 I didn't even know you needed an answer. Oh, no, I didn't. You look like you were having trouble hearing. That was all. Yeah, and my email address is the one from whence the invitation came. So just ping me if you get booted and we'll do what we can to get you back in. There's a title from whence the invitation came. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yes. Mayhap, if you should get booted, should thou get booted from the. Perchance. I got my Christmas lights all on. We're good to go. See, Dr. Water says, kiss Christmas tree in the background. Susie has her Christmas plant. Erin has the traditional Christmas curtain. Oh, you put on your Christmas coat. I did. You dressed for this, man. I dressed. Erin's just playing a loop. Have you seen those YouTube videos where they just take a picture and just run the loop? All right. So we are live. You are ready to begin, mayor. Then I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. Welcome to the separate 2000 or 2020 city council study session. Let's go ahead and start with the roll call, please. Mayor Bagley. I would be present. Council Member Christensen. Here. Council Member Doggo Ferring. Here. Council Member Martin. Here. Council Member Pack. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Here. And Council Member Waters. Here. Mayor, you have a quorum. All right, great. Then let's go ahead and start the pledge. I'll lead us off on the count of three, or just actually approximately three. Here we go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. John Shetter, who came, arrived in Longmont in 1971 with his bride, his bride Bev, and spent 50 years, or 50 years, spent his career in the banking business. And both while employed in post-employment, served on the hospital board, the YMCA board, he's a friend of the senior center, he's a storyteller volunteer in the school district, he is the epitome of a servant leader. And so for John's 80th birthday tomorrow, I want to offer a birthday limerick. John Shetter, we all know is real smart. For Longmont, he assured on his part, on his birth, so on this birthday, we just want to say we love him for the size of his heart. Thank you Mayor Bagley. Thank you. All right. Thanks for that limerick. I think that was very nice way to greet him for his birthday. It has occurred to me we had the, the Arapaho, Northern Arapaho came down, and only two members of city council were able to actually be there and the rest of us really couldn't hear what was going on. We have $67,000 in the council contingency fund. And given how devastating COVID has been particularly to First Nations people, I think it would be appropriate if our staff reached out to the Northern Arapaho to ask them if it would be helpful to them to have say a $5,000 donation to their hospital. Or some other thing that would be helpful for them in this time. I would like to. I love that idea. Okay. Is that a motion? Yeah, I guess it's a motion to direct staff to do that. It's been moved and seconded by, it's been moved by Councilor Christensen seconded by Councilor Peck to have staff reach out to the leaders, I presume, Lee Spoonhunter of the Northern Arapaho tried and discussed with them their needs such as maybe a monetary donation to their hospital. The amount of $5,000 was suggested. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion carries unanimously and Harold I've got some contact info if your people need it. Okay. All right, anybody else. All right, great. Let's move on into the COVID-19 update. You're muted Harold. There's a little microphone on the bottom of your screen left hand corner Harold. If you click it, the little red line will go away. No, I was throwing because I didn't know normally we do public invite to be heard first on this, but you're right, we do have public. That's a nice way as mayor get your get your stuff together like going fairly fast. Thank you Marsha. All right, let's go ahead and start with public invite to be heard then we'll do the COVID update. How many are on the list. We haven't opened it. We haven't opened it yet. Let's take, let's take, let's just take a three minute break then and let people get online. Okay, we'll be back in three. Thank you, Harold and Marsha. You're welcome. All right, just a reminder to our callers that if you are joining us for our public invited to be heard, please remember to mute your live stream and listen for the instructions on your telephone. We'll call you by the last three digits of your telephone number, and then you will be able to state your name and address for the record and you will have three minutes. So I'm sure we'll get started here in just a few minutes just remember to mute your live stream and listen to the instructions on your telephone. All right, how many we got. Mayor looks like we have three callers with us. Hi, guys, no heads up. For some reason, these funky colored lights that you're seeing in the background that I thought would be so cool for Christmas for work for Council. Apparently they're on my Wi-Fi, I put them all over my house, and it's competing with my computer. So, if you lose me, it's because my lights are stealing my cable connection. So, I disappear momentarily, Aaron just I'll be back. All right. I know that because our TVs are not going out. All right, Harold, let's go ahead and hold off on you still and start with first call public invited to be heard. I'll take the time to start calling him in. Excellent so guest ending in 488, you should be able to unmute yourself state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes. Is my microphone easier to hear. Oh, that's easier. Yes. Thank you mayor guest 488. Hello, City Council. My name is Scott Cunningham. And I reside at 3771 South Narcissus way in Denver. As you remember, I'm a practicing internal medicine integrative internal medicine physician. And I've spoken to this council several times detailing the adverse health effects of wireless smart meters. But this evening I'd like to focus your attention on a safety issue which often carries much more immediate risk. I'm talking about the risk of electronic smart meters, such as the proposed AMI meter catching fire. Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't have an electrical engineering background as Ms Martin does. But I'd like to share my understanding of this issue, essentially from an educated lay person's perspective. My goal is to make a very complex subject understandable to all of us. I'd like to introduce you to Fire Chief Dwayne Roddy who testified to the Michigan House Energy Committee in 2017 that he watched a smart meter installed 36 hours earlier on his own house ignite an arc at his home from a power surge. For reasons I'll explain, the electricity kept flowing and arcing, melting the lines to his house and didn't stop until the transformer on the pole blew and then the fuse on the pole finally tripped. Fortunately, since he was physically at home at the time, he was able to intervene and prevent his home from burning potentially to the ground. Here's the inside scoop on how this smart meter fire actually started. As Chief Roddy explains, the standard time-tested analog electricity meters have very effective surge protection so that in the 14 years that he had served the department, he had never witnessed an analog meter fire. In contrast, electronic smart meters such as the proposed AMI meter have very weak surge protection and when they blow, since they're installed on the outside of the house, there's no circuit breaker to stop the flow of electricity so it continues to flow feeding the fire. If an overage comes from the power line, the building circuit breakers can't stop the flow of power because the circuit breakers inside the building can only protect from excessive power flow inside the building. So how would Fire Chief Dwayne Roddy advise you to proceed? I believe Fire Chief Roddy's message to you would be something like this. Don't even think about installing electronic smart meters on the outside of residences and businesses. Any assurances of safety will surely ring hollow when those meters inevitably begin to fail. And when the investigations start, I'm sure that you wouldn't want people to find your name on the work order. I recommend you to proceed with extreme caution taking the time necessary to provide the citizens of Longmont a metering system that meets sustainability needs without excessive risk of fire. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right, next. All right. Next ending in 499, 499, you should be able to unmute yourself, state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes. Okay, can you hear me? We can. Okay. This is Doe Kelly of Barbary Drive in Longmont. I have some bullet points which represent a summary of the many points that have been raised to do with the proposed smart meter rollout throughout some of the Longmont City Council public invited to be heard meetings. So starting with number one, smart meters, aka AMI receive and transmit information via microwave radiation at 2.45 gigahertz frequency. Number two, contrary to Bill Hayes environmental engineer with Boulder County public health statements. There is considerable published science on biological harms from non ionizing microwave radiation, such as that emitted by smart meters cell phones cell towers 3G 4G and fifth generation wireless, also known as 5G. Number three, contrary to AMI expert, Rick Schmidt assessment. There is ample recorded evidence of smart meter fire hazards. Number four, Susan Foster of Lyons documents firefighters in California spent 15 years and millions of dollars fighting cell towers on their stations, having suffered harm and impairment. Living and working in the presence of cell towers, emitting non ionizing microwave radiation. Number five, Susan Foster, a medical writer initiated and assisted the medical quantifying of this impairment suffered by this specific population of people. Legal struggles around cell sightings on fire stations in California continue. Number six, Virginia Farver of Fort Collins recounts a cancer cluster at San Diego State University arising in a single dorm room from a cell tower adjacent to the dorm caused the death by brain cancer to her son, rich and several other unlucky victims. Number seven, Virginia Farver of Fort Collins was forced by police presence, and in spite of her strong objections to have a smart meter installed on her home against her will. Number eight, a Pennsylvania court recently ruled it illegal to force residents to have smart meters installed on their home setting a potential legal precedent country wide. Number nine, Longmont stands to be sued in court as health and safety issues arise with AMI as no insurance carrier will ensure smart meters for liability. Number 10, smart meters and unfettered exposure to non ionizing radiation clearly do more harm than good, and it's the new asbestos. Do we the people of Longmont really want to spend $16 million on technology that's nearly obsolete according to Tim Shackley and may shortly become an albatross around our collective neck. Where's the precautionary principle and all of this and whatever happened to common sense. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Last caller. All right mayor it looks like the last caller may have hung up. All right, let's go ahead and move on to the update on COVID-19 by Harold Dominguez. Mayor and Council actually have Jeff Zayac from Boulder County Health here tonight to present. And on the COVID. So Jeff's on the screen now and Erica can you get his presentation ready, or I'll let Jeff call it up when he's ready sorry. Thank you. Thanks Harold thanks council members pleasure to be back. What we're going to do is just walk you through the latest data that we have today, which is so far looking good it's it's a positive report, and we'll see what happens in the next few days. And then just talk about what we might expect over the next few days as well as what we might expect working into the winter holidays next slide please. This is the current incidence rate on the state public health dial, and it's the incidence rate per 100,000 for a two week period and Boulder County as at 644.9 this was as of this morning it gets updated twice daily. So if you went on there now you'd probably see a different rate or rate has been decreasing for the last week which is positive news. And then we'll wait to see what happens throughout this next week the next indicator is on the next slide. And this is our positivity rate and our current positivity rate in Boulder County is 6.7%. And this is largely because of the significant amount of testing that we have in Boulder County per capita we have a large amount of testing that's occurring I'll show you that on a slide as we move forward. But this this indicator is in the yellow next next and last indicator on the state dial is the current number of days of decreasing or stable hospitalizations. Currently, we are in the yellow and this is declining and a positive trend as I'll show you when we look at our specific data. Next slide. This is a very busy graph but what I this is the graph that we typically share with you it's the Metro Denny Denver County COVID-19 new case rates and it's a seven day moving average. And you can see that right now, Boulder County is actually got the lowest case rate among all the metro areas. And we are the second lowest in the total number of new cases that we're seeing as well this only shows the rate. But if I showed you the graph on the on the number of new cases we have the second lowest number of new cases across the metro. Again, all these are fairly positive trends most these rates are decreasing we have one in Denver, that's slightly increasing as well as Arapahoe County that's slightly increasing. Next slide. This is the total number of positives and then the total number of positives associated with long term care facilities. As you probably all remember early on in the outbreak of this disease, our biggest challenges with deaths and they still are to this day have been in long term care facilities and that's because long term care facilities are congregate care facilities. And we know that once the disease is in the facility it's difficult to control the spread of the disease and obviously it's affecting our most at risk population, which ends up with unfortunately a larger death rate than our general population. The positive news here is that when we do have vaccine, we already have contracts set up for strike teams to go into each of our long term care facilities to be able to provide the vaccine we know that the majority of these cases are coming in from asymptomatic staff that are bringing the virus and still to this day so so we do have some hope and some light at the end of the tunnel here in the next couple months next slide please. This just shows our five day average new case rate. We're very happy to see it continue to go down at 128.6. We still don't have capacity, not here in Boulder County nor at a statewide level to be able to do the level of contact tracing or case investigation that allows us to get to the majority of these cases. So we are contacting many of the secondary contacts and probable contacts via letters or electronic devices at this point. And we need to get these case counts and that map if you remember that first map I showed you is mostly all read across the state. When that map starts to turn back to yellow and green we will be at a place where at a statewide level. We're at a better place to be able to do the case investigations and contact tracing. Next slide. This just shows the relative contribution from each of our minutes municipalities that have positive tests. You can see that back in early September associated primarily with the University of Colorado outbreak the far majority. This is from the city of Boulder that has switched. And we are seeing the largest majority now from the city of Longmont and we've seen that for the last, approximately the last month. Next slide. This is another busy graph and what I just want to call attention to this is our, our trend in two week incidents among Boulder County residents by age group from zero to nine all the way up to 75 plus. And we see that for the majority of our, our age groups, the, the rate is declining which is what we want to see and we hope to see that big huge spike right in the middle is associated with the 18 to 22 year old spike that happened when the University of Colorado brought kids back late early September. And the one that I want to call attention to is the one you do see increasing there. That's our 75 plus age group and again we know that's associated with the long term care facilities. Next slide. This shows the breakdown of residents testing positive, or who are considered probable by race and ethnicity by week. And you can see that one of our biggest challenges here is the disparity and inequity that we have in the number of Hispanic Latin population that currently is positive. And we know that this is an area that we need to continue to focus on I want to give a thank you to Longmont for working in partnership with us to think about how we can best engage this community and decision making and help us think about the best way to make a difference within that population. So thank you again to Longmont here. Next slide. This is the total number of tests and the total number of tests that are positive. What I just really want to illustrate here. You probably remember me talking about the number of tests that we need to do per county. We're really on in the response. That number was 495 for Boulder County. We're consistently testing high numbers well above 495 now so we have a very adequate testing capacity we have four different sites in Boulder that are that are one of those in Longmont, one of those in Boulder and then our two priority population sites, Netherland and Lyons. Again, want to thank Longmont here for the support around that site in Longmont and all these sites have stayed busy and are providing access to our community in a way that's making testing as easy and free as possible. So we really appreciate the support from from all of our jurisdictions. Next slide. This is our five day positivity rate and this is different than the one that you saw in the dial. The reason we check that we track five days because we can see changes more quickly. The dial that I showed you was a two week positivity rate but this is a five day and you can see that our positivity rate is slowly dropping. We hope to see that continue and I'll talk a little bit more about what we're expecting to see in the next week or so. Next slide. This is our hospitalizations. This is a very good trend to see obviously we've been in an increase in hospitalizations since the end of August. That's pretty consistently climbed throughout this this last portion of the disease progression. And this has been challenging for us because as you can see the disease or the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19 positives is significantly higher than the highest point it was back in the early part of this disease. The good news here is that our hospitals have done a great job of being able to really figure out how to treat people who are in the hospital. So the actual length of stay in hospitals with COVID-19 positive patients now is much less than it was in the early part of this disease outbreak. So that's a good thing. Our hospitals are telling us that their biggest challenge right now is in fact around staffing of beds. The staffing that they have in their facilities, their staff are pretty burned out and are much more, have much higher turnover rate than they did early on in this disease. And I want to give a shout out here to anybody who's listening to say that please take time to thank healthcare workers. They put their selves out there every single day to treat these folks who show up in the hospital that are coming in from our community and do the best they can to care for them. And they don't get the same level of appreciation that they did early on in this. You remember the howls that people were doing at eight o'clock. That doesn't happen as much anymore. So please do a shout out for healthcare workers who are still doing their very best to keep up with this challenge. Next slide. This is the hospital surge metrics that the state is tracking. The biggest thing I want to make note of here is that we that we don't have any, we're not approaching surge crisis, especially for our medical beds. What we are challenged with is, sorry, I have a screen popping up on me. What we are challenged with is our, is our ability again to make sure that hospitals have the staffing they need to be able to take care of the beds that they do need to be able to treat patients. And I'll just use one more example. So early on in the, in the outbreak, when we had hospitals that were running into issues, they were having to, to cancel elective surgeries reschedule them. And they're not having to do that at this point, because they haven't reached that surge capacity yet. And again, the biggest issue is not necessarily the ICU availability or vent availability, but it's it's actually the ability to staff those beds in our hospitals. Next slide. This is the state hospitalization and as you can see, we've got a decline there positive trend. Next slide. This is the number of deaths. Unfortunately, what we've had is we've had 35 deaths in November and 14 deaths already in December. And this is a similar trend to what we saw early on, when we saw increasing cases, by getting into long term care facilities, we know that that resulted in increased deaths we know that by the by and for our, or the large for the largest percentage of our deaths are different, definitely in our long term care facility. And that's what you see on in the orange on this graph right here. It's not because those facilities haven't figured out all the prevention strategies to take they're actually in places. It is the asymptomatic folks are bringing the disease in and not every facility can test every single person, every single day so our greatest hope right now is to get this vaccine out there and get it in people's hands to start providing it to staff and people in the facilities. Next slide. This is just a graph of flu versus COVID versus hospitalizations really quickly the green line is just hospitalizations that are not in COVID. So what we have right now in the hospitals we have a lot more people that are hospitalized for non COVID reasons. As we increase COVID hospitalizations to that and then if we were to increase increase flu with that, then it's going to put a stress again on that staffing shortage and on the beds that are available. Luckily, the blue line on the bottom that you see is flu. We have not seen many flu cases show up yet. And I want to thank everybody who who took the extra effort to make sure that they got their flu shot this year because that is going to help the hospitals and help our healthcare systems. Next slide. This is I'm getting close to the end here. This is the social distancing that you've heard me talk about before and Boulder County right now is at 54% social distancing. When we were, again, you can see it's compared to 86% in April when we had the stay at home orders in place. So we're fairly a fairly large percentage lower than we were before. And we know that eventually the lower that we are in social distancing the more we know the cases will increase and I'll illustrate that. I think it's in the next graph here. Next slide. Next one after that but what this you can go back it's okay go back one more. This just shows the stay at home index. And it's what the graph on the left shows is historically where we were in 2019, the amount of time that people stayed at home versus where we are right now on the right hand side so you can say, see that early on April May of this year, very high levels of people who were staying at home that were not throughout the year to the point where our lowest point was around October we're now starting to bring that number back up slowly we know that this is really difficult for people right now. It's really hard to not be socializing it's really hard to stay at home and we know that people have coded fatigue and it's also critically important to controlling the spread of the disease. This next slide I'll be able to talk about those projections. So, this shows lapses in control this is statewide current transmission control, which is what the TC is. And that's just another term for social distancing. If that stayed consistent right now with 71%. You see the black line that turns into the blue line on both those graphs. That is what our projections would look like going into the end of March basically, if everything stays the same as it is right now. If we lapse between 1020 or 30%. You can see how those things spike up so on the, on the left hand side, you can see that we're not going to exceed our hospital total hospitalization surge platform. But what we may exceed is active ICU patients and the ability to deal with those ICU patients, depending on how much we lapse in that social distancing so we want to be diligent and maintain this social distancing as we move forward, especially over the winter holiday. Next slide please. And then, Harold had asked for just a summary of what does it look like in terms of complaints and enforcement relative to long month. Long month I really appreciate your support and coordination. We have not had any major issues in long month these are numbers for the last two weeks. If a jurisdiction doesn't show up it's because they didn't have any reported period time. The primary complaints and long my have been focused on masking. In the last two weeks and just the lack of masking in different businesses across long month. And again I just want to say again how much. I appreciate the partnership with each of our municipalities because the partnership is what is making the difference in keeping us focus the way that we are. And I think this is the last slide. Yep. So just to summarize, we still have an estimated one in 40 people statewide this was this prediction was as of this Saturday they'll update this prediction began at the end of this week. We still have one in 40 people statewide who are infectious COVID-19. That means that we have a lot of COVID in our communities. Our infection rates earlier on in this. So if you think back three months ago. At the end of spring early part of summer, we were probably around one in 800. So we have a significant amount of virus in our community which means that we have a lot higher risk of running into somebody who is infectious with the disease. We know that there's still. We don't know exactly what the percentage of people who are asymptomatic are. But we know we have a symptomatic spread occurring throughout our community, and we have a high probability that we are going to run into somebody that has the disease when we are with more than 40 people, about 16.5% of our population so far has been infected with as far as the car school public health can tell what we're waiting on is we know based on Thanksgiving we're expecting to see some more increases in those graphs that I showed you. We probably will see those today tomorrow, the next day through this week, we will be able to have a much better sense of what those look what what anything that had to do with Thanksgiving will actually look like that will generate new symptoms which will help us predict where those cases may come down in the future when when you're thinking about that springtime you saw that really February, March is when you started to see hospitalizations come down. The reason that modeling so important is because it has an impact on schools. It has an impact on businesses. So if we can knock the numbers down and we don't see as much of a surge from Thanksgiving that that provides us with a better picture moving forward. And if we see a significant surge obviously it, it, it lengthens that projection out which makes it harder for all of us. We have people to be diligent the school public health run some new modeling at the end of this week. So we'll have some updates we'll share that with our municipal folks across the county, and we'll be able to have some more conversations around. What does that really mean for our schools as we move forward. And finally, there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel. We do have some hope with the vaccine. The vaccine has a high effectiveness which is very, which is very encouraging. There was concerns about if the vaccine would be that effective when the trials for started and the numbers that we're seeing are very positive. The state is receiving their first doses next week. The regions will get some of the vaccine but 47,000 initial doses for over 3000 healthcare workers or 300,000 healthcare workers who were in the first priority, obviously won't make a big dent. But each week, the state expects to get another shipment until we are done with all the priorities, which is roughly, roughly the middle of the middle of the, you know, Junish timeframe. It could be sooner than that. It could be later than that. It just depends on if the vaccine gets delayed if there's any other issues associated with it. But by the time we are through the summertime, we should be through all of the priority populations all the way down to the lowest priority across the entire state. And that's it. I know it's a lot of information. So thank you for bearing with me. I'll stop there and see if there's questions. And sorry about that. My mouse. Mr. say it says 16.5% of the population of Colorado infected. I wasn't clear whether that means that so far that is the percentage of the population that have been infected, or is that the amount that is currently affected. I'm sorry. That is the that is the total percentage of the population that their estimating has been affected at this point. Thank you. Dr waters. Yeah, it's not for Jeff. It's for Harold. I'm still going to make curious about, we have any data from the wastewater testing. And when would we, when would we anticipate if we don't have it and, and how can we put it to use right as we anticipate what's coming. So, if Jeff has time I'm going to go ahead and ask Dale to jump in because we've been connected with just staff. And then they connected us with the state group today and we had a conversation earlier about our model and what we've built and so Dale's going to talk generally today about where we are. In our conversation in the near future the state is hoping to have a public dashboard with that data. That will bring, that'll bring that forward. And so today Dale will tell you what we're seeing. And it may help Jeff, in terms of what more and more it's going to look like. And then we'll start seeing the data hopefully in the very near future when the state makes it public now do you want to jump in. If now is a good time. Mayor Bagley and members of council, Dale Radamaker deputy city manager. Council as you know we have now for several months, going back to May, then participating in a collaborative effort with several other communities up and down the front range. We've coordinated through Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and Colorado State University, and Longmont as recently also sort of increased the sampling frequency here at Longmont. The program we refer to as our wastewater surveillance program. Essentially what we're doing is we're testing the wastewater as it comes into the wastewater treatment plant for the presence of the COVID virus, and, and sampling that and getting that data now on a daily basis. We were doing it just weekly, but we have now upped the sampling frequency to to a daily frequency. We have also been working I got to give a lot of credit to Roberto Luna and Casey Campo and our staff, who have began the analysis of the data. And, and what we are working to do is to understand that relationship of the loadings that we're seeing of the virus and wastewater versus the case counts, and we're comparing to the five day average of new cases in Longmont. And so, the great partnership again with Boulder County Health, they are providing us with the, the new cases that are that are being determined in Longmont and so we're, we're charting that and analyzing that data. What we are doing and what the data is beginning to show us is that it does give us a fairly good indicator with about a seven day lead, if you will. In other words, a sample taken today will give us some indication of the number of cases that we may anticipate in Longmont a week from now. What I can report is that, well, first of all, folks, this is, this is sort of like raw data and research live. And so it has not had anything near peer review, or, you know, substantial verification. We are, as Harold mentioned, though, working with staff at Boulder County Health and the city of Boulder. And today we also met with folks from Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Our initial feedback from all the agencies has been what we're doing here in Longmont appears to make a lot of sense. And everybody is fairly impressed with the, the correlation of the data. And again, by the data, I mean the number of virus load count in wastewater versus new cases. What I can tell you is that we are coordinating with the state. And as Harold mentioned, they, they are intending to release the dashboard. I would anticipate in that in the next couple of weeks. I would anticipate us then following that up with a Longmont local information because we are reaching a point where sharing this information, certainly with Boulder County Health, which we're doing and have been doing for some time, has proven to be probably helpful in trying to make decisions and to anticipate what might be coming at us a week from now. The good news that I can tell you is that we are not seeing a surge from Thanksgiving at this point. And we're about 10 to 12 days out from Thanksgiving. And as Jeff was saying, we're looking closely at the next several days this week and to see whether or not there's any spike in loadings. And so I think if there's any message from, from this research, it's everybody needs to stay the state of course. We need to all continue to do what we're doing. We need to prepare to be having some beneficial impact. And it is, you know, certainly not the time to let up on our, on our commitment to protecting ourselves and each other. So with that, that's the general update. But at some point, Council Member Waters being a better position to, to show some of the, some of the charts and data. We're a bit reluctant to do that right now because again, we're coordinating with our partners on the overall collaborative, but suffice it to say, we are seeing a good correlation. And it is at this point, knock on wood trending downward. And I think the piece to that, if I can add something to that really quick. So, when you look at it, you know, we talked about what we heard and they said the eyeball test it looks good. R squared is 0.7. So those things really work. Longmont's a little bit different. And I think this is the challenge in this data, because we don't have the industrial base that other communities have. It's easier to really get a hold of that data in terms of what it means for the community versus other communities that may have more industrial waste going into the system. To Jeff's point that he said this is why I said he may want to hear this and I wanted to jump in. What I took away from this data is when I saw his graph in terms of mobility. He handed it to me before the meeting and I compare it to the loading. And then I see the direction that the cases are moving. It's all starting to line up. But like Jeff, I want to see what happens in the next few days to really take it through the last sort of look at this. But what's very clear is the advice they're giving when we're seeing people do it. In case counts we're seeing it in the wastewater loading. And I think it's important to really be focused on the advice and how we're moving forward. And what I said is I want to, I hope we can move through this even faster. So we get to the point where I can call Jeff and go here's what we're seeing on the loading. We need to really hammer our communities to say we need to be diligent again because it's going to show it to us hopefully ahead of time. Versus waiting on the case counts. And so let us get through this week. And then I think we'll be really at the point where we're more comfortable. I just follow up. Harold, you just said, you said when they when they do it. What I what I'm going to interpret is when when residents comply with the three W's right. Watch your hands watch your distance where your mask when we do that. That's when you're seeing the first one. Yeah, socially distance in the piece of all of that because we're finding that's that's the piece of this. And it's nothing new. I've just been saying this, but you can see that mobility start making its way into different data sets. Sorry, sorry, Council Member Farrell just wanted to throw that in there. You called me right. Yeah, I can hear you. So I have a couple of questions. One, and it's in regard to testing. So when we look at the disparities among the Hispanic and Latinx community, in case of positivity, you know, the positivity rate. How often are people, are you looking at the demographics of people who are being tested. I know for, for me, I can opt to not put my ethnicity in there. And, you know, you can decide whether or not to. So I understand that it might be a little difficult to keep track. But I'm wondering as far as, and this one can kind of go to Harold as well. What one what are we doing to help educate the Latinx community to get tested. It's been the other week we go as part it's part of our district where we have to test a month. So encouraging folks to go in and get tested regularly. And then for Jeff, do we have our is there any data being collected on how many in the Latinx community are getting tested. Harold, do you want to go first. I'll let you go first and then I'll jump in. So we are collecting data, as long as people are disclosing it we're collecting data. We have done, I think as you're aware, some pop up testing as well so we've gone to specific communities, really tried to outreach to people we've been using our brokers. Harold can talk about the partnership that we have with Longmont and all the work that we're doing together. But obviously, the we need to be able to engage our Latinx community as decision makers in this and we need to work with them to figure out what's the best way to really reach the community provide the community with supports, have them be part of the solution with us in order for us to be successful and clearly from that data that I showed you on that graph we're not there yet we still have work to do. Okay. So, we've had a couple of pop up testing one was near the mobile home park near Quo campus, and that went relatively well I think we had 200 or so tests in there and so that one work really well, based on where we were seeing the they've given me access to the hotspot map throughout the community. And so we tried for a couple of weeks for a pop up testing on Tuesdays at lashley street station. That one didn't perform as well. And so what we we looked at doing is really anchoring back on the fairgrounds testing. And then retooling and this is the work that Marika and she's working with Carmen neighborhood services and cultural brokers, really retooling how we're communicating within neighborhoods within our community to to encourage that testing. And that's one where we probably will reach out to council to try to help us get that message out into deeper into our neighborhoods within our community because we're finding that is, is an issue to deal with what we've also learned and I'm going to say this is a probably equally an economic demographic issue, as it is ethnicity. And what we've heard is I think questions is a testing free but then when you get into it, it's. So what happens if I test positive. How do I pay my rent, how do I have utility bills how do I take care of my family. And so we're trying to really work on getting that information out because my guts telling me that there is anxiety with getting out if you know that you can't go in and work, and then you can't take care of your family so that that's another layer that we've started talking about in terms of how we really communicate what resources are available people so we can provide assistance if they're in that situation. And, and I know that's that's something that comes up a lot. So we're really trying to refocus our efforts and, and how we engage with neighborhoods and to an extent we've even talked about, you know, walking through and putting our care package cat care packages, you know, indoors and things based on where we're seeing it in terms of that direct communication. Yeah. And so and you know I do have a question so that were there times that the Lashley Center closed early, because I heard on two separate occasions that they people went out there. They were already around. Everything was closed. So what I can say that I was there the first week, and we closed a line early but we didn't close it early. And we still had people out there cleaning up after the end time was there so I know from my perspective when I was there the first Tuesday they didn't. They didn't check on the second one but I don't think they did either then so. And so you know one of the folks because I talked to them in person. What you know I just said well if there's nobody, you know maybe the facilities open. But if there are no if there aren't anybody going in to get tested, you know you wouldn't see a lot of people. So you know maybe they were there but you know did you circle around or I, I don't know but Karen I see you up. So, Harold and members of council I do believe that Carmen indicated that that that last night of testing that they did. They did close down earlier than what they advertise because they did not have anyone there to get tested so I can tell you the exact time but as she did mention that they closed a bit early. Okay. Joan, your hand was up. No, all right counselor Christianson. I'm also concerned because I've heard from a member of the Latino community that well and I also know my own personal experience a lot of people are just worried about money, because when my son and I went out to clinic. The shot was free but the administering of the shot was not free. So, we wound up paying $150 from my son shot, and I wound up paying. I don't know some amount from my shot. So I think that a lot of low income people are very worried about how much they're going to pay and a lot of Latino families are a little larger and have extended so the whole family, maybe 10 people they're going in and they're worried that they can't have, you know, they'll get a shot and then they'll get a big bill for something. So, I think it would be really important to let people know the reality of how much they're actually going to be charged because I think that's a lot of the reason that a lot of people are not going in to to get tested. Is this the flu shot that you're talking about? I'm sorry. I said shot I meant, I meant COVID test. Okay. Yeah, administering the test costs money. Even though the test is free. That's what the nurse told me. So, I'm just saying, yeah. Yeah, I'm happy to answer. Yeah. So, and if you if you go to our website, if you just search Boulder County COVID-19 click on the testing link. It'll tell you which sites have an administrative fee which don't. But if you go to the fairgrounds as an example or the Boulder Stasio field drive up site completely free no cost whatsoever. Anybody who's listening can go to either of those two sites completely free of cost. There are some if you go to individual providers or to a hospital that do charge and administrative fee but all of that is on our website and associated with each of those facilities. This was clinic in Lafayette and I was led to believe that it was all free but anyway. Yeah, yeah. Marika is also part of the gist and working in partnership with Boulder County Health and so we'll make sure we push this in and then we'll work with them to get that information out locally in terms of where and making sure that it's also translated as we get it out in the community. You're muted to I don't know what I swear I unmute this thing and it just goes back to me. So, here we go. Okay, so the so anyone else have any other questions before I ask my question. Okay, so I've taken a lot of heat for the last couple weeks, not anymore but last week I took a lot of heat for encouraging World County and businesses to back up the governor. One concern that I'm hearing from neighboring mayors is that there's going to be a 4000 member mega church meeting up in Lafayette. So, they're frustrated that the Boulder County Health Department's not doing anything to stop that I don't know if you can. But, and nor would I advocate you necessarily do it, but a lot of the frustration continues to be over the seemingly a lot of our small small businesses, especially the restaurants are hurting more and more closing down. They can't hold on much longer. Part of my being vocal to World County was that we're doing our part. The sooner they do their part, the quicker we all get out of this, but we're doing things as a county such as that 4000 member meeting of people coming in. And I'm just, I have, I sometimes have a hard time defending some of our artists, what seems to be government decisions. What are your thoughts, how much longer can I'm not advocating that you shut down this this church group I'm advocating we open up restaurants and figure out another way because people just are dropping left and right restaurants businesses that they're shutting down for good. So, how do we a keep the covert numbers trending downward while starting to think about providing some relief for small businesses. Is that the other mutually exclusive exclusive of one another or not. Not necessarily and thank you Mayor Bagley for asking that question and for the advocacy that you've done you've been really clear that this needs to that we need to follow these suggestions and that when we work together we're going to be more successful so I greatly appreciated that and I know you've you've taken over that. And what really drives and I think everybody on this call knows and every presentation that I've been doing I've been talking about. Nobody wants to have anything shut down. And it is, it's extremely unfortunate because we're, we're losing businesses that may never ever be able to open up again we're putting people into homelessness that currently weren't in homelessness. It's incredibly preventable we know that. So the message for sure that I want to get across is that if people follow those recommendations we don't need to have any of these policies in place. We know that the behavior change will result in the positive trends that we need we know for sure that face masks can make a significant difference so even in the absence of more restrictive policy, wearing a face mask makes a significant difference. I hope we can all take that to heart, because the policies aren't necessary, unless we ignore the prevention strategies and I don't certainly don't want to be doing that I know you certainly don't want to be doing that. And it puts us in a in a no win situation. The, I would bet that everybody's been paying attention to some of the things that are happening at the national level with churches. And the churches were recently reclassified as essential businesses by Colorado and their latest public health order, which means they can operate like any other essential business. They have to wear indoor or outdoor gatherings, they have to maintain six feet, they have to wear masks indoors, but there's no limitation on them that's different from any other essential business at this point. And that's a huge challenge for all of us. For me, it's a huge challenge for you, it's a huge challenge for every community around us as a huge challenge. And what I want to send to anybody listening to this is, if you're going to go to a church gathering. I urge you and implore you to please wear a mask, maintain distance, it's safer to maintain more than six feet between family groups, then it is just six feet. But if you're going to do that please maintain the social distancing and wear a mask. It will make a difference we are. And I'll add Mayor Bagley is that we are working with Chief Bashar in Lafayette to make sure that messaging is getting out. And we've been talking about that weekend and week out because we have had some challenges with some of the the faith based churches. And we want to make sure they understand the importance of this and that they get the message, and that they pass that message on to their parishioners. So have we thought about allowing restaurants to reopen with the understanding like one household 12 feet distancing. Is there anything we could do to allow in person dining that would allow us to continue to see a downward trend. There has been a discussion of that at the state level. My guess is some of you are aware of that. And they were looking at a five star program that Mesa put forth the State Health Department is evaluating that program right now. And I can tell you that from what I've seen from the data, what I know will be a challenge is we need to be able to have not only the ability to reduce the disease but when we bring multiple families together and you're sitting indoors, even if you're at tables, without really significant separation that makes it difficult for restaurants, you can still have that virus transmit because if you think about it you've got people who take their masks off. They're sitting in stationary places for longer periods of time, and it's much easier to transmit the disease so the latest Yale study and I'm happy to send us to any of you or you can publish it on your website. I think that looks at some of that specific information relative to restaurants, and that that is a facilitated disease spread category because of those kinds of things and that's what makes it challenging. That's why we've driven and encouraged the restaurants to do is and I know this is not. It's difficult this is and I have to say I receive calls from restaurants every single week who are pleading with me that they can't make it another day and this is going to mean life or death for them and it's their entire investment over their lifetime. So I know what this means. We really encourage people to do as much as they can outdoors, much less risk outdoors, 19 to 20 times less risk when you're outdoors than indoors. Those are the safest place places we can prevent for restaurants to be able to gather I know that's difficult when we're talking about wintertime and cold weather. And last but not least, the one question I have is everybody here knows that when some but when I feel attacked I kind of react strongly. So, I have a close friend who was recently fired, because her employer refuses to wear masks at the workplace, and she was acquainting with me. And so, my question is, when you outwardly have when you have someone who is not adhering to rules. What is the appropriate action to take. The first thing to do is what we've been doing and this is difficult right if we're talking about individual to individual situations. There's a lot of those things that happen, and we're not going to be able to deal with every single one of those issues. What we're looking for is trend so as you, I think as you know we have an entire business team that's set up around where we're hearing lots of complaints about businesses people not masking. We're doing tons of education that's a partnership with all of you and each of our other municipalities. The best thing you can do if it's an individual to individual situation is separate from the person if it's an employer who is not following guidelines those are the things we definitely want to hear about and we will do follow ups with to make sure that there are I am aware of employers who are letting people go vocalize that they that they need to be compliant with the governor's orders people are losing their paychecks, because they're scared these people will turn them in. And so I, it's time to start turning them in. Yeah, those are things that need to come into the business group and in Boulder County Health and then they they partner with the jurisdictions on this. You all may have seen it on the, there's several that were on the newspaper in the newspaper today where that's yeah well and we work with them like I said usually it's like I know we're all trying to get along. But when people are people are starting to do stupid mean things. And so I'll be stupid and mean back. Mayor I wanted to also add, I wanted to add something to Jeff and the five point program we've also asked Jessica so she's been involved in that conversation because she's partnered and I forgot the name of the business it's actually designed a more more robust certification program that in in their review of it and Jeff we need to probably get you into this. Yeah, each queue and so I know they're trying to talk about that a little bit because I think it's a little more robust than what Mesa did. And so I know those conversations have been forwarded to the governor's office as well. Yep, Jessica did send those. So thank you again for partnering with us there to that did get into the governor's office with the encouragement that they take a look at that program. And then Mayor counsel I just wanted you to know that based on what we were seeing and conversations that Jeff and I had terms of critical infrastructure and all of these issues. What we were seeing internally just to know what we did. You know, obviously I said we're really enforcing masking and those issues. But to the point of this basically said, if there's not a reason for someone to be within six feet of each other. You don't need to do it. And if they're really the only reason we should be within six feet of each other is if there's an emergency issue that we need to deal with water leak wastewater leak those types of issues and so we've even been more focused just based on the we've seen in our organization in terms of saying don't be near each other. Be six feet away. waters. Thanks. Jeff, any advice for us or for members of the public on the apps that that are available to monitor our own proximity to others who either have been infected or were outbreaks have occurred. Absolutely. And I can't believe it but I'm completely spacing the name of the app that you put on your phone that will tell you if you've been exposed to somebody that is close to you that has covered. And what it does is it does not collect any personal identifying information. I don't know the technology behind it. There's a ton of information on the state's website about it. Harold I hope you're looking it up for me because I can't believe I've spaced the name of it but um, but there is an app that you can download on your phone I've downloaded online as soon as I heard about it. One of the things is if you get in close contact with somebody who is a probable or known positive, then you get a text message that comes to you that provides you with explanations of what you can do is next steps. And the reason that's important, especially now so thank you for bringing this up. Dr waters is because we know we can't contact trace and do case investigations with everybody. This is another way for people to get a notification if they've potentially been exposed, and is a very positive thing. All right, Council Member Christensen and Council Member Douglas Farring, and then Council Member Martin. Thanks. Jeff, I someone wrote in today with what I thought was a good suggestion and of course, because we won't be getting the vaccine. Most of us for quite some time. So that's very frustrating but anyway, one thing that we could do in conjunction with this app that you just mentioned is if people get the vaccine, they would be given a little certificate that they can show and then we can let those people go to restaurants and bars to and be assured that we can begin to open things up as people get vaccinated, because their entrance to be able to go to a restaurant or bar would be their certificate of vaccination. Do you think that's a good idea. Well definitely float the idea I think the tracking is going to be the hardest thing to deal with so if you think about the number of vaccinations that need to go out across all of the communities across Colorado, and how we actually coordinate and track all that, and then I think that the person who's in the restaurant, who gives them the certificate I bet is a lot of operational issues with that but I will I will definitely float the issue and bring it to the state as well, and just see if anybody has thought about this or talked about the Susie, I'm sorry, Council Member Douglas Bering. You're good. Council Member Martin, Council Member Peck. Covid19.Colorado.gov exposure dash notifications. Add your phone. Is the other way that you can access it. I have it on my phone that's why. And the key piece on that is when when you get a test result if it's positive there's a section in the app where you can upload your result. We have this question on our staff. Basically, depending on the age of your phone it uses a Bluetooth technology in terms of proximity but it doesn't keep track of doesn't track you. We have older phones that does it does use location services but it also doesn't track. We sent this information out to our community we will or to our organization I'll have Sandy send it to you with a technical article that goes over that. All right I'm going to keep. Let's take these last couple of comments and then just going to remind everybody nicely that we still have for huge issues to get through tonight. Council Member Martin. That was the same thing I had found it before Council Member Christensen spoke. And it's a other thing people shouldn't probably know is that if you have an iPhone you don't need to install anything you just have to enable your Bluetooth. And it can be frustrating if you if you have an Android phone. And Harold's going yeah, it can. But that's what's called the, it doesn't really have a catchy name it's just called exposure notifications. Thank you. This goes to Councilman Christensen and Jeff, Zach. I just saw in the news that Google and other big platforms are creating an app that once you get the vaccine, you fill in the app and it will give you a green screen that you hold up to go into any, any event, any restaurant, etc. It might be more worth looking into. And then nobody has to question anybody you just hold up your phone that you've had the vaccine. Thank you. Thank you I will look into that for sure. All right, Jeff thank you very much for your continued work. I don't know if you signed up when you first started this job if you ever thought you'd be doing this kind of crap. But earning your money my friend earning your money. So, thanks for your help. Appreciate it. Thanks Council members. All right. Next, let's go ahead with the front range passenger rail presentation. Joan, thank you, Mayor. Sorry, Councilor Peck, no complaining about the rail. Okay, we're going to talk about it. I know you hate it, but we're going to talk about by the way I'm being sarcastic I know. I know you are. Hi Randy. Hi, Mayor. Thank you members of council Phil Greenwell transportation planning manager with the city of Longmont. Just wanted to quickly get to the front range passenger rail presentation here by Randy Gromberger. This is some pretty positive news for passenger rail along the whole front range and also includes a bit of our Northwest rail corridor so I invite Randy to take it away. Thank you very much, Randy. All right, thank you, Phil. And it's a pleasure to be here tonight I appreciated Phil inviting me quite a while back. And told him we're always anxious to get the word out about front range passenger rail so thank you for this opportunity again I won't have as many bar graphs and probably as much interesting information I was fascinated by. The trends that Jeff was talking about tonight and, and I just encourage us all and you do the same to keep wearing those masks folks. All right, next slide please. Okay Southwest chief and front range passenger rail Commission I'm the I'm Randy Gromberger and I am the project director for the Commission. I'm the director for this position almost two years ago. Now, the Commission itself was created by the state legislature in 2017. These are the 11 voting members. The top ones are the 11 voting members of the Commission then we have three nine voting members. As you'll see, both railroads, class one railroads in Colorado are members of the Commission. Mitchell, BNSF railway DJ is actually the Vice President of passenger rail operations for the entire BNSF network so we're extremely fortunate to have a DJ on board as one of our voting commissioners. Also we have representatives from each one of the front range MPOs. We have a couple individuals in the southern part of the state, because half of the Commission's charges to continue to work with them track and the BNSF to make sure that m tracks long distance train between Chicago and, and Los Angeles the Southwest chief that train remains in southeastern Colorado and continues to flourish. Bill van meter with RTD is another one of the voting members of the Commission. We have three non voting members David crutchinger he's the head of the division of transit and rail at CDOT, Rob Eaton with Amtrak is a non voting member and then Dale steen Bergen, one of your neighbors up north in Cheyenne, the Cheyenne Chamber is also a non voting member. Next slide please. These are the Commission's purposes for existing basically again that legislation in 2017 said that the Commission should continue to preserve Southwest chief service in the southern part of the state. And then the last bullet and the most significant probably to you folks is the facilitation of the development of front range passenger rail. The legislation called for front range passenger rail to exist between Pueblo and Fort Collins, which is about 180 180 mile corridor by highway. Next slide. Why the renewed interest in passenger rail I mean there have been studies done for many many years up and down the front range and across the state for passenger rail. And the real reason that it really makes sense now is the incredible population changes. As this slide shows these stacked counties show how much growth there's going to be in long the front range. Between 2018 and 2050. As you can see all of the growth will not all but certainly the predominant amount of growth in the, in the state of Colorado over the next 30 years will occur in this 180 mile corridor. Next slide. Here's some of the reasons that the Commission was charged with implementing front range passenger rail. Anybody that drives I 25 knows that congestion is simply getting worse, travel time is increasing, and certainly is becoming less predictable I live up in johns town and before coven I was commuting to downtown Denver every day, 43 miles, each way. And my travel time was anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half for that 43 mile trip and that's one of the beauties of passenger rail well run passenger rail system you can almost set your watch by when the train arrives and when it arrives at your destination. The state's population we already touched on that has grown significantly over the last 30 years and it's going to continue to grow. Fort Collins to Pueblo currently has 84% of the states 5.6 million folks, and that corridor itself will gain 84% of the additional three million residents by 2050. And I imagine another three million residents wanting to use that one additional lane that seed out is currently adding died 25. We don't think that's going to get it done. We're pretty concerned about the average travel time, especially if you're not paying the toll to be in those managed lanes population 65 and over is increasing. And I can't symbol that remark, and I'm understanding that you know the older I get the less I like to be on I 25 and, and I think a lot of our older folks are feeling the same way that I do. We had a really interesting conversation with some folks in in Adams County several months ago now, they had just interviewed a very high powered fortune 500 company that was considering moving to Adams County. And today they said nope, we love front range Colorado we like everything you've got here except you don't have passenger rail, and our employees are used to riding trains, and we're going elsewhere. So we're afraid that that kind of thing might be occurring up and down the front range and obviously jobs and economic development are critical and the younger population I'll tell you when I turned 16 it was the right of passage I finally got my driver's license. I mean, I've seen out that some kids aren't even interested in getting their drivers license they'd rather ride transit and sit on their phone or sit and play with their phone or text their friends or, or listen to their headphones so it's an entirely different world in the old. Well, we're out West and we all love our cars that that's starting to change pretty rapidly in Colorado. Next slide please. In an online public meeting, a survey that was up 24 seven for the entire month of July this past July. And we, I'm going to touch here on a few other questions that we ask in that, in that survey. We had 10,000 people responded to the overall survey, which was quite amazing the consultant team that put this up said they had never seen this kind of response to a one month survey. As you can see through this pie chart, we ask what are the most important operational considerations to you for a front range passenger rail system. Station location close to my origin and destination that made a lot of sense as do these others. The second it almost 19% was the ability to interconnect with other modes of travel, either currently or planned in the future. The reasonable travel times ranked very high affordability of cost was very high. And then the last larger number was shifting people from their cars to reduce congestion. Next slide. One of the other questions was where would you most want the alignment of front range rail to go and in this particular question they were only given these three options downtown Denver, the airport or Denver tech center. And as you can see downtown Denver, it was the obvious choice. A lot of people say well there's a lot of people wanting to go to the airport. And I say yeah but the people that are wanting to go downtown Denver a lot of those are commuting and they're going there five days a week. Some of the people that would love to have this train go from Fort Collins or long not to the airport, maybe only go out there three or four times a year. I think the downtown Denver focus is not surprising in this 180 mile corridor. Next slide. This was an interesting one what would be your most primary purpose for using front range passenger rail recreation leisure again was almost twice as high as the second highest which was commuting. But once again keep in mind the commuters are probably on that train five days a week, and the recreation leisure people might be on there two to three times a month. So, the fact that there's twice as many people that voted for that particular recreation leisure column. There still will be a lot more commuters overall on this train making up the total ridership numbers when this line is in this passenger rail network is opened up. Next slide. This is just a listing of some of the. Again, the people that said where do you most want to go. And again there's no surprises it's the predominant destinations and and attractions Denver and the airport Colorado Springs Fort Collins Boulder and and on down the line. So again this this particular question didn't surprise any of us. Next slide. We had done a couple previous surveys back in 2019 again this one the previous one that I just discussed was in in July of this summer, but these two were done last year we did a, a metro quest survey. This was handing out cards and having people go online and complete a survey, almost 7000 people responded to this over a two month period. And 95% of the respondents believe that passenger rail service could help address the transportation needs up and down this front range quarter and 92% said they'd be interested in using it when it becomes available. Then in October, the rail commission engaged a couple of the most high powered political consultant polling companies in the state, one on the Republican side one on the Democratic side we didn't want to have this balanced or unbalanced in any way they did 600 telephone surveys across 13 front range counties from October 4 October 8. In order to participate in the survey you had to indicate that you were going to be a potential voter in the October, excuse me in the November 2020 election. Again came up with some incredibly surprising numbers, 81% of the folks contacted indicated that they had support for a front range passenger rail service that would provide regular train service daily between Fort Collins and Pueblo. And we asked the tough question. One of these others had ever mentioned money. So we ask a question, would you support or oppose a sales tax increase to fund a front range passenger rail service project that would have regularly scheduled service to these population centers with an estimated cost of $5 billion. 61% said they supported it only 27% said they opposed the pollsters that did this Magellan and RBI strategies. They said they were shocked by these numbers and they said the commission was in an excellent position to begin begin this project. Next slide please. I've done over the past several months we've been doing ridership modeling, and the modeling that we've been doing projects that will be a very notable demand for for this service. Again, the demand appears to be highest amongst commuters and that was significantly aligned with the recent survey we did this past summer, but that substantial demand for recreation and special events, special events are things like the stock show like Rocky the state fair down in Pueblo CSU and Boulder football games at CU and CSU Air Force Academy, etc. Those are special events that are categorized into the into the travel model. And again, these numbers that we're coming out with in Colorado and I've got a couple slides here to show you in a second, but they fare comparably well with other rail lines across the country. And absolutely the trains will create a reduction in emissions and fit nicely into the governor's air quality goals for the state of Colorado. Next slide. This is the the ridership numbers for one of three alignments that we still have in contention and one of those happens to run right down through the middle of Longmont, the BNSF line class one freight line that begins up in Fort Collins comes down to Longmont through Boulder into Denver and all the way into Pueblo. So that continues to be one of one of our routes. That line is actually 191 miles of railroad. In the year 2050, there will be 7 million people along that line. We projected out the full vision of this operation and it would be 25 round trip trains a day, operating on double track exclusive rail through the quarter with 14 stations between Pueblo and Fort Collins annual ridership nearly 3 million riders per year were about 9200 riders on a average weekday. Again, we normally do model runs with only 10 stations but this particular one we used 14 stations, and that included some secondary stations in Fort Carson, Monument, Louisville, and Bertha. And when we do the additional four stations some people thought by adding that additional station stop time, we might lose ridership. No the model says we would actually increase ridership by adding those four additional stations. This is a listing of some of the other comparable passenger rail systems around the country that we compare this proposed service to. As you can see, there's a service between Chicago and Milwaukee known as the Hiawatha. They don't even carry a million riders a year and they think that's successful enough that they're currently adding additional trains to that line. The capital line from San Francisco out to Sacramento. That's about 168 mile route carries a little less than the projected ridership for this Colorado train. We've got a neighbor to the west of us the front runner over in Salt Lake City. That's a very successful train that operates through Salt Lake up to Ogden and down to Provo. And again they're carrying close to five million riders on on that particular service with 28 round trips per day. Next slide. These are the alignments that are still in contention as we're wrapping up this first consultant contract. We've got a couple more consultant teams to be brought on board next year to complete the service development planning and start doing the modeling that would be required by the Federal Railroad Administration. And the railroads themselves in order for us to operate passenger trains in the adjacent corridors to the class one freight railroads. So we've got two lines the blue line is the BNSF line that I mentioned that goes through Longmont. The yellow line is actually the line that we evaluated back in 2014. I was the project manager for that study for the consultant firm at that time and Phil Greenwald was one of my superstars on the technical advisory advisory committee for that. That line started again in Fort Collins came down to Longmont and then went out to the I-25 corridor connecting down to eventually to RTD's North Metro line which just opened up this past September. The purple line is the I-25 corridor alignment. That one does not penetrate downtown Denver but instead when it hits the north suburban and south suburban areas it heads east out to the airport in the I for the E470 corridor. And then it proceeds south along I-25 all the way to Pueblo. So these are the three that we've been evaluating over the past 15 months and we're anticipating it'll be these three alignments that enter into NEPA. They're all technically feasible. They obviously have different benefits and impacts but those particular routes will be studied much more detail over the next probably the next 15 to 18 months. Next slide. Now this is an exciting slide here. We were the commission was presented with a an overview at their August meeting from from our Amtrak representative on the commission about a new program that Amtrak is including in their federal reauthorization proposal. It's called a network modernization program and what it will be would be to create a $25 billion, $5 billion a year national program to create new short distance corridors. And by short distance we're talking about corridors less than 400 miles in length. The Amtrak officials have have identified the Colorado Front Range Corridor as their top priority in the nation for this new program. And they have already cleared the House of Representatives has has approved this. They're awaiting companion legislation in the US Senate to get this program underway. I don't know if a lot of you have heard but the new president elect Joe Biden is referred to in a lot of circles as Amtrak Joe. So everybody believes that passenger rail is going to be at the top of his priority list. In terms of some of his agenda for the next four years so that's pretty exciting. But to have Colorado is the number one list on this. This particular program is exciting Amtrak has indicated they have targeted $2 billion, $2.1 actually billion dollars for infrastructure improvements and rolling stock for treat three trains a day service between Fort Collins and Pueblo. We're proposing a train leave Pueblo and and Fort Collins in the morning peak, another one over the noon hour and then another one in the evening peak so this is exciting and we're pretty, pretty sure that a $2 billion payment from the feds and that by the way is 100% federal funding. There is no state match required for this new grant program, but we think that'd be a pretty exciting down payment for the future build out a front range passenger rail. Okay, this is getting close to the wrap up. Again, we think that front range passenger rail has an incredible amount of momentum been developed over the past 15 months. We've got three different surveys showing substantial local support for for the system up and down the front range legislative and local elected interest we've got a lot of folks involved in what we call segment stakeholder coalition meetings. We've met four times in the past 15 months the next meeting of these groups will probably be in in February, but they're basically opportunities for the public to provide a lot of input in terms of alignment in terms of station locations in terms of service levels environmental impacts all those kinds of things. Amtrak is as I just mentioned is extremely interested in the Colorado front range as our class one railroad partners we meet about every six weeks with BNSF and UP and now having DJ Mitchell at the table as is just a real shot in the arm for the commission and other potential partnership opportunities we're having pretty regular meetings with Bill van meter and his staff at RTD talking about the potential for the Northwest Rail Corridor from Denver to Boulder to Longmont being the first usable segment of a front range passenger rail build out. And to sit down with with bill van meter and his staff and DJ Mitchell at the same time and have those conversations is is pretty exciting. Bill van meter has even indicated that once his new board is seated and, and their new general manager gets her feet on the ground. He is trying to host some type of virtual dinner or happy hour or whatever where his his board and the Rail Commission can get together and spend a couple of hours getting acquainted and, and trying to further these partnerships. Next slide. Oh, that's it. All right, well I ran through that kind of quickly I know your first a couple of agenda items tonight were really interesting and, and took a bit of time so I didn't want to take too much of your time this evening but I'm certainly available for for any questions that you might have. I just, I just want to say before we start the questions just something to keep in mind me personally just, I'm sure you're aware of the RTD fast tracks situation from Denver to Longmont. Absolutely, feel free to share with them that it sounds to me like you're you're talking about a hell of a good matching fund or some type of down payment that would go a long way to us getting Northwest Rail. And you can call it and if they decide to call this one in the same. Keep in mind that Longmont currently pays for four to $5 million a year to have rail service from Denver to Longmont. And so that should be money that that if we're going to continue to pay it that should go towards rail. And if you and others are going to come in and build that rail. I would want to see our tax dollars going to help this project, rather than pay RTD, get nothing from RTD, and then have another tax to pay this rail, you know, so the only thing worse than paying for no rail is paying for, you know, no rail twice or double paying is not what that makes sense. So just just just as you're talking in these meetings know that I think I speak for all of council that we want our rail. We love hearing what you're saying. And that RTD needs to contribute funding to this project should indeed it go from Denver to Longmont, which, again, speaking for this council, we would really asked that be pushed, but anybody else have anything to say other than that. I'm going to put it on the head councilman back. Thank you, Mayor. Randy, thank you. That was a great presentation and it's really, really exciting to see these projects moving forward. And so my question is, what can we as a council do to further your interest in using the Northwest Rail over those other two lines that you're looking at. Do we need to move faster on getting the Northwest Rail ready as far as getting projects going? Do we need to get an analysis done? Tell us what we need to do to show that we're ready and that we want to be part of this project. Well, Phil does represent you on the segment coalition stakeholder coalition meetings that I talked about. Again, we meet about quarterly every three to four months our next meeting. We're expecting to be sometime in February. That is really where the local support and local voices can be heard. Certainly any kind of letter writing campaign. You know, to the commission or to your legislators, we're actually going to be getting out and the commission is going to be sending out pretty much personalized letters. So it'll probably your letter will probably come from Jacob Rieger who is the staff at Dr. Cog that is is your commission representative. But those letters will be going out before the end of the year, basically asking locals to consider contacting if you have lobbyists or, you know, if for the MPOs, they certainly do have lobbyists. I don't know if Longmont does but these letters will be encouraging you to contact your, your state elected officials. We expect in this next session that Senator Leroy Garcia, President of the Senate will once again be running a bill to create a front range passenger rail district. We're pretty sure that when this project eventually goes to the to the voters for funding, we can't imagine that we'll be asking people out on the fringes of the state to pay for it. It seems logical to follow what some other states and communities have done and that would be, you know, ask the people that are adjacent to the line and it would more likely use the line the majority of the time. Probably folks out in Sterling and up in Craig and down in Durango and those in Lamar probably aren't going to get a lot of votes from them and obviously the way we have to do things in Colorado, you need to pass an election to generate some of the revenue. Again, we believe we're going to get a lot of funding from the feds we've received these two federal planning grants recently and the state of Washington was on this same track several years ago. They're now receiving a lot of federal funding for capital and equipment, following the partnership that they created with the federal railroad administration years ago. So, we believe there will certainly be some state funding involved but we know we would like to get all the federal dollars that we can get our hands on for these types of projects and for this initial $2 billion 100% federal Amtrak grant that is, you know, Amtrak is running around the country given PowerPoint presentations telling everybody that they're chasing Colorado for the first $2 billion of this and that's awfully exciting. I heard from Amtrak's representative on the commission just two days ago that they intend to have the new president and CEO of Amtrak come out and meet with the commission and the governor in February to announce this program and I said, the sooner you can get out here with that kind of news. I think the Denver Post is looking for some positive headlines instead of everything that's been so negative over the past several months. And so I say, get your butts out here as quick as you can please. We need to hear that and the governor needs to hear it. And there needs to be a very nice press conference announcing that type of a program for the state. And the other question, what kind of timeline are you looking at for at least are you going to do it in segments or all at once. This project probably works best by doing it in segments and using again the class on railroads. That's how almost every other system around the country those in the Pacific Northwest those in Utah those in New Mexico those in California, other than the rail project in California that's an $80 billion project with a lot of green field construction. We just don't envision that taking place the Colorado Front Range is already so developed that we believe the best solution right now. So moving into NEPA is to suggest partnering with the class ones, starting with six to eight to 10 trains a day, building up ridership over time, building up pots of money over time to eventually build out that, you know, 24 trains a day round trips a day on double track dedicated right away in track dedicated for the passenger rail services. And one more question before I let you go. Just out of curiosity is Amtrak looking to a kind of evolving in the in the way the country is going or the other parts of the world and getting away from diesel fueled engines. Is it still going to be the diesel fuel. No, DJ Mitchell in fact is a strong proponent about every six weeks I hear from DJ he says you remind the stakeholders up and down this quarter that by the time you know this train is an operation and it's going to take five years, you know at a minimum to see these trains operating under the best scenario probably five to 10, but DJ is strongly convinced that that battery powered locomotives will be operating not only the passenger trains around the country but also their freight trains. And that's very exciting news. That's that's exactly what I wanted to hear. Yeah. Thank you very much, Randy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Council Member Christensen and then Council Member Martin. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Randy. This was a wonderful presentation and it's, it's very exciting to see that Amtrak which has been kind of more much more interested in its freight for the last decade is actually excited about this willing to put money into it and understands how much this prosperity for our region for both commuters and tourists. I've traveled all over the world without a car and I've done it on trains and now it's much easier. And so, and it would lead to all an incredible amount of infrastructure investment in jobs. Good jobs. So, absolutely. That's really exciting. I, so I would move that as a council we draft that staff draft a letter in letters to our United States senators and representatives and also to our state representatives in support of this in support of this program. I have a second. I'll second that. I think that I think that we should also add on their RTD. Yes, with, with outlining some of the concerns I raised previously, encouraging the project and asking them to, you know, get behind it. So, I agree. You know, all in favor say aye. Can I add something to that. Along with RTD. Do you think and I'm not sure do you think we should add our lobbyists on there as well who were will be going to Washington to lobby for us, like commuting solutions, NATO. Yeah, yeah, I think that I think that Phil, I think we should just I think what's best is Phil can just come up with a list and get the letter to him. I'm having been to Washington DC several times with Phil and seeing his, you know, expertise in action on this particular topic I have full faith he'll be able to figure it out. So basically the motion is to write our, our elected representatives at all levels. We're expressing our support of, of the Southwest chief slash front range rail. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion carries unanimously. Mr. Gralberger, thank you so much. That was awesome. Council member Martin. I see you. Go ahead. Okay, that was my hesitation about seconding the motion is that's where's my question. Mr. Gralberger, you said that there would be a phased implementation. And, as you know, Longmont has has a bad taste in its mouth about phased implementations because we were the last phase. What criteria do you expect will be used to determine the ordering of which phases will be built at which points and. I think that a municipality can do to improve the odds of being in an early phase. Well the early modeling numbers that we've done in terms of ridership the Longmont Boulder Denver link is the heaviest ridership in the entire quarter. The next highest is probably down to Colorado Springs and then from long gone on up to Fort Collins. And again, the, there are opportunities I would say, just because of the existing infrastructure that's there from Fort Collins to Longmont to Boulder to Denver. And that appears would be the simplest piece to add the appropriate sightings to allow six to eight passenger trains today to operate, you know, adjacent to and in with mixed traffic with the with the class one operation right now. So I think we should engage both UP and BNSF in in some opportunities to consider sort of revising their freight operation norm in the northern part of the state. If that can truly happen. We can't discuss many details of that yet I think Phil Greenwald has has heard a few of the possibilities there and we're hoping that there'll be some announcements in the next three months that could literally be game changing and some of the types of things for for communities in the North Front Range. Through some cooperation with both class one so we're holding our breath that these negotiations continue and and are just kind of, you know, I'm giddy about you know what this would actually mean to to you folks and your neighbors to the and up and down the front range, you know, for not only for passenger rail but just for the livability of your communities. That's very encouraging news. Thank you, Mr. Grant. Thank you. And again, thank you for your your offer to write these letters. I mean, I will let the Commission know, you know, about your reaction to this call tonight. And I think that'll put some wind in their sails in terms of these letters and we'll say that Longmont is sort of taking the lead in terms of this advocacy for for the project and and I guarantee you there'll be some other communities wanting to follow suit. So I really appreciate your leadership on this this evening. All right, thank you again Mr. governor. Okay, thank you much. All right, how long what's almost. We might want to take a little bit of a break, depending on how long the update on the 219 greenhouse gas inventory and climate action House force recommendations is going to take. I assume somebody on staff. Yep. No, I'm Mayor Bagley members of council any noble environmental services manager. I estimate it will take about 20 minutes. Yeah, let's go through and it's three items, and Lisa will be teaming them up. All right, let's go ahead and do it then. Great. Good evening, Mayor Bagley and members of council and Lisa Nabok sustainability program manager with public works and natural resources. And tonight we'll be discussing three items with you, all of which are related to climate action. We'll be discussing the 2019 greenhouse gas inventory, and then we'll be discussing the evaluation and prioritization of the climate action task force recommendations. And then finally the solar feasibility study, which was first conceived by wastewater treatment staff to offset peak loading and then was expanded to look at all public publicly on properties and long lot so I really just wanted to acknowledge that we had a lot of work to do on our treatment plan for taking that initiative. We'll be seeking direction from council specifically on the modifications and implementation of the climate action task force recommendations. And before I hand it off to staff to jump into those presentations. I just want to inform you that we had planned on bringing back the bringing the equitable carbon free transportation roadmap to council in December. The plan was taken longer than we anticipated, but we do plan to have that finalized and brought back to council in the first quarter of 2021 so I just wanted to inform you on that. And with that I'm going to hand it off to Francie Jaffe with the sustainability team to get into the greenhouse gas inventory. Thank you, Lisa. Mayor Bagley members of city council and Francie Jaffe water conservation and sustainability specialist. I believe I have a presentation. That should be shared. Thank you. Next. I'm going to start off my presentation with the update to the 2019 greenhouse gas inventory. Next, as a reminder the sustainability plan direct city staff to update the inventory every three years from a 2016 baseline. After we completed the 2016 baseline, a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 66% by 2030 was established. The city uses the internationally recognized GPC protocol to determine our greenhouse gas emissions. The GPC protocol uses the unit metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent. This combines carbon dioxide methane and nitrous oxides, three greenhouse gas emissions into one unit. For context, one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent is about 113 gallons of gasoline. Next slide. Next couple slides I'm going to highlight some key findings starting with overall 2019 greenhouse gas emissions and then we actually focused a little bit more in depth on waste for 2019 so then I'll end with diving deeper into our waste analysis. Next. So this is a overview of the 2019 emissions by sector. Our largest sector is residential commercial electricity followed by commercial and residential natural gas. Combine these four categories make up about 7090 80% of our emissions coming from our buildings. After that the next large largest sector is on road transportation that includes cars and buses. I do want to note that we have a number of different sectors agriculture industrial processes and procedures oil and gas wells that are all under 1% so for the next slide I'm just going to remove that for clarity. Next. So this is the same pie chart we're bringing in additional equity share emissions that additional equity share emissions represents the percentage that the city of Longmont owns of what platform of power authority is selling on the market. This is not usually included in the GPC protocol as the energy is being used by other communities, but we wanted to include it as informational item of both the emissions from what is used in the city of Longmont as well as own that sold to other communities. So I'm going to start with adding this in emissions from electricity come to about 65%. Although I do want to note that this was done in 2019 and since then we've seen about a 20% increase in renewable energy we use being used for our electricity supply so when we do our next greenhouse gas inventory update in 2022. We should see a more significant decrease in our electricity emissions. When comparing 2016 to 2019 we saw a 8% decrease in total emissions and a 12% increase in per capita. This is due for two reasons. One is activity. We saw increased waste diversion as well as a closure of oil and gas wells, but probably the bigger impact was due to methodology. As you can see on the slide there's a significant decrease in air travel. This was primarily due to how the Denver airport is allocating emissions to different communities. Doing greenhouse gas inventories are an ever evolving science. So every time we do this we're going to look for the most accurate and up to date information so that we can most accurately present our greenhouse gas emissions for the city. Next. I'm bringing up this slide again because I wanted, we wanted to talk a little bit more about solid waste, even though the GPC protocol is a very extensive analysis, it does not look at avoided emissions. When you recycle you actually create avoided emissions so we wanted to better understand our impact from recycling. I do want to note that the analysis was included last week as attachment for Bob Allen's waste services presentation. So we just wanted to revisit that analysis when we did the greenhouse gas inventory update this week. Next. So when looking at waste, it's important to look at the full life cycle of a product from a raw material to manufacturing to the transportation it goes through to whether it's recycle composted or put in the landfill. So that recycling going back into the manufacturing process can have a huge opportunities for avoiding emission, and then the product is either sent to the landfill or composted. So we have the GPC protocol, it only looks at methane being released from the landfill process so it does not look at this full life cycle analysis. So that's why we thought it was important to use the EPA war model to dive a little bit deeper into our waste emissions. Next. What we found was that in 2019 we avoided just under 56,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. So we wanted to see the impact of what if we increased our waste diversion. So we looked at two different scenarios. The first scenario looked at 85% diversion by 2050. This is equivalent to about removing 41,500 passenger vehicles from the road by that time. The second scenario looked at 95% diversion, and this is equivalent to removing just under 44,000 passenger vehicles by 2050. So overall, if you increased waste diversion, we can have a huge impact on our increase in our avoided emissions. Next slide. I'm trying to highlight strategies to increase our waste diversion and too much depth as that was a main effort of Bob Allen's Waste Services Update presentation last week. But I did want to bring up the sustainability plan waste strategies to highlight the work that has already been done and has been planned to be done moving forward to increase our waste diversion. Next slide. And I did want to highlight on this one piece of information that we did find when doing this analysis we found that the city of Longmont only hauls about 33% of the total waste for the entire city. So if we want to work toward these waste diversion goals, we need to work with all haulers not just the city to achieve those greenhouse gas emission reductions. That is the end of my greenhouse gas inventory update so I wanted to pause to see if there's any questions before moving on to the Climate Action Task Force. Councilor Warren. Thank you Mayor Bagley this is just a quick one and it's more of an explanation. I just want to call that Francie referred to works really well if you're talking about taxing the carbon emissions and allocating those taxes. And the reason that I think it's important that we pull in the equity share of the of the electricity that's generated and sold out of our area which means somebody else would pay the tax. And I just want to say that the greenhouse gases themselves and the other the particulate emissions and and the volatile organic compounds that are produced in the generation processes now do not leave the area. And so especially with respect to particulate. I think we should reduce that equity share of carbon based generation as fast as we can, because even though we wouldn't pay a tax on it, we're still breathing it. And I thought that Francie's explanation of equity share was was really important, but I'm not sure we put it in concrete enough terms so I thought I'd just add that in. Thank you. Councilor Christianson. I think that's a that was a good presentation. So I, I wonder what your strat what the strategies are for working with the private haulers. I think that graph made it very clear that since we only have 33% of the waste diversion, and the rest is largely we need to consider whether we want to well consider a strategy for how to work with them and what other cities have done in that regard. Do do we have something like that. I can jump in on that. Council member Christianson. This presentation last week from Bob Allen. Certainly one of the areas that we will be returning to Council on is the universal recycling and composting ordinance is that type of action that brings in all of the haulers within the city. Right into the program. So that is how you would first and foremost start to look at that. So how do. When we when we bring that back which I'm, I'm in favor of but I, I also wanted to be fair to the haulers and commercial thing, commercial enterprises, especially at a time when it's very difficult for them to begin with. But could you give us examples of other cities that have done this so that we have a little bit of clout when we're talking about this. Council member Christianson. Yes, that'll be part of the analysis and the evaluation staff. Okay. And we'll do some of that work before we return to you. Okay. With that type of opportunities and options. Yeah. And can you also tell me. I believe pace works with individual businesses to make to make their recycling and composting programs easier to manage. Is that correct. I can, I can jump in there. Okay. Thank you. Council member Christianson and Mayor Bagley members of council. Yes, PACE does offer rebates and financial support to businesses to get set up with composting and recycling services. Okay. I have a question about other strategies that we're doing to support the commercial sector. That's really where the sustainable business program comes into play. As yet we're mostly focusing that on the business side itself are really helping those businesses to become educated about what recycling and composting resources are out there and get them connected to some of those incentives like what PACE offers to help increase that that portion of our waste. That's great because I think a lot of restaurants and grocery stores and things like that that have a tremendous amount of compostable waste would be happy to do this, but they, they don't have a huge margin. And they have to, it has to be something that they can do quickly and something they can do efficiently. And so if PACE helps them do that, that's, that's wonderful. Thanks. Thank you. Can you go back to slide eight and bring it up. So, you made the comment that that I'm looking at total emission reductions in 2016 to 2019. You made a reference to or you referred to several factors that would lead to that to the reduction, one of those being oil and gas. There's a little bit more about that. Is that, is this a reflection of, well, just give us more information on what's the reduction of oil and gas that accounts for that difference that reduction. Yeah, council member Waters a member of city council I would be happy to in when we did our 2016 greenhouse gas inventory I believe there are eight open wells within the city and when we did the 2019. There's only two open wells. When wells are open they do release methane into the environment so by closing those wells and going from eight to two, we did see a decrease in emissions from that process. Yeah right a maker would you. Can you account for that by the as a result of the agreement we signed the contract we signed. I'm not sure I would go that far at this point I understand what you're looking at but as I look at that particular chart it appears to me, one of the biggest offsets is how we're accounting for our share of the air travel. So, to, you know, I rely on Francie and the work that she's doing to to analyze that I know the agreement that we did. I assume what you're referring to as the one with top and. Yeah, yeah. I'm referring to, if we have what was so say more than about air travel. How does that relate to that pose a closed wells. Council member waters I believe what Dale was referring to is that even going from eight to two wells, I believe our well impact from wells was less than. 1.1% so even when in from two wells and when it was one eight wells, it was still less than 1% so that 8% total reduction that we are getting is probably is not happening because of the well closure it's more due to changes in methodology and one of the biggest impacts is that the Denver report has changed how they allocate emissions to different communities so improving methodologies probably had the larger impact than activity in the past three years. So, I guess that affects the question of our total emissions. How much what percentage of total emissions you attribute to oil and gas in 2016 in 2019. Not much apparently. Not, not much. I don't have 2016 numbers available. Council member waters, but they were on the slide they were the 2019 were 0.06% I believe. All right, thank you. All right, let's go on with the next half of the presentation. Great. Thank you Mayor Bagley and members of council for your questions on the next presentation will be the evaluation of the climate action task force recommendations, which was requested by city council and office 25. Next slide. So I know there's a lot of text and I'm not expecting to you to read all of this but the reason I'm bringing this all up is because I wanted to remind city council of the breadth and scope of the 27 climate action task force recommendations to develop a list of how the recommendations should be implemented. Staff used a criteria and waiting scenario that I will detail over the next couple of slides combined with staff modifications that are detailed in the packet. Next slide. To evaluate the recommendations staff looked at seven different criteria criteria ranging from cost to community impact and board feedback. The sustainability team developed a series of questions and wait. And then we did some calculations for each of these criteria and then work with staff across the different departments to rate each of the recommendations for each of these criteria and develop a final score. Once that final score was developed. The recommendations were applied to seven different waiting scenarios, including a waiting scenario recommended by the sustainability advisory board. They were specifically focused on waiting scenarios that emphasize greenhouse gas reduction and effectively engaging the community to influence change. Next slide. So I know there's a very colorful image with a lot of small texts. The reason I am bringing that up is because I want to walk through how we use the waiting scenario process. If you look up in the top right corner that is three of our seven different waiting scenarios. As you move down the list, the recommendations are ranked as one or highlighted in green or to 27 as highlighted in red. I do want to note that this ranking doesn't mean you need to do recommendations ranked one first and then recommendations ranked second next and then down the list. This was just a tool combined with staff modifications to help staff determine when the recommendations should be implemented. So when doing this one of the key things we found is that no matter for most of the recommendations across the seven different waiting scenarios, they did not shift significantly and how they were ranked. So that did shift significantly is only for maybe one or two scenarios and not all seven. So this helps staff separate the recommendations into three different categories near term so the ones highlighted in green. So they should be implemented over the next two years midterm highlighted in yellow of four years after that, and then three that should be monitored over time. The last thing I want to highlight on this slide is that those that were highlighted in red so rank to lower for the different waiting scenarios staff and initially thought this might mean that they'd be long term recommendations, but instead we realized that this indicated a need for more significant staff modifications to determine the implementation timeline. So on the next slide I'm going to highlight one of our more extensive modifications. Next. So this is for the water conservation recommendation. This recommendation was consistently ranked last across the different waiting scenarios. The climate action task force called for a 35 to 40% reduction and overall water consumption by 2025. So the proposed staff modification that's detailed in the packet staff is instead recommending that we continue with current water conservation and drought management efforts, which includes a recent effort to better integrate water efficiency and land use planning until for the next water efficiency master plan update at that time, staff should evaluate a more aggressive water conservation goal and then bring the results to city council to make a decision on how to pursue a more aggressive water conservation goal at that time. I'd like to highlight that again this is one of the most extensive modifications and other modifications for recommendations could be as minimal of just adjusting the timeline slightly. Next slide. I wanted to next highlight the 12 proposed near term recommendations, the ones that are highlighted in yellow at the top are already budgeted for 2021. The ones highlighted in red are budgeted for 2021 but may need additional funding to meet the goals of the recommendation in future years. The one the two that are highlighted in purple staff applied for Boulder County Sustainability Tax funding to help initiate these efforts in 2021, then the two that are unhighlighted still need additional analysis to determine all budget needs. Next. So our request to city council this evening is to prove staff's recommendations of proposed near term midterm and monitor over time actions, including the proposed modifications to the recommendations and direct staff to continue on these efforts, as well as integrate this work into the next sustainability plan in the vision long line. So, update so I'm going to pause at on this slide to see if there are any questions about this direction, or the analysis that I detailed. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. We'll have some other questions. But I do want to say that I went over this extensively with Francie and team. Last week, and I'm really satisfied with the work that they've done. And so I am going to move that the council adopts the plans, the staff's implementation plan for the climate action task force recommendations as it stands. I really don't know why that keeps happening but any further objection or debate. Councilmember waters. I do objection and debate I do. I have a question but it's not specifically related to the motion. It is related to the just transition committee recommendations. Well, let's let's vote on this quick and then let's go ahead and do that. Okay, all in favor say aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion carries unanimously congratulations Councilmember Martin and that was important to you. Dr waters. I didn't want to move on to the next topic without having a chance to ask the question. Staff brought to us some questions when we saw these recommendations back in the summer. And, and we tried that we got into some discussion that evening. And so very far we were asked then to respond in writing to questions. And then we were asked several times prodded several times to respond to those questions I've never seen what happened to those we responded. I'm not certain who responded, or what what what happened to the responses. Could we just get some idea of what, what that input where that input went and what anybody did with it. I'm sorry staff usually jumps in. Councilmember waters I believe that information was provided in your August 25 packet when we brought that back. Any I saw, I saw our responses. But I didn't have you didn't have to show me my responses back I know what I submitted. And I had a chance to see the several other council members responded. So why were we asked if nobody did anything with what we said, or what the input was. Councilmember waters I think we walk through that whole process in the presentation based on the information that you provided and I think what we heard from that. We didn't get any feedback but what we were proposing was to move forward with the climate action task force checklist and there didn't seem to be any concern about that. So we're going to go into more detail about that checklist but that was the feedback that I believe we got at that meeting. All right, that's, I recall get the loop loop getting close to that's probably on me. I move that we recognize that that's on Dr waters. I have a second. I'm just kidding. All right, Councilmember pack, or will you second my motion. Okay, Councilman or Martin. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. We did do that. And I think maybe the, the piece that's that might be left out is, is that each of the individual recommendations that Miss Jaffee showed us. They all got down into the weeds with them. They all contained social equity constraints within the recommendation that are the starting point for what the teams that are going to implement them will take into account. So we would have and Dale's nodding here I'm glad I'm glad we're on the same track Dale. The issue would be is if the the reviewing staff in each particular case came up with reasons why they could not equitably address these recommendations, then I would expect them to come back to us as some kind of a just transition exception. But so far at, you know, in most of these the first year there's make more plans. So we can expect maybe to hear about issues with a just transition later next year, but we are we're they're satisfied with their being that they're being addressed in the separate recommendations now. I would just like to thank the whole task force for all the work they've done on this I know as we go through each segment of all these recommendations, we're going to be hitting on the body of work so everybody that was involved with that. I thank you. All right, thank you very much staff any good job we appreciate it. All right, can I have my screen back. All right, let's go on let's actually take a three minute break before we start the solar feasibility study that okay. All right, be back and let's let three to five. All right, right. A bit of trivia is we're waiting. Do you guys know how many calories in a pickle gherkins or deal depending on the answer right Joe. Go ahead and turn the time over to our staff. Tim, are you up for the solar feasibility study. Yes, I am. Can everybody hear me. Excellent. So good evening Mayor Bagley and council members. My name is Tim Ellis I'm the renewable energy strategy manager in the energy strategies and solutions group at LPC. I'm here tonight with Dan Shippey, who's control systems electrician in public works and natural resources. And we're going to present the results of a solar feasibility study that was completed a few months ago. Next slide please. We didn't have this item. Second slide. Here we go. Thank you. So here's our agenda for the presentation. First we're going to review the purpose and methodology of the study. So over the parameters we used for facility selection. And next we'll give an overview of each of the eight sets final sites selected. And finally we're going to cover how the study fits in with the city's plans and goals and what the next steps will be. Next slide please. So as you know, the long month sustainability plan provides a roadmap for social environmental and economic progress for the city. The sustainability study addresses the plans actions to expand the use of renewable energy technologies to improve environmental quality to provide a resilient energy supply and to realize any economic benefits of projects. This study wasn't intended to be was not intended to be a community wide evaluation of commercial or residential opportunities. It was really focused on city and county owned facilities. We actually considered 31 sites throughout the city, all but one being city owned, one was county owned. And we evaluated the sites with certain selection parameters with the intent of selecting the top eight sites that best align with those parameters. I'll cover the parameters in the next slide. We then ran the eight slides through our sustainability evaluation system and lifecycle cost evaluation tools. These tools allowed us to rate the sites in comparison to each other regarding the city's sustainability goals and relative life cycle costs of each project. And we have the table showing the results in a couple of slides. Next slide please. So here are the selection parameters that we use to evaluate the 31 sites and pair down the list to the top eight. And here's help us rate projects that would have the lowest cost to build and connect to the grid, and that would also follow the city's environmental and planning goals. So they include how close the solar array would be to existing city electric infrastructure, the projects capability to offset existing electric load, and this is all behind the meter load. Also what are the existing environmental conditions and with the project have any significant environmental impacts. So are there any future land use, planned future land uses that would preclude the project and finally, are there any other physical site constraints that would inhibit project construction. Again this goal, the goal of this step was to narrow down that list of 31 to the top eight best suited sites for solar development. Next slide please. So this table lists the final eight sites ranked by the sustainability and lifecycle cost tools as they relate to each other. The preliminary estimated cost of each project, the annual energy production in kilowatt hours and the expected greenhouse reductions for each project. And next, Dan's going to present a few slides that are overviews of each of the eight sites that we selected. So please go ahead Dan. Thanks Tim. Good evening Mayor Bagley and members of city council. As Tim mentioned, there are eight sites that I'll discuss in more detail. I have a wide variety of system types as well. It's important to note, however, that the size of the systems in the study were limited to the available buildable area and regulations set forth by a platform of power and for behind the meter installations, as well as the city's municipal code so that they generate no more than 120% of the previous years electrical consumption of the service they're serving. The primary reason for sites being highest on the list is due to the solar readiness of the location. An example, ease of interconnection and the size of the array. There are two potential installations that take place at Centennial pool. So there'll be one slide that depicts both of those systems. Next slide please. So we have sites one and two. Site one is the newly constructed renewable natural gas waste services building on South Martin Street. The site consists of a rooftop system that is 240 watt 241 kilowatts that would completely offset the building's During construction there was foresight to install extra conduits between the building and the electrical service in anticipation of a potential future solar installation. Site two is the newly constructed maintenance office building at the wastewater treatment plant. This system is designed at 80 kilowatts and would offset roughly 2% of the wastewater treatment plants electrical load utilizing available space on both the southern and western roof slopes. Next slide please. Site three and four next site three is the pavilion that Roosevelt Park in a size that 87 kilowatts. This has great exposure to the public and will offset roughly 64% of the electrical load from the ice rigs compressor and lighting. Site five is a rooftop mount system on building seven of public works on a vehicle storage on airport road. This system would produce 289 kilowatts and has a great roof for solar that would allow for a complete offset of that entire campuses electrical consumption. The location of interconnection, however, is not directly adjacent to the building where the system would be installed. So it would involve more work to connect to the grid. Next slide please. Here we have sites four and six, both are located at Centennial pool. Site four is a ground mount which is designed at 67 kilowatts and would take the place of the existing solar hot water system which has been inoperative for years. The existing underground path between the building and the array location can be utilized for electrical conductors and will bring operational solar energy back to the pool facility. Site six is a parking structure over the parking lot of Centennial pool. A simple parking lot design would incorporate a structure for solar canopies over the parking lot and the design at 240 kilowatts. The combination of these two systems, the ground mount for site four and the covered parking site six will offset roughly 85% of the facilities electrical consumption. Next slide please. Here we have sites seven and eight. Site seven is the Nelson planters water treatment plant, four bay body of water that utilizes an innovative technology called flow to of all takes, meaning the array of loads. It's an 853 kilowatt installation that would bring or that would be the second of its kind in Colorado. The solar arrays are installed on floating module racking systems, utilizing water area instead of land. They have been installed throughout Europe and Asia and are growing in popularity in the US. The system would completely offset the electrical consumption of the water treatment plant, and because of its modular design can be easily added on to the future. Site eight is a 138 kilowatt design installed over the wastewater treatment plants primary clarifier covers. It would be the most challenging design as engineering and racking fabrication would be a one off cast. The major benefit of this system is the amount of energy it would offset from the wastewater treatment plants facility at roughly 6%. That's the time and I'll hand it back over to Tim where he can talk about the study findings and the next steps. Thanks Dan. So, where does this study fit into the city's goals and plans. In 2018, the city of Longmont committed to reach 100% renewable energy by 2030. This city declared a climate emergency with the intent to take actions to address the climate crisis. This, the solar feasibility study demonstrates the city's commitment to clean energy analysis and planning. And the city now has a list of the eight most buyables solar installation sites on city or facilities. There are also plans and studies underway by our wholesale provider plant river power authority that together with this study will help us determine ways to reach 100% renewable energy. We recently finalized its next integrated resource plan that offers resource options that provide safe reliable and cost effective electricity for its member cities for the next 10 to 20 years. And the plan moves us towards our renewable energy and carbon goals, but even more pertinent to this solar study is a separate study that plant river is performing with the member cities as partners. It's a distributed energy resource study that is analyzing the future of these resources in our region, which solar is going to be a very important component. The study will provide us with a model to evaluate the project cost effectiveness and help us determine which projects and programs make the most sense for the city. We're also exploring various grants and other funding opportunities that can provide financial support to our solar projects in the future. These include grant off grants offered by the American Public Power Association, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, DOLA, and the US Department of Energy solar and their combined with innovative processes or technologies that support both support city goals and our grid provide grid flexibility or other energy efficiency opportunities can qualify for pretty substantial funds to offset city budget spending. One example of these efforts is the city's recent application for a DOLA grant to help help fund upgraded aerators at our wastewater treatment plant. This this grant application also includes the solar project that Dan covered as site to earlier in the presentation and it also pairs it with battery storage at the plants office building. We should be finding out the results of this application by early next year. Finally, as these plans and studies and funding opportunities proceed. The solar projects that were analyzed and designed as part of this solar feasibility study are poised to, to quickly ramp up and support achieving our city needs and goals. That's it. Thank you. I got it. I got it. Thank you. I don't know what I have no idea what my mute keeps not working. But what I my question is simply. We get our energy from Platte River and Platte River. This is what they do. They, they build solar wind and other power producing infrastructure. Now we are looking at doing it ourselves. My question is why I understand the symbolic gesture, but theoretically, by being part of the PRPA co op. Aren't they doing it anyway. But I would go this, I would say this as a board director. I'm sorry, Marsha. So my, my concern is, my concern is that we are going to be doing something that our power provider is doing. And we're going to be doing it at a more expensive cost, and not focusing on those things that we do best. So, what is, what is it going to cost us compared to PRPA. Well, you're right, the utilities, large utility scale renewable energy is the cheapest renewable energy right now, but, but the fact remains that there is, there are many local efforts for renewable energy that are going on as we speak. There is also a, and we are exploring local renewable energy opportunities with with Platte River. But there are beyond that there are, there are opportunities that are cost effective. Depending on what the, the, the benefits that they will provide to the city, and that's why we're starting off this process, applying for grants to see how it all works how it all fits in how it can be per solar can be paired with battery to provide other grid resource flexibility, and that will also accomplish our renewable energy goals. So there are, I think there are multiple reasons to look at local opportunities, as well as the broader flat river opportunities which are usually outside of our local locality, and another one of which is supporting local installation. So the, I think there are other benefits that are beyond the simple, what is the cost of this solar kilowatt hour that this this project and other projects like it can provide and I'll let Dale and Dave step in because I'm sure they have some other things to add to that. And just as we go forward, I'm going to, I'm going to keep pushing on that because my question is when we say well other people are doing I don't see any math or hard numbers there. But so I mean Mike, again, that question will persist. So Councilor Christensen. I'm sure Councilman Martin will have a better, a more articulate answer but there really isn't an either or thing going on here. There are a lot of people who have solar installed on their house and they're feeding energy back into our grid. And this is part of that. And also there's less energy, I think lost in transmission because there isn't transmission it's directly from the building to the building so there, there's a need for exploring all these possibilities and I think this is a wonderful opportunity for us to demonstrate and make our buildings more efficient, especially our public buildings. So I thank you for the presentation and I'm really happy to see that we've that we're moving forward to this and that we can encourage other commercial companies to do this. I remember when I was working at CU, our building used $150,000 in utilities a year. That was outrageous. Outrageous when it had a big flat roof. You know, we just need to be more efficient in every area that we're doing and use the facilities we have. And I think this is a terrific study. Councilor Martin. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I would like to add to that and Council Member Christensen made some very good points. First of all, Platte River Power Authority is aware that to reach the goals that they are honestly struggling with that we have set them that distributed energy resources are necessary by the cities. The Distributed Energy Resource Task Force, our own David Hornbacker is the chair of the Distributed Energy Resource Task Force, I do believe, and the immediate good of solarization in Longmont is peak shaving. Back and back, it was a long time ago now. It really feels like a long time ago. But when we saw a presentation from PRPA on our electric rates, what we found was that because we have the least predictable demand and the highest peak demand of four cities that we are paying the highest demand charge component of our wholesale electricity rates. So if the city by offsetting the electric demand for some of our biggest buildings can shave that peak even a little bit, everybody who pays electric rates can benefit with it now. I'm not sure whether, you know, these initial study projects are going to have a huge effect on that, but eventually solarization as a distributed energy resource, especially with some behind the substation meter battery storage is going to be is going to do a real good job of making us a better PRPA customer and getting us more favorable rates. So I really don't agree that honestly that that this project goes against PRPA's goals in any way at all. They're happy to have us doing this. Okay, so first of all, your comment of Christopher Martin, if I do not agree, I was only asking a question, not making a statement. So there's nothing to agree or disagree with. You sounded like you thought we were. No, no, I'm asking the question of like, for example, you use the term, it will do or will do a real good job. Adjectives to describe renewable energy costs, reliability and sustainability. I just want to know numbers, meaning the organic contract the contract was originally signed back by the four cities. 10,000 years ago, I don't know how long ago was signed. But the originally, we all agreed that we would not do solar power, we all agreed that we would not produce our own, our own power, and we would rely on PRPA, because it's not going to do us any good to buy our power from somebody else, right? So what happened is we changed that in order to allow our individual citizens who wanted to provide their own solar, that they'd be able to do that. And the cities doing that, right, which obviously we, I mean, at least I think we provide that we look at other residences, etc., and commercial buildings, we consume quite a bit of power, we have, we do things with our buildings that consume power. And just saying before we do that, what that I did not see in the feasibility study is a number, meaning how much, how much is it going to cost us, meaning compared to purchasing the energy from PRPA, and what impact will it have on the overall grid if we can support Collins, Estes Park, Loveland, and Longmont all start producing our own power. My only, the question I'm raising is, what type of strain will it create on the system? And as we're working forward with PRPA, I'm not advocating for or against, I'm just saying in the feasibility study, I still don't know how feasible it is, meaning it's technically feasible. What I don't see is our numbers that say, well, we should do it, because does it impact the health of PRPA? Does it actually, by doing this, so we can actually do more harm than good towards our overall goal of hitting 100% carbon free energy by 2030? And how much is it going to cost us? That's all I'm saying. I will be the first person to champion this. I'm just saying, I'm just missing a key piece of information. That's it. I don't want to hear words like it'll be good, or it's, I just want a number, meaning, how's it going to impact things? And I think that's a good thing to know before we launch in to put in a bunch of solar all over town and detracting and taking away from our role currently in purchasing power from PRPA. That's it. Well, so the only thing, the only piece of that that I can answer is the number, which is, is how long does it take for these stellar installations to pay for themselves in terms of the rate, the electricity that we don't pay PRPA for. But theoretically, in terms of the grid design, I think it's important to get out there that this is something that PRPA expects the cities to do, and PRPA has a task force working on how it should be done. And my understanding is that that that task force is looking at ways to streamline the process. What this is doing is producing power. And for example, I mean PRPA has solar fields, just, just 30 miles to the north, and they can produce it the same way we can. And a lot of these and I'm not seeing like putting, I mean, we're not talking about just putting solar on our buildings. I was seeing options of where to build solar, solar plants here in town. And so I understand if we're putting them on our buildings, you know, I'd still have my same concerns, but we're talking about competing with PRPA. And that again, the number, the number I just want, I mean, we don't have it now. I'm just saying moving forward as we're discussing this. I understand that I don't know as much technically about anybody else on the screen here, right. I understand that technologically I trust you that it's possible to be done. Theoretically, it's possible. I get that. I just want a number. So, but we're not going to get that tonight. So I'm just warning people that I'm going to keep asking for the number. That's it. Unless you have a number Dale, you're biting your finger. You got a number. I do. All right, let's hear the number there. I don't have the number for the entire issue. I would invite Director Hornbacher to weigh in. I think he is on that task force working on the distributed energy strategy for Platte River. What I did want to let the council know is Dan and Tim referred to a grant application that we put in with Doa just last week. And you of us were part of that presentation. We've got some initial reaction back from Doa already. I believe we are going to get awarded. We requested $750,000 for a $1 million project that involved more efficient blowers as well as the solar array and the battery storage. You know, that's the exact type of project that I believe we need to get involved with to understand battery storage to understand how to leverage a solar array effectively at a site. And so, good news is, in that particular case, I believe we are going to get a substantial grant award from Doa. I don't think we've got the formal notice here. I'm getting it through other sources, but good news is, the number I do have is I think we're going to get about $675,000 from Doa and towards that $1 million project. Dave, got something to say? Yeah, if I could just add to the conversation and I, Mayor Bagley and members of City Council, I hear what you're saying there and certainly as we do, you know, future presentations, make sure we have some of those actual dollar figures in so you can sort of compare it to what is it like versus doing it in bulk up with Platte River at other sites. But I think, you know, sometimes we look at it from two benefits, one as a consumer to just offset your use and how does that compare to the electric bill. But I think a lot of our discussions more is the benefit as a community. How does this really help us? So the solar feasibility study is really a first step and I would call preparedness. Should grants be available, especially with the next administration, we want to be well positioned. If there weren't any available for this type of work, we would have information that we could present and be competitive in that environment. Next, really four elements. So that was the first element. The second element is with our 2030 goal of 100% renewable. One of the challenges is really going to be that last 10% that we're going to try and achieve and because that is the highest variable and the highest cost or can be. And so I think that's where one of our roles as a member of Platte River is that we as a community also look to see what we can do with how we consume energy and how we generate energy to really help get to that 100% energy goal. And one of those strategies is that distributed energy resource committee, which is currently convened with Platte River and different members of our other member communities. And in that that's looking at the strategies of how these different distributed energy resources can create that environment to get to the 100% renewable mark. And so as we get that information out, we need to educate ourselves further on how we can apply some of those tools and Dale's point bringing in a battery here into one of our facilities is an excellent opportunity to start to see how we can integrate that on a broader scale. And then the last point I want to make is electrification. As we start to see more electrification just the advent of electric cars. And then as we move towards more, you know, home energy uses that are electric versus natural gas fired that is going to create an increased demand on an existing electric distribution system. So think of that system as a highway, and you just are now adding a third more population, you know, half more, maybe you're doubling it at some point that that highway gets constrained, and you either need to rebuild it, or you need to do strategies to reduce pressure on the highway system you're talking about, you know, different types of transportation means carpooling and buses and the rail that we talked about to really move things around but offloaded on the disk electric distribution system. It's really how, how and where can we store energy. How and where can we generate it, even if it's in smaller bits but in meaningful locations to help reduce the impact to that electric system to be able to deliver. So that's looking a little bit more turn long term, but near term, we do have to look at it through the lens of the cost and benefit. And that's something that also when we complete the strategy document for distributed energy resources will have more to work off of. And I, again, I hear you, and we're going to spend a lot of time talking about this topic. I have no doubt of that. You know, but still, as great as that sounded, Dave, phenomenal. Back to the basics. That's right. I mean, and again, I'm only raising it again, because I do not want to spend a lot of time and effort in order and then we do something, and it detracts from our overall goal. If I mean, because building solar right now at PRPA, as you know, we can, we can buy all the solar we want, you know, I mean, but, but that's not going to solve our problem or get us to the finish line on our goal. Okay, so I just don't want to have our city staff do a bunch of. I don't want to do a bunch of, you know, construction solar panels, only not to have it make a difference. And so I'm really asking the question of, is it going to make a difference. And so, again, we don't have an answer right now. But I would like one as we as we continue to talk about this. All right, any other questions, comments or concerns. If you have on this topic. All right, can we go on to the building energy benchmark update then. All right, let's go on building energy benchmark benchmarking update. Welcome Debbie. We see you. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Mayor Bagley and members of city council, and I'm ready to show presentation. Thank you. All right, my name is Debbie Sideman, and I work for Longmont power communications I'm an engineer and project manager by background. I currently work in the energy strategies and solutions group. I did introduce building energy benchmarking to city council back in May but I am here to provide an update on what we have accomplished in 2030. If you want to clarify, there's no action today for city council. This presentation is just to provide information and update. Next slide please. For the agenda today as I will provide a, I'll reintroduce benchmarking. I'll give you information about a demonstration project that we held in 2020 and provide information about a larger voluntary program that we plan to move to in 2021. Next slide please. Thanks a click. Thank you. So again as a refresher benchmarking in general is a comparison related to a relative to a baseline or an average. In this case specifically benchmarking is rating of energy use relative to other buildings in a similar region. Now everyone is familiar with fuel efficiency of vehicles and miles per gallon so similarly a building can get an energy score. Here's an example of a building with a score of 71 on a scale of 1 to 100 where 50 is average greater than 50 is a greater than average. And then next click please. And in doing this we use an EPA software and receive an energy star score. The intent is to make building owners aware of their energy use and then to take additional action to improve their score and this is the adage, the old adage you can't manage what you don't measure. Next slide please. Again as a reminder, nationally there are 34 cities that currently have a building energy benchmarking ordinance. Ordinance there are also three states that have a requirement locally in Colorado, Fort Collins, Denver and Boulder all have an ordinance. Next slide please. So in 2020 we we released a managed a demonstration project with select buildings in the city, 20,000 square feet work greater and these were commercial or industrial buildings. We recruited buildings to participate in the program and then next slide or next click, and then once we had recruited building owners and property managers to participate we provided some in depth training instructions and one on one assistance. The program was really designed to help us gain a better understanding of how the software works with the EPA and how useful it is how beneficial it is to both the city and the customers. Next slide please. So, we did recruit 10 commercial buildings to participate and a subset of those are shown here. One is the UC Health Longspeak Hospital. This is a relatively new and large facility in Longmont. Next slide please. This school district participated with two buildings. Next slide please. I'm Honda North America data center participated. Next slide please. Circle graphics, a large manufacturing company participated as well as the first bank building on North main. There are also some additional large retail buildings that participated, and everyone was really a good partner and they were all really good to work with. Next slide please. So how did we proceed with the demonstration project again we use an EPA software and the building owner is required to self report their own information they input information such as building square footage and type of building is it a school is it an office building is it a hospital. They also input 12 months of electrical energy and natural gas consumption. And out of that they receive a score again here's an example of a building receiving a score of 60 and this is again on a scale of one to 100. Also, like to explain what what factors affect this score so that's how efficient your building envelope might be so how good your windows are insulation type ceiling around the windows, maybe the number of computers in use in the building. So if you want to emphasize again the software itself does not save energy this is a tool to help you see how your building is doing. You can look at it year over year, and the intent is that regardless of what your score is, we would hope that building owners would want to take action to improve their score. And if building owners want to do this long amount power communication has many ways that we can help them understand what programs what projects could be done and how they could get rebates etc. Next slide please. So, once our building owners and property managers benchmark their building we did hire a third party consultant to look at the input and output and make sure things were being done well. And a, an output of this step was that we actually got a little lot of interaction with our customers and we got a lot of good feedback informally as to what they thought was beneficial or maybe what could be done better and better in the future. Next click please. We also as I mentioned had some formal and informal customer feedback. There really was good personal interaction, and customers came away with the importance of wanting to do more. Next slide please. So here's the results of the 10 commercial buildings that participated. And again the building is benchmarked against a building with a similar use. So it's an average for that type of building schools are benchmarked against other buildings, office buildings, grocery stores are benchmarked against other grocery stores, etc. And again this is in a climate region so that helps to whether I to normalize the weather data and the impact. Next slide please. Now, I keep emphasizing this is a tool, the city of Longmont is not, is not really focused on what the score is only on that a building might want to make improvements, regardless of a building has a score of 75 or greater. They are eligible to become an energy star certified building, and two of the participants in the program choose chose to move forward and actually are working on certifying their buildings and that's a commercial building and one of the schools. So that's that's kind of a plus. Some of these buildings plan to continue benchmarking their buildings in the future also a couple of these large commercial and retail companies had benchmarked and then stopped and now they're they're going to continue doing it again in the future, both with some local buildings and other buildings at other locations. So we receive an energy star certification receive a sticker such as shown here that you can put in your, your window. Next slide please. So we also benchmark 10 municipal buildings I worked on those, and I worked with facilities management in the city and I worked with many department managers, located at various buildings throughout the city to obtain the information I needed to input into the software. I appreciate their health. Next slide please. So here's results from the municipal buildings. And as an example we have a score of 60 for the development services center. And this was interesting I that's an old building it's actually three buildings that are combined together. And I was surprised considering that's an older building that it had such a good score I assumed it just wouldn't have. I just, in general the newer buildings tend to score higher. But in researching that I discovered that there was a major effort done a major project in 2007 to add insulation values to the wall and the roofs and therefore we've seen the benefit of that and that building actually has a relatively good score. Also, I'll show that not all building types can receive a score, however, all building, all buildings can receive an energy use number shown in the second column, you don't really need to focus on that. And over time, every four years the EPA does building surveys and adds more building types that have a baseline that can be benchmarked against. Next slide please. So what are some benefits to the program well with our voluntary programs that we're doing the demonstration that I just discussed and a voluntary program that I will introduce. With these initial programs, we can provide a lot of really good education and support with our customers. And then, in general, benchmarking really can be a good tool to help get funding for future projects and so resulting projects can help building owners save energy and costs. Also, this can be used to help market your space. Kind of help to promote your, your performance of your building when you're looking at potential tenants and or employees. Also, I'd like to mention that currently with the pandemic, there's there's probably increased importance on saving costs so this is another tool that over time we help can help our building owners. Next slide please. Now, as I mentioned in 2021 we'd like to expand this program to all commercial buildings of the same size 20,000 square feet and greater, we have approximately 280 buildings in Longman of the size. And you know why this particular group of buildings well these are our largest buildings. It's a small number of buildings but a larger impact because these are the buildings that that are the largest energy consumers. Next slide please. Also additional benefits. This supports the city council resolution for 100% renewable energy by 2030 cities that have participated in this program have seen a 2.4% savings. That have participated and that's the information coming out of the software. Also, this coordinates with other city programs such as the climate action task force and sustainability plan. Also you just saw results from the climate action task force and benchmarking is listed on that list of priorities. Next slide please. So, current actions and near term actions again we had a demonstration project in 2020 we're still consolidating feedback. We will move to this voluntary program in 2021. That will include expanded customer education and outreach, including a panel discussion with the Chamber of Commerce with some of our participants that were in the demonstration project and then we do plan to come back to city council and report our findings from 2021. Next slide. Thank you. Oh, you're on mute. Mayor Bagley. Thank you, Debbie. That sounds very good. Thank you very much for that information. Look forward to 2021 and seeing what happens. Council Member Christensen. Thank you Debbie this is a really, I think this is also an excellent program because on our utility bill. We get a graph of how much we are spending relative to last year. And that's very helpful because sometimes you notice that. Oh, I'm spending a great deal more on such and such. I wonder if I have a leak say in the water system or if I mean it just helps you to evaluate how much you're actually spending and do some repair or at least schedule plan and budget for repair and upgrades. And that's very useful for I think everybody. I, it's not a mandatory program. It's just that I think a lot of businesses would like to be able to save money and certainly it's important for our city businesses or city buildings to be able to see how perhaps inefficient they are and how we can over time make them more efficient and save more energy. So thank you very much. I could add an example you mentioned if you might have a leak. An example not a building in Longmont this is a large building downtown Denver but I was told the story of a building that did benchmarking and saw they had very high energy use in the summer that they hadn't expected. They have a snowmelt system under their sidewalk and they discovered it had been running in the summer. So, but now you can also discover that looking at your Tilly bills but but that's an outlier, but that is a positive story coming out of this. And this is also a tool that you can look at year over year. I know myself. Our August use this year residential was higher than I'm used to, but we had to shut the windows and turn air conditioning on due to the fires, unfortunately, and typically, I'm not really an air conditioning user so thank you very much. We appreciate you. All right. All right. We're at the end. Do we have mayor and council comments anybody. All right, great. I'll start by saying Merry Christmas for me to get before then but what the heck. All right, Carol, do you have anything. Comments mayor council. Eugene here. Oh hi Eugene. Mayor, come on. I don't know you're here. All right, great. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So move. I'll suck it. All right. All in favor say aye. Opposed. All right, great. See you guys next week. We're adjourned.