The meeting come to order. This is the April 8, 2025 special meeting of the Irvine City Council, a special meeting in the nature of a study session. this time I'd like to turn to the city clerk to call the roll. Council member Carroll. Here. Council member Goal. Here. Council member Lou. Here. Council member Triseter. Here. Vice Mayor Mai. Here. Mayor Eagren. Here. I should note it is 2, 10 PM. I apologize to my colleagues for being a few minutes late here. This is an important study session that we're going to have. At this time, I'd like to turn to the city clerk to identify the nature of the subject, the item that will be studying this afternoon. Thank you, Mayor. Item 1.1 is review of the current project proposals included in the city's draft climate action and adaptation plan document. Thank you. As I indicated, this is a study session. This is an opportunity for us to examine in some depth over the course of the next hour and a half or so. Some of the important projects related to our climate action plan, we intend to address at a subsequent council meeting the actual adoption of a climate action plan. But for purposes of this meeting, we're going to be principally talking about various projects that will be recommended as part of that plan. With that, I'll turn to our city manager, have him further introduce this item and also introduce staff who will be making a presentation in my own thinking about this we'll want to hear from staff at whatever length they think is appropriate, then we'll want to entertain questions or comments from council members. Then we would turn to the public so that they might comment as well. And then finally back to the council for further comment. That would be my intent at this time. This is all a little less formal than our normal council meetings and no specific action is anticipated or even would be necessarily appropriate. It is a study session. With that I'll turn to our city manager at this time, Mr. Chee. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council, staff's excited this afternoon to be able to share details related to the climate action and adaptation plan work that we've been working on for the last couple of years. pursuant to the memo that agendas this study session meeting. Staff has prepared a fairly extensive review of the programs and actions associated with the cap. The council recalls the climate action adaptation plan coordinates a lot of analysis to identify total greenhouse gas emissions within the city and it identifies actions that the city can take to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions to achieve a current city council adopted goal of carbon neutrality in 2040. To get there, the current cap document includes 198 different program actions. Luis Estevez from our public works and sustainability team will be leading the conversation today He will be supported by staff on our sustainability team that have been working to deploy the actions. We are planning to run through each of the different actions which are grouped into six different project categories. If the council would indulge the staff at this point, I will turn it over to Luis to get rolling with the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Chi. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. So my pleasure this afternoon to present to you this study session on the adaptation plan measures and actions for our draft cap with me. I'm gonna just interrupt you for a second. Would you lower your screens a little bit so we can actually see your faces? Angle it down just a little more. Press on the top. I think that's as far as this one's gone. Okay. Thank you. Also your colleague, me this afternoon is Melissa, you are manager of sustainability. And on the line with us is Hannah Cornfield from the Sent environmental. mental she's our consultant helping us prepare the draft cap as well as these measures. So just by way of background really quick you know what it wanted to just provide a quick synopsis on what a cap does and it does a number of things to help prepare the city for future climate change. The first is to estimate existing in future greenhouse gas emissions, and this is called the greenhouse gas inventory. And we'll look at some of the preliminary findings from this in a moment. This step is critical because in order to understand how to make the most impact at reducing our emissions, we firstly understand where the emissions come from here in Irvine. And then secondly, we set GHG Rejunction Targets. So currently the city's goal is to become carbon neutral, as Mr. Shees said, by 2040. The plan will then recommend policies and actions to meet reduction targets. It's important to note, however, that the cap does not create policy requirements. It simply serves as a road map by recommending actions that are the best fit for Irvine to help us reduce our emissions. These recommendations will also integrate climate adaptation and resilience strategies and throughout this entire process we were engaged heavily with the community. Lastly the cap will provide an implementation plan and a cost estimate for implementing the various actions. So by way of background, back in June of 2021, the council directed staff to prepare a cap. A couple of months later, council adopted an achieves resolution that set a city-wide carbon neutrality goal by the year 2030. Almost two years later, staff returned to the city council and held a special meeting to review the draft GHG reduction measures developed at that time. And the staff reported at that time that the 2030 goal was a bit of a moonshot, the investment that would be needed to achieve a 2030 neutrality goal was far infeasible. And so at that time, council pivoted and developed a new target to achieve a citywide carbon neutrality by 2040 instead. It also directed staff to proceed with the cap as a non-sequesterified program document as well and to utilize the current measures and actions as a basis for the cap. The staff and the consultants we hired did analyze this updated scenario to meet those 2040 target. In December of this past year, Council opted to move Irvine customers down to the OCPA's basic choice plan at 47% renewable as a default electricity provider. Two weeks ago, Council was provided a status update on the cap and at that time voted a table consideration of the matter until a future date. And then of course this afternoon we were having our study session here today to talk about the program measures associated with the cap. Since 2022 we have engaged directly with thousands of residents, businesses, and students in the city in meaningful ways. When compared to other cities across California, the amount of outreach we have conducted around the cap far exceeds the average. We have held over 30 targeted workshops and presentations within the community. And this includes interactive workshops here at City Hall where we solicited direct feedback for our cap measures to presenting our cap to large and urban based businesses like Taco Bell and Medtronic. We've also held several feedback sessions with UCI graduate and undergraduate students as well. IUSD high school students, H O A's, community-based organizations as well as regional agencies as well. For the last two years, we ran a comprehensive survey on our cap measures through the Considerate platform, which we translated into our eight threshold languages. The survey received almost 9,000 individual comments and opinions, indirectly through our social media and email campaigns, as well as our cap promotion at large community events, we have reached nearly 200,000 community stakeholders with our cap messaging. The cap includes 198 individual actions and projects aimed at reducing Irvine's screen-how gas emissions sources. The measures include a range of proposed actions for Mount Reach to new programs to enhance regulations. What's important to note that 88% of all GHG emissions in Irvine comes from just two sources. Transportation at 51% and building energy at 37%. And the measures that we develop were in accordance with state GHG reduction targets. This pie chart here provides a quick visual on the breakdown of our GHG emissions sources. Of course, as I mentioned, the on-road transportation and building energy comprises the lion's share of that. Coming in at 7% solid waste or emissions generated from landfill waste, 3% of emissions come from off-road vehicles and construction equipment operating here in town and then much smaller pieces come from water and sewer treatment plant and pumping stations as well. The current draft of the CAP and the measures and actions we're discussing this afternoon are based on the city's enrollment in OCPA's 100% renewable choice portfolio. Now that the city is enrolled in basic, in the basic choice plan at 47% renewable energy we'll need to modify or add additional actions to make up for the loss in renewable energy in order to meet that 2040 carbon neutrality goal. Now from the OCP as website, the estimates of their 2030 portfolio for the basic choice program, it was derived from their 2025 offerings, which include 47% renewable electricity. was assumed that the same percentage of nuclear power would be available as it was in 2023. So therefore really the 2025 basic choice tier provides 75% carbon-free power because of the use of nuclear power in their portfolio. As I mentioned earlier, there's 198 action items previously approved by the city council because transportation and building energy are our largest sources of carbon emissions in the city. Those categories naturally have the most actions needed to reduce those as missions as noted in this table here. So it's broken down by six different sectors under building energy, transportation and land use, resilience, green economy, and carbon sequestration, off-road vehicles and equipment, solid waste and water and wastewater sectors. After collecting information from the public, stakeholders, and subjects experts, the city finalized the approved actions. And after the finalization, city staff reached out to the involved departments to determine which actions are complete which ones are in progress and which ones have not yet been started. The screenshots that we'll show here in a moment of some of the projects that we're working on will show which ones will show those how those are broken down but more than 50% 3% as a matter of fact have either been completed or are actually already on in progress. And that really showing that the city's and the staff's commitment to council's previous direction to start working on a lot of these projects. So knowing that a lot of these completed or in progress projects have already been financially budgeted for or included in the city's operating budget. And some of these actions really are as simple as continuing public outreach and education while others still require significant public private investment and public policy discussion which we'll discuss here a little further in a moment. So 29 of the measures of the, I'm sorry, of the actions have been completed. 68 are in progress. Eight are noted as reference actions that are being assessed and they're actually noted in in a couple different areas, and we'll talk about that here in a moment, and 93 of the actions have yet to begin. The first sector we'll discuss this afternoon are the Building Energy Actions, which includes 49 project actions grouped into four separate categories. We've also arranged today's presentation as Mr. Chimit noted by Action Strategies ease of discussion here today in the study session. Nine of these actions are complete here under Building Energy Actions, 17 are in progress, and 20 have yet to begin. The next set of tables you'll see outlined the various actions related to our Building Energy and Electrification Strategy. This strategy really is focused on seeking out opportunities to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings. One example is of a direction action of a direct action to further that strategy is to perform energy audits on all of our city facilities every five years. These audits analyze a building's energy consumption over time, analyze the energy consuming mechanical equipment and fixtures using the facility and determine if more efficient equipment can be installed to further reduce energy consumption as an example in this particular category. Here we have some additional building electrification strategies. One of which would require extensive public policy discussion with the city council and the community and that's building electrification. It's also a comprehensive energy retrofit program to confer 72% of all the buildings in the city to all electric. Additionally under building energy electrification we have the one Irvine program that council set up and funded a few years ago. That was used to help fund incentives for home retrofits and other benefits as an example. Another energy action item includes piloting and all electric retrofit and an Irvine community center as well. So, Council was inclined to develop a pilot program. That's an option there as well that we could pursue at some point in the future based on council direction. Implementation of smart reads is also a neat, another key action item. And some version of this action is noted in a number of different carbon reduction strategies that we'll visit here in a moment. Implementation of low carbon development projects is the next strategy we'll go into discuss. One specific action here could include adopting a building electrification ordinance, which of course again would require robust public policy discussion with the city council and the community. These are reference items. They are essentially to implement and enforce the reach building codes and green building standards that's reference in other actions. It's noted here as a reference item. Same here as well. Elimiting fossil fuel backup generator sources by 2028 that's referencing another measure that will note here in a moment. Again, here's another iteration of a smart grid action item related to low carbon development strategies. The City Council's Matterfek approved a power purchase agreement last year that will construct a micro electricity grid here at the Civic Center. And that work is actually already underway as evidenced by all the utility trenches you'll see out in the parking lot outside. So that work has begun and we hope to have the solar panels and battery systems installed in the second quarter of 2026. This action item directs all existing city facilities to become zero net energy by 2035 as a low, another example of another low carbon development project we could implement. increasing high refrigerant actions. This is another opportunity to partner with OCPA and SE to implement a natural refrigerant incentive program, similar to what Smut has done up north as well, their pilot program. The next strategy on our list are clean energy projects. This particular action item includes continuing outreach to residents and businesses regarding OCPA's 100% renewable service level. Of course, this action would require some modification now knowing that OCPA is not currently able to provide 100% renewable energy without significantly raising their electricity rates on ratepayers. So there's a few instances where you may have to modify these based on that new reality. Prioritizing the installation of renewable energy and battery storage systems at city facilities is an ongoing action item related to clean energy projects. As I just mentioned a few moments ago, the city's currently under construction for a microgrid project here at the Civic Center. And we've identified a handful of other city facilities around the community that would benefit from new solar and battery storage systems. And those projects will be pursued as funding is made available. A microgrid system is also being considered for the great park as well. So again, those projects are being pursued as funding becomes available. Encouraging the installation of solar canopies on surface parking lots is another example of an action related to our clean energy project strategy. You'll see a lot of those around school campuses now. And then on a larger scale, we're also looking to collaborate with our various power providers to develop microgrid systems at local schools and hospitals as well. Energy education and awareness projects is another strategy we're implementing in an effort to reduce meter power consumption in our local buildings. This includes a comprehensive outreach and education campaign such as through Solarize Irvine's efforts. So that's an ongoing program that you've seen I'm sure before. The next slide is outlined. All of the actions related to building energy program measures that have either been completed or are in progress. The team is done a fantastic job at advancing a lot of these projects both into completion and continuing to advance them along as noted here in these tables. This final table here provides just references back to other specific standards that we talked about previously. Transportation and land use actions, this is the next sector that we'll cover. And as I mentioned previously, this represents half of all the emissions generated in Irvine each year. So the categories in this sector ran the gamut from low and zero emission vehicles to transportation demand management. Eight actions are complete. 31 are in progress and 34 have yet to begin. The first strategy we'll talk about in this category is when it comes to transportation and land use program measures a sustainable transportation and land use planning. This strategy focuses on implementing new land use zoning that supports higher density closer to major employment or residential centers, as well as mass transit. The City Council recently took actions here to further sustainable land uses, be it the adoption of the city's most recent housing element, which will allow housing to be introduced now into the spectrum, as well as expanding housing options in the IBC. And the City Council also recently approved a landswap with five points that will see new apartments being built adjacent to the Irvine train station. So great examples again of this particular strategy being put into play. Again, another additional action item here is related to expanding the residential overlay and unit cap in the IBC to promote more mixed use developments. Limiting lower speed limits is also a recently taken action by the city council in which also helps to further this particular strategy. The city council has also invested in traffic calming measures and strategies that have also invested in a residential shuttle service known as Irvine Connect. Both of these are key actions to advancing this particular strategy. The city has led in many of these regards. Though in zero emission vehicle projects is another key strategy and the city has led in this regard by expanding the number of public EV charging infrastructure throughout the community. Another action here, for instance, is to designate certain curbside locations as commercial loading zones exclusively available for zero-mission commercial delivery vehicles. This is really developed as a means to help induce a transition towards EV delivery, the use of EV delivery vehicles. Promoting existing programs and those of partner agencies are common actions found throughout the draft cap and this measures lists. Here's a handful of programs available through SE and EQMD to encourage a transition towards the use of EVs. Developing and implementing an electric car share program. Another example of that. For the city's part, we have been slowly transitioning our own fleet to EVs. We now have more than 30 EVs in our inventory. And that represents about 5% of our entire rolling stock at this time. Again, supporting new development by increasing the number of chargers requirement, that's a standard action that we take in a lot of our new development projects, city projects as well, when we start adding EV infrastructure, charging infrastructure wherever we can. One action to note that would further, this particular strategy would be to implement a tolling mechanism to enter certain business districts or also notice congestion pricing. This is of course something that has not yet begun and it will obviously, something like this would obviously require extensive public policy discussions with the city council and the community if that was a direction to go in. Implementing transit system improvement projects is another key strategy in reducing transportation related emissions. One of these actions involves the creation of a circulator shuttle service which the city currently has in place and is currently evaluating options to expand that service. that's, falls, that's actually going to the Transportation Commission next Tuesday to be followed by a presentation of the City Council as well. Another action in this regard could be to implement developing a potential city transportation authority. Partnering with Amtrak, MetroLink and OCTA to expand the Irvine station with ridership upgrades and broader connectivity is another action the city could take along with implementing an electric car share program based at the train station as well as a good example. Implementing transit supportive treatments and transit routes into roadway infrastructure projects is another action that we can implement in order to improve transit travel times and reliability. And lastly, on and on demand public transit services, another action the city could take and implement to further transit system improvement projects throughout the community. Implementing active transportation projects is another strategy under this sector and another one in which Irvine leads in. We have one of the best local trail and bicycle networks in the country, and that which helps facilitate transportation and recreation access throughout the entire community and beyond. Bicycle infrastructure is a key action item in this sector, and one that the city is actively working on to expand and looking at a potential mobility hub based at the Irvine train station specific to this particular alternative here. This is a reference that's measured in a different location, but essentially focuses on developing more accessible and safer pedestrian infrastructure as well. Complimenting an EV sharing system, we could also implement an electric bike or scooter sharing system as well. A lot of cities have that available as an alternative transportation means for the community. Transportation Demand Management Projects is the next strategy we'll take a quick look at under this Transportation and Land Use Program sector. Requiring employers to participate in alternate transit options is another action item that would require a lot of policy discussion with the City Council and community, really to try to flesh out how something like that could be implemented and managed on the city side with local businesses and companies. This here just references another sector here with regard again to transportation demand strategies. And again, reducing vehicle idling as a measure that could be accomplished obviously by expanding EVs on the road. Parking projects is the next strategy we'll take a quick look at. A specific action related to this particular strategy could install parking meters on public streets located around key destinations as the spectrum and the IPC, for instance. And these actions here again tie back to implementing fees for parking in high traffic areas that's referenced in a different location. The next three slides summarize all of the actions that have been completed or in progress now. Again, the team has done a great job of advancing and completing a lot of these actions and continuing to work on all of these as well. All of these are still in progress and then of course this slide here references four reference actions that are tied back elsewhere. The resilience, green economy and carbon sequestration sector is the next item we'll review this afternoon. This sector has 30 actions grouped into five separate categories, which include actions related to urban forestry and open space and green business and job creation opportunities. One action here has been completed thus far, eight are in progress, and 21 have not yet been started. Urban forestry and open space projects are the main strategy actions under this sector. The key action being the urban forest master plan which is Currently being prepared of council recalls it and awarded a Contract to doodak about a year and a half ago or so to prepare A new urban forest master plan and we anticipate presenting the Council with an update on the master plan next month and then By this summer have a completed document to present to the city council for its consideration and adoption. Providing additional shade in local parks is a good example of an action item in this category. Something that staff and the council has been investing in slowly over the past few years with new trees and shade structures at our parks. And staff does plan to present a budget request here soon to the City Council for its consideration as part of the annual budget preparation process that would create an annual tree planting program. Reducing the heat idle effect is a key strategy here and one that the city is already implementing by expanding the use of cool pavements throughout the community. In fact once the parking lot outside is improved and been repaved it will be resealed with a cool pavement slurry seal to help reduce the reduced the ambient temperature here at the Civic Center. Pursuing or encouraging green infrastructure projects is another strategy we can employ which could include developing permitting guidelines and best practices, for instance, to construct green and vegetable roofs throughout the community as an example. Green business and job projects could also include expanding certification and recognition of green businesses in Irvine and continuing sharing of resources and state rebates. Attracting green industries through tax incentives and low cost loans and grant program is another action item the City Council could take to further this strategy. Carbon sequestration efforts would include continuing the city's existing use of soil health first approach to landscaping city properties as an example. And the city could also adopt a new code that requires all new developments to utilize low carbon concrete, steel, and other key impact materials as those projects and properties develop. This slide and the next one confirms which actions have been completed or are in progress. We only have one in this particular arena and several others here has noted that are currently in progress. Off-road vehicles and equipment actions is the next sector we'll cover this afternoon. This sector includes nine actions, one of which is complete, three are in progress and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning and planning residents to swap out their gasoline equipment for battery power alternatives as a good example here. Another more aggressive action the city could implement or to reduce emissions from construction equipment is to require all construction projects in the city to use tier 4 construction equipment only. And of course that would require a lot of policy discussion with the city council and the construction community as well. This slide and the next one I've identified is which action has been completed and which ones are in progress. We've got one completed here now, which is the off-road engines. And of course, we've got three additional ones that are currently in progress. Solid waste actions are the next sector we'll discuss here briefly. We've got 18 actions grouped into three separate categories here. Eight of these are complete, four are in progress, and five have not yet been started. Under the zero waste strategy, a key component of this sector is the implementation enforcement of the city's organic waste recycling ordinance, which is in compliance with state law. That would be SB 1383. The City Council approved a new waste hauling contract with waste management last year, which included the new organics recycling program, which has been implemented. Providing ongoing education, audits, and technical assistance to residents and businesses is a key component of the city's organics recycling program and is included here as an action item. Continual education on outreach on single use plastic reduction is an ongoing and the city is actually currently surveying our restaurants to determine how feasible it might be for them to transition away from single use plastics. And so we hope to complete that survey here this month and then be able to share the results of that, those survey results with the City Council here shortly thereafter. 75% diversion rate for construction and demolition debris is another goal the City can pursue as an action item moving forward and encouraging and facilitating the repair and reuse of consumer products is another action we can take in an effort to reduce the amount of materials sent to the landfill. These are reference actions again disposing a waste that innovative facilities has a waste energy and in the reuse facilities. Is there in a couple of different places? And here in terms of reducing landfill emissions is another, again another key strategy. We have some action items here that we could implement in partnership with or to support OC waste recycling here at our local landfill. Tracking state legislation on changes to solid waste and recycling is something our staff follows very closely and are closely engaged with with the team at the state level and the local level. The next three slides here will outline the actions we have already completed and that are currently in progress. A number of them here have been completed and four additional ones are in progress. This is a reference item again, disposing of waste at innovative facilities, waste to energy at reuse facilities. Excuse me. Under the water and wastewater sector, we have identified a handful of actions focused on water conservation and water recycling. Two of these actions are complete, five are in progress, and eight have yet to begin. Now although the city doesn't operate its own water and wastewater utility, there are regulations that we could implement that would help further water conservation goals such as requiring low-flow fixtures as an example. additional water conservation projects could be implemented that would help further water conservation goals, such as requiring low flow fixtures as an example. An additional water conservation projects could be implemented, that would include requiring more low water usage and native plant materials and conjunction with our existing model, excuse me, model water landscape ordinance. Here we have a handful of recycled water projects that again to encourage this and continue to encourage IRWD to pursue these projects wherever possible as well. The next two slides will show you the actions that have been completed and which ones are in progress. We've got two finished here now and several others still in progress. So in terms of possible next steps, the council obviously should review these 198 reduction actions. It provides staff with feedback in terms of which measures should we continue to pursue moving ahead. Of course, we are still working with our consultants to develop an implementation costs for these measures. And then we'll also want to consider the current 2040 carbon neutrality goals against the resources needed to scale up to meet the goals with access to only 47% renewable electricity. And so again recall that our current program measures do allow us to meet carbon neutrality by the state directed 2045 goal. But having access to less renewable electricity will have to make that up somewhere else, which is either additional actions we can take or more intensified actions to help close the gap that we lost by not having the access to the 100% renewable. And of course, we'll want to consider whether or not to direct staff to prepare a cat measure implementation plan and the cost estimates for the measures selected by the City Council. So that concludes my presentation. I'd be and listen myself in our consultant. Be happy to take any questions. Well, thank you for the presentation. Thank you also for providing the list and the draft of the 198 projects, I guess it is now. I'll tell you what I think we ought to do now and probably will begin with me. We'll take one round of questions, comments, thoughts that we have here from the Dias, each of us limited to five minutes and then we'll hear from the public and then we'll come back to the council members who had further thoughts. So let me begin myself. The clock is running now and I'll, it here to the five minute limit here. The fact that at the behest of OCPA, we lowered our tier from the 100% renewable. We went down to the basic. I think they were recommending going down to a new tier of about 54% something of that sort. That does mean we have to be aggressively pursuing other projects. I'll just start things by saying the three things that interest me the most, not the boutique projects, the small scale projects, but three large scale projects that I think we need to pursue with great vigor and an aggressive posture. In the transit realm, in the transit realm, what I'd like to to know is if we were to expand the Irvine Connect system to really reach all corners of the city of Phase 2, perhaps of Phase 3, if we were to do that within the next five years, perhaps a fourth phase, to make that transit system really city-wide, what would that do to move the needle? I think we've got a good start with Irvine Connect now. It's a question of rapidly expanding that service. What would that cost? And what would be the measurable in-road on our carbon footprint? That's a great question, thank you Mayor. I think... That's number one. Let me get to number two and three, and then you can respond. Second thing is you mentioned at the tree planting program, which I of course have emphasized publicly before. If we were to aggressively pursue an appropriate master plan tree planting program that might involve many tens of thousands of trees. We were to max out on that program, get as many in the ground in appropriate places as possible in the next five years. What would that do in terms of not just heat island effect and all the rest, but reducing our carbon footprint, advancing us toward carbon neutrality, sequestration of carbon in those trees and so forth and in their root systems. And then the third one that I think holds tremendous promise is solar rooftop and battery storage, installation of systems. If we were to in the residential realm alone, manage to, if we were able to, if we were able to manage to initiate a very aggressive program that involved, let's say scaling up at a rate of about 5,000 households per year, 5,000 rooftops, but it's got to be with a battery storage system. If we were to do that over the course of the next five years, 10 years, and 15 years, what would that do to move the needle? I imagine it would be very, very substantial with tremendous benefits, of course, to homeowners in terms of the rate pain that they do now. They'd be largely free of SE where they'd have a battery storage system. Those are the three that I'd like to see us really pursue. If you can respond to that quickly now, now fine and then we'll turn to to others. Sure. I appreciate the question. Thank you, Mayor. You know, in terms of the expanded the Irvine Connect, there is, that does hold a lot of promise. The single route that we have now has seen over 100,000 boarding since the program launched. essentially a's essentially 100,000 vehicle trips that we've been able to avoid on local roads. I would have to call on our consultant, Hannah, from a set to be able to speak a little bit more intelligently with regard to how many tons of CO2 we would actually be able to reduce. They can calculate that for us. Let me just say I don't expect a specific answer or even a general answer. At this point, I just think that in our analysis as we go forward, we obviously want that. We want to know the numbers. Absolutely. We'll absolutely make sure those are calculated in the final product. The tree planting program also does hold a lot of promise in terms of being able to expand the forest and more importantly expand the canopy coverage throughout the community. That also has a side benefit of reducing the heat island effect throughout the community as well. And we do have a pretty aggressive tree planting program that we're going to propose to the City Council for its consideration when we come back. The solar rooftop and the battery storage, again, also holds a lot of promise, especially if we're able to scale up and target 5,000 households a year. That's quite a bit of energy that we would be pulling off the grid as a result of that, especially when it's combined with battery storage, which would be a key component to that effort. But again, we are definitely happening. We'll get into the more granular level in terms of being able to calculate the amount of carbon we'll be able to reduce at this scale. Thank you. I don't yet see any requests from my colleagues. Are there requests, questions that people have of our staff? Vice Mayor Mai. Thank you, Mayor Higren. Thank you, staff, for your presentation. There's several initiatives that I've championed that are on here and many of us here champion and had past as well. I might have a couple of questions here regarding that. How are some of these projects completed or more than half of the projects completed without us adopting the cap document? That's a great point, Councilmember Vice- Councillor Meing. Yes, the council did previously provide a direction to start pursuing these projects and we have done so without having an actual cap in place. At the end of the day, the projects still get us towards the goal of carbon neutrality without having an official cap document in place. But ultimately, would be the council's pleasure if it wanted us to continue to pursue that. Is it possible to move forward on certain projects without adopting the entire document as well? Yes, if that's a council's pleasure. And I guess the other questions are regarding fiscal questions. How much would it cost the city to implement These projects in the cap have we done an analysis on that yet? That's being actively worked on right now with our consultant team I guess I would answer the other questions I had which were how much would residents be absorbing to pay for this and then also businesses So that's going to be included in that analysis that is correct. Do we have any estimations of that? The easy one I can think of right now is the Urban Forest Management process that we've been personally involved with that effort. That we've got a series of plant tree planting projects that we were proposed to the City Council as part of the budget process. That's looking, you know, an annual program to plant, to replant trees that have been missing over a number of years is probably about $700,000 a year. There's also a proposed project, a tree planting project for Coil Hill. That would be a 10 year effort to replant Coil Hill with about 7,500 new trees is part of a project with the IRC. And that would be cost around $260,000 a year, so over the course of 10 years. So there wasn't a full analysis or even a speculation of cost to this. I mean, you don't have any ballpark figures. I mean, I've done some ballpark figures on my own after reading the entire cap and I'm estimating almost a couple billion dollars. Is that accurate? Would that be accurate to say to implement the entire cap? We're not talking millions, we're talking billions and potentially trillions. This is just the estimate that I'm doing. I just want to, I just want to clarification to understand the scope and the amount, the fiscal, the fiscal amount that we'll be having to spend as a city. Yes or no, at a high level, we did understand that that was one of the reasons why the council directed staff to kind of roll back the 2030 goal and go to the 2040 goal was the cost. Something like building electrification in and of itself to retrofit 70 some odd percent of all the buildings in the city is billions of dollars and so That was one of the you know the reasons why we had it kind of had a Manage expectations a little bit on these goals because the financial costs were we're pretty we're pretty high very high I should say so you were saying that is just one portion of the cap document, which is probably 10% of it? You know, it probably closer to 30%, but yes, if you were in the hundreds of billions of dollars when taking all into consideration the entire cap with all the programs, both the city related costs and private related costs. So 30% so we are looking at potentially trillions of dollars. Potentially yes. Okay. That was there were some of my questions here. I have other questions on individual items, but I'm going to yield my time for my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember vice mayor. My I'm just going to interject here all the more reason when we get back measurables from you, projections measurable progress at what cost over what period of time. I noticed in our discussion just in the last five minutes or so in interplay, we move from thousands to millions to billions and even trillions. I think that required a lot of careful analysis as we move up the scale here. And that's why we need to get realistic numbers from you, accurate numbers that we can count on over time. By the way, against that, you need to include the efficiencies. You might spend over time in building modifications and everything, a billion dollars, but the payoff to the people who use those buildings, residential units, in terms of dramatically reduced energy costs, that has to be part of the calculation as well. That's going to require some sophisticated analysis on your part and that's the challenge for us all. Councilmember Carroll. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of questions for staff and then maybe a couple of quick quick comments. Just with regard to the 188 actions that have already been performed, what has the cost been involved with that? You know, I can't answer that right now. That's the way we can calculate and bring back to the council. When can we get that? I think probably the next couple of weeks. Okay, maybe I just don't want to put you on the spot. Can I turn this into maybe? When can we get a, I don't need it to the scent. I would like the council to know how much the city has spent and tax $200 on the items so far. Can you just give us a meeting? We can get a rough order of magnitude cost put together on cap measures that have been deployed. off the top my head a couple of the items that come to mind the Urban Force Master Plan for example the counts allocated a half million dollars to advance that initiative. The Irvine Connect expansion costs about two and a half million dollars a year to operate right now. We can tabulate all those costs. I don't know about my five minutes. Can you give me a small slide we can do it can do it at certain announcements or something just to know because as Vice Mayor might I think we're in the millions already in taxpayer dollars and okay so another thing too just about applicability we're talking about this climate action plan these 198 things a lot of these are requirements I'm going to read a few of these things how many of these apply to the University of California Irvine? We have about 66,295 stakeholders between 37,337,350 students and 28,545 workforce according to their website. How much is that applies to UCI? On the regulatory and building permit and transportation permitting and those city related, city related measures don't apply on the campus itself. Okay, so if we're going to use these goals to reach them, is it fair to say that the rest of Irvine meaning non-UCI Irvine because UCI of course sits within municipal boundaries of our city. We will, meaning us that live at the rest of Irvine and work and the rest of Irvine will be disproportionately bearing whatever we're requiring our residents to do because none of that will apply to anybody that lives or works or goes to school at UCIs, all right? Our proposed cap measures wouldn't apply. We would have to coordinate. I do know UCI has their own climate action-related goals. So we'd have to see how that matches up with ours. To the point that you made. That's kind of important. Sorry to cut you off again, because I'll have a few minutes. Because if our goals are to get to a certain port of neutrality in a certain environmental goal a certain year, and UCI also has something going on as well. We need to kind of join forces, because that may mean that we get to do perhaps a little bit, you know, we can kind of modulate what we're doing a little bit to make sure that maybe we're both reaching whatever goals that a majority of this council may want to do. But I kind of find it interesting that for example, you know, the one that really kind of gets me as the requirements for ultra low flow water fixture retrofits on residential buildings and the requirements of solar. I keep thinking I have this 87 year old widow or 89 year old widow in my mind living over in Northwood somewhere or maybe over at the ranch and they need to sell their home to go into assisted living and it's just kind of of strange to me that we're gonna regulate those elderly residents of our city to do these things when it doesn't apply to UCI. First of all, I'm not even for it anyway to begin with. So I'm a little concerned about that. With regard to the waste management item, I just wanna make sure that my fellow new council members, my fellow council members that are new know that by a vote of 4-1, I voted I was the one. Vice mayor May and council members go and do against raising the waste management fees on our residents. Again, not at UCI because we don't, nothing, we don't waste management doesn't handle UCI. This is just the city of Irvine outside of UCI. We raise the rates on our residents over 10% to include foodpales and other things that I've never seen a resident and maybe my council members have, but I've never seen a single resident use other than myself and other items that I fought vehemently. So just so everybody knows and it's on the tape and we have it and the new council members can talk to it, we literally raised trash fees over 10%. I fought my dandist. I lost four to one to include a food pal that nobody uses so that staff here cannot, you know, in a bad way, but staff can now say on their little PowerPoint that we achieve that UCI one. And my final 22 seconds, I'll just, you know, read some of this stuff. Retrofit existing residential buildings, comprehensive energy efficiency conservation electrification, require development to comply with state regulations, require installation of renewable energy heaters, require all built parking structures to have solar generation. You know, the list goes on and on, mandating battery storage and existing homes at the time of retrofitting or doing a renovation on your house. You know, the list just go on and on. I'm looking forward to the public testimony. Looking forward to my colleagues, but I'm still going to be pretty vehemently against this and still very, very strongly for the environment. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Carroll, Councilmember Traceter. Thank you. That was great. So I just want to reassure Councilmember Carroll about UCI. Councilmember Carroll gets a bit emotional about UCI for reasons I don't quite understand. But I just want to show him UCI has a great climate action plan that it's actually adopted and implementing their way ahead of us in terms of greenhouse gas reductions, in terms of all these fixtures in our homes to reduce water flow and create energy efficiency where we've got all that and it's happening also in our residential neighborhood. So I don't, I would say we don't really have to worry about UCI maybe slowing down the city. I think of anything UCI is helping the city. But it looks like these mechanisms that have been proposed here are specifically, yes, for the city of Irvine exclusive of UCI. So we just just need to make sure that Irvine can keep up with UCI in this matter. Thank you. Thank you council member Traceter. Others at this point. If not, we'll turn to the public taking public comment at this time. I assume we are connected via Zoom for those who wish to comment through the magic of electronics. Those who wish to comment via Zoom, please raise your hand at this time so you can enter the speakers queue. the committee. I'm going to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the? Correct. One is here and two are via Zoom. Correct. All right. And we'll take additional speakers up to the point where we reach no more than a half hour, OK? With that in mind, who's our first speaker? Thank you, Marif, I could call forward, Kev Abizagian. As Mr. Abizagian comes forward, I want to note his longstanding service on our Sustainability Commission. You're currently the chair, is that correct? Yeah, let's connect them. My honor. Thanks for the introduction. Yeah, I'm glad. Thank you for your service and welcome. Thanks, Mayor and council members for taking up the climate action and adaptation plan. I service chair of the sustainability commission currently if served on that for a couple of years as well as the Green Ribbon Environmental Committee. And I'm faculty at UCI and Physics and Astronomy. And I'm talking here as on behalf of my own views here. And I'm really glad that this study session's happening to kind of lay out what has been going on both in the Green Ribbon Committee and the Sustainability Commission. We've been looking at this list of action and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state and the state want to really emphasize that community choice energy has been identified as a prime way to tackle climate action, very short time scale, by getting us to and carbon-free electricity for up to 37% of our carbon emissions, right? So I don't want the city to lose sight of that as a main way to tackle things because it's a very short term like within if we can get OCPA to get us green energy, we can get to that, you know, very high fraction of carbon impact in short order. And related to that, of course, we worry about costs. And I think one of the things that's been missing in terms of this matrix sort of list of action items has been the capital cost of these items. And then also we've had it in previous commission meetings where we have an assessment of the carbon impact of each item. So you have to weigh both of these things as well. There should be some kind of figure of merit both in terms of how much impact that item has on a citywide scale if implemented, but also the cost associated with that. We cannot do arbitrary high costs but just to give moral imperative to this it's very easy to say you know it's not just the city of Irvine's responsibility it's not just the county of Orange it's not just the state of California we have a responsibility to act on this as a moral and ethical imperative to not harm our planet any further. So thanks for your attention on this. Thank you. I'll tell you what. While you're there, any council members have any questions of Mr. Abbasajian? Any comments? You were making the point that I was making, which is, you know, costs, but benefits. And those benefits are not just reduction of our carbon footprint and reaching carbon neutrality, but their economic benefits associated with greater efficiencies moving from fossil fuels to renewables to solar and so forth. And I think that's what we need to start seeing from the Sustainability Commission, from our staff. Very clear eye analysis of what the capital costs are, but what the return on that capital investment is. You mentioned OCPA. I'll just be blunt with you about this. One of the things we can and should be getting from OCPA is not only 100% renewable. They asked us of course to move down a tier, dramatically move down a tier. But what we need to get from them is some of our money back from those excess charges or excess cash that they have on hand. So we can make the capital investments in rooftop solar and other carbon sequestration of all kinds. So, yes, keeping an investment in OCPA makes some sense. But what are we getting back? What are we getting back? We've got to be clear-eyed about that as well. I just it drives me nuts that they're sitting on our ratepayers' cash to the tune of tens of millions of dollars over there, and we've got nothing back by way of projects from them. Yeah, if I could respond to that. Yes. I think we can ask for a lot more from OCPA, that's for sure. And I think that they have to be a better partner with the city and the residents by far in delivering the goals that they were supposed to do, which was cheaper and greener electricity at the same time. And projects. And projects, yes, which a lot of CCEs do. I only had three minutes, so I focused on the big thing that I think is short. No, that's all right. That's a little less rigid. I don't want you to feel constrained. If you have one or two more thoughts, go ahead. Sure. I mean, speaking in my role as a commissioner and chair of the Sustainable Commission last year, when we went through this climate action plan and these 198 items, although I think the numbers increased, which is good. We were refining them over that time, giving input as a commission. But the next steps as I understood it, and I hope we can get to this, was as a commission to look at feasibility cost and prioritization. So those things as, you know, need to come before the city and the commission to really find out, what are the low hanging fruit, what are the harder things as you know need to come before the city and the commission to really find out What are the low hanging fruit to what are the harder things and I'm glad the city's doing a lot of the low hanging fruit like the solar right here in the parking lot But you know, I think the commission's maybe best used by being being able to do this partization feasibility and. Absolutely. Thanks. I see there's a request first council member, vice mayor, my, then council member Carol to it. They can address a question to you if you like. Point of clarification. Are we going to talk to our other public speakers? Or we're going to go out cab for a while and then will they get equal time as yeah yeah okay I'm trying to accommodate everybody here okay this is a much formal procedure just asking for clarification so thank you absolutely just asking for clarification thank you uh So, Vice Mayor Mai. Yes, Commissioner Chair. I just wanted to Thank you. Vice Mayor Mai. Yes, Commissioner Chair. I just wanted to thank you for your comments here. It was something that I always ask not only the fiscal impact but also the impact and benefit that would come from all these projects. So thank you for mentioning that. I really appreciate that comment. That's it. Thank you. Councillor member Carroll, did you want to be heard? I did, Mayor. Just real quick. Commissioner, Chair. Thank you for coming out. Appreciate it. And yeah, look forward to working with it. I think a little bit of, feels a little card and horse and cart up here and hearing you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing what comes back from your commission. So thanks for coming out. Yep. Thank you. I think that's it unless you have something further. No. I'm happy to be contacted by the council as needed. Thank you. Thank you. Again, thanks for your service. Next speaker please. Our next speaker is Tomas Castro. Tomas you may unmute your mic. Good afternoon councilmembers. My name is Tomas and I advocate with climate action campaign and long-time resident of Cambridge. While I'm glad the council is meeting today about our long debated climate action. I'm just starting to see that it's in the context of the study session where we already know progress will be made at the time of day and most working people are unable to work. The people of Irvine have longed and cleared their desire for a fully funded and equitable cap. The time for debate, the time for study sessions, the time for presentations to lower. Please agenda as the plan during a council meeting and adopt it without further delay. Mr. Mayor Ayur town hall at on March 29th you've heard from various residents about how their wildfire insurance has doubled the last few years. Your response to this is that they need to plan what all the credit rates. But we can't plan our way out of the climate crisis. We need a climate action and adaptation plan that staff have been working on. We need to stay in our CPA without which the capital meet its goals. So please protect the cell. Don't forget to click thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Our next speaker is Don Geller. Mr. Geller, you may unmute your mic. Hi, good afternoon. Glad to see the Council meeting for the special session. My name is Don Gallagher. As you know, I'm chair of the Finance Commission. I'm speaking just for myself right now. I would just want to remind the previous speaker that this is the forum to make your case and not at the state of the city speech, not interrupting the mayor. This is the right forum to make your case, Mr. Castro. So I really appreciate the staff's presentation and I did not coordinate with chair Abjanyin on making this comment. But I did not see the staff recommending to solicit feedback from the Sustainability Commission or any of the commissions. And as you know, I've been a real advocate for utilizing our commissions. There are some amazing individuals, not just scientists like Kev, Abijadean, but on the Finance Commission, we have Finance specialists on the Planning Commission, we have Planning Specialists. of our commissioners should be solicited for their recommendations and their council for using their expertise for the council's consideration. sustainability commission as as the Finance Commission, should look at the feasibilities, the costs and the prioritizations. And our commissions can take the very deep dive into many of these matters. It's good to see the consideration of all these very, very important measures to make our city greener. Just to make a note for my neighbor Council Member Carol, a number of our neighbors do use the recycling bin for our trash. It's a very popular and low cost and easy measure to recycle some of the trash in an environmentally safe way. So thank you so much. I again just appreciate the time that the Council is using to seek the public's comments, but especially seeking the commission's input on these important matters. Thank you so much. Have a very good day and appreciate it again. Thank you. Well, let me just say thank you, Mr. Galler. Thank you for your service, your Maya pointe to the Finance Commission or the Chair now. And you make the point over and over again, which is that we ought to be consulting in this process with our commissions, not just the Sustainability Commission, but of course the Finance Commission and the Transportation Commission as well. In fact, a thought occurred to me and I'd appreciate your feedback on this city manager, Chi. If we were to conduct at some point here in the very near term a tri-commission meeting that included the city council as well. So it'll be the City Council and members of the Finance Commission, Sustainability Commission, and Transportation Commission and all get comfortable with whatever is in the final draft of the cap. I think that might be a very useful process, and obviously that would be an open public meeting. The public could participate as well. In the financial analysis that a number of us have called for, obviously we should give the finance commission the opportunity to weigh in capital costs, ongoing operational costs, how all that fits within our budget and so forth. I will note that everything we've done so far is obviously fit within our budget, within our operations budget. It's an open question as to what additional projects will require, by way of burden on our operations budget, ultimately on the taxpayers, and where capital is going to come from for some of these major expansion projects and so forth. The more smart minds we can have looking at that and working on it in the days and weeks ahead, the better and to delay any concerns that anyone might have. It would be my intention is as mayor and working with the city manager and my colleagues to schedule a vote on the final draft of a cap. As soon as possible, I would imagine that basically being about the time we adopt a budget by that time we ought to be I think in a position to have the requested vote on a draft cap. Does that seem sensible to you, Mr. City Manager? Certainly that's a feasible pathway forward to do some joint meetings with the commissions and have a discussion about this matter. I'd note that the CAP document is on the Sustainability Commission's agenda for consideration tomorrow, I believe, where the Sustainability Commission will initially review information related to options as relates to the cap document and get some feedback on that. Certainly we are here to take direction from the council as relates to how to move the matter forward. So if there's interest in doing additional meetings with the commissions maybe doing a joint meeting with sustainability and finance as you've suggested we can certainly get that coordinated over the course of the next couple of months. And from that feedback, identify a pathway forward. Excellent. With respect to these projects, I'd like to see some real clear-eyed numbers associated with moving forward with the, for example, the expansion of the Irvine Connect system, which is so promising. How much would that cost? What is the source of the funding? Is it internals? Is it external? How would that work and so forth and with with all the projects with all the and principally with the big ones of course? Certainly Luis Melissa, I know we're working right now on the cost analysis and implementation plan. Do you have any insight into sort of Timeline associated with developing that also is prepared to answer that with respect to Irvine Connect or other specific programs the council may have an interest in. As the presentation identified about 53% of the identified cat projects are either completed or currently underway. Those that are underway we certainly know costs associated with what those measures look like. We can bring that information back. If there are specific projects, the council is interested in understanding fiscal impact. Let us know that too. We'd be happy to chase that down as we put together the overall cost analysis. With that, Melissa Luis, anything else to add to that? Hi, good afternoon, Council. Real quick, we actually are currently working on a cost analysis, but that's only for the near-term high priority goals. At the moment, if Council would like us to look at all the measures and actions and the cost analysis as far as it goes with residents and business, that probably going to require a little bit more time but initially for the first we have a cost analysis for the near term measures and actions that we have priority map so that's about 98 measures so let me just say I think for my part, I'm interested in the high priority, big projects being in the act. I mentioned solar rooftop installations with battery storage. If we were to be very aggressive about that, how much capital would we need for a revolving fund that allowed us would it be $20 million, $30 million, $50 million, $100 million? How would we fund an aggressive program of that sort? And what would the payoff be financially and so forth. Same thing with transit and same thing with, well the tree planning program, it's pretty clear we have a real good grasp on that right now. But I've also, I've seen so many different reports on, well, just how much carbon is sequestered in a tree. And I've come to learn, obviously, it's different trees and different placements of the trees. And apparently, the root system is where you really get the payoff, not in the canopy, you get the payoff from the canopy by cooling the heat island effects and all this. So, I mean, we have a lot to learn. And you have a lot to teach us, I hope, in your analysis. But I would like to see some prioritization as the sustainability commission actually prioritized the projects regardless of cost and everything just in terms of benefit. Have we seen that from the commission? What are they regard as the 10 most important things we should be doing? We've brought the measures and actions to them, but the prioritization it was kind of done based on what has been in progress and completed, but that's something that we can discuss with commission if need be. I think we should. The commission needs to weigh in on that. I've read through all of these and you know so many of them are common sense and educate people on this and encourage them to do that and all that. I'm not I'm not focused on that. Let's focus on priority big projects and what the cost would be. And I guess it goes without saying one of the recommendations is stick with OCPA consent on the side. I'm interested in everything else. Okay? Thank you. member to seat her thenmember Liu, let me just turn to our clerk. Are we done with public comments? We just had one more pop into the Zoom queue. Why don't we take the one more right now, then we'll hear last words from Council colleagues and we'll be able to adjourn the meeting. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Our next speaker is telephone number 131. 131, you may unmute your mic. Good evening, council members, Helen Meyerson. I'm usually there. I wasn't aware there was going to be public comments. Go right ahead, Mr. Morrison. Okay. So good afternoon. After listening to much of this meeting, and especially hearing Mr. Geller again talking about commissions, which he makes this comment frequently, It came to my mind, is there a formal process set up for these types of subjects where the council speaks to the subject and then it formally goes to one commission and then from that commission goes to another commission. And if there isn't a formal process set up, I'm wondering why that is. Maybe there needs to be. Because it seems like it's catches catch can. Sometimes it goes to commissions, and sometimes it doesn't. So that's my question. Is there a formal process set up? And if there is, why isn't it being followed? And if there isn't, why isn't there? Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Meiersen. Let me just, I guess, respond by saying our city manager is nodding. I think he understands that what we're looking for after this meeting is your suggestion of formal next steps, whether it's commissions individually, whether it's some kind of tri-commission or by-commission meeting, some kind of joint meeting that could involve and probably should involve the City Council as well. Fine. I think we kind of look to you for your thoughts and recommendations in that regard. I also would just want to reassure folks. It would be my intention to get a vote on the cap by the same time we adopted our city budget, which would probably mean getting something done in that regard in the month of May. That's just my final thoughts. Did you want to respond at all? Mr. Chair. Are you okay? I'm happy to just provide a little bit of context where every commission does have a prescribed set of responsibilities and all of the responsibilities that need to run through the commissions do. When the City Council member, though, asks for an item to be brought forward for Council consideration, that request is always honored. The last two discussions related to the cap, this study session tonight, our discussion a couple weeks ago, were initiated by members of the council wanting to really drive the conversation forward. In those instances, we certainly come and respond to the council's direction. From this conversation, it does appear there's a desire to revisit the cap related projects with the commissions. We have one of those meeting scheduled for tomorrow with the sustainability commission. We'll certainly take the feedback today, develop some recommendations, respond to what we've heard, and see if we can engage our other commissions on this topic. If it had. Excellent. Okay. Last three will be hearing from Council Member Liu followed by Council member Go followed by vice mayor. Point of order. My apologies. I think I was supposed to be next. Yeah. I didn't see your name here. You mentioned that I was going to go next, but then you went to the public speaker. Oh, I'm sorry. All right. Councilmember Traciter, then Councilmember Liu, go. And Vice Mayor Mai. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the mayor agendizing the study sessions. It's great to sit with everybody as we go through all these measures. I'm glad everybody's had a chance to see them. I agree that we should prioritize 100% based on return on investment. I think we should be very careful about how we invest our money and taxpayers' money and make sure that we get the best return possible in terms of reducing our carbon footprint. I think that we had in an earlier version, I think it was before you two came on board, actually. But we had a version of the cap in 2023 that actually had the amount of carbon that was sequestered for each of the measures. And I think that information got taken out. I wouldn't expect you to know, because you were not here, but do you happen to know why? We do have that. It's the same measures that we have here. We just didn't put the carbon, you know, quantity and all that stuff, but it is the same one. Okay. All right. Yeah, that I'm sure it'd be very useful for folks to have, including also the cost and I believe that we are working with a scent right now to to develop that. Okay, so yeah, I'd love to see that when it comes back next. I agree it's very important. Just to answer the mayor's questions, he was asking for these three projects he was prioritizing about how much would that affect the carbon footprint and how much would it cost. I can say that in terms of cost for 5,000 rooftops per year in Irvine getting solar power just a quick back of the envelope calculation if each home costs about $20,000 to install solar panels, which is I think about kind of average for Irvine. That would be about $100 million per year. In terms of the tree planting, so first of all, I fully support having more trees and woody shrubs, especially if they're native in the city. I think that that's great. to the extent that we are able to help restore our open spaces to have more native woody shrubs, that would be excellent, and certainly help with carbon sequestration. I will say that it is using trees to capture carbon is, for decades now, scientists have indicated that this is not viable. We can't plant our way out of our fossil fuel emissions. Unfortunately, I really wish that we could just plant more trees, and that would take care of it. It would be lovely but it's not it's not going to get us there and just to give you an example for Irvine. So let's say we have a fully grown tree that's growing pretty well which means it would need a lot of water. It will sequester about 50 pounds of CO2 per year for a fully grown tree. In order to make up the carbon difference between say OCPA basic and OCPA, and the OCPA basic and OCPA 100% renewable energy, we would need to plant every year about 344,000 trees or so. And that's full grown trees. Sapplings and seedlings will sequester much, much less carbon, sometimes nothing for the first many years. So that's again 344,000 trees. Just to compare it, Irvine right now has about 550,000 trees in it. Of course, the city does not control most of those. The city controls about 76,000. It would, it would basically mean we would have to plant trees on just about a reach surface and Irvine, including our rooftops. And again, this is only works for full ground trees. So if we really wanted to realize that carbon capture, we'd need to bring in heritage trees that were fully grown. But those trees are already growing elsewhere. So it's not necessarily a net benefit. You can plant seedlings for sure, but again, it would take decades to realize that. And so I do agree. Trees are great. I would love to have more trees in terms of this particular goal of offsetting our carbon emissions. It's just not feasible. And I wish it were. It's just not. And we've known this since about the late 1980s. We could pay companies that specialize in carbon sequestration to pull the carbon out of the error in terms of the difference between say OCPA basic and OCPA smart. We would need to pay about $1.8 million per year for a carbon sequestration continuously. So I do really appreciate these endeavors like it only helps us to have solar rooftops and batteries because it does improve our resilience for sure On the other side that's really expensive The tree planting again has many co-benefits But on the other hand, it's very hard to plant as many trees as we need to offset our carbon. So I'm hoping that the numbers that the Ascent puts together for the cost versus the carbon capture really help us put all these items in context. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Triseter. Councilmember Liu. Thank you. Well, I'm glad that we're here to talk about this today and I don't pretend to be an expert on this at all and thank you for educating me about all of this. Thank you for preparing all the presentation and so this is just my observation. So, well, I may be new to this. So I am assuming this is just a strategic plan, which should be a document that gives us a roadmap and set the goals and each project I assume will be individually analyzed based on what's needed in the situation at the time, right? So I appreciate that you're prioritizing projects as we go and I Assume that a lot of the questions came up about What we should do and what's going to cost us and all that. But my observation is we should probably wait the cost against the benefit of having things done to improve our environment and reduce our common footprint. And maybe some of these will cost permanent damage if we have inaction. Thank you for coming in to talk about what sustainability commission has been doing for the city to help us prioritize the project on your expertise along with our staff. And I would think some of these are probably helping us to bring in cheaper rates or cheaper costs for the residents. So I would say those will probably be something that we can prioritize to do most likely to benefit our residents immediately. I understand for costs if I'm wrong, please correct me. Maybe it's something that if we should also consider the time lapse, I mean there's just so much variable technology or even there yet, maybe the analysis of inaction or even cost of inflation we're now looking at tariffs. And with regard to other cities and municipalities, I assume we're all breathing the same air. So you know know it's not like we can segregate any of this so I think a joint effort will be called for and I would appreciate policy analysis based on this and I know that some of the discussion involved OCPA whether we should stare or we should not or whatnot. I just want to point out that SE screen energy program has been closed, so that's not even an option. So I think what we should do is to maybe make sure that we are able to bring in some benefits to the residents rather than just throw the baby out with the bath water. And yeah, and I did read through the items that were the draft that we provided. We were provided and I understand that some of these projects are statement data. For example, the waste management bio waste that's statement it, that's not something we can do about to get exempted. Some of these will actually save money for our residents and some of these are aspirational may be pine to sky. And at the end of the day, if it is too costly for residents, I believe that we will consider that and maybe vote against it or something or delay it when it will be more economical for us to implement. So with regard to the formal process for review I do believe that we should rely on the expertise of our commissioners and yeah and if we couldn't have all these projects brought back case by case and go through sustainability commission finance commission and any other commissions that will be involved I would I think that's a smart process to have this done. So overall I don't see a big issue with adopting the cap plant right now, but obviously I'll defer to the rest of my council colleagues. But thank you for bringing this up and thank you for your service. Dr. Kaspagyi. And thank you for doing this today. Thank you, Council Member Liu. Council Member Goh. Thank you. In speaking to solar and batteries, District 2 is one of the few, or actually a lot of the areas in Irvine with zero lot lines. So a lot of our homes, there are three stories on up, two stories, three stories. There's a very little surface area to cover solar for a battery program to become prevalent. And some of the units there doesn't even have a roof because of the way the condos are structured. So unfortunately, using that program in our district may not be as effective, but I have been working with OCPA in terms of creating a larger infrastructure for solar within the great park, maybe having a PPA program for solar buy back, and they've started the preliminary work with us to really speccing out that infrastructure as well as putting together grants and loans, loan programs for homeowners to be able to utilize purchasing solar and batteries that would be helped and subsidized by OCPA. So that's been one good advantage that we've broken through so far. Just happy to report on that. And as far as the climate action initiatives, I am really a big proponent of the transportation measures. So next time I ask for transportation improvements, I hope my council colleagues are a little bit friendlier with us since I think we were talking millions, billions and trillions and improving transportation as far as active transportation the cost is such low hanging fruit and not to bring back and belabor less council meetings LPI's that measure really helps encourage more people to ride their bikes or you know walk instead of taking a car. really, I'm a big proponent really continuing to invest in our trail systems, which a lot of people why people live in Irvine. And that's been one of the amazing things I've been able to experience here of being in Irvine resident. For us to always prioritize commuter safety, it's going to help get these cars off the road and that's just the lowest hanging fruit we have here as a city and I'm really a big proponent of that. Thank you, Council member Go. Vice Mayor Mai, did you wish to be here? Yes. Thank you so much. I think we're gonna be giving you the last word. All right. I'll make it good. So thank you for that. And you know, I'm glad that we're not. I'm glad this is a discussion and we're not moving forward on anything right now. We're making a vote. Thankfully today we got another probably six hours here. But I just want to say that, you know, we have to take in cost considerations with everything. And thankfully we're not doing anything because as staff mentioned, we're in 100 million and trillions already. So. I just want to say that we have to take in cost considerations with everything. And thankfully we're not doing anything because as staff mentioned, we're in the 100 million and trillions already. It's a great discussion to have here. Also, I want to make the suggestion to the public. If you guys haven't read this document, you should read it and it's entirely because for the sake of transparency as well. There's things in here that I really like. Trees, open spaces, the connect system, solar, a lot of things that I like. But there's a lot of things that people, I didn't notice until I actually read the things. And I just want to highlight some of these things just from a broad overview. A couple of these things that were questionable, which one of them was the low fixtures. I mean, that's one of them. Increasing and promoting ADUs. The state allows up to eight. If we're going to reduce vehicles and traffic, I mean, you're going to put ADUs on a property, which because it's allowed and we're going to promote that in here. Create car-free zones. Where? Where is that going to be created? Other things here are traffic calming measures. Humps, lumps, roundabouts, curb extensions, islands, tighter corners to promote. It says safety, but it's basically to promote non-use of cars. The other things is creating a toll or a boundary around Irvine or around certain areas of the city. I couldn't imagine paying a toll going into Woodbridge or going into my neighborhood, or even the city for that matter. Other things, I mean, I hear from people all the time about e-bikes. One of the things in here is to encourage and incentivize the use of more e-bikes and creating more e-bikes in the city. Mandate and require large employers in the city to offer cash as an incentive for people to not drive their cars. Mandating it, I mean, that's kind of wild to me. Reducing parking within commercial structures or within the city, if you've been to the Irvine spectrum where diamond jamboree, I don't know about reducing parking structures or limiting that. We have a parking issue already, but you can give people the option of that, but to mandate that is a little wild to me as well. Implement fees for parking in high traffic areas. That's a little tough too. I mean, how are you gonna dictate that? Some other things, retrofitting all residential properties and commercial properties. Again, that's gonna be within the billions itself. And then other things such as requiring new residential and non-residential buildings to generate on site renewable energy. In addition, to have existing swimming pools put in heaters and any from residential and commercial to actually put in heaters into their electric heaters into their swimming pools. I mean, I don't know how that's gonna work exactly here. Overall, I'm gonna end on this. We need to do a balance. We have to have a balance of the needs of the people to our own ambitions here. I think there needs to be a, we have to get the people's feedback on this because it's not just us spending our money here. It's going to be impacting people's pocketbook. And that's something that we need to take in consideration. Because we're elected here to represent the people. And we need to hear from the people. And if they're willing to pay, then we listen to them. But I don't see someone willing to pay trading and feeding their family to push something that we want. So that's something we just really need. We really need from you guys is the fiscal analysis. Because nowhere have I seen before. I mean, I don't even know why any of this is brought up without any fiscal analysis. Because it's just a dream wish, basically. Tell us how much it's going to cost. That's what we need to know. If you want to implement the stuff, we need to know how much it's going to cost. It's bottom line. It's very simple. We can want everything in the world. What's the cost? Thank you. Thank you. Well, Council Member Traceter, you'll have the last word. Thank you. Maybe. We'll see what everybody else wants to do. I really appreciate this discussion. This is wonderful. I think we're all in agreement that we should be careful to look at the costs and the benefits and balance them both. And so I'm glad that we're all in agreement. I just wanted to ask if you all had backup for the assertion that this would cost like trillions of dollars. Is there a calculation that you did? We're still looking at all of the cast analysis. And then given the feedback we're getting from city council today, if we're going to look into how it affects the residents and the community, it might take a little bit longer. So I don't, we still have to. Okay. You don't have any backup for costing as much as that. No. It was all it was again it was back of the napkin calculations we were running through in terms of if we were to retrofit 70 some on thousand buildings in the city to all electric what could that conceivably cost as an example. That sounds good and then, I also want to emphasize that these are all, in many cases, independent mechanisms. And if people have issues with some of them, absolutely we can revise them or take them out. It is not a problem. But also, I do have the draft of the Climate Actation Plan from October 24, and it does go through a lot of these mechanisms. But then if I look at the slides that you provided, some of those mechanisms don't really line up. They seem a lot more restrictive than what's in the actual plan, like in terms of requiring employers to do such and such. It's in the slides, but not in the actual plan. And I was just wondering is that, are the slides like the real current draft or is this the real current drafts? The document you have there now is the actual draft. We did not attach the attach the measures to that draft. We just had a separate document. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you. I think that concludes our study session. We will begin our council meeting at four o'clock our regular council meeting. So that allows us to adjourn, take a five minute recess and then reassemble, reconvene for our regular council meeting. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Moved by Council Member Mai. Seconded by Council Member Liu. All those in favour say aye. Aye. All as opposed. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you all very much.