I don't have a gavel. Good evening, everybody. I'd like to call to order this April 17, 2025 meeting of the environmental sustainability council and energy transition subcommittee. And we've got a short, short end schedule agenda tonight since some of the folks that we're supposed to present us will be unavailable. But we're going to get through as much as we can in their stead and try to reschedule Lionel for another time whenever he's available. hopefully hopefully we've done early this evening. So with that, let's start with a rule call and go around our table and say our names for the record. I'll start, Joseph Sharizzi, Chair, ESC. Chris Bear, ESC member. John Ferris, ESC member. I'm sorry. Curt Lawrence, staff liaison. CSC. Chris Bear, ESE member. John Ferris, ESE member. Kurt Lawrence, staff liaison, CSE. Debbie has got City Council liaison to the ESE. Stahl, ESE member. Thank you. And I assume you're going to do our minutes as you're taking away. Thank you so much. Great. So next thing up, public comment period. Kurt, were there any public comments received? Yes, there was one public comment from a false church climate action network. It was a letter to council on the budget and the CIP. So I'm thinking we can look at it now or maybe save it for the budget discussion. Let's let's save it because John said that he was going to be Possibly a little late today. Okay. Let's come back to that. Were there any other public comments received before the meeting? None received. Is there anyone online with us this evening to give a public comment? Does that mean no? No, it's, it's no, it's just me and you're okay. Very good. Is there anyone with us in person tonight who would like to give a public comment to the ESC? No. Okay. Very good. Then we will move on and we're're gonna come back to our FC Can letter and give John a chance to be there for that, if we can. If we run out of everything else before he gets here in the next 20 minutes, then we'll, we can go through it. Okay. But yeah, I'd like, he wrote most of it, I think, so it would be good to get his context. Alright, so how about approval of the March ESC minutes? Let's bring those up. Alright, I'm gonna pull that up over here. Everybody read all the minutes earlier, right? I read them. Thank you. Do you have any comments on them? I don't. Were they just wonderfully typed up? As good as I've ever seen them. I agree. You read yours too, and were better but I did the best I could. I think they're pretty good and there were a few action items from last month, so I collected comments from everybody about budget recommendations, and in the meantime, we were able to send our list of budget recommendations forwarded to City Council, so that was great. So thank you to everyone who sent in comments asynchronously about that. Excuse me. Yeah, I don't have anything else to add. Does anyone have you have anything they want to add? No, okay. All right. Would anyone like to move to approve the minutes? I'll move to approve the minutes. Thank you. Would anyone like to second that? Second. Very good. Got that. Okay. All those in favor of approving the March ESC minutes. Please say aye. Aye. And opposed the eyes have it. The March 2020 25 meetings minutes are approved. Thank you. All right, so we don't have Lionel. Did he have a presentation or anything Kurt? No, we can do all want him to come with a presentation or do you want him to kind of just talk about what he's doing and answer questions? What does he doesn't want that to look like? He does not need to have a present. I don't I'm not the goal the goal is not to give him any extra work to do. That was my understanding. So the goal was for him to come in, introduce himself, talk about projects he's working on, stuff he's got planned, and just give people an opportunity to ask questions. That's right. Because we might be able to help or our other members, not me, might have some great experience that relates to some project that he might have some challenge on that maybe we can direct or direct him to particular resources. And also we want to maintain accountability to the ESC so that we are actually making progress on all of our energy action plans and one of the one of the roles of the ESC is to be a citizen, you know, accountability group for the government to do the things that it has voted to do. So that's it. That's all we're uh, I was hoping for. I definitely don't want to give him any extra work, but if he had something, I don't know, maybe we could see it, but if he doesn't, then we'll just skip that for tonight. Yes, so no presentation. He'll most likely come in June. Okay. Just briefly, can you mention what his scope of responsibility is? So he's the principal projects manager, right? So that means that he's working on a lot of the government energy action plan stuff among other things. The biggest project I believe he's working on right now there's two. It's the geothermal at the community center, which will be done in June. By the time he comes to the meetings, so that would be good for him to recap and talk about that whole thing. And he's also very involved over West Falls, doing a lot of the engineering work over there. So he's a very busy person and it'll be exciting to see his point of view on things. That's pretty different than what I do day to day in the planning department. Different side of how the city operates. And the bulk of the work on West Falls, once Dominion Power gets hooked up to the lights, the bulk is virtually down to, so hopefully you can great, refocus on that. I mean, I think that's going to go on, ongoing for years at West Falls, but like specific to site plan review and I mean, being on site safety reviews on site. That should be wrapping up until phase two. Should be wrapping up this summer. What's West Falls. Sorry, it's the 10 acre development next to the new high school. Oh, is so. And that required all new infrastructure roads, stormwater, power, everything. Right. And what Lionel is basically the principal in charge of making sure that all happens on the ground. He's in the engineering side of the house versus the planning side of the house. So he incurred complimentary rules. Excellent. I think they're complimentary rules. Sounds pretty to me. He did. Yeah, he's a George Mason alum class. That sounds about right. You had to tell him the same class. Yeah, he definitely grew up here. Definitely. Yeah. And that's about right, because I know, yeah, he's a professional engineer, which requires certain number of years of engineering, right? So I don't remember how to read a five something like that. So it was right.'s not that right. Yeah. But yeah, if there's a group has any other questions for Lionel that you're hoping to get out of June, feel free to send that to me. And we can or send it directly to Lionel and say, hey, tell us about this next month. It doesn't have to be anything complicated, just I think, hearing from him every once in a year would be nice or something, right? I think let me challenge about not hearing from a little June is having, if there are any, well, I don't know that we're gonna have a stream of our budgets make a couple of changes, but just to understand what his role where he fits into the budget versus where a curve fits in the budget and what we can do realistically with economic constraints we may have in fiscal year 26 and the budget vote is mid-May. So that's my only... I guess I'll just email him directly but I'm thinking of you're thinking about cost overruns and things like that or just... No, no no about staffing costs and how we're funding the work that's supposed to be getting done and see and go eat. Yeah. I think it would also be helpful just to understand how they go about within the things that have been funded, how they prioritize the work. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So we're going to move on from that for now. And look forward to hearing from in the future. That's right. Great. So next up we have liaisons and subcommittee reports lead version five. So I think Mike was going to present this a little bit to us. I have some notes I can share with everyone. Excellent. Let's do it. So I got lead version five and a number of other things to share with the dream. I'll start with lead. I went to have been keeping up with it and was uh... watched uh... webinar on when other things to share with the dream. I'll start with lead. I went to have been keeping up with it and was watched a webinar on Wednesday last week on some updates on lead that kind of explained more in depth what's going on. We can go to the website here. So basically we do use lead in the city for our special exception projects. Most of them are getting lead gold for version four version four point one. But lead version five has a number of changes that are going to kind of shape that up a little bit. especially as we get to the time when we need four and four point one closes for new registrations. We're going to have to decide, you know, if we get to the time when we need four and four point one closes for new registrations. We're going to have to decide, you know, if we want to use lead V five and what kind of what kind of goals to target as we assess buildings on this new scorecard. So right lead is kind of just like a green doting standard that addresses things like Sustainable sites your on this new scorecard. So right lead is kind of just like a green building standard that addresses things like sustainable sites, your location and transportation, energy use, water use, things of that nature. We've talked about it a number of times. So I don't wanna be too repetitive. But I'll just go over my notes. So I'll start with something that Matt emailed me to share with the group. We've had a couple of discussions about lead cities here and he wanted to clarify for everyone that that's only available through lead v4.1 right now, not lead v5 and I didn't hear about that in any of this information on the webpage. Hey then again. We've been talking about lead cities which is a different rating system than the regular lead, the commercial lead. Commercial lead is for buildings. Just for just buildings. It's for just buildings. For a whole city. A whole city. So the city of all church. For just a city. Or yet, we go. Yeah. That is not out in this update. That's coming. I haven't heard about it. it's going to be part of lead 5. But lead V5 is going to be for building design and construction interior design and construction and operations and maintenance. So I'll keep everyone updated on on lead cities. It was newer in lead 4.1 and it's a little bit less popular than the building ones. So it kind of makes sense why they didn't include it here, but. What's the timeframe on their decision of. What leads timeframe when they're like for version five. Yeah, so that's. Here in go down school down front. That's all good. So right, there's been a long kind of comment period and review period and then there was a member vote earlier this year. So this is member ratification in March 2025. So it's been ratified and it will get fully released for use and registration at the end of April. And all of the rating systems that are finalized are available here. And I can pull that up in a second. So, right it opens at the end of April registration for lead version 4 and 4.1. There's going to be some overlap like they're not going to close at the end of April. They will likely be open until early to mid 2026. If you get registered in that time frame, right, you'd have time to finish your process and you wouldn't have to finish it by the time registration registration is closed. They are moving to a standardized five year development cycle. So that means like lead V6 for example will come out in 2030. And then there's three big changes with lead V5 that are addressed here. So it's decarbonization, quality of life, and ecological conservation and restoration. So there's a big focus on this cycle on improving reporting and kind of planning for the full life cycle of the building with a higher focus on operations and reporting how much energy use, you know, every year for the building. Being operated rather than just kind of commissioning it at first. Lead platinum will now have a requirement for a very low carbon operation that's listed here. Sorry, this page is a little tight. But right platinum instead of kind of being able to get points from a variety of areas, it's going to be very focused on carbon now. Let's see what else I have. So in terms of decarbonization, half of all the prerequisites and points are related to decarbonization. And we can look at an example scorecard in just a second. Lead V5 addresses all forms of emissions across the building life cycle, which includes operational and body carbon and transportation. And all lead V5 projects will complete operational carbon projections through 2050. And I'll show you that on the scorecard. In terms of quality of life, I want to focus on adaptable, resilient, inclusive, and healthy spaces. And there's a new requirement, which is a human impact assessment for new buildings. And then the last category of emphasis is etiological conservation and restoration. And for this one, they'd like to focus on reducing building impact and restoring natural habitats. So that's looking at the use of land and compact developments, minimizing site impact and increase in continuity, and creating things like pollinator pathways, and reducing the impact on wildlife. And then another focus there is on increased density and mobility options, doing a whole building life cycle analysis for building materials, and reducing waste, and they're also gonna require buildings to plan for zero waste operations. So if we look at this one, which is building design and construction, this is pretty common for new buildings, kind of like the developments we get here in the city. So here's kind of the, it's a big long document that has that breaks into all of these prerequisites and credits. Tell us you how to get it tells you what the point is, all that sort of stuff, but what I think will be good to see tonight is the scorecard. Kind of gives a good overview of everything. So for example, up here you can see the human impact assessment and the carbon assessment and the climate resilience assessment. These were not in the lead V4.1 process and now they're going to be requirement of any new lead V5 projects. So even if you're dead and just lead certified or bronze you're going to have to be doing these things which I think is pretty good. a couple of new point categories that will be interesting to dive into as it rolls out. Compact and connected development is new and that's an interesting one. And then if we get down here, we can see that operational carbon projection and decarbonization plan. This is a new one, which is kind of talking about how they're going to get to things like net zero and low carbon use. And that's the same idea of extending the commissioning of the building. So you're not just doing the fundamental commissioning here like you used to have to do kind of planning out and seeing, you know, 10, 20 years down the line. How much energy are you using? Meager and in reporting, going to have to report how much energy you're using. And then here we can see it's, you know, fully requirement to plan for zero waste operations. Other than that, many things are similar, but right, there's that emphasis on decarbonization, quality of life, and ecological restoration. Zero waste is things related to the waste of the people that live in the building. Yes, I believe it's for operational waste. They do on the material side, they will do a plan for composting and everything to get those points. Right. And you can see here, this is the impact areas. So right decarbonization is a little bit more than half of these seats and all over the place here, except for this area. Then the other two are right quality of life and ecosystem conservation and restoration. So you envision this, before we have an official green building policy, which hopefully will be moving toward. Let's say, I don't know, we have application coming for special exception in the next month or so. Now's the time to say we expect you to be at lead. Lead version five, at least gold. Don't even come to us if you don't have a plan for gold. And you wanna go for platinum if you really want it to impress us. So this will be out end of April. So if they come in May 1st, this should be fully operational ready for registration. So it's not it's not really something that the city needs to adopt, because this is going to be put into the state's building code. But it's all as a guide. Really, it's just as a guide. And primarily at the city level, we just use this for the special exceptions. For any big big buildings that comes in if you want to get a permit you've got to check. You got to get this many points to get hold and if you and here's and here's the guide for how to get points and that's it. So I don't think we need the city to adopt it, but maybe it has an expectation of what to look looking for in the buildings. Yeah, would it be helpful for us to send the letter to the building code department in the city or is there something? In a court session on Monday and see if it needs any formal action from the S.T. Yeah, that would be great to know. And then maybe it's just something we can all agree on at the work session. And I'm happy to come and talk about it. If that's helpful. and we can just, you know, say, okay, on the website where we list the things that we're going to want from special exception before they come and take up council's time and take up resources from the city. Where we list the things that we're going to want from special exception before they come and take up council's time and Take up resources from the city like hey just so you know we're on v5 So use this place and maybe that maybe it's just one line on our website somewhere. I don't know The recently the buildings that have Been opened recently like broad Washington counter throw. Are they certified? Yes, they are. Or at least they have requirements to be when they were given their special exceptions. Yeah, and that's part of the review when they're the site plan review and then held in safety revision. We can incorporate that as well to make sure that they actually did consider those. Bert, do you know anything about testing and procedures for some of the required criteria now? I mean, it's all looks, I mean, a follow-up lead for years. I'm my only concern about jumping or moving to V5 is if it creates high hurdles for development. And whether the specific criteria that are new, if they've been, if the process of meeting those objectives is clear and straightforward and attainable by developers. And so whether we move towards V5 as all the versions move forward or for satisfied with the V4 and meeting their criteria, that's my only reaction to it is not having this fair. Not looking close enough to the details. If a human impact assessment is not very clear of how they do it and the cost to do it becomes excessive burden, we ought to think about how it is implemented. the effectiveness that developers can implement it before we move towards it. I mean, maybe we give them an option. I don't know, but I mean, we ought to find out how it's being used in the field first before we... Well, they have been working on it for like more than 10 years. I absolutely. I absolutely. The lead people, this is all they do all day. Yes, absolutely. And they have committees of committees to prove their stuff out. Truly. So here it is. This draws on relevant information from demodraphic, local infrastructure and land use use and health impacts occupant experience so I feel like they generally do that anyway They used to do It was more in the in the sustainable side-scraditor would do kind of a site overview This is a little bit more in depth with this demod wrapper item that wasn't in their previous little thing and And this human use and health impacts was kind of a site overview. This is a little bit more in depth with this Demod Rapper item that wasn't in their previous level. And this human use and health impacts was kind of addressed in indoor environmental quality. But I think this is more like this housing affordability and availability thing. It kind of looks into more of the right this idea of connectivity for an area. I think it's trying to expand the, you know, the rails of the 4.1 to look outside just the building and look more at the neighborhood. So this is kind of like a narrative that the developer. I would assume so they so there's this. There's this document and then there's also a much longer book. You know, it's like four times the pages where this section instead of being one page would be four pages and they'd say these are the requirements. This is what this means and then this is the documentation that you submit. So they'd have some kind of booklet that says, okay, you need to submit this, this, this, this, this, this. And it will be detailed and I think the other point to keep in mind is that this will be the standard kind of everywhere nationally within, you know, a year or so with the registration for 4.1 closing. So, you know, if this stuff is getting contracted out, there's going to be contractors that are available and trained in this stuff to do. The light is going to have 100,000 people who's only job is to do this. Right. Yeah. My company too. Sorry. Not to pick on anybody. And we're in DC. There's any Deloitte people watching this in the future. I'm sure you have very real jobs. Okay. Any more questions? Just to comment that I assume that Parlington Fairfax Alexandria are planning on adopting this. Yeah, that's a good point. So kind of see what they do with it. You know, they put it into their code or they made it on on the website or something like that. I will track that and I can also call the my equivalent person in those jurisdictions to see, I think that's a really good question. I basically expect every city and state and county in America to adopt this in the next like, yeah, yeah, this is, I mean, lead is it's very much baseline. And this is the next iteration of it. I also know that in this upgrade, Kurt, do you know how long they've been working on this? They started like 2005 or something. Not that long ago, but it has has been a very long time. So the part of the upgrade is that it turns into a more regular cycle for the next version. So future versions of lead will come out every five years and that's the plan for now on every five years update. Yeah. I also get get the idea. It didn't wasn't clear to me until you mentioned it before is just going to be closed down. And so it is just lead going forward, whether whatever version it is, there is only one version at any given time. Yeah. Really? I mean, maybe there's a there are subsets of lead. Like can get the certification for operations and maintenance. But, you know, that's for existing buildings here. We're mostly doing design and construction. So this will have a slightly different set of requirements and procedures, but we'll have these same kind of themes and will require the same kind of human impact assessment that I think is going to just end up being built into the industry of development. I would ask Mr. Cunningham this if he's at our next meeting because he's an expert. But my understanding is within a few months, V4 will kind of be off. And if you want your building to be lead certified, it's based on version five from now on. So whatever your rating is for every building going forward, not today, but you know, six months from now, it's whatever you got on the scorecard for version five. It seems fairly broad, although it seems like they're focusing more on certain priorities. Is there ever a case where a city may say we want you to be the lead certified with the latest version, whatever that may be, but also have even a more particular focus on which criteria and specifically you want points definitively in this area, even though technically from the perspective is more scoring right.? Yeah so to my knowledge we haven't done that to say. It may not be said. It may not be said. Choose this we want this this categories you know so whatever. Yeah so you can say you know that we want 15 there's you know 20 available points in the energy and atmosphere category we want want you to get 15. That's something that can happen. If we have specific requirements too, we can say, hey, we want you to have this many electric car chargers. And maybe you get points and that's what I mean. We've done that for every special exception that every every special exception that I've lived in the city for we've asked for please get this lead and We want to see you connect to solar we want to see this many electric car chargers We don't have to say this is how many lead points you get for doing that let them figure it out Right, we're always that's that's kind of the nice part about special exception. I mean, for better or worse, but we can ask for anything. They don't have to do it. It's a voluntary concession, right? Yeah, we're just a little free to ask for whatever we want. Although, if there's a way that upfront, you can kind of set your expectations for a standard. Yes. That makes sense, but it also gets into the case we have to review every line for every single project, try to make sure you don't miss it. I think if someone shows up and says we are already lead version five gold certified, they will probably have already checked all the boxes that we are going to want them to. If not, you know, it will be very impressive. I think the last special exception, which was rejected by City Council came in as lead silver and it was very, very unimpressive and not thoughtful at all. And to my knowledge, City Council has never approved a special exception below gold. So, the last ten years for sure. Not in the last ten years for sure. So yeah, but we're still can always ask what we want. And again, it would be nice to save everyone time and expectations if there was a green building standard and one of the items was get lead gold. And then here's some other, you know, here's how we think you should get it right and I would save everybody time and money. So maybe that's something we work on. Have I been saying that for a year? So to your point about things that don't cost there's no budget what if a budget attached to that to that. That ESC can be focused on a working on that's not tied to specific dollars, you know, making those recommendations. I would think would be a good use of ESC time and support staff in doing the work. Mm-hmm. A policy like that would need an expert and I don't think I Don't think we have like the expertise on staff necessarily to like write that whole thing or the man hours for Kurt to do it himself Because he's busy already But yeah, I think it would definitely need to be a line item. The same way that we wrote the government action plan or community energy action plan. How they get needs to be as in depth or as big of a, you know, lift necessarily, but it would definitely require some outside help, in my opinion. And I don't know who in cog metropolitan Washington council governments who we wrote their agreement to use to get the consultants to do that to plans. Presumably there's somebody in there who also has a green building policy. Somebody in the region who has a model, so you're not starting from scratch, maybe with our. I can look into that. That's a really good idea. I didn't consider that engagement. That should be something that should be available to us. I would think I don't know. I'm going to look into that. That's a good idea as a starting place. Any other questions, lead five questions? Maybe yes. Okay. All right. Thanks for going through that. Should we do other liaison and subcommittee reports? Sure. That's me. We're going to talk with our next subject. The budget discussion is going to talk a lot about that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. underneath what we had originally forecasted. By how much? Well, I don't know how much this year's did. It's not a shortfall on the overall FY25 budget because we had some areas where we we had investment income was much higher than we projected. So we'll net we'll net fiscal year 25 with a surplus of some amount but our projections for for fiscal year 2026 were based upon our original projections for revenue this quarter. And so our revenue projections for fiscal year 26 are overstated and we are revising those down on the revenue side. By a lot. Which means, yeah, by $1.2 million, which means we will, you know, the only two levers in that, you know, in that algebraic formula, like income and expenses and if our income is down $1.2 million, then we either need different sources of income or lower expenses by 1.2. And that is assuming that we had moved forward with a two and a half cent tax rate reduction, which is what we majority on council had asked for now on Monday night. We voted so the way this works is when city council votes and first reading we vote on the ceiling of the tax rate. So you can go down from the advertised tax rate. You cannot go higher. So the advertised tax rate as a Monday night's meeting is flat, 121. They're still desire for many in council to lower that tax rate, because even with the lower tax rate, the tax burden on individual homeowners is still increasing, because our assessments continue to rise and rise and rise. So those are the discussions we'll be having. What are the levers? What are the things we can cut back? Can we still offer a tax decrease and meet the majority of our goals? We'll be discussing that on Monday night. There's also Town Hall next Thursday night, I believe. I've seen the schedule that's attached to this agenda as well. But just to kind of set the scene of what we're talking about on budget and go sheets. The other thing that happened on Monday night, which has been many, many years of work and progress, is we voted 7-0 on a accessory dwelling unit ordinance. So that was pretty exciting. It's not quite as progressive as I as one council member would prefer. We compromised on a couple of different points that it happened. And I think that's one additional possibility and an option that we're giving home residents to provide more housing for people. So I think that's very positive thing thanks to the SC for its contributions and feedback and for many of you who spoke from council. I think it's always helpful, especially kind of this concept of what an environmentalist is and environmentalist isn't just, you know, tree by tree by tree, but over arching regionalism with regard to building denser housing, so you're not tearing down more, further out, more trees, more adding more commuters and more distances travel to work and all of those things. That's a shifting concept for a lot of people because the old-earth day, original earth days, the model of environmentalism, you don't tear down any trees, you're not a environmentalist, if you're tearing down trees, which obviously you have to do if you're building more housing. So it's finding that right balance and making that shift from kind of the older mindset of environmentalism to a newer, denser model. So thank you to all of you who have contributed to that. And thanks to the students in absentia for spending some time looking into that too. I think that was a good exercise for them and I like to enjoy seeing their feedback as well. A couple meetings back so. Can I add a note to that? Yes. I'm especially impressed with City Council's compromises on the environment around making sure that all the existing storm water runoff requirements and all existing tree cover requirements were included. So any new housing has to conform to all of our existing environmental regulations and not have any impact on the city's stormwater or tree cover for what people can do already. And also that there was no parking requirement, which was contentious at the beginning. So no parking requirement means no more trees get torn down to put in a more parking lot. So I think that was great to see that. And RM zones were included and some of the other things that USC members asked for. So I felt like there's a great process. Lots of back and forth with the community. And the ESC is very grateful that many of our comments were included in updated drafts. So thank you for fighting for us Debbie and to City Council for making it happen. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, so essentially from now until May 14th, it's budget budget and more budget period. And what started off as a relatively easy budget season given the current state of the economy is turned into a challenging one. Is the projected production in revenue? What is it like predominantly as a result of? Milletoxes. Milletoxes are down. Is there a portion of income tax that the city gets as well as people, for example, come on my sale? No, well income tax. I don't know if this is not. The case goes to the state state of contact. So I mean, we have been, we take a minute, we definitely deliver more to the state and to the federal level taxes from our region than we received. So predominantly sales tax and personal property sales tax hotels. A lot of the discretionary spending that we project and again, this is projections moving forward. That's where we're having. The shortfalls this year aren't huge but they are meeting the growth patterns that we had hoped for. And then we build textures by John. The current growth plus. I'm just editing case. So it's flat. Yeah. So continue to eat local shop local. For all the reasons keep a tax dollars here. Keep your carbon emissions minimized. Very good. Any other updates from you Debbie on anything else the city council has coming up that we can contribute to. I will keep you posted. Can't thank me on stuff man. Those are the notes for myself. Not a leading question. Sarah, I've run her bike inside and didn't use the... Oh I didn't know. There's a new bike rack out there. We are hoping you can see that's a... I knew it was wrapped up. But I had not. The wheel trip after the meeting. Oh yes. I have a plan to leave the building after the meeting. I have a couple more items for my report. Please. Take it away. No, that's no problem. I'm happy to break that up. So long one today. For the EECBG grant update, I just wanted to share that I did hear something recently. So last Wednesday on the 9th, I heard from Virginia Department of Energy that they've initiated the process of drafting the contracts. So once those drafts are complete, they'll send them over to us for review and then we can finalize and sign them after that. So right, that's for the $77,000 or so for a residential energy auto program, which we've talked about a few times and still making steady progress there. On May 15th, we've been talking for a long time on presenting data from the Community Energy Action Plan. I'll be presenting on May 15th, and that'll get published with that agenda packet. It's hoping to get it out this month, but fat a lot to do with the planning department, like tree canopy and a number of other things, but in the main meeting, we'll get that one out. The ULI tap, John, I got a question from you this afternoon about that. We did receive a manuscript from ULI a few weeks ago, then the city staff sent it back with some edits. So the next step is for ULI to send back the full design report. And then the city will post a web page with that report and the presentation and then we can go from there. So I'm still making it. We'll go to the Gordon Road Triangle plan. We'll brief them. Yeah. I'm just in the CIP for you'll see in several comments 30 million dollar projection. You're 2028. Yeah, that sounds right. We can we can look at the item. And then there was a question. It's been asked a couple of times about an item in the budget with $50,000 growing from the community plan to the government energy action plan. Right. And that was reallocated to DPW and the FY26 budget to help support work on the government operations energy action plan. This includes energy audits of city facilities, building control changes, minor equipment purchases, and the city's contribution to a consultant for pursuing a virtual power purchase agreement. Any VPPA work would need to be through a neighboring jurisdiction and is not something the city can pursue on its own. Despite all that, I still... Oh, that, who sent that? That was from the manager's office. Okay, thank you. And I still plan on, so the 50,000 that was originally appropriated for an energy audit program. We've had the issues with implementation, then we're trying to put it off to focus on the residential energy audit. So with all that in mind, the money got reallocated, but I still fully plan to explore the commercial energy audit program after we establish, after we get the funding and that's secured for the residential program. And then any funding I can secure for that, we will move forward on. If it's just a pilot program for now, then for what exactly the commercial energy audit program. So that would be different commercial energy audit. Yeah. So is that there are line items for that in the budget right now? No. So that's that's the issues that there was one and now it's getting reallocated to DPW. There's not a line item right now. But I still plan on on doing the work to establish the the idea there would be to establish a partnership with a nonprofit instead of contracting with someone to go to all of our businesses and give them an audit, which is something we've been doing last year through trial and error with trying to get a contract going. That is what we're gonna do for the residential energy audit program, which kinda makes more sense given the industry, there's a lot more people willing to do and audit of a residential building than a small commercial space like we have in the city. With that said, the plan is to work through a nonprofit and just offer commercial businesses that go out and get their own energy audit done. We would then kind of give them a grant through a nonprofit kind of similar to how we do the, an example would the rain barrel program if anyone's ever gotten a grant to get a rain barrel. Kind of a very similar thing for just a different amount of money and a different purpose. So I'm confident that we can move that, at least continue to move it forward and kind of, you know, made progress on that end. And, you know, get funding some way somehow to make it at least a pie would happen. You're confident that you think we can still do it? I'm at least trying to get, you know, some kind of agreement pushed forward. That's what I can say for now is that I will do everything I can to set up an agreement and push it forward. All right. We'll do our best. So I can say for now. Ask for help when you need it. I will. Very good. I'd like to just get the if we can get the residential thing going and you know get that contract signed then get the contract with a vendor sign and get that one moving. I think that'll have a really, really big impact and a successful. That'll really load well for us to in a commercial thing. That would be a great step. It would be nice. The last item I have is a word from Lonnie Marquetti and she has said that the city is considering hosting a fre cycle event which was kind of like a swap meet like people kind of exchange things instead of going to a yard sale or throwing stuff away just kind of exchanging things that they might not need anymore and there is an interest survey going out soon. So please be on the lookout for that and help spread the word once it comes out. So write this as an event that I think would be good for everyone, good for the environment, and we just need enough interest to actually put it on. So once that comes out, we're just asking to fill it out, circulate it, that sort of thing. Her second point was, and this, if there's anyone who's been around for a while and might know something about this, there's two clean-ups. Every year right, there's a spring clean-up in April, and then there's a fall clean-up in October. And apparently, there used to be a meal given to the volunteers after the fall one. Lonnie was wondering, if anyone here might know where that funding might have come from. If there was a meal any details about that. And if anyone would be willing to help gather donations. Never heard of that. It was donated. It was donated to the field. It was donated by a, you know, if it was by a restaurant or by people kind of chipped in. Restaurant restaurant definitely restaurants. And I don't know. Annette Mills. Yeah, she coordinated it all. I have her email. I don't know if she might. I just remember eating. Yeah, it was great. So who coordinated it? Annette Mills. Okay. This one is. I'm a sister- predecessor-ish role changed a couple different ways. Yeah. That is. I mean, one day you should stop it. I didn't talk about how there's been lots between. Yeah. Okay. And that's because. Sounds. I mean, that's great. That's a lead. I'm sure she'll be happy to have some more info. Thank you. I can't believe I forgot to talk about this because the other major thing that's happening is we know the budget that if I can re-enerject and Monney's name brought of back to mind is that we are talking about solid waste and composting. and we may or may not remove currently solid waste is paid for through your through general government, through your tax rate. And we're talking about removing it from the tax rate and charging a separate fee because of the way some of our townhouse. I guess the simplest way to say is some of when townhouses came online and they hired their own trash removal service, they didn't receive a break on their taxes. So there's some perception that might not be equitable. And so we're looking at that and there's been a lot of back and forth as to how soon we can do something like removing it and changing to a fee But we're trying to do that some of us are trying to do that We can in this years process The benefit in my opinion is that we'd add composting to all those who receive trash services from the city So you'd add a third venue to have trash recycling and yard slash composting, wrapped up into that same fee. Would they consider if they were charging a separate fee doing what we've looked at also before pay as you throw like we have a small container? Yeah, we talked about that and that is more operationally challenging just from the treasure and revenues office. So but I totally see your point. I'd like to have a smaller one. I mean, we have a small one that is available. There, yeah. And we've had one ever since they gave out free ones, you know, and however many years ago that was. And yes, it's always seemed to me. Composting shrinks that trash bag. Yeah. Yes. But I mean, we've always been very conscious of waste and yes. And when you're, when you're what was once a family, or you know, five people living at home, now they're just two, like, I don't know. Yeah, but we were conscious. We had back then we had five people too. we would just like, yeah, we've discussed that and they have a 65 gallon price and a 35 gallon price. And there are some pros and cons to that. And some of the cons are more on the financial operational side of getting different like each of the 3000 homes, changing annually. And what it would do to our really small treasure and commission of revenue staff. So I think, you know, I think that's some of the limiting factors, but I totally agree. You know, in Germany, they had the system where you bought a trash can and you paid to have it picked up. You had to get a sticker to get picked up. And if you wanted, you know, depending on the size of your trash can or the size of, you know, how many you had, how many stickers and how much you'd sticker costs. And so, you know, you either got more picked up or less picked up. Yeah, if you didn't have sticker on your trash can, you didn't get picked up at all. There are many who agree that as a concept, I'm not sure if we'll get there with this change and iteration of it. Pay is you. This is not going to be a change. But if we do it for a year and you can see the bulk of the cost of trash removal or tipping or the not tipping piece, it's the actual labor to go to every house and pick up regardless of how much waste you use. It's the time and labor. That's like 77% of the cost 80% of the cost. Anyway, this is the other big topic and there are different opinions just within councils to the best way to do this and then some concerns about timing and concerns about communications out to homeowners. Because there'll be some homeowners who have to pay more. Because it's essentially been subsidized by townhouses and presumably most of us. Yeah. It means to be subsidized. Yeah. So. We don't actually know how much we pay. Right. Right. As a taxpayer, you wouldn't know because you're just paying the general tax rate into the general government pot that then gets paid out. So you don't know that you've actually, most people don't actually know that they've been subsidized by town homes who are paying places. Right. But we wouldn't know if the tax rate doesn't go down with the increase in the cost. Right. Wait. What kind of condos today, pay? We don't have too many condos, but they pay their own for the belief. They pay their own for the police. They pay the city. They're brought away. But did their taxes also? Many of them pay into the city for waste collection and they get no services, which is a very important thing. The city was mostly single family. Right.. Right. But it wasn't developed with any kind of subterfusier balance. And it just, you got one townhouse and then it kind of got left. And then this came on. And for now, we're 50, 50 mixed use development single family owns. So the challenge is that the commercial also, commercial has been supporting it as well, because they pay at the same tax rate. You drop the tax rate and you kind of do some of that revenue that commercial has been paying and I don't know that that always gets to the end department user like they get a tax decrease. Are they going to go say, hey, your apartments now $10 cheaper a month. So some of the tax relief goes to Commercial development owners. So there's some odds about The balance of all that but Finance accounting aside just maybe one benefit to you know your rate would have gone up But you go for smaller size. I don't know how the math works out, but... Yeah, probably every other week. Yeah, we could do that. Yeah. Only the same with any questions on that. I guess that. I don't have any answers. I just want to let you all know that this is your field. Please feel free to weigh in. We had a big movement from Kano and townhouse and each of ways coming into obviously, but I don't know that anybody in single family homes is necessarily paying attention to the discussion and what impact it might have on them. And that's where a communications plan is going to be really important to say, you know, this is why it's changed and this is what it might mean to you. And it's hard to, in this literal day and age to be increasing fees to people. But I just wonder if there is an outside the box idea in this alert, going back in time to this example you gave where the burden could be removed for them, but it's a different process. Even something like something like using stickers at least gets people to be more intentional think about what they're you know do it I don't love We have stickers and deal with that, but it makes you think a lot Yeah, I wonder if there's other approaches that could be considered would relieve some of the burden on the Yeah, all ideas are welcome Okay. What's your title for trying to work this out? We are getting a present. I haven't looked at my, the city manager's presentation should have been released of today's packet for Monday night's work session. We're supposed to be talking about a Monday night's work session. So as soon as you could go into effect would be July? Well, we're hoping to have it kind of by or now before we vote on the budget in May because that'll determine, you know, we'll have to set taxes and fees based upon where we allocate the expenses on traction back collection. If we make changes this year, we'd have to think it by May. And then people would see it on their bills in December. So there's time for like a communications plan. But ideally we'd have that iron out by May. There is some unprecedented wiggle room, I guess, that we could have resolution later in the summer if we can't make it happen by May, but I should probably should look at what the I mean, just put out for money money for session before I go too much further. Yeah, take a look at it. So like a, at least the original proposal last October from Lonnie was about a 10 or 12 page PowerPoint deck. Kind of walks through the issues. My mind, I keep thinking, upside of making composting easier for everybody. At your doorstep. Yeah. So, all right. For the $50,000 earlier, you mentioned a few things like the Dolen Controls your audit, do you say VPP, consulting or what was the bit? Yeah, the idea with the VPPA has been to start off with getting our consultant, which would kind of help figure out what, you know, the possibilities are and that sort of thing. And then I actually did hear back from right so the original group that was leading it was Blacksburg, Richmond, Arlington, and the fourth might have been Howard Zandria. No, I think it was Fairfax. So the fourth was Fairfax I think. So I did hear back from them this month that they're starting to see some more progress and we should kind of get on a meeting and start actually talking about some more legitimate things soon rather than just kind of being up in the air. But that money should be there. And if there's an opportunity to spend it, it seems like we're going to spend it. OK. Yeah, I mean, did it very well could cost the full 50k for that. For our portion, I don't think it would cost the full 50k, I think 10,000 is a good allocation for that. I don't even know if we would use that full thing because it's, you know, it's that for governments and then they've got a bunch of other smaller localities that are interested. So I don't think we do above 10,000 on that. Kind of like some of our other purchasing that we do off of Bear Hacks County or other large jurisdictions. Yeah, we ride contracts pretty often where you know someone else does a lot of work to you to get the contract in, do all the vetting and the bidding. And then if there's a lead way for us to ride that contract, it's all the benefit to us to get on that and save ourselves some resources. And especially for something like this, we would cost, I mean, I think they're looking in the scope of hundreds of thousands between all the governments, and that's not something we could cough up right now. And the staff coordination as well, we need, they've got FTEs and these other jurisdictions looking at it pretty often. Yeah, how would we, aside from the 10K, that you know, the remaining 40k? How do we, how do we want to, how would we go about deciding which of these other things is the highest priority for that money, whether building controls, energy audits or even whether that money would just try to go towards, you know, reallocation for the Aurora PV, for example. That's a good question for, for Lionel. Like if, if you were here in June in the budget pass with that item in it, you might have a good idea of where that's going to go. Ideally, I guess you want the I mean the BPA is probably the greatest carbon impact if we could actually get that through aside from that. like just a ballpark kind of analysis for the impact for, because the energy audit, there's one thing to get the energy audit of it's the impact for, because the energy audit, there's one thing to get the energy audit if it's another thing to actually do and whatever some cost is associated with that. And it's just trying to figure out what's the greatest carbon impact relative to the lifecycle cost of whatever the project is. Right, I would guess that energy audits are pretty high up there just to give a baseline and see what we can do. And that will help allocate the rest of the funding and future funding. But that's a good question for why I know and for after the budget gets a little more cemented. Anything else to report, Kurt That's all from Debbie. I'd say no but then five minutes. I might be the third topic that I've now looked at my notes so we're those were the main topics. I'd like to forgot to say a little bit. I'll give you a moment to check out your notes. How is it? Okay. Three topics. I'll give you a moment to check out your notes. How is that? Okay. Great topic. Then let's move on. We haven't seen John. He hasn't joined online, right? No, and I just tried to my email. I haven't seen any word from him. I also did. And did not hear from him. So let's check out the FC can letter now. Okay. And then we'll do our budget and then we'll make a few announcements and we'll be done early tonight. I think. And I'm gonna pull it up on my computer so I can actually read what it says. So people write it's addressed to city council. Hmm interesting. So we've got a list of top energy and climate funding priorities. Support the Aurora House Solar Project. Implement city tax incentives for electric vehicles, restore neighborhood tree program, great idea, and some budget clarifications explain the status and funding for energy audit programs. So we talked about that a little bit already this evening. High electric vehicle, highlight electric vehicle charging solutions. Great. Explain strategy for funding for electric school buses. Okay. I can bring them up. I can bring several these up during work sessions. We talked about the line on the transfer of funds. He can also talk to the warehouse I've heard. There might be some structural challenges on the roof at the challenges on the roof at the rural house, but I have to get more information on that as well. I can basically take this letter and raise it during work sessions so you will kind of really get clarified funding for new will energy credits. Okay. Describe future funding for multi-geurisdictional, renewable energy projects. Also, I love the formatting of this because it's got summaries and then also in depth, really well written. Any recommendations? Yeah. An actionable recommendations. Right. Super helpful. Commit to sustainable property art investment. Incredible. So those are going to be continued back into your point. John, when the ULI comes back and we see, you know, if you had a chance to read it, maybe it's incorporated a lot of these things already. But a lot of the feedback was given during those two days with the tap, the ULI tap. So So hopefully those are two things that we can that are already taken action on. And then part three is budget process recommendations first to identify a senior lead accountable for the implementing implementation of the plans. So that's great. We've got these energy plans. We need to make sure they get implemented. Restore environmental sustainability account. And add crosswalk of funding for add crosswalk of funding for energy plan implementation. I don't know what that means exactly. I kind of get to find, um, in this paragraph. Is that something with your report on the data that you'll be thinking about or talk to in May? Oh, not funding for crosswalks. Yeah, that's not a literal crosswalk, but a planning of, here's the goal, here's who's doing it, Here's when it's going to get done. Excellent. And then how does it relate to the environmental sustainability account? Because that has been kind of split into the public works and for planning. Because a lot of that right was that 50,000 that ended up with public works. And then a lot of it is just kind of what goes with the position. So there's like the sour in benefits and then with the, you know, there's office supplies, travel, training, all those sorts of things. And that kind of just went into planning to add my position in there. So we'll talk about the actions and we'll talk about funding where it's relevant, but I was not planning on having a crosswalk in here. Some of that, I don't think will be fully defined by the time I published that. I guess to the extent that it is, like it's like we're agnostic, we collectively residents are agnostic whether it's DPW or ESC or whoever, like the goals are goals how are we going to get them done and what are they going to get done and what funding needs to be associated with it. Right. And so I agree to that point of the crosswalk and coming back and reviewing on the two plans how just bottom line how are we going to get it done or what is missing and how do we define what that cost is. Right so that's That's something that should talk about with. You know, I'd have to have information from Lionel if he was going to do like a government plan report. We could do that there and kind of compare notes and see where funding's going. I think that would be helpful. OK. Does it also define, you know, if we're in economic heart, like I'm not the you know, a federal economist, but it's not as if I think next year we're going to have a significant surge in revenue either. We're going to this looks like it's going to be a long slog. How what do we do to meet these goals? How do we define what is a community value? commuting financially, socially, social constructivized as well, like what are the priorities can be? Okay. And you can really only find that eventually by cost. Yeah, I think it mentions that the only referencing FY 26 budget to the action plan is density and 80 use. So. And geothermal, geothermal and then next year, in the last year's budget. There are only two big things. We did bioelectrics for this. Yeah. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. dollars to it then it's not a priority. So I think there's a bike projects where I thought to reduce the emissions. And there is investment in the CIP side on that operating budget. But I'm not sure. Yeah, but I think that the school bus ones were also done largely because the grants paid for the difference. And then when the grants didn't pay for the difference, we bought the diesel buses. And so the only time the environment wins is when it is- Find's subsidized, easy neutral, or in the case of geothermal, was a better deal. Right. Through it through. Yeah. So, you know, we have to, we have to say to start taking some actions to show that we actually value this plan outside of those items. There's still a lot of those items to do. We should do all of them. There's still quite a lot of cost effective environmental things on the energy action plans that we haven't even started yet. So those should be kind of baseline. Well,, you know, has the upfront capital cost, then it pays for itself. Right. Whatever the structural issues are inside, the details are. To me, that just means that there's no excuse. There's so long time ago, so we have to do those ones. Half to do those. So let's get those now. Right. But as it stands, that's on funded because the only one that's kind of like very clearly in there at the moment. It's kind of associated with the CEP or the GOP, the government operations. GoP? Are we calling you GOP? What do we call GOP? I said GOP, but hey, GOP is probably easier to say. I know sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I I also sent a letter with a bunch of things that I would like. And that letter that I sent kind of became the basis of the letter that the ESC already signed off on and sent. So I don't feel a need to go through that again tonight with everyone. Yes, so let's move on to our budget discussion from that. But excellent letter from FC Can. I wanna publicly thank all the members and the time that they put into it. their expertise is truly an asset to the city, even if none of them are with us this evening. They are very appreciated. So in terms of budget, I think the first thing we should do is look at the schedule again. Because it has changed. So, and I'm going to pull it up on my computer so that I can read it. All right, so first things first. Today is April 17th. So we've got Thursday next week. First Monday nights the work session. Oh, that's right. You'll be talking about a lot of things, but specifically about the sound waste. Convokes things. Okay. So we've got work session. Town hall. Council meeting work session. And then then vote and anticipated adoption. And that's it. So we're most of the way through or we're a bit more than halfway through the process already. So city council has our letter. I don't think we need to go through every item in the budget again, because we've already, you know, sent these letters and I feel pretty strong that the first letter that we sent, I think, two weeks ago now or about a week ago? Yeah, about two. Yeah. I don't think anything has changed since then very much. And it was pretty strong letter already, I think, of like what our recommendations are. So I don't have a ton to add to this this evening, but I wanted to make sure that we had some time on the agenda because last month it had just come out like a few hours before our meeting. So we've been working on this asynchronously for a few weeks and then you know sent our stuff in because we wanted to be early. But yeah, have any of the other ESC members with us to see them gone through it? Are there any other comments that weren't sent into the last letter that you feel strongly about or any parts of it that you want to go through tonight together? Well, I'm mostly interested in the waste issue that you just brought up. And is there currently a proposal that we can react to or are you? I have not, packets should have been in the look at up. I think it's expected. There's a thing I noticed in the budget. It's not about for 28 years. The access to the high school is in there. And I don't. The bike trail. Yeah. Through the. Through the. Conducts. I thought that was not happening. I thought that was in there. Well, there's. Capital. There are funds that are set aside for making the east west bike connection habit. Where the discussions with the H.O.A. don't know. I mean, there have been iterations of it. I don't know where they are. I don't think it's going through the condominiums. I think the funding is for a bike lane that gets to the condominiums and other paving improvements in the park near the WNOD trail behind the Mr. Tire over there. That's going to get kind of connected. It's not really resolved, but it's in the budget. That's what I was... It's a good question. The design doesn't seem like it's totally resolved, but... I don't believe it is, but... If there's a lot of money in the budget, they are to make it happen. Which is a bit strange, I guess, to put all that money in the budget. There's still questions of what's being done. What if you just make it good where you can and then figure out everyone's going to go to the convenience anyway. But I mean, I would never trespass to get over there the only possible way to cross the street on that highway. I mean, it looks like the same solid waste presentation is in here from April 7th. It's a good question. But I think that if you're, if this is a new source, if you're, you're someone's doing the financial analysis of how the costs are going to get allocated to single-family homes, right? So that's a full cost and there's a recycling. So everything's gonna get bundled into one cost and probably three bins. Yes. And yeah. That was a discussion so far. Doesn't look like that. So it's on the agenda, but it doesn't look like there are any changes to the presentation that we saw in October then again. Well, I mean, just picking up with Sarah was saying you two. 54% is that if if it's a tag-based system and you're you only put the bin out when it's full enough then is there a lower cost that you can negotiate with the hauler when you're when they're actually picking up fewer bins? Because not everybody's putting them out every week. Yeah. But I think they'd want to monitor it for their have reduced their costs until there's some proven reduction expense for them. I think there'd be different sizes too. I'm not sure how many people'd want to monitor it for, you know, their average use their costs until there's some proven reduction expense for them. I think there'd be different sizes too. I'm not sure how many people would want to hold on to their trash. I'm sure we could. But I think it's the depends. Well, actually, yeah, it was, it was for weekly to pick up. It's just you paid for a tag for a year of pickup. I see. It wasn't like you paid per week like now and you put you had a tag Stuff on your thing and it was good for a year Yeah, I gave you the wrong number just there's a cell-dwaist cost component 64% of the cost of it is curbside collection 28% tipping fees and 8% compost So you saying that those of us who pay for compost now, you wouldn't pay for compost anymore? It would be bundled into a fee. You have a third band, for household, for a piece of wood waste. I mean, if you have one conversation, please, because it's recording everything. That also is costly to pick it up. Right. Currently, we subsidize Compost Crew $77,000 a year. There are 200 and some people who compost through that. So it's not an insignificant subsidy. Right. So I don't see any new data on here though. I'll have to follow up. We're tuned in. Originally. Would Compost Crew still be the ones picking you up. I don't know. If it's going to be compost, goes back to ADS where we have the trash. For the recycling. I didn't know if it did come. It seems like there's a lot to work out in a compressed timeframe. Yeah, and that's the concern. What do we have to decide now versus what can we? But because it's a budget item. Yeah, I guess you're going to decide whether you're going to have a separate fee for single family homes. Yeah. And then the details are to be worked out. Yes. So we're here more on Monday night. I don't see any new information. From this presentation that just got posted. Just to go back to the schedule. Are you thinking that this is something that ESC would. Take a. Provide recommendations on a support to have a separate waste fee for single-family homes. Would you like to propose that? That's what I'm that's the question that we should. Would you like to write a letter about it? I would support that., I think it would be great great if we took a stance to be honest Yeah, to me to me it's it's all about fairness and everyone should have access to recycling and access to composting and these Environmental services in our city and it's very unfair how it works right now my opinion So I would I would definitely support that. Yeah. Sarah, we learned a lot in being part of that whole process. So yeah. I'm happy to write that letter. I think I'd be good to react to something. I won't be able to listen into the work session on. So there is a PowerPoint presentation that Linemark Ketty had put together for October. We discussed it then and it came back up again this spring during the budget discussions. And we got the same presentation in April. It was just a bigger focus from our townhouse, HOA community, came out, I mean, there were literally probably 30 people here in Monday night who came out to, and they collectively wrote a letter. Okay. And so it's taken on more energy that maybe has the past But look you can look at the PowerPoint that's on there and gives you some idea of what we've been talking about if you want So that's sort of the on the so right as if that's the straw man. Yeah, yeah, those are the options that were given back in October so Okay. I'm also, I don't know if anybody from ESC, so I can take the FCKN letter and go point by point during the work session and see what kind of feedback we get from city manager and from staff and from other council members who maybe didn't have a chance to read a letter and full or you know certainly it's my responsibility to as liaison to make sure that everybody's aware of those recommendations so I will make back to them in over 90 nights work session to go through them point by point and then that town hall on Thursday I don't know if anybody's available but maybe someone would be willing to speaker ask questions on next Thursday night's town hall on Thursday, I don't know if anybody's available, but maybe someone would be willing to speak or ask questions on next Thursday night's town hall to or reinforce the letter of the census and the recommendations that have been made. And I can put that out to Mike and Tim and go on and Dave and I think Jeff Peterson. That's what's. Great. So we're having to make these decisions. Then it's a conscious decision. We said these are our priorities, but we're not funding them. And it's because of the economic condition, we have to fund X, Y and Z. I just like to be a public acknowledgement that we're making choices on where we spend and how we spend. I mean, the challenge here is I've a hard time figuring out what is, you know, how to absolutely necessary. Obviously, out of many of these things, it's looking important. One example though is, I mean, this is in my neck of the woods, the Crossman Park, it says 495K for play equipment there, and it cavalier Trail. I'm not sure how much is for each one of those projects. Yeah, that's funny. You brought that up because even in discussions, we're like, that's probably the first thing that can be held online. It's expensive. Yeah, I don't know about how much the equipment is for Cavalier, but I mean Crossman, for example, as much have young children I would love to have new play equipment because it took out a slide there however I Walked two minutes So I got on it through that up, of course I would love to have the slides of but then if I think are a well That versus something that has a greater Or a PV you know I don't know maybe it's maybe it's a Orgbottreid off for now This is so we knock off somebody's thing This is everyone makes a lot of happy But Who has a very long walk to the only neighborhood park which has only one entrance Of course you're only going to walk it down like that I don't want to go here. Let's go to the other one. I don't want to even on the road. You have to walk to get there. We're still pushing out. I'm asking out. park which has only one entrance. I don't want to go here. Let's go to the other one. On the road, you have to walk to get there. There's still a person. Can we have one conversation please? Thank you. Sarah, please. No, you know, I just. If you're talking. Parts one of these to me, the most obvious improvement is Robert's park, which has one entrance. So even though it's theoretically our neighborhood park, it's a very long walk along his feet without a sidewalk. And it's been that way since my child who is now 35, just turn 35, was young. And there seems to be no excuse for not making it accessible to people in the neighborhood. Because it's a really long walk from everyone who lives all around it, you know, on Rosemary, Poplar, Treysea, it's all of our neighborhood park, but you have to walk way out of your way to get to it because there's one entrance. But I guess it would just become a similar debate. That's kind of like within our aid if you're going to put money towards improving the park. That's one pocket is out of pocket you want to hold from to address solar or something else. I don't know. It seems to me 30 some 35 years of having no access to the neighborhood park. Hardly it's just really. I think that's an issue, land ownership issue in a right-of-way. You know how they did it for Howard Herman Park? They bought the property and then they kept the right of waste because it was really super annoying if everyone on Least Street had to walk around to get to TJ now. So they bought it. They could have done the same thing on Poplar. Yeah. and've had 35 years to do it. Yeah, and I don't know the history of why I just know that's why you can't access it elsewhere. And I do know that we put that missing as a missing link sidewalk. It's on our sidewalk plan now for that last, you know, it's like two blocks to get from the Laura Drive, two Roberts Park entry. Yeah, all the way from Jeff's street. Yeah. So there's hope on the sidewalk front. I don't see anything changing in the right way anytime. But it does, it's the only park in town that has only one entrance. So back to our budget and solid waste just to stay on topic for this. So we're going to work on a letter. Yes. Do we as ESC, we need right the letter, circulated comments, one by one by one. And we had a way to reach. So the budget we. We expect the budget to be passed May 12th. So that's before our next meeting. So if we want to pass a letter. If we want to send in a letter before then, it should probably be in before the city council work session that does the budget markup, right Debbie? Yeah. Okay, so we're going to end to have that done on the Friday before May 5th, which would be May 2nd and 2nd to the council. Right. So if we give everyone at least a few days to review it and send in that they approve of the letter. Then try to have it done in the next like 10 days or so from now. Is that fair? Is everyone agree with that? Yep. Okay, so. So we think that by Monday, I send out probably the power point from Lonnie as background or explanations if that's not fully clear on it. I'll be clear and not phone what the discussions are and then the letter that we can comment on it. Okay, so I'll send that out by the 28 and we'll get comments back. But you think 30 is fair enough for the everybody? Okay, and then I'll finish it by the second. Or I can try to do it earlier than that. I do think you already have a final letter that everyone has agreed to, depending minor edits. So it's not like collect comments and then you send out a letter because then everyone hasn't seen the letter that you sent out. It's send a letter out earlier than the 28. Yeah, it's like write it over the next week and then with whatever you want it to have. Okay. And then everyone will tell you if they like it or not. Yeah. Okay. And whether. So we're kind of whether enough people support it to pass. Whether notes that come out of the work session that are publicly available. Yeah. There are yes. There's always something going. You can call me and I can. You're unable to attend on my name happy to give you the net of what. Discussed on Monday night. Yeah. Great. I don't see it in the budget, but just there, do you know anything about the budget for replacing school gym lighting? I don't because that's but then we on City Council, you know, get the railways to try schools and school budget decides how they're, how that's all spent. So it would be in the school budgets budget. I got it. The question documents. But you should be able to, you should be able to. that's how they're, that's all spent. So it would be in the school budgets. Okay. Budget. I got it. The question documents. But you should be able to, you should be able to search the school budget. You know, they've already agreed on there, they've already voted on their budget and should be incorporated in there. Okay. And I don't, if it's more than $150,000, it'll be in the capital plan. I think it was like $100k, $2,000 for like something like that. So just determined whether like, yeah, whether like the, there's a change in type of lighting that adds efficiency or, you know, if that money is better allocated for something else. But if it was allocated for something else in that instance, it would probably have to be reallocated within the school budget. It's not going to transfer back to the general fund. Correct. OK. I'll take a look. There is one of the questions there on the buses is like, how do we make sure the communication from general government to schools, to school leadership is made to be? So the schools are ensuring they're making the right decision, the best decisions for our government energy actions plan. How do they incorporate that in their decision making process? And if it's more expensive, they come back to us and say, hey, you really want us to be buying these electric buses, it's going to cost this amount or on a new lighting or whatever the case might be. So I push it on Monday, that's one of a really good one that's not better. Very good. Any other topics around the budget? Professor one thing, can we clarify what the body of the letter would be? Just wow everyone's here at the table. So like if like what is the position in the letter? the position. Supporting a separate fee outside of the tax rate for a solid waste collection presumably. Yeah, no, I think that's the plan. And I include composting. Yeah. A third bin. Yeah. Okay. And with any possible options on pay as you throw or different sizing of bins. I mean, I don't think we're necessarily experts in it at all, but so we'll kind of hopefully Lonnie has some thoughts on that or evaluation of options for. But that is. But I'm sure the whole thing is wrapped up in like recycling is largely a net cost for the city. So there's there's that. But okay, I mean, I'll pull that together and I think at least in this room, we're all sort of in support of that separation that caused to single family. Well, that's just an evidence. What's that? It's said it's inevitable. Yeah, I mean, and as we continue to have more multi-family buildings and the inequities just grown over time. So, do you guess the cotton's lawny salary going to be captured in this kind of separate solid waste? I don't know. I don't, my thought is that it would be she's a general, you know, government employee that her salary and benefits would come from the general tax rate. because she also does. But it's just like the contract. We need clean up. That's right. She has other components of a job they're not. government employed, then her salary benefits would come from the general tax rate. Because she also does like the country. We know that she has other components of a job. They're not solid waste, which is a large part of a job, but there are other things that she does that would be distributed across you know, all of the community, everybody who lives here versus like literal curbside service. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just on the consides are you aware that some people are concerned? is like literal curbside service. And here I can ask that. So just on the concides, so you're aware that some people are concerned about removing it from the tax rate so that there's any perception of that you can five all a cart for any services you receive in the city. Like, why don't have a kid in school? So I shouldn't have to pay for schools or I don't get leaves collected. I just leave them on my yard. I shouldn't have to pay for leaf service and you know there is some concern with opening that up to being like well everything should be parsed and whether I receive it or I don't receive it and then the counter argument of course is that you could receive it though like right now if you live in a townhouse or a condo you actually can services in the Cain Court. You could receive school services if you had a child. You could receive, you know. So there are some concerns, press from some council colleagues that you don't do not go the way of having everything be a fee-based service. I think that's very wise. We'll be putting it to the messaging, the challenging part of the message. Right. And we have, you know, our surrounding jurisdictions do it this way as well. There's an unprecedented, there are many that already have been. But what we like about having it city provided versus Fairfax County, you know, if you live on a street, you could have trash picked up huge, you contract with somebody and picks it up on Monday. I contract because someone who posted a bunch of Tuesday, you contract with someone who posted a bunch of Wednesday. So we have a trash truck coming down our little street and our little... You contract with somebody who picks it up on Monday. I contract with someone who picks it up on Tuesday. You contract with someone who picks it up on Wednesday. So we have a trash truck coming down our little street in our little city like every single day. And that happens in a lot of streets and Fairfax. I don't know if it's that extreme, but definitely multiple days. And the great thing about us having a contract is that Wednesday is the day that you have to add that five minutes to get to your destination because you know you'll somewhere in your neighborhood you'll get behind a trash drive. Yeah, the much of this logic applies to this other topics but you can at least for the trash example and compost possibly make the case that you're influencing people's behavior for the greater good in a sense because it's pushing people to produce wastes without that there's no incentive to get people to reduce the waste. I don't know if that's. sense because I'm pushing people to reduce waste without that there's no incentive to get people to to reduce the waste. I don't know if that's helpful. It's a counter-argument. Okay if there's no other topics for the budget I think we can wrap up with some final announcements And then, then, we're going to shop for the evening. So, Saturday is Arbor Day and Earth Day is next week. This Saturday is the 19th. We have 9 to 11, 30 am, farmers market booths Vipis is giving away free tree saplings so go get a tree sapling at the farmers market and then at 11 we have a flag raising in front of City Hall and We have special guest speaker, VIP. Charles Prince, the city arborist. Very, very, yeah, can't wait to have him there. And Amy Crumpton, Urban Forestry Commission Chair and Virginia State Forester will be there as well. And so come and learn from experts in urban forestry about planning and taking care of trees and then 1130 to 130. Join the City Council and the City's Arborist for Tree Planting in Cherry Hill Park. So we've got a lot of excellent pro-environmental events for Arbor Day and the Urban Forestry Commission has selected the swamp chestnut oak. I'm not going to try to say the Latin name of it as the 2025 tree of the year and it was selected for its adaptability to urban environments. The high value it provides our forests and environment and its rarity in our city's urban forests. So go get a swamp chestnut tree and make sure to plant those all over the place and that is it for our meeting this evening. I'll adjourn. This April 17th, 2025. Yes, seen in. Thank you. it for our meeting this evening. I'll I adjourn this April 17th 2025. Yes, senioring. Thank you for joining us everyone. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you all for sharing your time and expertise. There will um the