you for the commendation, and I I would just I haven't gone you know, I haven't read the full methodology of the the carb analysis. I would imagine they take some account of, you know, VMT in regards to tourism in an area, but I'm I'm not certain on that. And again, these are these are kind of estimates, and and those estimates are county wide, not necessarily jurisdiction specific. We we, you know, we had broken them down further by jurisdiction based on population.

But, again, we can we can overshoot the estimates if if we if we want to. It's just, you know, a matter of of public policy and decisions decision making on on installing more chargers to account for those the travelers.

So when you divided it up, you it came for the county or the area, and you divided it up by population, or how did you divide it up?

Yes, that was done before I arrived at the county, but I believe that was how we divided up the jurisdictional data.

Okay, thank you. And then I just my hat is off to the city of Napa with all the chargers. Well done. And the fast chargers I don't have an EV, but I've been on a road trip with an EV, and not finding chargers will really ruin your vacation.

Member Alessio? That's a

good segue. NAPA has done a great job and I think we got a nod to Deborah Elliott for that. She came from the county, she's with the city, she's very connected, is really a long time local expert in this area. I thank Deborah and the continued work she does with the county and all the jurisdictions for that. Two things.

One, I want to kind of refresh where the greatest emissions are coming from. They're coming from vehicle emissions. We know that through the GHG study we did. And if I recall, I think it's 39% of all greenhouse gases are coming from vehicles here in Napa County. And we said as a committee some time ago, this is a priority area for what we can do.

And one thing we can do is create access and access to EV charging. I think that we need more fast chargers, I guess that standard charger. It takes a lot of time. It's not convenient and we know that consumers want it now and they want it convenient. So to make it so, we need to get more fast chargers out there.

All chargers, but especially a focus on the fast chargers. I will say that I, to Director Member Joseph's question, I see all the time that people don't have the faith of feeling like they have a secure transportation because if they went strictly for EV and those who have, I've heard frustration that they don't have access to chargers or those fast chargers to feel confident about the commitments they have through their days and the responsibility. And that kind of insecurity does not allow people to have the full confidence in terms of purchasing those full EVs. Now I'm not saying that's everyone, but I do hear that a lot. I will say on a personal level, I have a hybrid because, again, I am not I don't feel secure enough that there's going to be charges and my car is going to be it's going take me everywhere I need to go and the time in which I need to get just day to day life.

So I'm just going to put that out there. So I think it is upon us to try to lean in and continue to meet this priority. We put a lot of time in this. We did a study. The study that the Berkeley doctorate intern did for us is exceptional.

We're really fortunate to have that because it really maps out those opportunities and those need areas. So as much as we can apply and I thank the county for working with the other jurisdictions that is trying to reach the success of the city of Napa, and the city of Napa can use more chargers too, especially the fast chargers, let me just say. But I really appreciate the work and the intention and continuing to make this a priority area. It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of work, but it's the only thing that's going to get us over that threshold where we're going to make a difference here in people having the consumer confidence at purchasing the EVs by having the access to those chargers. Thank you.

Thank

you. Anyone else? Member Joseph?

I wanted to also pick up on a couple of other comments that member Tripp and Eisenberg made, and that is for the L2 chargers, not the fast chargers but the regular chargers, they have a really important role to play at resorts and hotels because everybody who's coming here, you know, hopefully they'll spend the night and leave their cars getting charged at a slow but steady rate at nighttime which is the best rate. And so strategically, especially if we want to reinforce our tourism strategy, it would behoove us to do a focus on hotels and resorts to try to get them L2 chargers as much as possible because that actually would augment tourism to American Canyon but also to the Napa Valley because you could almost say look you don't have to worry as long as you spend the night here you're going to get charged. I mean if you're out all night you're on your own but you know if you're responsible you can get charged and we'll take care of you so come on down and have a good time in the valley. So I just want to throw that out as a strategic perspective to think about.

Member Alessio?

Thank you. And that just reminded me one point I also wanted to make, thank you Member Joseph, is that the workforce that is coming into our county every day. So the Napa Roadster just did a story saying that, you know, commute, the numbers are just as, were now pre COVID commute numbers in terms of vehicles. And it's roughly 28,000 to 30,000 people coming in and leaving this county every day. And so, we need to think about the workforce too.

So any employers that can secure those EV chargers. And I think it's great that the jurisdictions are taking this. I think it's hard to ask others to do something that we're not doing ourselves. So I'm glad that we're saying, hey, we're going to do this first. We ask others, we're going to show that we also are doing this, but the workforce is also very significant.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Great presentation and thanks for hopping on, Ryan. We appreciate you being here.

Absolutely. Thanks y'all.

Alright. And we have our final item 5C which is an update from staff on the regional climate action and adaptation plan. Mr. Gutierrez, Ms. Crosby, I don't know which of you is taking that.

Okay. I'll do it.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's a really kind of quick, simple update. We are in the middle of reviewing public comments, which we had a lot of, but also kind of just touch on the environmental review and implementation for the RCAP. So yeah, we had many, many comments received over the two month kind of open comment period. We're getting really close to kind of reviewing all the comments and developing preliminary responses to each comment. A lot of comments and concerns are kind of grouped together.

As you probably imagine, there's a lot of kind of similar concerns or praise, you know, but there are some specific comments on specific actions or specific measures, specific text changes that were requested. So we're looking at and have looked at a lot of these comments. We're probably 75% of the way done and working with our consultant to, you know, make any approved changes. We have talked as a group, the project staff, and making sure that we take each comment into consideration. We did receive over 400 comments just from the workshops, and those are more of thematic comments because they kind of came through those poster boards, and we couldn't list every single measure there because there would be too much information.

So those comments are more like, Yes, I agree with this, or Please, more EV charging, or What does EV charging even mean? So it's more thematic versus the comments that came in via the online comment tool. Those are very specific because people could comment on specific measures or specific lines. And then we received several dozen emails and letters, and those were also very specific based on just kind of different groups, like NAPA Green or the Bicycle Coalition kind of advocating for, you know, the work that they do. But a lot of those letters contain many comments within themselves.

We had to kind of break those out and, you know, you had, you know, some letters that had four comments and some had, like, 30, right, when you kind of broke them out. You know, that was working itself to just kind of get those broken out. And it says here over 115 comments, but I think there's definitely more. So we're in the middle of doing that, that work. We do want to produce a public facing document when we're done, so for transparency's sake, that we acknowledge that everyone's comments were heard and acknowledged, but also that some comments and some concerns did actually help us make some tweaks or adjustments to the plan, to the RCAP itself.

So the initial study of the environmental review is underway and it's expected to be completed in 2026. And that's when we would get a thirty day public comment period for that based on CEQA rules. And once we get closer to a final RCAP draft, which is probably be, like, in the 2026, we should all, the CAC and the working group, staff working group, should really start thinking about, yeah, implementation planning, prioritization of measures and strategies. The working group wanted to wait until we kind of had the public comment period done, had made any adjustments to figure out, yeah, how to talk about implementation. So we haven't done that quite yet, but we're getting close.

That will be kind of the next phase once we've done all the public comment and come up with the different responses, and we're going to have even, I think, master responses, like bigger responses. So, yeah, I think it's a good time to start thinking what implementation could look like, how we're going to start working in that direction. With that, those are the R CAP updates.

Okay, thank you. Do we have any public comment? Come on up, mister Miller.

I was just I was

just wondering, this was brought up. I was on a technical committee for the infrastructure portion of the Napa County general plan update that everything you're doing here because it's all such good work and more recent that it's getting fully incorporated into the general plan is that accurate?

Yeah, so right now the baseline data report is underway, working towards that baseline data report and yes, lot of the RCAP data and information is incorporated into specific sections for sure, like the environmental climate section, it's going to incorporate a lot

of this work. I just wanted reassurance that all that work we put into this is not going to get lost.

No, definitely not. They're definitely kind of intertwined, for sure.

That was my question. Thank you.

Thank you. And good reminder that we're still accepting data for the baseline data report, so send your data in. All right. Any other questions or comments?

Just a question. Are like a half dozen comments added to the staff report and I'm wondering what was the basis for including them. I mean they were very good comments and got me thinking but if there's 700 comments, why are they highlighted?

No, that's a great question. I think there is some confusion to that because there are so many comments. And these were kind of comments that were specifically said, Add me to the agenda or RCAP agenda. So, like, they were specifically asked to be a part of a public comment for these agendas. A few kind of got of lumped in by kind of accident.

So, yeah, they're definitely not the full breadth of comments we've Some of these were, like, specifically targeting or asking to be considered by the Climate Action Committee, So they kind of made it on here, but yeah. All the letters we received, there's so many kind of really great letters and comments that we received, and yeah, we haven't added all those to kind of a public comment PDF to share with you all.

Okay, because in that regard there were some concerns that I think you know not being a scientist I don't know if they're as relevant as they sound but seem to be something that hopefully staff will address or assent. And then there were some that were more policy driven like trying to redefine or insist that voluntary compliance versus kind of our approach which is we're not draconian but we are kind of nudging you in the right direction. So I don't know if you need direction or we've already talked enough about this that we know where we're going or where staff's going.

I think so. Yeah. At this point, think it's just a matter of reviewing those comments kind of individually and talking about them as a group and working with Ascent to figure out the best way to respond to those. Knowing that we already have direction from the Climate Action Committee and kind of the intent of the measures, the intent of the plan, the fact that we want it to be a CEQA qualified plan, that there's calculations and measures already in place that we want to get to, you know, net zero carbon by 2045. So, like, I think that's plenty enough, I think, direction to be able to respond to a lot of these comments. But I'm sure if we do have questions and do need more direction, we'd come back and ask.

Okay. Thanks.

Is there someone on the website where all of the public comments to date live where members could look at those?

No. At this point, what you can review is the draft RCAP. And if you click the comments button, you can see all the comments that are there. Yeah, which is several 100 comments. So you can see those. But the letters that were sent, we haven't published those. I'm sure we probably could share them if we wanted to. If you want to see all the comments, we can try to compile them.

I think, you know, like we're kind of used to as board and city council members and what, like just seeing public comment posted somewhere at some point. So, you know, whenever that can get done, think people would be happy to have that opportunity.

Sure. All right.

Member Alessio?

Yes, and I was going to also mention the website on napacounty.org, Regional Climate Action Adaptation Plan, you can find a lot of information there and the timeline that this work has started and has been going through and where we are. I do think we could also let folks know where we are now. It goes through the public comment portion, which ended at the September. So if we can kind of get an update to the county website division with where we are now and where we're headed, that would be great too, just again for the public's understanding of what their participation is and where we are in this process. Thank you for the ongoing great work.

Yeah, we can do that.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Do we have any reports or announcements? Staff?

Yeah, a few announcements. So, this is the last meeting of 2025. First meeting of 2026 will be in January, and we'll be choosing or electing the chair and vice chair, so just be aware of that. We'll be discussing and adopting a yearly calendar, so start thinking about that, what that looks like. Previous years, we've always done these meetings on the fourth Friday of every month, but there are possibly some Fridays which might fall on long weekends. So do we want to hold meetings or schedule those meetings when we know they might not possibly be able to take place? I think that's something to think about when we talk about the calendar in the New Year.

Okay. We will do that. Jamison?

I was just going to say, just to add real quick, yeah, we'll present a draft calendar for your consideration and if there are also times that could conflict with conferences that municipal staff frequently go to, just kind of have those in your own mind and your own calendar and we can revise it as needed and adopt a final calendar.

Okay, great. Thank you. Any reports or announcements from members? Member Painter?

I'll just make one quick announcement and I know I already mentioned it but since we're talking 2026, I just want to remind everyone that March 26 will be the fourth annual NAPA Climate Summit. The agenda is almost formalized, and I've already mentioned the topics, but we're looking at resiliency both from a land based perspective, where we're going to have some great presentations from Cal Fire on work that they're doing, and then community based presentations featuring information from our Calistoga Resiliency Center, which is a fabulous presentation, as well as looking at green workforce development. If you want to put that on your calendars, would be great. It will be at Napa Valley College, three to five p. M, March 26.

Great. All right. Let's see. Any future agenda items? All right. Right. All right. Then we are going to go ahead and move to adjournment. Let's see. When is our next meeting? Not till January. Is that what you just said? Okay. I'm sorry. I'm looking at the notes here and it's saying 11:20.

I'm like, oh, it's not about 11:20. All right. Well, we will go ahead and adjourn. And everyone have a wonderful holiday season and we will see you next year, if not before.