Climate Action Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome to the Napa County Climate Action Committee for Friday, 01/23/2026. Maybe I have the roll call, please.

Member Joseph? Member Painter? Member Narvaez?

Here.

Member Alessia? Member Eisenberg?

Here.

Member Dizzy? Here. Member Trip? Member Reeves? Chair Gallagher?

Here. Why don't we have member Reeves and member Tripp come on up to the dais, and we'll just take those cards down. And if they show up, they can come down here. Or is that is that gonna Okay. Okay. Alright. And I see you do have your your technology set up, so I don't wanna disturb that. Alright. Absolutely. Alright.

Member Chip, would you mind leading us in the pledge? Pledge and allegiance. The flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Alright. We're gonna move to public comment. Is there anyone in the room who would like to address the Climate Action Committee regarding a subject over which we have jurisdiction, but it's not on today's agenda?

Good

morning, mister Miller.

Good morning. Just a couple of timely topics I wanted to alert you the board to. First, last year, our hauler, NEPR Recycling, Waste Services secured a $912,000 grant for a source separated special glass commercial collection. I believe there was only two awarded in in the state, and I think believe the other one was in San Diego.

Can you see that number again?

$912,000.

Oh, 912,000. Okay. Yep. Thank you. That's still a lot.

Yeah. Well, basically, paid for a new truck driver for two years and everything associated with all the equipment to service this special route where it will be glass only. And the idea there is when it goes through single stream recycling, you recover 60 to 65%. You know, it's broken glass. With this, you were gonna recover 98% plus.

So that's a big difference. So they've and if you could imagine, it's where glass is generated, bars, restaurants, tasting rooms. Napa is a perfect location for that. So I believe between locations in the city of Napa and in the South Napa County, I think they have about 230 locations that they've identified, and those businesses will get a $40 per ton credit. It takes a lot to get to a ton, but glass is heavy.

But they will get a credit for doing this special separation and keeping it clean. You get extra benefits through the bottle bill too. And since they've added wine and hard liquor to the bottle bill, this is a very it pays for itself in a lot of ways, and it's very productive for our facility and for our our revenue for material sales. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is since September, our hauler has secured a an agreement through I believe through the 2028 that we have added the rec curbside recyclables from Vallejo and American Canyon. So Recology, Vallejo and American Canyon are now bringing it to Napa's facility for sorting.

So that's an extra 20,000 tons a year approximately. That's a big deal on a lot of fronts, and we're very happy. It helps pay for a lot of the improvements we put in from optical sorters to sorting robots to those kind of things. The more tonnage you have coming through, the more it pays these fixed infrastructure costs. So that's a win, I believe, for the region and for recycling overall. Great.

Thank you.

Good morning. Yvonne Baginski here in Napa County. I've been in meetings all week on environmental issues and I just want to rant a little bit before I offer some suggestions. One of the rants I have is, you know, there's a lot of scary stuff going on in the federal level and at the state level. People are leaving their jobs.

It's going to significantly impact a lot of our environmental successes that we've had recently. One of the things I'm very proud of with our local government is that when we had issues with our SNAP program and with our immigration issues, that local people stood up and local people came together. And that is going to be the answer to the issues that we're seeing at the environmental level at all. We have to become more supportive of each other. We have to become more supportive of our environmental groups, and we have to start listening to each other.

It seems to me there's a disconnect between this group and this group. And that disconnect seems to be around the issue of data and around the issue of how things are being collected in the community. In this community, we rely on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and The US Fish And Wildlife Service for our wildlife data. I have found out this week that a lot of the data we have is simply old and broken. When we meet with these groups, they have different data than what's at the state level and at the federal level.

There has to be a way for us to locally come together and agree on what is accurate data. And the reason why this is important is I listened to Linda Brown come up here and talk about greenhouse gases being we need to reduce greenhouse gases. We need to and I go, well, who's monitoring the air? Who's measuring our air quality so that we can know whether or not we're actually reducing greenhouse gases? We don't have air monitors in Napa County.

That's a significant issue. I read the biological data report, and they say there are fish. There are fish, and I'm not being critical. What I'm saying is they make a comment, a very general comment about fish in the Napa River, but there's no count of what kind. So how do we know when wildlife is declining or when it's rebounding?

We don't have any measures. So when we take actions, we have to take the word of people who come up to this podium and say things that I've been accused of not telling the truth because I'll make a comment about seeing bald eagles knowing there's bald eagles down by Stanley Lane and people say, no, haven't seen them. So what I'd like to propose and when I started Share the Care and I started on my front porch, everybody told me I couldn't do it. I'm liable. I'm going to be fined by the city. I heard everything. We have a very successful organization now called Share the Care Napa Valley. And it started grassroots. And I would like your support in getting air monitors and doing other grassroots work in this community. Thank you.

Thank you, Yvonne. And I will report that I am the person who sits on the Bay Area District. And we have been trying to bring an air monitor to the county. This is the third year. And we're getting close to finally agreeing on a location. We used to have an air monitor down near the college. That was removed to make way for some buildings. And there was a plan to put one up. It didn't happen. So we didn't have anything for two years.

I came on the board and went on the Air District Board and have been working for three years to get an air monitor. So we do have cooperation from the Air District. And we are looking at a couple of different county sites. We started by looking at school sites. Actually, could work that out with the school district. So we're on to county sites now. And we think we're really close to getting one. So we are aware of the need for air monitors and pursuing getting at least one air monitor up. So just wanted to make note of that. Anyone else have any public comment?

Okay. We're going to move on to our consent item 4A. Is there any public comment on 4A? Can I have a motion?

So move, Joseph.

Second Heisenberg.

Okay. I think Liz got that in there before you, Kevin. So, motion by Joseph, second by Alessio. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Great. Thank you. We're going to move on to our administrative items, accept nominations, and elect a chair and vice chair for the twenty twenty six Climate Action Committee. I'm going to first see if there's any public comment in the room. And then if not, I will go ahead and bring it back. I'm gonna go ahead and get us started. I'm gonna make a motion and you all can it can be seconded, or we can discuss it, or however you want to want to go from there. But I'll get us started.

I would like to nominate Member Eisenberg as the chair, who is our current vice chair. And member Narvaez as our vice chair for 2026.

I'll second that motion, just to get the ball rolling.

Okay. Alright. Does anybody have any comments or anything they'd like to member Tripp?

I would just like to say I support those nominations as being very effective contributors so far to my involvement. And so I think that would be great from my perspective. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you so much. Alright. Well, I'll go ahead and call the question. I made the motion. And member Joseph made the second. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Alright. Well, we're speeding right through here. Yay. Yes. Congratulations. We're gonna stay where we are right now. We'll change seats next time. You okay with that?

I'm fine. Okay.

I like this chair.

He just worried about his chair. That's all. We'll make sure you always have a tall chair.

Yeah. I'm I'm big with swiveling.

Okay. We'll move on to five b. Discuss and adopt the proposed twenty twenty six Climate Action Committee regular meeting calendar. And, staff, do you have anything to report on that?

Just one thing to report that we moved the normal the regular meeting for the holiday schedule from the December to the December. That week the first week usually, coincides with CSAC, annuals conference, so we decided to move it there. But, yes, if, this calendar is attached with the same normal cadence, the fourth Friday of every month, with the exception of that holiday schedule. And if there are any conflicts or any, motions to change one of the dates, if anyone has a standing conflict, please let us know.

Okay. Great. So I would ask that everyone get all of these dates on their calendar so that they're sure to be here. Does anyone did you wanna make a comment?

Okay.

Does that look good so far for everyone? Oh, sorry. Member Reeves.

Thank you. I just was wondering if we could have a little bit of discussion about the schedule given that we've expanded the, kind of needs of this committee to include the working group for implementation and how that affects the resources that we're using as the CAC, both our local jurisdictions and the county staff. I would like to talk or hear comments about the idea of the CAC meeting every other month while the implementation group works the in between months so that we actually can focus on maybe some of the other things that are stated in our bylaws, like developing education and outreach programs so that we support what implementation ideas are coming up. I just feel like we have not fulfilled that part of our bylaws very well. And it would be great now that we have something to work with to ask for what the implementation group comes up with that are maybe first steps.

And we can develop programs working with the local people on the ground who already know how to do educational programs. So that's my comment.

Okay, great. I'll take comments from the diets. But I first just wanted to look over to staff and ask, when do we project we're going to maybe finalize the RCAP? Because I think we should be meeting monthly until that happens.

Yeah. We're looking at early spring to have the final R CAP ready along with the initial study, mitigated negative declaration, and we'll put all those out for public, kind of viewing early spring. We do expect to have the initial study out itself, early next month, early February, for its thirty day kind of public public review. So it's coming up very soon. I think member Reeves is right that we are kind of moving towards implementation, having a lot more, talks with the working group about implementation.

So I think we are kind of at that kinda cusp of really kinda moving on action versus, kind of, having you to review a lot of the plan or RCAT measures themselves or the plan itself. Mhmm. We've kind of done a lot of that. So now we really have to move to this next phase. So, yeah, it's coming up very soon in the next couple of months.

Okay. Great. Thank you for that information. Member Joseph?

Yes. I I I think that makes sense. So I think for the next few months until the R CAP is wrapped up, we probably do need to meet regularly because of, you know, just trying to nail it down. But afterwards, I think director Reeves has a good point that that maybe our role, since it is fundamentally an advisory body, it may make more sense to go to every other month because we can be working in our own little worlds trying to get parts of the RCAP implemented in our communities. So there's some merit to it. I think it's maybe adopting a monthly schedule for now, but recognizing in two or three months we may wanna come back and revisit it.

Thank you. Thank you. What do I call you? Chair Eisenberg?

Oh, yeah. I can.

Actually, you should be running the meeting now.

I was not I wasn't gonna say any But you were going somewhere else.

Say something. Sorry. I just kept on going. Actually, I'm gonna turn the meeting over to you. And just just now when I realized I was gonna call you chair Eisenberg, I'm like, this is not right.

All right. As Chair, I'm going to take the prerogative of being able to speak. You know, before I do that

You are now in charge.

I would first like to thank immediate past Chair Gallagher for her service, as well as for mentoring for me. And, obviously, she enjoys her job because she didn't wanna give it up. But, thank thank you, Joel. I do have a comment on the calendar. And I think that regular involvement in the implementation is very important for this group, the Climate Action Committee, because we have the connections to the political organizations in each one of our jurisdictions.

And I'm not trying to inhibit the meetings of any implementation group, but I don't think that thing I think it's really important that this group stays active definitely through the adoption of the RCAP. But I just, from experience, know that may take a little bit longer as it goes through the political processes in each of our jurisdictions. And as I was saying, that the actual implementation is going to be going through the political jurisdictions, and it's valuable that everything is open and clear here at CAC meetings. So unless it looks like we have nothing to do, I would not be in a hurry to cut out meetings from this group.

Chair? Oh, thank you. May I may I have a comment? May I Of course. Thank you.

Thank you, Member Reeves, for bringing that up. My initial thought was like, wow, that's a really good idea. But then as it settled in with me and being on CAC for such a long time, I find that this is an important opportunity for public comment, for us to convene, for us to keep ourselves accountable, along with all the folks that we're working with accountable, that we're moving forward on a timely fashion. And I've also experienced as past chair that when there isn't anything really relevant that needs to where we need to meet, we've canceled meetings. So I'd like to proceed, as as chair Eisenberg says, I'd to proceed monthly unless we find out we don't need to.

But I think the accountability and and the public comment and access is also really important. So I just wanna share that.

Thank you, member Alicia. Member Reeves?

I I just wanna clarify. I wasn't saying that we don't have work to do. I'm just saying that our focus may change. And in order to be able to work on that focus effectively with local groups, it might take more in between time for staff to work with the implementation group as well as our group to get things situated for meetings. So that's my huge issue because as we move forward, it's gonna get more expensive for each jurisdiction to belong.

Thank you. Any more comments from the board? Are there any public comments on the calendar? Seeing no public comments, is there a motion from the members to adopt the calendar? Okay. K. We have a motion from Alicia, a second from member Narvaez. Okay. All in favor, please. Aye.

Oh, sorry. All opposed? Okay. Motion passes. So now everybody knows when they have to be here for the with the calendar, at least for now. We should be ready for a presentation on s b thirteen eighty three by Amanda Griffiths, the supervising environmental resource specialist for Napa County Public Works and staff to the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency.

Good morning.

I'm not used to the microphone. I feel like I'm too close to it.

Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me to give this presentation today. Alright. So I'm gonna do a couple of slides just briefly on an overview of s b thirteen eighty three. S b thirteen eighty three is the most significant waste management mandate since AB nine thirty nine, which was back in 1989, and that created a 50% solid waste diversion mandate and created programs like, you know, our curbside recycling that we have today.

And it also created the state agency CalRecycle that implements all of these different mandates. Landfilling organic waste creates methane, which is a climate super pollutant. Landfills are responsible for 21% of the state's methane emissions and are the third largest producer of methane in the state. The main driver of SB thirteen eighty three was greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. And then the targets included here are statewide.

Those are 75% less organic sent to the landfill and 25% less edible food disposed, which is landfilled or composted. Here's a high level bullet point on jurisdiction responsibilities for SB thirteen eighty three. The main one is providing organic service, which is your your compost or curbside compost service for all generators, establishing an edible food recovery program, which is what I'll be covering today, conducting outreach and education that'll be to businesses, residents, self haulers, everybody in your community. Procuring recycled content paper, so that would be at the jurisdiction level, your copy paper folders, handouts, flyers, everything needs to be recycled content, as well as procuring what they call organic organic derived products, which is, for example, purchasing compost, making that available to the community at no charge, securing access to capacity for composting and food recovery, monitoring compliance at businesses and residents, and conducting enforcement is one that is new for many jurisdictions. Most of these previous waste management laws have not required enforcement, so this is a new one for many jurisdictions.

So today, I'll be talking about food recovery as I mentioned. And committee members, if you're interested in a more detailed SB thirteen eighty three progress presentation, I'd encourage you to reach out to your jurisdiction staff for that. Okay. So food recovery doesn't mean, for example, at a restaurant scraping off some leftovers from a plate, packaging that up for somebody to pick it up. So the regulations require that 20% of currently disposed edible food is instead recovered for human consumption, and a baseline is not specified in the regulations for the 20%, how they're going to measure that change.

So that's more to come from CalRecycle and how they're going to evaluate that in the future. And one of the interesting stats that I thought would be helpful for the committee today is for every 2.5 tons of food rescued, that's the equivalent of taking one car off the road for a year. So I think that kind of fits with the committee's purpose. So here are the main four bullet points of the jurisdiction responsibilities regarding edible food recovery. Jurisdictions are required to expand capacity for edible food recovery or sorry, identify capacity for edible food recovery.

If needed, expand that capacity, which I'll cover throughout my presentation. Ensuring generators have access, which is the mandated donors, which I'll cover today as well. That includes educating them, making sure they know where the edible food can go, and as well as identifying, reaching out to, expecting, and working with these mandated donors to ensure they're complying with the regulations. The counties are sorry, the regulations require capacity assessments at certain intervals. Counties are required to lead these assessments, and we collect the information from jurisdictions throughout the county.

The assessment today is just or the assessment points on this slide are just for edible food recovery, but there's also organics processing capacity assessments that are separate. The food recovery capacity assessments must determine how much edible food is currently being disposed, how much food recovery services and organizations can recover, if there is additional capacity needed, how much that is. We're required after those assessments to notify any jurisdictions that need additional capacity. And for the ones that need additional capacity, we have to submit something the state calls implementation schedules. And those are just how we're planning to create more capacity to recover more edible food and get it to those in need.

So we completed our first capacity assessment a couple years ago. The first one was 2022 to 2034. And the way the state does it is they give us these planning periods, but you're really looking at that end year. So in 2020 on 08/01/2022, we submitted an assessment that was for the year 2024, and the county led an RFQ process to find a consultant to complete this assessment. So we'll be able to report that information to Cal Recycle at all cities, including the county.

Everybody participated together in that assessment with the consultant. We ended up hiring a consultant or they're actually a food recovery organization as well called Abound Food Care and then created a county lit countywide list for us of all the mandated donors who are required by the regulations to donate. They found and spoke to all of our food recovery organizations. They determine how much capacity they have at those organizations and if they were able to expand and recover additional edible food. And at that time, we found that we needed about an additional 1,000 tons, so that would be four year, of additional capacity to recover excess edible food.

And then I'll cover in a later slide, included in that implementation schedule was some grants that we put out to the community, to food recovery organizations, in order to assist them with expanding their edible food recovery. And I just wanted to do a reminder that this is just edible food recovery capacity, not disposal capacity or composting capacity. Okay. So we are currently in our second planning period, which was 2025 to 2034. Again, we were just looking at the 2034 calendar year, which is what we are assessing.

We submitted that report in the fall of last nope. Previous year. August 2024, and it's for the year 2034. So we again determined that we have a lack of capacity, about 1,800 tons, and we worked on implementation schedules. So, again, we're how going to continue to assess that lack of edible food recovery capacity.

The county and all the cities collaborated on what our plan was going to be to the state. This is a very collaborative effort. Food recovery doesn't tend to stay in jurisdiction lines, so we do our best to work together. And our plans to cal recycle generally included further site assistance and technical assistance to mandated donors and revisiting how much excess they actually have throughout that process and also reassessing the capacity available at the food recovery organizations and how to best support them with recovering this edible food that they are required to do. And the next planning period will be for 2030 to 2039, so we've got about four years until we reassess everything again and see where we're at.

Okay. So as you can see here, I kind of did this to compare the two different planning periods. So we did have an increase in available capacity, but our study also determined that our need for additional capacity increased. And I kind of tried to go through what some of the main differences were. So when I did a little bit of assessment, I noticed a previous consultant determined the need with a different calculation than we did on this most recent planning period.

So previously, they based the amount of excess edible food at businesses by employees that are out of business and did an extrapolation extrapolation from there. In this most recent time, we used what's called a waste characterization study from Calvert Cycle. So they looked at business types and assessed about how much percent of their trash is actually edible food. So the second time, we'd used that method. So I think it was a good learning lesson for us of keeping a consistent calculation methodology so that'll give us a better look at how things are changing and that we're doing things consistently.

The other thing I wanted to point out, mentioned grants that I'll cover later. In the available capacity, the expansion that the grants were going to do was not included. The timing just didn't work out. The grants were awarded around when the studies were due, so we weren't able to include that capacity expansion in those calculations. The other reasons could be, you know, we truly lack capacity.

And there's also some challenges at some of the smaller food recovery organizations of truly determining how much they can take in. They may be all volunteer run, and they don't have staff to kind of handle these kind of complicated calculations. So we did submit, as I mentioned, those implementation schedules the 2024 to tell Calricelco, you know, how we're gonna continue working to make sure all that excess edible food gets to food recovery organizations and gets to people who need it. Okay. So this is a little bit of the the nitty gritty on who is required to donate.

So SB thirteen eighty three defines two groups of businesses that are required to donate the maximum amount of edible food that would otherwise be disposed. So see, this is our tier one categories. There's also our tier two. So tier one is mostly shelf stable foods, things from grocery stores, produce, sometimes some dairy items. And tier two is a little bit more of the prepared foods.

And you'll see the kind of list of parameters and business types on that slide. So the previous slide, think I forgot to point out, they were required to comply right when the regulation started, which was 2022. And then these list of businesses had to start complying in 2024. So they kind of phased in when everybody had to comply. And this one, I can have a little bit information with me today for county and also the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency member cities, so the three Up Valley cities on business types.

I'd encourage you to reach out, you know, for City of American Canyon and City of Napa to your staff with more detailed questions. I did wanna point out I had a calculation error on here. I had an update on the food distributors and wholesale vendors column, and I forgot to update it at the end. So our grand total countywide is actually 88. The vast majority are in the City Of Napa.

So City Of Napa has about 50% of the businesses. I combined the waste management agency in the county since kind of sure staff for that. That's about 47%, and American Canyon has about 3% of the mandated donors. And there are top categories of the types of businesses that have to donate, as you can see, is the wholesale food vendors, restaurants, and supermarkets and grocery stores. So these mandated donors are required to, as I mentioned, donate the maximum amount that would otherwise be composted or landfilled.

They're required to sign and maintain an agreement with a food recovery organization or service. They're required to keep records of those agreements and the donations that they are making. For large venues or events that don't provide food but allow food to be provided, they must require event operators or the event has to donate all their excess edible food. If it's over 2,000 people, I think that was on the previous slide, per day of events. So it's our larger events like Bottle Rock, La Onda.

And they also have to accommodate site inspections by county or city staff. Just a little bit more on what I mentioned, the food recovery organizations or services. So what I put on the slide for the first two bullet points is the definitions from the regulations. But to put it a little more simply, a food recovery organization, an example of that is the food bank. So they may pick up food.

You may have to drop off food to them, but they actually get the food directly to those who need it. A food recovery service will always pick up but does not directly serve the food. So that would be like feeding it forward. Feeding it forward may work with the food bank and then bring the food to the food bank, and then they do the actual distribution. These groups are not required to contract with the mandated donors.

However, if they choose to, they are required to keep records, report those to the jurisdiction that they are mainly based out of, and that gets reported back to the state. Inspections is another item that we are required to do. So up there is an example of the inspection form that we use for the county and the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency. We are required to monitor compliance. We don't have to inspect every donor every year.

Here, because we're smaller, inspecting everyone every year is a little bit more durable doable. The big cities and counties, it's going to be a little bit tougher for them to do that. So we are required to verify if they have contracts or written agreements, look at their recordkeeping on-site, as well as if they are donating donating the maximum amount. And that one, we would just have to determine based on what they're donating and size. For example, if there's a large grocery store here in the city of Napa or, you know, it doesn't have to be in the city of Napa, they're donating a loaf of bread once a month.

You know, you could determine they're probably not donating the maximum amount. Alright. We are also required to annually provide information to these mandated donors. They the requirements are listed on the county website as well as that's an example of a flyer that we use for the county I'm sorry, a brochure that we use for the county and waste management agency that is available in English and in Spanish. So we have to tell the donors about their requirements, donating the max, having an agreement, keeping the records, providing a list of the food recovery organizations and services in the county, which is what you know, the screenshot's a little hard to see, but that's what I included there.

And we're also required to let them know about steps to prevent the creation of food waste. And we have decided kind of countywide that the county website will hold the list of the food recovery organizations and services operating here. We have to update that annually, So we direct all the businesses to look there for the most recent list of who they can reach out to to potentially contract with for their excess edible food. Alright. So going back to previously, the first assessment where we determine we lacked capacity, Napa County led a notice of funding availability.

And Napa County, the Up Valley cities, the city of Napa participated in that. American Canyon did not because after our first determination, they did some follow-up and felt like they had enough capacity. So everybody but city of American Canyon participated in the notice of funding availability. We had $90,000 available for projects that expanded capacity for edible food recovery, and we wanted to focus on funding onetime costs, not we weren't able to fund ongoing needs like staff time or insurance. We received two applications, and we were able to fund both.

We awarded $40,000 to community community action Napa Valley, which is the food bank, as well as $50,000 to Feeding It Forward. And kind of some lessons learned that we had on that first round of grants was the food recovery organizations don't always need things like vans with refrigeration, tables, dollies, things like that. They need money for staff time. Sometimes they may not know what they need, as I mentioned earlier. And sometimes, you know, jurisdiction staff, we really are focused on recycling and composting, so we may not know what is best to expand our capacity here.

And then as I mentioned there, everything took a lot longer than we projected. So we awarded those, and we ended up amending the scope and amending the contract end date for both. So right now, both projects will be completed in June 26 for both Feeding It Forward and Community Action Napa Valley. So here's a Feeding It Forward award, a little bit more on them. The main part of their project was for installing a refrigeration unit in a van that they already owned.

So they had purchased the van already. We funded the a solar, actually, refrigeration system to be installed. And they realized after getting a few different quotes, getting slowed down a little bit on timing, the cost for the refrigeration installation was going to be less. So we did amended their project, and we were able to fund a couple other smaller portions for them to help with their outreach, their website since they had additional kind of funding available with the refrigeration costs being less. And then they did send me a few pictures so that in the back is the actual refrigerator system.

I guess you can't really see it. Maybe you could feel it if you're in there. And that was from some of their holiday pickups. And for Community Action Napa Valley, they we had an amendment with them as well. So we awarded them that $40,000 to purchase. It was originally a different type of vehicle. I believe it was like a Chevy Tahoe, a type of SUV. And they realized that, I think due to cost and logistics, they realized a Sprinter van to do food recovery pickups was gonna suit their needs better. So we amended their scope to allow them to purchase that, as well as extended the close date of their agreement. So that is a picture of their van there down at the food bank.

So we also work on collaborating countywide. So between the county, the Up Valley cities, American American Canyon, and Napa, we try to meet regularly or check-in with each other via Teams, in person, you know, whatever way you can best do it in order to try to have kind of a county wide collaborative implementation of everything. So some of the next step items that we discussed, our last collaborative meeting was at the end of last year, is we want to work on a baseline study to really get a better assessment of how effective the grants were that we awarded, what then the current capacity is at our different food recovery organizations, and providing more assistance to those who may be all volunteer run and just need some more assistance in determining that. And we're also hoping that'll give us a better idea of how to, in the future, better help those food recovery organizations expand their capacity. And then the other one is we've had some discussions with health and human services on potentially either combining with the master tobacco settlement grants or avoiding them.

When we awarded our first put our first kind of grant, the notice of funding availability out, We unintentionally released at the same time as the master of tobacco settlement grants, so I think that put some undue pressure on the nonprofits that were applying for the funding. So I wanted to kind of cover some challenges that we've felt like we've kind of experienced countywide. One of them is having the time for outreach and onboarding these businesses. This is brand new for them. Some of them may be really difficult to get ahold of.

It just takes a lot of intensive, you know, emails, follow ups going in person to these businesses to explain the regulations to them and get them onboarded. And another challenge we experience is the business owners not understanding their requirements, perhaps thinking they need to buy extra food to donate, or thinking we're requiring them to donate money to these different groups. You know, and then sometimes once we get that information to the business owners, on-site staff have to implement it, and on-site staff have no idea what's going on. So it takes a couple of different rounds of educating these businesses on their requirements and how to comply. And again, like I mentioned, the food recovery organization, some of the smaller ones may just have some challenges in getting a good number of what their capacity is and really understanding how much they can handle for this edible food recovery.

On compliance, I know we have city of Napa staff here who can give you a better number on where we're at. American Cannon, I'll ask you to cut I have a little bit of a sense, but I can recommend you reaching out to your staff on that. Between a kind of combined Napa County and the Waste Management Agency, and we're about 41 compliant right now. Many businesses, you know, are just really difficult to get ahold of. And or some of them, you know, we've had inspections and site visits and meetings with them, and they just haven't taken that final step to set that agreement and start keeping their records and really start donating.

So it's just, you know, again, that kind of time intensive following up with businesses in order to get them compliant. So our kind of next steps, we're going to be receiving final reports on those grants in June '26. The agreements we have will require Feeding It Forward and Community Action Napa Valley to give us a good report on how much excess edible food they were able to recover with the new vehicles that they have. And I'm estimating that we'll start kind of that updated baseline study, start looking for a consultant for that in the summer, and then, of course, continuing outreach and onboarding of all of those mandated donors. I'll have my contact information here in case you'd like to contact me for county and for businesses in the three Valley cities, city of Napa, city of American Canyon.

We can contact your staff, or I can connect you if you are having trouble with the right staff person. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Griffiths. They're very, very informative. I'm sure there'll be several questions, but let's start with public remarks. Are there any public remarks on this issue? Don't go too far away.

Seeing no public remarks, are there questions, clarifications, member trip, and then immediate past chair Gallagher?

Thank you. That was a really interesting presentation and well done. My question is basic, and I think you kind of covered it, but I wasn't quite clear. The capacity number that we're shooting for, that's determined by looking at the waste stream and saying x amount is being thrown out. Therefore, you need this capacity. Am I getting that right?

Correct. Yes. That's how I did it. So I looked at what a business's total solid waste is. So that's their recycling, compost, and trash combined. And CalRecycle had numbers by business type, like restaurant, school, commercial producer, and they have a percent on there, and then kind of do that multiplication to get how much they may have.

Okay. And then the excuse me. My other is a very basic question. So I'm aware, for example, in Yountville, Trader Joe's works with volunteers who pick up food that is still usable but would be thrown out, and then they bring it up to Yountville and distribute it. So the under this system, Trader Joe's would report that activity so that that could get counted, Or is that requirement that they begin reporting and you follow it, is that all new, basically? So you have to find somebody at Trader Joe's who attests to how much is being sent where? So Did I get that right?

Yes. Yeah. So it'll typically kinda go through the food recovery organization. So the businesses are required to keep records, and then the food recovery organizations keep records as well. And then they're actually the ones that report it to us at the jurisdiction level, and then that goes to the state.

So for example, and I won't get into too many details, but if this was like and this has been going on for many, many years, and I applaud Trader Joe's. So I think what you're saying, if there wasn't a formal organization involved like a nonprofit, it might not get reported. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Immediate past chair Gallagher.

Please just call me member. Thank you so much for the presentation. This is answering a lot a lot of questions that we've had for for a while, in terms of how this part gets implemented. So you said we're 41% compliant, and I realize it hasn't been that long for many of these businesses. What is the consequence of being out of compliance? And what is the enforcement mechanism, I guess?

At least for the county, can speak to it. Would go to our normal code compliance process. That's what's new as previously our team has been responsible for implementing, what's called AB eighteen twenty six. There was AB three forty one that are various recycling and composting mandates, but they didn't have the teeth, so to speak. So we had no recourse to report those to code compliance. But technically, these ones, you know, we actually did recently work with code compliance for a county unincorporated business, and they were able to help us bring that business into compliance with the mandate.

Member Joseph? Yes. Thank you for the report. I I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around the the numbers and the methodology. So Sure. We heard that figuring out the total capacity isn't really done by a survey. More so, it's just done using modeling and and that kind of thing. So okay. Good. So that's how we get to the big number. Current capacity would be examples like Trader Joe on their own, taking it up to be redistributed.

There's

okay. Can be, that kind of thing.

So there's the Okay. So there's the I guess it'd be the estimated edible food going to landfill. That's what's at the businesses that needs to be recovered. The capacity available, that's what feeding a forwarder can be could handle. And then we get the delta there. So the first bullet point is what the businesses have. Second is what Feeding Up Forward and Canby's Salvation Army could do, could handle.

And so then that, the capacity needed would could be, for example, giving Canvia an extra van so they can go out and pick up more things. Sure. Or creating another organization and those kinds of

things. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Alright. Well, that gives me a better handle on it. Sure. Then kinda off topic, but one of the issues is groceries have the Best Buy and all these other things that people will look at, see the date, and say, if it's after that date, then I have to throw it away, when in reality, it's probably got, sometimes with canned goods, maybe six months to a year more. Is there any effort at the state level or whatever level it is to say, don't be clever.

Just, you know, give us a date that says if it's after this date, throw it away because it'll hurt you or something like that. Because right now, I think there's a lot of confusion. It occurred to me a lot of the food waste is based on gee whiz, I saw this expiration date. I don't want to hurt myself. I'm going to throw it away. And they don't realize they're wasting for no good reason.

Sure. I'm not super familiar on this subject. I believe I had heard about a regulation that was going to churn, you know, there's sell buy, better buy, use buy. Yeah. And they were working on a regulation that would make it only one kind of phrase, but, you know, I'm not aware of the latest on that.

Because it yeah. I I mean, I hope they do because it's very difficult to tell somebody, don't worry about that date. It won't hurt you. And they look at it, you know, it's it's a tough sell.

It's a it's a hard perception, I think, for the food receivers.

Thank you.

Remember, Alicia? I'm just trying to go in order.

Oh, okay. Beth, do you want to go first? No. Go ahead. Okay. Alright. Thank you for this report. I have to say, this is for me, this is inspiring. It's when SB thirteen eighty three was first presented by Mr. Miller here, we're like, my gosh, this is going be really hard.

How are we going to do this? And here we are with actually an implementation plan on something that the state has mandated that, again, seemed out of reach, but it just, again, proves it is within reach. Right? And so not to say it's an easy lift, But it's really great to see this here and see this implementation. Just a couple questions. And you might have said this, I'm so sorry. Did you say where the funding originally comes from? Is this state funding, the 90,000 that we allocated?

It is. Well, at least for our county and waste management agency, Kevin's speak for the city, is from franchise fees. So it's from fees that we get that are based on how many more or less how many tons are collected by our waste haulers. So we get some funding back at the county in the Up Valley agency to create these public programs. We've thought about using we have a grant from the state right now. They call it the thirteen eighty three Local Assistance Grant. But it's a little bit challenging because then that grant requires the county to own these different things. Like, they require the county to own the van and lease it to the food bank, we felt like that was too complicated.

So we're just using They can keep their funding there. Yeah.

So we're using what we call franchise fees.

Okay. Are those new fees? Are those fees that we've had and they were paid for something else?

Yes. We've had them for a long time. So we use them for our various kind of public, education as and assistance programs.

Okay. So it's been it's been public education. And I'm just wondering if we're using those $90,000 and I'm really glad we are, what are we not using it for that we used to use it for? So is there that's that's kind of where I'm kind of

Okay.

Going with it.

I think it's just a little a little extra added on that we did. For example, at the the county and the waste management agency, we have what we call a business assistance program. The city has one as well. So if any business wants help with compliance with various mandates, we'll go out there, provide them bins for insights, stickers and signs, the different materials they need to succeed. And that's kind of one of the main things that we use for those fees.

Great. Thank you for that. And just I just want to give a shout out to David Busby. Because David Busby, who used to be the director of what was called the table of food program through the First Presbyterian Church. This was something that he saw as a director for this food assistance program for people.

It was a secondary program in addition to The Salvation Army. And he saw the waste that was happening, and it just really got him, just the whole thing. And so when he joined Leadership Napa Valley, he wanted this to be a project, and therefore it was, and it ended up being feeding it forward. So he was kind of a he was definitely the person behind this, and then he's stepped away a few years ago. But it's really great to see it moving forward. I just want to give him a shout out, because he made it he was ahead of his time, if you will. This is before 1383 was even known about. Let's see here. What else do I have? I have you talked about code enforcement.

Is this only county code enforcement, or is each jurisdiction's code enforcement involved?

Yeah. Each jurisdiction. You know, for city and Napa businesses, it'd be theirs. Up Valley cities would have their own.

And then at the at the end of the at the end of the line when we talk about capacity and the need in terms of the people that we can serve with this, there's going to be a surplus. I just know because I've been in the food access nonprofit arena ten years alone in prior chapter. So what are we coordinating? Are we working with neighboring counties that may have more need and capacity for these food to

go to? We definitely thought about that, but don't actively have any plans for kind of partnerships with other county. But I agree. I think we should also be considering our neighboring counties.

Yeah. We have an abundant amount of food, and we do have a lot of need here. So maybe it's, again, working closer with whether it be the family resource centers and working with them in terms of the implementation of this food to go out to the members of our community, the residents that they serve, in addition to the traditional, you know, the homeless shelter and and those other places. So I think we need to be creative, and I think we also need to work with our neighboring counties because I can see the surplus coming from Napa County. Thank you.

Member Painter?

Thank you. Great information. I really appreciate it. I have a couple of basic questions as well, and I'll start with just the notion of capacity when you say capacity. Are we talking about refrigerated storage? Are we talking about a warehouse built? Are are we talking about expanding existing facilities like the food bank? What exactly do you mean by capacity?

I think it would kinda be a summary of everything. So it'd be their ability to do they have the staff to drive the van to pick up the food, put it in their refrigeration system, and then get it back out? So that I think that's some of the challenge of them figuring out of these groups, like the Food Bank or Fading Go Forward, figuring out what that number really is, how much they can really handle, take in, and get back out again.

Okay. Yeah. No. That makes sense because I think, like member Alessio, I think about, you know, it's great to have all this ability to store and to collect. But if you can't distribute or we don't have the mechanism to distribute, then the bottleneck is really not that we're asking all these businesses to collect food.

The bottleneck is getting it out in a timely manner because we're dealing with expiration dates. We're dealing with, you know, you know, some basic health and safety issues. So identifying where the bottleneck is, I think, is really important. And if one solution is looking at other locations, I think that's terrific because, you know, we wanna try to collect as much as we can. But at the end of the day, if this program is about distribution, then, you know, that's equally important.

So thank you for clarifying that. The other thing on the sort of the mandated list, I noticed, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was restaurants larger than 5,000 suite, square feet and more than 250 seats, which is pretty large. And we have some of those in Napa, but we have a lot of smaller businesses. We have a lot of smaller grocery stores that don't fall into that mandated requirement. So I think sort of similar to what member Trip was saying, you know, we have some voluntary efforts that are happening that we're not really tracking, and I'm not suggesting we do track them.

But I think it's important to somehow capture that as we report back because we wanna continue to support our small businesses who are working so hard in small restaurants who have fed people in times of need, who have made meals during COVID and during fire emergencies, who have worked so hard to try to use all their resources to the best they can. And I think that's a large part. And I understand the mandates and and what you're talking about. But as a community, I think we have a lot of smaller businesses that we wanna kind of give a big pat on the back for all the work they're doing. So yeah.

Thank you. And I see Kevin here. So, you know, I am interested in our in city of Napa 1383, which has been a lot of work, and we've gotten information. So, whatever you have to share would be great.

Sure. And I'm just gonna focus on the edible food component of this gigantic bill. Right? You know, this this is an unfunded mandate. Just keep that in mind. For Napa, it's about 2,000,000 a year. We get these onetime grants. The last one the city was eligible for was about 200,000, and they're they're not recurring. You can't count on them. So they they they only help you a little bit if you're getting onetime purchases. So just keep that in mind. It's mostly on the backs of the ratepayers. Our contribution to the $90,000 grant came out of ratepayer funds. That's who paid for it. It wasn't anything from the state.

And with that, I think we we were half, and we're 44 out of 88, in terms of the tier one, tier tier two generators. And I have my point person, Griffin. I think we've got 42 out of 44 compliant. I'll let her speak for a minute.

K. Hi. We do have 44 generators total, and we inspected all of them past year. 42 complies, and we only have two Macrees that are noncompliant. We are working on it. Yes.

Thank you. You.

I do and I

because the question was brought up. That bill did pass. They they're trying to shift to used by for clarification because the Best Buy is it's it's just a quality thing. It doesn't mean throw it out. It's just maybe a you know, then go bad the day after the Best Buy date. The used by is really the critical one. That is when you're supposed to, for health reasons, throw it out.

Well, thank you. I I'm incredibly impressed by your compliance rate. That that seems wonderful. Are there any any more quest oh, vice chair Narvaez.

Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify on some of the data. So the current food that's going to landfills, what I wrote down was 1,192 tons. Is that correct? I believe that's what I saw in the in the slide. And in the in the in the answer that you gave, I thought I heard that there was a blended with landfill and compost. I just wanna confirm if that's if those tons are both landfill and compost.

So the okay. So for the estimated Kevin's much taller than me. For the estimated edible food going to landfill, so we did that calculation based on a state studies. So they looked at all the waste streams combined and extrapolated that number. So then that's what I I kind of did the same thing. So it combines you know, there probably isn't food and they're recycling, but that that's how I determine the percentage. With all of their services combined, I think probably gives a good sense of the scale of the businesses, why they did it that way. And then that's how we extrapolated the percent of excess edible food that business had, if I answered that correctly.

Okay. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the kind of the the pathway of waste going into organics versus landfill now for, food consumption. I would just wanna make sure that the the data is fair because

Sure.

I believe we're doing a pretty good job with filling out, you know, separating organics from landfills. Right? So would the calculation better be from organics? You know, how much are we collecting in organics and how much of that goes to to food consumption? Because part of my thought is maybe the reluctancy from operators and restaurants is if I'm not ready to throw this out, I can still sell it. Right? And the other part is, is there any danger for selling food that's nearly going to be thrown out, if somebody gets sick? So how how do we address that to make sure there's confidence from the generators?

Okay. But well, for the second part, I can't answer that one. So there's I think there's a couple different protections put in. I believe it's called the the Good Samaritan. Do you remember, Kevin? The Good Samaritan. Okay. So as long as they donate in good faith that they're not donating something that they as long as they're donating something that they think is, you know, healthy and edible and good for somebody to eat, they have kinda some protections. And we do have that on our website and also on the the handouts that we have a little bit more on that.

K. I know restaurants run-in slim margins. Yes. So for them to donate food that they could sell, I could see that there might be a pause. So I wonder if maybe I missed it, then sent then sent it for that. Maybe there's tax breaks for them as a business. I'm not sure. But what is may is that has that been maybe a hurdle for them?

I believe so. And I I think most restaurants, I think you're correct, they don't have a lot of excess edible food. I think most of it is coming from grocery stores. Costco here in Napa is producing quite a bit that the food bank is picking up. I think very little is actually coming from restaurants. And I think when it does happen, it's because maybe an event got canceled or they received the incorrect order. I I don't think most have regular donations they need to make.

I see. Okay. Thank you. I think part of the answer one thing I'm kinda careful to say is wasted food. You know? Think of it that way. The point of this really isn't to recover more edible food. It's to prevent the waste in the first place. So we're you know, whether it's edible food and somebody else you know, there's a a kind of a hierarchy of who can use it, or if if it has to be animal feed or if it needs to go to compost, there's different levels that you're that you're targeting. My point person right on the spot here pulled up what that labeling bill is.

If the a b six sixty, it goes into effect July 1. So that that has been passed and signed into law.

That's the sell by or use by?

That's the use by

that's the use by law. Ask about that.

Read my mind. Yep. So Sell by. Sell by.

Okay.

Perfect. And then I I think the other thing I I just wanted to point out, since we've done those studies, and I think Amanda would be the first to, concur on this, the expansion, particularly those two organizations that received our grant funding, feeding it forward forward has expanded their capacity significantly. They they don't have to say no. They're willing every time we go to a generator that has some available edible food, they're on it. They're willing to do it, and they have that connection, whether it be the food bank or other distribution outlets.

Everything they collect per pretty much, they find a home for, unless it's just gonna expire because of the nature of the food. And then the the can be the food bank at their new location, They have a much bigger freezer. What they're able to do is very impressive. So I think some of that capacity is gonna shrink just by those two organizations and the improvements that they've made in the past few months, in the past couple of years. So we're in a different place here in 2026 than when the initial study was done in 2022. So just keep that in mind. And we're that's why we're gonna do probably a reassessment of where we really stand to understand understand that.

I I believe that reassessment will show a difference between landfill and and compost and Yeah. You know, organic collection, which I hope for. I mean, that's the goal. It's less landfills and repurpose those to other uses that reduce the waste.

Absolutely. And we're making great progress. I can speak to the city of Napa on that. And if you want a future presentation on the other aspects, you know, this is just one sliver of this gigantic bill, especially on the multifamily. Bring that up. It's the hardest one to do, but we're making great progress on that.

Great great work and great and shout to the those organizations that are that are collecting the food and getting it out to to our community because food insecurity is a real thing. Thank you very much.

Can we have a com comment from staff, mister Gutierrez?

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for being here. And, my questions are pretty, I think, simple in terms of monitoring and data. Is there a formula to, like, tons of this kind of food diverted equaling reduced, you know, short lived climate pollutants? Like, it's like, we have this this tonnage, but does that equal, yeah, how much methane reduced? I think that's gonna be important for us in terms of monitoring this plan and trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I don't think I have that in my notes, but I would imagine CalRecycle has that number that I could access for you.

I just think it'd be interesting to have that wherever we have this information, but for them

to go hand in hand. We definitely have the conversion for the composting component. I don't know about the edible food piece, if it's higher, lower, same. You know, she had the statistic of the two and a half tons of record of recovered edible food being one passenger vehicle.

Mhmm.

So you have that. I don't know what component of that is the methane.

Right. And I think that's also a a great visual. Right? Like, one car removed, which kinda also tells us, like, man, if we remove more cars, if we all did more to drive less, like, yeah, it'll kinda make up a lot, you know, for for this type of work. So that's one. And the other one is in terms of education, the education campaigns, how have those gone? What have been some of the strengths, and what are some of the things that I think that might need to work?

Are you talking more globally or edible food specifically?

Edible food and, working with the businesses.

Okay. I I think Amanda and Burfin are better to speak to that than I am.

Sorry. Can you say that one more time? So, like, the strengths of what we found to be successful with outreach?

Yeah.

The I guess for a method, it's, you know, direct outreach. Burfin is doing a very intensive outreach in the city of Napa to these businesses. So most successful is getting face to face with these business owners to teach them about the regulations. Kind of the large scale sending out billing inserts, mass mailings don't work too well. It's really, like, direct face to face outreach is most effective, if that answered the the question.

Yeah.

Yeah. We do send a note notification letter at the beginning of the year, follow-up with face to face. I go visit them. I explain them. I tell them, this is not scary. Don't make anything extra. Just do not throw away your edible food. I'll find someone that you can give it to, and we do that. We make an we reach out to Kenby, Food Bank, or Feeding America or feed not Feeding America, Feeding It Forward, or we have more orient organizations. They make an agreement.

They tell them how they want to receive this food. It has to be frozen. Sometimes it needs to be single packaged or however they want to distribute it. They tell them. The business prepares it, leaves it in their freezer or fridge. It's sometimes daily. Like, Trader Joe's is doing a great job. They have, I believe, five separate organizations who comes each day to take different items, flowers, plants, dry goods, produce. Everything goes to a specific it's either church or school. There's they have amazing, team that works.

Maybe you tell them about Walmart as an example.

Walmart is yes. So Walmart is a big supporter of Feeding America, which is the food bank is under, And they try to work with one organization, but we have been finding a lot of edible looking food in their compost. So I we have been going weekly just to see, like, there's tons of eggs. There's bagels, produce that looks good. So I had to connect with the manager several times, and I said, okay.

I can find you somebody else. If food bank doesn't want this or if there's a reason that you don't give these out, I'll find you somebody else. Just say yes, and they did. So we are actually trying to connect them with feeding it forward for anything that the food bank doesn't take will go to feeding it forward to be distributed. We are working on it. Yes. It's a great great cause, so I really believe in it, as you can tell.

And I think that's I think that's one main answer to a lot of what you're you know, these organizations the food bank doesn't deal in perishable food very much. It's really not going out and actively collecting it. So that's where feeding it forward is filling that niche.

K. Well Thank you. Thank you, miss Griffiths. Thank you to all our presenters. There see no more questions from the board. I do appreciate the very informative presentation. We're going to move on to 5D, presentation on the CAC's 2026 work plan and related roles and responsibilities of CAC members and staff. I can read the rest to it, but I bet you'll cover it all.

I will. Did we take public comment on the last Yep. We did at the beginning. Very beginning. No one came up. Right? Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Good morning, everybody. So today, I'm just gonna give a quick, kind of recap, kind of focus us for the New Year, go over an RCAB update, go over some, work plan and priorities proposed, quick overview of the budget process, how it works, and then a kind of a refresher on, both county staff and CAC appointee, roles and responsibilities. So just to kind of set the scene, the role of the climate action committee, and I think this year, as we've kind of talked about the word action, I think, is gonna be very important. As we know, all six jurisdictions represented here have adopted resolutions or declarations kind of stating that there's a climate emergency and a need for immediate and urgent action, so much so that 2030 is a year and a and a kind of mile milestone that we're looking for, and that's gonna require a lot of action and kinda scaling up a lot of the efforts that already exist. So we have a lot of work to do.

In addition to, for the CAC as being a vehicle of sharing information with the public and with constituents, it's a form for discussion and coordination. So I think that's very important for us to remember. And probably an unspoken obvious truth is that CAC members are the champions for the regional climate action and adaptation plan. Staff were here to to to, you know, make recommendations, create policy, and and draft up programs. But, really, the CAC can guide and and make recommendations for implementation and implementation preferences.

So quick, R CAP update. In fiscal year twenty five, twenty six, this past year, the completion, adoption, and implementation of the R CAP was the priority. In the 2025, the R CAP was released for public review. Project staff with consultant and NAPA RCD support did host four open house events throughout the county in the incorporated cities and town. During the sixty day public comment period, reviewers of of the RCAP submitted hundreds of comments via the online comment tool on the project website, and over a 100 distinct comments were pulled from emails and letters that were sent to us as staff.

All comments were reviewed by staff, and we made initial responses and worked with Ascent, our consultant, to approve any or make adjustments to the RCAT, to the to the draft. Eric, our consultant, from Ascent, made presentations to each one of the, six CAC member jurisdictions and the and their governing bodies, to present the RCAT. And right now, the initial study CEQA document is in process. We are very close to releasing that for a thirty day public, comment period. Project staff, working group members, legal counsel, and, SQL experts on staff have reviewed the initial study and made comments on that, draft.

So we are working. It's in process. We're getting closer to to kind of putting it out for the public thirty day comment period. We are on track to have a final R CAP ready in 2026, and we're planning to take the R CAP to the county board of supervisors for approval in mid May or early June. So those are the kind of dates that we're targeting to take the RCAMP the final RCAMP to to the board of supervisors. Obviously, there's lot of work that needs to happen before that. We need to receive the actual final. We need to have the initial study complete. We need to put the initial study out there for the public. So there's a lot of notification that needs to go before that.

So that's why we're looking at May and, hopefully, as as a a date to have the RCAP ready for adoption. And then from that, the county will go first, and then we'll go through the other jurisdictions with, CAC and and, working group help to to get that hopefully adopted in the different jurisdictions. So the proposed work plan for this next fiscal year, 2026 to 2027, again, is the adoption of the RCAP by each municipality. We will rely on the working group staff to facilitate adoption hearing presentations for their respective governing bodies. Obviously, the project team will be available to support, but we are kind of relying on the working group to kind of move that forward in each one of their jurisdictions.

And in close coordination with the working group, we'll continue to develop the RCAMP implementation strategy. We kind of put a pause on that as we were working we're hoping to get, all the comments in from the public on the draft the first draft of the RCAP, and we've done that. We've kind of worked with Ascent and the working group to create responses. We're kind of, finishing that up. So we're really close to kind of moving more forward on implementation strategy and creating that strategy.

There are some implementation kind of frameworks in the r cap that that, set has the consultants have given us. So we have those. We just have to kind of work on, coordinating as a working group on how we would move forward. So I think there's still a lot of work to do with that, and we're kinda just getting that started. A big one, the CSC should be prepared to discuss how and if organizational update will be needed, as we move the RCAP from development to actual implementation.

Obviously, how the CAC will be leveraged to champion the RCAP and making implementation an actionable priority for the different jurisdictions and departments. Right now, we function under this drug powers agreement, which is working well, but do there need to be any changes to that? So just kind of thinking about that. I know an authority has been floated, but there's you know, a discussion should be had in terms of, like, is that the right way to go? How much work, needs to be done by the different, CAC members to kinda relay information to the jurisdictions?

How much work does the working group need to do? So there's a lot that needs to go on in terms of figuring out what this body how this body will will function, moving forward, especially for implementation. And finally, yeah, actually implementing the strategies and coordinating regionally the programs and actions and funding, for putting the implementation strategy into effect. Now budget process overview. We went through we went through this process basically last year where staff presented a draft proposed, budget to the CAC in February.

In February, we're gonna ask you all to take a look and give us feedback. We'll go back and and revise the budget as as with the feedback that we received and then bring back a budget for your approval in March. Once we have gonna have that, the CAC members should kind of facilitate the approval of that budget through your own municipal, budget hearings. And then beyond that, the county will invoice CAC members quarterly, and CAC members should facilitate and review and approve those invoices related to CAC activities. Counties county staff roles and responsibilities.

Napa County is the lead agency providing support to the CAC and facilitating CAC meetings. We'll continue to do that. County staff will continue to manage, contracts developed through the CAC, such as those with the SANT, working on the RCAP and, for instance, Ari, Bob Rock, who worked on the EV, charging tool. So we'll continue to do that. Staff will work with the project team and the working group to facilitate the completion of the RCAP, the secret document, and facilitate the adoption process with board of supervisors and provide support for adoption hearings at partner jurisdictions.

Staff will continue to coordinate and facilitate the working group meetings, which have been, ongoing since we, kinda started that group up, last year. We'll coordinate and continue to develop the RCAP implementation strategy. We will share information on trainings, workshops, and grants, etcetera, to the CAC, and we'll continue to develop scopes of work when needed for CAC activities and facilitate joint actions that are needed to meet the mission of and addressing the regional impacts of climate change. CAC appointee roles and responsibilities. As as mentioned, providing feedback on the proposed draft budget, approve a final budget, for the CAC, and facilitate the budget's approval by respective decision making bodies.

CSC members are champions of the RCAMP. As we mentioned, the CSC members will be crucial in ensuring that the policies and programs outlined in the RCAMP are set as priorities and implemented. The CSC should be ready to provide guidance to jurisdictional staff and to the working group on implementing implementation preferences, gathering sentiment from the leadership on how the CAC can best support the RCAP implementation and discuss potential updates to the to the JPA, sharing information with other, other other, other, staff, the constituents and departments and leadership, and, obviously, maintaining a good attendance at the CAC meetings, for this year. And with that, we can, move on to discussion. Thank you.

Thank you. Comments from the board? Member Gallagher.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Jesse, for making the presentation and updating us. I have a question actually, from a constituent about the you said that there were responses to the comments that were made by ASCENT and staff from I don't know. Who made the responses? Sorry. Who?

Staff, project staff, drafted initial responses. We worked with Ascent to kind of create larger responses, kind of break them out thematically. Now, those haven't been shared with the public yet.

Okay. Because that's, I think, what I was wondering. People are making comments on the RCAP and wondering if there's gonna be some kind of global response.

Yeah, so there will be. Okay. So, like, our initial responses were to kind of look at each comment, you know, were they comments about, Make a change here? Were they comments, this is my general sentiment, general feeling? Right? We had to kind of sit down with that, kind of parse them out. Same thing that there were a lot of comments that were kind of grouped together. A lot of them had to do with building electrification, or they might have had to do with working lands. So we kinda grouped those all together and figured out responses for those. So those are responses that we've kind of already started working through. We're trying to finalize those now, and we will create some kind of public facing document that has those types of responses.

Okay. So that'll be well in advance of any approval by the board, for example.

Yeah. They should all kind of be delivered together. So, like, when we have the final RCAP, the IS ready to go, those responses should be there because from those responses is kind of the changes that were made, if any, to the r cap at moment, to this to this final draft.

Yes. Mhmm. Alright. Thank you. Sure.

Other comments? Just Member Joseph.

In general, in terms of the priorities for the next fiscal year, they seem to make sense. And I think each individual jurisdiction probably has the responsibility to focus on the low hanging fruit that each jurisdiction has while the CAC is wrapping up the RCAP, getting the implementation plan going, and then talking about what our structure should be. The only caveat is we know that years ago there was discussion, and there's always the opportunity for legal action. So this is all based on nobody blows things up by filing a lawsuit. Right?

Okay. Alright. It it's I guess it's more a matter of I think this is a reasonable workload subject to something blowing up. So that's my main comment. Like I said, I think I think this is where we should focus. You know, wrap up the RCAP, make sure it's implemented, you know, and and then see what that does to our legal structure at this level. So I I guess I'm generally supportive and then anxious because bad things can happen.

Vice chair Navajos.

Well, to to that note, I think it's important as we saw in the previous meeting with the law of public comment to continue to work with the community. Right? I think the more that we involve them in the conversation, especially the realtors, the builders, they're gonna be highly impacted. And then the the end concern, which is the the the either the the renter or the buyer that eventual, you know, pay some of the cost. So as long as we continue to have those conversations, we reduce that risk, but that risk still exists.

So you know, but we put our best foot forward. Right? The other things I'm very much curious about those responses, and how we're able to better communicate with those communities to make sure that we're partners in this and we have a successful implementation. Thank you.

Member Tripp.

I wanted to compliment staff on the work that's gotten done. It it's been very impressive given it's a it's a heavy lift. But my other question is and I may have missed it, but when we were talking about the disposable foodware ordinance and went through that process and this is just kind of part of closing the loop even when things don't always get traction. And I might have missed it, so tell me if I did. But we were going to have jurisdictions report out what was going on with that, if anything, how it went, because those are also useful discussions to have sometimes.

So when you're talking about the work plan, I just wanted to put in my 2¢ that we closed that loop, which might not actually take very long depending on the loop. Anyway, thank you.

And I

and I'll just comment on the the foodware ordinance. So it was we brought the model foodware ordinance to the CAC to use as a model and then bring back to the jurisdictions to for passing or consideration for adoption of that ordinance as well. So the county had adopted I believe Calistoga already had their their plan, we can bring an item back for other member jurisdictions to report back on the status of that. But

Yeah. And I think that was intended at one time Mhmm. That we report back. Okay. And if the if if the momentum has changed or the sense and that would be useful to hear too. So thank you.

So I have a quick question. We never resolved what kind of cooperative action there would be for CEQA. Is that correct? I believe we were looking at many, many alternatives and I think it was decided to put it put that off until for more information. My is my memory correct or not?

Are you referring to, like, the type of secret document that we were choosing?

Right. What we were gonna do as an entire county, and it would have gone through the CAC. And I I know we were looking at several alternatives. Did we I don't think we resolved a single alternative.

Yeah. We voted on the initial study.

Okay. Alright. Thank you for correcting my my failing memory. Yeah. And then I have one comment. I mean, I know that reorganize how we might reorganize. And I just wanna say, as time goes on, then it we'll be looking at that in a bigger context. And it may involve the calendar change. It may involve a different organization of how this committee works. But yes, I'm open to that.

And as time goes on and we look at what our new assessed needs are. Other than that, any any more comments from the board? Any comments from the public? Seeing none, thank you so much for the presentation. It's a really good outline for us to keep and follow as we move along towards the adoption and implementation of the RCAP, which is really our prime focus.

And interestingly, we have our five e, which is a public comment from and it made me think of member Joseph's concern about lawsuits. And I hope you all had a chance to read it. It's in the agenda. For those of you who may not have read it, I can give you the capsule summary. It's much better to put burning fossil fuels as a high priority over the proliferation of greenhouse gas initiatives, and we should burn as much as possible.

Referencing several lawsuits against municipalities that have that are against the elimination of greenhouse gas emitting utilities in new construction. And I think we wisely chose to make it an incentive rather than a mandate, and I'm think we're going to avoid one of those lawsuits coming coming our way because it certainly seems that they're becoming more aggressive. So that was a good idea. Remember Joseph? Yes.

And using American Canyon as an example, we have required any new development to simply go 15% above the norm, which leaves you know, probably the easiest option to achieve that is just skip the gas line and go all electric. And for new development, that actually saves the developer a few bucks. I think the challenge is when you try to go through and say, we're taking your gas stove away, that's when you're going to trigger all the pushback. But I think incentives are better than trying to tell people. My concern is probably over the sequel process.

You know, we think the initial study certainly is quicker and cheaper unless somebody wants to challenge it and argue, no, you need a full blown EIR, and then we get to waste no. Then we get to expend a substantial amount of time going down that other path. But I agree. I think if we keep the public engaged, if we try to make sure realtors, for example, don't have to freak out and think that we're going to add $200 to the price of a home, I think we'll be safe. And I just wanted to add another comment that I like the idea of adding a feedback loop, because I do think a lot of the role of the CAC is to say you ought to do this versus you will do it by this date.

And it's important if the jurisdictions are doing it, because we just suggested it, then that suggests that a JPA is viable. And if we have jurisdictions that drag their feet for whatever reason, then that kind of suggests a more authoritative body might be the right direction. So that's my 2¢ worth.

Further comments? Yeah. And I think you're Mayor Eisenberg? Oh, would you mind if I Oh, I'm sorry.

Provide some context too for the who may not have dug into the the comment or the lawsuit. So this was a federal lawsuit for the cities of Petaluma and Morgan Hill here in the Bay Area on their gas or their natural gas ban, which was passed in 2020 for Morgan Hill, I believe, and following in 2021 for the city of Petaluma. And which is kind of an unprecedented way that the federal government is enforcing this law. And the city of Morgan Hill had come out with a statement that they have already shifted their practices away after the Berkeley ruling and the the ninth court districts ninth district court's ruling with the California Restaurant Association for the city of Berkeley that they could not enforce their natural gas ban as well as so Morgan Hill, city of Petaluma, other larger municipalities like City Of Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo have also paused or stopped enforcement of their similar gas natural gas ban ordinances. So it's they essentially the the lawsuit doesn't seem to be doing anything because they've already stopped enforcement of this.

But there is there are ways, as you mentioned, with the incent kind of incentivized FlexPath reach codes or to Cal Green tier one where there are are incentives or or you have to meet some energy threshold that goes above and beyond the state. It's not outright right gaining outright banning natural gas, but it makes it easier to meet those energy thresholds if you don't use natural gas. And then there are many other ways that you can, through reach codes, meet the same energy criteria for existing buildings, and there's a lot of kind of scare tactics with that with increased cost and and whatnot, but there are oftentimes triggers either monetarily monetary triggers or many have, like, a a square footage that you are a square footage threshold for a property that you are renovating already or a monetary value that you are renovating where then we would want you to make these additional upgrades. So we're not saying you, you know, at at time of replacement necessarily or or what have you if if a struggling family is needing to replace an appliance that you have to do it. But if you are making these upgrades, planning these upgrades to your home already, say you're remodeling your kitchen, we're just gonna want you to try to make it more energy efficient.

So those are kind of some of the strategies here. So to be seen, to be determined on what happens with these lawsuits, but they've they're the cities are already in compliance

with I should remind you that lawsuits aren't always substantive and very often performative. And at any rate, I think we are on the right track and I think that providing financial incentives to developers. That is you're going to put in full electric. You can put in gas if you want and spend that extra money. But we're relying on the good economic sense of people as they build and upgrade. All right. If there are no more comments

Oh, just a quick question. I just want to you know, this was a lot of discussion probably maybe two years ago about whether we do a full reach code or flex reach. And I just wanna I wanna thank county staff, city staff, especially Deborah Elliott, because I was really more gung ho on let's do this. And it was this foresight that kind of protected this our, you know, this jurisdiction, the county, and the jurisdictions within to kind of wait and see what happens with the court and not foreseeing what's happening now in this type of lawsuit. But I just want to thank staff and both the city and county for their foresight and moving forward mindfully.

I will also say that I do think there's a real consumer motivation there, as you mentioned. And, you know, I think a lot of people want to go all electric and see the benefits of that. And the market will also push towards that. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Actually, we have not yet done public comments on five e, the public communication letter that we received. Are there any public comments?

We have one caller.

Okay. Thank you.

David, you will have three minutes.

Hi. I hope I'm unmuted. Yes. Good. Thank you.

I just wanted to comment that the writer who submitted the federal lawsuit has I don't know if it was intentional or not. I'm not a mind reader. But the Ninth Circuit's decision about the Berkeley case is actually the Southern District Of New York has actually come to an opposite conclusion about the same the effect of the same law by parsing it differently. And so there is what is referred to in constitutional law as a circuit split where the law in the ninth circuit is more as represented by the the the letter from the justice department or the lawsuits against Morgan Hill and Petaluma. Whereas a more full picture of this would say, well, on the other hand, there's a different version of the interpretation of the relevant act.

And so this will ultimately this results in what's called a circuit split, and it will actually probably end up as a before the supreme court. First point. Second point is I completely agree with everybody who said that there are ways to finesse the structure of of this statute to reduce the amount of new installations of natural gas without an outright ban by creating incentives rather than prohibitions. Thank you for that. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you. Reports and announcements. I have one.

Just really quick, and

I don't

know if this falls within this committee, but I do wanna share that I've been getting feedback from, some constituents over some time that the there's a number of EV charging stations here that, you know, they wish a, there was more, but b, that the ones that we have that many of them don't work, and they're running into that. So I don't know if this body could do anything or if this is a different area of the county or is the ag commissioner because they've got the they do the fuel. They watch the the fuel and monitor that. But just wanted to put that out there. And and again, if staff can do something or direct something, that would be great.

I don't know if we need a report back, but I do think it's really important as we continue the implementation of more EV charge chargers and the fast chargers are really what we need here. So I don't know. Maybe there's a update at some at some future point in terms of how we're doing on EV chargers and the operations of those.

Yeah. I would support a report Mhmm. On EV chargers, both the numbers installed and then the numbers that are not operational. I I think it's an issue that is concerning all of us and all of our jurisdictions. Any other reports, announcements? Or just

I'm happy to announce that we finally, were able to get some funding for a part time sustainability analyst in the city of American Canyon. Yay. Deadline to file is February 8. If you have a college degree in environmental sciences or anything related, you might be the ideal candidate who hasn't and if he or she hasn't already gotten a really good job, this would be a great opportunity, albeit part time and temporary. So see me or go to the city's website if you want to apply. Congratulations. Absolutely. It it was not easy.

It'd be a long commute for me, but I'll let it somebody who's also more qualified.

Same here.

So future agenda items. Yes. Member Deacy.

Thank you. Here.

Let me

Thank you. Yeah, I did want to propose a future agenda item, a presentation by the Similina Community Forest, which is a redwood forest kind of a redwood forest preserve stewarded for community engagement and long term carbon sequestration. So it's inspiring, and I'd love for everyone to know about it if there's time at some point.

Member pain Member painter.

Yeah. This is actually not a future agenda item, but just a quick announcement. March 26, we'll be holding the fourth annual climate summit. The agenda is just about ready. You should be seeing a press release soon. The topics will be about resiliency, and the two areas will be about land resiliency, featuring talks from, both the RCD and, Firewise, NAPA Firewise, really great information there. And then a second forum on, community resiliency where we will talk about everything from the amazing Calistoga resiliency not center.

It's the

Calistoga Calistoga Resiliency. I think they call it center.

Yeah. And then to a green workforce and what we can and should be doing in this community to really try to encourage a workforce that can do all the things that we want to do, like, you know, heat pump installation and heat pump water heaters and all those other great things. So put that on your calendars. It'll be at Napa Valley College, three to 5PM, March 26.

Thank you. Ryan?

Yes. Thank you, chair. I also had a few reports and announcements I wanted to share with the committee. One, firstly, that the all of the site visits and the reports and cost estimates have been completed for the initial work that was done for the MCE EB technical assistance joint application with the cities of Calistoga, American Canyon, the American Canyon Parks Foundation, and the county. So those reports have been completed, and staff from the various jurisdictions are reviewing those reports and estimates now, and can use those at their discretion to move forward with EV charging solutions.

Second, report is that the city of Saint Helena has signed on to participate in the BayREN public program energy road mapping program to help the city plan for energy upgrades and decarbonization of three city buildings. The library, which they are are also planning to develop into a community resiliency center, not a similar one like Calistoga's, but more of like a a community gathering resiliency center, their wastewater treatment plant, and their fire department. And applications are still open for that energy road mapping program. So if there are other jurisdictions that are interested and want to participate and and kind of run some pilots of decarbonizing their buildings, that program is open, and I'm happy to share with that share that info with folks. Also, would like to announce that the staff and stakeholders from various jurisdictions within the Bay Area have begun to meet as an implementation working group to discuss and prepare for the Bay Area Air District's rule rules nine six, which is the implementation regarding the requirement of all furnaces in 2029 to to be non nitrogen oxide polluting.

So we are which essentially means no natural gas. But we are working to meet to discuss the implementation rollout of that. And then the last announcement I will make is the are the counties in Marin, Sonoma, and Napa are hosting a Bay Area North Bay contractor forum and training to help contractors to understand upcoming regulations, connect with clean energy industry experts, and learn hands on about heat pump water heaters and heat pump HVAC systems from multiple manufacturers that we will have on-site. We'll do some demonstrations with those technologies to help prepare contractors to be able to install those technologies in buildings. The training will be on next Friday, January 30, from 07:30 to 11:30AM at the Petaluma Veterans Hall.

Thank you. And with that, we are adjourning at 11:22 until our next meeting, which will be, as you all agreed, February 27 as recently adopted. See you all then. Thank you all for coming.