 We should be good to go all right. We'll call the meeting to order and I'll recognize that myself and councilmember Fleming are here to establish a quorum. Mayor Rogers is not able to join today. We'll go to public comment for non agenda items. If there's anybody who has a comment on something that falls within the jurisdiction of our subcommittee, but isn't on today's agenda. Happy to hear from anyone. We have anybody online. We have no hands raised on zoom. All right, then we'll start with department reports. Chair Rogers, may I ask if we could do the approval minutes please. Oh, can I please skip over them. I did. Faceshoot. Yep. Did you have any amendments to the minutes? Okay. Let's do public comment. Anybody have any changes to the minutes? Any hands on zoom. No hands on zoom. Great. We'll show those approved as presented without objection. And now we'll go to Tasha for the department reports. And I do not have any department reports this time. All right. You want to just jump on in on item 5.1 then you got it. Okay. So item 5.1 downtown parking study presented by Chad hedge manager of the parking division. Just park yourself right over there. Okay. I need to write that one down. I'll be good. And that's important. Do that for you. If you want me to. Okay. It'd be parallel. Sure. That's coming up. I feel like there's a meter joke you could throw in there. I'm sure there. We're trying to figure this out here. We're trying to figure this out here. Yeah. Yeah. We're trying to figure this out here. Okay. Bring the expert in. For me, it's operator error. It's not the IT. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. We're, my name's Chad hedge on the parking division manager. This is Tanya. She is our, our new analyst. And we were brought here today to talk about the, the climate action subcommittee. I think you were on the, the board. Kind of talk about what we're going to use these funds for. And how it's going to help the downtown, the railroad square, how it's going to impact parking. And so I threw a whole bunch of extra information into these slides. Just so I can make sure I cover it all. But on June, June 28th, the MTC approved the plan Bay Area 2050 implementation. We're going to look at, we're going to look at, we're going to look at the grant award of the grant award. The city of Santa Rosa city of their parking will receive $207,000. That'll go towards a curb management and access plan grant. That study will include, we'll evaluate our existing occupancy. We will utilize and compare best practices from local agencies. We're going to look at San Diego, Santa fell. I mean, the city of Santa Rosa is going to be in the, in the city of Santa. Purchase of the grant, evaluate future demand impacts from the state's elimination of the parking minimums. And approving the approval of multiple housing developments in the downtown and railroad square area. We're going to establish goals and visions for the future of the downtown of railroad square, analyze current revenues with future needs. And importantly, evaluate the EV capacity and needs with the increase in multi developments in the downtown impacts on the grid and then the infrastructure availability through numerous meetings with PG&E. We're gonna develop numerous presentations that we can outline the progress as we go forward and answer questions and have multiple community meetings to try to solicit information questions or highlight anything that we may have missed. So the background for us going forward with this study, you know, it's all come from the downtown station areas plan, the climate action plan, the climate vulnerability and adaptation report, as well as the multiple Walker report studies we've done over the past few years that showed us what our occupancy was, what it is currently and considering what we need it for in the future. And then incorporating the different housing units that are coming into Santa Rosa and how that's gonna impact what we currently have when it comes to garages, lots, but also commercial loading zones, ADA spaces, passenger loading zones and everything throughout Santa Rosa. And these are a few clips I took out of the climate action plan that will show that in order to reach our climate goals, reduce the GHGs and reduce the VMTs, there's things that we have to do through the climate action plan they're gonna help us get to that point, right? In conjunction with our changes in order to make things work better in the future for the city of Santa Rosa. A couple of the important items on 3.4, eliminating the amount of free parking in high traffic areas, free parking is gonna make people wanna drive around and circle and circle and we wanna eliminate circling around too much. Price on street parking relative to congestion, I believe the city did that in 2017 when we pushed forward to the progressive parking policies. Implement the city's residential parking permit program near high traffic areas. This has been going on for years and we're actively doing it and we have meetings and this really does help out a lot of the current residents and then evaluate the zoning code for amendments to reduce parking requirements where alternative transportation is available or planned. We've been working really hard on developing a really good relationship with transit. Whatever we do, I think can affect transit parking-wise and whatever transit does, I think can help benefit parking. So working together with Rachel and her crew, I think it would go a long way. And then of course the goal five, the electric and hybrid vehicles, in order to make these things work, we need to have the EV infrastructure in place, we need to have the chargers ready to go and that takes months, if not a year plus of planning. So we're gonna work on that as well. Some of the intended outcomes for the MTC funded study, better utilization of existing spaces, reduce the GHGs and the BMTs, ensure the implementation of EV chargers for public and fleet use, utilize technology to have a real-time data collection so we can be as fluid as the band changes, support the city's partnership with PG and Tesla, install EV chargers in the carriages, right? I think that's what we wanna do is try to get folks to use the garage more and to lower rates and more availability for the EV chargers, better utilize what we have for the benefit of the businesses and the visitors, stream operations for improvements to aging facilities, better wayfinding and equipment, additional oversight facilities, provide a safe and enjoyable experience. We want people to be able to know where to park before they show up in Santa Rosa. We want people to know they can park anywhere and they can be safe, they can visit businesses, they can visit residents, they can come to the markets and do anything they want. So we need more outreach and more communication on our end. Community outreach with stakeholders identified changes that would benefit all those impacted by parking. We go out daily downtown and I meet with business owners or I meet with guests, just I love talking to people, so I'm down there all the time trying to get feedback from folks. The only thing I'm trying to figure out as I go forward to make sure I do this study correctly and then the right way and I check all the boxes is find out what do you guys see as a concern regarding parking? What discussions have you had with guests and business owners of downtown that could impact parking and where do you rank the need to install more EV chargers and infrastructure upgrades along with parking? And there's my contact information if anybody has any questions going forward and I think we're good. All right, thank you. So before we answer those questions for you and get into a discussion, do you have any questions on the presentation? One question which went back to action item 3.4.1 parking on street relative to congestion is that are you looking to bring back some version of progressive parking? I can't, I don't know what I'm looking for and I only say that just because I don't know what this study is gonna show me as far as where I'm deficient or where I'm in surplus of. I don't know what's gonna happen with the sale of the properties. I'm not certain on how many developments are coming in. So there's gonna be holistic changes. I just don't know what they are yet. And when you get $207,000, does that buy you additional staff time? Does it get you consultants? How does this money get deployed? I mean, I get what the takeaways are gonna be, I'm just curious how you're gonna obtain the deliverables. So I've been speaking a lot with the MTC. This is a unique situation to where we won't see a dime of that money. The MTC will do the request. They will identify the contractor. They will hire the contractor based on meetings with us and what we need. And they'll pay everything. They'll have the quantifiable. So we won't have to do anything on that. So we don't process any of the moneys. We just receive that service. Yeah. It's unique, unique. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Does that mean that they manage the contract also? Correct. Okay. Correct. I understand and we're still in the beginning stage to this is that when they start identifying multiple vendors and start to make their choices, then we'll be brought into these conversations based on what these people are offering. So when you do the analysis for downtown, you have cited in there, I think it was 900 housing units with 500 and some change parking spaces planned within those developments. Are you planning based on projects that have been proposed or are you planning based on zoning and potential? Proposed. Okay. Proposed and or approved developments right now and based on what I can get from city. Yeah. Everybody knows that sometimes things will come in, they'll be proposed and then they'll just fall away and not be billed, yeah. But yeah, I would encourage you, it's more a comment than a question, but I'd encourage you to also work with Jill Scott and other folks, Claire, Raisa, because there are, I know of a number of developments that are at least talking to the city that have not been formally proposed yet. I like, for instance, we just finished some of the surplus lands acts, some of the first steps of the surplus and lands act on multiple city-owned properties that I know is not accounted for in that analysis. Correct. But if we're gonna be doing a study, there might be some placeholder numbers that we can put in based on some assumptions so that by the time the study is complete, it's more accurate than it might be otherwise. I agree. We've had some great conversations, all city staff's been great, with Raisa, with Jill, with Claire. I've also had folks, like I say, one Santa Rosa Avenue or a different developers who will call me when they haven't even filed for an application and they'll say, if I wanna do this, could I get permits here? And of course I'll say, yeah, no problem, let's work here. So there's a lot of what-ifs that we don't have factual right now that will be a part of this. It's gonna be six to, probably six to eight months is how long this study will take. Yeah, yeah. Let's go to public comment. Do we have any hands for public comment on Zoom? We do not. Anybody wanna provide comment? Peter, anyone? All right, do you wanna put back up the slide with the feedback that'd be helpful from the committee? Do you wanna kick it off? Sure, you know, it's always interesting to me when it gets to parking, you know, because it's so important. It's one of our greatest assets that we don't have more. You think that people would be beaten down our doors to talk about parking, so. What do I see as a concern regarding parking? You know, we wanna, you know, it's all about balancing this asset that we have and making sure that we don't encourage people to not use transit bike and pedestrian, we want people to use active transportation. We wanna make sure we're funneling as many people into the downtown as possible without, you know, having things made confusing for people. So, you know, one of the things you bring up is having the EV, I'm gonna bounce around because none of these are really distinct. I see that, you know, the idea of having EV charters in the garages is one of the best ways to get people off the street into the garages and it also targets one of the populations that is most challenging to get to use their garages. And so if we can partner, say with economic development and art in public places to continue to beautify and make the garages lighter, brighter and feel safer, if there's a great amenity that you cannot be gotten on the street. Okay. But can be gotten in the garage. We're gonna solve a couple of our problems over time in my prediction. One of the things that I hear from residents who live in these parking districts downtown, particularly Cherry. Yes, residential. Yes. Is significant frustration with a new system. And you and I have been in communication. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so I think that, you know, working to figure out a way to incentivize them to have their guests use garages where there are garages proximal to their residences for guest use. Having some sort of program for limited amount of guest use for them might be a way to ease some of the consternation that they have over the new system. I'm thinking about a particular around the garage behind Russian River. And then, you know, one of the things I always think about with parking is, you know, we don't want to dissuade people from coming downtown. And at the same time, we don't want to encourage them to use their vehicles. And so what other solutions do we have besides charging for parking? I mean, we can charge for parking, but you kind of nailed it on the head about working with transit. And how can we work with transit to make sure that there's less incentive. And I'd be interested to have a back and forth with the chair about some of the ideas that as he sees them in order, but the number one tool I think is to not place EV charters on the street. That makes sense. Place them in the garages. But I'm curious to know, I should ask this during the questions period. Have we looked at partners outside of Tesla and PG&E partners that might be a little bit more palatable to our public? No, those are all great questions. Let me start first on the EV question about the garages. We're actively working on getting fingers crossed, 13 EV chargers starting the process to install 13 EV chargers in garage nine. And if things go well, we could install somewhere upwards of 30 chargers. Is nine the one behind Corression River? I'm sorry. This one right here. This one, okay. And then garage 12, the one right behind Roxy. We're working on possibly getting 30 plus EV chargers installed in there. So we're definitely focusing on garages with the chargers. Are you focusing on the underutilized garages or the well utilized garages? Right now, well, I guess everything's underutilized right now, just because of our occupancy. I know what you mean what I'm saying. I'm hoping that focusing on these that are kind of used to be our good ones, these chargers will make them become more utilized and push more people out towards the house. They used to be the good ones. Is it okay if we used to have good ones? Like as in they used to be well utilized compared to some of the other ones? I'm sorry. This garage right here used to have a lot more occupancy with the state and the federal employees downtown. And they just haven't came back. And there's not a big draw for folks to come parking this garage and then walk downtown. Yeah. And the same with 12, the one behind the Roxy. We used to have more folks. I assume it'll come down to the events. Barbie didn't fix that. Well, I haven't checked today. I parked there when I saw Barbie. In fact, we paid a whole dollar for it. I parked at City Hall and walked over. Sorry. But at any rate, so I mean, I think that, and the only time we'll tell, I think that's really interesting because what you're kind of banking on is that these two types of businesses that have really not had a good pandemic recovery, you're banking on moreing people back to office and movie theater usage. And what we're seeing people come back in droves to is services like restaurants and salons. Yeah. And so, you know, I would have probably gone, if it had been me, like the garages on the north side of Forest Street rather than the south side. I'm not telling you to change. I'm just saying it is an interesting bet and I might've split it up between the two to see, for the test to see which side of Forest Street got the fastest uptick in return. But also to see which kinds of economic uses we want to most encourage and see what Bryce and her team think, you know, are most official in the city to encourage. I agree 100%. I think going forward, I am assuming that how can I maintain parking if occupancy does not increase? I'm expecting the worst, figuring out a way I can kind of continue to go through and still do my job and that if it improves, then we can spend on other projects. But right now I'm trying to figure out how to maintain. The second one, the permit thing, maybe offline, you and I can talk. We've made some, based on our conversations, some significant changes to that program that will greatly benefit everybody. I've been getting complaints lately. So whatever you're doing is helpful. Okay, good. I think we reached out to them. So that's very, very good. And then the third question you were asking as far as, I jumped right past it, the last one. Or did I get them all? You might. Oh, partners. I've met with Sonoma Clean Power. I've got a pretty good relationship with the brand Arthur down there. I've been working a lot with Tesla just because they've got a lot of new things. The changes in EV technology is gonna be a universal NACP plug that even if it's a Tesla charger, it'll work on 90% of the automobile manufacturers out there. And I think that that'll be beneficial. Different city departments, Rice's department, Gabe's department just, I can't do any of this in a bubble. So I've been trying to reach out to everybody and we're all trying to come up with a grand plan on how we can go forward. The transit, like I mentioned, we've been working a lot with them. We've actually introduced a couple of months back but now we offer a commuter permit and the lots right under the freeway, a discounted commuter permit because we want people to use smart. We want people to use transit and hopefully that commuter permit will encourage more people. Right, and that's an example of a place where I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to putting chargers. When I say like, don't put them on the streets, I mean, don't put them in super valuable parking places. Put them in places where people are less inclined to go. I agree, I agree. Where they can stay for long, three, four hours if they needed to, no issues. Yeah, I mean, just that's about it. Good points, very good points. Yeah, so on the flip side of that, what I was gonna mention is to me, the amount of electric vehicle charge stations we put in is almost secondary to what type. If you look at sort of the demographic of why people are coming downtown, doesn't really make sense for them to leave their car there for three or four hours to charge on a lower level charger. But if you had fewer chargers but more fast chargers where somebody can plug in and have their car charged by the time they're done having a beer or having a meal, I think that that actually would be a better fit for the economic profile of why people are in downtown. I actually, I'm glad you brought up the lot for smart because I was gonna mention what I think is really key is to decentralize sort of the parking from and make it accessible for all of our public transit because we do know people are gonna drive and park and get on the smart train or drive. And if we have the proposed circulator coming back to downtown potentially, like what smart is now doing with the airport, that's an opportunity where you could have people who are pushed towards the outer parking structures and then still take the circulator where they need to if they're not willing to walk or bike or do whatever. So I think looking at sort of those options as well, I'm not ready to agree on, let's put the chargers in the garages solely, but I do like the idea of creating an amenity there for people to be able to come in. And in fact, we have snubba clean power meetings, for instance, we've got somebody from Cloverdale who drives down for those meetings, drives our electric vehicle and finds a charger and plug into every single time. I know people on the North Coast that when they're heading either to Sacramento or to San Francisco for meetings, they intentionally stop in Santa Rosa because of our charging infrastructure is better than some of the places around us. And I've noticed the same thing for me. I think we were remarking, I drove my wife's electric mini Cooper over to city hall today. Nothing only gets a hundred miles on a charge. So when I'm going to Sacramento, for instance, every single time, I'll stop in Vacaville where they've set up an intentional charging. And of course, while I'm charging, even if it's only for 20 minutes, half hour on a fast charge, I'm walking around to those businesses that are there, right? And so I think a lot of times with climate and I think charging infrastructure is one of them. First movers in the space create their own economic incentive and then it'll diminish over time. But we have a really good incentive to create an atmosphere in downtown for people to stop and to charge. You mentioned your partnership with the Sonoma Clean Power. Sonoma Clean Power's office itself right now is sort of a test case on charging infrastructure. And so talking with them about, there's potential to make money off of the charging based on where we place it with businesses and access that we have to businesses. And they're doing a couple of interesting pilot things. Some of it is related to the bi-directional nature that we would need in cars. Some are able, some are not. But having the infrastructure that prepares for that kind of a future, like I know Senator Skinner right now has legislation that would require in the future, all electric vehicles to have bi-directional charging where they can both get charged by the grid but then also be used as an essential battery pack in a time of emergency or to sell back to the grid. And so I just wanna make sure that we don't install the technology of today by the time we get there, there's new technology and new rules. So it might be worth having a conversation with Sonoma Clean Power about what does the next five years look like? What does the next 10 years look like in terms of capacity and building? Okay. I too, between the two of us, we represent every historic district in Santa Rosa and complete around the downtown. I hear the same things that Victoria's hearing about the residential parking permit program. And it's at a time where people are more interested in it because they're concerned about the impact of housing projects that are nearby. So for instance, love the Canary project that's coming in but the neighbors on the other side on Pearson right behind it are concerned about the spillover of traffic into their neighborhood, right? And so I do hear that quite a bit from residents. And then from people who don't live here who are just visiting, they just hate any type of paid parking unless they're from San Francisco and then there's a steal. So I don't think that's helpful to you, but that's the thing I guess it is. Sometimes it's just a miscommunication. Maybe they don't know enough or what really goes on. And to that point, I think that as soon as some other jurisdictions start charging. It's very Petalema, Sonoma. Any of them. Yeah. You know something in Sonoma you can imagine. I'm not gonna get involved in that and all that. So for some of our regional partners would start turning to parking. I think it will make us look less like the bad guys. When it comes to that, I think that people just don't get that we have a parking district. So I think as much education as this reasonable and something you didn't ask me what I thought, but here we are five years later. So one of the things that I noticed is that you have someone on your team, a parking enforcement officer I don't know if that's your technical term for those workers who comes in. I'll be at like one of the shops on Forrest Street and Railroad Square and he'll say, hey, come check your leaders. And I think that those kinds of things build really good will. They just build education and an opportunity for people not to feel burned by overstaying a little bit of enjoyment time. I think that's really helpful. I'd be interested to ask you Chris, why you think what the logic is about not suggesting putting the EV charters in the most undesirable places near economic opportunities? And I'm not sure I'm against it. I would need to think about it a little bit more. I'm also a little bit on kind of the equity framework because I was driving through the East Bay earlier and I realized how much I hate the paid HOV lanes where like if you're poor, you have to sit in traffic, but if you're not, you don't have to. And kind of the idea of we're trying to incentivize people to be more climate friendly. And that means that you're gonna drive a car that's gonna be less polluting and then you're gonna have to park further away and potentially walk than somebody who's driving a car that's polluting and can park right on the square or right on Forrest Street because they don't need a charger, right? I'm not saying I hate it, but that's immediately where my head went of that you're essentially saving the prime parking spots for the non-electric vehicles and pushing the electric vehicles away from those spots. Again, I'm not sure I hate it, but that's the first thing that I've triggered. I have to think about it a little bit more. And the logic for me is that if you can afford the electric vehicle and you can afford to charge it, one is that's the demographics that I hear and not super willing to come to downtown all the time. So I was trying to think of an incentive to get them to come downtown without giving them the prime parking spots. I think we need to move away from the assumption that people who are driving an electric vehicle are more well off. Well, it's just a fact at this point in time. It's not gonna be true forever, but it is true now. I disagree that it's a fact now because many electric vehicles are still getting incentives from the state and federal government that are making them cost competitive with internal combustion engines. And at the same time, because they have less fuel costs, less upkeep, it's a first cost barrier. If you can get into one, it's way cheaper and depending on how you get into them, what your loan looks like has absolutely nothing to do with what your economics, your economic is versus somebody else's. I'd say in general, you're probably right, but I think we're moving away from that where they're becoming more accessible. There's more on the secondary market. And so I don't wanna make an assumption on a long-term infrastructure plan based on an assumption that may or may not be true today, but probably won't be true. I completely agree that it probably won't be true down the road regardless of what it is now, but I do think that a long-term goal of mine has been to move parking to the garages and to have higher utilization of them. And I agree with that entirely. And so I think that seeing if it makes sense over time, I'm not trying to ram it down your throat today, but I'm just curious though of over time adding amenities to those garages and not over incentivizing the curbside parking may be something that we consider. And again, I'd have to think more through it, but you can very easily accomplish the same thing by flipping that on its head and saying only EV parking in downtown. And then it pushes people who are not driving an electric vehicle into the lots anyway. There's ways to talk about it if that's what the intended goal is. Again, not making any distinctions on it today, but... There's a lot of different things to do. I just wanna encourage garages. It's really like that. I think it's that, yeah. And if I can, you guys are hitting exactly what's so confusing about EV is that how can it be beneficial to everybody? And then how can we afford it, whether you're talking about the city or just parking? Lot 10, I'm sure you guys saw, or maybe not. Were we doing the lot 10? I'm sorry. Which one? The car lot? Yeah, the one right behind... Lot four. The Russian River. Oh no, lot 10, yeah. That's one of the things that I'm seven years in and I have still never figured out which lot is which lot unless I'm looking at a map or... I just thought it was like the fifth and D. The one right behind Russian River. We've got this huge project coming up. We're gonna redo the entire lot. Once all's said and done, we're gonna have 12 EV chargers in that lot. So as we talk right now about where we wanna put the chargers, the big hinge pin for us is when we do this application through PG&E and we wait months to get a response, we have to give them an exact amount of how much power we're gonna need, right? But as we get to the point where we can afford chargers more, whether we're talking about downtown, if we can put a DC fast charger downtown, like you were saying, as opposed to a level two charger, well, now people can come downtown shop, get nearly a full charge on their car in 20, 25 minutes, as opposed to using one of the level twos downtown and having to wait three, four hours and then put the level twos maybe in the garages for people who are gonna be in the garages for hours. So the technology's gonna change and cause change. I will say with the council member's idea around putting them in the garage, one thing that you could use it as an incentive for is to change people's charging behavior that for the people who have permits to park while they're at work and park in the garages, if they had a charger that they could plug into, you're actually helping to lower the demand curve because then they're charging during the day as opposed to the evening when energy usage is higher. And so you could look at it from a feasibility standpoint of putting those where we have business permits being held. And then if you were looking at something on the square or something on 4th Street, the DC fast charger just makes a lot more sense. If you're at work for three or four hours, it makes sense to charge your car so long as it's cost competitive with the rate you'd be paying at home. That's a good point, a really good point. Cool. Two thumbs up. That is good. Thank you. Thank you. Chair? Yeah. Let's go on then to item 5.2. 5.2 is the overview of low carbon concrete and that will be presented by Andrew Pazelle, leaders of materials but associate for transportation and public works and Rob Sprinkle, deputy director of traffic engineering. And I'll tell you, Victoria's been waiting for this one for a while. She keeps telling me over the last couple of years, we need concrete solutions. We need concrete solutions. I got it. Thanks. I got it. I can be permeable. I mean, flexible. Oh. Ah. I can share. I can share. Yes. Just don't be hard as me. See? We've got a good mix of jumps here. I liked it. No, no, no, no. Skipping it. We have projects on my street and the time period for some of us. Getting there. It's literally. Okay. There we go. All right. So thanks for having us today. I'm Rob Sprinkle, deputy director of traffic engineering and this is Andrew Pazelle. He's our materials associate. He runs our materials lab. Our materials lab is kind of a gem in Santa Rosa. They do all our compliance testing for concrete asphalt aggregate for all of the stuff that goes into our streets, which is one of the reasons why our streets last as long as they do. Because we're one of the only agencies that actually can monitor the quality of the asphalt concrete and aggregate that go into our streets. So it's helping our streets last longer than they do. But today we're here to talk about low carbon concrete. So as we get into that, first go over what concrete is in general. So concrete's a mixture of gravel, sand, cement and water. And it's typically in the proportions of three parts gravel, two parts sand and one part cement. So, and then the water is what hydrates it in which starts the chemical reaction to harden the concrete. And it mixes with the cement and the cement is the binder and that's what gives concrete its strength. So, and the process to make cement not concrete itself, but just the cement portion of concrete is what is really the GHG hog. I guess if you want to call it in this instance and it does produce about 8% of the world's greenhouse gases. So as kind of a carbon footprint, one ton of cement creates one ton of CO2. So it's a lot. And at the bottom? Yeah, it's a ton. So I have a little couple of pictures here at the bottom of the slide here just for educational reasons. So the two photos of our trucks on the left, those are cement trucks. Those carry a dry product of cement. The truck on the right is a concrete truck. So that's just what, so we hear cement trucks a lot and then maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine because we work with it all the time, but the cement trucks are the ones on the left. Okay. Where's that one? Okay, so what is low carbon concrete? So I'm not going to read the entire definition, but I'm basically just going to summarize it. Low carbon concrete is concrete that uses other products other than cement in it to help offset the cement GHGs. So two typical elements that we see around here are slag from blast furnace, a byproduct from blast furnace and flash, which is from cold fire power plants. So those are both products that can be supplemented in for cement, which then help lower the use of cement, which lowers the greenhouse gas. And that's kind of the key to using, to what low carbon concrete is. And Andrew can jump in anytime he wants to interrupt me. So two, three, two. You're impressive. Okay, good. So then in another aspect of, so I will read the last part. So potential advancements in carbon reduction in concrete manufacturing are being studied in prefabricated concrete construction materials such as pavers, bricks and center blocks that it's currently limited to these prefabrication facilities. So on site when they're building those particular items and it's they're not available yet for doing field right next concrete. So that's where they inject the CO2 to help cure the concrete and use CO2 that way. They're forming the pavers, the bricks of the center blocks bringing them into effectively a curing oven and then injecting high concentrations of CO2 into the oven to speed up the curing process. So the situation on the industrial side. Exactly, just no water in it. It's just pure CO2 in the room. So two examples of projects that we've used concrete recently. The one on the left is the Fulton-Lewainey project from Gervild Piner. And then the one that we've finished back in 2019 is the Fulton Reconstruction Project between Occidental and West 3rd Street. So both of those projects used a structural section of eight inches where we took out eight inches of the existing street section, the structural section of the road and replaced it with concrete. So we're using RCC, which is roller-competitive concrete on the Fulton-Wideing project on the one on the left. And we used PCC, which is Portland Cement concrete on the project on the right for the project that we've already completed. The differences between those two is the Portland Cement concrete is basically concrete you see coming out of a truck that's wet. It can flow, it gets vibrated in the place and screed it off. The roller-competitive concrete actually is put into a paver. It's very dry and it gets actually compacted with rollers and you can't put a roller on the wet concrete, they'll just sink. This is so dry that it's actually being compacted in place with steel drum rollers. So in the Fulton-Wideing project, we're using 50% Portland Cement and 50% slag in the cementus cementus, yeah, I can't say that word. Material touches, thank you, composition. And in the Fulton-Wideing, we used 100% Portland cement. So with the mixed designs that we have with both of these products, the cylinder strengths or the compressive strength of the cylinders were the same. So you can meet the same strength requirements that we need to meet. But the roller-competitive concrete had much less CO2 output. So basically we used half as much cement and we saw a reduction of about 46% in the CO2 output and we used a lot less water. In addition to that, we used a lot less structural section than we would with asphalt and we'll get into that in a little bit and a couple more slides here. So some of the benefits that we see from using concrete roads in general is the carbonation of the pavement or the concrete itself. So when concrete undergoes carbonation, it actually captures CO2 from the atmosphere and uses some of that CO2 up that it actually was being produced in the making of the cement portion of that product of the Portland cement. Also there's a high albedo, which is the reflective property of concrete is higher. It's about four times higher than that of asphalt. There's other issues with that that can happen where Andrew's looking at some studies relating to concrete streets in Phoenix and where they had concrete streets and not a lot of street trees, they did see a lot of reflectivity and a lot less temperature on the ground but it was reflected back into the buildings and then the buildings had a lot higher energy use than the buildings that had asphalt streets next to them because of the reflectivity property of the roadway. Concrete streets also offer less maintenance in the future. There are higher life cycle costs or higher life cycle than asphalt streets and I'll get into that in the next slide. And there's less excavation which means for the same structural section that you get with an asphalt street, you might see say a foot and a half of asphalt would do the same amount of structural section or same amount of work for bus loading and truck loading than about eight inches of concrete. So a lot less material, a lot less stress on the natural materials and everything that go into each of the products. So this graph shows the life cycle costs on an arterial street with a traffic index of 11. So that's a street similar to Fulton which has a lot of the truck traffic, bus traffic, has bus routes on it and sees a high volume of traffic throughout the day. The bottom line is the roller compacted concrete or PCC, those are very similar in their performances for initial cost over at the left at the zero, it's just under $700,000 for a per lane mile that's calculated for construction. While the two lines that are above it, one is a full depth HMA which is asphalt. So if you just take the full depth of the structural section and make an asphalt, it's about a foot and a half. That's a little bit under a million dollars. And then if you use actually AB2 as a base which is the aggregate base rock and then a smaller section of HMA or asphalt, it's a little bit higher cost. And this shows different treatments over the years of the product. So at year eight, you would see for the asphalt you would want to do to maintain it properly, you would want to do a high traffic slurry seal on the product. Then again, in another 10 years or a year 18, you'd want to do another slurry and then another 10 years of slurry and then eventually year 36, about 35, you'd want to do an actual overlay of that product. So if we move down and that continues over until you have a reconstruction in the years in the future. If you look down at the concrete, there's a much lower maintenance cost. You can wait until year 25 before you do your first diamond grind which is where you go back and you basically smooth everything out, smooth all the bumps out. And then at year 40, you go back and you'd replace 10% of the slabs that have cracks or failed or are rocking and then at year 60, you would do a 5% slab and then diamond grind again. So this just shows the maintenance costs over the lifecycle of the product and cost savings you have potentially with concrete over asphalt. Now this does vary dependent on the type of street you would be applying this to. So in a neighborhood street, these lines really start out almost identically at the same point. It's almost exact same cost to do a concrete street as it would be to do an asphalt street. It's just that the maintenance is a lot better for the concrete street. But there's other issues that I'm going to concerns with the concrete roads. So concrete roads are a lot more difficult to cut through for utility maintenance. And then when you have a trench you have to either repair or say you want a new water service or something. It takes a lot longer to trench and to have the concrete set up and do traffic control for that over that trench while you're trying to repair or asphalt you can typically put down, roll it and it's ready to go. So there's a time factor there and convenience factor for the public. Also there's difficulty in leak detections. And I mentioned this before, but our local streets don't have the same, they have about the same initial cost and then they do show longer maintenance benefit from that. So with that, I think I talked fast and I'm ready for questions. Want to start us off? Yeah, I'll admit that my knowledge of material science is somewhat limited. So please forgive me for asking what might seem bone edge questions. When we get to talking about on slide three, fly ash byproduct from coal-fired power plants, sounds like great climate solution, or steel slide byproduct brought up from steel mill blast furnaces. Walk me through why these options are better for the environment. Like I understand that cement takes a lot of, produces a lot of greenhouse gases. Are these products going to be made anyway and is that why they're better or is it just, are we going to count on something that's like terrible to continue to be produced and where does we need the byproduct and is that what we're doing with this? I'll jump in. Okay, I was going to say on you go or you can go and follow. So fly ash is historically been what we've been using in the city. We have specs dating back to 1982 that's called out for using fly ash. We've seen fly ash be phased out by many of our producers in our local area because coal power plants are becoming less and less common. With that said, with continued development, both here in the US and we import some slag into the area, steel mills will always continue to be a thing and it's a byproduct. So either way, it's going to be made so we might as well throw it in the cement. Right, I guess what I'm trying to get at is like, let's say we have a really dirty steel mill in China and we're like, hey guys, cool job on making all that nasty like byproduct. Can you ship it over here across the ocean and you're also not very efficient freighter. How do we know that the overall, I'm not just talking about like in Santa Rosa, but the overall effect on the environment is better from using this product. Yeah, so from the studies that we can find online, these recycled materials cost less even upfront CO2-wise to produce than Portland cement. Okay, and I suppose we'll be looking for some better solution than relying on use in the future. Yeah, I'm sure there will be other things that we're looking at that will continue to try to reduce the use of cement products. The other thing around the high albedo, is that what you're saying? Albedo, yes. Albedo, great. So one of the things that I noticed in areas of Santa Rosa where we do have the concrete streets is that they also are concurrent with mature street trees in a lot of events. I thought that the lower temperatures was mostly result of concrete streets. It sounds like that may not be the case. So I just wanna highlight that I'm curious if we're starting to think about how to pair concrete streets or lighter colored streets with more incentives around street trees so that we don't have like a high heat areas or we do have high heat areas in our city and they do correspond with lower income census tracks. And I just wanna be curious about how we're looking to mitigate that. So that's kind of more of a planning development kind of question, because they do the street trees as part of the development process. But we could definitely look at when we're, so we look at each project, I guess, on its own merit, depending on how are we gonna use a concrete street or are we gonna use asphalt? And we basically look at the best fit that we think for the taxpayers and the use of that location. So, and we have had locations where we do a slurry and it's a lighter color, like Marlowe Road, for example, is a much lighter slurry than we've had than some of the other slurries that have been done. And so we do get that reflective property, but we don't always have that choice on the product where it comes from it's a little bit. So, I'm getting a little bit off track, but I'm trying to refocus. Some of it's not all on you. But it's not, yeah, it's not, it's not always our choice to, it's not always our choice, I guess, it's, so. Yes. Well, there's a lot of solutions that we can bring for it that are not within the scope of this here conversation. Yeah. Any other questions? All right, let's go to public comment. Any hands on Zoom? No hands on Zoom. Cool, I'll bring it back for some discussion then. So, first of all, thank you. I'd actually be really interested in checking out the lab. I've never actually seen it. Absolutely. So I think that'd be really cool to go and check out how we determine and all of that. Cause I do get asked about that frequently from people about road failures and materials. And so if we could set that up, that'd be great. I know Marin County passed a low carbon pavement program or preference, I'm not quite sure how to put it. I'd be really interested to see, bring back in the future a discussion about what exactly does that policy look like? What are the best practices that other jurisdictions are doing? When I was at COP 27, they actually had an entire area that was dedicated to new materials that were emerging. And many of them that were related to roads kind of fit within this bucket, but saw even greater than that 46% reduction in carbon, but also didn't see the same cost savings that you potentially get with concrete. So I would be interested to see how do we incentivize the folks who are bidding on our projects to be up on new technologies that might meet both of those goals for us. I'm actually really encouraged to see how one of the big questions I had was about how the upkeep would be, whether materials would fail faster if you'd have to spend the money on the backend. And I actually was really encouraged to see sort of your chart there on maintenance. I think that's pretty incredible actually. And so it doesn't, for me, doesn't need to be pushing forward with our requirement that we use this type of materials, but maybe looking at it through the lens of how do we create an incentive for people bidding on our projects to be looking through a climate lens as they do their bidding in their worksheets as well. Yeah, we're actually really excited about our Roller Compacted Concrete project. It's the first in Santa Rosa and not a lot of people are doing it. It's really not really great. So the first thing I hear from people every time is it sounds different. That when they're driving on it, it sounds different than the asphalt bid for them. And I just always think it'll get quieter too after we've done and grind it. So that's probably a little noisy right now. Yeah, well, they don't even mean it in a negative way. They just mean it just sounds different than what they're used to. So it's funny how we pick up on those. Yeah, this is good stuff. I think it's gonna be an interesting, the decades to come, these technologies are gonna get more and more interesting, more complex. I think it's gonna be fun to watch. Yeah, and I mean, quite frankly, it has to be right. The built environment, they're expecting a 70% increase in the built environment by 2050, especially as you've got other nations that are building out their infrastructure. And if you have materials that are representing right now, 8% of global emissions to hit our climate goals, you can't not touch the built environment. And I think we've had plenty of conversations about how do we design the built environment so that people can reduce their carbon impact. But I think Santa Rosa could be a leader in talking about not just how we design it, but what we build it with to be a part of a solution. So. Great. Cool. All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, future agenda items. Let's go ahead and go to public comment to see if anybody in the public has any suggestions for future agenda items that they'd like to see. No hands raised on Zoom. Nope. Anything on your end? I'm curious to know if you think that this was covered by our last item or our last meeting around cooling and general initiatives to actively cool. I know that I'm starting to hear some inquiries, press inquiries around what the city is trying to do to produce a cooling effect and not be a heat sink. Don't know if you think that that would follow then that this committee would look at. Nope, I love it. I love that as a discussion. And I know some cities are doing cool roofs and some are doing materials and to your point about trees. I think there's a lot of areas that staff can kind of take that and bring back some information for us. Well, nothing is not cool. That's right. Yeah. My colleague does not blow hot air. Poor Morgan's not coming back. He's like, I'm done. He has. With that, we'll adjourn. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. That was quick.