All right, I'll call to order this meeting of the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability and Resilience
at 6.01 p.m. And we'll go through the roll call. Tara Dunn-Bitt. Here. Here. Justin Vassel. I'm here.
Rebecca Payne. Here. Here. Christopher Miles. Present. Present. Zach Amerman. Here. Here. That's Mova
Rollo. Not online. Alex York. Absent. Maria Arstad. Here.
Here. Here. All right. Seven. Perfect. Good to go. Okay. So we'll start with the approval of the agenda.
Any changes anyone wants to propose to the agenda as it was circulated?
All right. We don't have anyone online, so we can do voice votes and stuff for the time being. All right.
Is there a motion to approve the agenda? Motion. Second. And a second. Perfect. All right. And all those
in favor say aye. Aye. All those? Any abstentions? Okay. The agenda is approved. That brings us to the
approval of minutes. We'll start with the
April 28th, 2026 minutes, which was our special session where we received the report from the O'Neill
School capstone. And we circulate around a really more, almost like memoranda than full-blown minutes,
but it has all the important details in there. Any corrections anyone has to offer to those? Nope. There
was no business at that meeting. No, there wasn't, no.
While we're here, we'll bring up the June 9th minutes for the regular meeting that we had last month.
Are there any corrections to that? We can just approve both of these in one chunk if there's no corrections
to either. Okay, do I have a motion to approve both sets of those minutes? And a second? Perfect, all
those in favor say aye. All opposed, nay? And any abstentions? Okay, both of those minutes are approved
as circulated. Brings us to public comment.
I don't see anyone in the gallery, and I don't see anybody online. Great. We're almost done. No. OK,
move on to the commissioner reports. We'll do the chairs report. How's everybody doing? Staying cool?
Yeah, no kidding.
We could stay later, actually. OK, so just some organizational updates to start. So we're bidding farewell
to Quentin Gilley, who is in our IU sustainability spot on the commission. So he's moving on from that
position. So wishing him the best and greener pastures ahead. And just want to thank him for his service
on the commission. He's been with us since, I think, November of 2024.
And so I want to thank him for that. And yeah, we'll look forward to the next appointment from that
position. But yeah, so at the moment, that puts us at four vacancies. Oh, and Alex is here. Welcome,
Alex. So yeah, four vacancies, including that IU seat.
Yeah, I think that's, do you guys happen to know if there are applications in the queue? It seems unnotified.
OK. Is that an explicitly, is that appointed through a particular path? Is there a position where if
someone holds that position, occupies that relation for IU to the commission? Or is it something that
anyone there can apply for? It's appointed by the IU Office of Sustainability. So yeah, Quinton was.
of that role on behalf of the IU Office of Sustainability. So we'll reach out to them tomorrow just
to hopefully figure out. They just picked someone. It's from somebody on the staff in that office,
I think. Yeah. Because before it, it was his boss. Yeah, that's right. He was in that role. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and there's some mayoral vacancies, appointment vacancies as well. So if anybody knows
anyone who might be interested, invite them to go to onboard and apply. Mayoral three or mayoral or
any of the counseling. Yeah, three mayoral. And then the fourth is the IU Sustainability.
I was gone last month, so thank you for Zach for standing in and sharing that. What was that? Sorry,
I said, wow, that was just a month ago. It feels like three months ago. Not any reflection on that meeting
specifically, how much has happened in between. Speaking of things that have happened in between, everybody
got a copy of the new
like grant, working group grant processes that Sean and Julie sent out in the past month. So you might
also be aware with the old ones that we have, because it's been a little while since we've gone through
the process, and we've had some new folks on the commission since then. So basically, there's some funds
that are available to us through ESD every year.
In the past, we've sort of set those aside for what we call working group grants, and there was a process
by which a working group could apply for a specific project for some of those funds. There's a couple
changes to the procedures going forward starting from this year. It's, I think, a little more streamlined,
which is good. So something for folks to be thinking about are ways in which we might want to use this money.
For example, we've had Canopy Bloomington go and replace some trees that had died after being planted
at various spots around the city. And so that was a great use of those funds. We got some new trees
out of it all around town. So stuff like that. We don't really have a very organized working group sort
of thing anymore. But any group of commissioners could get together to sponsor a project.
Some of the key changes now are that you'll have to have a community partner of some sort. So that could
be a small business, a nonprofit, a school, neighborhood association, that sort of thing. And the idea
is that they would be the leads who are actually implementing the project. And let's see what else.
The funding levels are one of the new things. So $7,000 total for 2026. And by the way, if I get any
of this wrong,
feel free to jump in. 1,000 of which we can dedicate towards supplies. So that's a new thing. We've
already spent some for the Earth Day stuff this year. So I think 575 is what's remaining for the rest
of this year. So anything that you think the commission needs for those sorts of events or anything
like that, yeah.
The question I have is whether there is an existing list of needs or desires that would help guide where
to allocate funding, and if not, if it would make sense to create a repository of project ideas or things
that would benefit from having money spent on them. I think the answer to that is no and yes. Can I?
Yeah, please.
uh like outreach to different orgs last year trying to get some of this money out um so i can like put
together what who i've already talked to um a lot of them didn't pan out just because it was the timing
of it was such that they were like we can we don't have capacity to do this now but maybe start now
this was maybe like october september october of last year and then i corrected the
This is for calendar year 2026. This is $6,000. The funding has to be encumbered. Encumbered, is that
the right word? By December, before December business meeting, I think. It's in the actual deadlines,
but we have a year to actually complete the project. That's what the previous one was. I don't remember
if that's part of what's changed.
So say you reach out to the organization in November, you come up with your project idea. As long as
we have a really good proposal put together, we can get a grant agreement put together. It doesn't have
to be executed, but as long as we have that draft, we can cover the terms. OK. There's a list of community
partners, or can we just add any if they're not already on there? We don't have one. OK. Yeah, I mean,
yeah, so the document spells out what kind of
partners would be yeah the criteria for a partner but if they're not already kind of on file with the
city I think they have to fill out some paperwork to kind of become an approved vendor through the city
but if they're already on the list that makes it even easier yeah and then yeah I encourage everyone
to look through look through the document that's a few pages and
give you a pretty good idea of kind of what goes into it. And yeah, so maybe just ask if anyone has
any questions about that process. So in terms of what we could actually do with this stuff and how do
we brainstorm these things, maybe I'll transition into the next topic here, which is we talked about
doing a strategy planning session at some point or a retreat or something like this. We called it a
few things.
there might be a really good candidate for that. We're part of, you know, in addition to talking about
what do we wanna do as a commission in terms of things like resolutions or other work like that,
you know, is there a list of sort of initiatives that if we just had some money, we could make some
progress on, you know, let's build that list and prioritize it and maybe think about what kind of supplies
we need. We were gonna hold off on scheduling a planning session like that until we,
had an opportunity to go through the training, the city-wide training for the boards and commissions.
So that's passed. I think we could probably talk about getting something like that scheduled again.
I'm thinking that maybe September is an ideal time to target, just because, as we'll talk about a little
bit later, we're hoping for an extra meeting in August to do a joint session with the Environmental
Commission. So I don't want to overload August with a bunch of extra meetings.
So maybe September, we sort of talked before about doing, do we just do an extra two hour session or
something on an off week than we normally would meet? Or do we do like a weekend thing for a couple
hours? I think we're probably not going to be meeting at any one time for more than two hours or so,
just to kind of keep things focused and be respectful of everybody's time.
But whether we try to fit two of those in a month or maybe just one on a weekend or whatever, yeah,
we can try to nail down those details and get it scheduled. And come up with some goals for things that
we want to actually walk away from those sessions with, that sort of stuff. Yeah. One resource that
we might be able to look into for community partners is, for a list that's already generated, is
the Monroe County Public Library maintains a list of nonprofits, I think. It's not necessarily the most
up to date, but it would have a lot of, I'll see if I can find that resource, yeah. Nice. Yeah, and
speaking of the grants,
I'm sorry, I'm just looking up a message. So a couple years ago, I think now, we used to have another
set of funds that we could issue grants through called the Sustainable Neighborhoods Grant. And one
of the projects that we did there was to, I forget in which neighborhood it was, Covenanter, I think.
buy some of these bins that people could put things that you normally can't recycle into those bins
as like a community and then they get shipped out to a place where they can get properly recycled. The
company was called TerraCycle. And Matt Austin, it was
commissioner here until earlier this year, you know, reached out to me today and mentioned that the
Waste Reduction District of Monroe County is participating in a hefty pilot program through Rumpke that's
very similar to TerraCycle. And so you can basically buy these orange hefty bags at like online from
Target or Walmart or Amazon or whatever. And you can pick them up and then you can basically do that
same sort of program, ship them back and
send all sorts of kitchen waste that you normally can't recycle out. So that's kind of cool. Matt pointed
out that, hey, we did that first here in Bloomington. Now, maybe it's because of that trial, or maybe
it just happened. But hey, it's a wider sort of service that's kind of being trialed now. So something
exciting I just wanted to mention to everybody. Let's see. OK.
For resolutions, so we passed resolution 2026-05 last time about the anticoagulant rodenticides and
traps. And so that's been transmitted to, at least I think, a vast majority of the recipients.
There's maybe, yeah. All the city. Right. So I think there's still a few stragglers that we have to
send, but Zach and I have been kind of splitting that up and getting those out. Let's see.
Thinking back to resolution 2026-02, which was our automated license plate reader, you know, flock cameras
type stuff, no new announcements from our end, but just things that have developed since then, which
I'm sure most people have probably heard of, that the mayor had announced in April that the city is
going to transition away from flock, but there wasn't a timeline specified. I think, as far as I can
tell, the LPRs are still installed around town.
If we're interested, we might consider sending a letter to the office of the mayor or something where
we ask for an update on that transition timeline and process. That's something we could pass at the
next meeting or something if people are interested in that. Resolution 2026-03, which was the Kirkwood
pedestrianization, just an update on that. Coordinates 2026-12 pass the council.
before they went on recess. And that one was, so that would have reestablished the closing of Kirkwood
during the summer months. And then that was vetoed by the mayor. And so the council, if they want to
override that veto, would have to do so at their next meeting, which would be when they come back from
their summer recess. So just wanted to provide those as sort of news updates on things that we've passed
recently. Internal updates, so strategic planning retreat. I think I've mentioned before that all
you know, send out a Google thing to try to help schedule that. I haven't done that yet, but I will
do that. And we'll try to get something on the books for September. One other thing that I think would
be a good topic of discussion for one of those sessions would be looking at bylaws rewrite, something
we sort of talked about
a little bit in passing before. I know Zach's kind of taking a look at that. He's got some ideas of
changes that could be made, but there's some things that just need to be changed, like old references
to parts of the code that no longer exist, because they've been moved to other parts of the code. There's
a couple typos and things like that in there, and things that would make life just a little bit easier,
like not being so strict on exactly how the agenda format needs to look, so that we can kind of change things
around ahead of time. But then we can talk a little bit more about what sort of procedures and stuff
that we have in place that are working well for us, which things are causing friction that we might
want to think about doing things a little bit differently. And we can have some of those discussions,
try to put that all together into one big package. Can I ask a question about the letter that you brought up? Yeah.
if we wanted to write a letter as a commission, does it follow the same process as a resolution
business-wise? Is it effectively a resolution or is it a different? You could read it in different ways.
My reading on it would be that it's not because it's not really formally stating an opinion
of the commission, but just asking questions. I would read it as it's not, we could pass it in one meeting.
But we never really strictly define anywhere what exactly a resolution is. So it could be argued away,
probably. So if anyone feels strongly about that. For the capstone project, I wrote a memo and we passed
on a meeting. Yeah, that's a good point. You can do that, you just need to vote on it. Not you need
to vote on it twice, not you need to write. So if our bios are neutral, we can just follow the city guidance.
I would thank you for something like that, especially for requesting additional information. The longer
it took us to write the letter, that information might come out and then it may become irrelevant. Yeah,
yeah, it makes it hard to write. Yeah. So things like that on a more time-sensitive. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, good question, though. And then just something just on the back burner is the chicken flock size
ordinance, which came out of a resolution we passed last year. So Zach drafted up some specific UDO and BMC
changes that would support that resolution. I think we're mostly just waiting on a sort of more opportune
time to engage with council and try to kind of get that on their radar, which might be coming up soon
once they're back from recess. And I think they've got, I think they have a permanent, I think a permanent
council council now, right? Or maybe. They're still hiring one that they have. Oh, they are, okay. Temporary
one. Ah, okay. Experience, yeah. Okay, gotcha. Either way, yeah.
We'll probably just look to Councilman Barallo for guidance on when is a good time to kind of bring
that forward. But just want to keep it on people's radar. A couple external updates. IU is doing their
Economic Development Summit that they do every year. It's on August 3rd this year at the Alumni Hall
in IMU. I don't think they have an agenda yet, but I
Right before this meeting, I typed up some chair report notes, so I'll send this around to everybody.
There's a link on there if you're interested. I think that's mostly it from the chair's report. I mentioned
the joint session that we're hoping to do with the EC in August. We're talking about that resolution
today, so we'll maybe kind of hold off on that for the moment, but I think
There's the logistic challenge of just getting two commissions in the same place at the same time. And
then there's not quite a challenge, but just some logistical planning that needs to be done in terms
of how does that actually go. And I think we have a pretty decent, you know, Zach and I talked about
this a little bit. I think we have a pretty decent idea of like how that would actually flow. You know,
both sides has to notice the meeting, of course. And each commission is subject to their own independent
forum. That's right. Exactly.
Each side, once they were there, and we called to order, there would be one chair, either myself or
the chair of the EC, and calls the meeting to order. And then both sides takes their attendance, establishes
quorum. And then when we do votes, it's the same sort of thing. One side goes first, then the other
side goes. Essentially just two meetings happening simultaneously at the same time. Yeah, just coordinated
meetings. Less complicated than it sounds. You just. Like there on one side and there on the other.
Not even necessarily. The main thing is you have to keep track of each commission's votes independently.
Yeah. Everything else is like a regular meeting. If we were going to pass something, we wouldn't need
a majority of the people in the room. We need a majority of the EC members and a majority of the PCOS
members. Yeah. That's the main logistical challenge. Everything else is just people in a room, like
we normally are in a meeting. Yeah. But it should be fun. Hopefully, yeah. Yeah. And so I'll send an
email to you guys tomorrow because we're targeting April
Sorry, August 18th. August 18th is what we're targeting. Council chambers is the obvious choice for
that because it's a big space. I didn't see any meetings on the public calendar at the moment, so fingers
crossed that the space is available, but I'll touch base with you guys and we can chat.
the EC talked about it, and I think that most of them are available on that date. Yeah, and that's the
main reason we're going with August 18th, because that's when they're available, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
So if people want to check their calendars at some point before we leave today, and you could let me
know if that date works for you, that would be helpful. It does work for council chambers. Awesome.
Cool. OK. Very, very good. There's one for at least one of you, too? Yeah. OK. OK, cool. Yeah, do we have to?
staff liaison from each commission or just one? I think technically, but I'll let you guys see for yourself.
I'll review things for sure with the clerk's office just to make sure. Okay. Perfect. I think that's
the end of my report. Sorry, there's a little scatter brain that just put it together. That's okay.
That's very good.
Thank you. Any questions for me? Okey-dokey. Oh yeah. First, tell me if this is more appropriate to
discuss later, but in terms of a retreat, have you discussed sort of the nature of that? When that term
is used, I think of something that is sort of
That plus wanting to spend money on it suggests sort of like other place where we all go and sort of
engage. And as I remember, there were issues with quorum and open door laws. Have those issues been
sort of clarified or is it still a kind of question of how we would gather together without violating
open door laws? Yeah, I think as long as we have a quorum, you know, for the full body and we publicly
notice it appropriately then.
We should be fine. I think, you know, retreat is maybe not quite the best word for it anymore. I'm excited.
I think it's like wine coolers when I hear that. Yeah, that probably won't happen. No zip lining.
Happy ones. That's right. It's the last structured planning session. Yeah. So it's subject to the...
Yeah, workshop maybe. Yeah, exactly. No campfires. Yeah, I know, yeah. That would be nice, but yeah,
it's, you know, tough to get all those ducks in a row.
In terms of where we would have it, I think it would be nice to get out of the building a little bit.
One place I've thought about is I've got a membership to the mill, so we could reserve the space there.
They've got a pretty large conference room. We'd still be in a conference room, I guess, in that case.
Different conference. Yeah, it would be a couple of minutes walk that way instead of right here. That
was special. If anyone has any other ideas of wherever we go, it just has to be publicly available and
accessible. In city limits, yeah.
If you go to the southeast branch of the library. I think there are interesting opportunities there
then, because I think there are some locations within the city that are maybe owned by the parks department
that might be of interest. The mill is a possibility. You will understand my hesitations around the
mill in some regard. I wouldn't rule it out though, and I am interested in, I think it's gray, go somewhere else.
Good thing to look into. Yeah, if anyone has ideas of places, definitely would be open to consider.
I'll put it on the Google form. You know, the parks department property is, even if another department
is borrowing it, they still charge our department a fee to use it because they have to staff it. The
parks department staffs it. So yeah, so it would be free to do that, unfortunately.
But that is, like, the idea is we would earmark some of the budget toward that purpose of, like, facilities
rental for this meeting, if I understood you correctly earlier. Yeah, would that be an appropriate use
of the supplies fund if we decided to go somewhere where we had to pay some money? Like, a strategic
meeting feels like a non-controversial way to apply that money. Is it, like, very expensive?
Or is it? Probably not. I think like less than $100. OK. So we're not, like, in the house. Nothing easy.
Yeah. OK. Yeah. We're going to blow the whole rest of the budget. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it used
to be, like, shelter houses or parks before. That's very reasonable. Sometimes, I didn't know if they,
like, give a discount. Yeah. I just didn't know the order. The public rate is reasonable. I imagine
if there's a discount city rate, it's more reasonable. Yeah. Right.
And we've used library spaces before, the downtown branch. But with the cut to library hours, it's a
lot harder. Those spaces are, there's just fewer of them. Especially the larger. But that's outside
of city limits. What? The Southwest branch is outside of city limits. I think we could be on the library.
I know this because I reached out to the library about doing one of those working group grants for some
native plantings. And where they really need the money is the Southwest branch. But it's outside of
city limits.
I'll keep air conditioning and public access and accessibility in mind, and I'll see if I can find anywhere
that's good. That's possible. Excellent. Awesome. Any other questions? Not a question, just a comment.
I think the mill is a good option. However, the door's locked at 5.30. Yeah. Yeah, it's not technically
open to the public either. Right. I'd have to check with people here about how that would work. Yeah.
Maybe not an option, but. Look, I'll switch here. Oh. It's fun. Yeah. The pavilion echoes so much.
That's it. It's so hard to hear in there. It could be in the band show. It'll be sweet. It'll be September.
It'll be like only like eight years old, right? It's a cool party. That's the fun part. We'll go to
Burn Park. Yeah, there we go.
Well, yeah, give it some thought. And if you come up with clever ideas, shoot an email or something.
Yeah. I think that this is also a really good indication that there are not enough indoor third spaces
in our community. Maybe that's something that our commission could push from there. There you go. So
now we've got a topic of discussion as well. Excellent. OK, anything else? Comments or questions?
Okay, well, we would normally go to a report from council, but Councilmember Morales is not here. Does
anyone have anything interesting that they've seen going on at council during this recess that they
want to mention to people? Does anything go on during recess? I think there's been a handful of hiring
committee meetings or something. That's about it. There is a draft ALPR ordinance that's been circulating.
It's not public yet, but they are moving on something that potentially completely banned
ALPR is in the city, so that's good. How long is the recess? When do they come back? The end of the
month. Getting close. No, the end of the month. The end of the month. 22nd. Oh, so next week. Next Wednesday.
Maybe of limited relevance, not connected to that, but you just reminded me, as of today, New York has
imposed the first nationwide moratorium on data centers for an entire state. Yeah. Very proud.
Yeah, that's good. Exciting news, precedent set, so worth keeping an eye on. Indianapolis just did a
temporary moratorium as well. They've had a ton of them there, so anyway. I happen to be, as part of
my work with you, I happen to be reviewing the ordinances, municipal ordinances across the state for
Language related to best battery energy storage systems. I think I'm going to be reviewing solar arrays
coming up. And so I'm not too deep in it yet, but it did make me think of this group, because Indiana
doesn't really have, to my knowledge, or at least on this report, this analysis that I'm reading doesn't
have any language around.
or ordinance language related to technology. So it might be something worth exploring because we have
not too far away a data center coming in. So to think long and hard about what we would want our community
to, what rules we should have in place if we think they're coming. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, we'll move on to discussions, not the subject of resolution. So update on Kirkwood. I'll pass
it over to you Zach. Yeah. Ross present. Hello. Hello. Okay, yeah. So on Kirkwood, I mean, basically
just jumping on what you said, the mayor vetoed. So there was an ordinance passed that would have reinstated
the car-free Kirkwood program as our resolution kind of asked for.
The mayor passed 5-4. The mayor vetoed it in order for it to be overridden by the council. They need
six members to vote for it. It's not impossible. So if you feel so inclined, I would encourage everybody
to maybe write to the council members that voted no. There's some cases that you could make about why
that's a good thing. If you want to talk more about that, you can talk to me about it after this. I've
got some ideas on that.
kind of a group of us trying to encourage the council members to override the veto. But yeah, so that's
the main thing I just wanted to say. Like you mentioned, the mayor vetoed it, and we'll see what happens
next. Yeah. So the veto would have to take place, like you mentioned, at their July 22 meeting. So that's
all I had to say. Yeah. Nice. Thank you. I realize the next item here is commission priority finding
meeting. I think I already kind of went over that. Yes.
All right. Resolutions for first reading, 2026-06, minimizing light pollution and attaining dark sky
certification for Bloomington. So Zach, back to you. Yeah. So typically, we'll first read if you don't
do a long discussion. But considering this is a fairly complex one, we thought maybe it might be a good
idea to just kind of walk through briefly what it would do. So all of you have a package that I printed
off as a memorandum in there. If you didn't have time to read the whole thing, that's fine. But please
read it before our next meeting. That would be great.
Basically, what this resolution would do is it makes a whole bunch of changes to the UDO, so our zoning
code, to strengthen light pollution laws. I'll just briefly walk through some of that. I didn't prepare
anything in particular, but I'm just going to briefly walk through some of the main changes it would
do. It would change color temperature standards on public lights. If you look on page three, there is
a diagram of lighting temperatures measured in Kelvin. It would require all city lights to be at the
3,000 Kelvin.
which is that line right here, which the American Medical Association and a bunch of environmental
organizations have said is you don't want anything higher than that, that's bad for things like bats
and birds migrating and things like that, and also bad for human health. A lot of the lights that have
been put in place on public lamps and things in recent years have been in the 4,000 to 5,000, 6,000 range.
Yeah, I just put one literally next to, I'm on a corner by Brian Carter, and it is like day. Yeah, they're
awful. Yeah, I agree. And you can tell what they've been put in place. So on that point, piggybacking
on that, this chart down here shows 311 complaints to the city about bright, glaring, annoying streetlights.
Sometime in 2022, the city started changing. It's from the old sodium lights that are like the old style.
In the decade prior to that,
they got, on average, about 11 complaints about bright or glaring streetlights a year. If you look at
2022 and thereafter, and keeping in mind, 2026 is just through April. They've shot up to 100 a year
around that every single year. So they're extremely unpopular. People hate them, the newer, bright,
really glaring streetlights. So this would be popular with people, I think. But this chart alone,
I think, shows that. People really hate the really bright glaring lights because they're awful.
So that's one of the things it would do. It also, hold on, let me go back to my list. So I'm on page
two, I'm gonna read through the main things it does. Number two is an amortization schedule for non-compliant
fixtures. Basically what that means is it requires the city to change all of its lights that don't comply
with the regulation as written within 10 years. That's probably gonna be the hardest sell. The goal
of this is to get us to get dark sky status.
So I basically just took what the Dark Sky organization's rules are and wrote them into, and that is
one of the rules. So that will probably be one of the harder sells because you'll have to, that will
have a cost associated with it replacing all the streetlights. Dark Sky International though, just as
a point on that, is flexible with cities. If you can't, like there was a city, I think Breckenridge,
Colorado was recognized as a dark sky city, but couldn't quite make the 10 year thing.
but they were making good faith progress towards it, so they gave them a couple year extension. So they're
not like a super hardcore stickler on it. As long as you're making good faith effort to get towards
the goal, they're not gonna rescind your status. So that's probably the hardest sell, and I will admit
that. It also will restrict exterior uplighting, so lights shooting up straight in the air. There's
a very narrow exception for, it's already existing in the code for flags,
I would get rid of that for me, but politically that's a very, you can't say, they're trying to take
away my flag at the sound. Anyway, so I left that and I also left one for historical, like historic
buildings, but you have to have a lighting plant of some sort in place. Probably the strongest thing
is number four, which is, this comes from Dark Star International, would require all public lighting
to have a strict,
a really strong reason for it to be there. You couldn't just say, safety. And you have to say something
specific to that site that requires a light. That's another one. And on top of that, I added, which
goes beyond dark sky, a suggested thing that says, near environmentally sensitive areas, so wetlands,
creeks, and things like that, it would be even stronger. And basically, you would have to prove that
lighting is the only thing that can solve the problem, and that nothing else can solve it. And even
if you can put in a light, it would have to be the lowest
luminous brightness and the lowest color temperature possible for that thing. Number five is an extension
of the light curfew. So currently in the code, there's a curfew on lighting that is 11 p.m. for a couple
of categories. I would make it 10 p.m. for all categories, so they're extended all the way to a whole
bunch of different categories that aren't covered at all by light curfew, and move it up to 10 p.m. from 11 p.
m.
Finally, the last two illuminated signs would have stronger rules, which I just took directly out of
the Dark Sky rules. And seven is strengthening rules of light trespass, so that is lights going off
of your property into someone else's property. There's a lot more detail to it. I encourage you to read
through the resolution before our next meeting and read through this as well. For your help, starting
on page five, the part two, is the entire code
that I'm suggesting changing with the actual changes suggested in the code. The deletions are in red
and the additions are in yellow. That would be what we would be suggesting to the council. And based
on feedback that we've gotten, it seems like they want more specific wordings. That's what I did. So
this is something they could theoretically just copy and paste directly in the code if they wanted to.
They could obviously tweak it as they see fit. But the idea here is to really get this into code, ideally.
And I have spoken with a couple of council members already who seem very, very interested in this. Now,
whether that actually means it will get passed, I have no idea. Whether that actually means we're going
to get any of this in, I have no idea. But several members have expressed strong interest so far. So
that's where I will leave it for now. Do you have any questions? And this is a logistic question. My
understanding is because we're doing this, the EC is considering this resolution
like exactly this week the identical resolution meeting on Thursday yeah and we worked with them as
you can see on the rose illusion co-sponsor list I was the main author but I had quite a bit of help
from Alex Justin on three members of the EC as well we all got together and worked on this and went
through several drafts yeah any other questions or comments it's very complicated I understand like
it's a lot of
my technical jargon on lighting and stuff. A lot of that comes directly from dark sky. I will say the
goal here is to get dark sky community status. That is the goal. My actual goal, that's the goal for
the city. My actual goal is to reduce light pollution. And I don't really care whether we get dark skies
or not. That'd be nice. That's like a cherry on top. This is one area where, and there's a lot of areas
where this is not the case, but this is one area that is rare where incremental, even little bits of
progress make a big difference here.
So even if we don't get all the way, even if we only get 50%, 75% of the way there, that's still a meaningful
reduction in light pollution. I think we have a human right to be able to see the night sky. And that's
being denied to most people who live in cities today. And I think that's not needed. So yeah. We're
right in that big, big migratory corridor, too, for a lot of migratory areas. Absolutely. And this came
up in our neighborhood, because we actually wanted an additional light.
because we had no sidewalks. And there was a corner that was terrifying because it was a blind corner.
And then the light that they put in was like, this is just day to them. We just wanted to not get hit
by cars. But it came up on our neighborhood that we were like, well, we want ones that don't mess with
the ability to see. Because they have the capped ones. Yeah, that would be another thing this would
do. It would fully define exactly how they have to be covered. And the covers wouldn't be that crazy
to install even on existing lights.
And because of right now, it just kind of vaguely defines it in the code, just with fully defining it
and not allowing any uplining at all. Or it has to come down, basically. Do you know how any of this
would be enforced with IU? And I say this as a resident who lives on the north side who is frequently
bothered by light pollution coming from the stadium. I'm curious how that falls into the... We can't
force IU to do anything. Of course.
that would be a big question mark on what's getting dark sky status. Because I've talked, and Alex has
as well with me, talked to the dark sky people, because I had a call with them just to go over this.
And they were very curious about how that would work out. It's a shame it's a meeting where we don't
have our IU representative with us. Because that would be my big question. Because I know that, at least
for me, that's the single biggest contributor to light pollution in my area. You could quite literally
see it from my backyard. Absolutely. And it's pretty glaring and obvious.
That'll be one of the biggest roadblocks, so that's for sure. It'd be interesting to see how other college
towns have partnered with their universities. It strikes me that if this were carefully presented, there
is a really good opportunity for political inclusiveness here. I think it's very easy to make a pitch
that is broadly appealing to most people with the exclusion of the kinds of holdouts that I could imagine
would be private property owners who want to do whatever they want with their lights.
that is something I think you need to be more. There's a needle to thread there. But I think at the
same time, I can imagine it's easy to go in the opposite direction where I think I share exactly your
goals and for probably identical reasons. My concern would be that if we were to phrase things in the
way that I think actually reflect our motivations, it would be easy to alienate people.
To your point, this does not very little to private property. But I guess what I'm saying is I think
this is a great idea. I think it's very easy to present this as practical, both in terms of overall
human environment and ecological purposes. I think it's a mechanical change that's relatively simple.
It really requires will and money. The longer-term strategy is I'm thinking about this in relation to
something like IU, which is that weird carve out
like literally the whole quadrant of the city, is that if you were to actually start making progress
on this, it would require a longer-term strategy, but you could exert pressure through success and evidence
of mitigation and improvement in the city that might leverage IU into making changes down the road.
I'll probably be more willing to follow than lead in this situation, especially
current admin but like yeah I think it's I think it's very doable personally. First comment thank you
very much for providing all of the information and the expert that's that was very helpful I really
appreciate that. Second comment I fully intend to vote to pass this to a second reading because I do
believe it's within the purview of our commission and
I think in order for me to vote to pass it at the second reading and for it to have a chance of the
city council actually considering passing a version of it, there are some changes I would want to see. OK.
or perhaps some more information I would want. So some of these recommendations to the UDO changes that
mention they exceed the dark sky community requirements. I would be interested in knowing, so why do
they exceed that minimum set? And who came up with that metric? And why did you decide to go farther?
To me, I think it's good to go farther when you can. And I saw areas where we could. But my concern
is that by going farther than what is just required, it might be pushing too far where it'll just be
completely taken off the table. I haven't read this, but I do need to spend more time with it. But that's
just one initial consideration. A couple other things.
I'm curious about, so I'm very interested in seeing that Flagstaff has attained the certification. And
I'm wondering, so the requirement of illuminated signs being turned off an hour after sunset, I don't
see that being popular or council wanting to vote for that. And I'm wondering, does Flagstaff really
turn off all of their signs? I think so. And ma'am, we're talking.
Primarily, like billboards. Billboards, yeah. That's what we're talking, not... Billboards, not...
You know, there are many other signs. Big sections for, like, roads, security, signs that are needed
for safety and security. But, like, signs on Kirkwood, like, for businesses that have neon there. I'm
not sure I'd have to look into that. It's primarily billboards that they're talking about, though. Because
I don't think those would violate... I think what we're talking about, you know, you've got the big
upward shining lights on those billboards, whereas if you've got, like, you know, yeah, you've just
got letters that are illuminated, I don't think that would... Okay.
OK, good. Well, then, yeah, I would need to know more about what the illuminated signs is. And also,
yeah, if all the cities that actually have this certification, do they actually meet all these requirements?
Which of them have received variances? One other thing, and I hate to say this because I love it and
I think it's lovely, but the first whereas clause, I would probably move to strike that.
Because I think the data-driven arguments in the following clauses are so strong, like the you report
complaints. And this, again, is a lovely paragraph. But I wonder if it might undermine the following
arguments for people who are already maybe
not looking to support it, if they might just roll their eyes. So those are just some things that I'll
look into more, and I would like to talk about more before voting to pass this. But I will certainly
pass it for a second reading. OK. Hi, Alex. So since I helped work on some comments to some of those
things, first,
that first wear-as-clothes used to be three wear-as-clothes in the first draft. So this is the paired
back first, if that helps. And it was beautiful prose, but we had a similar feeling of like, this might
be too much. And so I will say having talked to some other people about it, they were very engaged in like,
the humanity of the rights and the spiritual aspect of it. So I do think that that clause does speak
to people. But personally, I'm a data-driven person. So I read it, and I was like, I recognize that
this is beautiful, but it doesn't speak to me. So I have a very similar take, but I know that it does
speak to. It will speak to others, but I'm just dumb, me, and maybe not you.
The Dark Skies is changing their certification process. So one of the reasons to do this now is that
potentially gaining Dark Skies certification could be a reason that would help get it past that people
would be interested. I know cities sometimes like being bicycle friendly USA and all of these things.
So we need to get this moving. If we don't get it moving, the new Dark Skies certification is going
to be performance based.
where they will actually measure how much darker it is. And between the presence of IU and our proximity
to Indianapolis, they just flat out told us that it would probably be impossible for us to get full
certification. But they did say, just to be clear, that if we show good faith effort on these current
status, we can get it if we are moving within the next year or so, approximately. Yeah. But that also
is potentially kind of a reason why where we can to
go a little farther, because we already can't get to be a dark city from a performance-based standpoint.
So if there is a place where we can go a little farther, I think that there is some rationale to do
it. And we should weigh benefits and costs of going farther, but I was generally supportive of that,
to the idea that it being
kind of uncontentious, I actually expect there to be pushback on the idea of safety. In this process,
Zach primarily, but I mean, I did too. We looked at trying to find evidence that lighter equals safer,
and there isn't really much. But,
people think that there is. I can tell you, I came to IU in 2006 as an undergrad and campus is much,
much brighter and they, you know, during my undergraduate years, they had a very concerted effort to,
you know, light up the dumb worlds because it was deemed to be an unsafe location when how dark it was.
And the lighting on campus has grown considerably
in the name of safety. And I think that there will be pushback in the name of safety. Much of that,
I think, will not be. I don't think that, in general, the pushback against decreasing lighting in the
name of safety is data-driven, that removing this lighting makes things less safe. There are exceptions,
obviously, but people will
feel very passionately that lighting in places, the lighting on your street corner, that it makes people
feel very passionately that, oh, you want to take away the lighting. People are going to start breaking
into businesses. I don't know. I expect there to be some level of pushback on that front. I think that's
exactly right, personally. The reason I emphasize the idea
property owners, because that's an intransigent sort of position that has basically only a
sort of principle-based counter-argument, where there's no sort of way to make an argument rooted in
other kinds of arsenals. And I think with the safety argument, it is absolutely available to kind of,
A, I think you're correct in terms of my understanding is that
Light versus no light does matter, but the form and sort of shape and expression of the light are absolutely
manipulable in a way that can preserve both of those concerns. I think that to your point, you arrived
on campus at a time also when LEDs were becoming available, cheaper and different nature of lighting
being installed.
I guess I just think that kind of an argument, I think you're right, it will be the number one pushback.
But I also think it's open to really robust kinds of argument that are not against it, but that can
demonstrate it's possible to preserve both concerns. That's not the right way to put that.
And I think it's about doing that carefully and effectively. That's what I've meant by that. I think
it was on Dark Sky's website that there was a picture that we found in this process where they show
a garage with a bright light shining from the garage out, and they show a person standing behind the
light, and they're completely invisible, and then they turn the light off. And there's a person that
just appears. Yes, it does. Yeah, I mean, you need to be smart about how you light things for the purpose
of safety.
Sorry. Two things that, well, one thing that I would like to know more about is in this 311 data, was
there an overall increase in all 311 calls or you report tickets that would potentially explain this?
Not to the scale. OK. Not to the scale. I think it's worth mentioning in some
capacity that this is independent of just more people being aware of this resource and utilizing it.
Yeah, because we're talking about the timetiming. Yeah. And I think on the safety thing, I'm not sure
how this would work into the resolution. I think this more works into the way that we talk about it
in session or in any kind of outreach to council or anybody else about this, is that there is data,
pedestrian safety data for young children.
It's part of why our schools start so late is because when kids are waiting for the bus, when it's darker,
there are more instances of people hitting children with their cars. Now, the solution to that is not
pollute the skies with lights. It's people to not drive dangerously in general, but especially around
children. And like I said, in my neighborhood, it was literally that it was a terrifying corner to walk
on, because people would just whip around the corner.
and it was dark, and you would either be like a deer or someone and their dog. And you're like, maybe
tonight I die. So I think making it clear that this is not about like, no, we're not saying no street
lights so that you stand in the dark waiting for the bus, but that those lights do not need
to be illuminating the heavens in order for somebody to not hit you with their car. Because there is
data around that, and that does drive local policy decisions around like,
when our elementary schools start because we should actually be on the central time zone and we're not.
To be clear, this is not, I know you guys know this, but for the record, this is not about eliminating
all street lights. It's about being smarter about where we place them and not having them,
like you said, illuminate the heavens as well as pointing the light downward instead of everywhere.
and changing the color temperature. Yeah. I don't think that it necessarily changes the context of the
resolution itself, but just how we communicate it, whatever we communicate to Castle or other bodies
in trying to drum up support for it if it passes. Legislators are the people who are the most excited
about, quote unquote, data-driven language. People who are not in that population are much more interested
in felt experiences of reality.
For them, you can turn a light on and have it turned off, and they'll be like, I like this other one
better. So I think it's very important. Again, that's what I meant with my initial comment about messaging
and not starting in the wrong place and not being like, well, look, you don't know what you're talking
about because the data shows that you're actually, people are like, no, and I hate you now. So that's
the kind of thing. That's like creating defensiveness. Yes.
If there's one thing in my entire history as an educator and as a member of my family that you want
to avoid, it's getting people's hatles up. I think introducing this carefully around exactly this, because
people will go buck wild if you challenge their sense of safety of their children in particular, as
you're pointing out.
You'll just shoot yourself in the foot instantly if you were to do that. I think there are probably
ways to express this in terms of strengthening safety and strengthening other things because I think
that's actually true. It's not like a marketing approach, it's more about ensuring that whatever ethos
it is that you and I might have in terms of right to the next guy and concern about other species,
there are also these other things that are there. Well, driving down a dark street and then suddenly
there's a 5,000 lumens light is also not very, it's a disconcerting experience. And I mean, like, I
think that this image that you put in here is incredibly compelling because even though this is a photograph,
I am having a visceral reaction. I know, I made them too, right? I'm like, oh God, these are the lights
that make me
And that is a life-friendly thing. They literally trigger migraines for me, but that I'm like, make
my teachers. People associate those with environmentalism, though, also. The super bright ones? Yes.
Because those were installed for environmental efficiency, people associate these really negative things
with environmental and ecological initiatives, partly because of canny strategy of opponents to those things.
Yes, I actually think there's a there's a win-win. I'm so sorry to use that language, but like here
in exactly what you're pointing out. It's actually it's why I think this is such a strong idea. Yeah.
Yeah. This graphic like I would I think go so far. Yeah. We want these.
It's not on the purview of this, but it makes me think of cars that have those LED lights that are genuinely
dangerous when you're driving, particularly if they're right behind you because you can't see anything
in front of you. Personally, I have a similarly very strong reaction to those because, again, I'm very
light sensitive and it makes it hard for me to drive at night. Those are the arguments that really pull
people in, I think. Because I think a lot of people have those kinds of
of experiences with this type of thing. We're not going to take weird street light. We're going to make
it not feel like it's weird. We want to make it more pleasant. Yeah. I genuinely think if it's presented
well, this will be extremely popular, the main components of this. But I do think that, back to what
you're saying, it doesn't matter what the data show. If you feel unsafe walking through Dunn Meadow,
and there's all kinds of Dunn Meadow, Dunn Woods, you're not going to care what the
what the technical situation is going on out there. So I think it's just this, I think the challenge
is gonna be the language that we use because this is about how people, this is about people's feelings
around safety. And so it doesn't matter, you can tell them all day long that you are actually safer
because we're using this particular lower level light. So I, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, but it's also an opportunity. I mean, not that resolutions are meant to be tools, but we're going
to have to educate a lot of education about, no, it's not less safe. It's OK. An angle of this that
we have not discussed this evening that resonates with me, too, is that also if we are using lower wattage
lighting and removing excessive lighting things, we reduce energy consumption.
Yes, as well. So at a time when city budgets are particularly limited, we can kind of have that long-term
view of it would reduce operating constants. I think there was also a, one of you might have to remind
me of the exact details of this, but there was some benefit related to the length of the pollen season.
Yes. Doing this would actually reduce how much people suffer from pollen allergies. It's a weird connection
you wouldn't expect, but that's when we talk about how we sell it. Artificial light tonight significantly
extends the duration of the pollen. It's not like a small ink. It was a study that came out this year
thanks to, I think, Alex sent it to me, or Matt from the EC sent it to me. There was a dramatic increase
in the pollen season because of artificial lighting, way more than they expected.
Again, I think like this image is like, that is something that people will be like, to breathe. And
one thing I want to point out for staff is that we can lead the application process. The commission
can, according to Dark Sky. So it's not something necessarily that staff would have to do. We can do
that ourselves. And that's also for the commission as well to know, a good thing to know. What was the
other? Oh, on your energy thing that you were talking about,
The dark sky told us during our meeting, this is anecdotal, but Jacksonville, Wyoming airport got certified,
what was it, an airport could get certified as a dark sky airport, but again, but they said that when
they converted over to dark sky lighting, their energy use for lighting decreased 30%. I mean, it's
just for lighting, that's not all energy, but still, that's a substantial decrease in energy costs over
time. So even though it might have some costs initially upfront to change lighting to conform to code,
So the new code, if this ever gets passed long term, the savings would be substantial. So. It's also
extra impressive considering that airports are meant to be these giant beacons of light so that the
pilots can see it from miles away. That's impressive. Yeah. Did you have? Yeah. So there's a lot more
we could go into, but yeah, that's legit. I have one question. So for the light trespass, do you know
like this is obviously I would think a it's driven by like citizen complaint if it's currently happening
and so if there was like an increase in the restrictiveness do you know like how many complaints the
city's currently getting on like yeah I have to look into that or like how much staff potentially could yeah
you know, increase costs, if that was like. For sure. I mean, I could look into that. The main thing
that would do with that is for future development. I mean, there is, things would have to comply with
the amortization requirements. So things would have to comply within 10 years. That's primarily for
public streetlights, though.
the amortization requirement. This is all lighting fixtures. So on private property, there's not an
amortization requirement. So it would be, primarily for new developments, we'd have to comply with this,
is the main thing. So they would, when you go through the planning commission or whatever you have to-
So it would be during the planning process? Yes. It's not like there would be on the back end a lot
of potential staff- I don't think there would be a lot. I mean, technically, you might be able to file
a complaint or something like that. I mean, I think you can now, because there are light trespass rules
now. These are just stronger ones.
So I don't anticipate a substantial increase in that, because we're just slightly changing the rules.
It would be more newer developments. Yeah. I can't find it now, but one thing that I thought was really
cool, in my head, I pictured it being creating a corridor of dark skies. And I assume that meant across
the nation. And so I was like, that's a really neat concept. And I don't think that's going to be
But it's a really neat piece to consider in the overall goal. Yeah, so the idea was that IU,
number one, we have an astronomy department here with the Kirkwood Observatory. And we're surrounded
by state forests and state parks that are relatively dark. We could become, if we do this right, play
this right, we could become an astrotourism destination, theoretically. That's one angle that I was
trying to push.
And I mean, as a sort of community partners or people to tap into, I have learned about this from birders,
people that travel up and down that Northwest corridor in the migration times to go see particular birds.
That's how I've learned about turn off your outside lights during this period of time and things like
that. So that's an impassioned.
group of people that know a lot about this, that are a potential partner. If there are communities in
the city that are engaged in that hobby. Yeah. We have a lab on IU's campus, the Kettersen Lab, that's
an expert in bird strikes. And lighting, in particular, is what causes bird strikes during margarita.
Birds hitting buildings. So lighting at night is what they signed off. They wrote a letter in support
of the rodenticide thing. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I'll look on their side in front of them.
Yeah, I think she would. And just worth mentioning, I did talk to the IU astronomy department. They
were like super on board, so I'm hoping they'll be writing a letter. For obvious reasons, it would help
them recruit. And also because there's a thing in here suggesting, because you require a monitoring
program to monitor whether or not you're having an effect. So I suggested to them, would you be interested
if they were very much on board about having maybe a student project to monitor lighting?
long-term. So I did float that with them because of the resource that we have in towns. We might as
well use them. They didn't obviously confirm, but they said they would be interested. So that's worth
mentioning. I could add one positive project that we're working on here. So ESD is providing funding
to Parks and Rec to install a wildlife-friendly solar light aggregator. Oh, that's awesome. And by a
manufacturer called Stepco. OK. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Can you send me your phone number? I appreciate
it. Thank you.
I suppose I have one question, and I wonder if anyone here can speak to this. The motivation for this
question is entirely anecdotal, so maybe someone knows more about this than me. But the more I think
about it, the more concern I have that, as I understand it, this would apply to everyone, commercial,
municipal, and residential property owner, ordinary type person. That's the way it would be put into
effect is,
I own my house, I own my yard, I go to Home Depot, buy this light, install it, and then I get a bill
or a warning from the city, that kind of a thing? No. Okay. To a certain extent, like on light trespass,
I think that might be the main thing. Everything else, it does not apply to single-family residential,
for the most part. If I'm recalling correctly, it's been a while since I wrote everything, but I don't
think it applies to single-family. I intentionally avoided targeting single-family residential being
multi-family. That's what my question is.
I think some of the light trespass rules would apply, and there's also a general limit on the amount
of lumens per acre, but it's so high that it wouldn't, unless someone's shooting a spotlight in the
air, it wouldn't impact it. Okay, because that's the American sort of Rage Against the Machine principle
of I'll do whatever I want, I think is the source of a lot of revenge effects for ostensibly well-intentioned
things that actually make people be like, I don't want some faceless city
representative coming to my house and, you know, shaking their finger at me for putting a light in a
way that I want on my property. This is the United States. I should be able to do what I want. I think
people don't tend to do that unless they're being challenged. And then they're like, I'll do whatever.
And then they react that way. Yeah, in particular. This is like very anecdotal, but I also think that
there is, I appreciate that it doesn't focus on residential. I think because it's proportionally, what
they're doing is relatively small. But also, I started looking into the ticket data on snow removal
tickets. And again, anecdotally, I have intentions of doing proper analysis when things are quiet in my life.
noticed a pattern that is not, I cannot confirm, but a pattern of residential homes being ticketed and
developments and commercial properties getting a warning. And so I think that if we included residential,
the way that it would potentially play out in enforcement is that the enforcement would disproportionately
fall on the smallest contributors to the problem.
That's a larger issue in how these things play out in code. But hopefully I'll have more data on that
before the next snow season. OK. So yeah, from a logistic standpoint, so EC is meeting this Thursday,
right? Yeah. And they're going to do their first reading of this.
You know, if we pass this here today, you know, we won't revisit it until we have that joint session.
We do have another meeting for B costs in between then and now. So that gives us an opportunity. If
we had amendments that we wanted to do, we could do it there. The way to do this is a little bit different
than usual. We probably at least want to know what's coming down the pipe a little bit and try to give
EC a heads up of what kind of amendments we might want to make. Because they're not going to have another
meeting until
the joint meeting with this date of August 18th works for me. So we've got to thread the needle a little
bit, but I think if there's some of us who want to make their own, there's certainly ways to make that
happen. So we've done this in the past with some resolutions, especially more complicated ones, where
people make a copy of the spreadsheet and then send reference to the line numbers and say, here's what
I would propose as an amendment.
And if we get those all in a relatively short amount of time, we can sort of correlate them and try
to figure out, OK, here are the big pieces. And try to figure out a plan. Maybe at the end of the day,
EC has to do a special meeting or something before the joint meeting to have it. And if the membranes
aren't too numerous or lengthy, we could also have them at the same time. We could have them at the
joint meeting. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it would be good to know ahead of time what's coming to it.
They're not seeing stuff for the first time. I thought about that.
And of course, you have to do this all the way that's compliant with open rule. Yeah. I would request
that you provide it. If you have an amendment to suggest, that's fine. Please suggest it. But in writing,
maybe before our next meeting, maybe, I don't know, ideally. Obviously, we can't make that a rule, but
that would be, I think, ideal. Could we compile any suggested amendments in a letter to the other commission
and transmit it to the other commission following that meeting?
Yeah, we could, but we wouldn't even have to. We could just, you know, I could, whatever we, you know,
if we voted some amendments or something, I would just email it to them. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So make sure
that this moves on correctly. Can I make a motion that we consider this resolution for a person? Oh,
yeah. That's a great idea. Second it. All right, with the motion, I have a second.
I said, I can second, yeah. Perfect. And this is to consider this resolution for first reading and to
advance it to a second reading. I also want us to get so you don't have the next thing and be like,
oh, we never acted out. We never brought it in. That's right. That's right. Excellent. OK. All right.
Does anyone have any objections to moving to the vote to advance this? And then we can try and figure
out exactly what things will look like between now and the next meeting. OK.
Perfect. Since this is resolution related, I will do a roll call vote for this. This is to advance to
a second reading. Tara? Yes. Yes, Justin, yes. Rebecca? Yes. Yes. Christopher? Yes. Was that? Yes. Yes.
OK. Zach? Yes. Yes. Council member Lowes, absent. We didn't get anyone else in. Alex? Yes. Yes. Maria? Yes.
Yes, Diana. Yes. Yes, and Ross. Yes. Yes. OK, perfect. Great. Yeah, I'll be in touch with instructions
over email. That's the best way to do that. It'll be a similar thing. Everyone sends stuff to me, and
I'll compile it and make sure nobody has a chance to discuss all that until we're at a public meeting.
I also will say, I mean, presumably, if we are having an entire special meeting in conjunction with
the Environmental Commission for only this,
we'll have the time to have some discussion, right? I mean, if we're gonna have at least an hour, an
hour and a half, like a typical meeting would be, yeah. If we just go, vote yes, and then leave. And
then leave, yeah. We've been there for, even with two commissions and everything, yeah. Yeah. 15 minutes,
yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think it'll be fine. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you, Zach. Yeah.
Okay, we've got no resolutions for second reading.
So this is the staff liaison report. Oh, I didn't know it was on the agenda. Thank you. I wanted to
let everybody know that we have published our 2024 greenhouse gas inventory report. It's on our website
now. The press release hopefully will go out on Thursday. And I wanted to give a shout out to Zach for
your help with the Google data that you mentioned in the report. Cool. And you were acknowledged for
your work on that. Cool.
So that will be available. We'll be launching a new solar grants for income qualified homeowners, hopefully
next month. We issued an RFP. We're waiting to get our proposals back. So that will be providing a five
kilowatt system to income qualified homeowners. That means residents who earn less than 80% AMI will qualify.
That's awesome. That's cool. As long as their roof is in good shape, it's going to be a turnkey program.
That's awesome. What's the limit? What's the AMI?
If you Google housing and development 80% AMI chart, you'll find it. Are you guys using it with your
head? Yes. Cool. Something to keep an eye out.
on legislatively is lots of states have passed, like, balcony solar provisions. And Indiana, you know,
there was a bill to consider that this year. They didn't go anywhere. But they've been passing state
houses generally, like, unanimously. But in the future, there could be a program to have, like, smaller
systems and have a lot more of them. But I'm not allowed now. But, like, future programs, hopefully.
Yeah. Yeah. Have there been sustainable neighborhood grant applications since that was posted? We haven't
received any. A press release is going out hopefully tomorrow, I believe. Yeah, yeah. Just to get it
back in the news. Try to get the word out. Yeah, so if anybody here wants to help promote that program,
we would appreciate it. Grandview Hills can share our blueprint for what we've been in neighborhoods
that are interested in.
So for those who don't know, we provide $1,000 to neighborhoods. So at least four neighbors, if they
get together, they want some sort of sustainability project, such as composting bins, a native flower
bed, veggie beds. If it's sustainability-related, we will most likely approve it. So $1,000. Cool.
My wild bergamot is seven feet tall. Oh my gosh. Approximately. I'm almost six feet, and it is well
above my head. That's insane. Six and seven feet. I kind of regret planting somehow. Like, wait a second.
I didn't know it could get that tall. My plant's been a septic leach field. This makes sense. Seemed
to be that, a septic leach field.
Awesome. Okay. Well, that brings us to member announcements. Anyone have any announcements they want
to make? Okay. Cool. No new business. So, hey, we're early. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion. Second.
All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? All right. We're adjourned at 720 PM.