Climate Action Committee - Regular Meeting

Climate action committee, March 27. Can we please have a roll call?

Member Dizzy? Here. Member Gallagher? Here. Member Alessio?

Present.

Member Painter? Here. Member Joseph? Here. Member Lamatina? Here. Member Reeves? Here. Chair Narvaez?

Here.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you. If you can please, stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you very much. Good morning. Next, we have public comment. In this period, anyone may address the climate action committee regarding any subject over which the committee has jurisdiction, but which is not in today's posted agenda. Do we have anybody from the public that wishes to address the committee? Please come over.

I'm Yvonne Bieginski. I live here in Napa. And I wanted to bring to the attention to this committee. I know you're all doing really hard work. And I know we're all very well educated in climate and in recycling and in wildlife management and all that stuff because I've been going to these meetings for three years now. And I go to your council meetings and I see the presentations and I go, this is the most well educated group. And yet, change comes so slowly, doesn't it? And as all of you sit there and say, well, what is it that we're actually doing? Because we're hearing a lot of information. And I had the opportunity, and I'll bring this book to your attention.

This is called The Environmental History of the San Francisco Bay Area, and it's written by David Schmidt. And David's coming to Napa today, this afternoon. He's going to be speaking to the Wildlife Coalition meeting at the Gasser Building at 02:00. This book is 600 pages. It took thirty one years to write. I have been reading it. I'm on chapter six, and I'm very depressed because it talks about all of the devastation and all of the destruction that's happened in the San Francisco Bay Area. But one of the things that really stands out in this book is that the activists and the people in the community were behind every single major change. It didn't come from the policymakers. It came from the people in the community.

The people like Chris and Jim, the people sitting out here in the audience were the ones that kept after the change. And I really want to bring that to your attention, because sometimes I come here and I go, what's the point? They already heard everything I had to say. I just keep saying the same thing over and over again. And the other thing is, these people, they persevered, they stayed. I met the man who saved the San Bruno Mountain. You know the mountain when you come out of the airport, that big mountain that's still green? That mountain took fifteen years for him to save. The developers and the city council had already signed the paperwork to start the development on that land and they worked still to save it. And I don't know if you remember that song, Ticky Tacky Houses, Little Boxes.

That song was written specifically about that development that was going to go up on San Bruno Mountain. So I know that these people out here have a lot to say and I hope that all of you have an opportunity to listen. I know it takes a long time. Reading this book, there's so many heroes in this book. Three women created Save the Bay and they changed the way the bay was being used back in the 1970s. I just want you to know that everybody's working and we certainly hope that you're listening. And if you have an opportunity to come and hear this guy, he's great. I've heard him talk. He's funny. He has a good sense of humor. So it makes it an easy listen. So we'll be there at the Gasser Building at 02:00 today, and hopefully some of you can make it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Kevin?

A going on in the last couple of weeks as far as climate change is concerned. One is we had our city county recycling awards. So these are the best recyclers and composters from businesses, schools, multifamily apartment complexes, and we even had a contractor in there who did a great job. So that happened about a week ago, Thursday the nineteenth. We had a biggest event we've ever had.

We've done this for almost twenty years now, and we had 127 attendees. There were 14 winners from the city of Napa. There were seven winners from the South Napa unincorporated area. And I'm gonna I wanted to hand out through the secretary. There's a little flyer with the winners, you can take a look if you weren't aware of that event. And then, I don't know, I just I just showed up, so I don't know if it was mentioned. But obviously, yesterday with the Napa Climate Summit, amazing presentations, they asked me to speak on the anaerobic digestion. If this committee ever wanted to have more information on that, I've got the presentation ready to go. So just throwing that out there. Those are the two things.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin. Anybody else? Do I have anybody over Zoom or phone?

We do have one caller. Sarah, you will have three minutes.

Caller, are you there?

Hello, members of the Climate Action Committee. My name is Cyrus Zadiki, and I'm a junior at Justin Siena High School and a member of Napa Schools for Climate Action. I'm proud to say that our organization was recognized by congressman Mike Thompson as his twenty twenty four climate crisis champions and by three fifty Bay Area as their twenty twenty five climate justice champions. Recently, we had the opportunity to share our perspective on the county's 2026 legislative platform as we have in past years. The platform lists the climate emergency as a guiding principle.

We pointed out that the continuous destructive impacts of wildfires on Napa residents' lives and safety and the insurance crisis are symptoms of the larger planetary crisis we face. We recommend that Napa County explicitly call for stabilizing the climate not only by immediate and deep emission cuts, but also by massive deployment of safe, scalable carbon dioxide removal. In support of our request, we pointed out that the Napa RCD and the Napa County Office of Education passed resolutions endorsing congressman Mike Thompson's house concurrent resolution 46, which presses for national and international policies that will decisively restore a safe and healthy climate for us. An amended platform was approved that included language calling for investment in atmospheric carbon pollution drawdown. Thank you for incorporating our concerns into the platform.

Since 2019, Napa Schools for Climate Action have urged our schools, the cities, the county, and the RCD to take decisive climate action. All have passed climate emergency resolutions and all have committed to achieving the goal of net zero climate pollutants by or before 2030. The World Meteorological Organization has officially confirmed 2024 to be the warmest year on record with it being 1.55 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. The last three years have been the hottest ever recorded. As we speak, the extreme March heat wave is shattering records in our area.

It is now critical more than ever before that we, as a community, get serious, say no to more fossil fuel projects, and help others gather the courage to do so. As we have said before, the first step shutting down the dirty energy system is implementing a countywide prohibition on the building of new gas stations and the expansion of existing ones. The regional climate action and adaptation plan includes the ban as one of its action items. Thus, as recommended in the RCAAP and in solidarity with other jurisdictions who already have taken the lead, we call on every jurisdiction in Napa County to issue an unambiguous ban on new and expanded gas stations. We know better.

In conclusion, we are asking for bold climate leadership. All of us have declared a climate emergency, and we intend to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Reducing climate pollution right away along with drawdown of existing heat trapping pollution will reduce suffering for all, especially for our younger people. Our future is in your hands, and we depend on you to make the right decision to protect us now and in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Do you have anybody else?

We have no other callers.

Okay. Thank you. We'll move on to item four, consent items. We don't have anything on there, so I I think we need any action on that. Okay. Do we still need to adopt that without any consent?

It looks like the the minutes got looped into the public comments instead of the consent items. So we Yes.

Oh, I see that now. Okay.

Yeah. So

I need a motion and a second to I'll have

to approve consent item A.

Motion by Lazio, second by Painter. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any against? Okay. That motion passes. Thank you. Next item five A administrative items presentation Piasma from Sustainable Santa Elena will present on the Santa Elena Community Redwood Forest project.

He can't hear the room. He can only hear the video. So I think can I just text him and tell him he's on and we'll see

if it's

Yeah, please do? Paul,

can you

hear us? Paul?

Good morning. Can you hear me?

You

hear I'm sorry. Can't hear you in the room. I could hear the speaker online. I will go ahead and start my presentation.

Did you want him to

We can hear you clearly. Please start.

First, I just want to say, thank you for having me this morning to present about the San Galena Community Forest. I think that I can check my text from time to time. If, Michelle, if you wanna send me something that and it might be a way to, handle questions as they come up. So just let me know. Send a text. I have my wife, Marilyn, here. She can let me know if there's any problem with the presentation. But I just wanted to thank you for having me again. And, it is a pleasure to present about the Saint Leonard Community Forest. It's been an amazing project that we've been working on for about fifteen years now.

And, it's a project where we take treated wastewater and we've created a forest, wildlife habitat, and we're storing a lot of carbon and it's, no cost to the city of Saint Helena. So this is the location of the project. This is at the upper part of the picture. You can see that the wastewater treatment ponds for the city of St. Helena, that's about 20 acres.

And below that is about 100 acres and you'll see the little circles in light on the screen. And that's where the city after treating the wastewater sprays the effluent onto these fields. In the lower part of the picture, you'll see an area of white and green and yellow along the edge of the vineyards. And that is an area where that has been fallow for decades because the city is not able to spray treated effluent in that area because of the vineyards. For years the wastewater was only secondary treated water and that water could not be risked putting on getting near a food crop in the wine grapes.

And I know that down in Napa Sanitation has a lot of land that they use down near the airport they where they for their effluent spray fields. So the project was started back in 2011 with Mayor Britton and we planted about 500 coast redwood trees. And those trees are now about 60 feet more than 60 feet tall, many of them, and with diameters of 16 to 20 inches. In 2021, we worked with mayor Ellsworth and other council members to start expanding the area. And and so since 2021, we've planted about another 2,000 trees.

We planted over 2,500 trees now. And I'd say there's about six to eight different species, but primarily coast redwood. And we'll talk about that in a minute. And last year, did a really great project. We worked with the NRCS and came up with 14 native pollinator species that did not host Pierce's disease and were native to Napa County.

And we planted over 100 of those with volunteers last June. And again, we irrigate those with the treated effluent as well. I need to take a quick moment here and say that my comments today are not related to my role as a board on the NAPA RCD. And I want to make sure that that is that my comments are not reflective of my board position.

Thank you. So

the purpose of the forest that has these four primary areas of purpose, it is environmental, educational, wildlife habitat, and the community benefits, and we'll go over each of those. These are the primary environmental benefits that you see on the screen. Excuse me a second. Vital remediation, I like that word. It's a big word, but it basically is talking about taking treated wastewater and using it to grow evergreen trees that can then sequester carbon and create and then we're also creating habitat for wildlife.

We're improving the air quality. I put in the temperature modulation here because you'd be amazed in a on a summer day that's 85 degrees. You walk in the shade of the trees, it's 85 degrees. But out in the sun, just in the grass, we're not talking about out on asphalt or anything, the temperature is 40 degrees higher than in in the shade of the trees. So it's it's making a huge difference in temperature modulation.

The soil also, where the trees are protecting the soil from any sort of runoff during heavy rainfall. And it's, it's really neat to start seeing the mitochondria or not the mitochondria, but the fungi start to develop in the soils. And some of you probably know that the fungi have a very special relationship with trees, especially with coast redwood and transferring of nutrients. And then long term carbon sequestration is also a very valuable part of the project. Here we had a recent education opportunity that was last November with seventh graders from the RLS and it was a great day.

The RCD did some of the forestry curriculum as well as myself and we planted valley oak and coastal oak trees as well as journaling and collecting owl pellets. The wildlife habitat is something that was it's almost like if you build it, they will come and that's what's happened. We have been surprised of how many barn owls now roost in the redwood trees on a daily basis. And then there's been some very rare bird sightings. One on the left is a cattle egret.

It showed up one day when we were mowing. I grew up in Florida, so I was very familiar with this bird, but it's very rare in Napa Valley. And then the sandhill cranes came after the first November rains last year. And to our knowledge, this is the first sighting in Napa Valley of sandhill cranes. There has been Sandhill Cranes sighted over in Pope Valley at the Dollarhide Ranch.

But talking to the local Audubon Society representatives, this is the only Sandhill Crane sighting that's ever been seen in the Napa Valley. So for the community benefits, there are many recreations at the very top. We have plans for connecting this someday to the walking paths with the city of San Lina because the community forest is really meant to be open basically from dawn to dust and protected into perpetuity. And this also is supported by our city of St. Helena Parks and Rec Commission.

And I think it also closely aligns with your the climate action, the RCAAP that you've you've done and the goals you have for increasing the urban canopy for for each community. And then also just stressing that this is at no cost to the city of St. Helena. And we're also only putting these forests on lands that the city of St. Helena does not use for their normal wastewater treatment operations.

So these are some of the review, some of the other the benefits of the watershed and water quality benefits. It's a great use of tertiary treated water. It's also a great way to recharge the groundwater. It reduces erosion. It moderates the soil temperature and evaporation.

And then there's a lot of we've been talking about the wildlife habitat, but this is really a closed loop water reuse system. So I know that this committee is devoted to climate action solutions. And I think this is a perfect project that shows what could be done throughout the county. And it shows that something that's already being used. Also it's a Coast Redwoods and other species we're planting are primarily drought tolerant and once they get established, we don't have to keep water in them, but we are to support their growth.

So we haven't really talked about why we selected Coast Redwood, but Coast Redwood is an amazing tree. It does sequester carbon faster than almost any other tree in the world. The longest known is around 2,500 years old. They are also fire, drought and disease resistant. I think many of you know that.

And if you drive up into the areas that have burned in the Mayacama range, you'll see quite a lot of redwoods that were in the fire zone and have now re sprouted, while other species like Douglas fir are not a fire tolerant species. They're also native Napa County. The oldest known grove is up in the Angouin area. It was aged at about 800 years old. We go up there and we have been up there two times, collected comb, we propagated seed from the Dunn Wild Lake Reserve owned by the Land Trust.

We propagated seed from there. And we've also propagated a lot of seed from another old forest in Anglin at the Las Posadas State Forest. And also we chose redwood. The whole model was to use treated wastewater and to create a sustainable forest. Redwood, once you harvest a redwood, many of you know it re sprouts.

So this is a managed sustainable forest. So here's kind of a summary of how the whole system works. We have the treated wastewater goes to grow the trees and other important shrubs. Those trees and other are sequestering thousands of pounds of carbon now. We're creating a lot of incredible wildlife habitat and we're recharging the groundwater at the same time.

So it's not a concept anymore. Originally, it was an experiment, to be honest with you, to see how the redwood trees would grow. Would they take the treated effluent well? How would they do in those soils? And this is a model we feel that can be replicated throughout the County. So there's other areas in the county that I think are available to this. I mentioned the lands around Napa Sanitation. I think they have over 300 acres in that area. And it doesn't always have to be redwood trees. It can be other trees.

The city of Eugene, Oregon grows poplar using the same model on 600 acres. And for them, it's a different Poplar is not like redwood. It doesn't re sprout, but it has important uses, creates a forest habitat, expandable across the county and it really aligns with your goals on this committee. Some of you have been out there and some of you have not, but we would love to have you come out there anytime. This is a summary of who's been helping us along the way besides Marilyn and myself.

Nick Kent is our original registered professional forester. Andy Armstrong also helps us. He's with North Coast Resource Management. And John Henshaw, many of you probably know John as our Napa County RPF. And Bill Libby was a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley and probably one of the foremost geneticists in the world especially when it comes to Redwood.

And then our nonprofit is Sustainable San Helena and we do work closely with the NAPA RCD and the NRCS. And Silverado Farming, Pete Richmond and David McGraw are really the they're our farming partner and they've just been fantastic to work with. And the city of St. Helena has supported this project. And we hope to we have plans to possibly expand in the future. And there there is some additional unused land that we would like to expand into. So we'll see how that goes.

Great. Thank you, Paul. I know he can't hear us, so we can't ask questions. So what I will say is if we have Paul, I just wanna check. Can you hear can you hear me? Okay. So if there's questions, maybe we can email it over and send out to him and he can

Yeah.

Send it back. Sounds good. Get a copy of the press I just double checked on

on my Zoom, and I can't hear it either.

Okay. Well, we're having a couple

Zoom problems.

A little bit of difficulties with the the microphones and sound up here. So please bear with us as we go through this meeting today.

And, yeah, and I can coordinate for any questions with Paul to follow-up and any requests for site visit as well. Can Thank do a follow-up for the CAC.

You very much.

I wanted to publicly say thank you to Paul. And it's a fantastic presentation. And then being there in person just takes it to a whole other level. It's beautiful hearing the story of some of the initial efforts and adjustments is really cool. But even just being there and the kind of silence under the trees and the wildlife in it is amazing. So I would absolutely encourage everyone to take advantage of the opportunity to get out there.

How do you go about how do you make arrangements to go up there? I'd love to see the forest

I'm with okay to answer that.

Can I

answer Yes, please do? Yeah, so currently we're working I think access roads is our one big challenge. It's worth doing anyway for the benefits. But that is kind of a goal so that it is a long term goal so that the public can access it freely. But right now, does need to be arranged. So you could do that through Paul or through me. And so that we don't break any Brown Act rules, I think he's willing to do it with a few visits with the right number of people.

Great. You. Victoria Lizzie.

Thank you. And please, I want to extend my appreciation to Paul, too. I've heard a lot about this. This is the closest I've seen it, so I'm very interested in taking a field trip at some point. Yesterday, after the NEPA Climate Summit Program, which was phenomenal, I met a gentleman who's been in NEPA for about three years. I think he's a neuroscientist. His name is Craig Gardner. And he has a passion project that he wants to do something similar for at the schools here. Because many of the elementary schools in Napa, they don't have proper shading. So I could see this idea being translated to the schools in the Napa School District.

So he and I are going to I told him I'd follow-up with him later, and maybe we can get a group together, a little subcommittee together on that.

Yeah, that's big to him. It's a great idea. Anybody else? That's a great presentation. I mean, the benefits are great, especially replenishing the aquifer. I think that's wonderful. So I'm interested in seeing that as well. If there's nothing else, we'll move on to next item on the agenda. Okay. Item b, receive a presentation of the status of the draft RCAP and related sequel document.

Alright. I'll be presenting this item. I think we're pulling the slides up. Alright. I've got some great updates for you today.

It's a bit text heavy, but such as the such as the RCAP and the CEQA document. So today, we'll talk about the tribal consultation and partnership initiation for the RCAP, the some updates on the initial study and mitigated negative declaration, quick RCAP update, and the next steps for the CEQUA document certification and RCAP adoption. So on February 12, staff county staff held a formal AB 52 consultation with the Eotre D'Hee Winton Nation. We held informal discussion and partnership initiation with representation from the Micho Awapo tribe of Alexander Valley, and both discussions highlighted tribal concerns over impacts to local waterways, the need for local access to the Napa River, the need for tribal input, partnership, and consultation on many of these issues affecting waterways, and ensuring the use of nature based solutions for remediation and improvement of natural resources. So on June 27, the CAC directed staff to move forward with the ISMND.

And we have received a letter that is closing AB 52 consultations. So once that is incorporated, we will be finalizing our comments on the CEQA document, and we'll be publishing for public review and comment with the California Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovations. A notice of intent will be filed and published on SequaNet informing the public organizations and agencies about the availability of the ISMND for review, and that will signal the start of the thirty day public review period. Then stakeholders can comment on the document's findings regarding the potential environmental impacts. And the notice of intent will be distributed to all RCAP and CAC interested parties, potentially affected agencies, and other stakeholders.

The notice of intent will also be published in the Napa Valley Register, filed with the county clerk, and available on the county website. In addition to the finding of the documents with cequanet, the documents will also be made available for public comment at the counter of of the Napa County Planning Building and Environmental Services Department as well as on our project web website, the Conveyo, the climate action, napa.conveyo.com. And during the public comment period, the published ISMND will be presented to the CAC providing another opportunity, for member discussion in this forum as well as public comment in person or by phone here at a climate action committee meeting. We'll also accept comments through our county project website, rcaap@countyofnapa.org. And for the RCAP, we will release both the final draft of the RCAP and the public draft for for review of the ISMND concurrently.

Only the CEQA document will have an official public comment period at this time, which could necessitate changes to mitigation measures of the CEQA document if needed. And while we encourage any public comments on the RCAP or other sustainability projects anytime, at this point in the process, the RCAP is so far along that, any any comments that come in won't really necessitate any changes to the actual RCAP document. An implementation plan will be used to prioritize and inform how the RCAP measures and actions will be rolled out, And we are working on creating pathways for consistent and constant monitoring and data tracking for the RCAP measures and their implementation to assist in analyzing the effectiveness as those measures are implemented. And then we plan to use those metrics tracking tools to continually inform the committee as well as any interested parties and other legislative bodies at your respective jurisdictions for quarterly or some other cadence of updates. So for the next steps for RCAP adoption as well as the CEQUA document certification, following the public review process of the ISMND, the Climate Action Committee will first see it and consider consider and possibly recommend adoption of the RCAP as well as the CEQA document which will then be, forwarded to the individual member municipality hearing bodies for their review.

Each jurisdiction will then independently consider the adoption of the RCAP and the associated CEQA document as either a lead agency for Napa County or responsible agencies for all the other member jurisdictions. And for purposes of the CEQA document, the county is the lead agency. The other municipalities will act as responsible agencies and pursuant to CEQA guidelines, each responsible agency complies with CEQA by independently considering the mitigated negative declaration prepared by the lead agency and by reaching their own conclusions on whether and how to approve the project. Responsible agencies would then certify that its decision making body has reviewed and considered the information contained in the environmental document, affirm that the CEQA document is adequate, and adopt any mitigation measures to address any significant impacts, as well as make its own findings and issue its own approvals for the project, including the adoption of a mitigated mitigation monitoring and reporting program. Ultimate decision making authority remains at the individual agency and legislative body, and RCAP adopt adoption must be unanimous by all of the agencies of the joint powers agreement for the RCAP to be considered a CEQA certified greenhouse gas reduction plan that can be relied upon to streamline the analysis of GHG emissions for associated development projects.

And again, ultimate decision making authority remains at the individual agency level. Our just a repeat slide, please. RCAP adoption must be unanimous for this to continue on. If it's not, it can cause legality issues with some of the CEQA certification, but we will cross that bridge when we get there. And that's all I have for today for the updates. Happy to take any questions. We also have our deputy county council here for the climate action committee to help answer any CEQA related questions.

Thank you. Before we bring it back up here, is there any public comment on this item? And I apologize. I forgot to ask on the last item, so if anybody has public comment on that as well. Okay. We'll bring it back up here. Does anybody have questions? Go ahead. Director Painter?

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. A couple of quick questions. I know you probably can't give us an exact date on release. You said it was going be published. Are we assuming sometime in April?

I believe that's the plan. I think sometime we are finalizing the comments on the CEQA document right now from the agencies, as well as outside counsel for the county to finalize its review. And I believe sometime in April or the May meeting, would finalize those documents and present them to the CAC.

Okay, great. Yeah. So by the next meeting, we'll have an exact date. That's good to know. I think as it moves forward and you're probably already doing this but I think each of us as our cities and member jurisdictions should make that information available, however we do our noticing, and social media and websites. So you mentioned the county obviously is lead agency, which is the way it should be. But I'm hoping that each of us as cities can make that information available. And then my last question and we've talked about the implementation plan and sort of some of complexities there. Can you remind us again what the schedule is for developing that and making that available?

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll have a follow-up discussion in the next agenda item actually on budget that touches on some of the implementation plan a little bit more.

I think But we can wait till the next item and talk about timelines and specifics.

Sure. Those are

my questions.

Thank you. Go ahead. Yes. Director Joseph.

Getting to the RCAP specifically, and I know there was a lot of comments, and in particular, the realtors have been homing in on mitigation measures BE1 and BE2 relating to retrofitting existing homes. Can you comment on what modifications to the draft RCAP that relate to that because when I read it, it it doesn't specifically say we're mandating anything, but we are saying it'll be 25% in five years and and a hundred percent fifteen. So that kinda sounds like a mandate. Can you comment on what's going on with those two mitigation measures in particular?

Sure. And we have been in contact with the leadership for the North Bay Association Of Realtors to initiate discussion on these items as well. We we will be releasing a response to public comment as well when we release the final draft of the RCAP. So all of the all public comments will have gotten some response. As far as changes to the RCAP, those two measures are quite critical in terms of reaching our target greenhouse gas emissions reductions for for the building energy sector in particular.

And we have responded. We we put out a response to those comments in particular, kind of upfront, and those are available on the county's website. And as far as the the the mandate question goes, some of the and I'm remembering BE1 specifically, the reach code adoption to try to decarbonize all buildings by certain target dates, Many of those reach codes will need to be they're not set in stone at the adoption of the RCAP. They will need to go through their own individual approval process at each of the hearing bodies, each of the legislative bodies, just like a normal ordinance would get passed. So the there will be ample time to, to comment and to to address those concerns and and pass those individual ordinances.

And again, those ordinances aren't designed to, starting from day one, to mandate you have to go in and make these upgrades. We're trying to look forward as things break, at their end of life, really incentivize the adoption of new technology and lower carbon intensive practices for buildings. And later in those same actions and measures in the RCAP, there is a heavy emphasis on developing programs that help incentivize, from a financial standpoint to help incentivize those upgrades as well, as well as leveraging other outside programs on a on a region wide or state wide basis. So they I don't believe we've changed the language of those measures, but we have created language to help address many of the concerns that have been brought up from the Association of Realtors and other interested parties.

Okay, thanks.

Anyone else? Director Alessio?

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. We're getting closer. It's exciting. Long awaited. So will you be making this presentation to the cities? Or are you going to put it upon the cities for them to provide their own presentations for their approval and their adoption?

We will likely support the cities, but we would like to see the the we have started the implementation working group as well at a staff level, so we would encourage the those staff members implementation working group to make the presentation for adoption hearings with county support as needed.

Okay, perfect. I think it'd be great if you can be there or somebody with staff can be there to support the different jurisdictions with any additional questions. And I know you do have a working committee, so thank you for that reminder.

And we will have for the CAC approval process, I believe we'll have Ascent Environmental here, representation from Ascent, our consultants to help with the approval process by the CAC. But for the independent individual hearing body presentations, I believe it will be staff and county staff support.

Fantastic. Because I don't want to we can accidentally make an assumption because we're so immersed in it that we may assume that others that are new or haven't been part of this journey may know more than they do and therefore feel more comfortable than maybe they will. So I just want to make sure everybody's well supported and well informed. In terms of the AB52, are there any concerns on AB52, that process, and the steps of AB 52? And this is, you mentioned it, because that's fairly new to me.

Yeah. I can start and then maybe our county council can But chime I believe that we have met the requirements for the required consultation with the federally recognized tribes, as well as our due diligence to try to meet with other non federally recognized tribes. And I can't remember if we had received the letter. We had received the letter from the tribe stating their concerns, but recognizing that we had addressed those in our consultation and closing that.

Okay. So we're comfortable that we've covered that and we're good to go from that point. Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Anyone else? You mentioned it has to be unanimous for it to be certified. There's any variations within a jurisdiction in some of those measures. Would that, create an issue with certifying it?

I believe so. I think it does need to be a fully unanimous, adoption of the RCAP. I'll pass it to county council to comment on that.

Good morning. My name is Mikhail McMahon, Deputy County Council and counsel for this committee. Remy Mousson Manley is outside counsel for the RCAP and the associated CEQA document. So this question would be best for them, but in an effort to answer your question, the county is going to adopt the CEQA or propose to bring it to their board to consider adoption of the CEQA document as lead agency. From there, each individual jurisdiction will adopt to their own CEQA document as a responsible agency.

And there is the ability to change as a responsible agency some of the mitigation measures to best fit that jurisdiction. But the recommendation and kind of going forward is that everyone has the ability to comment on the lead agency's CEQA document, then from there bring it to all the, responsible agencies. Does that kind of address?

A bit. You know, I just wanna make sure that because the jurisdictions are a little bit different, there's constraints that we haven't seen here that might arise later. I just wanna make sure that it doesn't put, you know, delays the effort there. I'm just kind of thinking ahead make sure we're prepared for that.

Yeah. Own legislative body, they will be able to adopt to their own CEQA document. Then a county will be bringing forward the CEQA document as lead agency and then from there, each jurisdiction will consider it as a responsible agency and and that's up to each jurisdiction.

Okay. Thank you. And we are taking steps to ensure that all of the responsible agencies, any concerns or comments are being addressed upfront so that that minimizes the the need for further review and and edits later down the road.

Great. Thank you. Anything else on b? Okay. We'll move on to item c, receive our presentation, the proposed revised budget for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven.

Great. I will give this presentation. Good morning, everybody. Jamison Crosby, Natural Resources Conservation Manager. Just reviewing, we talked about the budget last month, the draft, and we got some really good feedback and input from you.

Three points that were made in particular. Number one, the committee requested that we include some budget for resource conservation district staff to support individual municipalities and the county in outreach regarding the RCAP, both during potentially the adoption hearings and also the implementation phase. So we did reach out to them and get some and provide some budget for that. Number two, we got feedback from the committee to work with bright action communities to provide kind of minimal support so that the NAPA Climate Challenge web page would be operational and functional and open, but not having the full functionality it has presently. And we got a reduced cost on that from them.

And then you also wanted to continue the exploration of the implementation plans, but on a regional focus, kind of going along with our RCAT. So we did that. We went back to the drawing board, as it were, to accommodate those three things. And this slide represents the staff cost that's in the proposed budget for next fiscal year. This number has not changed from last month.

This is the breakdown of approximately $134,455 of staff time. And then you can see that's on the top line of this table. And this is where we added in the costs for the $35,000 approximately for the NAPA RCD to do that localized outreach and engagement. Dollars 1,500 for the NAPA Climate Challenge to keep website up and functional. And then we touched on this last month, dollars 10,000 for Ari Bal Barak to continue making updates to the EV charging tool that he developed.

That would be on an as needed basis. And I think as all of you have been with the CAC for so long now, these numbers are not to exceed numbers. Honestly, 35,000 of RCD support is a lot. That would be a lot. I wouldn't expect that we would probably spend nearly that much. But these are not to exceed. So, again, this is what you saw last month. If you take that same number, that $180,000 and you divide it based on your JPA cost allocation, this is what it will cost to each

of

the municipalities individually. If you'll recall, our JPA cost allocation takes the total cost of the program, 33% of that is paid by the county, and the remainder is paid as a fiftyfifty split. 50% of the remaining costs are paid by each of the municipalities on an equal basis, 50% of the costs are paid for on a population basis. I kind of think of this as like the House of Representatives and the Senate kind of bicameral approach. So that's where those numbers are derived from.

I think everybody knows that, but just thought I would revisit because it will come up in this next part of the budget. So with the RCAP implementation plan, we went back to ascent and we said, hey, that proposal you gave us before, we don't want any of the bells and whistles. We want just the basics. I think at this stage, one of the difficulties to the implementation plan is, well, what is it going to look like? What are we getting for this? So we said, first, let's at least take out all the extras. We don't need them. So they did that. They reduced the price down significantly and looked at it. Again, it would be a collaborative wide approach, allow for flexibility in implementation approaches with different jurisdictions.

And aligning with the city of Napa, who has already, about a year ago, contracted separately with Ascent to do their own implementation plan and define clearly roles and responsibilities, ensure consistency with our cap assumptions. And to me, of the next to the last bullet is really important. Inform your department level work plans. And this is we did ask them to definitely include some funding and budget to meet with each of the municipalities individually on your own, at least two meetings with each municipality. Because that's, sorry to use a trite phrase, where the rubber hits the road, where they will sit down with your respective department heads and say, Okay, how do these measures really affect each department?

What are they going to really cost? That's where we really find out who's doing what in this plan. And I think what's important for each municipality is to the RCAP is a huge document, very complex. And that's, I think, where it will really inform each of you of who's really doing what and on what time frame and what are kind

of the

prioritization that cities would like different actions to be accomplished in. I don't want to speak too much for the city. And Member Painter, please jump in if you'd like. But based on my conversation with your staff, the city has offered to share the outcome of their implementation plan with us. I think one of the key features of it will be the spreadsheet.

There's going to be a spreadsheet. Everything is break it down into a table. What department is doing what, on what date, what staff, rough costs. So that's I'm picturing kind of the meat of the implementation plan and the city has offered to share that. And I think the idea would be is your implementation of cities would fold into the greater regional implementation plan that the rest of us are developing.

So the total cost of those implementation plans is $181,986 And if you do the breakdown of that, this is what it would cost each of the respective municipalities. Of course, city of Napa zeroed out there because they're doing their own. And you can see the percentages are slightly different than our normal JPA cost allocation. And that's because for this item, we only have population to work with. So we looked at the population.

And it's in your staff report. Actually, I don't think it's a slide in here. But it's in your staff report on the last page of the staff report. It shows the population of each municipality and what the regular cost share would be and without the city of NAPA. So you can see that.

I don't know if you want me to go back, but that's what each of your respective costs would be. And then if you put them together, the administrative task cost share plus the implementation plan cost share. On the right column in green, you can see what each of your respective budget or outlay of funds would be for next fiscal year. So today, we're happy to take questions, engage in discussion, comment, get more guidance and recommendations from you. We're not asking you to vote on the budget today.

Frankly, I usually like to have the committee vote on the budget in March because we're going through our budget process. You all are too. We like to know what is our number, but that's okay. We put some numbers in our county budget, so it's okay. We can give one more month. So what we're asking is that each of you go back to your respective city management and share this number, kind of what it means, what's involved, facilitate those conversations that you need to have in order to come back next month and be able to vote on the budget to adopt a final budget for 'twenty six, 'twenty seven. So that's it. Happy to take any questions or comments.

Thank you. Do you have any public comment on this item? Okay, please come up.

Thanks for that presentation. Linda Brown from NAPA Climate Now. One thing I thought might be interesting for your discussions as you're thinking about the budget also is to think about the climate return on investment. And that's going to be an interesting adjunct to the information that you have available. And I'll just give you an example.

Yesterday at the climate summit, I presented two projects with the exact same emissions reduction attached to them. And they had some cost estimates attached to the two different projects. And so let me just zero in on one thought. I did not get to present that yesterday. By 2030, the project A had only one third of the heat reduction of project B.

And yet, from a cost standpoint, that project cost $8,500 per terajoule of heat reduction. That is, the heat reduction was costed out at $8,500 per unit. Whereas the project that had three times the climate benefit was costed out as $166 per heat unit. So we had $8,500 per unit to $166 per unit, and yet the $166 per unit project had three times the heat reduction benefit by between now and 2,030. So that's an additional type of information that is available through extra analysis.

Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else?

Nobody on the phone.

Have Thank no

you. Director Gallagher.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I want to put a pin in the city of Napa because I think we need to go back to that and have a discussion. But I wanted to actually reflect on what Linda said. We had an item in September 2025 where Linda Brown presented on the global heat reduction accounting method.

I think it's really, really important to bring that up at this point when we're looking at putting the implementation plan together. I have had some ongoing discussions with Linda, and I think that this is something we should definitely look at. I think it would be a relatively small amount of funds that we would pay to do a pilot project. Here in Napa, just as Linda just mentioned with her small example, we can get a much better analysis of the the heat reduction impact, of our cap activities and look at what kind of dollars we're spending. So I think it's really important as stewards of taxpayer dollars that we are getting the biggest bang for our buck.

And so I'd like us to ask Linda to bring something forward as a proposal that we could look at to do something to analyze RCAP measures in this way so that we can assure that we're prioritizing correctly. And I think that in addition to being a great help for the county of Napa and its jurisdictions, it could also be a model for California. Because this is something there are some pilot projects happening, but not everywhere. And I don't know that there's anything really in California. So this could be very, very valuable, not just for us, but for the Bay Area and the state as a whole.

So I just think it's important to discuss that now and make some room for that because I think drilling down is going to be important to show the community that we are going to have the greatest impact with their dollars.

Director Alessio?

Thank you. I was debating whether to bring this up during the previous item on the RCAP and the CEQA. Again, very impressed with Linda Brown's presentation yesterday. I talked to some staff following the forum we had, the climate summit that was hosted. Because I think it would be I concur with what Director Gallagher is saying.

It would be a missed opportunity to the point of I think it would be negligible if we didn't do something and move forward with something with this. And as I was talking, getting some feedback, we want to move forward with what we're doing with the ARCAP because we've been working and investing so much money on this. At the same time and I hope it's Okay I kind of lay this thought out as an idea but to ask Lynn to come back, do a presentation to this board, and for this committee or committee and this committee to look at how can we layer that science in terms of warming and the cost analysis, the value and the prioritization, and how that drives decisions. So it's something I think it's forward to bring back. So I'm not sure.

I want to make sure I'm not countering what you're saying. I think we definitely need to move forward. We need to add that. But it might be a layered versus stopping what we're doing now

to bring

I'm not suggesting we stop anything. This is an add on, basically. Perfect. So I yeah.

There's So we're just talking to you.

Not in any way delaying anything. It's just an added way to drill down even further to assure our priorities are the best, most impactful cost savings.

Yeah, because there's the cost, there's the value, and the return of investment. And this is our climate, this is our future, this is our tax dollars. So I think that's great. Thank you for bringing that up. Thank you, Linda.

Concerning putting out a future agenda item, I got that noted. Thank you. Director Pater?

Yeah, I just want to add to that conversation. Those are really good points that you brought up. And including the heat reduction as an element in the implementation plan and how we prioritize, I think, is really critical. But I also would really like to hear back as we're ready to launch the CEQA and the RCAP itself that we have language in there that shows that we want to prioritize the heat reduction measures so that we can tie the two together. And we're at a point now where I think we can make sure that that language is there.

Maybe it is. I don't have it right in front of me. But I think as a committee, we should be reminded that that approach and the implementation plan fits squarely in the RCAP itself. Because as has already been stated, it's a really clear opportunity. And not to take Linda's thunder, but what she talked about yesterday that really resonated with me is that we're really looking yes, we're looking at emissions reductions, but we're really looking globally at heat reduction.

And there's a lot of things that can be done. We heard already up in San Elena, which is a great example. But that's where we want to really prioritize. So I just want to make sure that our RCAP has language in it that will help us tier as we move forward.

Thank you. Director Joseph?

Yes. I would concur with everything that's been said. What struck me from yesterday's comments is that heat reduction to some extent buys us time and time is the big issue right now. We can't probably meet a 2030 goal in terms of global emission reductions but if we can reduce enough of the heat that it might be able to drag out the consequences a little bit and so I definitely think that there ought to be an effort to put a heat reduction number to all of the mitigation measures that are quantifiable so that when we are implementing or when we are developing our own individual implementation plans, we can begin to look at where should we invest our efforts initially because if we can reduce the heat through reducing methane leakages, for example, that might be a better return on investment than investing in retrofitting all of our existing homes. And I am concerned that that particular project retrofitting our homes could be the stumbling block relative to this whole effort because if you've got somebody organized who feels their interests are being negatively impacted, they are more apt to challenge this whole process and it kind of throws everything off the the wheels off of the bus.

So I do think a heat reduction strategy might make a lot more sense necessarily than an emissions reduction, and we won't know how to do that without that kind of data. So I would certainly support, frankly, contracting with someone who could do that kind of heat reduction analysis. And it shouldn't stop anything because it really plays into the implementation phase. So I'm on board. Thank you.

Okay. Anybody else? Oh, director Reeves?

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I just wanted to concur with all of the other comments. And I just felt like we all were inspired by Ms. Brown's presentation yesterday and rethinking our previous presentation here. And it just felt like we need to give the tools to our working group that that would provide. And I think we need to add that to the budget as a logical and helpful item to make sure that all of the things that we say we want to do are actually doable and need to be done in a certain order.

So I really support that.

Can I just one more comment? I think in terms of process, I think what would make sense rather than just like Linda coming to the next meeting would be that there would be a proposal forwarded to the staff and the staff could take a look at it and bring it all back and then we'd have a nice package to take a look at.

I was going to suggest the same thing to our staff to give since we have it, you know, voted on the budget that we look at what that cost could be, I agree. I think it complements what we're doing very well. We talk about heat reduction all the time. So if it complements the process, doesn't delay us, I think it's something that we can very much consider. So if we can bring back that cost and have that part of the discussion with the budget. Anybody else?

Well, I wanted on to the actual budget process because American Canyon did come back and have a discussion with our council and staff. At this point, and we will go back and give them the latest updates, but the direction we received was we're okay with the baseline budget even though it's jumped up from 18 to 23, but still it's okay and I'd still be supportive if we went up more because of the heat reduction proposal that we're talking about. But as to the formal implementation plan, we are more inclined to pursue our own approach, part of that is because we have just recently added some funding to hire a part time sustainability analyst And quite honestly, given the opportunity to use 40 or $50, I think the council would prefer to use it to keep somebody that works for us and maybe say your job is to focus on an implementation plan working with everyone. That to this council made a lot more sense than buying into a package. And quite honestly, our impression was that we would see some kind of a template of a plan, you know, maybe here's the spreadsheet, each jurisdiction fill in their cells.

So at this point and things can change, but at this point, American Canyon might be looking at using maybe the same amount of money but pursuing it internally so I don't know what that does to a sense proposal at some point they're not going to just keep carving it up that's where we're at.

Okay. Anybody else? Do you have something?

I was just gonna say that's absolutely possible and if you have that money budgeted elsewhere in your city budget, you would be covered. For anybody else who is unsure, I would say or even American Canyon adopting this budget, including that, would at least placeholder that money for you and make sure you have it. And this is the case for everyone. That's kind of the purpose of passing these budgets is to make sure that you all have budget to do what you need for the rest of the year. There's nothing that says, if you were to adopt the budget as it is presently, that it means you have to do an implementation plan or that you have to use the SENT or that you that's still to be determined later.

So our budgets are always kind of placeholders. They're really just a way for you to get enough money in your budget to do what you need to do without having to go back to your city council halfway through the year. All of your options are preserved in terms of which direction you want to go in the future. If the City of America candidate, over the course of the couple of weeks, we'll have some conversations on the phone, I'm sure. If you determine you're certain that you don't want it, we can remove that. We can go back to a sentence and say, hey, revise your proposal accordingly. We'll redo the cost share once again and provide revised numbers. But one way or the other, I just want make sure that everybody is covered in their budget needs.

Is there any contract requirements or timing as far as amending any of the the work with the senate?

No. We can do that amendment anytime. I mean, it sounds like for the folks who are interested in doing it, they people are ready to start. I think I'm hearing people want to move on this one way or the other. So if the budget is adopted to include an implementation plan next month, I would say we pretty quickly, immediately thereafter work on an amendment to a sense contract to allow for that and potentially even getting started before the RCAP is fully adopted.

I think they were looking at a new contract as well, just because of it had been several years since their original proposal. Am I remembering correctly?

That's true. We have done a number of amendments. And I think we've just advised someone rightly that we just start with a new fresh contract because after a certain number of iterations of amendments, it becomes clunky.

Great. Thank you. Anything else? I think that's good idea. Mean, we have the placeholders. It's not that we're not willing to move forward. It's just we have our ways to move forward. It's the same concept, but we're all gonna get there. That's the goal. That's why we're here. Anything else on C? Yeah? Yes.

I just want to ask a question. So if municipalities do their own implementation plan, I mean, we're still able to look at this as a whole in terms of how you would implement the entire plan. It's just the money to start that implementation would see, I'm just trying to understand the cost share. And if we start pulling pieces out of it, does it really cost us less? Or are those who are left going to have to spend that money? I'm Trying to understand that part.

To cost less because I would not advocate us entering into a new or an amended contract with the Senate that has the same price for fewer municipalities doing it. So I can't tell you exactly what that cost would be. We'd have work with them. Okay.

But looking at the RCAP activities through the lens of the global heat reduction, we could still do all of that. And then that information would just be shared with everyone. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to kind of get that straight.

Yeah. Just at first reaction for me, I think the heat reduction potential tool makes the most sense as rolling up into the implementation plan as and we can have specific language in there stating that we're using the heat reduction potential as a specific prioritization criteria rather than like building it into the ARC app or the CEQA document, you know, into the implementation plan, I think makes sense.

Well, thank you very much. We'll move on to the next item, D, presentation. City of Napa SAP will update the CDC and the progress of climate action sustainability activities within the city of Napa's jurisdiction.

Good morning. I'm Deborah Elliott with the city manager's office at the city of Napa. I do not have a presentation today, so I'm just going to ask you to picture in your mind's eye what I'm talking about. So, I'm going give a quick update on the progress of our climate action activities at the City of Napa. Just as kind of a base setting, so we are when we're deciding what actions to focus on at this point without the climate action plan to guide us, we're focused on high impact greenhouse gas reduction projects that also have multiple benefits.

So looking for that opportunity where in addition to greenhouse gas reduction in those most kind of significant sectors, are transportation and existing buildings, where we can also have multi benefits that benefit residents, business owners or whoever we're really focused on. So I'm going to run through a number of projects and then I'm happy to answer questions or go into detail about more of them, but I'll stay pretty high level on most of them. The first project is one that I do not work on at all, but you are all very well familiar with because it's the anaerobic digestion project. So Kevin gave a really good presentation on that yesterday and I know he's given, a number of updates during public comment to this group. So that one is a great example as an activity.

That's something that Kevin and I work closely together, but I'm not involved with that project at all. But that's a really significant one for greenhouse gas reduction, as well as private fleet vehicles within the city that are operating within the city. Those are, owned by Recycling and Waste Services. Another project that I'm working on is through the California Air Resources Board and this was a grant for an EV and e bike plan. And we're working very closely with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition and the Napa County Resource Conservation District.

This one has been a really interesting plan. We've been working on it for about a year now, and we're really starting to get moving on it. But this one includes capacity building and relationship building with organizations. So in addition to having a community transportation needs assessment and identifying locations where we would like to put public charging stations, it also is building capacity, especially at the Bicycle Coalition, but also building capacity and building relationships with those community based organizations that we work with really closely and that we want to work with more closely, which included giving significant stipends to the staff from those organizations and giving stipends to the residents who are participating. We're trying to get information about their transportation activities.

And then we'll also be doing education around EVs and e bikes and opportunities there to try and shift some of the thinking as we move towards a more electrified transportation future. Future. Another project we've been working with the NAPA RCD for about two years is outreach. So they do a lot of the climate outreach for the city of NAPA and that's been really focused on rather than kind of broad outreach or really reaching the people that we already know are really engaged. That's been focused on trying to get multiple languages.

So meeting people in parks, having outdoor activities. We did a repair fair, which was also with the county library and, a number of other, non profits were involved in that one as well. But that one was really successful, but doing a lot of kind of Spanish based food waste activities and planting activities, different things where we can not make it so climate action focused that we don't have people show up, but kind of really meeting people where they are and then bringing the climate side into it. So that's been really successful. We have a federal EV charging infrastructure grant, which we're working through obligation on now.

And so that one's in process. We'll see how that goes. We used, just to mention because it came up in the budget, the EV charging tool that was developed over the past couple of years. That was used in the EV charging infrastructure grant application. So we really use that as a basis to apply.

So that was a really useful CAC developed tool. And we're also using that in that CARB EV and e bike plan. We're using that EV charging tool to determine where the public facilities are so we can determine where we could potentially put charging locations. Also on transportation, we're working on an EV fleet plan. So this is looking at the city's about two fifty fleet vehicles and coming up with a plan of where we need chargers, how many chargers we need, who's going to use them, when they're going to use them, and how we're going to transition that whole fleet over to electric.

This is really in response in addition with that CARB plan. It's in response to the governor's executive order that transitions us away from internal combustion engine cars by 2035. So on the fleet side and for the city, we're looking at very specifically how do we transition our fleet by that time. And we're working with the advanced clean fleet rule, which is through CARB. And then for the public, and especially for low income multifamily residents, we're looking at how do we educate the public.

We know that if you have a single family house, if you have a garage, you're going to be able to figure out charging in the next ten years. But if not, we need to really do some of that outreach to ensure that we're helping people figure out the best way to charge. We also you may have seen or heard, but we have, a Tesla now. So St. Helena is not the only city. So we have a police Tesla that is used. They received it through a cannabis grant, but it's used for DUI enforcement. But it's very nice looking Tesla. I was just at

and I'll talk a little more,

but I was just at career day and talking to a bunch of fifth graders, that got the most attention from them, when we showed the police Tesla. So that was really that's like an exciting it's a great tool for outreach, again, the community is making those EVs, you know, they're used by the police, they're around town, they have value and they're functional, which is great to show also just the police officers that they're functional cars as well. A couple of the bigger projects we're working on, we're looking into a facilities project that would add solar and energy efficiency on city buildings. We're also working on a project at Laurel Manor, is a Napa Housing Authority owned senior low income housing. So, we're looking at working with three incentive programs.

MCE is one. The Low Income Weatherization Program through the state is another. And then Solar on Multi Family Housing is the third. And that's another state program. So that one we really see as a multi benefit project.

So, from my narrow greenhouse gas focus, that's great. We are going to get greenhouse gas reductions. But it also provides resident comfort, it provides resident safety, it's a healthier place to live, and it reduces utility bills. So it's kind of where can we do a project that reduces greenhouse gases but also has all of these benefits which are really important to consider as well. Some of the other projects that are happening in other areas of the city, we have a lot going on with our Parks and Rec department in relation to tree planting and the urban forestry management plan, which will kind of determine what tree planting looks like going forward.

And then on the implementation plan, just to touch back on that, that hasn't begun work yet on the RCAP implementation plan from the previous couple of items. The city really saw an opportunity a year ago to contract with the Senate to take advantage of some of my funding that was expiring. So we contracted with them a year ago to do that, but we see value in that plan by taking the larger regional climate action plan and really taking it and making it very specific for our city. So how is our fleet supervisor going to implement the transition over to electric vehicles? And what does that look like?

What does that cost over the next five years? So having me being able to meet with them and them being able to put that money per year and budget that money and think about that money and having ongoing conversations with them to make sure that I'm not the only one thinking about climate action, that we really have staff throughout the departments and throughout the cities thinking about climate action. So that's really important to me. So those are the projects that I wanted to focus on. But again, we focus on the highest impact greenhouse gas projects in the most impacted sectors, which are transportation and existing buildings, but also looking at those opportunities for multi benefit projects, so not just focusing on greenhouse gas reductions.

I also try to focus on items that I have control over. But that's actually a very narrow kind of group of items that I have complete control over. So a lot of what I do at the city is work on relationship building and my sphere of influence. So how can I influence parks or roads or the planning department to make decisions on their projects that are the most environmentally friendly? And then just building on that, I talked to eighty fifth graders this morning about climate action careers, my career in general, but also climate action careers.

And the fact that every job is a climate action job, so whatever you're working on, if you're thinking about how you can improve the environment or the climate, then you're making a difference and that's really important. So, I think that's all I had for now. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Deborah. Do we have any public comment on the presentation? Okay. We'll move it back to the commission. Yeah, Director Behr.

I would love to start because, first of all, thank you, Deborah, for all you do for the city of Napa and really for all of our communities as a model. A couple of things to just share I think that we want to reinforce is that every job, every department, sort of every action that we take can be a climate action decision. So I think that's really important as we communicate and move forward, because it's about both the GHG reductions and also carbon sequestration, which I think is something we want to talk more and more about. I'm really proud of our urban forestry management plan because I think it feeds into that. The one thing I wanted to share with this commission is that as a council, we set certain priorities or focus areas.

And one of our focus areas for this year is in communication and outreach. So you're just a model for how that focus and that commitment from us as a council to say, here's how we want to communicate with the public and with all the various specific interest groups and those in the community doing work in these areas. How do we partner and get out there so that we can share information together is really a critical step. So I just want to thank you for that. Because we have a lot of great groups doing work, but it also takes our participation as electeds and government. So thank you.

Thank you. Director Duletsky? Okay,

thank you. And I'm going to kind of echo what Member Painter just talked about. And again, with the presentation, in terms of you've got a table or a grid, and has all the different departments. And it's a really culture shift, a mind shift for agencies. And the bigger the agency, bigger the shift, right?

To get people to change how they view, how they operate, how they see opportunities for this. Because there are so many benefits that crossover from the cost savings to, of course, climate change, all these others that are to benefit with that. And really, Deborah, you have been such a leader in this. And you do it in a way, I've seen, that is very informative, that's bringing people in. And not scaring people or getting them to be defensive, but really bringing them in and seeing how they are already contributing and how they'll be contributing more to this.

So you really are a model and a leader in this. Very excited for the city of Napa and how that's going to also influence all the other jurisdictions, including the county.

Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alright. So, next item is six, reports and announcements. Do you have any announcements, reports?

Go ahead. I'll help you. Painter.

Well, I just have to do a quick shout out and thank you for everybody who participated in or attended the climate summit yesterday. First of all, a huge thank you to NAPA Climate Now and all of that work. It's been a real honor to be a part of that for the last four years. And this year was only just as good, if not better. I want to certainly thank Ryan for his involvement.

He joined us at meetings that we had at least once a month, if not several times, and really contributed to the technical information and the success of our programming and our tabling. I think people really got a lot out of it. I do hope that for 2027 I know we're going to take a little break. I'm not suggesting we're going to get together at this particular moment. But hopefully sometime over the summer, we'll start to talk about 2027.

I'm hoping that Ryan can continue to be involved. And I'd really encourage other CAC members to pay attention and think about what we should be sharing with the community around climate action and around these issues. Because I think we've really built something that the community really is interested in attending, and it's an opportunity. So I hope that we can all participate in the planning for 2027. And last thing I'll say on the summit is while we didn't videotape the entire session, there are slides that are available.

And I'm hoping that maybe NAPA Climate Now can coordinate with Ryan so that we can make those slides available and that you could distribute it to the commission, if that's possible. Thank you.

Thank you. Mark Joseph?

A couple of things. Number one, I I was finally able to make it to a Napa Climate Summit, and I appreciated it. And I'll just throw out, you know, if theoretically, our our capital have been adopted and we'll be starting on our implementation plan, so that might be a topic for next year, not that I am trying to influence anyone. So that's my first comment. My second comment is just an FYI. I will be out of town at our May Climate Action Committee meeting. So I won't be here, and I'll make arrangements for our alternate to backfill me.

Thank you. Director Alessio?

Sure. Again, I I just have to thank member Painter and everybody that was on that committee. Member Painter, can you tell me do you recall the individuals that were on that working in that planning committee for this year's summit?

I hope I'm not going to miss anyone. But certainly Chris Benz and Lynn Baker, Gopal Shankar, and Ryan, of course, Rainer Honeke, who was member emeritus member of RCD. Joan Martin. MORDINGER. Yeah. Joe was very involved from the beginning as well.

JON MORDINGER Fantastic.

And Doctor. Sherri Tennyson of Napa Valley

College. Yes. JON Napa Valley College was a great partner as we look at trying to share information. Yeah.

Well, all I can say is that I was really just blown away. I mean, the information was so relative, and the content was so packed terms of the presentations that were all probably about eight minutes roughly. There was a lot of content and just really, really important information. I videoed a few of the segments. I do wish everything was recorded and even live streamed. Maybe for next year, consider doing that. But I just want to thank everybody for that hard work.

Wonderful event. Anybody else?

I've got one report and one announcement. We had another sustainability workshop this month. What date was that? March 11 at the Calistoga branch of the Napa Library. This was our first sustainability workshop that we had done outside of the main branch of the library. We had two people show up. So it was small, but they were very engaged, very interested. And we were able to have very in-depth discussion with the small crowd. But we have another few workshops coming up. We have April 8 at the main branch library from six to 7PM.

We're still determining the topic, but I would imagine it's either energy efficiency or on heat pumps. We will have another one up Valley at the Yountville branch of the library on May 1 from twelve to 2PM at the, yeah, at the Yountville branch library on a topic of energy efficiency for your home. And on May 13 from six to 7PM at the American Canyon Library, topic still to be determined. But I have some flyers here I can I can pass out after and hopeful to touch base with with some of you and and lean on your connections and networks for getting this information out so we can get more participation at these these library events, especially at ones that we haven't done before at Up Valley or Down Valley?

Okay. Great. Thank you. Don't get discouraged. Consistency will get the word out and more and more will show up. Yeah. So don't be discouraged.

We've had as few as Keep it going. One or two, and we've had as many as 80 show up. So it's it's really hit or miss. But, yeah, hoping we'll we'll keep the work up and trying to trying to get information out there.

That's right. Okay. Any anybody else? Okay. That's next. Yeah. So future agenda items.

Yeah. We had a

I had a presentation from my air district meeting from regarding the Bay Area Regional Climate Action Plan. And I think it would be great for us to have a presentation here to see how the bar cap can supplement our regional climate activities. So Ryan, if we can do that, that'd be great.

Great. I've got an audit to hear

too. Okay. And if I can, I have a few? One, will say well, I think that every presentation at this summit could be a future agenda item. I really think that that's another way to capture it and get it recorded and preserved.

Again, I know that we've talked about having Linda Brown bring back a proposal. But I still think her doing the presentation on maximizing climate return on investment would be very valuable to this board and to those that watch this board. And it would accompany, hopefully, a proposal of sort to consider. Also, I don't recall and Ryan or Jamison, did we ever have a presentation on climate change as a public health crisis, how climate change and public health intertwine? I'd like to have that in some future agenda item because there's a direct link.

Those who are the most vulnerable in our community are the ones who are most at risk for climate change. I think we need to look at the health impacts on this, not in the affordability, but the health impacts on this. And then last, just to make a note that Arbor Day will be on our next climate action committee meeting, which is April 24. So I don't know if we wanna do anything in that or just make a note of it, but it is Arbor Day is April 24, which is our next meeting.

Can

I just respond to one thing too? It's kind of more on an announcement as well. But before the next meeting, we'll also have Earth Day celebration on April 18 out of the Oxbow Commons. We'll have another great several dozen presenters and events going on. Tabling will be out there on behalf of Bayron and also talking on the RCAP a little bit.

And on the public health topic, April 12, Sunday, April 12, is a community health fair also at the Oxbow Commons, and we will be out there presenting on behalf of Bayron and and Napa County Sustainability. But I think it's a great idea to to bring put the public health sector into this space as well.

Thank you. Any other future agenda items to consider? Okay. Well, as we adjourn, I just wanna remind everybody that we can all be climate champions. Go ahead.

Yeah. One, we we have a standing item for the the sustainability updates from jurisdictions. So I would welcome volunteers for either next month or following if if any we did the county did it last month and with a great presentation by miss Elliott from the city today and hoping to have a great volunteer for

And we wanna keep that going so we can all be informed what everybody else is doing. So if we don't get volunteer, we'll just slightly make some recommendations, some friendly recommendations. And hopefully, we can get that information out. So well, thank you very much. We can all be climate change champions. And no matter how little or how big we can do, it's all positive impact. Thank you. You all have a great day.