 Welcome to the webcast on local government leadership and electric vehicles. My name is Alex Ramel. I am a field director with Stand Otter. Stand is a non-profit with offices in both the United States and Canada, and our mission is to challenge corporations and governments to treat people and the planet with respect because their lives depend on it. If we're working in spaces motivated by two goals, we want to see more electric vehicles on the road replacing diesel and gasoline engines as a way to rapidly transition weight from fossil fuels. And secondly, we want to we see the way that that deployment happens as a way to begin to address historical injustices. The benefits of vehicle electrification, the portable fuel, the cleaner air are most urgently needed in communities that have the least assets. And we see local governments in California as the front lines in both of these efforts. A report was recently published by the International Council on Clean Transportation called Expanding the Electric Vehicle Market in U.S. Cities, and it showed definitively that city and county governments have a wide range of effective policies that they can implement to increase the number of electric vehicles on the road. And the sort of comparative side-by-side analysis there indicated that the benefits of each of these policies were cumulative, that they stack on top of each other and implementing each successive policy can yield increased benefits in terms of the number of clean vehicles on the road in each of those cities. Local governments are also the front lines in terms of environmental justice. They directly govern the zoning and the permitting issues that define which parts of the community that the essential charging infrastructure will be placed in. And they also have a close familiarity with the local environmental justice issues, like localized air quality. So we're excited to have a diverse panel joining us today who can talk about these questions from a variety of different experiences, including managing the city government, advising local governments, and advocating from outside city hall. And if you jump to the second slide, I'll be introducing the panel in a moment, but just wanted to do a couple of quick housekeeping items at the beginning. As I mentioned, the webinar is being recorded and will be posted online later. Our audience is in listen only mode to begin with. We won't be able to hear your dogs in the background, although we may continue to get occasional odd music. But we do definitely want to hear from you and we have a question and answer tool here in the Zoom link. Please enter your questions. Our format today is really just talking with these four panelists. I'll start with a couple of questions and then there'll be lots of time for moderated questions towards the end. And finally, oh, and I should say if you're watching this on Facebook Live, we do have a colleague who's going to be moderating the comments there and we'll forward those onto me. So we'll do our best to get those into the queue to try to get to as many questions as possible. And I should just say, for whatever reason, we lose our Zoom connection to this webcast. Please just call back in, try back in once. If it still is not working, we have a toll free calling number that you can use and we'll just switch over to a conference call line. And that conference call number is in the email that was sent to everybody who registered ahead for this, for this webcast, that email that you received about one hour ago. So before we begin talking with the panelists, I would love to hear from you. We've got one quick poll question. And what we're interested in is what those of you in the audience's role working with local governments is. So a poll question should be popping up for you here in just a second. And our question is, are you an elected official or do you work for a city or county government in a non-elected position? Or as a formal or informal advisor, things like planning commissions or climate advisory council? Or community activists or advocate working again outside city hall? If you would, take a second to let us know who's in the audience. And I'll begin just introducing you to our panelists. So today we'll be hearing from Mayor Heidi Herman, who's the mayor of San Luis Obispo. She was first elected three years ago and was just recently reelected to a second term. She's an experienced community organizer and a climate change activist who's committed to using her position of leadership in the city to set an example of effective climate action. Michelle Kimman is the director of transportation for the Los Angeles clean tech incubator, Lacey, where she manages the transportation electrification partnership, which is an unprecedented and private public partnership focused on accelerating the electrification of transportation in the greater Los Angeles region. Barron Fezzelli is director of research and policy for communities for better environments. For the last 18 years, he's been in CBE managing a number of research policy and planning projects. He's worked closely with CBE's community members, organizers, and attorneys providing the technical assistance for a variety of campaigns and partnerships, including the Charge Head Coalition. And Janelle London is the co-executive director at Colterna. She's the founder of the Yes, Clean Cars Coalition. And she also independently chairs the Environmental Quality Commission for the city of Menlo Park, advises Peninsula Clean Energy, Green Ninja, and the Peninsula Advanced Energy Community. She also teaches a course called Energy, the Environment, and Chocolate. And I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that will probably be the next webinar in our series. Well, as Alex mentioned, I'm the director of transportation for the Los Angeles clean tech incubator, or Lacey, and I manage our transportation electrification partnership, which I'll describe momentarily. I weigh of a quick background. I joined Lacey this past August, so I'm fairly new here. But I've worked for over 20 years in the nonprofit sector, working in one way, shape, or form to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. I worked for 14 years in the former Soviet Union, working with communities that are frontline to the oil and gas industry, before then transitioning over to environment California, where I worked for seven years as the Clean Energy and Transportation Program Director. Most relevant to this webinar, I had the distinct honor of coordinating the Charge Ahead California campaign, working closely with Bahram for five years. And that is a joint campaign of five organizations, communities for a better environment, the Coalition for Clean Air Green Lining Institute, NRDC, and Environment California that's been focused on making sure that low income communities of color are benefiting from and have access to the transition to EVs. If you could move to the next slide, Ann, that would be great. For those of you who may not know, Lacey, we're a private non-profit organization that is creating an inclusive green economy by unlocking innovation, working with promising clean tech startups to commercialize clean technologies. We're also working to transform markets through partnerships in transportation, energy, and sustainable cities. And then working to enhance communities through workforce development, pilots, and other programs. We were initially founded as an economic development initiative by the city of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power, but we're now our own independent non-profit organization. Next slide, please. So I think this slide represents why I was invited to participate in this webinar, and that is that we have launched a transportation electrification partnership, which is a really unique public-private partnership, bringing together now over 20 partners representing local government, utilities, regulators, and industry, and all focused on accelerating transportation electrification in the greater Los Angeles region, so a five-county region we're looking at. And we're utilizing the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will be in 2028 here in Los Angeles, as a rallying point. And saying, by the time those games come, by the time the world is turning its attention to the LA region, we want to make sure that we're able to move people and goods all throughout the region without creating emissions. And so you see here on this slide some of our partners. We've got a couple more that we'll be announcing shortly, but with this partnership, we released a zero-emission 2028 roadmap in September, just before the Governor's Climate Action Summit. And the commitment our partners made was to say that together we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution in LA County, an additional 25% beyond what's already on the books in terms of local and statewide legislation, and to do that by accelerating transportation electrification. Next slide. Oh, that's just a cover of the roadmap itself. We can move quickly past that to my last slide. I know this is a little bit difficult to read on a webinar format because some of the type is a bit small. You can also find a copy of the zero-emission 2028 roadmap on Lacey's website at lacey.org. But this is really the heart of the roadmap. This outlines a number of ambitious goals for the deployment of various vehicle classes and then also charging infrastructure that together we're aiming to meet with our partnership. I'm happy to talk more throughout the questions, but I think I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you. Next up, Barron Pazzani. Do you want to continue or as a reminder, sort of introductory question? It's just about your background and your role in helping. Right. So yeah, I've been at CVE for about 20 years. I think the bio that you're looking at is two years old. So we'll be, CVE will be celebrating actually it's 40th anniversary this spring. We are a statewide environmental health and justice organization and with officers in the Oakland which went here in the city of LA and in Southeast LA county. We work on a wide range of issues related to the life cycle or as some people like to call the death cycle of fossil fuel from drilling to food transport to refining and combustion which is most related to this webinar. And we have organizers and attorneys and research and policy staff who are working with the EJ communities to give them the capacity to create better communities and more sustainable clean energy policies. Now for things I wanted to highlight for this discussion, the work we've been doing, Michelle talked about the Charger California initiative that CVE was part of along with the Coalition for Cleaner and RDC Greenlining and Environment California. And we sponsored SB 1275, the California Charger head initiative that was championed by Senator de Leon. I was signed into law in 2014 by Governor Brown and the focus was really to make sure that in addition to accelerating towards electrification we provide access for low income communities to access clean mobility. And in that coalition we have a wide range of expertise working on different aspects of infrastructure implementation and we've supported a number of bills since 2014 related to clean transportation and we also do extensive outreach and community engagement and forming cross-sectional alliances. One specific thing that I wanted to highlight was one of the fundings that was created based on SB 1275, the Charger California initiative was what City of LA took advantage of in creating the Blue LA EV Car Share Program. And that program was officially launched in April of 2018 and there are currently 11 sites in operation with 55 EV Chargers and 61 EVs. This is as of July of 2018 actually. And then the goal is to reach 40 stations and 200 Chargers and 100 cars by end of 2018. Covering sort of the Westlake, Pico, Union, downtown LA and portions of Corio Town. This was the, this is the City of LA's EV car sharing, low income car sharing program, which is something that I think we can talk about a little more maybe later today or future discussions. And I think I wanted to highlight from the work we're doing is the work we're doing along the 710 corridor. For more than a decade now we've been, let's say, challenging Caltrans and Metro in their ambition to expand the 18 mile stretch of the 710 freeway which connects the San Pedro Port Complex, which is the biggest port complex in the country, to the inland rail yards in East LA. And what we are pushing for is sort of reducing pollution along the corridor, creating a designated zero emission lane, prioritizing clean alternatives and creating a real meaningful and democratic public participation and pushing the planners to prioritize public health in their decision making process. So in that we are working with the Coalition for Environmental Health and Justice with a number of our partners in that coalition and it's an EIR to be released soon so we are engaged in that process. The 13 I wanted to highlight was the work we've done with the City of LA's Office of Sustainability. Since Mayor Garcity released its first sustainability plan, we have been at the table and working with the Office of Sustainability and the City of LA influencing the target state pick and one of the important sections in that sustainability plan is clean transportation. Similarly, the last thing I want to highlight is the work we are doing as an anchor community-based organization with the County of LA as they are in the process of releasing or creating and releasing their sustainability plan for the county. We've been working with the Liberty Health Foundation, the UCLA Institute of Environment and the County Office of Sustainability. So there is actually a policy brief on transportation which has a very good background on research related to state of the Queen transportation in the county and highlights key goals and strategies for the county to move forward. I'll share the links to all those things that I talked about at some point with Alex and I think you can distribute it to the participants. We'll circulate that both on the Facebook page. Next up, Janelle London. Great. Thanks, Alex. I'm Janelle London. I'm with the Nonprofit Cultura and our nonprofit is dedicated to accelerating the transition away from gasoline and toward clean alternatives and we do that through policy. So we're working to pass gasoline phase out legislation in both California and Washington states that would set an end date for sales of new gasoline cars. We're also working to expand that type of legislation to other states. So the idea is kind of like with marriage equality where it popped in a few states at a time and created ultimately kind of an unstoppable train. And then we also work to do that through culture. So we are working to change the narrative around gasoline and help people understand that when they hop in their gasoline cars it's actually causing a lot of damage. And then another path that I wear is I'm on the Environmental Quality Commission for the city of Menlo Park. So I get to see at a very local level how change is made or struggles to be made. And in my spare time I attend lots of marches and pepper Facebook with comments dispelling the myths around gasoline vehicles and clean cars. Thank you. All right. And Mayor Harmon, circle back to you. Sure. So I'll just be brief. I was I think I don't know how much have you heard of this before when I was speaking but I was a climate activist for a long time and ran for mayor. And so now we have a pretty ambitious climate program in general and the sustainability manager has been great in facilitating the community and the council's vision around all of these things. But our EV charging policy is probably not that different from other cities in that we require EV infrastructure of all new development that's both accessible and visible. And then we also have our own EV charging program that the city is implementing throughout the city. I think right now we have about we're a pretty small city with 49,000 people. 12 stations now, 20 more coming and 10 Tesla charging stations at our one of our local hotels. And I believe that we're set to be the city that's going to have a hydrogen fuel cell station as well. So we have a lot of those kind of alternative fuels for vehicles happening and coming down the line. Thank you. And thanks for sharing with us and getting the sound issues figured out. So we'll just kind of jump into a few questions that I have. And again, I invite the audience to enter questions that you have and your Q&A. But I'll get us started with a couple. And if you want to just sort of popcorn in and let us know what you think on these, we don't have to do it all the way around the table. First question is just in your experience. What do you think are the most important and effective policies that local governments can implement to increase the number of electric vehicles being used in that community? I can kick us off. Got a number of ideas along those lines. I think Bahram has already touched on one of the key policies that we've already seen at play in California with the possibility of setting up EV car sharing programs specifically designated or targeted towards low income community members. There is the Blue LA car sharing program that Bahram referenced. There's also a program that's being deployed in Sacramento that's designed in a little bit of a different way. But that is also, as I understand it, achieving success. So I think that's something for other cities to look to replicate. In addition to that, one of the things that I'm working on and looking at is working with local municipalities to put in place expedited permitting processes for EV charging. What we're hearing anecdotally is that it's taking in some cases nine to 12 months to get through the permitting and interconnection processes. May not seem like the sexiest topic in the world, but it's really a key one if we want to make sure that we've got the charging infrastructure available to support a sharp uptick in the deployment of vehicles themselves. And there's actually legislation at the statewide level, AB 1236 that requires local municipalities to have expedited permitting processes in place. But what we're finding is that oftentimes local municipalities just don't even know that that legislation exists. So the application of that legislation is spotty at best and really educating local municipalities about the need to get ahead of this uptick in EV charging I think is important. Similarly for cities that have municipal utilities to put in place expedited interconnection processes, that can also be a process that takes a long time. Two other quick ideas would be EV fleet purchases. So for cities to transition their cars, their buses, their garbage trucks, whatever it may be, over to electric vehicles to set the stage for citizens to do the same thing. I know in September that a number of cities, I think 30 or so came together with a climate mayor's electric vehicle purchasing collaborative. And the idea there is that cities large and small all across the country can come together to leverage their collective buying power for electric vehicles for their cities. So that might be something for folks to check into. The website for that is driveevfleets.org. And then the last thing I'll mention that's on my mind that I don't know if we can say is proven or not. I just am not myself that educated on it as of yet, but that I think is really interesting is the idea of cities here in the U.S. creating zero emission only zones in which only electric cars, delivery trucks, etc. are allowed to travel and that internal combustion engines are not allowed to travel in those zones. And I think that's a really exciting avenue for exploration. Yeah, kind of the tip of the spear. I was going to ask one question jumping back to your expedited permitting. Do you have any comment on whether there's challenges predominantly with the high-speed charging stations or those challenges trickling down to the type 2 chargers? Yeah, I think it's across the board. So I've done some informational interviews with people who have experienced going through that process here in the LA region and I've talked with folks who have both worked on level 2 and level 3 charging and it seems like the challenges are across the board. Janelle, can I encourage you to jump in on the conversation on EV fleet purchases? Sure. I'm actually going to pull up a couple slides and play off some of the things that Michelle and Baram already said. I'll see if I can do that. Click in my button and it's not... Oh, there we go. Okay. Okay, for one second. Oh, okay. I have to share. Sorry, I'm doing technology and talking at the same time, which is never easy. Yeah, so I'll just emphasize a couple of things. Let's see. Okay. Yes, charging infrastructure is key. I will say in our city of Menlo Park, we recently passed an ordinance that requires all new construction to have level 2 charging. So for residential, that's every unit has to have at least an EV capable situation so that one could connect up with a charger ultimately. This is way cheaper than doing it after a building is already constructed, especially if you have to do trenching. And then in commercial buildings, there's a pretty high percent requirement for EV charging infrastructure, again for new construction. So I think that one's probably one of the easiest things that a city could take on. It's estimated to cost, I think, 1% of the total building project to go ahead and add this EV readiness. And then I wanted to say it's not just enough to have the charging infrastructure because awareness is a problem. So UC Davis did a study and they found that even though the number of charging stations in California doubled over a certain period, people didn't perceive that there were any more chargers. And so to that end, one of the policies that I think is really important is the signage. And so anybody who's ever looked for an EV, a public charger for the first time, say in a big parking lot, will know that your phone and your app can kind of direct you generally to where it is, but you might drive around for quite a while before you actually find it. And there's very little, I'm going to say there's no wayfinding signage. So things like highway exit signage or signage at major intersections in a city to point you towards where is the EV charging. And then once you get into that big public plot, where the heck is the charger? There needs to be something big and major to point you there. It doesn't have to be expensive. And I'll just point out that on the slide I'm showing right now on the right, there's this glorious looking highway exit sign that I was so excited to see on the internet. And then I found out it's a composite. It doesn't actually exist yet. So I think the signage is very important. And then it's also important. I think what cities and counties can do is help keep the messaging focused on where we need to go. So in California, although we've put in a lot of great programs for accelerating electrification of vehicles, our gasoline use and our carbon emissions from transportation are actually going up. And so I think it's critical to and pretty easy for cities and counties to focus on gasoline sales. How many what is the gallons of gasoline sold in that region? And can we make it go down? That's really the end goal. Just putting EVs on the road without having this decrease in gasoline is just not it's not enough. It had had the right direction. And then as Michelle was talking about fleets, I happened to pull up the fleet that the climate mirrors EV purchasing collaborative site that she was mentioning. I absolutely agree. Cultura is working to pass legislation that will require public fleets to phase out gasoline vehicles. And as they go along acquiring new vehicles, ensure that they're electric to the extent possible. So we think that's really important. And then on the equity side, we have a lot of really good state programs already, such as the Clean Vehicle Assistance Program that will give, for instance, to low income folks a $5,000 discount on a new or used electric vehicle. And I just pulled up an example here of a used electric vehicle. It's a Nissan Leaf. And with the $5,000 off, this would cost a person who qualified $1,500. And there's also a state law recently passed that would cover $1,800 worth of or the $1,800 towards purchase of a new car battery if you're used EV car battery dies. And it seems like if cities and counties could develop a program to pick up the rest of that so that it covers the entire new battery, that could give a lot of folks who are buying used EVs the confidence to know that their battery is going to get covered if it should die. And then I just wanted to point out that on Cultura's website, we have a whole tab on act locally, the various things that you can do at the local level to help encourage phasing out gasoline and moving to clean cars. Okay, I'm going to stop sharing for now. Thanks. Since you started to move into the questions about equity, I'll go ahead and add that question. And we can talk about both of these at the same time. I'm curious, what role you see public engagement? Excuse me, what role local governments policies play in EV utilization towards environmental justice rules? And Mayor Harmon, you had mentioned the policy adding zoning requirements or development requirements for vehicle identification or substantial buildings. That strikes me as a particularly important policy. I think now you mentioned it. How do you see EV utilization being driven in not just highway corridors and neighborhoods where Teslas are? Is that a question for me? For you or for others? Okay. Well, I would just say the city of San Luis Vismo is the fifth least affordable place to live in the United States. It's very expensive here. The median home price is $800,000. And so we have different issues in terms of struggling with equity and inclusivity and diversity here and the lack of it. And so that's a constant struggle. So anything that we can do to support inclusivity and economic diversity in general, we're working hard towards. And hopefully that these policies around EV infrastructure being included in all new development throughout the city and ride sharing zones and things like that will be a part of that. This is actually new information for me that was just shared that I was just writing down about the assistance program. That's amazing. You know, I speak for myself, I need to do a better job of proactively seeking that out because that's obviously a huge missing piece. It's all well and good to have the EV infrastructure. But if people can't afford to make the shift to an EV electric vehicle, we're not really moving the needle. So that's exciting. I personally am car free because I can't afford an electric vehicle, but also I'm trying to model that. So that I wrote that down to share at the community, but also to look into myself. So that's exciting to see that. So I think one of the things that I have an opportunity to do as an elected is not just advocating, create the policy, but then also share things like that out to the community. So that's something that I'll definitely be doing to make sure that especially those on the lower end of the economic strata, so to speak, have access to that information. So on the issue of the sort of EV utilization supporting EJ goals, I think that there is a kind of a little bit of a fundamental paradigm that we are kind of wrestling with in the advocacy world, and that is do we accept that communities that have disproportionately been impacted by the fossil fuel economy deserve to be the first in line to receive the benefits of the health benefits and the community benefits of the clean innovation workforce development projects associated with this kind of emerging green economy, and the clean green renewable economy. And I'm talking about broadly everything under clean equitable access to transportation, clean public transit, clean goods movement, and clean passenger cars and other modes of transportation. So I mean, if you accept that the communities that have suffered most from the impacts need to really be the first recipients of those benefits, and then I think two things will happen. I think from a public policy perspective, you're going to see a more rapid growth of clean transportation economy wide. If your approach is kind of bottom up and middle out, you're going to see a more rapid uptake. And this is not an ideological take. You've even been done studies been done by UCLA Luskin Center when it comes to the rebates that is offered by the by the by the states and how changing the rebate to favor more low income communities receiving a bigger share of that is going to actually have a bigger impact in terms of the efficiency of those rebates. Um, so that is important. And the second thing is that we began to address sort of, uh, to write some of the wrongs that have been done in the past and redress some of the injustices. So I think that's kind of a big picture. And I appreciate all the specifics that people have mentioned. Of course, you know, in the charge at California Coalition, you know, we have pushed for these equity provisions for who should receive these rebates, low income financing, low income car sharing, and many other things that are in the implementation phase. I could just jump in with two quick things. One of the programs that I think has been most successful for the state of California that the charge ahead team was instrumental in creating was a program that's gone through a couple of different names, but is now called clean cars for all. And that is a program that was first piloted in the San Joaquin Valley in the south coast air basins, in which if you are a lower moderate income California and who has a old polluting vehicle to scrap that you can turn it in and receive up to $9,500 worth of incentives to get into a new or use DB. And with the prices of use DBs being around, you know, 10, $12,000, that really makes it a much more affordable option for many people. And those programs have had good success and are going to be expanded statewide. So that's, you know, started at the statewide level, but has had buy-in from and financing from the local air quality districts. So bridges the worlds of state and local policies in some respects. And then the other things I just wanted to share a resource and I can type it into the chat in just a moment. But the Green Lining Institute a couple of years ago put out a toolkit called Electric Vehicles for All Toolkit, which was designed to show advocates and public officials how to design and advocate for policies specifically designed to increase EV adoption in low income communities of color. And so that might be something folks would be interested in checking out. Yes, please do. And make sure that gets shared, not just in the chat. So I'm going to start kind of heading through some of the questions that have been submitted here. One question is about the best way to anticipate the current and future volume of charging needs. If you have been with your ambitious goals in Los Angeles, it feels like that's a bit of a whole thing, but how are you doing that? Yeah, in the process of putting together the 1.0 version of our roadmap, we did do some greenhouse gas and air pollution modeling to try to get at those numbers. And that's partially how we derived the numbers that we have in our roadmap. We also, I guess, took a step back from that and first looked at, you know, how many electric cars do we need to have on the road in order to hit our greenhouse gas goals? And then backed out from that, how many chargers would we need to have? So that's a little bit of the process that we undertook. We're now in the process of doing some more sophisticated greenhouse gas and air pollution modeling because we're intending to put out a 2.0 version of our roadmap next fall that will have narrowed ranges because some of the ranges we have, including the charging ranges, are quite broad. I can share too that I know all of the companies that are producing electric vehicles as well as the companies that are producing charging infrastructure are going through similar processes to project their demand. And I guess the hope would be that they are sharing that information regularly with utilities so that we can get through that permitting and interconnection process more smoothly, that the utilities are able to then staff up the appropriate resources to be able to handle that uptick in demand. I know PGD had circulated a tool with the governments a couple of years back to try and direct sort of a GIS tool, so best locations. Are there seeing that in the communities you're working in? I mean, yeah, other utilities have developed similar tools. I would just add that one way I think we need to anticipate demand that will really help with reducing greenhouse gas emissions is for ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft to be able to electrify. And so I know that there's a charging infrastructure company called EVGO that is currently taking requests, kind of votes for where do you want the next EVGO high speed chargers to go in. So for the activists on the call, I would say lobby EVGO to bring a high speed charger to your area, especially if you're an area where a lot of people use Uber and Lyft because that just helps Uber and Lyft get to more and more electric cars. And they are driving presumably way more miles than you or I, you know, regular passengers or regular drivers. And so the more Ubers and Lyfts that are able to go electric and have that high speed charging network where they can not interrupt their job too much during the day to go charge up, I think that's just going to foster more and more of our total miles being driven, being driven cleanly. So I would push for that and not worry about, it's unlikely, I think that we're going to over anticipate the need for high speed chargers right now. We're just lobbying to get any and just start the TNC, the transportation network companies, being able to electrify. The slide you shared with the, the, the debate for the, for the leave. Is that it? Yes, it is. Yes, we have a whole flyer that is all the various low income incentives for low income customers. So I don't know if you guys know this, but there's a program called care through PG&E. So if you're a low income customer, you already get a discount on your electric rate, which helps with charging at home. And I think 11 states have discounted electricity rates for their low income customers. And then it also has the example with the leaf and yeah, you can go on cargoes.com and search up used EPs under Leafs and you'll get a whole bunch of them. And last time I went up, I think the first top, the first 10 were less than $6,000. We have a question from the audience about constitutional considerations, specifically commerce policies related to banning certain types of cars. So that'd be either the S Queen cars coalition. The last part, I didn't hear you the last part. What was the last part of your comment? Are there any constitutional considerations with banning certain types of cars, either in the community, large or municipal? Well, currently, California as a state has a carve out from the federal preemption. So federal law generally covers vehicle emissions, but California has a special carve out so that it can set vehicle emissions standards that are stricter than the feds. That is currently threatened to be challenged by the Trump administration. But as it stands, California has the legal ability to do this. For commerce clause questions in terms of you're saying if you want to bring a car over from another state into California, there's not yet been a proposal to ban that. In fact, the King Bill, the Clean Cars 2040 Act last year specifically exempted folks coming in from other states. So is the question is one allowed to, I think I heard the term ban or gas fueled vehicles, right? Is that the question that the question is getting to? I think it was related, the question wasn't specific, but I think it was related to the first. I mean, I would love to hear that answer fleshed out because we have proposed potentially with new development. For climate reasons, of course, but also just for parking impacts and things like that to this project, we could say yes to this project if it creates meaningful affordability and also is car free is the way that this project could work. But how do we regulate that and how do we make that happen and have a whole development be truly car free? And so I'm curious to learn too, is that possible that we could create a policy around that, which is a slightly different but related question. From what I understand, cities do control land use, local charging infrastructure, curb space, zoning, building codes and parking codes. And so with that, it seems like you could zone an area car free. You could also use the ability to control parking to just say, look, you just can't park in our city unless you have an electric vehicle. So it seems like you could get at it a couple different ways. Yeah, I'm sure we can, yeah, we can research that a little bit more and maybe from a legal perspective, what are the restrictions in that? And maybe provide a more comprehensive response to that if needed. We have a question probably from Michelle. How accessible are electric vehicles only to these zones? And how would that potentially impact marginalized folks and ensure that they aren't faced with more barriers? Yeah, I can start the answer to this question, but I fully admit that I am exploring this right now and trying to educate myself on this issue, so I encourage others to jump in who may have more knowledge on this. What I do know is that there are many, many cities throughout Europe that are in the process of putting in place such zones. You could imagine them for a small portion of your business district, for instance, that you might have zero emission zones in a very well-defined area. I believe Hong Kong also has an area of this nature. I don't know about the status of existing zones of this nature in the U.S. I do know that Mayor Garcetti's office is looking into the possibility of a zero emission zone for LA. I'm not exactly sure where they're at in the middle of that process, but I know it's something that's certainly being explored. I would imagine that in terms of making sure that such zones remain accessible to all or are accessible to all, that there are a number of different things that you'd want to consider. I mean, this would be, you'd want to make sure that you have access for a variety of different technologies so that you'd be looking at making all of your buses zero emission buses that would run through those zones that you would also want to make sure you were encouraging light electric vehicle solutions like electric buses, electric scooters, just regular buses, all of the regular bicycles, excuse me, not regular buses, regular bicycles and the whole suite of solutions. So it wouldn't just be electric cars alone, but other sustainable modes of transportation as well. I would encourage folks, sorry, just to guide Dovetail a little bit into that, but I implied this in one of the answers that I wrote out, but engage with your local APCD or air pollution control district. There's a lot of, at least grant funding and things like that, that we've been able to benefit from. We're the center, we're the county seat in the center of the county, so it also makes sense in the center of the state in many ways that we have a lot of the charging stations, but the APCD has been really helpful in terms of pursuing grant funding and things like that for some of that. We're getting close to the end of the hour. Mayor Humana, I just want to ask you the last question. Wait, I can't hear you. I don't know if others, there, now I can, yeah. All right, I just need to lean in a little bit more. Mayor Humana, I'd be curious in your thoughts on how community activists can support and encourage local government leaders to pass these kinds of policies. As an elected official, what do you see as sort of the value and the role of activists in your community? Thank you for this question. This is one of my big passions is having been an activist and now it elected. First of all, I would say that if you see yourself as an activist, it's quite possible that you can also be an elected, that we need people on the outside demanding and we also need people on the outside deciding and invite everyone to think of themselves potentially pursuing that path and looking around at your activist community. And if it's not you, there might be some folks within that community that would be willing and able to pursue that. And then once that happens, as in my case, I was able to gather a lot of the folks that have a lot of intellectual capital and great ideas and commitment to this issue together to create what we're calling a climate task force. And now that group has an official relationship to the city and they meet monthly and they have staff liaison and all kinds of great support and have been crucial and essential to really pushing the needle in the community and with the city. So we have a lot of sort of an amplification happening between the relationship, between the city staff, the community, the council and the climate folks here in the community of San Luis Obispo. I think that has really helped amplify the work that we've been doing. So I would encourage climate folks to consider reaching out to their elected officials and seeing if they can participate and offer their time and ideas to have a meaningful role in relationship with their local governance. And then just lastly, I would say in general, a lot of times, and I know I'm sure I've done the same thing, we spent a lot of time and energy getting people that we think are going to be great elected. And then if we're fortunate enough to be able to get that person elected, we have a tendency to say, okay, bye, great, you know, I feel good about getting you elected. We'll see you in two or four years. And mostly we're probably going to also be mad in two or four years because you won't probably have done it quite the way we were hoping. But why? Because you left us, so to speak. So don't walk away from your electeds that you work so hard to get elected. So support them, see how you can reach out to them and support the work that they're doing, but also obviously hold them accountable as well. And so don't wait for that election cycle process to talk to them about EV charging stations and all the other things that we're passionate about. Stay in touch and be a part of it yourself, too, because we're only as good, really, as the people that got us here. I want to say thank you to everybody who's on the panel today. We did mute the audience, but if they were unmuted, you'd be hearing applause. And I also want to just thank a few people who've been working in the background, especially Aaron Pernick, who is jumping around multitasking. And my colleagues, Mary Zeiser, maybe Matt, John, just set up. We will have the webcast link available for folks to use. Stan is excited to work with folks around California to help to implement these kinds of policies. If you work for a local government, Stan is prepared to help publish what we're calling an electric vehicle community leadership checkup. The first one of those should be available for San Luis. And that looks at some kind of quick metrics, geographic questions and trends to make recommendations on some of the steps that if you're an organizer or an advocate looking to get more involved in this kind of issues, as Mayor Harman was mentioning, we have a local action tool kit and we can support this in the basics. I'll just wrap up by saying I'm more confident than ever that California is on the cusp of a really rapid transformation. We're at a tipping point. Local government leadership can continue to be an important way that we can protect both the climate and make these important strides towards a more equitable society. And we're looking forward to working with all of you in the future towards that end. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you.