 our recording. All right, great. Good afternoon, everybody. Let's kick this meeting off with our vision. And Stephanie, I don't know if the goals have been finalized for next year. Is that is that published? Are they still talking about it? Do you know the goals for how many goals? Oh, I think they did. I think they were adopted one or two meetings ago, but they are in the the council has on the council page, you should be able to access them. OK, I'll take a look at it because I'll have to change this. All right, so I mean, everybody's aware of our vision, right? I mean, we want to work collaboratively with the town and community, but our goals will change. So I'll take a look at them and modify these for our next meeting. In terms of our execution pillars, it's continues to stay the same. Our metrics. So my metrics here, and I talked to Stella separately, we were talking about transportation and Stella, if you feel like there are some metrics here that you want to add for transportation, please let me know. And I'd say the same for everybody else as well for each of your pillars. Our community participation has been dwindling. We had five people last time. So I know we're having the transportation education series today. I'm hoping that we'll have a improved participation today, but I also want to make sure that we're sending these flyers out ahead of time to our network. So we give them enough time to come to these meetings and plan it out. Stephanie, for you as an action item for next month, if you can and provide us with a summary of the expense spent for the year. You can take that action item. OK, I'm going to do my best. As I said before, this is new. I don't know that I even I'll do my best. I just want to say to that some of the there's a sustainability budget, but that there may be other projects that don't specifically fall under sustainability, like building related projects that I might not even know about, because sometimes that happens. So I just want to be clear that what I'll be able to access is really just the sustainability information from that fund account and from that account, but it won't necessarily mean that other things aren't happening. OK. Yeah, I know in the past, we've talked about Sean coming and talking to us about it as well. And I I know he's probably being pulled into multiple meetings as well. Just something to consider as well, Stephanie. Yeah, I can. Yeah, I'm going to actually try to meet with him. This way, if not by the end of this week, then certainly next week. OK, I have some things to check in about. OK. And then for our action items. The stretch video that everybody got a chance to watch the stretch video that Jesse sent up. OK, I hear I see some nods. OK, because we'll be talking about that today. And then Stephanie, I think you have some additional action items here. Anything that you want to talk about where we. Change the status here. OK, so let's see the first one, I would say ongoing the second one I was actually at the MMA conference and spoke to the folks at Mass Development who are responsible for the PACE program. And the woman I spoke with was wonderful, gave me her card and said that all I needed to do is reach out to them and they'd be happy to assist us with outreach at a chamber breakfast. Outreach at a chamber breakfast or some other kind of event. So they would be willing to give us information if we needed it in terms of successful projects. OK. Sorry, that was the Chamber of Commerce. That was a Chamber of Commerce meeting, Stephanie. Well, it's kind of both. It's they could it says discuss the successful projects. We don't have any in town, so it would have to be from other communities. We don't have them here. So. I'm sorry, I'm missing something. You there's two items. There's the first item I said was ongoing. The second item reach out to PACE. Yeah, that's the one that I was saying I ran into someone from the Mass Development program that oversees the PACE program. And they're willing to work with us and they would be able to give us information about successful projects as well as come to a chamber breakfast. So it's kind of Don is listed as that next one, but it's kind of both of us were kind of collaborating on that one. OK, I guess. What's what would be the next step here, Stephanie, then? Well, I think probably Don and I could maybe meet with the woman the contact from Mass Development. I think that might be helpful in terms of. And also, I mean, I think we need to find out if we can get this as a chamber. As we can get this on a chamber breakfast agenda. So that might be something that Don would do. Yeah, I can do that. And and the person at the Mass Development Finance Agency, which is essentially the financing arm for the PACE program. That was a good conversation, you said, Stephanie. It was an excellent conversation. Yeah, she was wonderful. And they, yep, I was walking by the booth and they saw my. Badge and they stopped me so to have a conversation. They were desperate for some conversation because they were kind of at the edge. So but it was great. It was really fruitful conversation. So. So, Don, have you had a chance to reach out? Laura, I'll get back to you. I see your hand raised. Don, did you reach out to the chamber? I didn't. I mean, you know, one of the things that came up actually thanks to you, Vasu, because I hadn't taken a look at the statute in a number of months is the, you know, the changes that are taking place in the PACE program now because of the August legislative actions, making new construction eligible for PACE. And in fact, Massachusetts has out a what they call a straw proposal, as I think you may have seen, Vasu, which is to develop the kind of to develop the program for new construction and their their their timeline calls for this the release of the guidelines for for PACE for new construction to come out this month in February. So there'll be a lot that would need to be added to that discussion because in my mind, new construction is a big deal as we get a lot of new construction or hopefully new construction in the town to be eligible for the financing. Yeah, definitely a lot going on here. And if we're talking about the specialized stretch code today and and that applies to new construction and significant renovations as well. So we have to see how everything ties in together and what's going to be the conversation that we have and push the town on in a certain direction. Yeah, and the proposed PACE guidelines for new construction actually reference the stretch codes and, you know, the the opt in specialized energy code. So all of this stuff going on back and forth is part of the is part of the guidelines for the new construction for PACE financing for new construction. Yeah, I mean, I think it still still shouldn't stop you from having the conversation with at the Chamber of Breakfast, right, as part of the agenda with them, with the businesses, right, that shouldn't stop you. So these two actions still can coexist with the update in the law. You mean setting up the chamber breakfast, right? Reaching out to set up the chamber breakfast. I can certainly get back in touch with the the head of the chamber, who, as I said, a number of months ago, I met with for an hour or so in my office. So I can certainly reach out to her this coming week and I can coordinate with Stephanie on what makes the most sense in terms of trying to coordinate setting that up with, you know, the mass with mass development finance agencies. Availability to come be a part of that. Yeah, OK, OK. And I will I'll reach Stephanie. I'll be in touch with you over the next day or two to try to move forward on that. Yeah, tomorrow is great, if you can. Laura, you had your hands raised. Yeah, I just and maybe we can add this as an action item for our different meeting, but that I'm I want to be sure that we're being as protective is not the right word, but that's what's coming to my mind of Stephanie's time as possible. And this action item one, I actually don't know what that data is going to be useful for as written. So I think if we're collecting data, we should make sure that we're going to be able to use it in some way. And I don't think just the number of buildings is going to tell us anything. So I just want to flag that. Yeah, good point, Laura, it do understand we have to be mindful of Stephanie's time. Don, what do you think? Do you think this information will be useful for you? We can I think I think what will be more useful is, you know, the the fact that Stephanie walked by and and reached out to the mass development people to me, that that's the next thing that should happen is trying to coordinate that with a chamber breakfast, whether it's, you know, and we could talk about it because because at that about that point in time the guidelines should be issued for new construction. There can be a kind of full-fledged discussion of of pace financing, what it means, how you go about doing it, what it can be used for, what is required. And the process, too, right, Don, we talked about the beginning involved. The whole process of how you do it. And and maybe that makes the most sense. And maybe Laura is right, spending a lot of Stephanie's time trying to find out how many. Because, I mean, that was an issue which popped up when we weren't talking about new construction. We were talking about only stuff that could be renovated or retrofitted. And we thought, gosh, it's a it's a it's a market. We've got to find out what the market is. I think opening it up to new construction is going to. Potentially open up a lot more. And and and I think that it probably would not be the best use of Stephanie's time to try to run down, you know, how many multifamily housing projects and how many commercial buildings we have in the city. It's not that that wouldn't be important long term, but I think short term it's the better use of Stephanie's. The piece of Stephanie's time that can be work with me would be to work on this chamber mass development finance agency, you know, some sort of a breakfast presentation. OK, Stephanie, you agree with one less action? I'm thrilled to have one. You were about to say Stephanie. No, I was just I was actually going to say I agreed with that. And I I did want to add that sometimes when we're collecting data to what I'm finding recently is that it seems like it should be easy to just access certain data. And when we start trying to collect it, it's like going down a rabbit hole. And even things that I think that we've already got information on, it's proven to be more complicated. For instance, I'll just throw out the the fleet inventory. You know, so I just feel like putting those things down are as agenda and action items seem simple. But lately I'm finding that they're actually not. They're just huge time sucks. Some of the things have to happen, like the fleet inventory. We have to find a way to make that work. And maybe it's like things that we need to do better in the future to organize our data. But right now, just trying to chase data is not it is. I appreciate that comment, Laura. That was really helpful. And that's how we have a we have a data analyst, right? Hopefully this year we can parse through all the data. But yeah, I don't know that we're getting a data analyst. OK. OK. Lori, anything on the festival planning? Any new ideas that came up? I got a lot of information and I put it all in a folder and I haven't had a chance to work through it yet. So I don't have to add for that this time. Next. OK. Thank you. All right, that's all we have for open actions. Let's review and vote on the minutes from the last meeting. Everybody get a chance to review it? OK. Any comments? Lori, no, I was just going to move that we accept them as they are. Thank you. I'll second that. OK. And voice vote in no particular order. Goldner. Yes. D. Yes. Allison. Yes. Raghavan. Yes. Roof. Yes. Breger. Yes. Drucker. Yes. OK. And that's approved. OK. Let's open it up to the public for comments. Stephanie. OK. So we have four members of the public. If anyone is interested in speaking to the ECAC, please raise your hand. OK. Martha, I've allowed you to speak. You can unmute yourself. Hi, I'm Martha Hanner, speaking as an individual here. I want to thank all your committee for your work on all these different fronts, moving the needle toward renewable energy. However, I would like to comment on one particular point. Last meeting, you spent an hour discussing what is our share of solar installations? How can we maximize our share of solar on our open lands? But I didn't hear any mention or recognition of the equally urgent need to increase our carbon sequestration. You know, climate models are clear that we can't reach our goals and stabilize the climate unless we also greatly increase the amount of CO2 that's annually removed from the atmosphere. This is written throughout the Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plans for 2030 and 2050. In those documents, net zero means that any residual emissions, and we know there will be some, have to be balanced by drawing down an equal amount from the atmosphere each year via our forests and soils and wetland and so on. And there's a recent paper by an international team of climate scientists for the written for the IPCC on the state of carbon dioxide removal that stresses the need that we have to increase the CO2 removal. And so I would sure like to see your committee discussing the difficult challenge of how we balance the real urgent need for solar installations to reduce our fossil fuel use with the equally real urgent need to sequester more carbon in our open lands around Amherst. I mean, that's a challenge to do that balance because there's no good metrics. You know, when you look at an acre of solar panels, you can say what's the amount of electricity present. When you look at an acre of woodlands, it's not so easy to give a number to what's its contribution to throwing down CO2. But we're not going to get there from here if we don't focus on both of those aspects. And so I hope that your committee will really try to address both and discuss the balance with our lands here in Western. So thank you. Thanks, Martha. And very nice to see you on Steve. Is it proper to me to pose a question back to Martha? Stephanie, I think that's up to you, Vasu, as chair. Oh, yeah, completely fine. OK, then the question I would say, Martha, to you and others, is what sort of land area do you think we need in Amherst as our fair share of land for sequestration? And what kind of percentage of our land area would be appropriate for that? And I'm not asking you to answer that now, but would love to see a proposal and a report perhaps on that. How much land should we have in Amherst for carbon sequestration? And that would very nicely balance what we are, what we spent some time on last week looking at how much do we need to meet the renewable energy goals. So you're right. Does those do need to be balanced and both need to be talked about? Yeah, and I certainly not not an expert. I try to read the literature, but there is this recent report that came out, I don't know, two or three months ago that really tries to dig into it. They talk about potentially new technology for, you know, having other chemical means of drawing down CO2, but they also admit that that's not going to get beyond just pilot programs very quickly. And so I don't know who would be best to address that. You know, I agree with you. We, you know, how do we get the metrics? That's, I think, is the challenge really. Yeah. Laura. Yeah, I was just going to say that I hope Martha can stay for a full meeting because I think the graphics that you and Steve worked on actually get to this, right. They show 30% of Amherst land is protected and 10 more percent is on track as a goal to be protected versus 1% for solar. So I think actually this is captured Martha quite well in our work. Okay, well, thank you. I will stay. I think you, as I say, you're doing a lot of interesting things on a lot of different fronts. And so I will stay and listen. Thank you. Thanks Martha. Anyone else who would like to speak? Please electronically raise your hand and I'll unmute you. Looks like no further comment. Okay, let's move on to the next part of the agenda on solar, solar survey. Stephanie, do you want to pull up the draft? Sure, spare with me. I know there are a lot of comments. Steve, you had a bunch of comments, Laura, you did too. I didn't send them in yet, but I have some today that. Okay. Okay, that would have been. Yeah, I'm not sure if we'll be able to vote on it. Yeah. Oh, I, sorry, Lori, but I mean, we're sort of at an 11th hour with this. So, I mean, I guess you can send them in if they're. The idea was to vote on this today. And there's another committee that's viewing the same draft as well. But that's okay. I had sent in some comments on the previous draft, but I saw some things in this one that. Didn't look quite right either. So anyway, I'll mention them, but we can proceed and vote. Okay. All right, I'm going to share my screen. Just give me a moment please. Okay. So not to go through this. Sorry, not to go through this all. But I did want to say that there, so the comments that were received were from. Steve had the most extensive comments Dwayne also had comments. That were reviewed and incorporated. I want to be clear that the. Consultant did respond to having an introductory. Statement more than a statement. It's pretty much a full page as an introduction to the survey. That was commented by a few members for both committees. There were comments from the ECAC from Steve and Dwayne, but also comments from the solar bylaw working group Martha Hannah, Hannah and Janet McGowan and. A lot of the comments were incorporated into this more recent draft. So. I'm just going to scroll through. Yeah, I can make a couple of quick comments. I mean, they're relatively small things, but. They're still bugging me. Shouldn't prevent a vote, I think. If they're minor, if they're really minor Lori, why don't you just say what they are. If they're really minor, they may be able to be incorporated in. No, they probably won't, but I was worried still about the equity thing. They're still in at question three, one of the bullets is. People are being asked to. Talk about what possibilities are most excited about. And the last bullet is equitable, so development and benefits throughout the community. And. I'm still compared to it's sort of like the odd man out. It looks very different than all of the other questions in that list. And it seems to me that that should be a starting point. Nothing gets done unless it's equitable. So I'm still a little confused as to why that's there. I mean, I think there are some other just sort of minor things about why not let certain things be open response and. So the open response was because. Had to do with data. Yeah, I know. And that's why, and there's going to be engage Amherst. Is going to be a platform that will be open for people to provide. More comments. So this survey is a piece. Of a larger process. It's not the entire process. But it's going to be in some ways a beginning. And an opportunity to get some feedback, but engage Amherst will also allow for. More open ended comment. And then there's also going to be. A public meeting as well as two other additional. Sessions that will basically be kind of more drop-ins for people to come in and. There'll be sort of ways to engage. Community members that are more actively. You know, talking about different charts and that kind of thing where people can put post-its or. You know, expressed interest or dismay or whatever. That they'll be allowed to participate in. And it will be a drop-in thing. It won't be like a. Those two sessions won't be like specifically just a. A presentation and talking heads. So there's other opportunities for people to provide that type of comment. Okay. And number nine undeveloped open space. I don't know. Is that considered open? So I thought they might want to clarify that bullet a little bit. And I thought number 10 needed a no preference option. It has a no solar development option, but it doesn't have, I have no preference because this is the most important thing in the world option. I don't care what they put the solar. Right. So that's number 10. Sorry. Yeah. Number 10 needs a no preference option. Relatively minor stuff. I mean. I don't know how to address that. I don't know how to address that. I don't know how to address that. I don't know how to address that. I don't know how to against it because of that. But I will. If you, if you want, I can put this in a note. And send it to you, Stephanie. Afterwards. It's not too late. Yeah. I think you could do that. Again, I can't. I mean, I think these are fairly minor that. Yeah. Could be. I don't know how to address the. The equity issue because we've sort of talked about equity is an issue. It's a priority. And we feel like it should be just prioritized. It should be in the opening statement somewhere. Yeah. Maybe then maybe that's where we could put something about. I'm going to make a note about that piece. But I don't think, and I think that's a good valid point. Thank you. Number. Also. I realized that number 15 doesn't, there are people around here who live in mobile homes on rented land. And that's not one of the options in that list. The demographic questions. Oh, yep. Okay. So. Just another question might be useful. Other bullet rather other choice. Well, would. I mean, maybe you call that a single family house. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, to me, a mobile home is a single family house. You own the house, but not plan. So it's a little. Yeah. Single, maybe just calling it a single family house is fine. Yeah, I kind of feel like that's. A number 15, the only other tiny thing that. The second to last dormitory or student housing. That I assume means on campus student housing. I just hope to interpret it as by such that. From people taking the survey. Cause you could rent a single family house and be a student. So. Yeah, some students may think they live in student housing because they're living with a bunch of other students. So perhaps just add on campus in front of student housing. Okay. That's easily done. Stephanie, can you go to questions 10 and 11? Yes. Steve, did we incorporate the comments that you made? I believe those were questions or nine and 10. Remember, let me. Yeah, the comments and questions or concerns that I raised have. By and large, I've been quite happy with the way they've been incorporated. Can you scroll to 11, please? Yes. Yeah, if we're, if we're having the community. Complete this. The second point there, do they know what setbacks mean? Do we need to clarify that? Yeah, this is where I feel like some of the simple language that we had in the beginning. Seemed to me got a little more complicated again. So. Yeah. I think I can. And again, I think a lot of this was accepted language that was proposed by others. So I could ask. Her to somehow find a way to either explain or reword the word setbacks. Setback and then in parentheses undeveloped border. Or undeveloped or decorative border. Right. Some sort. Oh, after visual screening requirements. I think we're, I think we're getting in the weeds here. Yeah, I agree. That just got more confusing to me. I think we need to accept that this will not be a perfect document. We have great resources for people to ask questions. Hey, and we could invite the general public to join one of these meetings too. If they have questions. Yeah, I agree. And I think setbacks is a term that is specifically used in zoning that I think that's why it's phrased that way. So we probably do want to sort of keep that language. I just, I agree though that, I mean, I do sort of see how some of the simple languages. Gotten more complicated, but I think, you know, hopefully it will. Promote conversation. Laura. Yeah. I completely admit that I have. Not given time to this. So. I will accept it as is, but can you remind me what the goal of this is? The goal of collecting this feedback from the community. This, this was an engagement piece that's part of the solar assessment process. And all of the information, the, the. The point of using the consultant was to have a sort of unbiased. You know, unbiased collection of the data. If it's about the solar assessment, then why are there questions at all about the bylaw? Because then the information is going to be shared with the solar bylaw working group. So it's kind of, it was kind of to cover. You know, the, the assessment process and also. To help. Give, provide some information to the solar bylaw working group that might sort of help them in the work that they're doing. And to understand some of the community priorities. Okay. I mean, I couldn't answer either of these questions. I don't understand what they mean. So I feel like we're asking questions that are. Not appropriate to be asked to the general public. And if I don't know how we would use the information. I think. Because it came, I think some of these questions might have also been given by members of the solar bylaw working group. So I think. That was to sort of help them. And that's why I'm saying, I do think they are getting a little more technical. At this point, I, you know, we've revised this three times now. And I don't think. I think if there are questions, we're just going to sort of hope that people can sort of do the best that they can. And then when we have these information questions or these, you know, ways to engage with us on engage Amherst and also through the website. That hopefully we can. Help clarify some of the. The information for people. And I think we want to say, like, so this survey is going to get posted on a website. It's not going to be sort of just a standalone thing. It's going to be sort of part of more information. So I think what we can certainly say is, you know, if you have questions about the survey prompted questions, we want to encourage people to reach out to us. Yeah. I think last point, this is right. I mean, I would prefer that this survey be only about the assessment and not about the bylaw. I think that it, because it's anonymous, we don't know who's responding. And I wouldn't want us to take these answers to these questions and use them as. I don't think these are, I don't know how general public would be able to answer. These questions. So I'm nervous that the, that this would create issue. I hear you. I think we're way past the ability to sort of revise the survey that drastically to take out. Questions pertaining to the bylaw, especially because this was, you know, both the assessment and the survey were to be just tools. To maybe help the solar bylaw working group, but they're not in and of themselves. The survey itself is not going to dictate. How the bylaw gets developed, right? There are points of conversation. I think there are issues that need to be discussed. I think they have to be hashed out. So I think that's part of that is part of the, you know, part of the goal of this is to, to sort of raise some of those issues. And the solar bylaw working group is going to have to sort of really work on having some dialogue around those issues. And Dwayne, you know, as chair of that committee. Can probably speak to that as well. Hey, Stephanie, just a point, maybe. You know, to Laura's point, the public might not know the answer to these, these questions. Does it make sense to add, and I don't know as an option. Instead of just a strongly agreed to a strongly disagree. Yep. I think Steve. I just wanted to, yeah, echo something that Laura said that we don't know who's going to be taking this survey. We won't have demographics to know if it's representative of the town. And there's nothing to stop one person from filling it out 10 or 20 times. So. And that we just have to accept that, but we're going to have to make sure when the results are interpreted, they are not interpreted as if this was a vote or a survey that had fallen, but there's noitude to this. The final result would be a fair term Yeah. Not any fair representation. So I'll be really upset if I hear committees or the town council, even saying, Oh, 55% of the people in the surveys agreed with, bubba bubba. It's like that's not a good result. That's not a fair way of interpreting the results. So, yeah, I kind of agree with Stephanie, this is just one of many different tools. And when you really start poking at it, it's not a very good tool, but still, I think it's a good tool because it will educate people about as well as help the town and different committees get a sense of what people think. But yeah, we're not gonna be able to rely on it as if it was a vote. Wayne? Yeah, I just wanted to echo what Steve just said and Laura before him, from my perspective from the solar bylaw working group. This survey is imprecise. Again, as Steve pointed out, we don't know exactly who the respondents are and to the extent to which that will be representative of the full community. And furthermore, it's a set of opinions and the bylaw process is more of a legal and regulatory process where opinions can be taken into account but there are rules and regulations with regard to what zoning can and can't do. So that's gonna be the driving force between the bylaw but it will be helpful to ECAC as well as the bylaw working group to get an inaccurate but nonetheless a pulse of opinions and diversity of opinions across the community. But I agree without knowing sort of the, unless the consultants have some safeguards around this without knowing exactly the makeup of the respondents except for some of the demographic information at the end, it really is not gonna be used in my opinion from the bylaw working group as a precise survey in any way of preferences around the community. Next one. Okay, anything else? Stephanie, I don't know if a vote is required whether you're in favor or not in favor. It was just that the survey is complete. The vote is more to just say that the survey is complete because it's not for you to accept it. It's really the town's decision but if you were with these additional edits that you've all proposed, if you can just sort of say you feel that the survey is now complete, that would be helpful. I could move that that with this additional notes we've made during this meeting, the survey is complete as it is. I move that we accept it to be complete. Second that. Okay. So a voice vote again, no order. Goldner. Yes. Allison. Yes. Regavan. Yes. Roof. Yes. Gregor. Yes. Selman. Yes. Drucker. Yes. D. Yes. Okay. Thank you all so much. And thanks for all your input. I think it certainly changed a lot from the beginning and we appreciate that all various input from various perspectives strengthened it for sure. And it's not perfect, but it's better than it was. So thank you. Yeah, great. And I saw Steve's extensive notes on the survey too. So yeah, thanks a lot, Steve. And he's gone when I'm thanking him. All right. Let's move on to the next topic. Don on the pace flyer. Don, you're a mute. You're still a mute. Don. I seem to have lost your comments, Steve, which works extensive and which when I first read them seemed very good. So if you could resend them, that would be great. You're talking about my comments on the pace. Yeah. Okay. If you could resend them to me, that would be great. And I will incorporate them and the whole, you know, the, the, the addition of new construction and the elimination of financing for gas line extensions, which were also eliminated from the pace program. By the new definition. So. And I can get that done within certainly before the next meeting. If you will resend those to me, Steve. I apologize for losing them. I think I must have CC'd Stephanie on those. So I, I'll find them. But she may also have them. Yes, Steve. I was having trouble finding them also. Oh really? Okay. We can, we can connect offline. Tomorrow about this. Okay. I'm looking now. So, Don, you will not have anything to share today. Is that what you're saying? No. Okay. Anything else in general on the past? Only what I've already. Discussed. I mean, at some point in time, I think we have to. Talk about the. And Stephanie and I have talked about it. The kind of cross fertilization of pace and the whole. Heat pump. Program. And the financing for that. So there's going to be a lot of interface. And. I don't know quite how to pull that off right now, but. I think. I think in today's meeting, we've put our finger on. You know, Moving forward with the chamber. To get the information out there to. To the chamber group. So that's, that's all that I have to. Okay. Thanks, Tom. We'll talk about the solar. Flyer review. Dwayne. If you want to bring that up. And we'll have to talk about the. Updated graphs as well. It's part of this. Yeah, great. Yeah. And I was really happy to see. Steve's. Graphics. And then I guess the revised. Graphic, which I think was the same data, just in a different bar chart instead of a circle chart. But as a. Very much complimenting. And reasonably consistent, but I can go through some of the, maybe. Where they differ a bit. With the. Evaluation that. I had shared. Yeah. At the last meeting, but then we put that in. And let me acknowledge and thank. Laura for. Initiating this process of developing a memo. And the idea of a memo here from. That would be provided. And maybe Stephanie, do you want to share the screen on, on the. Memo. That was in the packet. A late entry. The idea is that. The idea here would be a memo that was in the packet. A late entry. The idea here would be of memo. Getting to somewhat the, the comment that Martha had, Hannah had earlier and Steve's response to her. To provide some of our analysis. From ecac to. The solar working bylaw. Solar bylaw working group. As well as. Others in town. To begin to try to scope and scale. What we as ecac think would be appropriate. Share as it's being called. Of hosting or citing solar in Amherst to contribute to the state's. Projections. So. One can question about whether. Our fair share based on land area, which is the way this is presented is a right metric. But I think the purpose here is to be. To start the conversation and to have some basis for offering. Our opinions and thoughts and analysis. I think, I think, I think, I think, Steve and Martha were talking about earlier in terms of what is this trade off. And what, at least from ecac's perspective, do we feel like would be an appropriate. Window of target range of target. For being able to accommodate solar. Sighting on ground mounted. In Amherst. So this memo. Provides. And I'm not sure if people have had a chance to read it ahead of time, but it basically summarizes. The results of this analysis. And then give some background. To sort of give the frame that background. The analysis is based on. Looking at what the, what the Commonwealth. Is projecting for 2050 under in their decarbonization roadmap. For the need. Not for solar in its entirety, but for ground mounted solar. After all the, all the other. Solar on the built environment. Is accomplished. And with substantial efforts to keep that those markets going. What portion of solar. Is expected to be need to find home. On. On the ground. Sighted on the ground in Massachusetts. And as the illustration provides, there's a range of different scenarios. That the decarbonization roadmap. It evaluates. For. For outcomes with regard to how much ground mounted solar is needed. And so, they range in the, in these bars here. The all options. Scenario is kind of the base case. So we were looking particularly closely at that one. That provides. Suggest the need of about 52,000 acres. But the error bars there, they're not really error bars. They're, they're bars that. Represent the range of, of. As there's lots of moving parts to this modeling that they do. And so that those error bars as, as they're represented in the graph represent the range of acreage ground mounted acreage under that. All options scenario. That would likely be needed. The best guess from that scenario is the 50, 52,000 acres. But then we see from the other scenarios, which are also. Not, not unlikely in things that we need to potentially plan for. That the range of. Of land. Ground mounted acreage per solar across the Commonwealth is ranges between about 35,000. And 125,000 acres. And so what. The memo. Puts forward and open to. Discussion on this. So that's what we suggested that we consider a range of 50,000 acres. To 100,000 acres to cover. Sort of the most likely range of acreage needed. For the Commonwealth for ground mounted solar. Across the whole Commonwealth. That represents 1 to 2% of the Commonwealth's land. And that's just for, for, for, for information. And, and so then we looked at, okay, what if we want to look at our fair share, quote unquote. Of, of that land in, in, in Amherst. Amherst represents, and this is subtracting. The land area of the university and the two colleges, which are apart from our analysis. Subtracting out that land area, the, the remaining land area of Amherst is. Written here somewhere, I think it's point. 290% of the Commonwealth. Doing that math. It suggests that for Amherst. We should target. About, or we should be prepared to offer our fair share, quote unquote. That would be about 145 to 290 acres. Of land in Amherst. Not surprisingly, because the math just works out. That's 1% to 2% of Amherst land. Now, with the assumption, which I think is quite reasonable that each megawatt of solar takes up four acres of land. That would also translate to hosting or this land supporting 36 to 72 megawatts of solar DC capacity. I found that that was useful to put forward because we know that we already have ground mounted solar in Amherst of about 20 megawatts or roughly 80 acres. So we have already a decent start in that fair share, if you will, of acreage of land dedicated to ground mounted solar. But the recommendation then from this analysis from and from eCAC, if we decide to move this memo forward would be to put out there that that for the purpose of conversations and discussions in Amherst as well as consideration for the solar working solar bylaw working group. And then as we look at solar zoning in solar zoning in Amherst, specifically for ground mounted solar, that we should try to be accommodating of at least sufficient acreage to meet this target of ground mounted solar. Again, that would be the remaining amount. The fact that we already have about 80 acres of solar in Amherst would be about a remaining about 65 to 200 acres beyond what we've already done. So that's not to say that at all to the working to the solar bylaw working group that we only need to zone this amount of acreage that is eligible for solar because many of these pieces of land won't care to or decide to be solar farms but but that we should keep these figures in mind as we move that process forward. So that's the intent of the memo. I was really was happy to see Steve's graphics as well which I think are compatible with this. The only difference is that he sort of made the assumption that it's I think 65,000 acres for this for the statewide which was one one number I think for the base for that base case scenario. I used a range. The 65,000 acres Steve would be a bit over 1%. The Commonwealth is remarkably 50, almost precisely 50 million acres of land area. And so 50,000 is 1%. So that that 65,000 is 1 point something percent. But the range in these in this decarbonization roadmap. And with all the uncertainty about the other sources of renewable energy coming forward and so forth, I thought ranging that from 1% to 2% would make more sense. So happy to have any comments. Laura, maybe I ask you you sort of prompted this as well. And and started the drafting so if you had anything to add that would be great. But otherwise just interested in thoughts and comments and whether we want to move this forward. Yeah, thanks Laura for initiating this and sorry I didn't respond to you directly. Please have me this Steve. Well, did Laura did you want to add anything else to Dwayne's overview. No, I think I think Wayne did a great job. All right, well then I want to thank you guys and I think you did a really nice job of kind of taking the mud and confusion we got ourselves into at our last meeting and really simplifying it. I think Laura already suggested to just go with the area and not try to do the different population estimates. And why I think people are what use energy not acres of land. I think it's fine for our purpose here. And so I think this is a great memo, just one or two little picky things I might make some suggestions on but overall I'd love to be able to endorse this as ECAC and send it out to the world who might care about what this is to say. As far as my graphic I just was prompted by some comments Jesse made has made several times. We need something simple to kind of show the scale of things and so that's what I tried to do there. I'm not sure though after rethinking about it. So this is a this memo whether we really need to get into the land protection issue. When we're simply talking about how much ground out so that we need not mark Martha's point maybe. Yeah, maybe we do need to bring them both up at the same time. I'm sorry can I interrupt a second, it would be helpful because you all keep referencing the graphic. Well I think it would be helpful to share those I was sharing the document so would you like you or I can share it's on my screen right now if you've got it and you can pull it up that would be great. Yeah, just an FYI we have three minutes. Oh, well then let's vote. I would say vote for the memo and we'll use this graphic that I think you can see now, we'll use this in some later conversations. I would be, and it doesn't have to be right right away but this analysis is also helpful to the solar bylaw working group to get this this graphic over to them as well. Okay. But maybe we can take that up next meeting, unless we want to go on that too. I'm happy to vote now if we need someone to move to vote on it I'll do that. The conversation that we were having when was also as part of the education. You know with the consultant, we wanted to share something with the community as well right, and this memo does not do that. Right. Is this, will there be another document that will be prepared for the community that can be shared along with the, you know, whatever that the consultant is doing to educate the community. I have a thought on this, which is that if the point of the, and we probably don't have enough time to think about it right now, I would say, yes, there's the potential that we need a memo for the community. If the survey is meant to collect people's thoughts, then coming out with a memo that could be seen as their thoughts don't matter because we already have our opinions. Of course that survey has that is not for ecac, but so maybe there is something high level we should be sharing but I think we, I don't think this, this detailed analysis is what needs to necessarily be shared although I could be wrong about that I just I'm still a little bit confused by the purpose of the memo by the survey and the community meeting so I would need to understand that a little bit better. I just second that this memo that we're potentially voting on now is not was not written for the community was written for town officials, town council, and the working group, the solo by all working group. I think in conversations we had and getting to this memo. We did decide to, to that it may not be appropriate or timely to bias or anything else or just give this type of information to the community before taking the survey. Yeah, well, let's take a vote on it then and then we have our guests Aaron as well so I'm sorry can we have an articulated motion because is it to accept, you know I need, I need a motion to accept the memo about this I move that we send this memo to where does it go to town council or the solo by law working group or and the town council the town manager and the solo by law working group. Okay. And just Steve you mentioned you might have had a couple of thoughts on it I always appreciate that if, if they're minor I'm sure I can accommodate those even after a vote just if they're formatting if you have comments we can postpone the vote. Those serious comments I think it's fine as is it's just like maybe justify how you chose that 50 to 100,000 range out of the range that's on the chart that that's pretty minor. Nope. Nothing significant. Okay. So you have a motion on the floor, golden move seconded. Okay, and by voice vote, Goldner. Yes, Allison. Yes, yes. Yes, roof. Yes, Breger. Yes, Selman. Abstain. D. Yes, Dr. Yes. Okay. All right, thank you everybody and welcome Aaron and Stella maybe you can give us an introduction and thank you Aaron for joining. I think, I think Aaron is going to pretty much introduce herself but I'm so excited that she's here and I think it's going to be a great presentation for our first presentation on transit. So, thank you everyone for having me here tonight. Stephanie, am I okay to share my screen over here. Okay, great. I'm going to share my screen here can you all see a slide deck here. Not yet. Let's see. How's that. Yep. Awesome. All right. I'm in with my screen share. Y'all have minimized them so if anyone has a hand raised or anything, please feel free to just unmute and chime in. Just a quick question we don't need notes on this right minutes on this this will just be in there as presentation see the recording right. Yes, you can do that. Thanks. All right. Well, thanks everyone for having me tonight. As Stella mentioned my name is Aaron Convery and I am the multimodal transportation planning manager at the city of Durham in North Carolina. Stella and Stephanie invited me to speak tonight about some of the work we're doing in Durham to address climate and equity issues through our transportation planning work. So, to get started. Here's just a brief preview of some of the topics I'll be discussing tonight. We'll start with some introductions. Then take a dive into some of the exciting new federal funding opportunities that are coming available through the bipartisan bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act. I'll talk a little bit about how Durham is approaching these opportunities with a climate and equity lens. And then lastly, close out with a couple project case studies and an opportunity for some questions and answers. So, to start. I'll start with an introduction of myself, just for a little background. My educational background is in civil and environmental engineering I spent the early parts of my career working in environmental remediation type work. And then went back to school to do my master's in city and regional planning and been working in the transportation sector since then. I worked for several years as a consultant focused focused on active transportation so bicycle and pedestrian focused projects. I've worked at the regional transit agency here in the triangle area of North Carolina. And as I mentioned, most recently I'm now with the city of Durham. So, we've got a pretty small group here tonight from what I can tell, and what I was hoping we might be able to do is go around and do a quick introduction of ecac members as well. And if you all want to share your name and then maybe something transportation related you're interested in, just so I can get a feel for kind of where the groups at. And then we'll dive into the presentation. Stella, could I ask you to start introductions and then pass the baton on to another ecac member. Sure. My name is Stella D. And I am extremely interested in biking infrastructure because now I use an e bike as my primary motive taking my daughter to preschool. Laurie. I am particularly interested in, well I'm also interested in biking I bike, I would bike everywhere if I didn't have to die or risk dying every time I went out on Pellum Road. So, I'm very interested in biking but I'm also my, my, the thing that's bugging me the most right now is this problem of, of the cost of electricity, and how the demand for more electricity I mean right now in Amherst we're paying some of us are paying up to 50 cents a kilowatt hour. So this is killing us, and it's going to really hurt the whole transition if we can't fix that problem. So I'm interested in how demand for energy figures into all of this and the demand for electricity in particular. Laurie, do you want to keep the baton. Oh, am I supposed to pick someone else. Dwayne. Hi, Dwayne Breger here, Aaron thanks for for joining us it's great. In the daytime I'm the director of the clean energy extension at UMass Amherst. Personally I have an EV for about a year and a year and a half now it's wonderful transportation. I'm keen on the EV recharging infrastructure and the challenges and progress there. Looking forward a decade or two. When we electrify everything I'm really keen on making use of these mobile energy storage batteries going all around the place to come to UMass and other places of work and instead of charging. I'm really excited to be here tonight, and they should come to work and discharge during the daytime so really keen on trying to help figure figure that out. And I'll pass it on to Vasu. Thanks friend and welcome in and again, Vasu Raghavan and interest all the above, plus, how do we look at this from an equitable lens as well. And I'll pass it on to Steve. Hi, I'm Steve Roof. I am a professor of environmental science, geology climate change researcher at Hampshire College, and I also do a lot of bicycling and find it both fun and good for commuting. I'm interested in ways that we can actually reduce the miles driven. That's not a big part of our statewide plan it's more about making the miles driven more efficient, but I think we do need to reduce traffic on the roads. I'm interested in some kind of car share like you know I would get electric car I just don't drive that much and I wouldn't really realize the benefit but if I could get an electric car and share of my neighbors. It would have a greater benefit so if there's some way to figure out electric car sharing, that'd be a cool thing to do. And so that's one of my, one of my thoughts thank you. And who's left hasn't spoken as. As Jesse spoken. Too much in too much in general, but yes. I, I think my name is Jesse Salman I'm very excited and I've got two kids that are learning how to navigate the world so I'm excited about solutions that the youth might be involved in and creating new cultural norms where maybe they do not expect to ever own a car. I'm excited about low tech or no tech solutions where we don't have to actually buy something. I don't want to buy our way out of this problem with more things. And just shifting the way we are expectations of how we live our lives and starting with my kids who are excited to get their driver's licenses. I haven't gone yet. I'm actually in the car right now picking up my daughter. But I interested in everything folks sad definitely interested in how to reduce reliance on cars particularly in more rural areas, like where we live in Amherst. I did spend a year in the RTP area so I know that's also a challenge there so would love, you know it's bigger. I think there's probably a lot of lessons learned there so looking forward to hearing from you. Great. Did that cover everyone. No, not me. I'm Don Allison, and I'm a lawyer here in town and have been here in town for a long long time now. And I actually shared Dwayne's interest in in electric charging infrastructure. That's my main interest right now. Yes, Stephanie. Oh, yeah, thank you. Thank you, so. Yeah, I'm, you know, especially as a municipality I'm always interested in hearing what other communities are doing. And certainly how we are going to accommodate the need for more charging infrastructure is certainly something I'm interested in, but also ways in which to address equitable issues in terms of transportation and public transportation I'm very curious about too. Awesome. Hi Rosie. Well thanks y'all for sharing your some of your interests I think we are going to cover some of that tonight some of it we won't but it's really exciting to hear about your kind of broad range of interesting questions here. I don't have it in today's presentation but I can share some resources on some micro mobility projects that have been going on in RTP and some of our more rural communities here if you're interested. All right. Aaron just quick note. And we stop you and midway through your presentation. How do you want to. Feel free to chime in. And then I set aside some time at the end for question and answers but whatever works best for y'all. I'll look for reasons. Thanks to your microphone is doing its thing again. All right. Well so before I guess to close out introductions. I'm also going to provide just kind of a brief introduction to the city of Durham where where I'm coming from to set the scene for some of the work that I'll be talking about tonight. As you can see here. I've just pulled for some quick stats and figures, but Durham is a midsize city in the southeast. We're rapidly growing we're seeing a lot of population growth, but currently have just over about 285,000 residents as of the 2021 American Community Survey. We have several local transit systems those include go Durham which is our local bus system and go triangle which is our regional bus system. And then we've got to university transit systems. Through Duke University and NC central. You can see there despite those transit services, the vast majority of our commute mode chair and Durham is still single occupancy vehicles. As you can see here are biking walking and public transportation mode share are collectively just under 6%. So, I'm still relatively minimal. I also in preparation for this wanted to get to know Amherst a little bit. So I've compiled some some stats here. Also from the 2021 five year ACS data and just some some things online. As you can see y'all are blowing us out of the water on some of your mode shares, particularly walking I was very impressed. And then, as Laurie mentioned kind of it we're looking at different different sizes of communities here different densities and populations but I do think there are some interesting parallels and lessons to be shared between our communities. We're both anchored by educational institutions, just taking a quick look I think the size of the town of Amherst is actually pretty similarly size to what we would consider like the greater downtown area of Durham so there are some parallels there that I think make some of this So with with those introductions behind us. I just like to take a dive into some of the federal funding opportunities that have become available through both the bipartisan infrastructure law and the more recent inflation reduction act. As I'm sure a lot of you are aware between these two pieces of legislation. We're seeing some of the most significant climate focused transportation federal funding opportunities that we've seen ever so this is a really exciting time to be working in the transportation sector. So first up with our bipartisan infrastructure law, which is passed in late 2021. This legislation included $1.2 trillion in funding over five years, and of that 1.2 trillion 550 billion of that was new spending. To summarize, a lot of this funding is focused on capital or infrastructure projects, which as you can imagine provide a lot of opportunities for us in transportation. So on this slide. This is looking at that subset of funding I mentioned the 550 billion in new spending. The $1 billion dollars cover many different types of infrastructure, but I've highlighted in these blue boxes just some of the funding sources that are of particular interest from a transportation perspective, the bill or the law included 7.5 million for maybe infrastructure, 39 billion for public transit spending $1 billion for a program called reconnect reconnecting communities which I'll talk about a little more in a bit. And then 7.5 million in funding for zero and low emission transit vehicles. On the heels of the IJA we then have the inflation reduction act. So this legislation included historic levels of climate focused investment, some of which was particularly focused on the transportation front. And a couple programs of particular interests there were it included funding for rebates for zero emission commercial vehicles. We see grants to identify low carbon transportation construction materials. This provides funding for technical assistance and capacity building for streamlining the environmental review process for transportation projects, which can be quite timely and cumbersome. And then perhaps one of the most well known on the consumer level is the $7500 tax credit for the purchase of electric vehicles. Looking at these two pieces of landmark legislation together, we really see a robust set of funding opportunities available to local regional and state governments to pursue multimodal projects to start to address some of our climate needs. There are honestly too many programs to talk through probably in tonight's presentation. So the four I've starred here, and that are in bold, are programs that are newly created by the recent legislation. So I wanted to provide a little additional additional information on these. First, we've got the reconnecting communities program which I mentioned earlier. So reconnecting communities is a program that's aimed at removing retrofitting mitigating or replacing transportation facilities that create barriers. So that can be things like highways or railroad tracks that create barriers to mobility access and economic development. So this is a five year pilot program that was created through the bipartisan infrastructure law and has funding set aside for each of those five years. We've got the street safe streets and roads for all program, which I always get wrong. It's a little bit of a tongue twister, but it's focused on improving roadway safety with the goal of reducing or eliminating roadway fatalities and serious injuries. So through this program, municipalities or regional government organizations can apply either for safety action plans or implementation projects. And there is some emphasis on safety action plans and implementation projects for disadvantaged communities. The first round of these awards was actually just announced today, but it's also expected that this will be an annual program. Oops. Another program we've got here this one's got a clever acronym, the strengthening mobility and revolutionizing transportation grant program, otherwise known as smart. And this program supports projects that use technology to improve transportation safety, efficiency and accessibility. So some examples of projects that might be eligible for this program include coordinated signal systems, signal systems that give transit priority projects that support connected vehicles or sensor based infrastructure things like that. And then the last program I've got highlighted here is from the inflation reduction act, which included funding for what they're calling neighborhood access and equity grants. And so these grants are aimed at improving community health connectivity walkability and safety near major transportation corridors. I didn't catch the name of the road that you see as a barrier to biking but I would imagine that might be a facility that might fall into this category. This pot of funding also has specifically has $1.2 billion specifically reserved for disadvantaged communities so you can really see through some of this how the administration is prioritizing some of its equity goals through how the funding is being allocated. So that was a pretty quick and dirty overview of some of the funding opportunities that we're seeing come available. And now what I'm going to take a dive into is how Durham is approaching some of these opportunities. It's a good problem to have there are a lot of a lot of funding opportunities available, and we have to figure out what makes sense to apply for how do these programs match our needs and how can they help us advance our transportation equity and climate goals. So the first step in that process for us was getting really clear on what our goals as both as a city and as a transportation department are for any of our federal federally funded projects. So in doing this, we reviewed our city strategic plan, as well as a lot of our own adopted either citywide or transportation focus plans and used those to identify some key goals that would guide our pursuit of federal funding. So through that exercise, we developed what we've kind of by shorthand color three zeros. So that's zero carbon emissions, zero roadway fatalities or serious injuries, and zero disparity in mobility access. So with these three goals were aligning closely with some priorities laid out in some of our existing plan plans that includes our carbon neutrality plan our vision zero policy, and the city's equitable engagement blueprint. And then we've kind of tailored those to reflect some of our transportation needs so when it comes to zero carbon emissions from the city's perspective we're looking to convert our fleet to 100% zero admissions, encouraging. I hope I just saw a typo on this one, not via clues vehicles. Encouraging a shift away from single occupancy vehicles and helping develop the local for workforce to operate and maintain zero mission of zero mission vehicles. When we look at zero roadway fatalities or serious interest in or serious injuries. We're enhancing safety for all users of our roadway, implementing infrastructure to provide safe and reliable travel for all modes, and then adopting innovative technology to improve safety as well. This last goal focuses on equity, zero disparity in mobility access. So this is enhancing access to all modes of travel for all people, including people with disabilities, creating multiple multimodal improvements to advance the local and regional transit network, improving economic opportunities through transportation and workforce development, and enhancing access for justice 40 communities which is another piece of the current administration's transportation priorities. Hey, what's your timeline. What's that. What's your timeline on your goals there. With this exercise that we've been looking at. We've been focused on a not to not necessarily that will reach zero emissions, zero fatalities and zero disparity in access in five years but we are looking at a five year vision timeline for a grant pursuit strategy for. So, with that in mind, we have taken those goals. And I, let me, I'll hop to the timeline is that let me talk about this slide real quick. So we've, we've defined those goals. And another piece of the puzzle for us was to get a full understanding of the universe of projects that we might want to submit for federal funding. So through this exercise, we created a program of projects. It was quite a hefty list we went through all of our adopted transit plans are by pet plan. Pretty much any transportation related plan that might have a project in it that we might consider for funding, compiled all those, and then we're able to revisit our goals. And then we could determine which projects within that would be the departments top priorities for federal funding. And some of that was related to goals and then also taking a look at things like cost estimates, and which projects would be of the magnitude that that federal funding would be really beneficial for us. And so fast you to get back to your question. So that's where we started looking at developing that five year vision for how to align those projects we've identified as high priorities with those with all these federal funding opportunities that we're seeing come available. Another piece of this puzzle is in addition to figuring out which projects are a good match for which programs is also determining which projects are ready to be submitted for different programs. And so, for example, some funding streams are looking for shovel ready projects. So in that case we'd be looking at projects that have already gone through the planning and design process and are ready to go to construction, where other funding sources are available for funding those planning efforts and things like that so it's kind of been a mix and match exercise of trying to figure out how our priorities and which stage our existing projects are in line up well with those existing grant opportunities, and using that to build out that five year vision. So now that I've shared some one more question. What percent of your greenhouse gas emissions coming from transportation. Um, you know, I don't know that number off the top of my head, I can look that up for you though. Thank you. Yeah. Let me jot down some of the things I'm offered to follow up on here so I don't lose track. All right. Any other questions before I continue on to the next section. Awesome. All right. I'll close out. Now that I've kind of talked about our, our federal funding approach and how we're approaching all these new climate focused federal funding sources. I thought I'd also just shared about some of the projects that we're currently working on locally. Some of which are we are hoping to submit to some of those different federal grant opportunities. If you have any studies here, you could think of this as a section of just projects I'm excited to be working on right now and wanted to share with you all. So, I hope you find them interesting as well. So the first effort I'd like to highlight here is our recent 2050 metropolitan transportation plan. So this is a regionally adopted plan that informs funding for projects that make it into the transportation improvement program. So, in looking at the Amherst area, I think this would be similar to the regional transportation plan that the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission develops. Here we call it our, our metropolitan transportation plan. But this informs our long term transportation priorities for the region. And so in the most recent plan update, which was looking out through the year 2050 are our metropolitan planning organization or MPO took a pretty visionary approach to how they were looking at the MTP that differed pretty significantly to how they have in the past. So historically, our MPO's plan has included roadway widenings, convergence to expressways and different projects meant to address congestion but that ultimately continue to support single occupancy vehicle travel. So our MPO board, which is comprised of elected officials, looked at that and realized it didn't align with a lot of their stated policy goals around eliminating fatal crashes, reducing carbon emissions, and making sure everyone has access to affordable transportation. So it was essentially an opportunity to kind of right size these recommendations in order to actually align with, with the board stated goals. And they went ahead and did that so the 2050 MTP eliminated many of the roadway widening recommendations that were previous included in previous versions of the plan and called for more spending on transit bike lanes across walks and sidewalks. And so this redefining of priorities really does have a significant impact on what projects will get funding in the future, and therefore which projects will ultimately be implemented. So this represented a real turning point about how our region is thinking about and addressing climate change through its transportation policy. And this kind of an example of how some of that really does start at that policy and prioritization level. The next project I'd like to highlight is a recently completed planning effort that our transportation department did called the better bus project. So better bus focused on improving transit for go germ riders that's our, excuse me our local bus system. I mentioned equity as an interest. So go germs ridership consists of 80% people of color. So by its very nature a lot of times when we're doing transit focused projects. Those are also equity focused projects. And it's a way for us to do some really impactful work to better serve our transportation disadvantaged residents. So this was a pretty comprehensive project that we kind of focused on three different areas. So the first was access to transit. I think most of us know most transit trips start as a pedestrian trip. So this is looking at how can we improve to people's trip to the bus with things like sidewalks, crosswalks, ADA ramps, things like that. We also looked at bus stop amenities. So things like benches and shelters, what are needed and where to provide people with a comfortable convenient and dignified wait for the bus. And then lastly, we looked at bus speed and reliability. So that's where can we implement things like transit signal priority which let's buses have a longer green light. If the signal senses them coming pavement marking changes intersection improvements and things like that that can help us eliminate areas of delay on our bus routes. So that folks can make their transfers on time and get where they need to go on time. So we conducted these analyses system wide. And we also did some specific focus on two of our highest ridership and highest frequency routes, which are on the hallway and Fayetteville Street quarter those are highlighted in the top right map there. But one of the things I wanted to point out, kind of separate from better bus that's been pretty interesting about this is these two routes are also where we're focusing our deployment of our electric buses that we have been able to obtain through some of our federal funding opportunities. So we're able to be focusing those buses on those higher frequency routes and seeing benefits, you know, air quality things like that. In addition to the improvements to the trip to the bus and the trip on the bus. That was the focus of the better bus project. While I'm talking about better bus project. I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight our community partners program. This is a program that the transportation department funds, but is hosted within the city's neighborhood improvement services department who does a lot of our day to day interface with community members. Through this program community organizations are supplied with funding and capacity building opportunities. That helps support their organizations, while also allowing transportation or transportation department to invest in long to in long term partnerships with these community organizations. I think we can all acknowledge that the transportation planning process is not the easiest to navigate. It's often convoluted and complex. And so this program really helps community organizers who are already really active in their communities, and our historically black and brown neighborhoods to plug into that process, while compensating them for them for their time, and helps create that continuous stream of two way communication between our residents and the transportation department. So the community partners were a core part of our outreach efforts for the better bus project. We were very actively involved in shaping the recommendations. And as a result of that, we were really able to build some community trust and feel confident that we're providing recommendations that are reflective of the residents along those corridors. So as I just mentioned, lack of trust is something about transportation projects is something here in Durham that we, we see a lot in our communities and is frankly, well deserved. The prime example of this in Durham is the Durham freeway, which was a freeway that was constructed in the 1970s during during urban renewal. It cuts through the core of downtown Durham and destroyed many of Durham's black neighborhoods when it was built. So, and then effort to address some of these past harms. The city is embarking on an effort to reimagine what that freeway corridor could look like. We're building on the community partner bench model that I mentioned before, and partnering with community leaders in the hey-tie neighborhood, which you can see here in the image on the top right that's the hey-tie neighborhood in the 1950s, before the freeways was constructed, and then you can see in the 1970s what little was left after that freeway construction on the bottom right. So with this project to reimagine the freeway, we have some overall goals we're interested in pursuing biking, walking and transit connections, both along and across the corridor, and addressing a lot of the environmental issues we see with the freeway, such as air quality. But there are many options of what that could look like. It could be looking at something more like a boulevard. It could be something quite ambitious like a cap and cover project. We are not attempting to come to the community with solutions. With this project, our goal is to what we call as moving at the speed of trust. So we're relying on the community to help guide our vision of the future of the freeway. Before we pursue federal funding, this project we think could be a great fit for some of the opportunities I mentioned earlier, like reconnecting communities or neighborhood equity and access grants. But we really want to make sure we've got community and understanding and buy in on how we're moving forward with this one. I know a couple of folks at the beginning mentioned interest in bike infrastructure. I did want to highlight a couple of some of our recent bike planning efforts here in Durham. The city has a pretty robust pipeline of locally and federally funded sidewalk trail and bike lane projects. But one area we've been exploring more recently or had the opportunity to explore more recently is taking advantage of existing resurfacing projects to restripe some of our roadways to accommodate bike lanes and multimodal facilities. This effort has involved a lot of coordination between our department, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, who owns and maintains many of the roadways in Durham and so is doing a lot of those resurfacing. Our local public works department who also maintains our local streets and then we've even had some opportunity to coordinate with our water management folks who sometimes are during waterline replacements are doing full street resurfacing. So we found that these kind of opportunistic bike lane projects have been a really efficient and cost effective way to relatively quickly get bike infrastructure on the ground that might otherwise require additional funding or planning efforts. And then lastly, I just wanted to share. I guess a more programmatic effort that we've recently wrapped up related to biking in Durham. This was called our bull e bike pilot program. I know you all in Amherst have an e bike share program currently Durham does not have a bike share program, but this pilot program was exploring how we could reduce single occupancy trips through through e bikes. So it was a pilot program that was funded by Bloomberg philanthropies and then we also partnered with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL for data collection during the pilot program. So during the program, the city loaned out individual e bikes to participants for four weeks at a time. And it was focused particularly on downtown hospitality sector workers, who's, and the reason that group was chosen as our focus was because a lot of times, their shifts don't align well with some of our transit schedules so looking at different opportunities are different ways we might support mobility to downtown for those workers. And then also particularly focusing on those who are transportation disadvantaged or lower income. So overall the pilot was really successful over the course of the pilot which just wrapped up in December. There were 10 participants in seven cohorts who took more than 1100 trips via the e bikes over the course of that time. And the data shows. So the participants recorded purpose of their trip, and how they would have gotten there without any bike. And so that was part of the data collection which showed that 38% of the trips replaced a drive alone travel trip. Our transportation demand management team is wrapping up reporting on this project. But we're pretty excited about the outcomes and now have a fleet of e bikes that we need to figure out what to do with which is again an exciting problem to have. So with that, I think I've taken up a good bit of time I was going to show a little testimonial video from that program but maybe I'll just send the link to Stephanie after who can distribute it. And I'll go ahead and just this here is a recent one of those recent resurfacing projects I mentioned which just gotten the vertical delineation just got installed last week so we're very excited about. But with that, I will wrap up and if anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them now or my contact information is here. Happy to be in touch via email or phone with anyone as well. Aaron, thank you so much for doing it now doing this and I see Laura has her hand raised so. Yeah thanks Aaron this was super interesting and congrats on all this great work. Um, question that you may or may not have the answer drop your head. Just wondering how much the colleges in Durham contribute to the town, either transportation wise or other through pilot programs or other ways to help support some of this, these projects. Yeah, um, I guess one thing that comes to mind there. So currently, since the pandemic started, Durham has gone fair free on our bus routes. Um, this is a little bit dated but prior to that. We had a go pass system in which employers could subsidize their employees transit passes. And I do know that, for example, Duke was very involved as one of the biggest employers in Durham was very involved in the go pass program. It's a little bit on hiatus because there's no need to pay for transit right now, given that we're fair free. I'm trying to think of other examples. I, I will say the universities are pretty significant stakeholders in a lot of our projects. Actually this image we're looking at right now is on a roadway that follows the edge of Duke's campus. Um, so this is something they were pretty involved in from, I guess just a input and feedback on our recommendations perspective. But I can, I can see if I can find some examples of more concrete concrete contributions towards transportation projects, if you're interested. Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks. Stephanie, let's also open it up to the public for questions. Thank you. For anyone from the public is interested in asking a question please digitally raise your hand and I'll allow you to speak. Julian, go ahead. You can unmute. Hi, thank you so much. That was an amazing presentation. My question, two questions is a, do you have like in Amherst there's separate ports for bike chargers where you can like charge an electric bike with our e-bike program? How do you set up the ports like that? And my second question is the little pillars I see in the photo. How do those get like plowed around? Or maybe you guys don't get snow down there. So that's a great question. We do not get snow in the same way you guys do. We get snow maybe about once a year. If that, or we get reports that snow might be coming and everything shuts down in anticipation. We've switched to the North Carolina model. We're only getting snow once a year now. Remember yesterday exactly. Yeah, that's a great question. I can ask our operations and maintenance folks what they, how they handle snow when it does snow, but it does not happen enough that I know the answer off the top of my head. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, and I will also have to, because we don't have like a public bike, e-bike share program. I don't know about any particular charging stations that are specific to e-bikes or at least public ones. I know in a lot of our city parking garages we have charging available for, you know, for vehicles, but I'm not sure about bike specific charging infrastructure. But that's a great question. That's great. Thank you. Sure. Great questions, Julian. And Laura, you have another question. Yeah, if nobody has a question, sorry. Erin, you missed, you mentioned the fare free bus and I was wondering, I was actually just in a conversation about this hearing about how, and I forget where it was, it was tried, but there was some concern from the bus drivers actually that the fare free was, was creating more stress and issues for them. I just wondered if you've had that same experience a lot. I think do I think the, the general consensus was that it's a great idea but with, without addressing some of the problems with folks that without, without homes. It can create more burden on the bus drivers to sort of act, have to do things outside of their, their job descriptions. Yeah, so anecdotally we have heard some of that as well. We've looked at a couple of different things on that front. I know there was a pretty concerted marketing and education campaign that our transit system did around kind of courtesy towards bus drivers, not just for those who are maybe using the bus systems not, you know, as a, as a place to sit and not necessarily going anywhere but also just I think during the pandemic in general we saw a good bit of you know bus drivers having to enforce mask mandates and things like that that were just a lot more conflict directed towards our operators then anecdotally there had been in the past. Another thing, and this isn't transportation specific but Durham has recently started a program that's called heart. It is our version of a non police response to situations that previously police would have been called for in situations where, you know, that that level of response is not necessary. So I know our transit operators work closely with the heart program was as well in in cases where something like that does arise. There's a, an opportunity to address a situation without escalating it like that. Any other questions. What's. Oh, Jesse. Can you unmute or transport do you have Aaron in and how would you like to see it change or improve. Sure, I, I either walk or bike into work. I do only go in. I go into city hall about three days a week so two days a week I'm a, I have no commute. On the days I do go in I either bike or walk. It's about a 25 minute walk, little less than 10 minute bike ride. I think there are some opportunities to improve some of the intersections that I walk through on a daily basis. And I also either have to choose a more circuitous route that has existing bike lanes or a more straight shot route that doesn't so I'd love for someday for the straight shot route to have a bike lane. I can confirm that that's true she does walk or bike. Thank you so much for your time, Aaron, really appreciate it. And as we go on this journey, we might pick your brain through Stella. Sure. Yeah, I, I'm always excited I'd love to hear, you know, more about the transportation work you all are doing and, and all the other energy related stuff you guys doing so please keep me in the loop and like I said don't hesitate to reach out if anyone has any questions. Thank you. Thanks for your time. All right, thanks y'all. Thank you. You're welcome to stick around and we have 10 minutes or seven minutes and we'll wrap up the meeting. Jesse, does it make sense to talk about the stretch code now, or should we postpone it to next meeting. I don't have any updates. That's worth taking time over if Jesse needs the time. Oh, the one update, Stephanie. Anna is no longer the liaison. The town council, it's Alicia Walker, Alicia Walker. Yeah, thank you. Steve. Thank you. Just, just one update reminder, Stephanie sent you all a message Monday this week about the town, the development of the rental bylaw. And that is moving forward and the CRC hopes to be able to schedule some more public review meetings in February. And the most optimistic goal would be to try to get it finalized and over to the town council in March. Now they realize that's an optimistic goal that may not happen. In the message that Stephanie sent is copied the parts of the rental bylaw that are most of interest to us, and that is the series of questions that would be asked of property owners applying for a rental permit. And also the requirements for the rental permit with respect to energy efficiency. So those are in the email that Stephanie said if you have any comments or questions on those, please send to me and include Stephanie. And I look forward to any feedback you got, I will try to attend those CRC meetings in next month and then report back to you all how those provisions fair. Any other number please to see what do you think. Sorry, so I don't think we could have a full conversation I would just say, if anyone had any, if anyone did watch the video and had any specific questions whether we have time to answer them or not. Now might be a good time to ask a question about the process and I could find an answer for next time. Otherwise, I think, probably postpone till next time I did discover one kind of interesting side note which is, I think they're offering up another level on top. So this sort of secret experimental level which would be totally fossil fuel free version of net zero which I'm not sure how you couldn't be fossil fuel free for net zero anyway but it's kind of. I want to learn a little more about that as well but so if anyone had a specific question I could research. Yeah, my only question, the thing that I'm still trying to figure out I was going to do this myself but since you asked, is what are the salient differences between the new zero stretch bylaw, and the effort by some municipalities to put in a their own. What's it called their opt in code what I can't think what it's called. Home rule their home repetition with their own code that are there and are there any important differences left anymore, especially if there's an even more stringent stretch code that could be adopted. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that I will. I've been going to meetings for both things and they're not. Nobody has discussed one in the other meeting right so I'm trying to put it together myself. I'll see what I can find out it's good question. Grab a sweater it's going to be called this weekend. Only Friday night. Only Friday night that's how we do it now. Well Saturday. And Saturday but by Sunday it'll be back up at 38. We're like at Maryland is our climate. We'll be in Durham soon. I can never remember Maryland getting to minus 10 and minus 30 with windshield which is what's supposed to happen Friday night. Okay so conversation for next meeting then, Jesse. Yeah. Yeah, I think we happy to, I don't think it's a two minute or. Yeah, great. And please make sure you watch the video before the meeting. I think I'll just enable the discussion. What else do we have on the agenda Stephanie for our next meeting. Well, I think we covered transportation tonight so normally we would have had transportation we still could add that. We will have seat base and fire. So we have the sea pace stretch code. Heat pumps, heat pumps, maybe Lori, right. Yeah, heat pumps. If there's much more to add by then I think at this point it's mostly Stephanie working on it unless you want me to try to go ahead and put together. Well, I should probably talk with Stephanie about putting together some sort of a panel we talked about having a panel with people to talk. Yep. Right. So maybe it's time to start thinking about that again. Yeah, we don't need more time and we need to send this liar out. Maybe just a few more weeks in advance if we can. So more people join. Yeah, also maybe just a few minutes on the festival if I managed to pull together a proposal for what we ought to do. Okay, simple but If we that can wait if we don't have time. I think we'll have time next time. Let's add that to the agenda. Okay, anything else. I think so. Okay. Well, this was a great discussion and thank you Erin again for joining. Hope you all have a good evening. Thanks everyone. Thanks everybody.