Climate Action Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everybody. We will be we are now beginning the Climate Action Committee. It is 09:32. Call to order. May I have a roll call, please? Oh, I forgot the gavel. There.

Member Lamatina? Here. Member Joseph?

Here.

Member Narvaez?

Here.

Member Gift? Present. Member Alessio?

Here.

Member Gallagher? Here. Member Deasy? Here. Member Reeves? Here. Chair Eisenberg?

Here.

Thank you.

Okay. If you'll please rise and join me in the flag salute. Ready? Begin. Okay.

In this time period, public comment, anyone may address the Climate Action Committee regarding any subject over which the committee has jurisdiction, but which is not on today's posted agenda. In order to provide all interested parties an opportunity to speak, time limits will be three minutes for public comments. And as required by government code, no action or discussion will be undertaken on any item raised during the public comment period. If you have a public comment that is not on today's agenda, you're welcome to come to the lectern. Seeing none and none online.

No callers.

We will move to the consent calendar. On the consent calendar, we have one item, which is the minutes of last month's meeting. Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I'll make the motion.

Motion made by gift.

I'll second. Okay.

Vice chair Narvaez got the second in a little bit above, a little bit fast, but that's good. And all in favor of approving the consent agenda? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And now, we have a presentation on the status of the RCAP and related CEQA document, that will be Ryan.

Yeah. Good morning, chair, members of the Climate Action Committee. I'll be providing an update on the RCAP and the initial study and mitigated negative declaration. Today, I'll cover the tribal consultation and partnership closure, the initial study mitigated negative declaration update, updates to the RCAP, and next steps for RCAP adoption and CEQUA document certification. Staff held a formal AB 52 consultation initiation meeting with the Yocha Dehe Winton Nation on February 12, and staff held an informal discussion and partnership initiation meeting with representatives from tribe of Alexander Valley.

Both discussions highlighted tribal concerns over impacts to local waterways, the need for cultural access to the Napa River, the need for tribal input, partnership, and consultation on issues affecting waterways, and ensuring the use of nature based solutions for remediation and improvement of natural resources. Preparation is underway for a screen check draft of the initial study mitigated negative declaration. So the staff and legal team are reviewing those now, and the public notice and thirty day public review period is set for the early summer. Cequa. CEQUA NET coordinates state level review of environmental documents under CEQUA acting as a central hub for distributing, reviewing, and tracking projects.

And this notice of intent will be filed and published on CEQUA NET informing the public organizations and agencies about the availability of the ISMND for review and signaling the thirty day public review period allowing stakeholders to comment on the document's findings regarding potential environmental impacts. The notice of intent will be distributed to all RCAP interested parties list and potentially affected agencies and stakeholders. The notice of intent will also be published in the Napa Valley Register filed with the county clerk and available on the county's website. In additional in addition to the filing of the documents with Sequanet, the documents will also be made available at the public counter of the Napa County Planning, Building and Environmental Services Department and on our project website, climateactionnapa.conveyo.com. During the public comment period, the published ISMND will be presented to the CAC which will provide another opportunity for member discussion and public comment either in person or on phone.

And comments on the document will also be accepted through our project email rcapcountyofnapa dot org. Next up, updates on the R CAP. The final R CAP will we're planning to release concurrently with the public draft of the ISMND sometime in this early summer. While the final RCAP and public draft are being released concurrently, only the ISMND will have an official public comment period which can necessitate changes to mitigation measures and the CEQA document as needed. While comments on the RCAP and on sustainability projects are always welcome, at this point in the process, once the final RCAP is released, major changes to the RCAP document are not expected.

An implementation plan will be used to prioritize and inform how RCAP measures and actions will be rolled out. Monitoring and data tracking will assist in assessing the effectiveness of measures as they are implemented, and we plan for future updates to the RCAP every five years. For RCAP adoption and ISMND certification, Following the public review process of the ISMND, the Climate Action Committee will consider and possibly recommend for adoption of the RCAP and the ISMND, which will be then forwarded to the member jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction will independently consider adoption of the RCAP and the associated CEQA document as a lead agency for Napa County or responsible agency for all other member jurisdictions. That's all I have for you today.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now open the public comments period. If you'd like to make a public comment on the CHIP's previous presentation, please come to the lectern. What excitement. Well, thank you very much. And now we'll have time for comments and discussions by the board.

Chair, we do have a caller. David, you will have three minutes.

Am I audible? Yes. Thank you. My comment is that, I I have no idea how many climate action plans have already been through one or perhaps two iterations. And I also don't know what their respective environmental documents have looked like, but I'm I'm wondering if staff could help us understand more about what's coming down the pike here by providing some links to existing environmental documents related to climate action plans. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Are there any other comments from the public? Anyone else online?

We have no other callers.

Thank you. For the board. Member Alicia.

Thank you. Thank you for the report. This is exciting. We're getting closer and closer. Can you go back to the slide as you referenced the indigenous tribes that were represented?

Okay. Based on my knowledge and history, there are more tribes that would be represented in this area. Did you try to reach out to like, who is the source that told you the official tribes that were here to make contact with? Because I'm concerned we haven't reached everybody.

I can answer that. There are about, I think, five tribes that we reach out to. And that's for any project, I think, that needs to go through CEQA review. So the county has a list of kind of I don't if they say participating tribes and kind of both federally recognized and non federally recognized tribes.

Correct.

So yeah, so we mailed out letters and emails to all of the ones that are always contacted. The and the are the ones that responded and said, yes, we want to consult. When we mail out that letter and it's AB 52, we have to do that. We have to mail out those letters. And there's a thirty day window for them to respond.

So the Yocha Dihi responded pretty quickly. The Mishma WAPO responded after the thirty days. But because they come to the meetings and, obviously, we want to work with as many organizations as possible, we met with them and listened to their concerns and really incorporated both of their input into the draft RCAP in terms of making sure that issues around water and waterways are that we're consulting tribes, and specifically these two, because they let us know that they're interested. But I don't think that's stopping us from continuing to contact the other ones that didn't respond.

Okay, great. Because I do know that there was I would call him a young man, probably in his 30s, maybe a little more, but who represented the Pomo tribe. And that would be more on this West Side, the Maikima side, that was around and involved locally. And then also the Patwin tribe was also in the history. I don't know anybody who represents that tribe. But I just want to make sure that we've done our full due diligence in reaching out to everybody. So that's all. Okay, thank you.

Any other comments? Yes. Member Joseph.

Yes. I just wanted to clarify on the timeline here. When you say early summer, that could be June or July. So that's when we think that we'll be looking at the final R CAP and the ISMND.

Yes. That's correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. I think it's more towards June, early July, if anything. Yeah. So if we do bring it forward to the CAC, it might be for that July meeting, July.

Further comments? Well, I'm personally very excited that it's actually coming to fruition. It's been a long process, and now we can actually see a completion time at the end of the tunnel. And then there'll be the fun of getting all the jurisdictions to sign on. Just a quick question in reference to the caller's question, and I believe it was, are there other R CAP or R CAP like documents that have gone through the process of getting CEQA review and has that been used as a resource or as an available resource for NAPA?

Yes. I'm not aware of any right off the top of my head, but I staff can look into that and find other there's many other climate action plans out there that I'm aware of, but I'm I haven't seen their haven't read all of them and I haven't read all of their CEQA documents but, yeah, happy to look into it and provide any

examples. Yeah, just links. I mean, I don't want this to this shouldn't be a highly burdensome activity.

Sure.

Any other comments? Seeing none, thank you Mr. Melendez, thank you Mr. Gutierrez, and we're ready to move on to item five b and we will have a presentation from Eric DeCoke from Ascent on the proposed implementation plan for the NAPA R CAP. And he'll be appearing online. Thank you.

Good morning. Can everyone hear me okay? Yes. Great. I don't know if staff had any remarks or if I should just dive in, but I'm happy to begin if that's staff's preference.

Sure. Go ahead, Eric.

Great. Thank you. Let me go ahead and share my screen. Okay. We can begin. So I'm here. Yeah. Eric DeCock. Good morning, chair Eisenberg, members of the committee. My name is Eric DeCock, project manager with Ascent Environmental based in Sacramento.

You'll lead consultants on the RCAP. And, of course, I'm here today to talk about our proposed scope of work that we've delivered to staff for their consideration and your consideration in preparation of an implementation plan for the R CAP. So just really quickly, there's five tasks I'm gonna go over that were was in the proposed scope, and we'll just touch on each of those items and then be standing by to answer your questions or take comment. Of course we want this to be a very collaborative process, RCAP has been a collaborative process to date and of course it will be critical as we manage this process moving forward past R CAP adoption later in the year. We begin that process post plan adoption, we want to make sure that we're supporting staff and the ongoing collaboration from all staff in the jurisdictions working together.

So we do envision there will be workshops where all the staff are working together. We do envision having one on one meetings with the jurisdictions to make sure that we're listening and hearing about individual jurisdictions' needs as we dig into all these implementation details and think about prioritization, costs, and phasing things in over time. One of the first technical steps we'll do with the full working group and with staff at the county level is, of course, begin to categorize and dig into the details of the measures in action. Many of us have seen there is a lot of detail in the plan already, but we didn't get into excruciating levels of detail, the kind of detail that we would need for implementation planning. So of course, we want to first start with making sure everyone is clear on which measures are implementing actions supporting those measures apply to which jurisdictions.

We want to understand the timing in those measures and which actions will take place when. Some of that detail was assumed in the camp, but as we dig into the details and layout implementing actions or steps for implementing the many measures, we wanna understand that in a higher level of detail and really understand that in terms of staff capacity, program capacity, and other considerations. It's more of an iterative process of defining those details. There's also a need in this step to understand interdependencies between measures or actions. There's a lot of situations where we can bundle similar actions across measures together because they engage staff or other partners in similar activities, so we want to look for those bundling opportunities from a cost effectiveness standpoint.

So that will be true for some classes of measures or actions, but it's really hard to stay at that point what that looks like until we've had that discussion at the staff level. Another key step building on once we've completed that categorization step is to begin to think about developing or refining all of the details, whether that's what the staffing need will be, what the cost would be, what are the funding and financing pathways, and even some of the technical considerations about the nature of the measures and their implementation steps. If we need to conduct a feasibility study, there may need to be assumptions on the shared scoping of that activity or cost sharing. If it's developing an ordinance or creating a program or even modifying an existing program. A lot of those details, of course, can be spelled out in terms of the what and not just the who or the how.

So that will be a really important step in here as well. And a key outcome here of this step in the process is looking at prioritization and phasing. We know there's a lot of measures and a lot of implementation steps here, and we can't do everything everywhere all at once. We need to be measured. We need to think about priorities, especially in the near term. We advise, of course, that's all of the staff that we work with on climate action plans. Think about the near term priorities. Yes. We do have a twenty year plan in front of us, but we need to think about the next five years. As you heard Ryan mention earlier, there will be an opportunity to true up or change the plan within five years.

That is a commitment in the RCAP is to keep it fresh and alive. And as the staff begin implementation, also begin monitoring the outcomes of the RCAP, it will be important to think about the near term especially and how that sets the region up for success in the long term. One of the deliverables we did include in our proposed scope is to develop mechanism for tracking progress. And so there's two dimensions of this. Of course, there's tracking implementation status, who is doing what and what progress are we making from a programmatic standpoint and delivering on the programs or the projects that are essential to implementing the RCAP.

The other dimension, of course, is quantifying the effectiveness of the measures in achieving greenhouse gas reduction goals or on the adaptation side of the RCAP, thinking about outcomes and are we on track for success in building resilience in the region to the effects of climate change. And of course, an important way that we do this is through development of tools. We use key performance indicators or KPIs. We're tracking actually data as similar to what we use to develop an inventory. So those KPIs, the units of energy used in buildings or vehicle miles traveled, water usage, waste consumption, waste deposition, all of these metrics that we use for inventory preparation become also really important for tracking progress over time.

So there's some data collection activities that staff will be engaging in across the jurisdictions to make that happen. Of course, we can help provide the tools and provide mechanisms for that to happen and some coordination. And, of course, the tracking tools we develop can also be included and linked to how we set up the implementation plan, which I'll talk about momentarily. All these tools, of course, and as the data is being collected, as implementation status is being tracked, becomes key inputs into annual reporting on the RCAP's progress. And of course staff's vision, as stated in the RCAP, is to bring regular reports forward to the CCAC and to the individual jurisdictions.

We also, in this task, have an opportunity, and it's an optional task in the scope to think about setting up these tracking tools in a way that could be used in an online dashboard. So there have been some discussions with staff about how to deliver something like that as a package. So happy to answer questions about that as well shortly. Finally, the big deliverable at the end is the actual RCAP implementation plan. We envision this to be a moderate length document that really explains to decision makers in the near term.

So all the inputs from those previous tasks get summarized in tables and there's some narratives, some graphics will be included that really communicate what the implementation strategy is moving forward. Who's doing what? Who's collaborating with whom? Where are the partnerships? Where are the near term funding and staffing priorities?

So that all gets rolled up as a package and a document that's available for public review and, of course, the full informed implementation steps moving forward. I mentioned that optional task earlier, so we have done some dashboard work with other jurisdictions and if staff feel the need, they could activate this task. But of course, we're happy also if there are other resources available internally. The tracking tools that we develop will be set up and ready to plug and play, if you will, and serve as the back end of a dashboard. So that's always an option as well as I mentioned.

And a nice thing about the dashboard is it allows everyone to visualize the that's being made on RCAP implementation and to track progress over time for the public to see what data is being gathered and how that looks relative to the plan's goals, which can be really, really important and exciting. I did want to just share some folks have asked where have we done implementation plans in the past for climate action plans or climate adaptation plans. And a really good example from our perspective is the work that we did in the city of San Diego on their climate action implementation plan, city of over a million people. So this was a climate action plan that similar to the RCAP had some implementation detail, but really needed a more robust strategy to really guide implementation in the near term. So, you know, the success of this implementation plan that it really did do a good job of translating the complexities of what was in the plan into how are we actually going to actually implement over 190 actions in the city.

So we did develop a structured prioritization and phasing framework, not dissimilar from what we've included here in your proposed scope of work for the RCAP. We did establish monitoring and reporting tools that could support accountability, transparency, and adaptive management. We integrated equity partnerships and funding considerations into some of those implementation details and assumptions and are documented in the plan. And of course, we were happy to share that we did win an award for that implementation plan as well from that EPA California. That really concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take questions or comments. Thanks.

Okay, let's begin with public comments. Are there public comments in the room? Are there any public comments online?

We have no callers.

Okay. Let's move to board comments. You. Member Joseph?

Thank you. Thank you for the report. A few questions. First, how long do you envision this implementation planning process to take?

We haven't talked about schedule with staff in a high level of detail. I mean, my experience, this goes as fast as everybody wants to work together and can make moves together. I would think that probably a six to eight month process would be a reasonable, a moderate pace to move things forward. There could also be more time needed, of course, if we need to vet more details or dig into some more technical analysis, whether it's cost and funding pathways or other considerations. Okay.

Another key point as well would be that we wanna make sure we're aligning the process with staff's annual work programming process as well. We don't wanna work at cross purposes to that. So if there are key milestones that the jurisdictions are aware of where it would make sense to align efforts and meet those milestones in terms of staffing or budgeting priorities that would be critical as well.

Okay, thank you. Second question is to the extent that we are doing the environmental review for the RCAP itself, implementation of that plan shouldn't require any additional sequel analysis, is that right or am I just naive about the process?

I think that's correct, council member Joseph. I think the the key thing here is that the implementation plan gets into more detail, but it's still within the scope of the ER cap.

In other

words, we wouldn't be proposing to change measures or actions dramatically from what's within the scope. If anything, we're providing clarifying administrative details and don't really result in substantial changes to the project as assumed in the sequel analysis.

Okay, good. And then lastly, we just recently proposed adding what I'll call a heat reduction analysis which is really important because it will inform us on what might be real priorities. For example, if if we focused on methane reduction over greenhouse gases, you know, we might be better bang for our buck in the near term. But to the extent that we are going to be doing the heat reduction analysis at the same time as we're doing the implementation and this may not be the question for you, but shouldn't we have the heat reduction numbers available before we start trying to prioritize? And does anyone know how long the heat reduction analysis is going to take.

I'm concerned that we'll do a lot of implementation and then at the end find out that we really picked the wrong ones to focus on.

Yeah. We did get a proposal from the global heat reduction team, and it definitely doesn't take as long as it would for this type of project. So we can technically probably start it at the same time and have those heat reduction details, analysis details, as we're kind of thinking as each jurisdiction starts deciding and thinking about what they want to prioritize.

Okay. Because like I said, it seems to me that we really need to have the heat reduction analysis first so that we can begin to evaluate what we really want to focus on. Certainly, some things that are gonna cost hundreds of millions of dollars we might want to not prioritize for obvious reasons but there may be a lot of things that are financially feasible and we just need to know which one gets us the most bang for our buck. And I think the heat reduction results need to be there before we get too seriously into implementation.

Further comments? Member Alicia?

I'm wondering if it would be Okay if Linda Brown can respond to Member Joseph's kind of question to concern, because she does represent that agency and has been an expert on that. I'm just wondering what her response would be. Is that Okay if I ask her to come up to the mic and respond?

Yes. That would be informative, I think, for all of us.

I didn't know you were here at the podium block.

Right, exactly. I was waving. That was the hand that you saw, disembodied hand. Anyway, as Jesse said, the proposal that we submitted suggests that the entire work for the scope that we submitted, which was to do the heat analysis on the 17 measures that have quantification of emission reduction projections for 2030, 2035, and 2045 would be completed six to eight weeks. And so I do agree with Jesse's characterization that that should enable us to provide that information early into the process.

Excellent, thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Like I said, I wish I'd seen you there, I would have probably asked you to explain. Thank

Maybe I should move.

Okay, further comments, questions, I

have another one really quick. First of all, thank you, staff, for your hard work and the collaboration and the thoughtful approach. And I want to thank Ascent for your leadership. And congratulations on your recognition for the city of San Diego. I can see us excelling and being very proud of our results, too.

I guess my question is and this might be redundant because it may already be in this implementation. But I want to make sure that we're connecting the dots with everyday people in our communities. Sometimes this is niche, and people don't understand how climate resilience affects their health, their safety, social equity. And all of those are really important in the day in and day out of people's lives. They just don't know how that's connected.

So I guess this question is for Ascent. As we provide the implementation, is there a plan or can we create a plan that shows on a matrix or however you might want to do this, how this impacts and supports public health? And that would health in all policies that the city of Napa has in the general plan that we're going to be implementing in our general plan here in Napa County. Because again, we want it to connect with what we're doing in our jurisdictions, and we want to connect with everyday people. So as we look at public health or health and all policies, public safety, social equity, I'd like to, in that implementation, to connect those dots with everyday people.

Yes. Thanks for that.

Okay. Good.

Yeah. I'm sorry. It just took me a minute to find the button. Yeah. I really appreciate that comment and the question, supervisor Alessio. And I do think that, you know, as staff work together and think about community impact, you know, we have an opportunity thinking about prioritization to apply prioritization considerations in that ranking of the prioritization process when we get to those matrices and task two and three. So that will be an opportunity to do that. And I do think as well for setting up tracking tools or dashboards and other things to really show co benefits. Right? They're co benefits.

We're not just reducing emissions. We are providing, you know, opportunities to walk more, bike more. We are providing opportunities to as we green the community. There's carbon sequestration benefit, but there is also very tangible livability benefits that we need to be talking about. So I I do think that that is part of the framework and that we'll be working with staff, of course, to scope that out as the process begins of exactly which criteria, which co benefits do we really want to track and prioritize and highlight in the plan.

Thank you for that. I look forward to seeing how that is defined because there's definitely definitions in terms of how that links to the health, safety, quality of life for people in our county. Thank you.

And I'll just add one comment to that as well, that county sustainability staff have already begun working with the public the county public health department, housing and community services, you know, folks that are are connecting on the ground with many of the the constituents in the community to collaborate and coordinate on how we can support the public health work that's already going on, but also how we can incorporate some of the climate action and resiliency work that we're doing into more of the education and public health outreach as well. So it's an ongoing process. We're still building the relationships. But yeah, excited to have that work going on.

I think that's great. And it's just connecting it to everyday life. Like if you're able to insulate housing that maybe was built in a time where heat wasn't as extreme, but these houses that were built back in the 50s or 60s are now hot boxes for people, they can't sleep. And it impacts their cardiovascular system, it creates increased asthma. So as we move forward with practical solutions for people to see how maybe that's the leading message and that's where we go versus climate resilience.

Because climate resilience means a lot to us, but not to somebody who's working two jobs, has kids, can't sleep at night, have chronic illness because of impacts like this. So that's where I'm trying to go with this. Thank you.

Thank you. Further comments? Oh, yes, Mr. Gutierrez.

Yeah, I think it's a great conversation in terms of just the different variables that can go into what you prioritize in terms of the measures and actions to move forward with near term, long term. Because we do I mean, it's a climate action and adaptation plan, right? So there's adaptation measures that are also going be really important to think about in terms of, yeah, if you want to start planting native trees, you have to do it now. You're not going to wait till 2030 to start planting those trees. The other thing is that we did talk with NAPA RCD about what localized community engagement could look like for the RCAP.

And some of these conversations is exactly what we're talking about. Like, how do you talk to people about these climate change and climate actions without them being, hey, come talk to us about climate action. Like, there's these repair fairs, like repair your VCR, or like reuse stuff that you already have. Or if you're talking about composting, like, maybe don't call it composting, but how do you save money by using all the groceries you already have? So I think it's all going to be kind of connected. But you're right. The message to the majority of people is going to have to be something a little different than just what's in our plan, right? So I think that's going be something important to truly talk about as we move forward.

Further comments?

And chair, I would just I'll note that we had a late hand for the public comment. If you, at your discretion, want to reopen public comment so we can hear that.

I will now reopen public comments.

Thank you, chair. David, you will have three minutes.

Thank you. I apologize. I forgot to identify myself last time. This is David Graves from Napa. So my comment revolves around the kind of the a couple things.

One is I think there's a very large marketing issue that's kind of the elephant in the room is to convince the average person that this is actually gonna make that that it's in that it's an appropriate use of their resources and government resources to actually try to address this because I I just saw, you know, the gradual enforcement of the NOx rules for gas fired appliances is starting to emerge. And the I not that we all know Nextdoor is not a very reliable source of information about public opinion, but there was a good deal of pushback and outrage. I think it'd be very appropriate to compare, say, our incentives that a Napa County homeowner, for example, would have available versus what's available in any of the other eight counties in the Bay Area. And some really basic stuff like, well, okay, how many single family houses are there? How many are owner occupied?

How many multifamily are there? How old are they? I mean, there's a whole bunch of variables that really have a very important impact on uptake of measures to mitigate and adapt. And so I just I hope that the the plans that are brought forward to you are granular enough to to be pretty obvious. Like, well, okay.

How many how many people actually have applied for building permits to replace water heaters? How many people don't re apply for building permits to replace water heaters? How many of those were heat pump? I mean, there's a just a a whole bunch of questions that could be used to query the database of if such a a database is synoptic enough. And so I would encourage staff and and all of you to think big thoughts about, well, what's it gonna take to actually make people work on their building emissions?

I've tried to get the hospitality industry to try to think about this, and I get a big yawn or crickets or let's move on. So, clearly, there are a lot of sectors that are in this general building emissions category, for example, that are actively ignoring what is coming down the pike. So I just think that we need to kinda up our game by a couple of levels in order to actually be effective rather than kinda checking the box and saying, oh, well, we wrote this plan and let's, you know, five years later say, oh, well, it didn't work very well.

Think we need to be very peer over your three minutes.

Yep. And there, we need to be very much on top of our game.

Thank you for your comments. Well, unless there are other public comments, some closing public comments, and back to members of the board. Ms. Gibbons.

So this is not so much a question as a comment. I think, you know, it's clear that we're really all in agree that we need to very much adapt these measures, but somewhat to what member Joseph said, it feels like moving forward on an agreement with an implementation plan before we have the final RCAP is putting the cart a little bit ahead of the horse at this point. I completely also agree with member Alessio, just ensuring the community is aware. And I'm sure that you guys are doing everything through RCD, you know, just partnering with organizations like the Valley Family Centers just to make sure the public is fully notified of what is coming down the pike so that when it does come time for the implementation, that we can make those decisions. But I really am not comfortable on moving forward on a partnership with the implementation until we really see that full completed RCAP.

Thank you. Further comments? Yes, member Joseph.

Yes. I tend to agree and maybe I need to clarify or have some clarification. I think sequentially speaking, we're going to wrap up the R CAP probably by the end of this year and then proceed immediately into implementation. So even though we may be putting together a budget that authorizes that, the sequencing will be finish R CAP and ISMND, start with implementation. And I would hope that between now and then we could go ahead with the heat reduction analysis and have that locked up probably before we even start implementation.

So I do think sequentially those pieces will come together. The comment or question I was going to raise is in trying to evaluate what we focus on first, second and third, We really can integrate what David Graves pointed out, what director Alessio has pointed out and others that we need to look at a lot of things. For example, if we work with family resource centers and explain how some of these programs will make their lives easier regardless of how we're saving the planet, that can create the kind of, you know, community support you need to get the ball rolling. If, you know, because a lot of times it it I keep reminded of the person who said, you know, don't focus so much on reducing climate action because nobody cares. Point out how you can save on your PG and E bill and then they'll listen.

And I think we need to be able to kind of convert everything into, you know, retail politics and say, you know, if we do all these things, your PG and E bill will go down, your comfort level will go up, and, you know, your grandchildren will thank you. So I I just think that's part of the implementation has to be focused on what's the end product. We also should be able to say, if we focus on these things, this is what we should expect to see in a reduction in greenhouse gases or something. So that we do know that if we do all of this, here's the good stuff we should be able to expect and then hold everyone accountable. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. And I'll confirm that that that is the order of things. We'll present on the budget and then following item. But the the goal is to finish and adopt the RCAP and ISMND and then move forward on an implementation plan. But this is just the kind of project scope so you can see what that implementation plan would look like following the adoption of the RCAP.

Yes. Member Gallagher.

Thanks. Yeah, I think it's just important for people to understand it's like this is kind of a parallel process. I mean, have one, you know, the implementation plans, the project scope taking maybe six to eight months, as Eric mentioned, and then we've got six to eight weeks on the heat reduction. So we've got a lot of variability in terms of how long things take to accomplish. But, you know, getting these things in the budget, getting them looking at the scope, being ready to approve it at some point, just is important for us to do to keep up.

I think that's what we're basically trying to do today is just trying to get all of the information so that we can keep up, so that when we are asked to approve something, we have an understanding and we've had a discussion and we kind of know what we're looking at. But I think I see it as, you know, things that are happening sort of in parallel, but they're informing each other. And I think the staff's just of readying us at this point. So I'm comfortable with the way you have it laid out, and I know that if we learn something on one side, it's not like it's too late to inform the other activities, that there will be that process happening as well where those different activities and learnings influence each other. So just wanted to say that I feel comfortable with what you have laid out, and I know you're trying to kind of give us a little at a time so that we're not completely overwhelmed with one giant meeting that's just trying to hit it all at the same time.

So thanks.

Further comments? I would just like to say that from my jurisdiction, we're still contemplating exactly the process we want to use for coming up with an implementation plan. I appreciate the presentations. I appreciate the work our staff is doing, but worse and it's good to look at this implementation plan that was just presented as an option. We're still very much in the depths of figuring it out.

I will say that Calistoga is completely behind the RCAP. We're very, very supportive of its goals and pretty much as some other members have said, let's adopt the RCAP. We know that we have possible implementation plans and then we'll be able to deal with what exactly we think we can do, what kind of support we're going to need. Any other comments? Well, in that case, thank you so much, Mr.

DeCock and our staff and we will now move on to our next item 5C to approve the proposed final budget for fiscal year twenty twenty six-twenty seven for $248,955 for program administration of the Climate Action Committee, outreach engagement, and RCAP related projects with an additional cost of $181,986 for a regional RCAP implementation plan for a grand total of $430,941 And the presentation will come from Thank you. Mr. Gutierrez.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Jesse Gutierrez. Today I'm going to go over kind of the final revised proposed budget. You've seen this in different iterations over the last couple of months. So I'll go over county staff time really quickly, the kind of shared costs, the implementation plan costs, and kind of like the grand totals at the end, and kind of what we're asking for today.

So staff hours, rates, costs have not changed since we initially proposed the budget a couple months ago. It still stands the same at 134,455 I mean, I guess the only thing to add is that by adding potentially a new contract with global heat reduction, we'll be doing kind of slightly different work, but I think we factored that all into just kind of the implementation part of the hours labor. Yeah, we didn't change anything here. Here though, we did make some changes. The proposed CAC budget for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven includes, obviously, the cost for staff, county staff, and also the $1,500 to kinda keep the lights on, so to speak, for the Climate Challenge and Bright Action Communities.

As we had discussed a few months ago, that's the direction we wanted to go in. And those are kind of like the fixed costs. We know we're doing those. The placeholder tasks are tasks that we want to save aside money or budget to do, right? Last year we also had a placeholder for the EV equity charging and mapping tool, but we didn't use any of that money last year.

So kind of same thing this year. We could use it if we need it, If for some reason we decide that we need more EV work and EV planning, we have that set aside. So none of this is saying that you're committed to doing these exact things. It's like we want to have this budget set aside so you don't have to come back to your councils mid year for more money, right? So the placeholder accounts, dollars 10,000 for RE Balboaruk for the EV charging tool, we put $35,000 for outreach and engagement support by Dampo RCD, and $68,000 for the greenhouse global heat reduction to run the heated reduction analysis on the 17 quantified GHG measures.

So on March 27, the CAC requested staff include this proposed task to run a heat reduction potential analysis for the 17 measures. Staff did receive a proposal from global heat reduction for $68,000 with the option to run the analysis in two parts. The first part being the first 10 quantified measures that they feel could kind of make the most impact or that they see they could really dig into, and that would be $40,000 followed by the seven remaining quantified measures at $28,000 And as Linda mentioned, that would take about six to eight weeks to do the full run of that. So we met with them, we talked about that. We've also discussed maybe getting a more detailed scope of work from them and possibly bringing that forward to the CAC at some point down the line once we've kind of seen the final RCAP, seen the initial study secret document and are ready to move forward with that and look at those measures once they're finalized.

So breaking down the placeholder tasks and the staff and keeping the lights on for bright action, this is the breakdown for each jurisdiction. So it is a higher total than the last presentation based on adding the new global heat reduction task analysis. Let's see now moving on to the RCAP implementation plan, still the same as what was presented before, it's still estimated to be $181,986 This would be the breakdown obviously we are excluding or not including the City Of Napa because they do have already contracted with Ascent to do their own kind of individualized implementation plan. That's not to say that these plans won't speak to each other. We have talked to Ascent and that's something that we can do.

By passing this budget, kind of similar to the placeholder conversation, no one is committing to doing any one particular type of implementation plan except for the City of Napa because they've already committed those funds. So things might change, but we wanted to make sure that some of this money was included in case you needed to hire new staff or wanted to go a different way. So we do want a commitment in terms of having the money just in case, and, you know, we'll bring forward proposals and have you vote on them or decide or have conversations on what things could look like. Passing this budget in no way commits any jurisdiction to necessarily doing the implementation plan that was just presented by ASCENT. I think the county does want to move forward with something for sure, and whoever kind of wants to join in on that can.

But again, those are conversations we can have when we get closer to wanting to do that. And these are the grand totals, if you will, which is both the kind of shared costs, including all the placeholder tasks, and then the implementation plan if were to cost it out and share those costs. And this final column here in green would be what each jurisdiction would kind of not be on the hook for but is kind of saving in terms of saving their budget for. And so today, you know, we ask that we hopefully review the staff report, listen to public comment, and then make a motion, second, and discuss and vote on the item. Hopefully, to approve, I'll just read this, approve the proposed final budget for fiscal year twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven of $248,955 for program administration of the climate action committee, outreach engagement, and related projects support with an additional cost of 181,986 for regional implementation plan for the RCAP for a grand total of $430,941 Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. Let's open public comments. I see none in the room. Are there any online?

We have no callers.

No callers. Okay, let's move to the board. Member Joseph.

First, just a process question, especially with all the placeholders. So the county only bills the jurisdictions what's actually incurred. Don't, okay, so that's good. So if the EV charging for example doesn't happen then our share of that $10 wouldn't get billed to us. Okay, I kind of thought that.

As we mentioned last month, it's entirely possible the City of American Canyon would probably approve the 43,000 but not necessarily for a cent. That we may use that for our sustainability analyst position who by the way should be starting on Monday and that's exciting. So that we may just use that as a number to say okay that's what we're going to spend on our implementation and I could envision us participating in any countywide efforts just you know the person's job would be to do all the heavy lifting and maybe just take advantage of other jurisdictions but for our purposes we wanted to focus more on justifying this for our own positions and to make sure we can do things on our own. I'm concerned that if we pull out that can't or that a cent probably has some baseline cost that doesn't necessarily go away if it isn't a 100% of a variable cost. So at what point does this start falling apart if all we have left is St.

Helena for example in the county saying I'm on board let's go. Just so that I can either consider this kind of jurisdictional guilt that might come on or not but just to be able to know what's going on.

Guilt, feel the guilt.

It's an option but not necessarily compelling. I'm a finance guy and at the end of the day money is the only thing that moves me a lot of times.

I'm sorry. I just was thinking about Member Joseph's comments and I just thought, you know, city finances means you never have to say you're sorry. Remember Alicia, please.

Well, like I said, I will feel bad but it won't necessarily alter my behavior. How is that as a compromise?

Yeah, I would hope that things wouldn't fall apart if jurisdictions decide that it might be worth to just wait and see what happens with the city of Napa going first and maybe the canyon going second or simultaneously starting. Because ultimately, this is a collaborative effort, and everyone's kind of already spent a significant amount of money to get this far. So I don't see someone holding back or waiting or deciding to use those funds for the same actions, just slightly different. So I would hope that things would not fall apart in terms of moving forward together. But again, that could be a discussion for a different day in terms of sharing costs.

I don't know. That's a different discussion. But I don't see this I think the idea and this kind of urgent need to put these types of actions across the board for just the different departments into effect. Hopefully, wouldn't break down in that way.

Member Alicia.

Thank you. Agree, Jesse. The reason we have the Climate Action Committee is the reason we're doing this as a group effort. We're doing it because want to be on though we respect each jurisdictions, what their priorities and what their ability is, we want to work together because not only does it save in the cost overall, especially for the smaller jurisdictions, but it also just keeps us moving in the same direction collaboratively. And that really is the vision and the why.

We have the Climate Action Committee. We started this at the pre thought of the Climate Action Committee was in 2017 with supervisor Brad Wagconnect and a couple other folks. I was lucky enough to be on that ad hoc. We developed the Climate Action Committee in 2018. Here we are in 2026, and now we're talking about maybe not doing this in a collaborative movement.

That's kind of what I'm hearing. And, you know, in the city of Napa moving ahead, I know that we're going to be working I'll be very tight end for the city of Napa. It's just because they have Deborah Elliott that they're a little ahead of us because they were kind of behind for a while until Deborah kind of led the ship over there, in my opinion. But I know that even with the city of Napa and that part of it, we'll be very tied in with what everybody else is doing. So I really hope and not to say that the cities of American Canyon, they don't have the ability to have a staff person do that.

Think that's fantastic. But I don't think it can be it's an eitheror, to be honest with you. So I don't know. I'm just hoping that we can continue to move forward. I think there's been a lot of planning, a lot of time, a lot of money to get us to this point. And I'd like to see us move forward with this. So when there's a time for a motion, I'm happy to make that motion. Thanks. Okay, was just talking. I'll make the motion to approve this as recommended There by

is a motion. Do I hear a second? Member Gallagher? I'm sorry. Member Deasy?

I would love to ask a question and make a comment.

Okay, well, you can go ahead first for the comments because we do now have a motion so and a let's begin discussion of the motion.

Okay. Yes, perfect. Thank you. So I just want to be clear on what I'm voting on. So it is budgeting for the right 4 and 30,009 and 41,000 total. And really, that 248,955 thousand we're pretty much committing to. There's county staff salaries in there. And then the 148,000 which is sort of the topic of this conversation right here, if I'm following along correctly, is the placeholder bit. And so the city's I'm not committing St. Helena to that piece of it yet. And when it gets to that point, the proposal will come before us and we'll know who's in and who's out?

That's the way I see it. And staff, if you concur what the actual commitment is.

Sure. Think in terms of cost, I think the actual commitment is that first kind of fixed cost but also the placeholders. That's what you're kind of committing to. We'll probably do some of that or all of that, so you will be billed for some or all of that. Because even staff time, we don't necessarily know if we're going to use all of that, but we could potentially.

So that's the full on commitment. The $181,000 for the implementation plan, that's more of the real placeholder. We're just saying this is what it could cost if everyone went in on it, but we don't know if everyone's going to go in on it. Things could change. So that's kind of really just the understanding of, we're putting this in here so you don't have to go back to your ask for more money.

So yeah, I don't see us like thinking of a new implementation plan that costs more. Hopefully whatever works out is either wrong with that or something that costs less. So you're kind of committing to that first part. Second implementation plan is more just like, let's just hold this funding in place just in case we need it.

And to answer the second part of your question, it would come back for a full approval by the committee.

And one last nitpicky question. You just said it's possible that not all of the money in the first February gets spent. Is the county staff actually tracked its time spent on it, it's possible that that even could be less. That's interesting. Thank you.

Member Gift.

Well, thank you, staff. You really clarified some things. And I appreciate the comments. And I agree. We're all here to move climate forward.

There's definitely no question. Some of the jurisdictions may have very robust green committees or other staff members that could possibly move it forward. It's really eye opening to understand that this implementation plan is kind of a placeholder for now. My curiosity is when it comes time to vote, if we were to pull out and bring it to our own staff to be in line step with all the other jurisdictions, would that be allowed at that time? Just for very clear clarification of just the implementation portion of funding?

Yeah, I mean, I think the short answer would be yes, that's allowed.

Okay. Yeah. All right, thank you.

Yes, Member Gallagher.

Okay, I'm confused. A budget is a guideline, right? We're putting all these numbers here to guide us. We're trying to do kind of quote unquote, worst case scenario. This is as much money as we think we're going to possibly spend. So I'm a little bit confused about this implementation plan money. This isn't money that's just coming from anywhere. Money coming from all of the different jurisdictions. So there's no taking it out. I mean, there's no you either put it in or you don't, right?

That's how it works. It's not like there's money sitting out there that you can take and use for something else. It's just that you're not paying into the implementation plan. I just want to be clear that there's no pot of money sitting somewhere that you're going to get to take some. It's just that you're not going to give the money to the implementation plan.

I see Jameson's head going up and down, up and down. So just to clarify that. And, you know, I think I just want to piggyback on Supervisor Alessio's comment that, you know, this has been going on for eight years or whatever it's been, and so as much as we can hold it together and do the work together, especially around the implementation plan, I think, you know, obviously we're going to be working with each jurisdiction. I think that was made pretty clear in the presentation that there's going be a whole lot of, you know, conversation and working one on one with the different jurisdictions. So the point is to hold it all together as a county.

There is no doubt in my mind it's going to be a lot less expensive to do this as a county all the jurisdictions together than it is for people to go out and do their own hiring with other consultants, etc, etc. But, you know, I guess I just very much want to see us move forward together because I think it's going to be more cohesive, more comprehensive, and also less expensive. But it doesn't mean that any jurisdiction is going to have to do something they really don't want to do, or they really feel like, No, we want to do A, and so we're doing A. It's like, Yeah, okay. Nobody's going be forced to do anything.

So I just wanted to voice those comments. In terms of the budget, I'd really like to see if we go down the RCD route for community engagement. Really want to I know it's $35,000 it's not a lot in terms of the budget, but I want to see what they're actually going to do and have a scope of work, because I just feel like our community engagement was not great on the RCAP. Could have been a lot better. And I'm not blaming RCD, maybe there just needs to be more partners.

I don't know. But it didn't work well, so we want to make sure that we have robust community engagement and we're hearing from everybody and not just, you know, the same 20 people that we talk to every day. The other question and I'm sorry, this isn't really about the budget, but it curious. The EV charging contract, is there a reason why we are not using that? I mean, I'm a little confused. It's like, what do we do? Have a map that is usable by the public or usable by the jurisdictions and we're just not adding to it right now? Or, yeah, just if you could explain a little bit, that would be helpful.

Sure. For the EV charging, there's the tool that's made available to the public. There's also with the Berkeley team, there's a back end tool that has a little bit more application and nuanced data that can be used. And so the $10,000 placeholder there is to be able to work directly with Ari Burakbal and his team in case there are any one off plans that we wanted to do that needed a little bit more of that Nuance data. Say we wanted, you know, we wanted to install 50 chargers in, you know, a smaller geographic location and we wanted to pull additional data in than then is available in that publicly facing tool, we would be able to use those funds to contract directly with him again.

Okay. And it just kind of sounds like nobody's really doing a lot of EV charging installations right now? Just kind of like project by project, I know.

Project by project.

I

think I presented months ago on our effort with the County to lead a mapping project to then use that for the MCE technical assistance program. That that process is, you know, has been going on still and and those reports are available for the jurisdictions to use at their discretion. And in terms of general EV charging installations it's kind of on a project by project basis just as they come. We've gotten some interest recently I know anecdotally hearing from some folks with Napa County Recycling and Waste Services that in their discussion with businesses, some of the businesses also asked them about, you know, if there's incentives or any support for EV charging. So I think some of the interest is out there.

But, yeah, it's still just on a project by project basis.

Thank you so much.

Further questions or comments? Vice Chair, Novartis?

Thank you. So, just a couple of things. The big win here is the RCAP, right? Having this in place for us to continue to improve our health and our climate. The implementation part, you know, I don't want anybody to panic.

Point is we have the guiding plan for us to accomplish these goals. Whether the implementation is done together, separately, obviously, the city of Napa, we're doing it separately. We have, you know, really focused efforts on the same pathway. So I see the implementation part as the collaborative effort is through this body, whether it's through updates or together the budget. So, you know, I would trust any jurisdiction here that whether they do it together or their own budget that we're going to continue to get updates to work together.

So I just don't want anybody to panic because if one does it separately or aligned, we're still moving in the same direction in accordance to RCAB, Right? We all have different priorities when it comes to to climate resilience. So I just wanna emphasize that a little bit of that flexibility is not a bad thing because we all wanna we all know our city is better than the this body. Right? So as long as the implementation is moving us in the right in the same path, that that doesn't concern me as long as we continue to communicate our progress to each other and make sure that we're following the RCAP.

That's one thing. And then I heard two different things with the placeholder. I just want to clarify, Ryan, because it's a placeholder, but then I heard later we'll come back for full approval. So I just want to understand the process of, you know, when we commit to the placeholders and when will be the next discussion for that. We have our own internal budget for for climate resilience. I just wanna make sure that I align that with what our council focus is to make sure that we can be the most impactful with that that budget towards our our mutual goals.

Yes. Thank you for the question. So the budget proposal today is earmarking that fund. So for the purposes of your jurisdictional budgets, that money has been set aside. The same way that Jesse had mentioned, we we only bill for the hours that we actually spend.

So it, you know, it could be less than what the the proposed budget is here. The same would be true for the implementation plan if we would come back and only actually bill each jurisdiction for what we actually spend on the implementation plan. You know, if we come back and come with a proposal for the implement an implementation plan contract on a shared cost basis, that would come forward as a proposal and then be that earmarked funds that you have that your jurisdictions have set aside would then be approved for us to then bill and manage the contract with the consulting team.

Okay. So if we were to move forward with the placeholders, then, for example, the heat analysis, we would know you wouldn't start that right away, but the billing that would come later, we would kind of heads up because I think for us, we wanna look. We we have our urban forestry plan that we we have. We have a couple of things that kinda wanna have some time to align with the the analysis. And so I just I I feel like I'm okay with the placeholder.

I just we I wanna better align what we're trying to do here with our local jurisdiction and as a body here. So I just kind of want to be clear with the timeline before that, you know, not that I want avoid the invoice, I just want to know when that would start.

So I think we have an inherent problem and that is the discussion and the budget aren't necessarily aligned. You have several members who are saying, well, no, we're not sure. We may do something else. It may cost that amount. It may cost more. It may cost less. But there is no reflection of that in the written budget. And I actually think it would be better not to have that piece on the ascent cooperation. This is one point. Because it's just confusing people.

Also, I would like to echo members Joseph and Narvaez talking about we can still cooperate even if we are pursuing it through different means. We are all committed to making it happen, and I would like to see this body continue, whether it is a single implementation plan that we all buy into, or whether it's a variety of implementation plans and we keep sharing what we're doing and we continue to share possible cost savings and that we continue to work together to make meaningful results. So the budget right now is confusing. And I would like to reopen public comments.

Public comment or staff? Staff? Okay.

Close public comments. I would like to hear from staff.

Thank you so much for allowing me to intrude. Hopefully I can add some clarity to this. And we realize it is confusing. Bottom line is those placeholder tasks, even if you approve the full budget today, no work will occur on any of those placeholder tasks unless and until we come back to you and say, Hey, do you guys really want to do this EV charging tool? Everybody says yay or nay or and we decide to move on.

Hey, does everybody want to work on the NAPA RCD public engagement? You debate it and we decide whether we move forward. And same thing with the heat, reduction potential analysis and the implementation plans. Any of those items, we would have to come back to you first before we took any action on them.

Yeah, go ahead. And Chair, if I can just

Yes, go ahead. You may have the same

So I believe we're having this discussion now because it's budget season for all the jurisdictions, correct?

That's right.

So that's why we're bringing this now versus down the road because we would have to wait from a year from now for the jurisdictions to have this on their radar for us to then at some point give the official approval of each item that Jamieson is talking about. So it's really the timing of this is because of our budgets.

No, that's exactly right and the point of this is to give a number to the city so you can go back and say this is what I need to earmark in my city's budget, so that if we in six months come together and talk about any one of these things and decide we do want to move forward, you're not in the very uncomfortable position of having to go back to your city manager and say, Oh no, actually we need to increase our city budget for this thing. This is like you're kind of getting a pre approval for the maximum possible with the understanding that we will not move forward on any of the placeholders unless and until we come back to you for your approval for that thing.

I have a critical question.

Yes.

So let us say six months from now you come back and we have a, oh, here's the implementation plan, let's have a vote and Member Joseph votes no because he's already made his commitment. They're moving right along. Does that mean that you're going to bill his jurisdiction for it anyway?

Absolutely not. And I have to say, I personally would not characterize it as a falling apart if any one of the municipalities don't decide to move forward with the implementation plan. The others will carry on and if that were to occur, we would go back to the drawing board, go back to Ascent or whatever other process the committee directed us to, to say, one of our members would like to do it on their own, give us the new scope and budget that only includes these members. And then that proposal would be brought back to the remaining members to vote on and decide if you want to move forward. But we would not be billing any municipality for work that they don't want to participate in.

Okay. Once again, I just wish there was something like potential cost, optional

a placeholder. That's why we call it a placeholder. I

think there's some confusion about what's a placeholder and what's a the implementation plan is separate in the budget. But the placeholder are these other things. But all of a budget is a placeholder. That's right. That's all a budget is.

That's right. Even the staff time is just It's a

all just, this is what we think it will cost. This is the most, we think, generally speaking, the most we think it will cost. Can I ask one other question, Chair?

I'm sorry.

Thank you. I would just like to see I mean, don't think there's a lot of necessarily a lot of discussion to have on the placeholders. I think it's more of, do you mean you would come back with a scope of work? I mean, that's what I would assume you would come back with. Not, oh, we're going to talk about this again. But this is now the scope of work. Yes. Do you want to approve it or not? Yes. And thank you for

asking me to be more precise. And to your earlier point about the RCD, exactly. Even for the RCD, and we were just talking about it in a meeting this week, we would have them we'd get a scope and budget from them and we would actually have them make that presentation to you about the different types of work that would be included in the scope of work.

Yes, that would be things we've already actually talked about. We think these are things we want to do. And it's really more of at certain points, we would get a scope of work and sign a contract. Right. Okay. Yep.

I just wanted to say that my question earlier, that clarifies my question as far as the I just wanted a little bit more clarity as to what we're approving today, what we're going to do later because, you know, I want to take this back to our team and I think that clarifies it for me.

And

that way, by the time we have that conversation, we're very clear on where we are and where we can align.

Thank you. Member Giff?

Yes. So, you know, maybe I misworded it by saying pulling out, but earlier. Thank you so much, staff, for the clarification. I think it's really important for us to know that if we were to take it back to our jurisdictions and bring it in house, there is no question and I'm speaking for Calistoga here that we are totally dedicated to this plan and to the implementation plan and doing it as best in line step as we can with everyone else. Communicating that information across the board is imperative to make sure that we are all on the same page.

Now, whether or not we decide to move forward with dissent, that is really something that we have to take back to our counsel. And that's really where my position is on that. But just to reiterate, there's no question that we really value this plan, all the work that we've done, and really want to get this moving forward.

A question for clarification for

Yes, please.

Jameson. Jameson, generally before we have these meetings, county staff is talking with each of the jurisdictions prior to presenting. Was this discussion did staff here have discussion with each of the county each of the city and town jurisdictions prior to presenting this item.

Are you talking about the working group?

Yeah, the working group. Like Yeah. The working group that represents the city and the towns within the jurisdiction that represents this body, this body represents. Did you have a pre meeting on item?

No, we didn't discuss the budget. But we do, over the course of our meetings, talk about the different aspects that we're discussing and kind of really getting a temperature check, like what are you hearing from, you know, your council members from, you know, from management. So we have, but we didn't necessarily take this budget and say, here's what we're gonna present. So we didn't do that. Okay.

I mean, I would just say, well, go ahead, member Joseph.

Go member Joseph, please.

I just wanted to clarify. I think American Canyon wants to collaborate with everyone. That would be our intent. The not so hidden agenda is we're trying to maintain staffing for our own in house sustainability and frankly, if I had to choose between giving a cent $45 and having a part time sustainability analyst do some of this work for $45, I'm going for the sustainability analyst. I would expect that person to participate in the all working group.

I would expect all of us to work collaboratively. Yeah. Obviously, we're gonna share information probably from the city of Napa more than anyone else, but but the idea is that we're going to work together. It's how we accomplish it is the issue and quite selfishly, I know that we have limited resources and I'd much rather have an in house person doing a lot of this because since we know who it is, she will be doing that implementation. So this is more strategic from American Canyon's perspective.

How do we how do we manipulate the process to get a body who can do things and make life better in our community? That's where we're at. The collaborative approach has never changed. I

concur with mayor with member Joseph. It's also we will be making a decision in our jurisdiction is do we want to work with Ascent? It's completely without guilt if we choose to work with a center, we choose to do it in house, or we choose to do it with a separate consultant because we're trying to do it. If we're spending money, we want to spend money on what we think is the very best thing, completely without guilt and completely with the intent that no matter what we choose, we will continue to collaborate with all of the other jurisdictions. And as I said previously, I hope that the Climate Action Committee, no matter what implementation methodology is chosen, will still be a forum for us to work together.

Any other comments?

I think I just want to kind of bring this back a little bit, right? I feel like we've had a lot of great discussion, a lot of good input. I get everybody's position, and I respect everybody's position. So in this moment, in terms of what the action is, is that this is a budgetary time for all our jurisdictions. This is a time where we both are going to be finalizing this next fiscal year, the RCAP, thank God, and an implementation plan.

We're not approving to spend any money right now on that implementation, but what we are doing is that we're kind of, as they say, earmarking and holding, at this point as it exists, those funds, however it may be implemented and the cost not to go exceed. So our jurisdictions and staff in the Senate can go ahead and move forward with the work that we built up to this time. Is that a good synopsis of where we are at this moment and the action that we're being asked, you know, the current action that we're under right now in terms of approving or not. Because again, I feel like we've gone through a lot of different I just want to make sure we're all on the same page of what's being asked of this committee at this point.

I think that's a good synopsis and I would just add that if you approve the budget as proposed here, as we have a motion in a second, the only money that we would be authorized to spend immediately would be related to County staff and the Climate Challenge platform. Both of those things total up to $135,955 And even that amount, as other staff have put forward, is we would only bill on an actual time spent basis and we do quantify our hours. So, that's the only portion of this which we would be authorized to spend immediately. Rest of it, we would come back for individual actions on each one.

Perfect. And it was discussed here some time ago that this is based on the smaller jurisdictions that didn't have the capability of having independent staff to do this work, that we would do this, the county staff would pick this up. So the different jurisdictions, you wouldn't have to hire somebody. It's great that American Canyon has. Congratulations. That's awesome. But that's why we're doing it this way, to help save money, to help so we can all be on the same page, right? So that's what it is. So again, if I can go ahead and I'm going to stick with my motion. And I think Gallagher, you're going stick with your second, and we can go from there.

Can you clarify that motion just to since we've had some motion to submit? I believe

the motion was to adopt the budget as written. And so we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? If none, let's call the question. Roll call, please. Roll call vote.

Member LaMatina? Yes. Member Joseph?

Yes.

Member Norbias?

Yes.

Member Gift? Aye. Member Alessio? Aye. Member Gallagher?

Yes.

Member Deasy? Yes. Member Reeves?

Yes. Chair

Eisenberg?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay. Great discussion. And now we are let me get the right paper. We are reports and announcements. Are there any reports and announcements, either from staff or from the board?

I've got a oh, go ahead.

Okay. Member Gallagher?

Yeah, I just wanted to since we're connecting all our dots today in terms of our social determinants of health, I wanted to make sure everybody knew that there is a community wide housing summit that will take place on May 26 at Redwood Credit Union. It will be from one to 05:30, and that is being sponsored by Gen H Housing. And please, please come. Please spread the word in your communities. We'd love to get everyone involved.

I've been to a couple of housing summits that Gen H has put on in Sonoma County. They're great. And they're incredibly informative and really inspiring. And I recommend everyone come and spread the word in your communities. Thank you. Could you say the date again? That's May 26 from one to 05:30 at Redwood Credit Union, and there is a save the date that I can send you, and that will be going out today.

Okay. Member Nervais. I'd

like

to remind everybody of Napa Bike Fest coming up May 3, 9AM to 3PM at the Oxbowl Commons. So put your helmet on and get on the bike and join the the fun. Thank

you. And I'd like to follow-up on that. There's also the fundraising campaign for finishing the Vine Trail. And during the month of miles, if you wanted to contribute or back one of the writers or one of the people writing, you can do that. And if you don't know of anybody writing, I am available.

And I can send you personally my fundraising sheet. But it's and no matter where you fundraise, this is a really good program to get the Vine Trail completely done so you can bike from Calistoga all the way down to the Vallejo Ferry Building without having to run into a bunch of cars. And I meant that figuratively, not literally. We don't want to run into cars. But it's a great program. And you can find information on the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition website or just contribute to my campaign. Any further comments?

I've got one. First of all, Kevin, in the spirit of collaboration, I will sign up to pony up some money, and we'll talk about how many miles but as an announcement we're proud to announce the groundbreaking I think it's May 6 for our ecological center aka the old city corporation yard this we know it's a nonprofit that was able to raise I think just around $9,000,000 to refurbish that into an incredible ecological center. And it's going to have groundbreaking on the sixth, maybe take a year plus to get built or refurbished. This will be exciting, and everybody will want to come down and enjoy it. So just thought you'd be excited about hearing the groundbreaking.

It's 05/06/2010 to eleven at 205 Wetlands Edge.

Bet this Earth's in applause, by the way.

Further announcements from the board and staff. Mr. Melendez.

Happy to announce we've got an upcoming sustainability workshop at the Yountville Library on May 1 from twelve to 2PM. That's next Friday. And the topic will be energy savings for your home. So how you can save on your PG and E bills and related to climate change.

Great. Thank you.

And I have flyers for everyone

Okay.

I can share.

Mister Gutierrez.

Yeah. This is a really quick report. The county, myself, and staff from BayREN did table at Earth Day this past Saturday. I just wanted to say that, although I didn't get a chance to go visit all the booths, there was a ton of booths and that looked like a ton of good information, and a lot of people, out there. So I think, everyone's kind of doing a great job to really promote Earth Day in Napa and Napa County. So I want to kind of just congratulate everyone and just say that it was great to see so many people and have those conversations with people really thinking about. We a little solar panel out there. Kids were coming up saying that they had written reports about solar panels. It was kind of very inspiring. And then just to hear people's different questions was really interesting as well. So I just wanted to report on that.

Thank you. And now, we'll move on to future agenda items. I would like to preface this that saying from the minutes of the meeting I missed that we have future agenda item requests from members Gallagher and Alessio. And I will keep those when we do our agenda planning. Future agenda items. Yes, Member Gallagher.

Thank you. Since we were talking a little bit about the air district rule changes, not submitting appliances, I thought maybe it would be helpful I could work with staff and with air district staff to do some kind of a presentation to just update everybody on where we're at because there's a lot happening right now in terms of and I know Ryan's on the working group. So we can put something together so that we can help people better understand what's coming down the pike. I mean, we've been kind of doing this all the way along. But we're getting a lot of comments, as you might guess, right now because there's a lot going on in terms of the report that was released by the working group and the response from the staff.

And so we're going to be looking at that at the Air District and trying to move forward. We can look at that progress, but also maybe review all the incentives, really help people understand what's happening, what's not happening, what they can take advantage of, and maybe get kind of granular in terms of the incentive piece. Great that you're doing the work on the energy savings, having the public outreach and whatnot. But I think we can zero in a little bit more on this because people are confused and unhappy. And I think we could do a lot to kind of tamp that down, help people understand it better.

So I'd be happy to work with you all to come up with a presentation.

SPEAKER Sounds great.

And

I'll just respond as well for a resource for everyone. We've gotten some public comment that has come our way as well regarding the the air district rules nine four and nine six for zero NOx water heating and zero NOx space heating furnaces. And we put together using some of the air district resources kind of a a talking point sheet and fact sheet, myth busting sheet, whatever you wanna call it, to help respond to some of those comments. And I'm happy to share that with with you or your staff as to help answer any questions that you might be receiving.

Thank you. Any other future agenda items? And seeing none, we'd like to thank the board, staff, and all the members of the public who came, and I adjourn this meeting at 11:10AM.