City Council - Regular Meeting

3, two, one.

Good evening, and welcome to the Tuesday, 02/10/2026 study session of the Olympia City Council. For the record, we have a quorum with all council members present tonight. So we have one business item, for to discuss, and that is an update on our climate program. And we have doctor Pamela Braff, who is the director of climate programs here at the city, presenting tonight. Hi, Pamela.

Good evening. Hi, everyone. I'm excited to provide this update to y'all tonight. And not only is it an update on all of the climate work we've been doing at the city, but we're debuting a brand new presentation slide deck that we've been working on over the last couple of months to do a little bit better storytelling around our work to address climate change. So, I hope you all like it.

So, tonight, we wanna just talk about from commitments to impact and the work that we're doing to address climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and build resilience here at the city. So a bit of a presentation over for you all tonight. We're gonna start with a little bit of background then go into what we've done, what we've learned, where we're going, and then what we need. So I wanna start by acknowledging that Olympia has a really long history of climate leadership and policy and really a lot of work that started far, far beyond, far before when I joined the city, dating back to the early 1990s when the city developed its first climate plan. And then in 2018, the city started working with, the cities of Lacey, Tumwater, and Thurston County, and the Thurston Regional Planning Council to develop a regional climate mitigation plan, the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan.

And that was really, I would say, the start of the next wave of action at the city to really focus on climate work. But even with all of that going on, the youth in our community knew that we needed to do more, that we needed to do more to adapt to climate change, prepare for climate impacts, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And that led to youth in our community working with city council to develop a and pass a climate inheritance resolution, which really supercharged the city's climate work and and set a goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2040. This was soon followed by, the city's acceptance of the Thurston climate mitigation plan as our regional framework for climate action and then, the city declaring a climate emergency. Very soon after that well, I guess, two weeks before the plan was adopted, you all hired me, as the city's first climate program manager, and that was really the first, step that the city took towards, establishing a comprehensive and dedicated climate program rather than having one that was just kind of dispersed throughout departments where folks had time and capacity, doing some additional work.

Even since all of that has happened, we have seen climate change and climate impacts here in Olympia continue to get worse. In 2020, the city had, a wildfire smoke event where air quality peaked at 217 AQI, the air quality index, which is considered very unhealthy. In 2021, we had the really kinda unprecedented heat dome event where we experienced our highest temperatures ever recorded at a 110 degrees Fahrenheit. And then in 2022, the highest tide ever recorded in the city of Olympia at just over 18 feet as a part of that pretty extreme king tide. And so we know when these events happen, they put our health, our safety, our community at risk, and they strain our resources in order to be able to respond to those.

And we also know that events like these are becoming more extreme. They're becoming more frequent, and they're really just an indicator of what's to come as climate change continues to worsen over the next, decades. But it's not all negative. The, 2045 comprehensive plan is really our north star as we navigate an uncertain future. As you all know, we adopted this, late last year, and it includes the city's first ever climate element or climate chapter, which really sets out the the goals and policies for how the city is going to address greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change over the next twenty years.

We received more than 500 comments from the community throughout the development of this chapter. And really, what we heard was very clear. Our community wants to see affordable, equitable, and high impact climate solutions. And the climate chapter really outlines how we make this vision a reality. We know that our greenhouse gas emissions are not yet on track, with our goals, despite a really kind of sharp reduction during the pandemic in early twenty twenty, emissions throughout Thurston County have been rising again since then.

This is not really that unexpected. It's what we expected to see, and it doesn't mean that we're not doing anything. It doesn't mean that we haven't put actions into place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But what it does mean is the things that we've done, it's going to take time to see the effects of those. They build over time and it also means that we still have quite a bit of work more ahead of us to get back on track and to reach those goals.

So how do we get there? The vision that I keep mentioning, that is Olympia 2045, and we're bringing it to life through our citywide implementation plan. And this is where we go into more detail about the actions and the who and the when and the what to really implement on that on that vision. We just published this, I think, like, a week ago, and we're gonna be sending out through our next climate newsletter. We have an interactive table where community members can kinda sort by area of interest, time frame, kinda whatever they wanna know to understand how we're how we're bringing this to life.

And it's also a tool to help our departments understand their role in implementing our climate element and the city's climate actions. I'm not gonna go through every single action that's listed there. You don't need me to go through that line by line. But I do wanna just go over a little bit some of the building blocks, give you a sense of what what that looks like. And so I'm really talking about these as building blocks as we're and that's intentional because what we're doing is we're putting the foundation in place.

We're helping make things easier. And so, we have these broken down by net zero or, the work we do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as resilience. And so for, our building blocks to net zero, what it means is we need to produce 100% renewable energy. That does not mean the city needs to produce 100% renewable energy, but we would be, that would be our, utility provider, Puget Sound Energy. Within our community, we need to add 17.6 megawatts of rooftop solar, electrify and improve the efficiency of a 100% of the buildings in our community, so that's all new buildings and then retrofitting all existing buildings, reducing vehicle miles traveled by 20%, electrify a 100% of those remaining passenger vehicles, and then reduce solid waste generation by 50%.

For resilience, we're really focusing on adapting our infrastructure to future conditions as well as building the infrastructure that's necessary to mitigate, the increasing impacts of climate change from things like sea level rise, making sure that we're ready and prepared to respond to more extreme and more frequent emergencies, and really emphasizing public health, particularly when we think about the impacts of extreme heat and wildfire smoke. We also talk a lot about supporting businesses and adapting to climate risks and sustaining community identity and events. I I just wanna highlight that one because it's something that we heard quite a lot about during the comprehensive plan with community members concerned about how more extreme events kind of impact community identity and particularly summertime events that that folks in Olympia really love. So what have we done? Kind of framing it around some of these building blocks.

And I wanna start by saying, when I say what have we done, this is a very broad we. It's not just the climate team, but it's work really across the city what we have done to address climate change. And y'all are probably familiar with a lot of these actions, but we're bringing them back up intentionally because they think it's helpful to see everything altogether, understand how it all fits together, and not just what we've done in the past year, but really focusing on what we've done over the past five years. And so we're gonna talk about a couple of key areas of work. I'll give you a couple examples for each of these along the way.

First, I want to talk about buildings and energy where again our focus is on improving efficiency and electrification. Probably no surprise that I'm starting with Energize Thurston or Energize Olympia, which is really one of my favorite programs and one of our first programs that we started here. And I'm really proud of what we've accomplished here and what this program does is it really helps residents install heat pumps and heat pump water heaters within their homes. We provide pathways for, low and moderate income households to receive subsidized installations as well as, more kind of market rate households to just receive some extra support and incentives to make that easier. And this program really focuses on reducing energy use, helping to electrify our heating and cooling, and address Olympia's number one source of greenhouse gas emissions from our built environment.

It also has some really important co benefits and that heat pumps, also provide cooling. And I know it's not in the name, but they provide both heating and cooling. And so this helps to make sure people stay safe and cool during rising temperatures, also reducing energy bills and and really just generally improving health, safety, and comfort. So, we we crunch the numbers as to what we've done over the past couple years. So we've had three years of this program now.

So in Olympia, we've installed two twenty eight heat pumps and 21 heat pump water heaters. 61% of those installations were either fully or partially subsidized. A 100 nearly a 150 households gained access to cooling and we expect that this will result in nearly 3,000 metric tons of, CO2E reduced over the next fifteen years. So really starting to make measurable progress on those emissions goals. I also want to highlight all of the funding, that has gone to or that we've brought in through this program.

So the city has contributed a little over $200,000 in community development block grant funds, and I wanna emphasize that this funding was really important. It was the first funding that we had for the program the very first year we ran it. We received, I think, about $45,000 in CDBG funds and we were able to leverage that for grant funds, show proof of concept and really build the program over time. Nearly $1,300,000 in state and federal grant funding over the past three years that has gone into funding the subsidized installations. And then we've also leveraged an additional $620,000 in savings through the program negotiated discounts from the installers, utility rebates, and manufacturer incentives.

And I don't have it here, but we also just looked at also nearly a million dollars in private investment from the community to help fund the either fully or partially self funded installation, so really bringing this all together. And just wanted to also share a couple of testimonials from this program. You know, we hear a lot from folks, who go through both our subsidized and self funded pathways who really talk about how it just has a really big impact on their quality of life and their comfort and their energy bills. And that means a lot to us because the program isn't just about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it's really about making people's lives more comfortable and better. We've also done some work to streamline solar permitting.

So in June 2022, the city received a soul smart gold award for the steps we took to make it easier and reduce barriers to installing residential solar in the community. So we did a couple of things for this. We filmed a very cute video of a young Olympia community member talking about the steps to solar. We streamlined our, roof rooftop solar application process so you can go through that much faster now. We don't wanna be the ones that are standing in the way between folks and their solar system.

We've created permitting checklists for increased transparency just so folks know what it takes, both kind of households as well as installers and then made some minor adjustments to the municipal code to just clarify that solar is an allowable use and just help address any uncertainty, that may have been there. I also want to know, I'm only going to show two examples per section, so this is not comprehensive, just trying to give you all a sense of the breadth and type of work. Land use is another really important area of work and that's where we focus on building neighborhoods that bring people closer to what they need so you don't have to travel as far. A big kind of cornerstone of that is strategic infill development, and this is really a long standing policy of the city to direct population growth to urban corridors in our three designated high density neighborhoods. That includes downtown, the Capital Mall Triangle, and the Pacific Martin Lilly Triangle.

And it's really focused on making the best use of our existing infrastructure. So over kind of the coming years, this is where we expect to direct most but not all growth in the city. Kind of looking forward, we're also thinking about not just how we support infill development within the city, but also what does that mean at a broader regional context. As a part of the last comprehensive plan update, the city, put forward a policy, to accommodate growth within our existing urban growth areas, so not expanding those further out into the county. And so that really addresses that broader kind of regional approach to infill development.

We're planning to add a lot, some new folks to the Capital Mall Triangle area as we implement the Capital Mall Triangle plan, and then we'll be moving forward not next year, but in the coming years to developing the sub area plan for that last high density neighborhood area, which is the Pacific Martin Lilly Triangle. But not all growth is gonna go to those areas. We're really gonna accommodating growth throughout the city, really everywhere. And one way to make that happen is through middle housing. And last December, city council approved some additional code amendments to allow middle housing types throughout all of all of the community.

Really, this is where we address that infill development within our lower density residential areas. Not only does it allow for more growth where we have existing infrastructure, but it helps to promote homeownership opportunities, different types of homeownership opportunities in the community. So what's next? We're gonna be continuing to support this infill development, through some additional community outreach engagement, developing new resources to help communicate how to do this, make the most of really understand the city's codes, adding to our preapproved accessory dwelling unit plan, so making it easier for folks who want to, build an ADU within their home and then, some changes coming to just make the subdivision code a little bit more user friendly, address some, some new state requirements around lot splits. These are all, like, a bunch of small different things, but altogether, they really help to support middle housing when you look at them in their totality.

Okay. So land use is what makes our transportation work, but you still need to build the transportation infrastructure and so this piece is really important and this is where we're really focusing on making walking, rolling, biking, and taking transit, the easiest choice for folks. One piece of that that's really important is the transportation benefit district revenue. I think believe this was in 2023, the city council passed a one tenth of 1%, sales tax to fund pedestrian, bicycle, and other active transportation projects. This is expected to generate approximately 3,100,000 per year and this funding really goes directly towards those, walk, bike and roll projects and making that safer for folks.

So, it's still pretty new. The first projects are really just getting underway and so, what's to come this year are some, pedestrian and bike safety improvements around on State And Pacific Avenue, as well as a designated sidewalk repair crew to really help address some ongoing and and simple sidewalk repairs. I also wanna just, talk for a moment about transit signal prioritization, which I think doesn't get as much love as it should. This is really important for helping to make sure that our transit system is able to run quickly and efficiently. It's good for transit.

It's good riders of transit, so that they can get to their destination more predictably and more quickly. And so what this does is it gives inner city transit buses priority and longer green lights on Martin Way, really making those buses more timely and reliable. This was a big effort that took many years to put into place. It required some significant infrastructure upgrades and required close coordination with inner city transit, and Thurston Regional Planning Council. I want to highlight something that's coming next and this is another outcome of the most recent comp plan adoption that is in lane bus stops.

So, if you think about what you usually see a bus do when they're kind of driving down the road, they often pull off to the side to let passengers on and off. In lane bus stops means that the buses don't need to pull off to the side, they stop right where they are to let folks on and off and what that does is it means the buses don't need to weave in and out of traffic, it keeps them more on time and it makes it quicker like transit signal prioritization for them to get to to and from where they need to go. And so this was established as a policy in the most recent comprehensive plan update and something that the city is going to be working on now, specifically our transportation team to really implement this in coordination with inner city transit, where it makes sense to do so, and it's going to be incorporated as a part of some of the ongoing transportation projects that are gonna be happening this year as well as others in the queue. So just one more thing, you know, we don't run the buses, but they use our transportation system.

So the steps that we can take help them run more effectively, make them that better choice for folks. Okay. I also wanna talk a little bit about electric vehicles, which always feels like a little silly to talk about after saying what we really need to do is reduce vehicle miles traveled, but also just acknowledging that we live in a car centric community, right? Some people need to drive for other reasons, either they work far away or they might have mobility challenges that make it hard for them to use other types of transportation. So, we said, if you have to drive, drive electric.

And we've been doing some work around this as well and, you know, it it might not be the city's role to help people purchase an electric vehicle, but we can play a role in making sure that EV charging is more accessible and that everyone has access to it so that does not become a barrier to, purchasing an EV. And one of the places where we know this is a particular challenge is multifamily housing and rental housing. That's because residents in those places, they just have less control over the places that they live, less ability to install those EV chargers. We know this mat is important both in terms of access. If you don't have a charger at home, you're not going to be able to charge at home.

It's the most convenient place to do it and where most charging will happen. It's also really an issue of equity and cost because the cheapest place to charge is at home. It's more expensive to use public chargers, so I really want to make sure that everyone has access to that. So, we're just starting to look at some strategies that we could implement to really help make this more accessible. Kind of at the easiest level, the first thing that we've done is we've applied for and received some grant funding to install EV chargers at multifamily housing.

Those projects are underway, and I believe the third site is going to be completed very soon here. And then our next step is really just to look at developing a citywide multifamily EV charging strategy that might be a little bit, you know, when I say strategy, it might be like a handful of actions. I'm not talking like a whole planning process, but really identifying what that looks like. A couple of years ago, the council also adopted EV ready parking standards. And what this does is it ensures that all new construction, wherever parking is provided, has EV charging capabilities.

So a minimum amount of EV charging, but then also EV capable parking wherever parking is provided. And so what that means is that they're laying the infrastructure to provide that EV charging at a later date without needing to install it right up front. It's it's a really cost effective way to make sure expensive retrofits are not going to get in the way of future charging. We still have some more work to do here, particularly around, parking for elect electric bikes in multifamily housing. Electric bikes are really expensive. Sorry. Well, not they're expensive. Not as expensive a car. They're really heavy. That's what I would say.

So when you they can be really hard. Right? So if you have to lift and put it, park it, like, kinda up on one of those wall mounted racks. So I'm looking at the looking at our bike parking requirements to make sure folks who are trying to store their electric bikes have a place to do so, and starting to evaluate options for pole mounted EV charging where those, EV chargers could come down from a telephone pole or a or a like a utility pole, something like that. Lastly, I just want to talk a little bit about some of the work we've done around community preparedness And this is really acknowledging that climate change is is already here.

We're already experiencing the impacts. Even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tonight, collectively, like, went cold turkey, we would still be experiencing the impacts of climate change, and it would still continue to get worse for several decades because of the because of the greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere. So even while we're working towards reducing our emissions, we still wanna work towards adapting to that future that we're living in and we'll continue to live in, really managing the unavoidable. So perhaps one of the most visible indicators of climate change in Olympia is sea level rise, And the the city's been working on this for for quite a while now. I'm previously under the leadership of the storm and surface water utility and public works, and really focusing on reducing flood risks downtown by adapting infrastructure systems, streamlining our responses, and really planning for those future conditions.

We, adopted a civil rights response plan in 2019 and then established a collaborative of of seven agencies. That's the city of Olympia, the port lot, the Squaxin Island tribe, Thurston County, Washington State, Department of Enterprise Services, and Department of Ecology because all of these agencies really have a role or, manage or own part of the land where we would need to implement response strategies to have a coordinated seal of rise adaptation strategy. And we've been working together over the last six years to implement that plan. We came to you last year with an update on this. Nearly nearly 86% of those near term actions are completed, and so we're now we're moving into longer term planning for the work that needs to be completed through 2040 and 2100 to really make sure that the city is prepared for sea level rise not just today, but well into the future.

These are some big projects, so it takes a lot of a lot of preplanning to make sure that we can get everything in the ground and addressed in time. The city has also been doing some work around wildfire and drought maintenance within our own operations. And so this involves a couple of things. Some of it is just, as simple as developing standard operating procedures to make sure that we're addressing brush maintenance within our parks and drinking water well sites, to reduce the risks of wildfires in those areas. So, this is something that the departments are already doing and will continue to update and implement.

And we've updated our street tree maintenance protocols to make sure that they can withstand those more extreme summers, when they're initially planted so they can kinda get through that initial sapling phase until they're more resilient. So that's just kinda like to give you a sense of the type and the breadth and the different types of things that we do, there are lot of levers that we can push, programmatic policy, internal operations, incentive streamlining, and we're really working to push on all of those wherever we can and where they'll be the most effective. So what have we learned? Well, the work that we've done over the last five years and and even before that has really refined our approach. We're gonna continue to build off of that into the future.

And I just wanna share kinda, like, two main takeaways that I had as I was going all of going through this. One is that taking initiative matters, and if we start the work, improve that it works, we know that others will join us. We saw this with Energize Olympia. We see this with the Sea Level Rise Collaborative. We see it time and time again.

We started Energize Olympia as a pilot program in 2023 and we're now moving into our fourth year of implementation in 2026. Last year, we expanded it to be countywide, including several other jurisdictions, and and the program just continues to grow. And so I wanna emphasize how important that is. I also just wanna note how long it takes to stand up these new programs. We started to envision Energize Olympia in 2021, found a partner in Habitat for Humanity, and then spent a year working with them to develop the project plan and the concept and to find the funding because we didn't have any when we first started.

We launched the pilot in 2023, expanded it in 2025. And so it just takes a long time to bring these things from concept to proof of concept to implementation and and being able to kinda have the sustained funding to continue that throughout the process to get it to a place where we know what we'd we know how to run these programs and we can run them effectively is really very important. We also know that we can accelerate and scale with trusted partners and that quite frankly we we can't accelerate or scale without those trusted partners. The partnerships that we have to do this work is really, really very important. We put these up here just to give you a sense of all of the different folks that this is these are just the folks that my team works with.

It's not the folks that everyone else in the city is working with on their respective pieces of this puzzle. We know that when we work with trusted partners, we leverage our everyone's unique skill sets, experience, opportunities, networks to really be more effective in our work And my favorite thing is when someone takes something that we've started together and then they run up and do it on their own. And so we can turn our attention to other things. And and that's really what we're looking to do with this is accelerate and scale and and really build out the capacity of our community for other folks and other organizations who are are helping to to do the work. So where are we going next?

I just gonna highlight a couple of key projects that we have going on this year that you all, might be interested in. Again, not comprehensive but just, giving you a sense of what we're working on now. Some things may look familiar from your work plan. So, some of these things, I'm not gonna talk about all of them, but our home energy policy, the share accelerator, climate resilient design guidelines for capital projects. Those are the three I'm gonna talk a little bit more about, but some other stuff that we're working on, right now are preparing some development code updates to implement the climate chapter of the comprehensive plan.

So that will be coming forward, not this year to you all, but next year. Really continuing downtown waterfront revisioning, planning for sea level rise. This is under the leadership of the Parks Department and they're really planning for incorporating sea level rise adaptation strategies within that work, and some new initiatives that we have around extreme heat and wildfire smoke preparedness, for seniors in the community, so, some some more work going on there as well. Sorry. I'll just talk a little bit about the home energy score.

So this is familiar to most probably familiar to most of you, if not all of you. This is one of the actions on the city council work plan for this year, and it's to consider this proposed Home Energy Score assessment, for disclosure at a time of sale. HES is a tool that helps households understand the full cost of home ownership, including the cost of energy, which we know is the second most expensive housing cost that folks have. It provides this whole home energy efficiency rating so you can compare homes, how efficient they are compared to each other. It'll estimate the home's energy costs, so how much will it cost to power this home over the course of the year and provides a list of recommended upgrades that, folks could implement to reduce their energy bills and make the home more efficient and more comfortable.

So we brought this forward, well, we've actually been working on this for several years now at different fits and starts along the way. I think this has been the land use probably, like, three times over the last five years. But last year, we brought it back forward to the land use committee and to the full city council for a city session for consideration of this home energy score policy and we've been working on this in collaboration with Thurston County, City of Lacey, and City of Tumwater with the goal being to adopt a regionally consistent policy. We work together with those jurisdictions to develop a model ordinance for consideration by by all of those partners. And so the goal was to bring it forward for everyone to consider it last year.

We brought it forward to you all, and then, you know, we had some delays with our partners, and they weren't quite ready to to bring it forward to their respective jurisdictions at that time. So, counsel opted to delay action to at at that point to just give everyone a chance to get caught up so that, ideally, we could move forward altogether. So, do have an update on where everyone is on that now. The latest breaking update actually came in this morning, so this is very quickly moving. Thurston County is holding a public hearing on February 17, so that is next week.

It's my understanding that their board may take action on the seventeenth, they may not. I'm not sure yet what they're gonna choose to do. The City of Tumwater is holding a City Council work session on February 24, so just a couple weeks later And staff from the city of Lacey have requested proposed that this be included on their council work plan for this year, but haven't heard, back yet as to whether or not it's gonna move forward. So we do know it's now moving forward in some capacity in at least two of our partner jurisdictions, and we currently have this on the, agenda for city council consideration later in March. So, one question that I have for you all, which we can come back to at the end of the presentation, is just knowing that, where the other jurisdictions are, if you're comfortable moving this forward in the March or if you would wanna kinda wait a little bit longer.

Let's go.

Alright. I guess we're gonna answer it now.

Yeah.

City manager, Bernie.

Well, was gonna try to help with the thumbs up, but they start coming anyway. But I know. Just a reminder that we did budget for this in the budget with the hope that we get at least one other jurisdiction to come. It looks likely like that's going to happen. So Pam and I just talked about this, and I said, maybe we'll just ask and see for a thumbs up. I think it's March 10, actually, is when it's

I just asked to push it back. Okay. Like, little bit longer to give a little bit more time for legal review, but in March. It's coming. Great.

Alright. Councilmember Green.

Thanks, mayor. I'm just gonna continue to be the the slightly grumpy one on this in that it's really for me, it's it's really a big deal to do this with at least one other partner. So I'm totally on board. I'm excited that these two other partners are doing it. I'll continue to to be a little bit of a grump if if and I and, you know, and I saw earlier in your presentation where you addressed the value of us doing things first. So I get that, but I just I really, really hope one of these partners comes through with us.

Yeah. Agree. Councilmember Barrett.

Yeah. I was, I was wondering if it's possible to pass it, with a contingency of a of a partner, community, or agency also? Would that be out of out of the ordinary?

Yeah. City manager, Bernie.

No. I think I think you can do this, one of a couple of ways. One is you can make it contingent on others, or or o or b is, hey. Go knowing that others are coming. So we can serve this up however you'd like.

Thank you. Councilmember Madrone followed by mayor Pro Temuen.

My preference would be that it come forward to us to make the decision, and then we, as a council that evening, make a decision rather than having any kind of staff recommendation that that tries to solve that before we even really get a chance to learn learn together and talk about it together.

Yeah. Mayor pro tem Nguyen.

Yeah. I have a a question for my, I guess, self proclaimed grumpy councilmates. Is, I would love for our whole region to do some of the things that we wanna do and go together. I just am curious about what I guess, it just not wanting to layer on things on in people, a resident of Olympia that other people don't have to do in the county, or what's the sort of why?

Yeah. No. It's it's twofold. And the biggest one is, not like, I feel like Olympia has a reputation for some in the community for layering on or for making things more difficult than some of our neighboring communities, and I get there's lots of reasons that we do that depending on the issue. This just feels like one that in a time when the real estate market is so difficult anyway, I think any added piece just for one city just makes it all the more complicated for people trying to buy, people trying to sell any of it.

But then the other piece is just the idea that we would and I get that the numbers are small, but on principle, the idea that we would pay to, establish the the the infrastructure for this program and the framework. And then if the other partners wanna come on board, they they get sort of an easier way in. I just feel like it's something that our, community should do.

Oh, I'm with you there. No discounts. We're all going in together. Okay. Well, that's that's helpful. May I ask a question of doctor Braff? Will you help me remember the home energy score? Who would pay for that if the policy were implemented?

It would be excuse me. It'd be paid for by the seller. So, we looked at, you know, what this typically costs in some other communities and it's even kind of being conservative between $150 and $350 for the assessment. And then I'll also note while we're talking about costs, we also budgeted to provide subsidized assessments for low income sellers so that we could fully cover the cost of that. Got it. Thank you.

Yes. Council member Madron.

And when it comes to the cost of creating the framework, implementing the policy, my understanding is that even if Olympia did go first, like, another jurisdiction wouldn't just jump in there and have a free ride. They would ultimately pay their share into the program. Correct?

Yes. That's the discussion that we've had, at least at the staff level, about how it work.

Alright. Any additional questions? Councilmember Barrett?

Thank you. This is just perhaps this is really a better conversation for the land use committee when we when we take this up. But I I would assume, for simplicity's sake, that it would be best to fold this into the inspection process that is already required in a real estate sale to, for simplicity and and and cost savings. People people spend a thousand dollars to have their home inspected when you when you sell your house or or you buy your house. I also would imagine that who pays could be negotiated in the real estate sale also.

I I that's the way most of these costs are handled in a real estate sale. Sure.

So, we did look at the kind of timing of this as a part of the the policy development, when is the best time for it to come forward. And one of the things that we found both in conversations with realtors who said, you know, I wouldn't say they're necessarily overly supportive of the policy, but did say, you know, if it is required, we would prefer that this be conducted at the time of listing rather than the time of sale. Because if it's done at the time of sale, it has the potential to then hold up the real estate transaction at that point in time. So they prefer they would prefer that it's at the time of listing. Because of that, since the inspection is done later and the inspection is not required, it it's hard to roll this into the inspection.

From a kind of policy perspective in terms of what we're trying to achieve with this and support a market wide transformation where folks can compare apples to apples when they're looking at homes. It also means that the information needs to be available at the time of listing so that folks can see it as a part of the listing and and see how efficient the home is kind of right at the same time that they're looking at the countertops and the bathrooms and all of the other things that they're seeing as a part of that home buying experience.

Alright. Are you finished? Okay. Council member Vanderpool followed by council member Majora.

Doctor Braff covered most of what I was gonna say, but I also I also, think it may be important to maybe email out the presentation we got on this last year to some of my council mates that are this they're new to this. Just even as a reminder, the example of what the Portland area does, the the the one or two pager that they send out for if you buy a home, it's really quite informative process, and so I think that might help with some of the questions that folks have just to remind them.

Yeah. Just I any information like that would be great, and thank you. Some things are required. You know, when you sell your house, your energy bill for the for the past year, for instance, is it is the last two houses I bought, that was publicly that was disclosed information at the time of the sale. I I don't know if that's required or not, but it was in the it's in the book, you know. And so, I mean so to some extent, some people are providing some information. And and, of course, energy efficiency is far more than just how much you're paying on your electric bill. I, you know, I understand that. But

Councilmember Barron, do you have a question?

Yeah.

If is it relevant to what councilmember Vanderpool just said? We have a queue. I'm just asking. So I I got you to the list.

I I

think that's about it. I any any information I get would be wonderful. Thanks. Okay.

Thank you. Council member Madrone followed by council member Gilman.

I presume when this comes forward to us for a decision, you're gonna have a full presentation on what we're voting on. So I would encourage us not to get into the weeds right now, because there's probably a lot of questions coming up that are gonna be answered when doctor Braff brings the full presentation. Sounds like we can get some other information in advance. And just a point in the process to council member Barron, you mentioned when it comes to land use. It's already gone through land use, and it has a recommendation from the land use committee, so it'll come to the full council.

Yeah. Council member Gilman.

Just to sort of amplify what council member Madron was saying, this was the first project that the Climate Collaborative tried to work regionally. We've been about five years of discussion at this. We had a pretty full flushed proposal last year, including a vendor who might provide the service. And so I'm I'm anxious for us to give it a go. I'm optimistic that other jurisdictions are gonna come along before we get to that March meeting. But I just from my perspective, we're at the very tail end of a five year long conversation. And so I I I'm I'm just my questions are answered, and I'm eager to have the opportunity to make a decision.

Thank you, council member Gilman. I I do have a question. You kinda spoke to it a little bit by saying, you know, five year process. I guess I'm just trying to understand what exactly is the driver for why we are feeling like we wanna move ahead of the other jurisdictions if they're not ready. I know we've been waiting for some time. But besides just feeling passionate about it and wanting to, what is the reason to move ahead?

This is one of very few tools that we have available to us to help address energy efficiency residential housing. And so we know it's one of our largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. And we know that we need to significantly improve the efficiency of a lot of most, if not all of the existing residential housing. So this is this is just a tool that we have to address that. And it really goes to supporting that net zero building block of improve the efficiency and electrify 100% of the buildings in Olympia.

Okay. And do we run the risk of, I guess, I'm just curious. So if we're expecting them to to join later, and we talked about having a sort of a a one size fits all approach to the ordinance, could our partners then have different standards, which then causes more sort of different jurisdictions having different ways of doing this, and then maybe that's not ideal?

I would say anything's possible. But, I don't think it's likely at this point just because we worked together with those jurisdictions to develop the model ordinance. And it's already kind of been reviewed, at the very least by staff at each of those jurisdictions. And so I don't anticipate any major changes to that. We, as a part of that process, noted some places in the ordinance where there is room for a jurisdiction to do something a little bit differently, but it wouldn't, like, result in a significant difference that's going to impact how this is implemented across jurisdictional boundaries.

Okay. Thank you. Yes. Councilmember Madron.

Yeah. I wanted to answer a little bit of the first question that you asked, too, is, like, what's the drive to move ahead with the uncertainty with other jurisdictions? And for one, our goals are a little bit higher here in Olympia, carbon neutral by 2040. Sorry, so many terms. So our our goals are stronger in Olympia. It is part of the regional plan. And so if we're gonna suddenly decide that part of the plan isn't gonna work for us, then we need to fill that gap some other way. And also, you know, with the whole I jotted it down, take initiative and others will join. Sometimes that's regional. Like, if we take initiative, we see that others in the region come along with us.

But sometimes it's it's statewide or national. Like, we take initiative on something and another city sees what we're doing and they might not be here, but they're somewhere else. And so providing that leadership in the climate space is not just limited to what happens regionally, and we need every city to be working on stuff like this. So just wanted to offer some of, my my drive that we that we take some action on this. And, you know, I'm also really excited to hear that Thurston County and Tumwater are are are digging in. I really I feel really encouraged to hear that.

Thank you. Okay. Well, I I'm supportive of of having this in front of us in March for us to dig in further and have more conversation about. But I do think that council member Green's comments are definitely worth consideration as we have that discussion in March. Yes. Any other comments? Okay. Back to you, doctor Brown.

Alright. I'll keep going. We're close to the end. So next, I wanna talk about our SHARE Accelerator pilot, which you haven't heard a lot about, and we've been kind of quietly developing in this this one in the background for for a couple of years now. So SHARE stands for safe housing and rental efficiency, and this is a program that we've been developing, really focusing on, improving the health, safety, and energy efficiency and resilience of affordable rental housing within the community.

So, it's connected to and related to the rental registry, but they're two separate programs. And the goal of this pilot program would be to provide funding, guidance, and technical assistance to really help landlords improve the health, safety, and energy efficiency of their rental housing. Some of you may remember, several years ago, we received a cash prize from a prize, not a grant, from the Department of Energy to for this concept that we had developed. And and that funding was really meant to help develop the pilot program. And so, we received that in 2023 and spent most of much of 2024 really developing the concept and the project plan to launch this.

We had gone into this with the expectation that there would be additional rounds of funding available from Department of Energy that we would be able to continue to apply for. However, due to some changes in kind of the federal government and federal funding, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty around that, now it appears that those additional rounds of funding are no longer gonna be available. And so we had initially planned to launch this in 2025 but needed to hit pause there to kind of figure out what does this look like without this funding, kind of scaling back a little bit and to and to identify some additional sources of funding that could help supplement it. So we have our new and improved slightly scaled back revised project plan. We're getting ready to launch this this year now, which we're very excited about.

Likely, before the March, we'll be putting out a a call for for interested, owners to to participate in the program. And so we're really excited about this. It's a pilot. You know, we're gonna learn what works and what doesn't work. But the goal is to be able to eventually figure out a a a sustainable source of funding so that we can implement this program over the long term.

A lot of the incentives and programs, including our own, that are out there largely support homeowners. This is a program that's focused on supporting renters. And so it's really addressing a totally different kind of community within Olympia that doesn't see as many benefits coming towards them. As it launches, I'm sure we'll be back with more updates about how it's going. And then the last one that I just wanted to give a little bit more information about is this is more of an internal, project that we're working on and and this is, working across public works and with park staff to develop climate resilient design guidelines for city capital projects.

And and this is all about making sure that our public investments are ready for future climate hazards. And so making sure that if we're investing in in new infrastructure, that it's going to be able to withstand those future conditions. So, we're receiving quite a lot of help on this from public works engineering and storm and surface water. And the goal is to develop some easy to use, consistent guidelines that make sure across the city, we're all planning and preparing for climate change with our public investments. So, this is not a you know, we'll probably finish this this year and and and roll it out, very shortly after that.

So, this one is moving forward as well. Okay. So, lastly, just wanna talk a little bit about about what we need moving forward, how we how we keep doing this work. So the first point that I wanna make is, you know, Olympia has done a lot of work to put forward and adopt policies that help advance the city's climate goals, both on things that my team works on, but also kind of across the city. And we've put a lot of really excellent policy in place to help move this work forward, but we're not done yet.

There's still more that we can do and still more that we need to do and still more work that we're going to be continuing to doing and so continuing to do. So just really continued support for those policy actions, both the initial investment in in developing them and then considering them when we bring them forward, forward to you all. The second piece that's really important is, predictable increased funding to scale and sustain programs. Right now, a lot of our programmatic work, if not all of our programmatic work, is really it's all funded by grants. And so, we've been pretty successful in in in really chasing funding and finding ways to make it happen, But it's a pretty risky way to implement these programs.

And I like to think about grant funding as the way that we scale up and plus up our work, but not the way that we fund it. When we're depending on it to fund the work, we run the risk of having gaps. Right? Like, a whole year where we don't have funding to implement something, and and we, we lose a lot of momentum when that happens. We lose kind of our internal understanding of how we do the work.

And then it takes a lot more work to spin things back up when we find funding again. Figuring out how we can really sustain the funding for these programs and knowing that our emissions are continuing to rise. And the way that we turn that curve and reduce them is really to invest more in in a lot of these retrofit programs and projects that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And so this can come from a lot of different places, and and you all have something on your plan this year to start to look at this a little bit more for building decarbonization. It it you know, we're gonna be I'm gonna be working with Jay to figure out what does this look like and bring forward some options for you all.

It it's not gonna be the full thing, but kinda think about it as the first bite at the apple starting small and and and and then growing from there. Did you wanna add anything about that? Okay. Great. And then the last one is really, citywide and communitywide action.

So, I've said this a couple of times where I want to emphasize this. It's not just me and Dominic and Natalie who are doing all of this work. It's really a citywide effort. And we've done a lot of work over the past couple years across our departments to create a shared understanding and shared vision for what it means for each department to have a role in implementing the city's climate actions. And and, you know, there was work already going on, and now we see it just it's growing, and it's expanding, it's multiplying, and it's helping us really get to where we need to be.

And I'm I'm really proud to see that, and I just wanna emphasize that that's really important and that we need to keep doing that work. And then also community wide action. So it it's not just our responsibility. Right? It's our whole community's responsibility to to address climate change. And that can take take shape in a lot of different ways, but I I wanna emphasize community wide action is key too. Could be the work of community groups, community service providers, businesses, individuals. Any way you slice it, there's a way for someone to get involved and to help us advance on the city's climate goals, and it's all necessary, and it's all important. And with that, I'll say thank you and take any other questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments for doctor Braff? Councilmember Madron.

I I really, really appreciate this update. Very comprehensive. Great new slide deck. Well done. And it really demonstrates how people who work in the climate space really have to be generalists.

Like, the different buckets of work that you outlined, like, there's not one, like, master's degree that gets you to figuring out those particular things. So, of course, intersections. Yes. And I'm I wanted to just highlight that I'm really glad to hear that you and the city manager are working together around the decarbonization stuff. You know, we talked about this at the retreat a bit in terms of, you know, there's a referral that's been sitting there for a number of years that came from former council member Parsley in terms of finding dedicated funding for funding our climate action plan.

Since then we're like, now we have this plan we need funding for, we need to have this plan we need funding for, and it's obvious that we need to move forward all of our bodies at work so we can't just say okay here here's all the money in the world to implement the climate action plan but we can take it on the like you know one task at a time And so it's great to hear about the success of the the Energize Olympia, now Energize Thurston project. And I think that's what you're talking about when you're talking about decarbonizing buildings. Retrofitting existing buildings is one of the hardest tasks we have in front of us. There's a lot of hard stuff in the transportation realm as well but the buildings that exist the energy that people rely on right now is one of the biggest challenges ahead of us. So, I'm really glad to hear that that conversation is continuing and I would supposedly sorry the right words are not coming out right now because I'm tired but presumably, that'll be coming to the finance committee in terms of budget discussions.

Okay. She looked at you. You were looking down, but that sounds like that's probably the right pathway for that. Oh, okay.

I wanna share some good news. I was looking for an email she sent me.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I'd I'll just finish up by saying that I'm I'm just really excited to hear that that's moving forward. Thanks.

Councilmember Green followed by councilmember Gilman followed by councilmember Vanderpool.

Well, now I wanna hear

the city manager's good news. Well, it's really doctor Braff's good news. And she mentioned that a lot of the programmatic stuff we do is grant funded, and her team works really, really hard at this and has been really successful. They just learned on Friday afternoon that they have been awarded just over $1,000,000 worth of new round of grants. So they're they're conditional.

So we're still waiting for final approval. But 200,000 for climate planning grant, a 350,000 decarbonization grant, and a $750,000 decarbonization grant from different places. So I just wanted to highlight that and just thank doctor Braff for all the amazing work. We still need to do our work to find ongoing funding that's not related to grants, but they knock it out the park year after year. And I just it I wanna just thank them for all they do. Well done.

I may have done a little happy dance on Friday afternoon when I saw all those come in. Yeah.

That is good news. Thank you. So loved the partnership slide, but something that was on my mind through the presentation and then that slide kind of drove it home is there's a a big partner who is not on this slide, I don't know where they are at the table. That's our energy provider. And I know in the structure we have, it's it's really difficult.

But I'm curious, lever like, are there levers potentially at the council level, at the city level? Because one of the as we work towards electrification, one of the concerns that I have that I experienced that I hear from constituents is electricity costs are through the roof. And so the idea of switching from potentially gas heat to electric heat while even if somebody feels like that is the best thing for the environment might not at this point in time be a cost savings. How do we balance this?

So that's an oversight on our part that we did not put PSC on the partnership slide. So, I will make sure to add that. Too many partners to, remember all of them sometimes. We do work closely with PSC on a lot of things, a lot of kind of the programs that we run and coordinating their incentives and that sort of thing. You asked the big question about energy prices.

There's a lot that goes into determining electricity prices, and it's a highly regulated process that is managed by the utility commission. Right? So this is like a thing that happens statewide. It's a a really significant process. Yes.

There are concerns about electricity prices rising. I think and one of the things that I just wanna maybe caution or add is that historically, gas prices have been far more volatile than electricity prices. And the other thing is that when we focus on electrification, we're also focusing on efficiency. And that's about making sure that we're reducing our energy demand first and at the same time. So that way, we are really managing those impacts.

And we looked a lot at this as part of our energized program and and we'll be looking at also as a part of the share accelerators, making sure when we're implementing electrification upgrades that they're not gonna result in increased bill prices for the folks folks on the other side of that who are receiving that. One of the benefits is heat pumps are so much more efficient than any other type of heating is that even when you transition from, like, a gas powered heating to an electric heat pump, your bill might not go down, but it's not gonna go up. You're using even though electricity is more expensive, you're using so much less of it that it helps to to manage those those prices. I also just want to point out like I can't not mention the elephant in the room, right, data centers as being a really significant contributor to increase electricity prices. That is kind of it certainly impacts electrification goals, but that is separate from and it's really I don't wanna suggest that rising electricity prices are the result of electrification.

It is a relatively new issue, is rapidly evolving and there's been a lot going on at the state legislature this year related to that and so I would say, I would just kind of end it say yes and we need to pay attention to it and make sure it doesn't become a problem.

Yeah, thank you. And I think you touched on a little bit of my well, I'll just I'll put a personal story to this challenge. So, for my own home I participated in Energized Thirst and this year I went through the discussions got a few folks to come out and give great process, like really good program, all was well. In the end, where we struggled, was how could we as a household map out what is our energy bill now and what will our energy be? And the answers we kind of got was, we really can't tell you.

Right? Like I get, it's a hard calculation. You don't know how much electricity would be used. It depends on all of the things. And that just was a really difficult decision point to say, Okay, we're going to commit to this because it's important to us from sustainability standpoint. But for a lot of people, you know, like some way to calculate what's the reality of that going to be on my utility bill, you know, right now is just a very big deal. So, yeah, I appreciate that that PSC is a partner in this, and I appreciate that insight.

Alright. Councilmember Gilman followed by councilmember Vanderpool.

Wow. I'm really glad for this conversation tonight. And I I'm just gonna do a quick first, if you do a heat pump but you don't do air sealing, it it the heat pump is is is sort of the efficiency is predicated on having a better sealed, better insulated building that requires less oomph to heat it compared to the brute force of a gas furnace. So so that's that's part of the challenge of getting to the weatherization of existing housing is that that would allow us to use more efficient appliances to heat and cool it. So that's just that's one of my little nerdy things I I feel real strongly about.

I I'm a little bit of a broken record on on this work because we reported on effort but not on outcomes. And we haven't yet since 2018 when we first established one of these goals, we haven't mapped any milestones or progress or talked about the total number of heat pumps installed or the total residential electric consumption. You know, we haven't we don't have any sort of dashboard that maps a critical path to meeting each of our our climate goals. And and to my mind, it'd be really helpful to have those intermediate measures and a vision of what does it look like. What what does the what does the community look like living, moving around at that 2040 goal?

And I would appreciate two versions of the vision. One that, as we're assuming now, is with PSC becoming renewable energy and the federal government continuing to promote and subsidize electric vehicle adoption, and another one that says if neither of those things are true, can we still, as a community, reduce our consumption 45% from that baseline number? So and and maybe it's just my own brain, but it I'm glad to hear that we're trying, but I can't tell if trying makes any difference. And so that's that's that's I would just I'll I'll be grateful for the day when we we feel comfortable putting up some measures of our progress beyond that broadest chart of increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Yeah. I would love that too. It is incredibly difficult to measure that type of thing. And it's and it's not that it goes into all of the modeling. Right?

All of the when we say this is how much we need to electrify, this is how much solar we need, all of that is based on modeling that we do to help kind of predict what it takes for the city to get to net zero. And in that is all of these different calculations that underpin that, but a lot of that's kinda underneath the hood and and some very, very specific details. We can come up with and, you know, what I put out there is the building blocks. I'm really trying you know, want those to be those are the targets that we're working towards, things that we should ideally be able to measure our way towards. How many buildings did we retrofit? How many buildings have we electrified? That sort of thing. The challenge is that is that is difficult to measure. It sounds like it should be easy. Right?

Like, we should know how many heat pumps we've installed in Olympia this year. But because of the way that we do permitting and because of the way that we collect that information, it's actually really tricky to go back in and and measure that. It require it would require us to literally open up every permit and tally, like, what did they do here and really get into the details. So a couple years ago, we started some work and kind of with with, with the staff that kind of manage the permit system to look for ways, or can we make a tweak here, a tweak there, that kind of thing, to make it easier to track some of these things over time. But it's just been a really slow process.

We're we're really resource constrained constrained, staff constrained, kind of both on our teams and on other teams. So it's just one of these things that we just haven't had time, to put our energy towards. And what we can measure and measure easily is the outcome of our programs. Right? And that's what we're focusing on. The thing that's a lot harder is measuring, like, what's happening across the entire community. And so we're just at a place right now where we can either focus our attention on implementing the programs or doing the kinda lengthy work of figuring out how to measure those community wide indicators. We've chosen to focus our efforts for the time being on on the program implementation piece for now.

So I I appreciate that, and we've had the conversation over the last few years. I I just also think that it's it's a it's a it's a tough sell to the people who aren't policy nerds to talk about the small rule changes and the pilot projects we're making, and we're gonna need broader community buy in to to get towards our our goals. And so that's that's why I just feel strongly that a critical path that has stronger and stronger measures I also think it's it's super optimistic to imagine that adoption will come from pilots, and we'll have a big adoption at the end that will bring us to a goal. Because I think the tail end of adoption is the trickiest and often most expensive part of making a transformation like this. So I I appreciate I mean, I I and I I don't wanna take anything away from the efforts that are going on, but I have no idea if there's any significance to the energized program because I don't know what the universe is of gas furnaces and people who've chosen partly through our promotions to go ahead and privately go to one of the heat pump installers.

And so I'm I'm just I I I realize it's difficult to get to it, but it's it's it's a story I'm really hoping that we can tell. So

Yes. City manager Bernie has a relevant point on this.

Yeah. Thank you. And I appreciate this conversation, and we've had it on more than one occasion, you know, here with counsel about trying to get measurement. And one of the things I just wanna say is is doctor Braff's right. In terms of the staffing we have, we're staffed up, and we have some choice points. Right? And the choice points right now are let's let's get to doing. Right? But I think as we think about long term sustainable funding for the climate program, I think there's two pieces. Right?

One is for the programs, and two is maybe long longer term some staffing. I think to do all the things that they're doing, which is remarkable, and then add the measurement pieces in there too, I think we gotta continue to look for more resources for the climate program. I mean, this last year, we made a really hard decision to cut in the climate program. And so, this is not in my way of making excuses. It's not.

It's the reality of where doctor Braff's team is. She and I have talked at length about this. How do we get where we need to get to with some of the measurement tools that I think will be beneficial? She she's she said at the beginning of her comments, she wants to get to the same place. So I I want us to continue to have this conversation as we get into future budgets and find ways to continue to get where we really where all of you wanna get to within both doing the work and measuring the work.

Thanks, Jay. Councilmember Vanderpool.

I really appreciate the conversations going. Also, I love the brief presentation. It's wonderful. I you know, what keeps coming up in the back of my mind from what I'm hearing is also the is funding long term funding as the city manager has brought up. You know, we can have just got I mean, there's also the there's the Climate Commitment Act dollars. And I and I made note of that because on the presentation when I showed heat pumps, you could see the little sticker from it. Right? You can see them in the back of the school the back of the buses around town. And, you know, those dollars are very important, and continuing to tap those dollars to grants is important. But I also think that let local dollar is is important to come up with a a sustainable funding.

And I will I look forward to that conversation because in order to get to those goals locally, we will have to have that that continuous funding. But I also wanna say that the other side of this is the partnerships that was mentioned earlier. Right? So inner city transit. Right?

After inner city transit is able to get through all of its prop one measure that it that passed years ago and getting all caught up on all that, beyond that is also thinking about things like e bike sharing and other programs that they can work on with us and with the community and try to meet some of those needs that may not be paid for by the City Olympia Climate Program, but is a partnership that can help us get there. I'm interested, and I brought this up in finance, and I brought up with some my council mates before, the idea that in 2029, we'll have some bonds. And I'm very interested in looking at and studying that around transportation goals and redoing some of our streets that are not accessible by bike or could be better for bus infrastructure, meeting those needs by doing in those investments. And those are, in other parts of the city, that intersection between what we need to get to and what the climate program expects us to do. And so it seems like we have to hit both ways.

We have to be able to fund those changes in all of our other programs, but also fund the climate program further. And so those are the points that I'm thinking about as we're going through this. I also want to mention that Community Solar did spoil the SHARE program already, because when I went to their presentation this last few weeks ago, and they had mentioned that. They had it on a slide. And then they said, we would like to thank the staff of the city of Olympia if they're there.

And I didn't see you so they they they thanked you. But they mentioned that program out, and I was like, well, that's and someone was like, well, that sounds like an interesting program, Robert. I said, yeah, it does, doesn't it? So, yeah, I'm I'm interested in having these conversations going forward and what ways we can get there and get get the needs met and and be able to do more things on our goals. Because one of the things the public has been expressing over the years of me being on the climate collaborative is, oh, you're working on one or two things and one or two things.

And I've always expressed back that we need more funding to be able to do more and more. Right? And we need to be able to meet those needs. And you know, as it was brought up at the top, the comprehensive plan re you know, looks at all of the other sections of our city and making sure we get those goals. So yeah.

Alright. Thank you. Councilmember Madron.

Yeah. I just wanted to tag on to that a little bit. Loving all the conversation around long term sustainable funding. And I just wanna make sure everybody knows that the Climate Commitment Act is designed to go away. You know, so right now, though, there is funding available through the state because of those the auction of carbon credits. But the ultimate goal of that whole policy framework is that we stop carbon emissions. And so, know, as we talk about, you know, the programs that we're building up and the need for local resources, other resources to keep those going, I just hope we can keep that in the back of our minds that CCA is is here for now, but it is designed to go away.

Thanks. Any additional questions? I have one, which is I know I've seen numbers before for the heat pump program. So are you telling me that somebody meticulously, like, counted those for me to to have, like, those in my talking points? Because I know I've seen those numbers before, a few 100, a few for low income. So how do we get those numbers?

We have the numbers for the heat pump program. We just don't have the numbers for number of heat pumps installed citywide outside of that program.

Okay. Thank you. Yes. Councilmember Vanderpool.

Is would it be possible with the energy score passage to have a better idea of how many heat pumps are

in the city? Potentially. Okay.

Just curious.

Mayor Pro Tem when?

We could always have better, but we're never going to have all of anything. I think that's really the point. But I actually I actually think that when people wanna campaign for a city council, we should just have them check the heat

pumps at all the houses.

Council member, Barrett.

Thank you. I I I I do find it kind of surprising that we don't have statistics on everyone not covered by your great programs that have heat heat pumps because a lot of people do, you know, and they have solar panels too. And knowing that would be important data, we are doing a community survey. I I don't know if we could how much of that we could capture in a question. Does your home have a have a heat pump?

Statistically, I'm not sure how valid that would be, but but it would give us an idea of whether we're at 15% or 25% or, you know, less or more.

Thank

you, council member Barron. Do we have a response for that? Do we wanna offer one right now?

I'll try. Debbie, you jump in here. I definitely think we could ask a question like that. It would give us some data, but it's hard to really extrapolate because we're talking about 300 surveys and a statistically valid survey. And so I I think it it's too small of it's a big enough portion to give a statistically valid survey, but a small enough number that I don't know that we can extrapolate good data to say, this is what it looks like citywide. Does that make sense?

The other thing I want to add when I was talking to all of you about the public opinion survey is that this is a general survey about how well we are advancing the comprehensive plan and the satisfaction with programs and services. And individual departments have gone in and done surveys or gotten information and doing a deeper dive that is more relevant to their program. So maybe that is something that we could take a look at in the future. But I really do not recommend doing it here because I don't think it would give you the information that you're looking for.

Yes. Doctor. Brah.

Since we've been talking a lot about counting heat pumps, I I do wanna just point out, I I really think the way they get at this is to make the modifications to the permit system. We're not gonna know what's already out there, but we'll be able to start tracking what's coming in on a regular basis, what percentage of replacements are being replaced with heat pumps versus other types of heating systems. We're pretty close. Like, we've I know I said it's going slow and it's complicated, but we are pretty slow pretty close to being able to do that. We kind of have it figured out what we need to do.

We just need to make it happen. So, hopefully, soon, like, at least on that very specific question, we'll be able to start tracking that. But, again, it's also just gonna take some time before that data is meaningful. Like, it's not gonna we need a couple years of data collection most likely. So we are moving towards it, at least on this one particular question.

Yes. Councilmember Gum. And just to ask, in connection with that, is, rooftop photovoltaic installations, among along the same lines that

I will follow-up with some numbers for you all. That's the one we're actually able to measure really easily, because of the way it's structured. And and it does actually appear that we're on track with the amount of solar that we would wanna be adding on an annual basis in order to get to that target. So I can follow-up with some some more information on that one.

Thank you. Alright. Great discussion. Any other comments? Questions? Alright. We do have an executive session. So thank you, doctor Braff. So at this time, we are gonna recess for five minutes and then reconvene in Room 423 for an executive session pursuant to litigation and potential litigation. No decisions will be made. We'll meet in Room 423 for up to ninety minutes, after which we'll be adjourned for tonight.