Council Sustainability Committee - Regular Meeting

Sorry about that. Thanks, Jason. Thank you. This is the 11/06/2025 council sustainability committee meeting, and I will first call the meeting to order. This meeting is being conducted with a virtual component.

Anyone wishing to address the CSC virtually can join the meeting on Zoom using the link or phone number and webinar ID shown on the screen. When the chair, which would be me, announces the item on which you wish to speak, click the raise hand feature in Zoom or dial 9 on your phone. And when the chair calls your name to provide public comment, if you're participating via phone, please press 6 to unmute yourself. For peep for in person attendees, please fill out a speaker card, which you can find on the sign in table to the left of the door. So that completes item number one.

Now item number two is roll call. Ms. Lee, can you take roll, please? Certainly. Chair Hicks? Here. Member Showalter? Here. Member Clark? Here. So now we move on to item number three, which is minutes approval. This would be for the CSC meeting of the minutes for the CSC meeting of 06/26/2025. Does anyone have any comments or questions about the meeting minutes? Okay. Seeing none from the public.

Let's see. The next thing is would and I see no there are no comments from the public, I imagine. No. Okay. So now would anyone like to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes? So moved. Second? Okay. So, miss Lee, will you call vote? Certainly. Chair Nix? Yes. Member Shellwalter? Yep. Member Clerk?

Yes.

Now we're on item number four, which is oral communications. This would be oral communications from the public. This portion of the meeting is reserved for people wishing to address the committee on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to three minutes during this section. State law prohibits the CSC from acting on nonagendized items.

So would any member of the public like to provide comments on an item that is not on the agenda? If so, please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star nine on your phone. Those attending in person may turn in completed speaker cards. No online speakers. Oh, sorry. One raised hand from Mary Dadeo. Okay. And no in person speakers? Okay. Then Mary Dadeo?

Mary should be able to unmute. There it is. Thanks.

Good evening. I just wanted to make sure people are aware of the electric home tour that Actara is sponsoring this weekend. It's on Saturday from 11AM to 4PM. And for those people that are interested in electrifying, this is a great opportunity to talk to other homeowners who have already done the conversion and to get their thoughts on how it went and suggestions and learn about, just learn about the process. So, if you go to actera.org and, wind your way through their website, you can you can, find it.

It's called the green at home tour. Again, this Saturday, eleven to three, I think it is, or it's eleven to four, something like that. Thanks.

Thank you. Any other virtual speakers? I'm seeing none. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Then we will close item number four and move to item number five, which is new business. 5.1 under new business is a presentation on climate related federal legislation. This item will be presented by chief sustainability and resiliency officer Danielle Lee and staff from MMO Partners. Ms. Lee?

Thank you, chair Hicks. I wanted to just briefly introduce this item. We've invited John O'Donnell and Kiriakos Pagones from MMO Partners, our federal lobbyists, to talk to our committee this evening about federal legislative changes that have occurred specific to climate change legislation just to set the context for the decarbonization analysis work that we are undertaking. So we're pleased to have both John and Karyapas here this evening, and I will turn it over to them.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for the introduction and for the opportunity to talk with your committee. I would start by saying something that's pretty obvious to everybody, and that is that a lot of initiatives in Washington DC that were at the forefront of the previous administration are facing some pretty strong headwinds at this time. You're all familiar with the reconciliation bill that was passed, or signed into law on July 4, the one big beautiful bill act. Then there are rebate deadlines that are coming up.

Some have occurred, but more will be happening. And then there's been a significant amount of executive action by the administration that has affected climate resiliency programs. And then finally, in terms of our presentation, I mentioned headwinds, but there are also tailwinds. And some of those tailwinds are legislation that has been introduced this year that actually shows some bipartisanship and some opportunity to continue work, might maybe not with the same focus as we had previously on climate action legislation or programs. But when I said that there are headwinds, I'd say in every every change in administration, there's a a change in focus, and some are more dramatic than others.

This one happens to be pretty dramatic, but I think, from our experience representing local governments for over forty years, we've seen this, ebb and flow of emphasis on different programs. And I would say that setting aside not setting aside what happened on Tuesday of this week in in your state and on the East Coast and in many local governments, you see some of that tailwind activity that I I was referring to. And you also will see, I think, some additional opportunities coming up in the next session of the congress with legislation. So I mentioned that, you know, the the one big beautiful bill was passed on July 4. Then, at the September, there were, tax, vehicle credits expired.

December 31, there are gonna be more incentives that will not be on the books. And then earlier this or last month, in October, the Department of Energy and you you may have read about this or heard about this in the media, but the Department of Energy announced the termination of about 223 projects totaling more than 7,500,000,000 across multiple programs office at programs at the Department of Energy. The, clean energy demonstration program, the energy efficiency, renewable energy office, the grid deployment program, manufacturing and energy supply chains, fossil fuel, and the ARPA operation, which focuses on energy. Those programs have kind of disappeared from the radar screen at this point. However, while that is happening and and many people believe there's been a focus on on blue states, The interesting twist here is that some of the grid improvements that were scheduled to be paid for out of this $7,500,000,000 are in Republican states, Republican districts.

And there's a concern on the part of, Republican members of the house and senate, and utilities in their states about the impact that at funding, retrenching has is going to have on their programs. So those are a a few of the smaller forces, but they're there, that I we think will begin to affect in the longer term how this climate action agenda gets handled here in Washington. And what you're gonna be probably seeing in the next year and a half as we get into next year with the midterms. And then once the midterms are over, you'll begin to see ideas come from different candidates running for office who will probably have a wide variety of suggestions or thoughts or recommendations about dealing with the climate. So that's kind of an overview.

I'm gonna ask Kiriakis to follow-up to talk about legislation, some of the executive actions, and the federal rebate deadlines. Kyriakos?

Thanks, John. Can we please move on to slide four? Thank you. So as as John mentioned, I think, just to highlight, you know, some upcoming, deadlines as a result of the the the reconciliation bill. So in in California and across the country, December 31 for homeowners to be able to take advantage of some of these credits.

These are these are coming up for heat pumps. You can see 2,000, water heaters, 2,000 insulation, about $1,800 for panel upgrades, and then home energy audits, 150. Now state of California may have its own, and I'm guessing the state does have, their its own sort of credits for for things, but these are the federal credits that have been rescinded as a result of of the bill. Next slide, please. As John mentioned, the executive actions, Trump administration took immediate action on on day one as it relates to this committee.

This this executive order signed on the twentieth entitled unleashing American Energy, which in section seven called for terminating the Green New Deal. That set up, what we have now seen as several actions, including the EPA EPA's, endangerment finding proposed rule, to rescind, the endangerment finding done in 2009. Probably the probably one of the more significant actions taken by the administration to date. I don't I think all of you, understand the, ramifications of of this, being made final. And they've I think to date, as last I saw, there's about over 500,000 comments submitted.

The deadline for comment submissions was back in September, I think, on the twenty second. And, the EPA is is currently going through and has to go through and review all all comments. NLC, a number of other, public groups have have submitted comments about the impacts. NLC in particular submitted comments, and we've been talking with them throughout this process, and really focused on on the the impact of, rescinding the rule on on the health and and sort of the, climate impacts for local governments, including, you know, the impacts from disasters. And and, you know, and I think you all have taken action locally to to do what you can to to prepare, in case there are, natural disasters that happen.

But, NLC's comments really focused on that and also focused on on public health. And I I think some of those comments we've we've shared with city staff. As far as other agencies go, as John talked about DOE taking action, recently, the Department of Transportation early on, took significant action to eliminate greenhouse gas greenhouse gas measurement rule. It took action to review a number of grants, especially, ones that that were were created by the inflation reduction act, and still reviewing a number of grants, especially, transit. Low and known low and no emission grants are are still being reviewed.

And in and in fact, talking to other clients that we represent, we know that if if they ask for funding to do zero emission buses, a number of those, are being requested to be rescoped. And so cities are having to make decisions about whether or not they they wanna do that, and in some cases, going from zero emission, vehicle applications to maybe some that are hybrid. These are these are decisions that are being made, as we speak at the local level. So, significant actions are are you know, have been taken by DOT, EPA, DOE, and other agencies. Next slide, please.

So as John mentioned, there are there are some areas where, we see some some opportunity. For example, in the FY twenty six appropriations, budget process, which we're still, you know, going through as as John mentioned about the shutdown. The city was able to secure $1.1.0.1 145,000.000 for the Charleston Slough project for tidal gates. That is something that we worked, closely with city staff to develop and, supported by the council when, you all came back to DC back in March, and, representative Liccardo, was successful in getting, the city's request included in in the appropriations bill, which is still pending, but, it's in there. The FEMA Act, recently passed, the Transportation Infrastructure Committee with broad bipartisan support.

This action was taken, as a result of the administration's rescission of of, BRIC funding, building resilient infrastructure communities funding. And, there, as you can as we mentioned, bipartisan support for taking FEMA out of Homeland Security and also creating a new, brick style formula program. 50% of the funding that would be, sent to the states would have to be suballocated at the local level. The bill also, as as is currently written, requires states to develop a preapproved project list, which, theoretically would, cover at least one project per county as as as the bill is currently written. We're working with, t and I committee staff and others to to try to enhance that, try to increase it from 50% to 60% as a sub allocation requirement.

And so and this is pretty significant. If the bill gets passed, which we don't see it happening this year, we do see, potentially passing the house by the end of the year depending on when the the house reopens. But it is something because of the the strong bipartisan support it has on the house side. If it does go to the senate, there there could be a good opportunity to include it in some piece of, legislation next year. So it's something we're watching.

It would certainly provide a significant amount of funding, to do mitigation and, resiliency work, in in states and and local governments. Energy independence and afford affordability act was recently introduced by representative Mike Thompson. We've been working with his team. It it restores a lot of the energy tax credits that were rescinded, as a result of the one big beautiful bill act. And so that was recently introduced.

As of last week, there are about a 112 cosponsors. We were talking to city staff about the bill, and, it's something where, you know, we would recommend that the city support it and also, you know, and and and reach out to congressman Ricardo to request that he, support it as well. I think last slide. And that comes up to comments and questions.

Hey. Thank you very much. So do any committee members have questions?

Yeah. I guess the FEMA, Act, does it have anything or much in it related to flood insurance?

This no. Well, it it doesn't directly, deal with flood insurance. There is another bill, that, has been introduced by representative Palone from New Jersey that does deal with, the flood insurance program. But this this bill, really focuses on the public assistance program, makes changes to that. As I said, develops a new, mitigation formula program, takes FEMA out of Homeland Security, which is is probably one of the larger pieces of the bill.

My other question about it is, does it include, any funding or discussion of the maintenance of weather reporting, and monitoring. That's one of the things that's been axed and discussed to axed, but there's a real need for I mean, we all use this meteorological data all the time, and it's particularly valuable for public safety during disasters. So is that included in this?

I I don't believe it is, council member, but we will go back and and double check and verify and get back to you.

Okay. I I just know that that's something, in EENR, you know, at NLC

Yep. That

we're really, really, worried about. And in fact, we we added a new resolution this year on that subject because it seems like it's, you know, it's a big hole. So I'm not sure whether where it needs to be put in, but it's it's something that, you know, really can't be done by anybody but the federal government. It's it's such a big, you know, a big thing. So however we can get that in is is important. And and you could let us know where it's going and where we could advocate, that would be much appreciated.

Will do. We'll we'll follow-up with Carolyn, and and and see what they're thinking on that.

Thank you. Yep.

It's a member of Clark. Okay. So I have lots of questions, but they're more questions than Dia's questions. So are there any members of the public that have comments, either virtually or in person? I don't see any online.

Okay. Then this is an information item and no action is required, but if any committee members want to discuss it at greater length, personally my intent is to discuss the next item, but any discussion points? Okay. Then just thank you very much. Very informative, and this will be informing 52, I think.

You have a time machine to jump forward to next

week. So are you saying you got some hope from Tuesday? It's a little. I I know. So now we're moving on to item number two, which is our decarbonization goal analysis. This item will be presented by staff from the sustainability division and Cascadia Consulting Group, and Ms. Lee will commence the presentation. Thank you, Chair Hicks. I wanted to start this item with just a brief some brief high level reflections.

You know, one of the things that drew me to Mountain View, was its long standing commitment to sustainability from its early leadership on sea level rise to its ambitious climate goals. Not only has the city consistently demonstrated its commitment to this work, but it's really rolled up its sleeves and accomplished a great deal. All of us here this evening in the sustainability and resiliency division are really proud to be part of an organization that is so proactive in response to climate change. Tonight's item, while on its surface is just a mid project update. However, given the scale of change that we've observed since the start of this year, I mean, honestly, it feels like a a sustainability staffer a lifetime ago that we set we started this project.

I know that some of the news that we're bringing to you is bleak. You know, we're experiencing setbacks, delays, or outright policy reversals at the regional, state, and federal levels. And all these changes are truly dramatic. Our hands are increasingly tied, and it feels like the the levers for change that we have are disappearing before our eyes. It's, of course, been a lot to take in, but it's also proven to be a forcing function for us.

The scale of this challenge is so great that we're really pushing ourselves to test the limits. You know? What are the creative ideas that we can pursue? Things like financing strategies, statewide legislative collaboration, and new and perhaps novel partnerships. And we're honing in on the work at the local level that will be the most effective, not only in meeting our climate goals, but also moving us forward and building the Mountain View tomorrow.

So, I just wanted to kinda reassure the committee that we all as staff are doubling down on our commitment to do this work, and to making Mountain View a more sustainable community. Slide. Just some background. As you know, in November, the council approved a contract to undertake a 2035 and 2040 decarbonization goal analysis. In June, preliminary work, was presented to this committee.

It included projected emissions through twenty forty five, emissions reductions from regional, state, and federal policies, and some legislative changes that we were starting to see. We also presented a preliminary list of local emissions reducing actions that we would like wanted to model to see how we would close this emissions gap. The feedback that we received from your committee was general support for the local actions identified, and some dis there was some discussion around the population projections and the corresponding emissions forecasts. We've adjusted those population projections, and we can we'll be showing those to you this evening. And just to note here, our finding with population is really that both the problem and the solution sort of scale in tandem when it comes to population.

So we're happy to model additional population projections if there are other estimates that the committee would like to learn more about. But it's our understanding that the the real takeaways from this analysis are how the solutions compare to the scale of the problem. And then, you know, at the end of this item, we're hope the staff is recommending that your committee review the emissions reductions that we have modeled, approve the remaining items that we would like to model, and then direct our team to develop a five year road map aimed at achieving the 2045 decarbonization goal, which is the decarbonization goal that has already been adopted by council. Okay. And now, I'd like to hand it over to, our colleagues from Cascadia.

We have Hailey Weinberg and Alicia Fennel, and they've been working in very close partnership with our team since the beginning of this project.

Thank you, miss Lee. So we will go ahead and dive into the results of this updated analysis. We wanted to start with a quick reminder and overview of this analysis since the last time we spoke, was back in June with you. So, again, as as miss Lee just teed up, the decarbonization goal analysis is a projection model, which forecasts Mountain View's greenhouse gas emissions into the future under multiple different scenarios. The model uses the city's 2022 greenhouse gas inventory as a baseline and forecasts emissions through 2045.

Emissions are projected through 2045, and let's go back to the last slide, actually, please. Thank you. Using, as, again, we just we just kind of reviewed those projected changes to Mountain View's demographics, specifically projected population and employment growth. So this data previously came from the city's 2023 to 2031 housing element environmental impact report. And as you might recall, it showed significant growth in Mountain View.

But the revised growth factors that we're using that we'll show in just a couple slides incorporate county level population data and employment projections for the San Jose Sunnyvale Santa Clara MSA, or Metropolitan Statistical Area, from the California Department of Finance and the employment development department. So we've got new data sources for those growth factors. And, again, as we as we've started to say, these growth factors and the updates here change how the wedge figure looks, as we'll show in a couple slides, because they affect both the magnitude of the emission increases under the business as usual scenario as well as the emission reductions from state and local policies. So those changes directly correlate to the changes, in the increases and decreases that we see. Next slide, please.

Thank you. So, again, a quick refresh reminder from a few months ago. The analysis models three different scenarios. The first is what we call the business as usual, which forecasts the city's twenty twenty two greenhouse gas emissions assuming no policy or programmatic intervention. So we sometimes call this scenario the no action scenario.

Next, the adjusted business as usual scenario models the expected impact that key climate policies will have on the city's emissions. So this looks at a collection of state and regional policies and commitments and also includes, expected electric vehicle market trends. And lastly, the third scenario analyzes the impact of 10 key decarbonization actions, which can occur at the local level. So tonight's presentation features the initial modeling results for five of those 10 local actions, And the modeled actions aim to assist the city with evaluating the effort needed to reach the city's decarbonization goal. The project team, as mentioned, will also be presenting a list of the remaining five local actions that are currently under consideration for modeling later on in this presentation.

And the five year road map will also include, unmodeled actions, so things that are still priorities in the near term but are harder to model or are more indirect in their emissions reductions.

Right. So this table shows the results of our business as usual and adjusted business as usual modeling in three key years, which are 2035, 2040, and 2045. And so the topmost row here is the business as usual emissions. So, just as a reminder, those are the emissions that will occur kind of in a no action future, so no jurisdictional climate action. And so under that scenario, we expect that emissions will increase to around 500,000 metric tons of c o two equivalent by 2045.

And then the rows below that, showed the expected impacts of the policies, the market trends, and commitments that we have modeled. So it should look pretty familiar from June, but we want did want to flag a couple of key updates. The first of which is that since that meeting in June, we were able to obtain data that we could use to model Silicon Valley Clean Energy's commitments to providing clean electricity. Their board has approved a commitment to provide carbon neutral electricity to their customers from 2025 through 2045. So we have added that into the model.

And then the other update that we've made is updating the EV market transaction to more accurately reflect the percentage of pass due vehicles being sold in Mountain View that are electric. Previously, we had been using a statewide average, and we have not been able to obtain Mountain View specific data. But we have been able to obtain the sales rate in Santa Clara County, which we are using as a proxy. And so it's kind of combination of policies, commitments, market trends is expected to cut emissions down to about a 189,500 metric tons of c o two equivalent by 2045, which is about a 62% decrease from the business as usual scenario. So since presenting this model in June, we have added five decarbonization actions into this forecast, and those are implementing reach codes that were adopted in September, providing outreach education and incentives to encourage building electrification, implementation of a transportation demand ordinance, implementation of an active transportation plan, and then implementation of mixed use zoning and transit oriented development in existing and in progress plans.

So the combination of these local actions is projected to address about 5% of the remaining emissions in 2035 and 2040 and then about 2% of the remaining emissions in 2045. So that's about a 185,000 metric tons CO2 equivalent emission gap by 2045. And so we have a couple notes to make just about, you know, why these numbers are a lot smaller than the numbers on the last slide. First of which is that, a lot of these emission sources have already been addressed through what has been modeled in the existing business as usual. If we could go back one slide, that would be great.

Thank you so much. So just as an example, SVCE's clean electricity commitments and the state's clean electricity policy are expected to result in fully clean electricity by 2045. And, also, the Bay Area air district's rules will take care of a majority of natural gas emissions by 2045. So that's why the impact of local reach codes, for example, is much smaller in 2045 than it is in the years before. But just as an example of why these actions continue to be important is that if the air district rules did not exist, we would expect that the local reach code policies would result in about 30,000 metric tons of c o two emission reductions in 2045.

So that really I mean, in this especially in this political climate, it really illustrates how local action can serve as, a safeguard or a backstop if existing regional or state policies don't deliver as expected. And then one other thing to note is that, some of the things that the local governments can do, are necessary to set the stage for behavior change, but they don't always directly result in that behavior change themselves. So for example, active transportation infrastructure, like better bike lanes, better sidewalk infrastructure, it's necessary for people to drive less, but it doesn't actually require people to bike or walk somewhere instead of driving. So just another example of why these actions are super, super important. Next slide, please.

Thank you. So this slide shows a visual representation of the tables that we talked about on the last two slides, and it should look pretty familiar from the June CSC meeting. The colorful wedges from the dark blue, to the bright teal kind of represent the expected impact of those ABAU policies, commitments, and market trends that we just discussed. And then below those, you'll see the smaller wedge, kind of dark green and, like, peachy orange. And then the gray space below those shows the, emission gap between potential carbon neutrality targets for 2035, 2040, and 2045.

Next slide, please. So in the wedge diagram on the last slide, we just saw that emissions gap, which was made of the light gray area. So what this slide shows is what that area is made of. So the leftmost bar in this graph shows Mountain View's current emissions profile, which is the model's baseline. It's from the city's, 2022 greenhouse gas inventory, and that's made up of all of the emission sources that are shown in the legend on the right.

And the majority of emissions are coming from on road vehicles and natural gas. Looking at the bar that is furthest to the right, by 2045, the forecast is showing no remaining electricity emissions and a very small amount of natural gas emissions because those sources are mostly going to be addressed through modeled state, regional, and local policies. But 65% of remaining emissions are expected to be coming from on road vehicles by 2045. And as you may recall from our June presentation and as staff have illustrated in the CSC memo, on road vehicle emissions would have been taken care of by California's advanced clean cars policy. But now without that state level policy in place, without that being able to be enforced, local jurisdictions just don't have strong levers to pull that can move people out of their gas powered cars and into electric vehicles, which is why we see such a large emissions gap, that comes from the on road vehicles.

And so as we mentioned a couple slides ago, local governments can put the infrastructure in place to support driving cleaner vehicles and driving less. But as things stand right now, there are few, if any, levers to ensure that that transition actually happens. So those are the remaining emissions that we are expecting, in Mountain View by 2045. And I think we'll pass it back to miss Lucky.

Thank you, miss Weinberg. So this next part of the presentation, we're going to go through the potential modeled actions, the remaining five actions that we can model for consideration. And just want to based on this previous slide where the remaining emissions largely lie in transportation and and and some still in building as well. A lot of the modeled actions we're looking at focus on those two sectors. And one thing as well that we were looking at is, you know, we're look not just looking at new actions.

We're looking at how are our currently implemented plans, policies, programs working to help us continue to reduce emissions in the future. When we've had a lot of our GHD inventory discussions every year, it kind of pops up, you know, how much does this active transportation plan potentially reduce in GHD emissions. And so we are looking at tamale as a way to kind of answer that and see, engage what kind of efforts we need to continue on or, you know, whether we need to kind of look at enhancing some of these areas. And I'll one last point too. We're not only looking at kind of what actions would gain the most significant GHD reductions, but also where we can find data and studies to support the modeling.

Especially for something that's new or innovative, it's not always easy to find data or studies. We have make a lot of assumptions. And so it's kind of this fine needle we're trying to thread as to what would give us good GHD reductions and also kind of where can we find data that's reliable and can kind of show how much we would receive out of that action. And next slide. So for transportation, we are considering modeling expanding EV charging infrastructure at existing multifamily properties through policies and programs.

So currently, the building code and our reach code does a great job at providing or or ensuring that we have EV charging in in new multifamily developments. So this area could potentially be a good source of significant GHD reductions. Particularly, people tend not to buy EVs if they don't feel like they don't have reliable, accessible charging at home. So it's one aspect. And then the second potential area to model is outreach, marketing, and education to encourage EVs.

We've been doing this for a long time, and we can continue doing that, especially as the kind of clean cars act has phased out. We wanna still ensure that people are knowledgeable about purchasing EVs, what to expect, and continue to encourage that adoption. The third area we'd like to look at is continuing to implement our parking management strategies that eliminate parking requirements for affordable and residential developments within various precise plans. Some of those plans include North Bayshore, East Wiseman, El Camino Real, San Antonio and downtown precise plans, as well as Moffett Boulevard, which is currently under development. Next slide.

And for buildings, which is still a remaining emission sector in 2045, we are considering modeling time of sale requirements, which uses property purchases as a means to implement actions aimed at reducing emissions. This approach has historically faced resistance from the real estate sector, which use it as a potential hindrance in holding up the sale of a property or increasing the prices of properties. However, Berkeley has just adopted a ordinance that kind of seems to follow some some promising compromises to this action that's, again, long been considered. So it's something we'd like to model to see how much emissions we could reduce. It doesn't necessarily mean we would, you know, pursue it because we do need to look at a lot of the aspects of implementation and how that would work particularly for Mountain View.

And finally, we'd like to look at modeling our our modeling our city's zero waste plan. If if we go back a few slides to where the map was, our landfill emissions are still remaining in 2045 as well. So it'd be interesting to see how that would help us to reduce our emissions.

Color are they?

I It's orange.

Right. What's the so wastewater is at the top, and

you can't see anything for wastewater except that it's Right. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Yeah. So I think we're at

yes. Here. Thank you. So another item we are looking to get feedback on from the committee is directing the project team to develop a five year road map, and it would be focused on achieving the city's currently adopted goal of decarbonization by 2045. Next slide.

So the five year road map would be an actionable five year plan that identifies near term priorities to move the city towards its decarbonization goal. So we wanna leave enough we don't wanna plan too far in the future because, again, there's changes that occur at the federal, state level, technology changes. So we wanna be nimble in our approach, but also understand what we can do in the near term. So this road map will include both modeled and unmodeled actions, and we'll continue to update it and update our modeling and our road map as changes occur, especially significant changes. For example, if the air district rules are delayed or reversed, you know, we can easily address that through our road map.

Next slide.

So one of the areas that we're discussing is for a while, we've been talking about should we accelerate our goal? Should we keep the current goal? And this has been an ongoing discussion for since I've since I've been here. And in looking, it's been doing this exercise has been really helpful in trying to understand what's the effort it would take to accelerate our goal or maintain our current goal. And what we are finding is that our current goal of 2045 still remains very ambitious.

And we're expecting that the five models we the five actions we're proposing for modeling are gonna yield similar results, and accelerating our goal to 2035 or 2040 is going to be very, very challenging. And so this 2045 goal still allows us to be ambitious. It ensures a feasible and equitable approach into meeting the city's goal and adjusting as things change in technology or the legislative landscape. Slide. And this is just pointing back to kind of what are our remaining emissions to focus in on.

Slide. And the other part of this exercise of modeling is looking at how our local actions kind of move with legislative or state state actions or federal actions. And as you as we reported in June, it's been a very volatile environment for state and legislative actions. And I'm gonna walk through in the next few slides what some of those have been that have directly impacted our local emissions over the last few months and our projections.

Next slide.

So the first one, and starting at the regional level here, is the air district rules that would prohibit the sale of gas fired water heating and space heating equipment starting in 2027. We we have identified that there is a concept paper that's been released the end of end of October potentially pointing to amendments that may be made to these rules to address affordability, the realistic ability to implement the rules as well. And so we are working on preparing for comments to ensure that the rules continue forward in an equitable manner. And as you can see on the right hand side of this slide, the expected reductions from the air district rules are quite significant. And going back to Ms.

Weinberg, and she was talking about, you know, if these rules were to go away, you know, our local reach codes would kick in and provide 30,000 tons of reduction still. So it's it is truly a safeguard in that regard. The next item happened at the state level, a moratorium on local reach codes. So a b one thirty, which is a trailer bill to the budget, is it would prohibit cities and counties from adopting residential reach codes for the next six years. And so that's been very difficult.

So, you know, so if the air district rules are delayed or reversed, you know, we don't have a lot of ability to implement further reach codes in the next six years. So, again, that kind of helps us hone in on the 2545 goal is as, you know, a goal to consider to maintain so that we can adjust. And I wanted to note the city's response to this state legislation. So we we reacted pretty quickly. We sent a letter of nonsupport to the state.

We accelerated our reach code adoption in record time before AB one thirty takes effect. We also, you know, have heard from other cities who are also quite surprised by this action at the state level. And as a result of that, a newly formed local government climate policy alliance has been formed, and we're a steering committee member. And that group is intended to monitor changes in our legislation at the state level and federal level and take action where appropriate to advocate and influence and draft, even draft legislation to further our local climate goals. And we talked about this at length at our June meeting, the reversal reversal of the Clean Cars Act.

And, you know, can't emphasize enough how much reductions we would have received had that still been in place. Our if it had been in place, our gap would have only been 34,000 tons of emissions versus a 189 over a 189,000 tons. Next slide. So kind of moving back into what is our preliminary preliminary list for our five year road map. So we've got some of the actions up here, and we'll go into detail.

But there's certainly the ones that we've modeled that you've seen tonight and some of the ones we're considering modeling in the future. And, again, it's largely in the transportation sector. You know that those are gonna be the remaining emissions that we're going to have to contend with in 2045 or by 2045.

Next slide.

And for building, we've got quite a few items here, such as explore the time sale requirements, encourage participation in carbon free electricity, adopt a goal for the end of end of flow for natural gas. Next slide. And then we've got our zero waste actions and even ecosystem actions of how can our urban forest and natural areas that we're conserving help sequester carbon, and then looking at our cross cutting actions of where it is financing strategies fit in or funding options, again, relying on local collaboration and partnerships and advocacy and legislation. So this is in the report as well, but we're looking for feedback from the committee on, you know, are there are these on the right track? Do you have anything to add?

Because we'll be looking to bring back more of this list and more actions next year before it goes to council. And I'll hand it back to Ms. Lee.

Great. Thank you, Ms. Lucky. And now just to the recommendations from staff. Next slide, please. We'd like to request that the city review the emissions reductions of the five local measures that have been modeled. We walked you through each of those. Next slide. We're hoping to get approval from the committee this evening to model the remaining five local actions so that we can have a fuller picture of what our where we are as of now in terms of addressing emissions for 2045. And then finally, we're we would like direction to the project team to develop a five year road map.

We're aiming at 2045 as our decarbonization goal, our currently adopted decarbonization goal, instead of accelerating to 2035 or 2040, as a goal year. And just in terms of next steps, the project team will be bringing next, to the next committee meeting, our climate vulnerability assessment. That's on December 1. We will be modeling the remaining five local actions, and we'll bring those results back to this committee in early twenty twenty six. And then if directed, we would develop the five year road map to be presented to CSC and then ultimately counsel for approval next year.

And then with that, the entire project team, you've heard from nearly all of us this evening, that we would be happy to take any questions that you might have. Okay.

Thank you. So I will start off with questions from committee members. Other questions? Or did you have a good time for this?

Try to have some questions.

Go ahead.

Okay. And then one public comment after our questions. No. Okay. Yeah.

I didn't see sequestration from the marshes that we are growing adjacent to Shoreline Park added in. So that is something that I know it it it's understood that it will take approximately after we bleach, it'll take approximately ten years to reach marsh marsh plain elevation, which is when the the plants come in in full force. So that means it's probably twelve years from now. But still and I don't know what that that is, but but it's something, you know, when we talk about, you know, we talked about the urban forestry, for instance, I would really think that we should put that in as another component of it.

We we did address we did examine sequestration as one of the potential measures to model, and it was the guidance from Cascadia that relative to some of the other options.

I have heard that before, but it's our option. I mean, I guess that's why I bring it up. It's it's our action. And I think that we I think it's important for us to tie all of these actions together that we do even if they're not necessary that's not necessarily the only reason to do. I think it's important to to be aware of the of of how these things interplace.

You know? I mean, we're we're doing this for we're doing a major reason why we're doing the sea level rise protection is is to provide a adaptation. It's not a mitigation. And what we're talking about here is mitigation. But they're not completely divorced from one another. And so that's that's why I I bring this up because I I think that's important.

Council member Schwalter, can I ask a follow-up to that? Yeah. Are you saying that we're going to do it at the sequestration from the marshes anyway? Yeah. We're gonna do it anyway. Gonna do it. So it's a little different than the other the other local initiatives we're looking at because they have a big impact. What I hear councilmember Schowalter saying is this one we're not choosing because it's a we might not choose it to put it on the list because it's a big impact, but just because we're doing it anyways, oh, even if it has a small impact, we might add it a

little bit.

Yeah. Just to quantify it, you know, so people know that that's all. Yep.

Absolutely. Good. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understood.

If I may, at the next CSC meeting, we'll be bringing the vulnerability assessment and having discussion about potential amendments to the contract with Cascadia. At that point, we could because this the marshland is a great example of a cross cutting issue that both addresses our resiliency goals as well as our decarbonization work. And so while we look at a suite of amendments to the contract, we could, if directed by the committee, consider adding additional modeling to cover that. So we could do that in the next meeting.

I wanna bring it up. Thank you. And and then I have another question. It's a member show, Walter. Are these so if you're adding things to list, I was gonna use those as condoms.

Oh, okay. And, well, I was also alright. Another question on that is

Okay. We can do it we

can do it back to questions. Can bring some other things up to question comments. That's fine. Okay.

Are you Do you have questions about it?

No. I do have a couple questions that are just like I I had a question looking at the looking at the use of this is the transportation. I'm trying to find it here. Looking at local transportation and biking and active transportation, do we include programming needed to encourage? I I was just curious about this explore adoption of the transportation demand management.

What kind of of increases in biking does this include? I know we've been monitoring the amount of biking that goes in and out of the North Bay Shore, but I'm not really and I understand we've also been monitoring a little bit of the the utilization in around town, but I don't think we've been doing a lot of it. And and yet my feeling kinda just my feeling from just watching what's happened is with the the the construction of a lot of bike lanes, we are having a lot more biking. So I was just wondering, does this monitoring assume that the level of biking is gonna be static or it's going to change? Or

Thank you for the question.

If if I could direct this to miss Weinberg who did most of the actual technical analysis for the modeling.

Yeah. Thank you, miss Lee. So the transportation demand management ordinance, it just assumes a reduction in vehicle miles traveled, which is what is directed by the draft ordinance. We do assume an increase in biking in the active transportation action, but we don't specifically assume, if people are taking public transit, for the TDM ordinance, if they are biking, if they're walking, or if they're ride sharing, anything like that. It's just a, a reduction in VMT overall. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Don't have

any questions.

You don't have any questions? So my questions are around so what I have here and I don't think the other committee members have this. Jen Slough. No. Okay.

So what what I have in front of me, but the rest of you don't, is is that we take we next take comments from the public, and then we have a committee discussion that includes a possible motion, which I have in front of me and nobody else has. So it's unlikely you'll make that motion, therefore. But the motion seems to have so I just wanna make sure that we all understand where we're going and that I understand where we're going, and then maybe we'll go somewhere else. So this motion seems to have three parts. One is to, make a motion to approve the, five five additional or five remaining local local initiatives.

And I would assume also possibly add some as council member Schowalter just did. So the first part is dealing with the five local initiatives. The second part is approving doing a five year road map. And the third part is that that road map would achieve a 20 your recommendation is the 2045 decarbonization goal. So my question is, are those really the three components you're looking for from us?

Yes. Just to make sure that the the committee members understand it and that I do because I wasn't quite sure either. So we're looking at so our discussion now that we're done with questions unless somebody comes up with an additional one, our discussion will focus on five local initiatives plus any additional ones you wanna suggest, the five year road map, and the decarbonization goal, the year of which is suggested to be 2045. I have that right. Okay.

That was my question. And now it's time for and, of course, you can add any other comments you want. Now it's time for comments from the public on this item. Are there any there seems to be an in person comment, and after that, we will take virtual comments. And I assume we're giving you three minutes because there are not a lot of you. So

thank you for the opportunity to speak. I will run through several comments because I only have three minutes. The first one has to do with the population and job projections, which imply an a worsening of our jobs housing imbalance, which is the root cause of the fact that we have so many transportation emissions. So this is inconsistent with improvement. The population projections seem ridiculously low to me.

Perhaps not to you, but they certainly seem wrong to me. I, as you know, have led two citywide task forces to try to produce similar reports in the past, and we always showed our work. We didn't just say, this is the number for this. We said, here are the factors that create this. And so without having access to the the work, I just look at these numbers, say, maybe, maybe not.

No way to know. And, of course, a higher level document is appropriate for the committee, but I hope that the public and the staff have access soon to the work. I would love it if the committee would request polling to be done in the next year or two to try to understand what the citizens of Mountain View are willing to do, what they think they should do. We're proposing or it it's implied that we'll be doing major changes, and fear of the unwillingness of the public to go along with these changes is certainly a political consideration. Data would really help.

Looking forward to 2045, twenty years in the future, let's look back twenty years to 2005. How different was the world in 2005? The iPhone hadn't been invented. You could actually see people walking down the street without a phone in their hand. It was amazing. Those old days. Some technologies that I think will come in the next few years are ultrafast charging of EVs. This will require a thousand amp station, much like a gas station where you'll pull in. And in five minutes, while you go to the bathroom and get a cup of coffee, your chart your car will charge from 10% to 90%, something that today might take an hour. This will transform the importance of EV charging at multifamily homes.

When I look back at the 2008, ESTF one report, there was one thing that I thought really needs to be thought about which is therm solar thermal water heating for multifamily buildings as a preheater for the water that is delivered to the apartments. We've got all these flat roof two story buildings by and large. If those roofs are strong enough to support a moderately moderate weight solar water heating system, I think that's a real win win for buildings who would otherwise be very hard to decarbonize because of our rent stabilization ordinance, which basically says you really don't want to invest in a rent stabilized building because you won't get your money back for a long, long time, and even then, you only get half of it back. So how much out of time am I? Probably completely. So I'll leave it at

that. Thank you. Now do we have virtual speakers? We have two. First is Andrea Wald. You all know how to speak, and I'll share the timer again. Hey, Andrea. I don't know if you heard your name.

Oh, I'm Andrea Wald. Are we on item 5.2? Because I kinda came in a little bit late.

Yes. We're on item

Alright. So my name is Andrea Wald. I'm cofounder of Community for Natural Place Surfaces. We advocate for safe natural place surfaces. We educate public and private stakeholders on the harms of artificial turf and other artificial materials. We strive to increase the amount of grass and natural materials in our playing fields, playgrounds, parks, and towns. Why do I mention this? Because the impact of artificial turf and PIP poured in place rubber surface regarding loss of carbon capture as plastics release c o two and methane instead of absorbing c o two as happens with natural products such as grass, shrubs, and trees. I felt it important to urge all decarbonization plans to include avoidance of these plastic products. There's also the desire to reduce landfill waste.

Worn out artificial turf landscaping and old PIP playgrounds end up in landfill since neither is recyclable. So if your goal is to reduce landfill landfill waste, then you should consider not allowing installation of artificial turf or PIP. Artificial turf and PIP surfaces also cause a heat island effect, which is something that needs to be understood when you discuss your next agenda item 5.3, extreme heat preparedness, and I thought I'd bring it up now rather than wait online another hour. Avoiding the use of these plastic products is directly related to wanting cooler cities. I hope you have all had a chance to read the material I emailed on Tuesday and will take into account my suggestions and comments when discussing the decarbonization goals and extreme heat program this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you. And we have one more member of the public. Yes. I need give me one moment. I need to unmute Mary Didio. Hold on. Okay. Mary Didio.

I must

now ask

Good evening.

I first of all, I wanna applaud the formation or the participation in the local government climate policy alliance. I think that's you know, if we can avoid another six year moratorium on reach codes and lobby for other beneficial things to the climate, that's wonderful. So I'm glad that the city is is leading in that. I am disappointed to see that on the projection for remaining emission sources that in 2045, there are still emissions expected from natural gas in our city. So I know there's been discussion about the goal to have to zero out the flow of natural gas by 2045.

And so I'd really it'd be interesting to know more detail about why that is still projected to exist in 2045 emissions from natural gas. I think just from an infrastructure support standpoint and a risk mitigation standpoint, once we get to a fairly low level, I think we're gonna wanna zero it out rapidly. So I'm curious about that. I'm also surprised at population projections. I don't know about employment, but for people who live in Mountain View, I know the welcome to Mountain View sign say there are about 83 or 84,000 people here now.

So I'm surprised to see that it's only 85 and a half thousand by 2030 in this updated projection, especially since we're trying to build 11,000 residential units. So those two things don't seem consistent to me. There seems to be some kind of a something missing there. But I'm excited to see the future progress that we're gonna make on this, and I just wanna thank staff for all their work on this. Thank you.

Thank you. Has anyone else volunteered to speak? No. They have not. Okay. So I'm gonna close the public speaking and bring it back to the committee. So it's time for committee discussion, and the topics are the five local initiatives, the five year road map, the decarbonization goal, and anything else on this topic you'd like to approach. So does somebody wanna start discussions?

You go first.

Oh, thank you. Alright.

Well, one thing I I'd like to add somewhere is that in the development of the five year plan well, no. Not in that. In the development of our of our revenue measure for next year, I think that one of the things we should be polling about is whether or not people want to support electrification efforts. They you said in here it was a certain amount of money. It comes to $35,000,000 a year.

Do we wanna spend $35,000,000 a year? What would be the, what would be the debt, the indebtedness to do that? I I think probably that's prohibitive, but I still think there might be an appetite for continuing to provide incentives. There is a tremendous appetite, particularly in our youth, for things that are, you know, related to GHG reaction. So I I thought the the five things you mentioned were were fine, but I I already mentioned the the effect of the marshes.

Now I have kind of I'm not really an uninterested party in that. But another thing that I'm I'm real interested in as we develop these road maps is not just the infrastructure that we we are are gonna we are building or not building. I'm also really, really interested in the programming that we carry out to to teach people to use the infrastructure. I just I have so many casual conversations with people in the in the in the community who talk about, what does all that green paint mean? Or, you know, what does this new thing mean?

Or that what that so I think that, you know, we we do need to educate people about what our infrastructure is for, help them use it, you know, all those kind of things. So I I I think that's not a sort of an also rean. It's really important to get to get people to learn to use it. And then the other thing is is is that the the really giving careful thought about what are things that we should do alone and what are things that we should do in concert with Silicon Valley Clean Energy? You know, we're really part of a powerful group there, and Silicon Valley Clean Energy doesn't operate in a vacuum either.

They're very active on the state level. And I think that, you know, although we wanna do our part locally, sometimes our part is standing up and, you know, and and getting our our our fellow, you know, neighbors to to help us out with things. So and as the rep, you know, Chris and I are the reps on on Silicon Valley Clean Energy, and and we we could use direction, or I could use direction. I could use direction on on what are the things that we should be advocating for. In particular, there is a big appetite at the moment, and I don't think this is gonna go away, for what things save people money.

So in addition to GHG reduction, you know, how much money is saved, if there's a way to model, kinda add that in, I think that's important. And then the other thing I wanted to bring up is that things that get monitored are much more likely to happen and and get paid attention to. I really wanna hear on a regular basis how well our reach codes, such as they are, are working. I mean, we had a conversation today on the phone about that. How many, we know that, you know, the new construction will have to be all electric.

The question is how much how many gas appliances are being replaced? Well, as, you know, as as chair Hicks has mentioned repeatedly, part of that is educating people about, you know, the value of making a change. So I think that along with programming, you know, we we want we want people to be well educated. And I also think that we need to think about, do we wanna do this sort of independently as a as a a staff and and to have staff do it, or do we think this is something we want to grow a grassroots ecosystem of to help us with? Like, do we wanna ask carbon free mountain dew specifically

to help us with?

They're I'm pretty sure they jump at this chance. But, anyway, I think that that's the programming of these things, I think, is really, really vital. And then so, specifically, I I would like to you to request that we we poll related to the city's appetite for supporting electric station assistance, how we work with Silicon Valley Clean Energy. And let's see. Either things are down.

I wrote down everything you said. Okay.

And thank you for explaining about how the biking was incorporated. I appreciate that. Then the other thing I wanna put a plug in for is sensitivity analysis. You know, I I've never done, modeling for, for, GHG reduction, but I did do a lot of modeling for water resources issues. And once you have the model together, you can ask it a lot of questions.

And, so I would just urge you to, ask a lot of questions. And, you know, it it it's it's a very valuable tool. And even so I I can't say that I've necessarily come up with questions, but I hope that that's something you are really taking, very seriously. If the question isn't asked, it never gets answered. So that's the other thing I would say to you. I mean, no. You gotta get the questions right. It's really important to think about them with the modeling. And, and then you don't want to spend the rest of your life running the model. I know people who do that.

But but, you know, it's still, you know, an amazing tool that, I I would just urge you to to use. So I think that's my comments. Okay.

If you think of additional comments, you can come back. Alright. Council member Clark.

I just had a few, and I think with respect to the population numbers, it sounds like it sounds like once the model's built that we can yeah. The the model doesn't care what the numbers are. We can plug the numbers in. I do think that, you know, the at least the pop the the table and the staff report didn't feel like we're probably under projecting the population through 2025, but I also felt like the using the housing element assumptions would result in something that's way too high because we have plans on this, but we don't build units. So, yeah, we we we can't force people to build the impermits.

But but I think to the extent that, to the extent that the model doesn't care and that you end up, you know, trying to figure out which actual numbers to plug in, I think something somewhere in between probably makes the most sense. But I'll I'll trust you all to figure that out. I think overall, the the plan that the the proposal you put in front of us is is fine. I think the only thing that I have reservations about, and I realize this is just studying it. So if you all have the time and energy to study it, then that's fine.

But in the in the vein of, as committee of Marshall Walter said, you know, saving people money and not doing things by ourselves, I I have a lot of reservations about the time of sale, component because, one, you're effectively increasing the cost of housing, which is not what we wanna do. I think it would be I I think conceptually, I like it, but I think administratively, it will be very difficult to go verify that that $5,000 or whatever got used for what it was I don't I don't know how you administer and verify and enforce it. And I don't think I I just it maybe maybe Berkeley has come up with some way to easily do it. I don't know. And if they have, then wonderful.

And if you have the time to study it and we can figure that out, then great. But I I would much prefer if we were going down that path, something where what you get a not use one of the few cities with the transfer tax. Maybe you get some sort of credit, whereas committee member, show Walker, said, you know, you're there there's an incentive there as opposed to, you know, a time of sale requirement where, really, what's going to happen is the the purchase price is just going to go up by $5,000 because you you can say the seller has to pay it, but, really, it it just adds to the cost of housing. And, if you're there are still there are still condos in Mountain View that sell for under $1,000,000 between half 1,000,000 and 1,000,000, and that extra $5,000 on top of your down payment is is a big deal. If it's if you're buying a 3 or $4,000,000 home, it's a rounding error, and it's they're probably going to do the upgrades anyway at some point because they can afford them.

So, what you're I I don't know how you would narrow it to really cover, especially in those lower end, you know, those condos where you don't have the ability to go to your HOA and say, I want to it would just be very costly to upgrade your your meter or to run plumbing without interfering with your neighbors. I mean, I lived in one of the soft storey structure condos, and I just can't imagine how $5,000 would have helped. I'm trying to think. Maybe even replacing a stove because I couldn't you'd have to run the electrical and you wouldn't have the panel to do it, and I don't know. I I I've this is a long way of saying I think it's a real I think it's really great in concept.

I I think administratively, will be difficult unless SPCE and a bunch of cities figure out some way to do it at a broader level. That's just my comments on that. I touched on

the saying check into doing it more regionally and also check into study it more about maybe linking it to a transfer tax with those

I I don't think I I looked up our transfer tax language, and there's no way for us to give credits to people without going back to the voters.

So Nix that.

I just if you have the time and energy to study it, that's fine. I don't think it's something I would probably end up supporting unless I yeah. I just think it would be a waste of time and effort, but that's just me. May may I'm I'm happy to be proven wrong. And I think overall, those those are the two biggest things. I think overall, what's been proposed is a is a great next step, and the and the the four the four, local actions that I mentioned made sense. I just have the reservations about the ones.

Okay. So my comments on the the three main questions. So first, you know, although, of course, I'm not happy with the recent changes at the federal level or even the the state one regarding reach codes. Although I'm not happy with that, and I'm not happy that that makes you say, well, we're pretty much pretty much sure that we can't go that even twenty forty five is a reach. You know?

That whole realm of things I'm not super happy about. But I do think it clarifies for me that something that I've kind of been mulling over, which is that to me, I think those goals, whether it was whether it was 2035, 2040, or 2045 are not the main thing for me. And that it they kind of if those are our main focus, we're very reliant on state and federal, as we can see now from experience, on state and federal programming. So we're not really doing the emphasis is not on our own local programs. Instead, it's kind of bean counting as administrations change.

Oh, now maybe we can make twenty forty. Oh, no. Now we can. Oh, yeah. Now we can, which, you know, Tuesday made me more hopeful that maybe maybe this won't be forever.

But so it just reinforced for me that I want local initiatives that we do in that have big impact, except for the one that council member Showalter mentioned that we're doing anyway, with a small impact. That we want that we really want to focus on, you know, not being bean counters of state and federal federal programs, but doing what we can do locally. And then I think the what's been mentioned several times, the partnering regionally and lobbying on the state on whatever level, regional, county, state, federal, whatever level. So I think that it this unfortunate situation has clarified for me what kind of work we should be doing, and that's kind of reflected in your report. I liked the modeling that several peep miss Lucky mentioned first, and I think council member Showalter did too.

I'd like to review projects we're doing locally to see how impactful they actually are. And, like, the ones that come to mind, I love TDM measures, but, frankly, the ones that I've seen when we've reviewed it, because I'm on the Council Transportation Committee, a lot of them are sticks. And my own opinion is that TDM probably won't work well if it's mostly sticks and few carrots, and there or another way of putting it, there's little mass transit to transfer to. So I would like to know when I listened to I really liked our staff person who laid them out, so I didn't wanna ask mean questions. But but I thought some would be more impactful and and easy to use than others.

And I think we need to have frank discussions around that and which ones are just not gonna work out at all because there's no, you know, subway to to hop on when you can't park your car. Or that parking your car I mean, there's parking requirements too. Not having you need a car where you are. Not having a parking on-site means you're gonna park in the street, which means they can't do the everyone's parking in the street, they can't do the bike lane or the tree lined sidewalk or whatever that they were gonna do. You know, there are impacts there.

And I think we're not always doing a full evaluation of where we get the biggest bang for the buck. So so I like that you mentioned that, and I would like to do that. You know, I have the same and I think about it a lot with our active transportation plan. I mean, we just another one is what kind of bike lanes do people like to use, or do they like to use something else? We had our at our last council meeting, one of the council members asked about various ways people are crossing 101, and he he mentioned he asked questions about three different ways and different bridges and the Stevens Creek Trail.

And there were, like, 14 bikes going on one, you know, 15 on another in the teens. And then the Stevens Creek Trail, it's, like, a 188, a 195, almost 200. There's a huge difference. And I know this is how I feel. I don't bike on car heavy in car heavy places.

So I think we need to look at where we're putting our money, and we need to put our money into things that people will use, and we need to look at what we've put our money into. Some of these are very expensive projects, and there's always a a cost benefit. You know? If you put it into one thing, you can't put it into something else. So I don't think we should just go by road, stamping out the same possibly underused project over and over again.

That's so I like that modeling, and I would like to a lot of the things that you listed that we're doing to decarbonize are things that other departments are doing. You know, it's community development or housing or or public works. And I wanna make sure I sometimes think we're not we're just doing what is generally done in the region, and it's not necessarily things that are well used. So that's I would like more modeling of what's actually being used and what isn't. You know, also this thing about transit oriented development, all good.

You know, of course, I want that. But often we're taking out the things that makes it like the neighborhood serving stuff that make it so that people can give up their cars and putting, you know, like, office heavy. You don't do that so much. Or very housing heavy. But I think, like, in your report, you said mixed use, but we're doing less mixed use.

So when I walk Moffitt and talk to people, they they're having a shopping closet taken out, and it's gonna be all housing. And they are telling me they're using their cars more because there's nothing to walk to anymore. And so people who might have gone down to one or zero cars are driving a lot, not reducing their car use. Anyway, so I would like to look into the things we're doing and see how well they're working. As far as new local initiatives, the expanding the community shuttle I know our community shuttle is very expensive and and encountering some problems in terms of affording it.

At the same time, I think it's an opportunity to partner with I don't know if it's over the next five years, but at least start a discussion of partnering with we have several autonomous vehicle companies located here that their whole thing, I don't have a full list of them, but it's like Waymo Neuro and Uber, some of them are cooperating with each other, all wanna do more shared rides kind of things. Oh, and Zoox, which is Amazon, which is not local. They wanna do more, like, minibus shared rides, whereas Tesla wants to do more privately owned, you you know, your status symbol kind of thing. Could could you know, we we could promote that here. We have enough people with enough money.

So I am interested in starting a conversation. Also, our school district had said they would like school buses or more they use our shuttle, but they would like more. We have neighboring cities that do different kinds of community shuttles that would like to partner with us. And yeah. And then there's El Camino Hospital gives grants for things, and it might include our shuttle goes to El Camino.

So they give fairly large community grants. So I think we should be having conversations about how to expand the community shuttle that I think we should start broaching partners and look at how we might you know, we have a bus only lane going into North Bayshore. No buses on it. Could those be community shuttles? I think we should start looking at those questions.

I don't know that we'll do them immediately, but I think we should start the conversation. I would like to see permit streamlining and contractor and vendor outreach because I've heard that our you're at the water heater went quite well, and I've heard that you're presenting at the CNC, and that I'm very happy about that. But I have neighbors who wanted to do heat pump water heaters, and the contractor they called up convinced them not to do it. Mhmm. So I think outreach to, I mean, member Sherwaldo talked about education and outreach, and it might be there's also the guy who's selling there's a guy selling gas fireplaces on Castro.

Yes. And when I go in and talk to him, he I went in and talked to him when I was mayor. And he said he said I said, you know, you're not supposed to sell gas fireplaces anymore. I like your electric ones. Why don't you put them in the window instead of the gas ones? And he said, oh, don't listen to the city. I said, you're the city. But, you know, we could do outreach to those people who are selling things that we don't want. You know, he has electric places in there. He's just not prioritizing.

So vendor and contractor outreach, permit streamlining. I've heard some talk of our emergency preparedness program, not just earthquake preparedness, but climate crisis preparedness, including we're having everybody electrified, but in the winter, the electricity is going out constantly, some sort of, you know, solar roofing with batteries, you know, model that for people people have told me they would be interested in. And another one would be pairing a soft story retrofit program with electrification and That's charging. Maybe somebody is on council and I'm not could bring that up as a council. Okay.

There's balcony solar. There's an expanded concept of micro mobility that highlights not just scooters, but small cars, makes super compact cars a priority. And then the last thing I'll say is we should reevaluate every three to five years because I I suspect we'll see major unexpected changes in the same way well, Bruce Carney brought up some of these, the ultra fast charging. You know, like, 2020 brought remote work, and I think we're gonna and the plan Bay Area 2050, the modeling for that, and 2060, they're predicting disruptive pretty disruptive change with automatic vehicles that could be good or bad depending on the accompanying public policy. So I think we need to start thinking about the public policy.

Okay.

Those are my comments. Did our round of comments trigger any other comments for anyone?

Yes. There was one I I one of your comments triggered, and I really appreciate your comments. Very you know, and and, you know, very, very helpful. One of the things that this brought to mind for me, like, I've looked at how grim our ability to actually meet our goals was, is maybe we need to, think a little bit more about carbon sequestration and or or carbon mining. I it's something that there's a lot of technology.

There's a lot of innovation working on. I I personally know very little about it. I've gone to a number of talks, you know, to just make it tell the teachers you're enough to be dangerous. But, anyway but I I still think that that is something that could change dramatically in the future if there was the right technology. And then again, it might not it may never amount to anything.

But I I think that that is something that we should keep our eyes on, and we have a lot of innovative car companies in the city. We see we certainly see a lot of automotive research linked to anyway, I anyway, I think that's that's something that we we might wanna give some thought to as well.

Okay. So the next thing is we have a possible motion, but we also have a lot of comments. So I don't know whether staff has some idea of how they'd like to deal with the comments or whether committee members have have ideas for how to fit the thing. We could just have okay. I'm gonna make a a little bit of a stab.

We could just have people could decide, you know, to go with the staffing part part, or you seem to say that you everybody seem to say that they are willing to pass the staff report and then pick one or two other several other local initiatives or hand staff all the suggestions and they pick the ones that make sense? In terms of modeling additional local initiatives, I what I'd like

to recommend is that our at our December meeting, is in approximately three weeks, we'll be bringing the climate vulnerability assessment and discussing contract amendments. And so at that point, we can bring a summary of what we understood to be some of the ideas for additional contract modifications to model additional measures, and we could capture all of those changes at one time in the discussion in December. So we'll go back and make sure that we've captured the modeling requests in particular. In terms of the additional ideas for inclusion in the five year road map, whether they're modeled or not modeled, we we've all been taking notes. And so I'm hoping that between the seven of us, we have a fairly comprehensive list.

We can also come back in December with a confirmed list to make sure that we've captured everything. We certainly heard kind of ideas in the creative space around, you know, what is the what are the ways that we can make our transportation initiatives be more effective, some discussion around sequestration, of course, some concerns in terms of measures that we are modeling, but we're we're not yet at the phase where we are recommending them for inclusion in our five year plan. So we'll be able to make a final decision about that with the committee. I'm trying to think of, and then in terms of adjusting the modeling with regards to population estimates or other growth factors, we're happy to do that and to provide additional detail, on all of the background analysis that went into the model. And then finally, in terms of the polling and the revenue measure, I have joined the Citi's revenue measure team.

Of course, we're initially looking at perhaps a general obligation bond, and we'll be undertaking some polling. The kinds of activities that that particular form of revenue measure can fund are somewhat limited, we we're

sort of thinking

of them offhand as those things that would be it would show up in our CIP. And so we can bring additional information for that. And, of course, I think sustainability is already contemplated for inclusion in that polling. So it's part of a bigger conversation with the community about what their priorities are, but that will be touched on in the polling that's coming forthcoming.

So I

would just like to bring it yes. With respect to the polling, I would just like to, to bring up the the general accounting change that was made for distributed infrastructure for bond for for making it okay to bond for distributed infrastructure related to, water conservation. I think it would also apply for electrification, but I'm not positive of that. But so perhaps we could have I I could get you some information. I it's not remind me to do that.

It's related to the idea that, for instance, it would be okay to bond for a municipality to buy back everybody's lawns at once instead of to do it over a twenty year period. Anyway, so we think this is point of that.

So I guess in summary, we could bring back a finalized list of what we got in terms of additions to the road map because this evening's presentation was only kind of a first pass at what should be included in that road map. We won't be bringing it back to the committee for real discussion until 2026, probably the spring. And so, we can be in communication at the next meeting and, even just directly if you have feedback for us for additional things that you would like included. We'll make sure to add those in. There's several kind of on ramps for that still. You know, I may be confused about the way I'm thinking about the local initiatives for versus the five year road map.

I thought the local whatever you call them, initiatives, projects were on the road map. Yes.

The the well, we have five additional measures. Our contract with Cascadia covers 10 measures to model.

I see.

We approved the first five at our June meeting, and then tonight, we're hoping to approve the second five I see. Now that you've seen the results of kind of where we are.

I'm more clear.

We anticipate that many, if not all of those, would be ultimately included in the road map, but it that it's not necessarily the case.

You know, we could have that are not modeled Yes. That are done anyway. Okay. I get it. Yeah. So what I'm hearing, and tell me if I'm wrong, is that you're taking in what we're saying and will in terms of local measures and what should be on the road map. And so if we make the motion to accept the the staff proposal, you would just add those and come back with your comments about which ones we've said are reasonable and which you're

Yes. Okay. And then also the direction to develop the five year roadmap with with gold in 2045.

Okay. Does anyone wanna make a motion?

Yep. I will I will move that, and I'll just I don't know if my other two colleagues agree. I I don't think you should remove the time of sale item, but if in evaluating some of the other ideas that were brought up, like, you feel one of those would be more valuable than time of sale, then I'm happy to, at whatever point in the future, swap that in if it sounds like we get to study five. So I'm, I mean, you you heard my comments. I I I can go either way there, but, I'm personally open to swapping something else.

If if one of these other items excites you more than that one or you think has more traction than the other, then I'm happy to swap it in at that later time. But that's just me. So I'll I'll but I'll otherwise move to staff recommendations.

Okay. Sounds good. Do we have a second?

Okay. And and I I I would concur with the time of sale. I think that the implementation is is very difficult. So I I would I would want that to be studied collaboratively with other team meetings. I don't think we're gonna wanna go forward on that by our own.

It'll be tough to do it on our own unless unless the compliance mechanism is, like, I you literally send a two page or a a two line letter that says I certify independently Pershing that I've used $5,000 for something you told me I should use it for. But

Okay. I thought it was a good one, but I understand the the your criticisms of it and would like to staff to,

you know,

just if they find something better, give us feedback if somebody else is doing it well and it's easier than you thought or

if, in fact, there are a

lot of problems with it. I'd love to hear that.

Absolutely. Then the other thing I wanted to reiterate that, you know, it isn't in here, but I but you mentioned it, and I think it's really, really important, is the idea and we've been doing it, is the idea that we reevaluate this in in five years. I mean, I think that in particular, given the federal situation, we might even wanna do it sooner than that. But but we're all very hopeful that that the circumstances five years will be very different than they are now. And so, whenever, it seems appropriate, but at least within five years, I I would Yeah. You know, just want things reevaluated. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's why it's

a five year Exactly. For a 20 old.

Sense. Because not only I mean, there's political changes that I would have hoped we'd be on a more steady state, but then there's technical changes too.

Yeah.

Okay. So do you wanna call the vote, Ms. Chair Hicks? Yes. Member Clark?

Yes.

Member Shelton? Yes. Okay. So if there are no any final comments from committee members or staff? If not, we'll move on to five three, which is results of the Extreme Heat Community Preparedness Program. This item will be presented by Climate fellow Grace Khan. Ms. Lee will commence the presentation. Thank you, chair Hicks.

I just wanted to introduce this item. At this evening's meeting and at the December meeting, we plan to have our climate fellows showcase some of the work that they've been doing this last year, in lieu of the verbal staff update across all of our programs. This will just be a deeper dive into a single initiative. Tonight, we're pleased to be joined by miss Khan, who's, one of our clinic core fellows, and she will be talking to us about the results of our Extreme Bee Community Preparedness Project.

Thank you, miss Lee. Next up, please. So the city of Mountain View will face increased impacts from climate change in the coming years and decades, including more severe and frequent extreme heat phase and warm nights. Tonight, I will present the results of the extreme heat community preparedness program, which was designed to support vulnerable populations in Mountain View by enhancing their readiness for its safety and air quality events. The program was funded by a $25,000 grant from the county, and the city used an additional $4,000 to support the grant.

As you may remember from our June meeting about the climate vulnerability assessment, extreme heat is a major climate impact in Mountain View. Climate change related risks are currently being examined through the climate vulnerability assessment to better understand how Mountain View will be impacted by climate change. As mentioned before, the draft CVA will be presented at the December 1 meeting. However, preliminary findings for the CVA show that by the end of the century, Mountain View will experience 23 extreme heat days per year. Additionally, while most of the city is not projected to be directly impacted by wildfires, More frequent and intense fires in other nearby areas have contributed to unhealthy air quality in Mountain View, and this issue is likely to worsen as climate change intensifies.

These conditions will strain public health, especially for people living in vehicles, older adults, children, outdoor workers, and non English speakers. As you likely know, many vulnerable communities live in Mountain View, including unhoused residents who live in their vehicles and residents with limited English proficiency. 879 people are currently unhoused in Mountain View. This count rose from 56% from the 2023 count of 562 unhoused residents, and about 47% of the Mountain View population speaks a language other than English, and 15% of the population speaks English less than very well. And many residents who live in their vehicles speak a language other than English.

Residents living in vehicles and community members with limited English proficiency were chosen as the target populations for this grant as unhoused residents, including people who live in their vehicles, face elevated risks from extreme heat due to prolonged exposure, lack of shade, and barriers to accessing cooling centers. And residents with limited English proficiency may experience challenges accessing resources about climate hazards and information on staying healthy in their preferred language and therefore may miss out on up to date inaccurate information. The sustainability team partnered with the Community Services Agency, CSA, in the Mountain View Police Department's Neighborhood and Event Services unit to implement the extreme heat community preparedness program. I will refer to this partnership as the team throughout the presentation. Sustainability staff developed extreme heat import air quality preparedness flyers.

There are also some on the table, if you're interested in looking at those at the end. These flyers include information on how to sign up for the county's emergency alert system, Alert Santa Clara County, the top tips to staying safe, and the health impacts of heat and air quality. The flyers are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian, and they are also posted on our website. Next, resilience tool kits were created. The kits include items such as solar charging, air purifier, water misting fan, sun hat, electrolyte packets, and more to help residents prepare for and stay safe during heat and air quality events.

And each kit is valued at around a $140. Additionally, the extreme heat community preparedness program included an extreme heat and air quality workshop for staff. The sustainability division provided a workshop for CSA and city employees to educate staff. The training covered the impacts of heat and poor air quality, who is most vulnerable, the health impacts, and the top tips to staying safe. The team identified residents living vehicles who have a high percentage of non English speakers as the community that would most benefit from the toolkits and provided multilingual door to door outreach and distributed 200 resilience toolkits over the summer.

This map shows where kits were distributed throughout the city. The team gave out kits at safe parking lots, wide streets where residents can park oversized vehicles, and at community based organizations. 94% of the residents that the team interacted with accepted a toolkit, and the team provided multilingual outreach as 77% of residents who accepted a kit spoke Spanish. Additionally, many of the residents that received a toolkit had families with young children. Residents were provided a voluntary form to provide feedback on the program, and survey respondents found the health information, electrolyte packets, water misting fans, and air purifiers to be the most helpful items included in the kits.

Residents were also provided a space to leave comments, some of here which include, thank you so much. The items included may save a life, and I just wanna thank you for the support you provide. We also heard from leaders in the Latino community that their clients really appreciated the toolkits, and they came at an opportune time to help the living in vehicle to help the living in vehicle population deal with increasing temperatures. And as someone who went out into the field going door to door to residents living in their vehicles, I could really tell there was a great appreciation and thankfulness for going out there and providing these resources. And we also went out on days that were very high in temperature up to 90 degrees during a heat advisory when people were really needing these resources.

So the extreme heat community preparedness program was a pilot program funded by a grant. So staff will continue exploring ways to better assist vulnerable communities during climate related events, such as extreme heat and poor air quality through the climate vulnerability assessment. And just as another reminder, the draft CVA will be presented to CSC at the December 1 meeting. Thank you. And any questions?

Thank you. So do members of the committee have any questions? Yeah. I thought it was really interesting that you said that

the air purifier was one of the things that they particularly appreciated. Is that because inside of an RV, they do cooking and it gets rid of cooking odors, or do

you know why? I'm not quite sure about that, but, increased temperatures can also decrease air quality. So that could be one factor as to why they helped. We didn't quite get feedback on why those kits or why those items were the most important items and kits that people pointed out, but that's something we could possibly explore going forward.

It was them and the mister. And what was

the other thing? Yeah. The water misting fans, electrolyte packets, and then on the flyers, the health information that was included. Yeah.

Yeah. I know when I moved to California, you know, I had grown up in the East Coast where it was very, very humid. And, I did some fieldwork fairly early in my career in in a desert climb. And I remember going out there, and it was a long time ago. We didn't have air conditioning in their vehicles.

And the people out there had these water bottles that they sprayed the inside of their car with, and it would, like, immediately evaporate. And I you know, being a little a grown grown up and, you know, the the mugginess of Richmond and Baltimore and Washington DC, the thought of doing that, I mean, it would all be mold, and it was just like but it was magical how, you know, just a spray bottle would would you know, and the evaporation from that would would bring down the temperature inside of the vehicle. So I wasn't surprised to hear about that. But the air purifier,

I just okay. Thank you. Good job. So the staff report said you were not able to get much feedback from people. Do I understand that right? You didn't get to interact and find out?

Yeah. That's correct. So we provided a voluntary form, like a QR code and a link, on a handout that was inside the kits. Only two people took, decided to respond to that. And as mentioned in the staff report, it was kind of hard to follow-up with people. You know about the city, the parking ordinance where people have to move every, like, seventy two hours. So it was very hard to remember who you gave a kit to, and then you have to go find them again to try to collect feedback that way. So I think in the future, staff will explore other pathways to try to collect more feedback from residents.

Miss Khan, can I just add that the kits were designed with feedback from CSA, and, you know, they have a long history of engaging with this population? So we had some sense of what might be useful to people who live in their vehicles, but, you know, it's hard to really survey them until they've actually had a chance to use the items. And then it was, as miss Conrad mentioned, hard to find them.

Okay. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this item? We'll have Mary Didio. Okay. Mary?

Don't see the unmute command.

We can hear you, Mary.

Oh, you can hear me. Great. Thank you so much. I just wanted to talk a minute about the urban heat island effect and which is why all this is necessary. The surface temperature of hardscape can be about 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the air temperature, which means that, sidewalks or bike lanes can be just really, unuseful, you know, maybe multiple months of the year as we see these higher temperatures because we not this year, we've been fortunate, but last year, several times, the temperature here was over a 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

I just wanted to mention that trees, help by creating shade, but even more than that, trees actually lower the temperature because they're transpiring. So I just wanna reiterate the importance of the biodiversity plan and actually implementing that in areas where we hope to have active transportation so that all the people we hope are out on bicycles and and walking will be able to do that on days when it it it gets really hot in Mountain View. But we need to make sure that there's there's budget and that that the trees actually get implemented as part of the active transportation plan that they get planned for and that, you know, money is set aside not just for installation, but also maintenance. Thank you.

Thank you. So any other members of the public? I'm not seeing any. Yeah. Okay. So we bring it back. This, I think, was just an informational item. But any more comments from committee members? Okay. Seeing no more comments.

We will let's see. Where am I? So no action is required. I'll just say my comment is that when I saw pictures of people parked in RVs in large parking lots with no trees, my my first the first thing that came to mind was pretty much what Mary Dahlia said of what they really need is I mean, hopefully, we won't have people living in vehicles for decades and decades to come. But the way things are going, we may.

And, hopefully, our safe parking lots at least can have some shade and our streets as well for that matter for walking walking and on the street, I suppose. Okay. So now we're at item number six, which is committee staff comments, questions, and committee reports. And no action will be taken on any questions raised by the CSC at this time. Do any CSC members or staff have comments or questions?

Chair, I just wanted to mention, you referred to it briefly, but we heard earlier this week that our supplemental rebate for heat pump water heaters is fully subscribed, which is really exciting to us because the program only launched in April. So we will be regrouping as staff to look at additional funding sources and bring a proposal back

to this committee. Yeah. I was very happy when you said that before when we spoke earlier. Do you have any reasons that you like, where did it get where did you find people taking it up the most? Do you know? Was there any particular kind of outreach that really worked?

Well, we had a whole year of the heat pump water heater campaign. Miss Ramos headed that up, and we developed a mascot in Watson. And mascot was at the Dia de Muertos event a few weeks ago, or maybe it was just last weekend, and and really trying to engage people. It's it's not terribly exciting at face value, you know, heat pump, water heater. But miss Ramos has managed to make it fun, and there were lots of children crowding around and engaging and families just just talking about it. And so I think this really robust outreach and engagement initiative has been critical to its success.

Do you have any comments on what was what made it most popular? It seems like the consistency over time has really had an impact. More people have heard about it. Hearing about it several times. And then also, we were able to get it included in The View, which went out to every home in September. And that or seemed to be one of the things that helped the most recent month. Okay. Well, great. Any other comments? Oh, well, just congratulations

on the award.

Was Eagan Award? Eagan Award. Yes. From Egli?

Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. That's great. Institute from Louisville. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So Very bad.

Thank you.

Last call for comments. No more? Okay. Now we're on item number seven, which is adjournment. And so this meeting is adjourned at 08:03PM.