Climate Action Commission
Climate Action Commission
jue, 12 de octubre de 2023
Puntos de agenda
Registros de votación
Resumen del debate
Transcripción
RESUMEN DE REUNIÓNGenerado por IA
Climate Action Commission — 12 de octubre de 2023
Esta fue una reunión ordinaria de la Climate Action Commission (CAC), destacada por una extensa sesión de puertas abiertas al público previa a la reunión formal, seguida de una presentación principal sobre el recién publicado Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality de Petaluma —el plan de acción climática central de la ciudad— y por el debate sobre los próximos pasos para su revisión por parte de la comisión.
Aprobación del acta — 10 de agosto de 2023
El acta fue aprobada por aclamación sin modificaciones ni objeciones.
Presentación: Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality
Eric Jerkovich de Raimi & Associates, el consultor principal, presentó el Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality recientemente publicado (publicado el 7 de octubre de 2023, con el período de comentarios públicos abierto hasta el 28 de octubre). El Blueprint es el plan de implementación a corto y mediano plazo de Petaluma (5 a 10 años) orientado a alcanzar el objetivo declarado por la ciudad de lograr la neutralidad de carbono para 2030.
Hallazgos técnicos clave de la presentación:
El inventario comunitario de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) de la ciudad correspondiente a 2018 totalizó más de 470,000 toneladas métricas de CO₂-equivalente, con aproximadamente dos tercios provenientes del transporte y cerca de un cuarto del uso de energía. Las operaciones municipales representan menos del 1% de las emisiones totales. El Blueprint modela cuatro escenarios que van desde el escenario tendencial hasta un escenario de "qué se necesita" —neutralidad de carbono total para 2030— que requeriría electrificar el 85% de los edificios, lograr una adopción del 25% de vehículos eléctricos (VE) y trasladar el 75% de todos los viajes a modos no motorizados. El escenario más "ambicioso" modelado en el propio Blueprint tiene como objetivo una reducción de emisiones superior al 50% respecto a los niveles de 1990 para 2030, pero no alcanza plenamente la neutralidad de carbono.
El plan está estructurado en torno a 22 "Cornerstone Actions" que abarcan edificios, transporte, consumo de recursos, captura de carbono y operaciones municipales. Las acciones prioritarias clave incluyen establecer un centro de recursos de electrificación integral, desarrollar mecanismos de financiamiento para la electrificación de edificios, implementar códigos de alcance para la carga de vehículos eléctricos, completar el Active Transportation Plan, reformar la zonificación para fomentar el desarrollo de relleno urbano, implementar tarifas de estacionamiento, electrificar el transporte público y las flotas de vehículos municipales, y actualizar el plan de bosque urbano.
Comentarios públicos sobre el Blueprint
Los comentarios públicos fueron sustantivos y abarcaron una amplia variedad de temas. Temas clave:
Apoyo a la ambición del plan: Varios oradores, entre ellos Natasha Juliana, directora de la Cool Petaluma Campaign, y el activista Andy Shrader, expresaron un fuerte apoyo al objetivo de neutralidad de carbono para 2030 y rechazaron la postura de que las acciones de Petaluma no tienen repercusión a nivel mundial. Shrader señaló que la prohibición anterior de Petaluma al permiso de nuevas gasolineras fue replicada en toda la ciudad a lo largo del Condado de Sonoma y llegó a influir en Los Angeles y en más de 2,300 jurisdicciones en todo el mundo.
Solicitud de ampliación del período de comentarios públicos: Varios oradores (Deb Fox, Trayon Heckman, Andy Shrader) instaron a la comisión a extender el plazo de comentarios del 28 de octubre, argumentando que la comunidad necesita más tiempo para participar de manera significativa con un documento tan complejo. El personal indicó que está dispuesto a trabajar con los organizadores comunitarios para definir un cronograma revisado en lugar de fijar una nueva fecha en ese momento.
Personal y estructura organizacional: Deb Fox instó a la ciudad a priorizar el financiamiento de puestos de personal en cada departamento como parte de un coordinado "equipo verde", calificándolo como la prioridad más alta —más importante incluso que muchas acciones externas.
Escuelas y transporte: Maddie Cloud, miembro de la junta directiva de Petaluma City Schools, pidió que el Blueprint aborde específicamente el tráfico de entrada y salida en las escuelas, las rutas seguras hacia los centros educativos y la colaboración con el distrito. Señaló que la ciudad cuenta con 17 instalaciones escolares que generan un número significativo de viajes en vehículo diariamente.
Emisiones basadas en el consumo y captura de carbono en el suelo: Ned Orit y Matt Scheck señalaron que los residentes de Petaluma son responsables de aproximadamente 800,000 toneladas métricas adicionales de CO₂ anuales a través de las emisiones incorporadas en bienes y servicios —aproximadamente el doble de lo que se contabiliza en el inventario local— y pidieron programas de agricultura regenerativa y suelos saludables para abordar esta brecha.
Participación comunitaria y equidad: Dennis Buenrostro llamó a que haya interpretación bilingüe rutinaria (en español) en todas las reuniones de la comisión como medida básica de equidad. La comisionada Amy (Abé) se sumó a la necesidad de contar con opciones de reunión en línea como una cuestión de equidad para los residentes que trabajan.
Escepticismo sobre el alcance e impacto del plan: Dos oradores —el químico ambiental Trevor Pittz y Richard Braun— argumentaron que las emisiones de Petaluma son insignificantes a nivel mundial, que la transformación de la vida cotidiana y de la economía local será perjudicial, y que las inversiones pasadas en transporte público (específicamente el SMART Train) representan fracasos que sirven como advertencia. Estos comentarios fueron respondidos en gran medida por otros oradores.
Sopladores de hojas a gasolina: Steve Dueloo, en representación de G Street Action, llamó a una ordenanza municipal formal que prohíba los sopladores de hojas a gasolina (y los equipos pequeños para uso fuera de carretera en general), señalando que la ley estatal ya prohíbe su venta a partir de enero y que aproximadamente 60 ciudades de California cuentan con algún tipo de dicha prohibición.
Agua, ruido y otros elementos ausentes: Trayon Heckman argumentó que el agua merece un papel más central en la planificación climática. Nina Zito expresó preocupaciones sobre la dependencia del plan en la construcción de edificios (que en sí misma genera emisiones) sin abordar adecuadamente estrategias de reducción.
Retroalimentación de la comisión sobre el Blueprint
Los comisionados proporcionaron retroalimentación inicial de alto nivel, con una revisión detallada diferida al subcomité ad hoc. Aspectos destacados:
El comisionado Fong elogió la exhaustividad del plan, señaló que Petaluma está "años luz por delante" de ciudades comparables y advirtió contra el exceso de deliberación a expensas del impulso.
El comisionado Peters pidió un lenguaje de compromiso más firme en el documento (eliminando formulaciones equívocas como "realmente no creemos que esto sea probable"), enfatizó la velocidad de ejecución y el impacto social como criterios de priorización, y se sumó a los llamados por la accesibilidad en idioma español.
El comisionado Hudson solicitó un análisis de costo-beneficio más claro (que muestre el costo diferencial de la transición a tecnología limpia, no solo los precios de lista) y planteó la necesidad de abordar los incentivos para propietarios de inmuebles, señalando que la palabra "landlord" no aparece en el documento.
El comisionado Edminster señaló la necesidad de que el Blueprint aborde la instalación de biogás de la ciudad en la planta de tratamiento de aguas residuales, la flota de vehículos pesados y la adquisición de diésel renovable (actualmente en curso para los departamentos de bomberos y transporte, con un contrato completo para la ciudad pendiente de aprobación del consejo municipal). También apoyó firmemente una estrategia de gestión del estacionamiento con una mejor comunicación pública e instó a ampliar cualquier prohibición de sopladores de hojas a todos los equipos pequeños para uso fuera de carretera.
Varios comisionados pidieron que las 22 Cornerstone Actions sean mejor priorizadas y que se documente con mayor claridad cómo fueron seleccionadas, así como que las consideraciones de adaptación y las conexiones con el uso del suelo del plan general sean más visibles en el documento.
Sobre el plazo de comentarios públicos: La comisión realizó una votación indicativa informal y el consenso claro fue a favor de extender el período de comentarios más allá del 28 de octubre. El personal se comprometió a trabajar con los organizadores comunitarios para determinar un cronograma revisado.
Creación del subcomité ad hoc
El personal recomendó —y la comisión acordó— crear un subcomité ad hoc de hasta cuatro miembros (el quórum es de tres para este órgano) para realizar una revisión detallada del Blueprint, redactar recomendaciones formales de la comisión y presentarlas ante la comisión en pleno en la reunión de noviembre para su debate y votación. Dichas recomendaciones serán transmitidas a Raimi & Associates y al personal de la ciudad para orientar el documento final antes de que sea enviado a la Planning Commission y al City Council (con fecha objetivo de principios de 2024).
Tres comisionados se ofrecieron como voluntarios: Edminster, Hudson y un tercer miembro (identificado en la transcripción, pero con nombre poco claro). No se requirió votación formal para la formación del subcomité ad hoc según las normas de la comisión. El personal contactará a los tres voluntarios para programar una reunión.
Fecha de la reunión de noviembre
La reunión ordinaria de noviembre cae en un día feriado observado por la ciudad. La comisión acordó trasladar la reunión al miércoles, 8 de noviembre de 2023 a las 4:00 p.m., pendiente de confirmación del salón. Un comisionado señaló que estaría fuera de la ciudad, pero los miembros restantes llegaron a un consenso sobre esa fecha y hora.
Puntos clave
El Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality está ahora en revisión pública (es probable que el plazo de comentarios se extienda más allá del 28 de octubre). Describe 22 "Cornerstone Actions" prioritarias y modela un camino ambicioso hacia la neutralidad de carbono para 2030, aunque incluso el escenario local más agresivo no alcanza ese objetivo sin acciones adicionales.
Un subcomité ad hoc de tres comisionados realizará una revisión detallada y redactará las recomendaciones formales de la CAC para ser finalizadas en la reunión del 8 de noviembre —un paso crítico antes de que el plan sea enviado al City Council a principios de 2024.
La comisión y el público apoyan ampliamente la extensión del período de comentarios públicos, y el personal indicó que trabajará con los organizadores comunitarios para establecer un plazo revisado.
Las principales brechas identificadas incluyen: tratamiento insuficiente de las emisiones basadas en el consumo, ausencia de estrategias de incentivos para propietarios de inmuebles, ninguna mención al transporte escolar, lenguaje inadecuado sobre la instalación de biogás de la ciudad y la flota de vehículos pesados, y la necesidad de accesibilidad en idioma español en las reuniones públicas.
Transición al diésel renovable: El personal aclaró que los departamentos de bomberos y transporte han utilizado diésel renovable desde 2018; un nuevo contrato conjunto de abastecimiento de combustible que cubre la flota municipal en general está pendiente de aprobación del City Council.
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Qué ocurrió en esta reunión
Aprobación de Actas de la reunión del 10 de agosto de 2023
Minutes for the August 10, 2023 meeting were presented for approval. No public comment or member discussion was noted. The minutes were deemed approved.
Recibir una Presentación sobre el Borrador del Blueprint for Climate Neutrality Recientemente Publicado, Proporcionar Retroalimentación Inicial y Preguntas para el Personal, y Determinar los Próximos Pasos para la Revisión por parte de la Comisión y la Preparación de Recomendaciones de la Comisión al Concejo Municipal, Posiblemente Incluyendo la Creación de un Subcomité Ad Hoc para Redactar Recomendaciones para su Revisión y Finalización por la Comisión en Pleno
Eric from Raimi and multiple commission members including Deb Fox, Pete Gain, Natasha Juliana, Trathen Heckman, Maddi Cloud, Duane Bellinger, Dennis Best, Trevor Pitts, and others presented on and discussed the recently released Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality. Heather Hines discussed a revised timeline for public comment as part of the commission's review and preparation of recommendations to the City Council.
Analizar la Acción Recomendada por el Personal para Crear un Ad Hoc Especializado para Revisar el Borrador del Blueprint for Climate Neutrality (Plan de Acción Climática) con el Fin de Redactar Recomendaciones para su Revisión y Finalización por la Comisión en Pleno en una Reunión Posterior del CAC.
The commission discussed staff's recommendation to create a specialized Ad Hoc subcommittee to review the Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality and draft recommendations for the full commission's review. Three members volunteered for the Ad Hoc committee: Edminster, Baker, and Atchley.
Fecha y Hora de la Reunión de Noviembre
The commission determined that November 8th was the only available date for the next meeting, scheduled for 4pm. Rhianna will reserve the room and send notifications once confirmed; member Garti was noted as not available.
Puntos de agenda (4)
Procedural (1)
1ProceduralAprobación de Actas de la reunión del 10 de agosto de 2023
Qué ocurrió
Minutes for the August 10, 2023 meeting were presented for approval. No public comment or member discussion was noted. The minutes were deemed approved.Public Hearing
2Public HearingRecibir una Presentación sobre el Borrador del Blueprint for Climate Neutrality Recientemente Publicado, Proporcionar Retroalimentación Inicial y Preguntas para el Personal, y Determinar los Próximos Pasos para la Revisión por parte de la Comisión y la Preparación de Recomendaciones de la Comisión al Concejo Municipal, Posiblemente Incluyendo la Creación de un Subcomité Ad Hoc para Redactar Recomendaciones para su Revisión y Finalización por la Comisión en Pleno
Qué ocurrió
Eric from Raimi and multiple commission members including Deb Fox, Pete Gain, Natasha Juliana, Trathen Heckman, Maddi Cloud, Duane Bellinger, Dennis Best, Trevor Pitts, and others presented on and discussed the recently released Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality. Heather Hines discussed a revised timeline for public comment as part of the commission's review and preparation of recommendations to the City Council.3Public HearingAnalizar la Acción Recomendada por el Personal para Crear un Ad Hoc Especializado para Revisar el Borrador del Blueprint for Climate Neutrality (Plan de Acción Climática) con el Fin de Redactar Recomendaciones para su Revisión y Finalización por la Comisión en Pleno en una Reunión Posterior del CAC.
Qué ocurrió
The commission discussed staff's recommendation to create a specialized Ad Hoc subcommittee to review the Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality and draft recommendations for the full commission's review. Three members volunteered for the Ad Hoc committee: Edminster, Baker, and Atchley.4Public HearingFecha y Hora de la Reunión de Noviembre
Qué ocurrió
The commission determined that November 8th was the only available date for the next meeting, scheduled for 4pm. Rhianna will reserve the room and send notifications once confirmed; member Garti was noted as not available.Transcripción literal disponible
93 segmentos de transcripción indexados
recording in progress yeah the open house meeting for the climate action commission is officially adjourned can we please take a roll call vote Ashley Baker edminister amp gardy Peters present Fong Hudson shrips okay uh this meeting is called to order because a majority of the climate action Commissioners are present as a brown act body cic members are not to congregate amongst ourselves to discuss cic business we are going to take part of the open house as individuals and members of the public after the conclusion of the open house the CAC and attendees from the public will relocate to the city council chambers where we will resume the cic meeting of October 12th 2023 at 6:30 p.m.
CITY OF PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA REGULAR MEETING OF THE CLIMATE ACTION COMMISSION City Hall Council Chamber 11 English Street Petaluma, CA 94952 MINUTES Thursday, October 12, 2023 CALL TO ORDER FOR OPEN HOUSE START TIME 4:30PM ROLL CALL GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT During General Public Comment, the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the City Council’s subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda.
Public comments are limited up to three minutes per person. Depending on the number of persons wishing to address the Council, time will be allocated in equal shares totaling no more than twenty minutes, subject to the Council’s discretion (Cal.
Gov’t. Code §54954.3(a), Petaluma City Council Rules, Policies and Procedures, III). General Public Comment – Maguire/Gold Trevor Pitts Nina PRESENTATIONS APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1 Approval of Minutes for the meeting of August 10, 2023 Minutes for August 10, 2023, are deemed approved.
thank you recording in progress like to call to order the regular meeting start time of the Thursday October 12th climate action commission if we could take a roll call vote Ashley present Baker present Ed minister here amp present gy present Peters here Fong Hudson shbs okay the first item on tonight's agenda is general public comment I have three yellow comment cards if you would like to make a comment not about the blueprint but about climate action in general now would be your time to make a non blueprint related comment I will read the following statement and then invite uh the speakers up to present during general public comment the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are with within the city council or climate action commission subject matter jurisdiction that are not listed on the current agenda public comments are limited up to 3 minutes per person depending on the number of persons wishing to address the climate action commission time will be allocated in equal shares totaling more than 20 minutes the first Speaker I have is Trevor pittz hello every everyone my name is Trevor pittz I'm an environmental chemist most of my career has been involved in uh issues regarding uh things that would affect humans such as removing the Mercury containing uh uh specti spermicide from the market in 1973 because I had seen research to the effect that it could penetrate into the bloodstream we're talking about the sperm herde that was used with the
PUBLIC HEARINGS AND MATTERS FOR CONSIDERATION 2. Receive a Presentation on the Recently Released Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality, Provide Initial Feedback and Questions for Staff, and Determine Next Steps for Commission Review and Preparation of Commission Recommendations to the City Council, Possibly Including Creation of an Ad Hoc Subcommittee to Draft Recommendations for Review and Finalization by the Full Commission Eric from Raimi Deb Fox Pete Gain Natasha Juliana Trathen Heckman Maddi Cloud Duane Bellinger Dennis Best Trevor Pitts Nina ?
diaphragm later than that I finished up doing recycling of hazardous waste so I'm an old-fashioned early environmentalist and so I try to concentrate my efforts in places where it will do the most good for the least effort and create the least side damage and frankly this plan does not meet that standard I have a couple things here that I wanted to give give you but basically what they say it has to do with the scale of the problem now if you I've distributed some of these the first thing we should see is that there's an exponential growth in the amount of CO2 being being sent out by China the United States is falling the United Kingdom actually my home place has actually reached the level it was in 1880 at enormous cost but the city of Petaluma if it disappeared from the planet would not make the smallest material difference to these measures another graph here which I apologize for not being in color shows that the uh energy consumption in 1980 was about 90% fossil fuels today it's around 83% we are talking about a gigantic amount of energy that is produced from fossil fuels and will continue to be produced from fossil fuels for many decades to come what we can do here is utterly immaterial and yet it will it will do a lot of damage to our lives when I first came to Petaluma I noticed that there were no parking meters that you could shop there was all sorts of shops within two blocks there was a hardware store there were various office of V offices of various kinds so I
accepted the offer I I had been given for an for real estate investment and I loved Petaluma so much I moved in but if you screw up the traffic to make it harder to people if you put in parking meters you will get a lot of resistance and you will damage the small businesses if you follow this plan it will cost a whole lot of money it will interfere in people's lives and just to quote this thing here nearing our climate goal will require an almost complete transformation of our local economy and our community while strengthening the quality of life that makes Petaluma so exceptional there's only one thing wrong with that story it will not make our quality of life better we will definitely screw up the economy now in another part of this document it says striving for carbon neutrality which by the way is impossible for this uh for this city and which is in fact not attempting to do it you're just attempting to reduce the greenhouse gas now striving for carbon neutrality by 2030 7 years from now will require transformational change to the built environment streeted Network and urban form as well as it REM ining of daily life pet lumans I don't appreciate my daily life being reimagined thank you sir that's time I appr sir thank you for your comments that's time did he sa any greenhous gas sir thank you for your comment you will have the opportunity to comment during the agenda item thank you the blueprint is on the agenda for tonight's meeting this is general public comment
Ned Orett Matt Similac Steve Lou Richard Braun Andy Schrader Barry Busowitz Heather Hines – Discussed revised timeline for public comment. 3. Discuss the Action Recommended by Staff to Create a Specialized Ad Hoc to Review the Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality (Climate Action Plan) to Draft Recommendations for Review and Finalization by the Full Commission at a Subsequent CAC Meeting.
Edminster – voluntered Baker – voluntered Atchley – voluntered 4. Date and Time for November Meeting Only available date is November 8th. Rhianna will reserve room for 4pm. Available – Not available – Garti Next meeting is 11/8 at 4pm.
really you have the opportunity to make comments on the blueprint during the agendized portion of the meeting later tonight thank you I would like to remind the public that this is General comment general public comment and not for items on the agenda the next speaker card I have is for Steve duoo I'm G to make a comment on the plan is that all right the comments for the plan will be happening during the public comment after the presentation on the plan this time is for general public comment for items not listed on the agenda thank you the next speaker card I have is Richard bran Richard Braun excuse me quick comment could you please speak directly into your microphone because I think I have trouble hearing as well um okay the display outside was lovely congratulations I think it we have made a marvelous showing Let's Get Serious there's more of the blueprint than was on display much of the hard work will be rendered moot by $10 uh gallon gasoline worldwide shortages of key raw materials will pile on as in the 1990s sir I'm sorry this this is um your your comment is on the blueprint the blueprint so that can you switch me over to the other section thank you thank you the next speaker card I have is for Nina Zito and is this for the uh a comment on the blueprint or a general public comment comment perfect thank you hi I'm uh Nina zto thank you uh we should feel like we've accomplished so very much and we have and there's so much more we can do and the opportunity rests um in
acknowledging the reality the physics of noise and how that contribute contributes to the overall equation of warming and we we seem to have a conspicuous blindness to it because we we hear with our ears and people are not paying attention to the aggregating leaf blowers backup beeps uh pavers uh Earth movers construction noise ceaseless noise the sounds of progress perhaps but they are part of the net energetics here and if um it's probably beyond the scope of uh this meeting to talk about thermodynamics but um just reacquainting oneself with kind of the math is probably a good idea here if we're going to be serious thank you thank you very much I will like to also acknowledge there was a submitted uh comment by uh Stan gold and Matt Maguire so for those of you who read the online version there was an additional comment as well moving on to the presentation item our of agenda if we could have the presentation please yeah I guess Rihanna if you want to introduce this this one and our speaker one moment I just want to pull it on the screen perfect ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us this evening I would like to introduce to you Eric who is the lead consultant for Ram and Associates that'll be speaking about the public draft of the blueprint for carbon neutrality this evening as all of you here know Petaluma has ambitious goals to be carbon neutral by 2030 and this is going to be only successful if we come together as a city and a community each and every one of us
Rhianna will send notifications when confirmed. COMMITTEE COMMENT Peters – Commented on RCPA for the county meeting has a vacancy. Meeting this Friday. County of Sonoma going through similar process, draft climate actions due out in November.
Encourage everyone to ready Petaulma and Sonoma County blueprint plan. STAFF COMMENT Rhianna – Adoption of renewable usage / renewable diseal. ADJOURNMENT 8:31 p.m. CALL TO ORDER FOR REGULAR MEETING START TIME 6:30PM ROLL CALL CITY OF PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA REGULAR MEETING OF THE CLIMATE ACTION COMMISSION City Hall Council Chamber 11 English Street Petaluma, CA 94952 MINUTES Thursday, October 12, 2023 CALL TO ORDER FOR OPEN HOUSE START TIME 4:30PM ROLL CALL GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT During General Public Comment, the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the City Council’s subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda.
and work together to achieve these goals uh good evening can you hear me okay excellent thanks um it's really exciting to be here tonight uh on the back of the community open house that we had on the release of the blueprint for carbon neutrality uh my name is Eric jerkovich I'm a principal at ramian Associates um I'm joined this evening by my colleague Sammy Taylor who's uh wrapping up the open house outside but we'll be in later this evening to answer questions if you have them this evening as well um tonight I'm here to talk a little bit about the blueprint process about the technical analysis that was done as part of that process and then the action plans that self that are really the core Foundation of helping Petaluma reach its carbon neutrality goal um I'm going to talk a little bit about those blueprints but then I'll I'll really focus on the kind of the 22 Cornerstone actions that are part of the plan itself um the blueprint for carbon neutrality represents the city's program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions it aims to really uh Implement that shared vision for climate action action that was developed as part of the climate emergency framework um it builds on the past work that's been done by city council the climate action Commission in the ad hocs as well as ongoing planning processes like the active Transportation plan the general plan and other plans as well um the blueprint is really a short-term implementation plan so you're thinking 5 to 10 years out into
Public comments are limited up to three minutes per person. Depending on the number of persons wishing to address the Council, time will be allocated in equal shares totaling no more than twenty minutes, subject to the Council’s discretion (Cal.
the future tied to that the city's carbon neutrality goal of at 2030 um we also built an ongoing monitoring and adjustment that's part of uh the plan and the updates to that plan because it's kind of an active and dynamic process moving forward um the plan was released on October 7th and uh public comments uh are open until October the 28th um in climate planning we really focus uh often focus on these two kind of overlapping policy approaches reducing our contribution to climate change by lowering greenhouse gas gas emissions and then adapting to the potential impacts of climate change the blueprint itself of really focuses on reducing uh greenhouse gas emissions um concurrent with the blueprint process the C's been working to develop policy Alternatives uh to adapt to climate change so I think you all uh received a presentation I think last month on the updated sea level rise and flooding maps that the city's been working on to really understand the conditions between flooding uh sea level rise and the Petaluma River into the future um so part of that uh part of the general plan process will be to develop a series of uh policies and implementation actions to address uh climate adaptation within that document uh and given the timing of those two efforts uh we we kind of separated the two and so the blueprint really focuses on greenhouse gas uction so we can move that piece forward more quickly um this on your screen is just a simplified version of the process overall uh
Gov’t. Code §54954.3(a), Petaluma City Council Rules, Policies and Procedures, III). General Public Comment – Maguire/Gold Trevor Pitts Nina PRESENTATIONS APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1 Approval of Minutes for the meeting of August 10, 2023 Minutes for August 10, 2023, are deemed approved.
We've started by uh creating a greenhouse gas inventory for the community but also for City operations and Facilities um we then conducted a series of greenhouse gas reduction analysis where we packaged a series of strategies and actions together and looked at their benefit from a greenhouse gas perspective thought about their co- benefits as well um and then we worked to create a series of greenhouse gas uh reduction action plans uh which we workshopped with the city staff City leadership team as well as the CAC ad hoc groups um we took feedbacks from all those meetings and all of that has been Incorporated U into the blueprint for uh public review now um so during the development of the blueprint we had several touchstones with the climate action committee mission where we and it's ad hoc where we talked about the process discussed the results of the technical analysis and then um kind of provided that overview and discussion around those different action plans within the blueprint um those yielded a ton of different comments and we're not going to get into them specifically tonight but a lot of changes were made to those action plans based on the comments from um ad hoc members as well as CAC members um after those Mee um I think it's always important to begin at the beginning uh the city has done a lot of work already on climate planning and through the climate emergency process you worked hard to define a vision and values for what you hope to achieve as a community by
PUBLIC HEARINGS AND MATTERS FOR CONSIDERATION 2. Receive a Presentation on the Recently Released Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality, Provide Initial Feedback and Questions for Staff, and Determine Next Steps for Commission Review and Preparation of Commission Recommendations to the City Council, Possibly Including Creation of an Ad Hoc Subcommittee to Draft Recommendations for Review and Finalization by the Full Commission Eric from Raimi Deb Fox Pete Gain Natasha Juliana Trathen Heckman Maddi Cloud Duane Bellinger Dennis Best Trevor Pitts Nina ?
reducing emissions in line with that 2030 Target I I always like to start with the vision because it really does articulate what we're trying to achieve and the breadth of what we're trying to achieve as a group and as a community as we start to think about that it's important to understand where we are now so how do we currently contribute to greenhouse gas emissions within the city so as I mentioned we conducted a greenhouse gas inventory for the city um using 2018 data um we the emissions inventory totaled 4 over 470,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent uh at the time in 2018 um as you can see in the chart most of the emissions two-thirds of them are in uh the transportation sector and about a quarter of them are energy so they're really concentrated in a handful of sectors overall um we also looked at the trend so how has the emissions profile changed for the city between uh 2010 and 2018 where we had inventory data to look at those past Trends and while uh uh beginning in adding adding adding Petaluma into somoma clean power uh you can see that emissions from energy use and from water use reduced quite significantly during that time frame um at the same time you see increases in transportation related emissions and also solid waste emissions um on the transportation side it's because the model got better in those intervening years and so it wasn't quite Apples to Apples um and then on the solid waste side the Redwood R landfill started processing methane
differently so it was an increase in emissions there next slide um we also looked at Municipal operations emissions um and we Quantified those for 2019 um and there are 3,600 metric tons of uh carbon dioxide equivalent which is a little bit less than 1% of the overall Community inventory and you can see primarily these again are in the transportation sector so the vehicle Fleet employee commute um so this kind of mirror the overall uh CommunityWide emissions profile so now we're going to take a few minutes just to talk about the structure and organization of the blueprint itself so the blueprints really organized into these six chapters with a series of technical appendices um most of our work and discussion tonight is going to be focused on that chapter five those greenhouse gas action plans um next so really foundational to the implementation of the blueprint itself is an equity focused implementation so we believe Equity can be implemented uh through kind of three specific kinds of ways one is to make sure that the process is fair transparent and inclusive as you implement programs moving forward second we want to make sure to distribute resources equitably across priority communities really focusing on those communities who are most likely to be harmed by the climate impacts and third we want to make sure to address any underlying structural issues which make it hard for people to adapt and to take on these new greenhouse gas mitigation measures overall so those Equity
Ned Orett Matt Similac Steve Lou Richard Braun Andy Schrader Barry Busowitz Heather Hines – Discussed revised timeline for public comment. 3. Discuss the Action Recommended by Staff to Create a Specialized Ad Hoc to Review the Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality (Climate Action Plan) to Draft Recommendations for Review and Finalization by the Full Commission at a Subsequent CAC Meeting.
Edminster – voluntered Baker – voluntered Atchley – voluntered 4. Date and Time for November Meeting Only available date is November 8th. Rhianna will reserve room for 4pm. Available – Not available – Garti Next meeting is 11/8 at 4pm.
considerations are integrated directly into the blueprint themselves but we've also developed a series of tools for the city as you start to really Implement each and every one of these programs moving forward including an equity uh toolkit and checklist to guide program implementation and then also we can go to the next slide uh an analysis of the most disadvantaged areas within the city of Petaluma now these Equity priority areas were developed as part of the general Plan update process and these are uh areas within the city that have kind of a Confluence of lower Health Equity outcomes environmental justice considerations as well as social disadvantage so these are some of the neighborhoods as you implement different programs you should be thinking about how you can Target resources in those priority areas um so as defined in the climate emergency framework we want to try to get to carbon neutrality by 2030 so part of our process was to look at what it would take to get there um we looked at emission reductions in these primary seven sectors which largely correspond to the sectors within your greenhouse gas inventory so buildings and energy use land use and transportation resource consumption water sequestration and then uh Municipal operations so what we did was we forecasted out emissions into the future so we did two without local action the first is the business's usual scenario it just kind of straight lines emissions out into the future assuming no state and local
policy it's not a very likely scenario the second is the adjusted business as usual scenario so this straight lines those emissions out but then adjust for state and federal policy that's the things that are on the books now that are going drop our emissions independent of what local jurisdictions do and then we created two additional uh climate action scenarios the first is the ambitious climate action scenario and this was really developed to be coincide with the action plans itself within the blueprint and this illustrates that state action as well as the implementation of local measures to reduce emissions um and then the third the the fourth excuse me the four fourth scenario is the kind of the what does it take so we wanted to look at we want to we want to see what it would take for the city to get to Zero by 2030 what was that mean in terms of implementation how far would you have to turn the levers of policy to make that happen so that that's the the kind of the fourth or the what it what does it take scenario so those different climate action scenarios are Illustrated on the screen now um those include both those business as usual adjusted business as usual as well as the ambitious in the what it take what does it take scenario so that ambitious climate action scenario really models again the blueprints action plans it includes mandatory building and energy upgrades a significant increase in electric vehicle electric vehicle and an increase in active modes of
Rhianna will send notifications when confirmed. COMMITTEE COMMENT Peters – Commented on RCPA for the county meeting has a vacancy. Meeting this Friday. County of Sonoma going through similar process, draft climate actions due out in November.
transportation that scenario drops emissions by over 250,000 metric tons of co2e by 2030 that's an over 50% reduction from your 1990 levels um you can see that even though even though you take those ambitious steps there's still a gap to fill to get to that uh Target of carbon neutrality by 2030 so you might ask well what's the difference why can't we just ratchet up the blueprint to get to that carbon neutrality goal with that what does it take scenario so this slide is intended to sort of Simply uh illustrate what the difference is between the two so on the left hand side you have ambitious climate action and on the right hand side the kind of the what does it take scenario so in this case the ambitious scenario electrifies 40% of the buildings it models that 25% of all vehicles in the city are electric and that 50% of all trips are taken by active modes of travel by 2030 whereas the what does it take scenario uh models 85% of all buildings are electrified 25% electric vehicles in a 75% mod share now you could adjust and you could have a higher EV rate in a lower mod share either way you could you could adjust those variables but this kind of illustrates overall the challenge of getting to those those numbers so the the next couple slides sort of further kind of articulate what that looks like so what does it mean to Electrify 40 to 85% of the housing units just the housing units alone within the city that would be a thousand to about 2500 housing units every year to meet
Encourage everyone to ready Petaulma and Sonoma County blueprint plan. STAFF COMMENT Rhianna – Adoption of renewable usage / renewable diseal. ADJOURNMENT 8:31 p.m. CALL TO ORDER FOR REGULAR MEETING START TIME 6:30PM ROLL CALL CITY OF PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA REGULAR MEETING OF THE CLIMATE ACTION COMMISSION City Hall Council Chamber 11 English Street Petaluma, CA 94952 MINUTES Thursday, October 12, 2023 CALL TO ORDER FOR OPEN HOUSE START TIME 4:30PM ROLL CALL GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT During General Public Comment, the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the City Council’s subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda.
that Target likewise you'd be electrifying about a thousand new cars each year to get to that Target um to get to that 25% EV adoption rate so City staff asked us to just give a estimate of what the relative costs would be for uh individuals within the community to kind of meet these targets So based on analysis of both high and lowc cost scenarios for single family and multif family housing retrofiting those units could cost somewhere in the order of 14 million to 32 million note that that doesn't include subsidies and rebates which are widely available and readily available to homeowners and businesses which would draw down that cost overall those are for things like panel upgrade HVAC systems and more that are already available through somoma clean power through the state through the federal government already but th and so those incentive programs would reduce that overall cost they also have the added benefit of uh yielding public health benefits which aren't really Quantified as part of this or the operations of those buildings as well so what would it cost to purchase EVS at that rate so similarly the costs in EVS vary broadly from 30,000 to well over $100,000 per electric vehicle with the average last year being about $50,000 per electric vehicle so adding about a th000 new vehicles a year you're looking at a range of 31 million to 51 million again that's independent of the incentives and rebates that are readily available through those utilities through the state and
Public comments are limited up to three minutes per person. Depending on the number of persons wishing to address the Council, time will be allocated in equal shares totaling no more than twenty minutes, subject to the Council’s discretion (Cal.
Gov’t. Code §54954.3(a), Petaluma City Council Rules, Policies and Procedures, III). General Public Comment – Maguire/Gold Trevor Pitts Nina PRESENTATIONS APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1 Approval of Minutes for the meeting of August 10, 2023 Minutes for August 10, 2023, are deemed approved.
federal government to help reduce those costs as well as the public health benefits that would be accured through that implementation uh and then finally um a 50% mode split is really complicated to think about and really complicated to understand um but it means that half the trips are taken by not driving so half the the vehicle miles or the miles that you travel are taken by non-auto modes walking biking scooting uh or Transit use so that uh an example of what that looks like in real life is North Beach and in Chinatown in San Francisco the F their mode split is about 50% uh mode share so there you have a dense Urban environment with lots of high quality Transit and pretty good um pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure so recognizing all those challenges understanding staff capacity technological adoption rates as well as slower implementation timelines from the state and federal government um we set up a redu ction process that recognizes those challenges but that still aims to keep you on that Target and continually reevaluating and moving towards that Target so we start by implementing a series of foundational actions that will set the city up for future success so developing financ financing mechanisms for existing buildings electrification adopting EV charg or reach codes uh and then finishing things like the general plan are kind of core to those foundational items then we aim to focus on Urban transformation projects building out your um active Transportation plan
investing in uh all electric trans Transit facilities working to sequester carbon in the environment through tree planting and open space preservation all the while implementing a more rigorous monitoring reporting and adjustment process that that so that in two years and three years you can make adjustments and understand what's working what's not working and how you can continually turn those policy levers um towards the latter half of the decade it's really about expanding those decarbonization programs moving from voluntary programs and incentive based programs to mandatory programs with real Financial mechanisms to help property owners and individuals and businesses make those changes and then all the while kind of maintaining that focus on an equitable implementation so that is that approach is really implemented through a series of greenhouse gas reduction plans and that's really the meat of the blueprint for carbon neutrality um go to the next slide so those action plans are kind of spread across all of these different uh sectors and we're not going to get into uh all the details of this tonight but this illustrates kind of the array of strategies and actions which are embedded in the blueprint itself um this table also just kind of helps to synthesize the breth of all of those actions the priority actions um as well as those partnership opportunities we had a lot of discussions in the foyer about how can I help how can I be involved what are the Partnerships with
PUBLIC HEARINGS AND MATTERS FOR CONSIDERATION 2. Receive a Presentation on the Recently Released Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality, Provide Initial Feedback and Questions for Staff, and Determine Next Steps for Commission Review and Preparation of Commission Recommendations to the City Council, Possibly Including Creation of an Ad Hoc Subcommittee to Draft Recommendations for Review and Finalization by the Full Commission Eric from Raimi Deb Fox Pete Gain Natasha Juliana Trathen Heckman Maddi Cloud Duane Bellinger Dennis Best Trevor Pitts Nina ?
cool blocks and cool neighborhoods that really can further this so this gets an illustration of what the where those partnership actions are and it illustrates some of that what the potential greenhouse gas uh reduction is from those plans overall um the next one shows the breakdown of where you get the most bang for your buck so to speak in terms of greenhouse gas reductions so those are things like maintaining your maintaining the city within snow McLean power making sure that residents have access to 100% renewable energy it's going to be electrifying or removing as much of the natural gas out of existing buildings as possible it's going to be electrifying your vehicle Fleet and then focusing on clean Transportation modes active Transportation Transportation demand management those are some of the the biggest ones on your CommunityWide side within your city side and your Municipal operations you're looking at vehicle fleets and buses Transportation demand management for staff uh and Consultants who work within the city uh as well as R fitting existing buildings now this gives a sense of the relative costs because each of those measures aren't uh equivalent in terms of cost but this allows you to kind of see the relative cost of different uh types of actions within the plan itself and again there's a lot of overlap here between some of those uh sets of measures or strategies um and their greenhouse gas reduction potential so things like existing buildings and uh vehicle
Ned Orett Matt Similac Steve Lou Richard Braun Andy Schrader Barry Busowitz Heather Hines – Discussed revised timeline for public comment. 3. Discuss the Action Recommended by Staff to Create a Specialized Ad Hoc to Review the Draft Blueprint for Climate Neutrality (Climate Action Plan) to Draft Recommendations for Review and Finalization by the Full Commission at a Subsequent CAC Meeting.
electrification have high costs but they also have very high benefits for the community as we sort of talked about earlier all right so uh fundamental to the plan itself was though these Corner what we call the Cornerstone actions or the kind of the priority actions so through extensive conversations with City staff and the leadership team there we identified these 22 priority actions to really jumpstart the emission reductions so these strategies align with Council priorities they generate significant reduction as well as co- benefits and are sort of foundational actions that help prepare the city to implement uh additional actions within the future um and then the next handful of slides is really going to highlight what those 22 priorities are so the first four focus on new and existing buildings the first is establishing a center for a One-Stop shop for resources on electrification but also other educational resources about rebates financing how can people improve their homes to reduce their footprint the second comes um from our initial conversations with you all about the development of a financing mechanism to support uh building electrification making sure that there are resources to help fund and fill the gap for uh both low-income households but other members of Petaluma to to make these changes to their homes the next plan the next actions focus on implementing a date certain uh electrification strategy and then a policy that phases in requirements for new
Edminster – voluntered Baker – voluntered Atchley – voluntered 4. Date and Time for November Meeting Only available date is November 8th. Rhianna will reserve room for 4pm. Available – Not available – Garti Next meeting is 11/8 at 4pm.
development for uh low embodied carbon materials so those are things like recycled materials or using different kinds of concrete that have lower uh emissions profiles the next set of five AC next set of actions really focuses on transportation and land use so these include adopting a transportation demand management ordinance to reduce uh vehicle miles traveled also implementing the city's vehicle miles traveled impact fee um and as well as the EV charging reach code um and then completing and implementing the active Transportation plan as well as the local safety plan to provide those opportunities and spaces for safe and comfortable travel around the city uh finishing and implementing the general plan land use strategies and then also starting to implement parking pricing policies and programs around the city as well um next we also have expanding reliable charging infrastructure that's a big Focus now at the state level and around and where there are funding opportunities um as well as reforming your zoning and permitting to allow development in the places where you want it to happen um the next set of Cornerstone actions focus on resource consumption um and we wanted to include just a little bit of levity within the presentation it's pretty dense it's a lot of material um but we can really assume that that uh that bucket is filled with blueberries and that s and her mother are somewhere nearby uh with their buckets as well but these uh these strategies really focus on
Rhianna will send notifications when confirmed. COMMITTEE COMMENT Peters – Commented on RCPA for the county meeting has a vacancy. Meeting this Friday. County of Sonoma going through similar process, draft climate actions due out in November.
resource consumption um they include uh requiring enclosures for new multifan and non-residential development uh it also includes continued work with a cool Petaluma to really understand consumptive based missions here within the community uh that mean what those emissions are that profile is and really uh tabulating and estimating those emissions locally uh and then it includes continued partnering with Recology and uh zero waste syoma on food waste and food diversion programs um the next set of uh Cornerstone actions focuses on sequestration including finishing the revised tree preservation ordinance revising the urban Forest plan with that clear implementation strategy and then working on a comprehensive Land Management uh plan for City owned properties so how does the city manage the properties both for uh greenhouse gas reduction benefits but also for biodiversity benefits as well um and then finally the last set of actions focuses on Municipal operations these include things like electrifying the transit and V vehicle Fleet here within the city uh finishing facility Audits and electrifying facilities themselves making sure that your Capital Improvement plan really aligns with your carbon neutrality goal that you're not spending uh money in ways that uh further increase emissions uh and then finally increasing um and upgrading your Corp yard to um to meet your electrification needs of your Transit Fleet and your uh facilities go the next one all right so that was a lot I
Encourage everyone to ready Petaulma and Sonoma County blueprint plan. STAFF COMMENT Rhianna – Adoption of renewable usage / renewable diseal. ADJOURNMENT 8:31 p.m. CALL TO ORDER FOR REGULAR MEETING START TIME 6:30PM ROLL CALL
realize um but but before we hand it back to you we want to let you all know and the community know what's happening next in the process so there are a number of ways that individuals can provide comments to the project team on the blueprint itself so you can write a letter to plan Petaluma city of puma.
org website there's a a portion of the site devoted to the blueprint on that site you can go and complete an online form if you have a a longer comments to provide um all those comments are due by October 28th um next steps in the process so once the comment period closes what we'll do as a team is consolidate all the comments we got both here at the commission also members of the community send comment letters or fill out the online feedback form or Who provided comments to us in the fory year this evening we'll tabulate all those comments into one really long table we organize those comments by sector or action plan depending on what those comments start to look like and then we'll start to go through those with City staff to make decisions about what the changes will be to the blueprint um moving forward uh the intent is to come back to boards and commissions later on this year in December with Council consideration uh early in 2024 uh so I want to just thank everyone as a long presentation it is pretty dense but hopefully the overview is helpful for you all as well as members of the community who are here this evening so thanks thank you so much um so at this point uh Eric if if you be available for a couple questions from uh the commission members so typically we do a brief round of clarifying questions on the presentation then we uh do a public round of public comment on the presentation and then we do uh commission member feedback and that would be when You' provide
detailed feedback on the blueprint uh and your initial thoughts uh Etc so we'll start with just the first round of commission member questions uh and you know try and avoid detailed comments as much as possible uh and then we'll do general public comment so um I guess I'll start at my right Dave if you have any questions no okay questions okay and so um I have a process question which is the public hearing 3A item receive presentation provide initial feedback questions for staff determine next steps for commission review Etc but then including pre creation of an ad hoc subcommittee to draft recommendations and then 3B is discuss action recommended by staff to create a specialized ad hoc so we've got a little overlap here between 3A and 3B um and I'm also wondering if it might not be more efficient to take public comments and then talk about process I I'm just I'm a little confused about the process piece of this because I think that um if we create an ad hoc which makes eminently good sense to me then we're going to have ample opportunity to dig in in more detail than we could possibly do tonight whereas this is really the Public's only opportunity in this type of forum so I'm just wondering if it you know since we will have this other opportunity and you know I mean frankly I could take several hours to just share my comments so far and I haven't even really finished that doesn't seem like a very sensible thing for me personally to do I imagine each of you probably also has
voluminous comments so just just wondering if we can make any fine tuning to this process this evening can I make a suggestion I I mean I think it makes sense for the commission tonight to um to really give High Lev comments you know just on the overall format um you know to the extent to which any big items were not included um you know our confidence level in the Cornerstone actions for example and the and the approach of the Cornerstone actions so really kind of take a really a big picture uh series of comments you know how close to it align with the framework for example um let the public speak and then yeah what you said and really dig into the details uh in the ad hoc process and in our next meeting that we would really then Redline the ad hoc would Redline a document with you know edit edits small and large and bring it back to the commission and the commission would have a chance to look at it for uh you know several days at least before the meeting yeah seems like everyone is aligned with that approach um great okay so um I did have just a couple clarifying questions before we moved in general public comment um in the the inventories so the community inventory and then the uh Municipal inventory I noticed that the airport contribution was 0% at the city level which makes sense because the city isn't flying airplanes but um the off-road Transportation part of the community ghg I just I'm curious what the percentage of the airport contribution is to that number because
the city does own the airport does sell the fuel at the airport and so if that is a meaningful contribution then that is an action that the city could take with it in its control that's a great question um and you're talking specifically about fuel use on site as opposed to people flying in and out which would be captured under a different regulatory structure and system um that's a great question we there are data sets when we developed the municipal inventory that were not readily available to us and that was one of those data sets so part of our uh recommendations uh through that process was revising and and working in developing those uh data pipelines so each inventory going forward would have have that full set of emissions inventory so we're not sure if that's a large amount of emissions it's probably a fairly small amount of emissions overall um but those are kind of some of the next steps for the city in terms of developing those data pipelines okay thanks and um I guess my only other question is just the the number 22 on Cornerstone actions is that a magic number if we really love a 203 Cornerstone action is that on the table are we what is the what is the feeling in terms of the Cornerstone actions I'm not sure if this is for me to answer really um it is I don't think there's a magic uh number necessarily um we want to make that number achievable so we don't want it to be 50 but we want to make and make sure that those actions are meaningful and that City staff are
able to take those on so I don't think it's a hard and fast rule that it's 22 okay great uh thanks again so uh at this point I got a question yeah oh okay um U my question is when you when you showed the um the cost numbers for um replacing vehicles with electric vehicles and also for electrifying buildings are those cost numbers based on the actual cost of of the electric vehicle or are they based on the cost of the electric vehicle over and above what it would cost to buy a gas vehicle uh those would be the new like the new purchase price for a vehicle okay so but I think it might be more helpful to actually show the Delta because and I I think that's actually probably really important with the electrification of buildings as well because you know everyone's hot water heater is going to die at some point and they are going to need to replace it so I I'd like to see those numbers look at what the Delta is moving to electrification and the information that we have for example from zero home is that everyone immediately starts making money uh on replacing their hot water heater with an electric hot water heater so be nice to kind of you know have that be more realistic to the cost I think that would help people organize their mind around making some of these changes great thanks I'll just I'll just add to that that when we were looking at the EV cost analysis it didn't include the cost savings that happens with um ownership you know not not having to pay for gas or uh oil
changes that kind of thing can I pile on there it also assumed a purchase of new vehicles and not everyone purchased purchases new vehicles and the market for used EVS is growing every year okay great at this point we're going to move into the general comment item for this agenda and so I do have a nice St back of speaker cards here people are limited to 3 minutes um and so we will try and honor that commitment I be questions from the there the opportunity to ask questions is the purview of the climate action commission I just the first Speaker we have is Deb Fox and I would like to take note that our timer is not functioning so I'm going to share my screen and we're going to see a timer on the screen for public comment hi uh all right I I'll uh want to say uh thank you for uh this plan I'm excited to see this implemented I have two main things that I want to make sure um are part of the comment is one uh would really uh appreciate having a longer public comment uh Beyond October 28th it's really important that the public is able to really uh understand what this document means the importance of it uh so I would really like to advocate for a longer uh extension on uh that process uh the second one is I really want to emphasize uh adding a number 23 and that number 23 that is listed as a low priority is about the organizational structure we have to make sure that that those staff uh positions are funded first and foremost starting January 1 of 2024 it's not a hopefully that
can happen peace um it needs to be the highest priority that staff and every department is a part of this green team because that's the only way this whole thing is going to work is that we have staff that are educated involved and communicating together to implement the plans on the inside so that all of the organizations on the outside can be doing a cohesive as I like to uh cite Peggy the wind and the sail the only way that wind wind is going to have some sale or sale is going to have some wind is if everybody is working together but I really need to emphasize the importance of having staff in every single Department that are part of a regular meeting helping to implement each of the action plans both for the city and for the uh Community participation thank you the next speaker card I have is Pete gang followed by Natasha Juliana good evening and thank you I I just jotted down a number of random comments uh many of which came to me uh today when I was reading through this document um so they're not in order uh here goes one observation is uh throughout the document the words climate change sounds so neutral um in in many circles we prefer to use climate crisis uh because um what's happening is actually an existential crisis um and it's not neutral at all um I wonder why uh this the the effort did not use more recent greenhouse gas data I know rcpa has compiled 2020 data um to me the report it is does not seem well grounded in climate science um it it it makes very short
mention of the climate science that is propelling us to take bold and immediate action um there's no mention of of what we mean by greenhouse gases no mention of methane F gases Etc uh one missing Cornerstone action is um complete streets per the advice of City thread we need to build our complete Mobility Network starting immediately they set as a goal 25 miles of our complete network uh by 2026 um also I wanted to point out that many other National and subnational jurisdictions around the world have also set the the wildly ambitious Target date for carbon neutrality of 2030 including four other cities in Sonoma County um and yes it's a it's a huge challenge um per the vision in the framework I would suggest that we as Petaluma uh maintain our our bold audacious goal of carbon neutrality by 2030 we set our sights on it and we just make it a point to do everything that we have to do to reach that goal including finding the necessary funding in that way we would be a leader to all of Sonoma County and to the rest of the country um and finally My overall question is what would the timeline look like if this were an actual emergency thank you the next speaker I have is Natasha Juliana followed by Tran Heckman hi I'm Natasha Juliana I am the campaign director for cool Petaluma I'm also a parent of a 19-year-old and a downtown business owner what I love about the 2030 goal which I know is audacious but it doesn't allow us to keep kicking the can down the road which is so easy
because our brain just doesn't really work with long long time frames which works against us in this situation I'm personally very excited to live into a new climate neutral future there are so many co- benefits that um I look forward to cleaner air cleaner water um quieter neighborhoods safer streets healthier homes healthier ecosystems more nature more Beauty and I am uh this this Chang towards more sustainable future does not scare me for example I love cooking on my induction stove it's better than gas um and I don't have to worry about carbon monoxide poisoning like the 12 petal umans who ended up in the hospital two weeks ago because of a faulty gas range in their apartment I'm however I am extremely terrified of a future that is just business as usual where we don't take action we have 8 billion people living on a finite planet we cannot keep consuming and polluting like there is no end my daughter will be my age in 2055 what will that world look like for her what will the river look like as the sea levels come up what will our skies look like as the fires continue my future grandchildren could be my age in 2085 what will their world look like I want to do my part to ensure they have the same beautiful planet that I've enjoyed that we've all enjoyed and I look forward to helping make the this blueprint a reality thank you the next speaker we have is trayan Heckman followed by Maddie Cloud good evening Commissioners thank you um feels exciting another kind of important
moment rat and I appreciate all the incredible work that was gone into the blueprint um so first gratitude second I want to back Deb's comment about an extended time frame the original climate framework was created by the community with the commission through a lot of really good organizing and it really um tapped the wisdom of our community I think there's a good base of work that's done here and with some more time we could better um bring the community's voice and wisdom and some of the things that are missing to this um so that's a primary comment I definitely understand the heavy focus on carbon neutrality in this it's a major goal for the city just wanted to note that water is often seen as the 1% of emissions for ghg water is life water creates food Health Community sequestration habitat and so there's a lot more um ways water could be represented in this I think importantly um Community engagement in the original climate framework it was called for some creative ways to do engagement like creating a pedala equital climate action um Network we really have to invest in the social infrastructure there's only so far that organizations and volunteers can do we have to have more robust um funded backbone Community engagement to really utilize and Engage The community's Voice um the approach to Priority actions I heard council member Baker mentioned I'd be interested in hearing what the what the thinking was for how the 22 actions were selected um things that build
engagement and build community momentum 2030 is a a big goal and there's a lot of a lot that we have to do so I'd be curious to hear what the approach was there and would maybe come up with some different actions pending that and then Gardens there's um in the original framework there was a a section about creating a climate victory garden movement in World War Two is it I guess we grew about 40% of our food in Victory Gardens and that addresses Health that addresses water that addresses climate um and just in our neighborhood the kavanau center food Force at the city helped install in our garden sequester two tons and one ton of carbon a year while growing a lot of food while having very low water use creating habitat creating Community if we had every household in our neighborhood had that sequestration on these very small Lots it's 20 tons just in one neighborhood um our garden is the equivalent on a seventh of an acre of 20 mature oak trees about so there's a lot that could be done um around Gardens I think that's a missing piece and thing with with compost some um some good ways to enhance the good work that's already there in the sequestration section um and I think that covers it so thank you very much the next speaker I have is Maddie Cloud followed by Dwayne Bellinger thank you very much this was great I love the blueprint uh my name is Maddie Cloud I'm a Petaluma City School school board uh trustee and I'm here because uh I'm kind of a plea to work with the schools
and to think about the schools when uh in you know completing this blueprint um we have over 7,000 students and families in Petaluma City Schools they're all dropping off and picking up their children um or they're driving themselves um every day twice a day and I think everybody in this room knows that every school has an impact with that dropping off and picking up which our our unfortunately our schools can't um deal with so I'm just I just don't see anything about the transportation impacts of that daily um picking up and US of our students we have 17 School sites just in pedalo City Schools we also have old Adobe and W schools over on the West Side they have the same issues that we do um so with obvious impacts these all need to be mitigated in some way and I'd like to see it in the blueprint specifically um I'm asking that the city work with the district um I'm a school board member this is part of what I really it's a passion of mine to create the safe streets and safe routes to schools that aim to reduce the use of cars as transportation bus routes bike paths slow streets lighted crosswalks quick builds to slow traffic on main streets um so many others these are one ones I just thought up as I was sitting there um so um I'd like to see many of these or as many as possible implemented to make our our schools safe for our families to bring their School their students and not have to worry at least have options that are a lot safer than what we have right now and now we
have so many cars dropping off and picking up because they don't feel safe on the streets um so thank you very much for [Applause] listening the next speaker is Dwayne Bellinger followed by Dennis best yes Dwayne here um good evening thank you for all your work on this project so far um the previous speaker mentioned W School among others I would point out that W school was deliberately designed with two small schools 440 students each uh was designed to be within walkable distance of the old crony Life program U the northern city and and that it's the houses are within walking distance by children they're all within walking distance it was deliberately designed that way not by accident and the the problem comes about and there's quite a bit of problem of people parking in front of the schools and running their engines while they're waiting to pick up kids the primary problem is the speed limit in the city there's no reason if Paris can't go to 19 18 miles an hour there's no reason we can't go to 18 miles an hour and if Sacramento says no put up the sign that says 18 miles an hour and enforce it let Sacramento take us to court the major problem that we have in this country is that in the 1950s we decided we'd subsidize cars massively every time we turn around we come up with a new subsidy for cars why do we P spend property tax money on cars why do we spend sales tax money on cars why do we subsidize the health the medical cost of cars the health cost from the lead tetraethyl
that that probably as result for significant number of our people being in jail the lead tetraethyl breathing the fumes of cars throughout the 50s 60s and 70s the health subsidize the medical cost subsidies to cars is enormous stop the subsidies subsidies have effect just stop the subsidies immediately no property taxes spent on subsidizing cars no sales tax on subsidizing cars what would we have if we did that we would have cars paid for entirely by the gas tax I've driven in Europe the gas STX there was $4 a gallon and it meant that the uh gas companies only got two we got $5 here how much is that going to sales tax and how much or going to gas tax and how much of the gas companies taking it's because Sacramento and Washington are owned by Big Oil Stop subsidizing Oil Stop subsidizing cars do this tomorrow change our speed limit tomorrow we we don't have to it's a great plan plan 5 years 10 years do it tomorrow thank you very much the next speaker I have is Dennis best followed by Trevor pittz good evening uh I'm Dennis bu noos uh my comment is mainly uh about uh bilingualism multilingualism uh and many of the things we see there about our vision for for uh these activities um I think it's important from an organizational perspective U thinking about staff Consultants thinking about the process of Engagement thinking about the process of communications uh that we think early on about uh bilingualism thinking about making things accessible thinking about engaging people
where they are bringing people into these discussions uh the motivation for me coming tonight was I saw in the advertisement for the Coffield Bridge initiative uh one of the comments and this is a concrete uh suggestion was that uh bilingual interpretation would be available on request and I think that we need to think seriously as a city about just making it a matter of fact uh so that we can have that accessibility when people decide to show up and express themselves and I think that this is very important uh part of our climate action activities but also broader activities within uh commissions and planning across the board uh thank you very much for the time muchas and uh have a good [Applause] evening well I'd like to address some practicalities seven years ago the city of Richmond had a similar plan to this one set up by the Ry people it would be of interest for the committee to find out just what the results have been in terms of greenhouse gas reduction and talking about other consultancies we had a consultancy that sold us on the so-called smart train now if you were thinking of a complete failure of trying to reduce greenhouse gas and trying to reduce traffic then the so-called SMART Train is probably the best example in the world it's costing right now upwards of $500,000 at sorry $500 million so it's half a billion dollars now what could you do with half a billion dollars in some other way to reduce traffic volume and problems and uh other greenhouse gas reduction
it's almost impossible to imagine a bigger failure in those terms so I think we should be really careful about complicated projects that might turn out to be not very effective we're talking talking about public transportation which is extremely difficult to get people converted to our buses run probably 90% empty most of the time they weigh what five or 10 tons each that silly train weighs about 50 or 60 tons and has four or five people in it when most of the time I see it if we really think that we can revolutionize the way people move around this town then I think you have a real problem that's going to build up right now public trans transport in uh in New York city is in a disastrous State people are simply not taking the Subways and the public transport in the way they used to do it's a huge problem all over the country to get a public transport system to work something like a Jitney system might work it certainly would work a lot better than our buses or even self-driving cars that you just call up almost anything would work better than what we have now as a Heritage Electric buses are unbelievably expensive and if the Chinese ones are any guide they're not very durable and they have a tendency to burst into flames and by the way as an environmental chemist I can tell you that putting out a fire in an electric vehicle is it's not a fire it's a runaway reaction that feeds on its own heat sometimes the only way you can put the fire out is to dump the car in a pond or a
canal that's the only way and sometimes it reignites so we have serious problems here and as a recycler of hazardous waste I can tell you that recycling these used batteries is a nightmare they are contain 20% of the energy in them left when they're socalled dead that energy is enough to blow you out the window and it means that you're dealing with highly active substances I know because I used to deal with them I had to incinerate lithium components thank you that's your not easy it cost a fortune fortunately they paid me the next speaker I have is Nina zido followed by Ned Orit hi um I'm troubled by the lack of specificity in In This Very bold plan um there are an awful lot of assumptions made and maybe there are uh clear definitions that specify what these outcomes are when I I get nervous when somebody else says oh well we're going to make some foundational assumptions and we're going to do some prioritizing and we're going to base our visioning on this which then becomes enunciated into policy and uh mutates into tactics uh and then a strategy is achieved well I'm troubled by a strategy for for for climate change in the midst of a climate crisis that requires more building more construction more noise more expense More Money More pollution um the fact is from a physics standpoint for things to cool off it has to be a reductive process there this whole process hasn't addressed the mitigations by choice they're just going to we're just going to build take the carbon down
what if that assumption is not enough um I I challenge us to look more closely at some of the assumptions that are bandied about uh a little cavalierly at least a little too cavalierly for my comfort um in this document thank you Ned Orit followed by Matt San good evening commission um first I thank you for the work going ahead that have been put in for years on this and now we're getting farther along so my the thing that came out to me in reading the draft report has to do it was about carbon neutrality but neutrality from what obviously the target is zero by a certain date and and hopefully beyond that we're going to go to negative -10 or something to get get to pre-industrial conditions but Net Zero of what where are we starting from and we know that our unit uh emissions in America or certainly in California about 20 tons per person per year so overall that's mostly in the and the world average is about four so the difference is all the goods and services that we're consuming the emissions embedded in those are enormous and they were sketched out a little bit in the plan but not the starting point for our for the emission reduction we need to do so there's another about 800,000 metric tons of carbon per year that pedal umans are responsible for so how to deal with that so we've got to get creative to go there and I think we can really take some leadership in doing that the basic method we've used so far in this county is carbon sequestration in soil and to to reduce that
extra 800,000 metric tons which were responsible for would take about 40,000 Acres of range land on which we could put compost every year for 20 years and that would knock it out that's just one one way and the whole County should be doing that that would be tremendous leadership and while we're doing that we're restoring the health in the soil which is really important because our health is dependent on the health of everything else living in the biosphere so we've got to help restore life throughout the planet that would be a good way to do it and get us started toward regenerative agriculture so it was mentioned in the report that local food production would be good but it has to if it's not done grown regeneratively we're not helping ourselves then we have to look at the transportation linkage food processing grocery stores that was mentioned in the report um and so forth but that way we start making a big difference make make things helpful and and then fiber is another area we can work on WE lucky to have Fiers shed group um near us um that's enough blabbing for now but I really appreciate the work what we started and I'm I'm going to submit some some more details that I can't talk about here there's too many details thank you Matt appreciate butchering uh your last name there I was going to say you did pretty well actually so thank you for attempting to read it I'm Matt sehck U I live here in paluma run two businesses here that are focused on reuse and reducing
emissions I have three young kids that go to school at mcneer uh frankly I'm proud to live in a city that has a plan at all so thank you thank you uh for making that happen I I suspect we're probably in the top 1% of of cities and towns America that actually have a plan that has um goals and targets uh that said to call uh falling short of the Target by 2030 ambitious I think is misleading and kind of disappointing by the definition of the word ambitious falling short of the goal is really not ambitious uh I think if we choose an actually ambitious Target and fall short of it and we land at zero that would be a better result I realize it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort but I don't think having a ambitious goal that is short of the target is the right goal uh related to something that an said I also think that showing the costs of doing this without showing the cost of not doing it is very misleading um I think that a lot of people will look at the plan and say wow this expensive uh this gentleman mentioned it you know it looks like a lot of money uh I would love to see by 2050 what happens if we don't hit these targets and what the cost in dollars is there I realized that's tough to do but I was a consultant once and I know that it's possible to put those numbers together uh and I think that's really important for for the general public for anybody that's interested to understand both sides of that story um and as Ann mentioned that the kind of Delta of what are we
actually going to spend uh if we do nothing uh that's pretty much it but um yeah just enthusiastic and and ready to get involved so thank you for making that possible cheers getting down to the last of the cards here uh the next speaker I have is Steve duoo followed by Richard Brun I lost my voice waiting um uh we're strong I've represent a group called G Street action that's strongly supportive of your recommendation uh in appendix 5.6 that consideration be given through a formal ordinance of of the city council to ban gas-powered leaf blowers is a major step toward achieving carbon neutrality by 2020 already we are part of the way there uh the state has instituted a law which goes into effect next January that bans the sale of these devices we want to go further and ban the use as well and this is because the bill does nothing to cail uh leaf blowers already being used by Landscaping businesses we are not asking the city to do anything out of the ordinary after all about 60 cities in California have some form of ban on gasoline driven gardening tools in already in place uh what is to be gain from taking this step a drastic reduction of carbon emissions and other pollutants in our air for instance Michael Shapiro says that it's astounding but true that gas leaf blowers generators and lawnmowers admit more air pollutant Statewide than California's 14 million cars that's stated by in the magazine of the Sierra Club Sierra magazine also the noise from these blowers is deafening
especially to the people who use them our view is that banning leaf blowers then is just lwh hanging fruit after all the state of California has made available subsidies for the transition given that this and the reduction of greenhouse gas emmissions that will bring us substantially closer to carbon neutral ity by 2030 there is no reason not to take the step now and ban gas powered leaf blowers thank you the next speaker is Richard Brun followed by Andy Shrader okay all right thank you and once again the display was great out there you guys did a m the people who put it together did a magnificent job um my point is um money money is necessary for everything we can do the city has a limited budget people have limited budgets so what exactly is going to be the most cost beneficial is it going to be responding to a worldwide problem of CO2 gas where we are a DOT among billions of other people or is it preparation of the people here for what is coming if the Declaration by the city council that it is a climate emergency then we have to assume that it is coming and the you have to prepare the city for what is coming we can't do both we can't take care of CO2 for the world and at the same time prepare for what is coming there there are all sorts of huge projects that will be necessary to accommodate this so that is that is my major point there and so what we need is a plan and the health safety and economic well-being of the community is the number one priority the city council
was Disturbed enough to point that uh to have this climatic uh climate emergency and it's going to have an effect on us so what are we going to do about it that's my point thank you the last speaker card I have is for Barry [Music] btz sorry about that Andy Shader you know sometimes my Mom would call me Barry when she was mad uh good evening Commissioners um Andy shraer I'm a local father of a seven-year-old and a 9-year-old which if we get this right can be our ambassadors to the year 2100 they'll be 84 and 86 as has been mentioned before uh number one I think we need more more time than October 28th this is an excellent uh document very well done and I think a robust local stakeholder process can make it even better number two the actions of the city staff need to match the city's climate action plan and goals which means a robust training process of every member of the city staff on how it impacts their specific job and how what they need to do number three I completely Echo Ned's comments earlier that a a climate smart healthy soils effort is essential to this effort to draw down emissions it's the one actual technology that works the oldest technology on Earth and lastly I want to address the very first gentleman who spoke out of order in general public comment who said that petaluma's actions don't matter in the greater world when the city council of Petaluma approved a ban on permitting new gas stations they were followed by every city in somoma County including somoma
County and then the city council of the second largest city in the United States Los Angeles followed suit and introduced the same legislation The Guardian newspaper called Los Angeles the most influential city in the whole world so when Los Angeles introduced its climate emerg this is an example so when Los Angeles introduced its climate emergency legislation the city of Berkeley then Richmond and many of the Bay Area cities including all eight cities in the county of somoma followed by the United Kingdom New York City and now it's up to 2300 climate emergency declarations across the world and organization called safe cities which then council member Dinda Fischer helped found has taken up the responsibility to help these exact climate emergency cities work together share best practices so they can get to carbon neutral as soon as possible without Reinventing the wheel so that we as a global Community can work together towards dropping climate emissions as fast as humanly possible which is what this emergency really calls for I was on one of their calls today they're still working hard at this if Petaluma doesn't lead the way to carbon neutrality nobody else is going to be motivated to do so but if met Petaluma actually does lead the way which this ex excellent document does other cities will follow gratefully the small agricultural communities throughout the country will see themselves in Petaluma in Iowa Nebraska Indiana Ohio and they'll know that they too can create
carbon neutral cities what happens in Petaluma doesn't stay in Petaluma it echoes Barry btz uh good evening thank you Commissioners and staff and um the public um I I've been especially helped by the public tonight in the comments I started reading the blue Brint this afternoon and after I spent an hour or something on it I I was pretty overwhelmed and I didn't really want to come and I didn't really have enough thinking to to comment but but uh seeing the display boards and talking with the energized citizens and residents here uh has made a difference and um and you're doing heavy lifting you're doing hard work and and the public is also and and and I appreciate that and and I I'm especially moved to make a comment about the Smart Train I'm a proponent of active Transportation mostly by using it and the Smart Train is one of the several forms of active Transportation I use I've ridden it at the 5:116 in the morning there were more than four people on the train and I've ridden it other times a day and there's more than over over at 5:16 so that's my personal direct testimony anecdotal I understand but um um I believe it to be holy factual and and I'm also especially appreciate the the the the reminder not only that this is a crisis but that the cost of not doing it is our lives thank you very very much for the robust public comment I think it was really appreciated and will go a long way to making this document better uh I will say before we move into the commission member
feedback portion of this and I know there was a little bit of back and forth around the ad hoc topic as well uh before we do that um this isn't uh an action or a recommendation and there's no staff report on it but we did receive the most public feedback about extending the duration of the public comment period And so what we can do as a commission is take a straw poll on how we feel on extending the public comment period and uh if the members of the commission informally agree that that's a good idea I think that direction will go some way in how the public comment period is treated after this meeting I personally do think it should be extended and if anyone else agrees now would be the time to say that so my question is this was released on October 2nd I believe in um October 28th was given as the deadline is there a reason for that amount of time that to begin with good evening chair members of the commission Heather hin special project manager um with the planning division um so no it was approximately a month um I did have an opportunity to talk to a couple of the members of the public who requested a longer period we um will'll work with that um I've already talked with uh Remy Consultants too about you know pushing pushing that out to allow some more time so we'll work with um the members that are trying to do more of the organizing and get some input from broader groups to get a sense of what that time frame would be obviously we do want to keep moving along with with
this um and that was one of the reasons it kind of got pulled apart from the general plan when the general plan um was more needed more time for the sea level rise and um flood modeling that was why we pulled the blueprint separate from that so that that could move forward ahead so we want to be moving forward but we want to be moving forward with the community with good input so we will work to Define that I would prefer not to kind of create a date extension on the you know just on the Fly I'd rather have a chance to talk with the community members who are trying to do some of the organizing and come up with a revised timeline great thanks I think uh message received uh so before we move into the next item of the agenda which is the staff report regarding the ad hoc um now would be the time as discussed earlier to provide highlevel feedback on the document and in particular the sections uh that may be missing uh as well as uh any thoughts on the general public comment related to this so uh Dave thank you appreciate it chair uh first of all I wanted to uh thank our Consultants uh you put together a really comprehensive plan and I've had a chance to review it it's a mind bogglingly uh and I wanted to thank uh City staff and the community for coming out and it just uh it's incredible because I get to work with uh cities throughout uh the area as part of my day job and I can tell you we are light years ahead especially for the size of our city on what we're trying to accomplish
here um I would encourage those who feel like we haven't received enough community uh input or that we're taking we're not taking enough time to consider the fact that no plan's perfect there's never going to be a plan that's going to accommodate every everyone's uh you know their their considerations we need to move forward and start getting some of the actions done that are laid out in this plan so I I highly recommend that we uh we move forward and and there will be opportunity to tweak as we as we implement the plan right it's not a static thing uh I also want to make sure that we acknowledge the um the huge contributions by Ned Orit who is a commissioner uh and provided uh invaluable knowledge on the consumption uh portion so thank you Ned and uh yeah I really appreciate that so thank you feedback I just uh Echo those comments and I appreciate the plan it's a very comprehensive plan I'm looking forward to public comments and uh moving forward I also want to say thank you um to Remy and um to our climate action manager for and the city staff planning department for putting together this plan it really is taking a big step forward um building on the framework that that we did as a commission and and as a Comm commity I think we set a pretty high bar with that and I think this this is a really good draft document um and has a lot of a lot of substantive thought in there um I have a few uh few comments that I'll say tonight um one thing that I was thinking about was that the
uh the city emissions are as a as 1% is a fairly small I mean it's a tiny amount of our overall emissions and so my feeling is that there are a lot of Cornerstone actions related to Municipal emissions and that we have to get a lot of Leverage out of those actions so I feel like the city needs to get you know the schools in the sidecar and we really need to have a a business Round Table process and that the efforts that the city makes that really becomes a part of the community experience and that businesses and large non nonprofits for example really can learn from what the city's doing um I feel like the uh the transportation initiative is the single biggest and most important area that we need to work on um and I feel like those initiatives should um should begin in in the um in the daak areas first you know in the disadvantaged communities I think that's where we need to really walk our walk um with Equity considerations um it seems clear from from comments tonight and and reading this document that we're going to need some supplemental sources of funding that's perhaps a climate fund or something that's independent of of the city budget we're going have to figure out how to do that as a community and not rely on the city to do that um a couple kind of kind of smaller um well one bigger comment is overall I'm uncomfortable with removing adaptation from this document partly because it's such an integral part of our response to climate change and I understand why it was
done because we're trying to move more move forward more quickly on but I do feel like this document the finished document should have a list of recommendations that are in the general plan that are specifically uh climate related not not just adaptation but also because the land use portion is so big uh and such a key part of our transportation issues that that that the the why is missing in this part me when you talk about the land use you know like why you need to get you know more multif family housing and sing single family housing districts and things like that I think we could motivate people more if they understood how all these things fit together and that's not really spelled out here um um just a couple more thoughts uh I do think it'd be helpful to understand the analysis behind the Cornerstone actions and why they were selected that's not entirely clear like what didn't quite make the list um and um just a couple smaller things I think buildings we need to talk about passive Heating and Cooling more and um and also uh talk more about refrigerants and other um climate forcing gases and um they're not as much on the radar but have a big short-term impact because we do there is kind of an argument to be made that you know acting faster on climate forcing gases what do we need to be doing right now you know and so I think helping helping us sort which of the Cornerstone actions we work on first you know and the theory you know we did that whole theory of chains
exercise but I think that's kind of where we are now is how do we sort which priorities go first so understanding a little more of the Cornerstone actions and then um the and the the piece about climate forceing gases and how they're playing out right now because it does seem like climate change is accelerating and perhaps that's why thank you commission member ABY um I will Echo the gratitude for the group of people um that put this together I I I will admit that there was a part in here that I started tearing up because I was so proud to be part of Petaluma um and that part is the city's goal is to work towards carbon neutrality by 2030 with this the city is pursuing the what does it take scenario which me me so happy the city is committed to working towards carbon neutrality and will leverage new opportunities to reach even deeper reductions just um very inspired and um happy to see how much work was put into this um but as far as comments go um actually I'll start with this comment which is the um developing that cost benefit analysis for um making these changes um at like we were talking about with the cars and um I would say with buildings and um lots of other things uh you know what is there's the there's the sort of price tag but then there's also the cost you know and so that I think that would be really valuable for the for myself to see but then also for the community to see and and create Buy in and um and I think that's why meetings like this are so important you
know everybody's input is putting is um bringing this to the Forefront um I was asked by contractor to request that um the city um consider extending work hours to to earlier in the morning cuz right now contractors can't start to work working until 8:00 or 9:00 on weekends and um as the afternoons get hotter you know you can imagine workers being on the roof and how hot that you know it's 20 degrees hotter on a roof than it is on the ground and um that is also an equity issue um so if we extended uh working hours till like 7: a.m.
and I know that that there's a noise issue there but there's also I mean it's a noise issue versus a human you know health issue um uh the other thing I I I saw a few mentions of it but I I felt like there could be more consideration for building materials um that not only have low embodied carbon but also contribute to a circular economy um you know reuse regeneration of material products uh I there was a mention of uh what is the phrase um I can't the phrases it's giving me now but basically there were a bunch of mentions of tenants you know with equity and everything like that but there wasn't a whole lot of um solutions for how to incentivize landlords to be making some of these changes um I I actually searched the word landlord and there wasn't a single mention so there was there was I remember a piece of that that that talked about that um the name the phrase is escaping me [Music] um there was a gentleman this evening that talked about accessibility of meetings um for uh Spanish language um I I this is being recorded I guess it's going to be posted online but I just want to reiterate we talked we talked about this like another couple months ago that um having these meetings online is is actually also an equity issue um some people are you know it's difficult for them to get out and some people um who are working two jobs it's easier for them to be making dinner while they're listening to a meeting like this um or even particip you know able to participate um as far as
Community engagement uh I think this is maybe part of the ad hoc committee but um I have a lot of ideas about um you know highlighting local businesses maybe bringing in the schools having um having there be a class at one of the high schools to do a weekly uh thing for the Argus corer about you know highlighting people that are doing cool things um so these are all probably things for um like more detail oriented but I think Community engagement um is sort of put in um um sort of glossed over but you know it's in there a lot but it's um could be fleshed out a little bit more um I'd like to reiterate that somebody talked about water needing to be more I think it was trayan talked about water um needing to be more Central to the the discussion of the future and that's all I have thank you I guess I'm up um lot of great comments from my fellow Commissioners thanks for doing the heavy lifting just leaving me with a few comments and um also uh thanks to staff and consultants for having boiled down a heck of a lot of content into a relatively concise and that still overwhelming document um I think one of the top things that jumped out at me uh upon reading this today was as Amy pointed out yes we're we're doing the what's it called again the the all of the above what's the what what it takes yeah sorry I'm Delirious been reading this thing way too long today um yeah the what does it take scenario and yet at the same time there's some equivocal comments in the document that say
well yeah we don't really think this is likely but we're going to try I I want to see us really truly commit I think that's a very important thing for us to do because nobody really overachieves a goal if anything we fall short of goals right so let's set the bar where we really really really think it needs to be and not do any of this like well we might do 97% if we are you know turned into super men and super women like no we need to say we're we're really going to do this or we absolutely will not I think that's hugely important um I also think a a couple of comments others have made that I want to underscore I think nah Zito's point about we need to look at reductive strategies and not just build more do more strategies because those all involve carbon expenditures so I think it's really important to think about what we don't need to do or what we need to not do right like build more stuff I think yes we need more housing but who needs housing the people at the very very bottom end of the socioeconomic Spectrum need housing others not so much I also agree that having Spanish language is as a regular thing is hugely important if we are sincere in all of our Equity rhetoric um I also really appreciated some of the graphics I like the um shades of green on the ghd reduction potential and the shades of red in relative cost I would love to see that go a couple of steps farther and see well how how do those overlay you know where do we have high impact and low cost for example
but I think there are also some criteria that were missing for example as as an and others have very um astutely pointed out the cost of not doing this stuff is pretty staggering and that is sort of the overriding consideration that's why we're here so we need to really understand that and to that point I think speed of delivery is hugely important um the one single comment I made more often than any other in this document was sooner and I do think they actually a lot of relatively easy quick wins some things that in fact are underway or are waiting in the wings and that can really be addressed much more quickly if we have the political will to devote the capital and Staffing to that which of course go together um and also another Criterion that I think is really important is social impact you know things that are visible and show progress and demonstrate the types of quality of life improvements that Natasha mentioned can really um uh mobilize people to engage in a way that no number of reports or presentations or public events can do if we can do some of the Tactical urbanism things and have people go wow my street is really a lot safer calmer quieter now and I actually feel my blood pressure go down that's a win that you can you know R carry a lot of other stuff on so I think we need to be looking at those again speed of delivery and social impact as being criteria in what we do and when we do it as being equally important to some of the criteria that have been discussed
that's it for tonight thank you commission member edminster you did steal my comment on the four boox Matrix about the lowcost high impact so um certainly appreciate it as well as adding some more criteria to that you know I do think some of the aspects of prioritization you know would be well served by the commission to better prioritize which of the 22 or 23 or 25 or whatever if there's a discussion at the next meeting regarding prioritization uh I think that would uh serve the community well I do have a couple quick comments and then two sort of more in-depth uh discussion points so um the first somewhat related to the prioritization but the the sheets out here on the walls did a good job of noting with the stars and the icons what was a Cornerstone action and what was a a city priority I didn't see that in the document as clearly and so um would be good to just get that throughout the document um as well as in the presentation there was the summary of action plans table and that you know that that table could definitely go into the document um and then the related comment on that you know I I personally think there should be one cornerstone action uh per sector just you know we only have clean energy we could obviously do many clean energy uh Cornerstone actions relatively quickly with you know lowc cost high speed and high impact uh and then water you know I this is a a broader probably more in-depth conversation about water but the water chapter really just talks about
the resource of water and not necessarily our water system and I would like to see uh more documentation around our water treatment facility specifically you know the city has moved forward with a a massive 5 megawatt floating solar project there that's going going to be one of the nicest biggest floating solar projects in the country when that comes online you know and that's that's only one Pond of I think we have five or six more ponds there to do and so that's the first piece on the on the water part of it the second piece is the biog gas facility that's there the document needs to speak to the biogas facility and I'll give a little bit of analogy here not to get too long- winded but at the last city council meeting there was a item on the consent calendar for an excavator purchase that purchase ultimately went through even though there are uh electric Alternatives the point I'm making is that in the council comment and in the staff comment there was confusion between renewable Diesel and biogas and the city council said why why can't we get an excavator that runs on the biodiesel from our water treatment plant okay and so the the water treatment plant produces biog gas that biog gas is intended to power Recology Fleet I don't know the status of that contract I don't know if that contract is in the best interest of the city relative to all the uh incentives available for the production of biog gas I also don't know the production or status of that facility but that is one
of the largest capital investment that the city has made in recent history is that facility so that facility needs to be brought online it needs to be prank cranking out biog gas so that Recology Fleet is powered and some of our larger heavyduty city fleet vehicles are powered the second thing that's not really into the document is the city's heavy Vehicles Fleet and that's that's the toughest things to reduce is your heavy Vehicles right but we need to at least speak to that in the document what is our plan for a heavyduty vehicle Fleet and the last point I'll make on this topic is the renewable diesel piece so the reason the excavator purchase moved forward is because the city is apparently already uh purchasing renewable diesel this is something that we talked about at the commission and it was a bit of a surprise to me I I was under the understanding that we would need to sign some kind sign of contract for that but apparently that is already done and the city's already transitioned to renewable diesel which is a huge win and something that should be included in the blueprint if true uh and if not true certainly some miscommunication occurred at the last city council meeting so to just put a pin on this topic it's that the document should speak to the city's biogas facility our heavyduty vehicle Fleet and our renewable diesel purchasing plan the last Quick comments I'll make related to the um public comments the one from Maddie Cloud at Puma City schools on working
specifically with the schools as a component of the transportation demand management that seems like very lwh hanging fruit and can easily be tucked into that section just couple lines you know there's the TDM chapter how do we do Transportation demand management let's have a specific goal and focus for the schools so I think that's a that's an easy one uh as well as the comment on the gas powered leaf blowers I was happy to see that having you know personally myself spoken before the city council for years on that topic you know there is again lwh hanging fruit there and I personally think that should be extended to uh all uh off-road equip equipment right so uh what he mentioned in his comment is that the state is working on this they have banned this type of equipment the sale of it and so we should go beyond leaf blowers uh the state uses the acronym sore small off-road equipment and so we should have a ban on small off-road equipment at some point by [Music] um the last uh comment I'll make and and not to go uh grandstanding but um you know the parking management strategy is near and dear to my heart so uh it was uh good to see one person speak about the potential cost of uh non-free parking uh because that was only one person in a relatively full room right and this is a democracy and as long as we have less than 1% of the public speaking out about the this parking management strategy then that is a win but we need to message and communicate this very clearly because
the way it's written in the document is a little bit scary we are going to put costs on Downtown parking so it is inconvenient for people so they take alternative modes of Transit and so that messaging should be softened and made more approachable to people right and so we need a parking management Strate y there are plenty of ways to do parking management strategy that don't involve parking meters that don't involve paying for parking every time you go downtown just look at mil Valley mil Valley's RSVP program every resident that pays into that program gets to park downtown Mill Valley for free and go shopping and the people that don't live in Mill Valley pay right and so that type of policy is very popular having The Outsiders pay for benefits that go to the local residents right and so the more we can message that the people that want to visit our beautiful downtown our beautiful tourists they can pay our Transit taxes and they can pay our parking fees and you know this is the little speech I'll make this is a letter we have from the Attorney General's office of Governor Brown from January 3 2008 and it's regarding the draft eir for the general plan back to Pamela tuft when she was heading this and says right here the ja draft general plan requires the city to study the feasibility of a city-wide Transportation demand Management program which includes parking management funded by development fees and so that was back in 2008 and so we've been talking about this parking
thing and this Transportation demand management thing for a very long time and so we need to accelerate that and I personally will take it upon myself to make sure that it gets implemented and so I don't need to be on my high horse about this but the impact of free parking is a huge underestimated climate impact the high cost of free parking you know all the shoe pieces is out there they'll know what I'm talking about but the thing is we need to get the messaging right for this and the the document is one way to do that and the public comment is another way to do that and so we just need to accelerate this because people driving around parking for free is no longer an option so um having said all that I think there's a last couple items on our agenda for this evening again thank the public and the consultants and staff and everyone for this the next agenda item is the discussion of an ad hoc so Rihanna I don't know if you want to make any comments about this item so staff is recommending that the climate action commission create an ad hoc to do a deep dive into the document draft recommendations to bring back to the full commission in November for a vote and what a discussion and a vote and once a conclusion has been reached those recommendations will be moved forward to Remy to incorporate into a final document to convene with staff and then decide what needs to be incorporated into a final document okay and um this was clarified in the staff report so this body has nine
members one of the members is a city council member number and so that means that uh Quorum is four and a majority is four so less than yeah sorry to clarify um the STA the uh Council liaison is not a part a full part of the climate action commission so a quorum is three it's not to exceed four so we will need to have three members in the ad hoc MH I'd like to volunteer this is my day job so it's near and dear to my heart and I also have considerable expertise in the subject matter we need two more volunteers I'd like to volunteer I'll do [Music] it I nominate you Ben but I'll uh I'll be happy to join if not okay it looks like we have three volunteers uh Rihanna do we need to take a formal vote on this the creation of ad hwks is an informal action so we don't need to take a formal vote the three volunteers I will contact next week and we'll set up a meeting to discuss the details further okay great um couple other items on our agenda I did neglect to uh go over the approval of minutes so uh that was an earlier agenda item that I missed apologies for that so uh the approval of the minutes is done by acclamation so if anyone has any changes to the minutes now would be the time to make those comments okay the minutes are deemed approved the final two items we have are Committee Member comment followed by staff comment so um actually we have discussion of the date and time for the November meeting because the November the original November meeting falls on a City observed holiday
so we will need to move that date and time and after reviewing the City chamber's calendar the only available date is the Wednesday before which would fall on November 8th the timing is open and flexible I I like the eth I personally think earlier in the day was better if this is such an important document and we are trying to finish it by the end of the year you know if that's what is the earliest we could meet 400 p.m.
I can try to reserve the room for 4 P.M if that's the consensus let's can everybody come at four I I'll actually be out of town I'm very sorry four o00 on the e8th works for me okay one two three we need a fourth Committee Member to hold a meeting no okay the next meeting 400 pm on the 8th assuming we can coordinate that time and if not you know I'm assuming later will work well for everyone I will send out notifications once I confirm okay uh thanks and then I guess uh I'll go left to right this time in terms of Committee Member comments okay um I guess I'll make one comment and this is uh for those members of the public uh still sitting there so um the rcpa countywide meeting I Pete I believe you are on this committee so it does have a vacancy for Sonoma County uh so there's two generally the each supervisor District gets two and so um I encourage more participation in uh those meetings our CPA meetings that is one potential funding mechanism for this climate blueprint you know the rcpa was unsuccessful in that tax measure that doesn't mean they've given up but I do encourage people to come that meeting I think is this Friday I took a look at the agenda it was you know of note and I think uh at least in terms of this commission trying to propagate more climate action we should spread the word and get another seat on District 2 for that body and get more participation there uh the last thing I'll say uh for my comment is the county of somoma is going through a very similar
process as the city of Petaluma and I believe there uh draft climate actions I don't know what they are calling them but those are going to be due out in November as well and so November will be a very busy month for actual climate actions but I encourage everyone to not only read the updated blueprint for Petaluma but also read the county of Sonoma plan because their actions and their funding mechanisms need to align with ours does anyone else Committee Member comment okay staff comment the only comment I would like to make is to clarify the adoption of renewable diesel usage by the city fleet the fire department and Transit departments use the school district facilities for their their fueling services and that trans transitioned to renewable diesel in 2018 earlier this year the city entered into a joint fueling Services uh requests for proposals with the county and the city of Santa Rosa we recently received notification of the lowest bidder for that request for proposals and there's documentation that staff is working on to bring that contract forward to city council for review and hopeful approval so part of the fleet has transitioned and the other part is pending city council uh approval of the contract great thanks um with that this meeting is