I would now like to call the June 16th, 2021 Lungmont Sustainability Advisory Board meeting to order. Can we please start with a roll call? Yes, joining us today are Kate Colerson Chair, Jim Metcalf Vice Chair, Charles Musgrave and Adam Reed as board members. And then staff members joining us today are Lisa Knoblock, Annie Noble, Francie Jeffy, Tim Ellis and Phil Greenwald. Our city council liaison is Polly Christensen, and then public in attendance will be Brian Jeffries and Montee Whaley. Thank you. And do we have a quorum? Yes, we do. Fantastic. Thanks. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the last meeting. Does anybody want to motion to approve those? I will move to approve the meeting from the minutes from the last meeting. I'll second that. All right, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Okay. Aye. And the motion is passed. Okay. So I will now open it up for the public invited to be heard. Each person speaking will be unmuted one at a time. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name and address for the record. You will have three minutes for comment. I will time you and please I'll interrupt you if you're still talking at three minutes. And if you continue to talk, you will be muted. Please go ahead and Right, Brian. I'm going to go ahead and ask you to unmute yourself. And as the chair stated, please state your name and address for the record and you will three minutes. Hi, this is Brian Jeffries 4027 Milano Lane Longmont. I've read the draft questions posed for the Platte River power power authority that was shown in today's meeting packet. If that list is already been sent to the Platte River power authority, then my comments would follow our moot. If that's the case, I can stop now. So can you tell me whether that list is already been sent or not. Lisa, do you Yeah, the list has already been sent. Then I've got nothing to say. Thank you. Okay. Then There's no one else to be from the public who wishes to be heard. Is that True stuff. That is correct. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any revisions to the agenda or documents to submit from the staff. Yeah, I have one revision to the agenda. I would like to under items from staff, add a letter of support for a DOE grant. Great. Okay, I'll Make sure and add that. Okay. I'll move on then to general business. I'll ask board members to please hold their comments and questions until the end of each presentation after the staff has finished presenting. So, first up is the US 287 bus rapid transit feasibility study. Okay. And then we'll move on to Jeff Butz, the floor is yours. Or Phil Greenwald. Well, good afternoon. Chair and members of this of the board. Just wanted to let you know that I've been trying to get a hold of Jeff Butz and he is not available at this time. So if you'd like to move on to your other items, we can certainly do that. And see if he needs any assistance getting on to the meeting today. So apologize. But we cannot track down Jeff so if we can move on that would be wonderful and then I will let you know when he's available. Sounds good. Thanks Phil. Thank you very much. Okay, Lisa. Yeah, sorry about that hopefully everything's okay and that wasn't some sort of miscommunication on our end but we'll circle back with you all if we don't hear from him today. Okay, so Steph, I could have you pull up my presentation that would be great. All right, so I just wanted to take some time today to give you all a brief update on our zero weights waste efforts and get some preliminary feedback on updating the zero waste resolution which I'll get into in a minute here so you can go to the next slide please. Sorry. So our sanitation staff brought an update on zero waste efforts to counsel back in the earlier part of the year. They identified four main areas of focus, which are education and outreach. If you hit the right arrow. Yeah, for as a PowerPoint stuff. I realized I put in animation and forgot to specify that. No worries. It is the PowerPoint. Great. So if you hit the right arrow should come up. There we go. All right, so the main focus in education and outreach is the green star schools program which we do in partnership with eco cycle in the St. Rain Valley school district. In the last few years, we have been funding one new school to be added per year and within Longmont city boundaries and then the St. Rain Valley school district also funds one school that could be anywhere in the district so may or may not be within And we just increased our budget to add an additional school to that so now moving forward there will be three schools per year added to the green star schools program it's a great comprehensive program that focuses on composting and recycling education and services from schools. The next is the hard to recycle program so if you hit the right arrow again. The main focus there is just increasing opportunities within Longmont for hard to recycle materials, the zero waste resolution right arrow. That's the main focus that we'll be talking about today and then the universal recycling ordinance if you want to hit the right arrow so hard to do animation when you're not doing it yourself. It will largely be a good portion of that, the foundation of the universal recycling ordinance we ordinance we anticipate incorporating into the zero waste resolution. And those are all happening over the next 12 to 18 months so you can go to the next slide please. As you all probably know because we've talked about this quite a bit of the climate action task force also had a focus on zero waste efforts particularly on composting. So that was a priority we will incorporate that into the zero waste resolution, which we'll talk about more shortly so you can go to the next slide. And then also waste is a specific focus area within the sustainability plan we we do have a lot going on in this area. The targets are listed here that are from the sustainability plan if you hit the right arrow we have some more animation. So we've actually met our household trash consumption goal which is pretty exciting so we'll be revisiting that when we update the sustainability plan. If you want to hit the right arrow again. We're doing pretty well on the residential waste diversion goal and I think if you hit it once at the time. So we're at about 40% and we have a goal to reach 50% by 2025 so we're doing pretty well with that we have good participation in our recycling composting programs that help us a lot there. And then we are doing a lot internally, as well as with the commercial sector largely through the sustainable business program, but we still have been working to define baselines in those areas. Next slide please. This is just a quick overview of all of the strategies around the waste topic that are in the sustainability plan so you can see focused on composting and recycling waste management regional waste management work educational opportunities. You'll see the commercial recycling ordinance in there and hard to recycle materials as well. Next slide. So mostly as I mentioned we'll be talking about updating the zero waste resolution today. This is in just an overview of the timeline so we started this process in May and what we committed to council was to have this done in a 12 month timeframe so anticipating having the final resolution completed by June of 2022. So we reviewed their existing resolution, we've been doing some research on examples from other communities, put together the draft timeline that you all saw in your packet. And now we're moving into the stakeholder engagement section which is mostly just getting some high level information, as we'll talk about on what people want to see included in that resolution, we'll take it back to council early fall. And then we'll go through a period of doing some data analysis and additional goal settings so we really want to build off those goals we already have in the sustainability plan, but hopefully identify some new goals as well. Circle back with stakeholders and then finalize the resolution and bring it to council next year next summer. And then go through communications process and we'll be looking to incorporate that into the envision and sustainability plan updates as well. Next slide. So this is just very high level the existing resolution as you all saw was from 2008. It was, it was a pretty good resolution had a lot of stuff in there these are just the high level components that talked about existing conditions what the impacts were why we should care about it they had some guiding principles included, and then some very high level tactics kind of focus on in there. I'm not going to go through all the details because you all have that in your packet, you want to go to the next slide. So looking at revising and updating that resolution you'll see similar components around the background similar things that we would want to be looking at in that area as well. What we want to what we are looking to focus on that would be the primary difference is really incorporating some pretty specific goals that can help guide our work so looking to the zero waste resolution as kind of being that foundation for zero So we have our existing sustainability plan calls I just mentioned, but as we go through this process will identify if we want, if it makes sense to add additional goals to that as well. And then from the tactics standpoint we have the same plans programs policies and infrastructure components, but really a focus on stakeholder engagement as well and identifying those equity impacts and community needs. So this time I'll go ahead and have stuff pull up the draft outline, and we'll walk you through that so you also saw this in the packet so hopefully you'll have had a chance to at least digest it a little bit. And while she does that what I'm what we're looking for at this point and unfortunately Charlie came in here is who's our sanitation manager wasn't able to join us today. But we're just looking for some very high level feedback on these components that I've included here, what might be missing and if there are specific items that you think that we should be considering within those components. So we'll just push those out in detail, especially as we get through the data analysis process and bring it to you all for further feedback as as this progresses. So we'll kind of run through here. And then feel free to just follow out if you have questions or comments in each of these sections and I can kind of, we can just, I guess we can't, we can't take notes here but Francie is taking note separately so incorporate your comments in here. So the background is just the overarching issue of waste. Why should we care about it. The existing conditions so we want to talk about what are our statistics that we know currently our waste volume, our diversion rates we have all the statistics around what the current participation is in our different programs.  So if there's other things we want to include there around community impacts as well we can include that. The value proposition is looking at the climate impact community benefits convenience that comes out of additional programs or whatever it might be, and then really the long term value to the city and really investing in waste diversion efforts and becoming a zero waste community. Before I move on to the next section of sorry stuff. Are there any comments or additions that folks want to make in this section here. I had a quick question. Do we have like comparisons, like to other communities, maybe model community. For example, I think the target was two pounds per person per day of waste. Do we know how that compares to other communities is that ambitious is that. Yeah, that's, that's a great question. That, in particular, is pretty ambitious and long line is doing pretty well on that. The caveat I will say to that is it's not standard in the way that that's being calculated across communities. And so that's one of the things that we actually want to look at when we update the sustainability plan and we look to revisit that goal is. We moved in terms of best practice in the way that it's calculated because it really depends on what all gets rolled into that particular calculation in order to be able to compare that across communities. And at least when we did it initially there wasn't a standard. So that's one of the challenges for sure and being able to do that person. I guess also eco cycle did a comparison across all the municipalities within Boulder County and pull the lot of this information so we do have some pretty good comparative information at least across. So, so I'm guessing that we would include the way we're the definition of how we're going to calculate waste per day per person. Yeah, probably not to that level of detail in the resolution but that when we actually go to increase in revisiting that goal, yes. Got it. Got it. Thank you. All right, so we can move on to the goals section. Yeah, yeah, sorry, you'll have to jump in because I can't see everybody. Yeah, I was realizing that as we're on this view. Um, this might be just a follow up that Charles question with that the way that we calculate our waste. Is that is that just looking at the amount of waste that is hauled from our city cans, like the ones that I put out every week or does that include free dump day and does that include. Okay. It includes all of the above everything that we can track and we do get information. I would say it's not going to be the most accurate but we do get information from our commercial haulers as well they're required to put data into a system that we a countywide system that we can at least have some general information about that. Yeah, great. Yeah, thanks for this discussion. What's still not clear to me does this number also include say some of the recycle materials that end up not getting recycled they just end up getting thrown away is that something that can be trapped. Yes. Not on a on, we have to go through specifically and every and Charlie would be able to tell you with the frequency I don't know what frequency this is but we do. We go through a waste audit every so often to give ourselves an idea of how much recyclable or composted material is going into the landfill so that it just gives us kind of ballpark idea of that but it's not something that's tracked on an ongoing basis. Yeah, but that's a critical piece of information for us. Okay, great. Thank you for the goal section. Thank you, and I see Jeff joined us so that's great we'll hand it back to him when I'm done with this. So as I mentioned I just dropped in the existing goals, and then I do think that we'll probably be looking at additional goals, particularly as I mentioned in the city operations and the commercial side of things our goals are just the increased and then those areas but I think we really want to be able to add through that data analysis piece some more specific actual targets to that section there. And then the last section is the tactics so as I mentioned this, the update to the resolution really focuses a lot more on the stakeholder engagement side and really understanding those equity issues and considerations. And then the community needs we know the area of multifamily units is a big area of focus for folks because it's been really hard to get serve recycling and composting services to folks that are living in apartment complexes and whatnot. So that's an area that we'll want to look at. And then that high level approach in terms of do we want to establish some specific plans like a solid waste management plan or a zero waste plan. And then different programs, including partnerships with folks like eco cycle and others. policies so we can look at code updates and then that's where that universal recycling ordinance would come in and what that does is essentially require everyone to have recycling service to their so all commercial entities and stuff would have recycling and then C&D sorry I should have spelled that out and that's accurate and then but that's construction and demolition which is a huge huge waste stream and from a volume and weight standpoint has a pretty big impact and then the infrastructure piece and looking at partnerships and regionalization of our waste infrastructure. So that's pretty much what we're looking at are there any other comments kind of in that section that people want to add or have questions about. Okay, great well we will we'll circle back with actually if you want to bring up that the presentation stuff I have one last slide because our next step is really the stakeholder engagement piece. We know there's a good handful of folks that have a lot of interest in this area, so I dotted down the folks that we've come up with but definitely if you have other people that we are groups that we should be considering. Please let us know. There you go. So obviously we have a lot of staff from across the organization that are impacted in different ways that we want to make sure engaged and have different needs and considerations in this area. The Equitable Climate Action Team, Sustainable Resilient Longmont has a zero waste committee that will be touching base with the business community will be working with Bernice to understand what are the needs in that area. The Sustainability Coalition, the Boulder County Resource Conservation Board which is a group with representation from across the municipalities in the county that looks at these issues as well. Really from a regional standpoint and then looking at engaging the community broader broader more broadly through our engaged Longmont page. Are there other groups that you all are connected to or that you know of that we should add to this list from a stakeholder engagement standpoint. Yes, Bernice. Listen, this is Bernice. I think we should also engage howlers that was to get those because I could waste connections. Yep, perfect. Great. Thank you. Alright, anybody else. Okay, well as I mentioned as we get into the, the more substantive details of this will be they will be bringing it back to you all as well. And with that, I am going to be handed over to Jeff. Okay. Jeff. If you are ready, we would love to hear an update on the the 287 rapid transit feasibility study. Jeff, are you there? Jeff is unmuted but I do not see. I cannot hear him either so. I'm here. Can you hear me. Yeah, we just can't see you. Yeah, you can't see me. I'm getting failed to start video camera settings. Okay, so the host asked me to start my camera. My camera is turned on and it's green so I don't know what is going on here. Sorry, I've zoomed. This is why I was late. I was having issues so my apologies. We may just, let me try switching some cameras around here. Can you see what's on the screen, Jeff? I see you, Phil. I see Phil Greenwald is your name, but I can see what's on the screen if you want to move forward with the presentation. I can give the presentation. Sorry that I'm unable to share my video. My zoom has been giving me every problem of the day so far, I guess, trying to connect. I'll just move forward without video if that's okay. I appreciate all of you allowing me to be here and spend some time with you. This is going to be my first time really working through the presentation, not having the controls. This is really designed to be a conversation to hear from you all as a part of our process for designing bus rapid transit long 287 and additional treatments. And so I guess just one thing to note on sustainability and here you talk about waste reduction. It's kind of an old world of mine in college. I actually got recycling going at the university like full recycling is the chair of the environmental awareness clubs. So I love the work you guys do and there's a place in my heart for it. So I appreciate you having me here. I'm going to talk about 287 today. So if we can go to the next slide, please. Actually, let's go to number four, if we can move ahead to number four. One more. Sorry. Here we go. Sorry about the train. I live in Longmont. So the train is driving by right now. And the reason why I have these scattered we're taking the public presentation really that we gave and then trying to tailor to each group. So each group understands and just want to have this be a visual aid more so than a presentation. But there is a little bit of upfront stuff here that I want to walk through. So first of all, this this explains the county's transportation master plan, which shows prioritizing the movement of people over cars advancing the Northwest area mobility study and then working with our partners such as Longmont has been a great partner. And of course funding next next slide please. And so this shows the North Northwest area mobility study. You can see on here how there is 119 and if you need to zoom in, you can hit control and then zoom in on your mouse and usually that allows you to zoom in if you need to see closer neat trick. But you can see the network of bus rapid transit that is planned for the area. The yellow line is 119, which is the most furthest along, I guess. And then the red line is seven, which is the second. And now this orange line right down the middle is the really the spine of the entire network. And when you think about sustainability, having sustainable mobility options helps tie right in there, you know, if people get out of their cars and if we find a way to get people into into a bus instead, then that will save save some trips. So next slide or save some carbon. And I just want to acknowledge all of our partners that are working on this. And then if you could advance two slides please. And I want to note that this is in English and Spanish when we gave the presentation originally there's an option at the bottom for people to be able to change from English and Spanish so we had live so that's that's why the Spanish is on here. If you look to the map on the right, you can see that there's two areas there's a blue line that extends all the way from Fort Collins down to Denver. And that is where there is service right now. There's transit service connecting those areas right now. And then when the middle from 66 down to 36 you can see there's a second line which is a gold color and that is the area where we're also looking at capital treatments. So what can we do for service from Fort Collins to Denver and then what capital treatments can we make along the way or in the middle and then if you can advance one more slide. Here we go these these are these are the big issues that we've been hearing people talk about when we are in our public meetings and through surveys. These are the major intersections that are issues and just major problems. Arapaho I probably no surprise there. And then South Boulder. There's probably nothing in Longmont that I see which is good for you all except for the pedestrian friendliness something that has been coming up consistently is it's not pedestrian friendly and the highway divides the community including in Longmont of course there's east side which is divided. And so now if we can move along to the let's see here next slide. And so what I want to show here is that of our survey respondents which was around 77 there was strong support for our for for moving forward with these treatments and things. So this is where I want to pause sometimes I do Mentimeter here. Sometimes I don't. And this time or not because it's recorded, but I want to take a moment and ask you all what are the top things we should consider when planning transit enhancements along to a seven. So this is a moment for discussion. If you feel comfortable just how can we help tie into your sustainability goals and what should what should we really be considering. Jeff can ask a question. What's the time frame that you're thinking about implementing this plan. Excellent question. And so the study itself is going to go into Q3 of this year. So August, September, potentially October. And then we're going to start a second phase of the study which is going to put safety as the primary emphasis. And so it'll be safety, multimodal mobility and environmental. Those are to be the three things we look at and when we look at environmental habitat, sensitive areas making sure we don't disturb those. And then also if there's and we're going to include stakeholder engagement and bilingual stakeholder engagement throughout the process. So we may also include traffic signals, we may not in that second phase, and then that phases will be a year to 18 months. So that's the study. But it's a study. And I imagine that depending upon what the outcomes are of that study in terms of, you know, what what plan comes out that the implementation would depend upon, you know, how much, you know, what is needed in terms of construction or what is needed in terms of, you know, adding bus service, etc. But is this something we're looking, you know, three years out five years out. I think it's what seems to be coming to the top is there's going to be a variety. So 119 is going to be one large project at once. And this is probably going to be taking advantage of projects as they rise to the surface. So for example, if there's an intersection reconfiguration within Longmont, that's already an existing one, then the recommendations of the study can be implemented down in Broomfield. They already have some turning lanes on the outside. So that's just new paint. So that could be something within a year. And some transit queue jumps, if you're aware of what those are. So the transit is able to bypass the bus is able to bypass everybody and then jump to the front of the line. That may happen in certain areas quicker than other areas. So there will be some things that will probably happen within, I don't want to be overly optimistic, but within two years, you should be able to start to see some changes happen in areas. And for the full scale, when's it done? And when are the stations built and everything? I would optimistically say 10 years, but that's very optimistic. I would say 10, maybe 20 years for the full build out. This is the third priority. So we have 119 that still needs to be built. And then we have seven and then we have this one. Got it. Thank you. You're welcome. So implementation is important and being able to see stuff on the ground. Are there other things that we should consider? Are there other questions? Adam. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. I did have a question about how you plan on making the buses faster. I noticed that you said something about adding another lanes for the buses.  Can we skip to slide 30, please? And then share the screen once you're there. If you can just jump to 30 or maybe you have to scroll through them all. There we go. So this is an example of what we have at NYWA. We're not saying that we are going to do this at NYWA station, but these are the different types of treatments we're looking at. So this is how it exists. Next slide, please. This would be the outside option, which is the most likely option. And so you would have queue jumps and maybe some areas with some bus only where it makes sense. But so outside and then next slide, please. Inside. So these are really the two different treatments. So if you want to go to the previous slide. And then again, the next slide. So this is where we're at. So if we stay on the outside, there really is less widening of the roadway. But the pedestrian has a long ways to cross. And if you go with a center running, it needs more right of way, which is of course difficult, but you could give a pedestrian refuge as well. So it kind of breaks up the street in the middle. Does that help? Okay, great. Excellent. Jim. Yes. So I was wondering, you know, in the last year, I think it was maybe early or late winter or something like that, Governor Polis kind of asked us to or asked the RTD to reexamine the train service expansion from Denver out to Boulder and that whole area. I was wondering how changes in kind of the planning for rail systems would impact planning for the bus rapid transit systems at all? Or have my change priorities?  And so none of these things are exclusive of one another. It's not that we are building bus rapid transit in place of the train. And it's not that the train would replace the bus rapid transit. The idea is to build a network that works seamlessly together. So somebody could take the train, for example, to Broomfield, get off at Broomfield, and then be able to head up to Lafayette on the bus. So all of it work together as a network solution. So every piece of it builds upon it. Does that help answer your question? Excellent. Okay. Oh, sorry. So one of the reasons I was asking about timeframe is because I'm just wondering about technology as it advances and there could be some interesting technologies that come out in the next 10 or 15 years or sooner that could impact some of these things. And this is one that is kind of controversial but the autonomous systems and autonomous self-driving vehicles could come out. And we've seen even over this last year, I'm not sure what the statistics are locally, but ridership is probably down significantly during the pandemic. And a lot of people bought used cars and things like that in order to be able to transport themselves because they didn't want to ride buses during the pandemic. It's going to take some time to get back to higher riderships. But there's a possibility that if autonomous systems come out, you know, self-driving cars that services, you know, similar to Uber and Lyft, et cetera, but not with, you know, no human drivers could come out and make, you know, transportation per mile for those kinds of services very inexpensive. And you can imagine, compete with municipal transportation. Is that something that comes up at all in these, in the thinking of these, these kinds of long-term plans? So thinking about how we can work with TNCs, transportation network carriers, I think is the name of them, Uber, Lyft is something that we consider, we also do consider how to, what autonomy is going to do. And there's really two different types of autonomy. You have automatic, which is more of a expert AI, where the experts decide every if-then scenario. And then you have neural network, which is Tesla and comma AI. And so it depends on which one of those you go with, I think, and it's a crystal ball. We are heard technology is important and to consider technology for the traffic signals, for sure. If we could get to a place where we could have autonomous buses, that would reduce the cost of running the buses.  So, you know, we're talking on the 5-10 year timeline with this project. And those things are probably going to slowly incorporate into the next 30 to 50 years we're going to be seeing more and more of them. And so we'll just see how it develops and and where to incorporate transportation. Phil, you have your hand raised. Oh, I didn't want to take I didn't want to take anybody's time. I wanted the chair to be sure that that was okay. My apologies, but I just wanted to jump in and just talk about, you know, there's the autonomous vehicle kind of utopia. And then there's the autonomous vehicle kind of dystopia, which is that feeling of, you know, I think Jeff mentioned that the zero occupancy vehicle. But there's nobody in it, but it's driving somewhere to go pick somebody up and it's taking space on the road. So, you know, same thing with Uber and Lyft. I mean, it's a one person driving. And so we just have to be careful that the idea is, especially when we're talking to a sustainability advisory board is we don't see that there's going to be that there's going to be a need for much more roadway widening, especially in Longmont. And so the idea is how do we get people on mass transit? You know, regardless of the pandemic, I understand that was a thing that that really affected and it was really almost said to hear the CDC come out and say, avoid public transportation. And so we need to kind of move on and get to the next level of how do we, how do we deal with a pandemic type situation and still be able to use our mass transportation because it's extremely critical that we move people in all the variety of ways that we possibly can and not limit to people to a personal, you know, private vehicle, usually driven by one person, quite frankly, so that's what we're trying to move toward here and, you know, on both the bus 36 example and I believe on on State Highway seven, we're really looking to expand it so that vehicles can also be told so to TOL led told so that if you do want to drive alone if that's your, if that's your, if that's your preference if that's your, what you've chosen for your, for your ride that day. And you're willing to pay a price for your trip reliability you can get into these lanes as well and I'm not saying that's going to happen on 287. But I'm also not saying it's not going to happen on 287 we don't know. So that's a reason for this study as well and and my apologies I've taken a lot of your time so I want to turn it back over to the board for comments. Yeah. Thank you. Adam and then Polly. I just wanted to change gears quickly and look at not the transportation itself but rather the transit centers. Does this project encompass the Longmont Park and ride and doing anything to that I know there's a facility in South Longmont but I'm not sure at what level it's being used to modeling. So we are heavily dependent on the great work that city staff has done to prepare for this there's been just a lot of excellent work done. And so we are incorporating those and we are letting Longmont take the lead, but because it's Longmont, you know, and so we're incorporating those into this but and maybe making some suggested modifications but we're showing the stations down there and then trying to figure out the speeds Phil do you have anything you want to add to that around the transit centers. Yeah just to let you know I mean we've been working with RTD for a long time now to try to figure out something to do with that station area. The buildings obviously dilapidated and needs lots of work. They still have a pretty good garage in there with a car wash with a bus wash and and fueling facility and a lot of things that can really help. They're talking about being over capacity at their Boulder maintenance facility right now which is out there on 33rd and and Rappahoe basically. Talk to him about maybe you know putting this back into service but keeping our park and ride. And then we'd want to do some really good pedestrian connections across 287 across Main Street in order to facilitate those buses running quicker in front of that station and being able to get people on and off the buses comfortably and safely. Great thanks Phil and more broadly we're including the stations area toolkit. Which we're just developing which has a lot of place making elements to it mostly to make it comfortable for people to be at these stations and around them. There may be some stations that have two or three elements and at least a bench and covering and then there may be some stations that have 10 elements or so and so outside of Longmont and something that could be broadly applied. And so when you talk about transit centers. We're looking sort of at the stations themselves outside of Longmont and inside of long month long months to use it just a toolkit we're developing alongside it. Okay, so since you brought this up Adam actually City Council, particularly Joan Peck has been working on a transit center at first and main, which would be the buses, but well, we hope the light rail would be coming in. Between Kaufman and main and at first Avenue and our TV has we have $18 million that we can use for that we've been buying up land to provide that and they were going to give us a clock tower and they said, Well, we need a building because it snows and because you know, every other place has an actual place to park a place to go inside grab a drink and sit down and whatever you know. So that has been going on for at least the last eight years. It's slow because of RTD, but you know. So what I wanted to say is in regard to autonomous vehicles. If you have vehicles on the road. It doesn't matter who's driving and they're on the road and the part. The reason we have so much traffic is because we keep making the roads wider and bigger and we need to get them off the road into a traffic form and travel, which is what light rail is. And everywhere else that I've ever lived and traveled. Everybody does take mass transit because it's easier. It's cheaper. It's more efficient and as Mr. Butz has said that the idea is that you connect a series of different kinds of transport from subways to to light rail to maybe then you know the last mile or whatever is a bus or a taxi or a bike or whatever but you have to get people around in a massive way first. And if you're going to if we're going to keep on talking about our own little vehicles, we're never going to get anywhere. We can't afford to build these roads and we're destroying Colorado by building more and wider and all these roads that we need if we just used mass transit more. We had better mass transit in 1880 in terms of trains than we have now. We had better bus systems for getting around Colorado in 1972. I could get up on a bus in Denver and get out to an electric vehicle. I can't do that anymore I would have to go. I mean, I'm just saying this is, we've gone backwards, we need to actually go forward to mass transit and understand that this is the only way sustainable sustainably we can get out of the traffic and the building of roads and constantly trying to maintain those roads with no gas tax anymore. I mean, because if you know who's going to how are we going to finance that if we don't have a gas tax because we're using electricity. So I just think there are many, many things to consider about autonomous vehicles being the solution to all of our problems. Thanks for that Polly. I second what she said. Charles. Yeah, so, so a couple of questions. I am. So I commute by bicycle between Longmont and Boulder. And when the weather's not good, I take the bus. And so I have quite a bit of experience, you know, 13 years of experience coming back forth and I know this is 287 and not going down the diagonal. But I think there's a lot of similarities and some some things just I think to be aware of is making sure, you know, I'm not sure what the details are but making sure that that when pedestrians have the potential to come into contact with traffic. As they go from park and rides, for example, to the station that they're there's either a way, you know, safe way that they get across. You show that station I want 287 seems to me I've read several articles and newspaper over the last few years, where you know there seems to be some fatal accidents in those areas. And that's just motorcycles and cars and trucks and things like that. But yeah, so I was really happy to see that safety was a priority there. The diagonal is almost seems like there's almost no safety features to travel along the diagonal between Boulder and Longmont, especially at intersections. I don't know who designed it but it probably wasn't a cyclist. But I would hope that whatever's done along the 287 quarter that there's, you know, there's some, some precautions that are taken in terms of the design to make sure that it's it's just safe for anyone who's using that quarter for transportation, cyclists, pedestrians, etc. because if you have buses and cars and cyclists and pedestrians on that, basically in the same surfaces and there's no separation that fatalities are tragedies that be great to design to avoid those. Thank you and I just wanted to make a note that that is the most important issue to Boulder County and to me personally, and probably to fill into every transportation planner and engineer. When there's a fatality that's not just a life, it's a family, it's a friend. So it's extremely important and not just for people driving their cars but also for people walking their bicycles. It's so important that in this phase, we've decided to do a second phase that is going to highlight safety as its primary feature and safety and multimodal mobility, I mean, you know, how do we make it safe for people to walk and bike and drive and predictable and get to the bus stops and around the bus stops. So thank you for, thank you for raising that. I just like to get time check I have two more questions that I want to get through. I don't want to rush you all but I don't want to. I don't want to overtake your time. I just have two more and just want to make sure that we have time to get to them. You want me to move on. Yes, I think so. Okay, great. And thank you all for your questions and your insights and and the discussion around autonomous vehicles really interesting. And Phil mentioned the dystopia you could have a world where it's just back to back cars driving around trying to avoid paying for parking. The next question that I have, and this may be a vote and unofficial votes, it's, you know, I just want to get people's ideas here. It's not. The question is one seat ride to Denver versus more frequent service. And so let's say that you could do.  Yeah, I was wondering this idea if it's possible to have like food trucks next to the parking lots, then we create business opportunities and you know people can have a taco or whatever food they want while waiting the bus. So these would also, you know, contribute the economic development for for that. Awesome. Great idea. And that is something that we could include maybe in the stations or a toolkit. So thank you so much for raising that up. And then there's the equity side of it and other stuff too and I see Lisa's her hand up now. Yeah, just quickly, kind of picking back in a little bit off of what Bernice mentioned just from that also creates, I think greater safety for people that have been involved in some RTD projects and in the past in the Denver area, where there's light rail stations that are very solitary located under like overpasses and things like that and just thinking from a safety standpoint of who feels safe to be at those places, you know, after dark and whatnot but if there's specifically economic activity and things like that that are, you know, drawing people and there's more people around that also creates a greater sense of safety for people to be able to take advantage of those opportunities. So these are great things to include in the stations area toolkit. I feel like we need to send it to you for review for ideas as soon as it's closer up to the end. A 100% agree. Great, great ideas. Yeah. Quickly, I want to also say that I have commuted between Lamont and Boulder via bus. I've also taken the bus along 287 and something important to me is accessibility. So it is being able to get to the bus stop. And the way I do that is by using a bike. And so I like to know if you can include ways to store the bike on the bus, similar to how RTD has that in the front of the bus, but also having the possibility to put it under the bus or somewhere in the bus, if the front were to be full. So we're looking at multiple options. Right now RTD runs the coaches, which are smooth, but they load slow and they unload slow and there's limited bike capacity. We're also looking at Artix, those bendy buses.  I'm not saying that we're going to do that. I'm just saying it's something that has been discussed at a small level, but addressing bikes is something that definitely needs to be done. And another thing that I've heard is when people are five foot five and 115 pounds and they're trying to pull it off of there and they're feeling rushed that it's really difficult. So I think I think you raise a really good point. And then as far as the bike parking goes around the area, that's already that's included in the stations area toolkit. And it's something that Boulder County has done quite a bit of and I believe Boulder County is has some agreements with Longmont on a couple of those as well. So there's those, there's the long term bike parking, the bike shelters, which I believe are coded. And then there is the short term bike parking, which is just like a bike staple or you rack right outside. And so yeah, bike parking. That's something I think that we've got a pretty good handle on and just need to implement. The bigger question is the, yeah, putting the bike on the bus or under the bus or in the bus and what are the load times and what are the convenience factors and things like that so thank you for raising that question and then routes to it as well so yeah. Okay. I see another hand up.  Because because in some ways the frequency question to me is, you know, kind of depends on that that ratio, because if you could have smaller buses that were more fully occupied and operating much more often that would be really ideal but it requires until we have autonomous buses, more labor. So, you know, you ask the question about frequency I that you know like I take the, when the weather's not good I take the Jay, and that bus basically comes every hour.  Being more frequent I think would help ridership and everything but I know that that frequency obviously affects costs, both because you need more equipment but especially the labor of having extra bus drivers. Well, let's say we have 100 service hours, right. We can take those 100 service hours and we could drive right into Denver, and then provide 30 minute headways. You know, or say we have a set number of service hours 100 is maybe not the right but we have a set number of service hours that we do. And you can go all the way into Denver, and you have 30 minute headways with those service hours, or you can go from Longmont to Broomfield back to Longmont. So instead of continuing on to Denver, you come back to Longmont, which then increases the frequency of bus that you have, but you have to transfer. And so you're dependent on, you know, that other bus being there, and it's great when it's there but it's awful when it leaves right when you arrive so that's that's a great question. And so that's what I'd like to talk about now is one seat rides into Denver, and let's just say hypothetically, you would have a 30 minute ride into Denver. These are hypothetical number or you would have 30 minute headways into Denver, just for for this exercise, not model or anything, or, you know, instead of running that bus into Denver, you bring the bus back up to Longmont and you're able to use those service hours tighter and get 15 minute headways. Which one of those is more important, having the frequent service where you don't have to have the map or, or, you know, the one seat ride so you just get on and go, I see two participants have their hands raised so I will let the chair. Yeah, go ahead, Jim. Yeah, I mean, I think that to me, you know, so I live in Longmont and I work in Boulder and I've done the J and the bolt combinations for a lot of the time that I've lived there and I also bike back and forth and the thing that I always think about is that that question depends on the time of day you're talking about. You know, I think the J is a perfect example where it, it in terms of where I can get on the J and where the J dropping off drops me off it's convenient. But it also gives you an entire tour of the front range along the way stopping up a lot of places and it doesn't come very often. And it seems to me that like a, you know, something like that where we know that there's a lot of people that live in Longmont that work at CU or downtown Boulder. So we're going to have door, you know, single seat service during so that people can get to work at normal working times and get home after normal working times that that makes sense. But then in the the other time where maybe I'm going to Denver because I want to go to a Rockies game or something like that. It's a little bit more of a, you know, having to having to to change a mode of transportation in broom field or something is isn't really a big deal to me. It's the the daily stuff that I think is where, you know, the commutes that people are we're trying to get people to do their daily commuting. It seems like that's the biggest impact is to do their daily commuting and something besides the private car. And one seat ride is important for the daily commuting is what you're saying. Well, I mean, I think that I think that being able to get from, you know, like the J, you know, the J from 23rd in Longmont to the first stop at CU is like over an hour and a half. And you know, if I that's like, I can bike that distance in less time. And and if I drive my personal car, it's about 3035 minutes. I live in North Longmont. So, so if if there were well timed connections, maybe I wouldn't care so much. But to me, it's getting that time down for the the regular stuff that is important. And whether or not, you know, and it seems like if there are ways that we know a lot of, you know, a ton of people who I think it's something like 700 CU employees live in Longmont something around that. I don't know where I heard that number, but it's it's around that number. And if you think about most of them probably most of us probably drive our cars. So maybe if there's a way to do a single seat thing that that takes takes these big bites out of, you know, the people that live in Longmont but work at maybe the federal, I don't know, somewhere else. It seems like there's ways to take big bites out of it with single seat service that doesn't operate all day, but really targets those commuting times. Our jargon we use as service patterns and service. Yeah, like the LX that takes a line and what would you say Phil interlining interlining right. Yeah. That's great I saw there was another hand up. Not sure who that was. I think it was taken down. Okay. And real quick just that what just a second what Jim was saying, the weird thing with the J is it's almost like a, it's, it starts as a local and acts like a local then it turns into a regional. And so, if you're trying to get like a regional service and you're on the north side of Longmont, you have to go through the, the local kind of aspect of it for half an hour to get to the south southwest part of Longmont. Like, Charles said, if you, if you happen to miss it, it actually stops right outside of my building here. And it's like I can either leave work a little bit earlier than I'm supposed to and catch it, or I can stay at work a lot longer than I want to and catch it. But either way, it's, you know, by the time I get on that until the time I get home, it's approaching two hours because of the bus and the other connections, which, which is a big deterrent in me deciding to take it. So there definitely needs to be work with making sure that the networks are aligning well and that the buses are coming and hopefully these treatments that we put in makes the bus more predictable. I think one issue that we deal with right now, and particularly on the LD is that it could take you 30 minutes to get to Broomfield, it could take you 47 minutes to get to Broomfield. And so we're hoping to help make these more predictable, which could help make those transfers more predictable. And so what I'm hearing from you all is that the network is really important to use that network and be able to have those transfers but during peak times to have have those one seat rides available to major destinations. Yeah, and I'm, I know that I'm talking a lot, but I just, I'm very, and I'm, I'm sure you guys already do this I don't want to, I don't want to be condescending and saying this but I'd be very curious and knowing, you know, if you, if I did, if I drew a line of everybody's commute from Longmont or to Longmont in a day. It seems like there would be these big groupings of places people are heading at roughly the same time together and I've, I've complained that I work for CU and I've complained to see you every time they send out transit service about like, why aren't you organizing a bus that goes from 8th and Kauffman to CU and gets us here to start a workday at eight o'clock. There would be, if you know you could do that in a half hour, everybody would want to take it. No, I think that, I think that's, I think that's in the plans, actually. That's great to hear because it seems like we could do a lot by targeting some of these like the, you know, like the big hubs. Maybe Phil can speak more to that. I was going to say though it might, it might be very beneficial to this group if we send you out the plans for the bus rapid transit service along 119 because it, you know, the J, the J bus goes away. There's more direct service to CU. I think it would really benefit this group to see that so I'll send it through Lisa and we'll get it out to you all. Thanks. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. And that's that's that's one of the first improvements has been worked on is those types of things and trying to build that network. Any other discussion on frequency of service versus one seat rides. Anybody have any other opinions that we haven't heard from or other ideas or Bernice. Jeff, before I forget, I don't know if within the bilingual feedback that you guys presented, you've got any, any comments about all, especially people of color living in Well County, and how, you know, there are not enough public transportation. I know a lot of Latino workers living far from Frederick. So hopefully after this project if it's successful, this will create opportunities to collaborate with Well County and creating more options for those communities living in that east. Thank you better and you say there's another project 52 Colorado 52 we're working on a planning study for that and transit is being brought up along 52. And so maybe we could have something connect over there. There's also been discussion around extending 119. Come up with service provider boundaries. Once, once we get outside of there and so for example to get over to 119 Longmont would either need to annex their city and provide all the services and, you know, it's not sustainable or a good idea. Or the voters who need to approve it and they want it and so or we can look for another provider. So I guess when we are looking at Weld County, we're mostly looking along 52 and I will also say that something else is that to look at is C dot is working on an outrider through Weld County that starts in Greeley and then I believe stops in either Hudson or Firestone, one of those two, and then and then continues over into Bowler County. So, C dot outrider Weld County would be sort of the Google term there. So thank you for that input that's really important. And yeah, appreciate it. Thank you. Jeff, I just had a brief question about accessibility. Are you also doing anything to ensure equal access to the public transportation? I'm thinking of things like making sure there's some amount of affordable housing near the transit centers and things like that. So housing is a hot topic that we don't talk about as this as transportation planner so much, especially with the county, I think there's probably more leeway within the city. And it's up to the individual cities, I suppose is what I should say. When we are planning this route, yeah, that's a great idea. You know, in the perfect world, you would have fast transit and you would have, you know, mixed income apartments around there. We are using existing zoning for different areas like Lafayette and Broomfield, and Longmont does have some good ideas and maybe Phil has some stuff that he would like to add on that. Just really quickly, we do work. We have been actually going through a pretty elaborate and aggressive rezoning process along this whole corridor. Main Street is really seen as the best place to redevelop these kinds of apartments and the higher density, because we do have the existing infrastructure, and we do have those kind of, you know, the transit lines are there, we just need to enhance them and make it better. And what Jeff is talking about leads us to that next step of making them better. So we are working aggressively to allow the zoning that will incentivize people to build higher and more densely along these corridors but not need more roadways to get around. And I guess thanks Phil for that up zoning. Longmont is great. I really enjoy living here. One thing that the county is doing. Boulder County Housing Human Services, I believe they're called over on Kauffman, there is that large crane that you can see up in the air near downtown, and that is going to be I believe around 73 units. And those are going to be, I think mixed income. So I think they're go from studio up to two maybe three bedroom apartments in there and so that's something that Boulder County is doing where we can to provide that housing, but the zoning is really important. Polly, I see you have your hand raised I want to make a real quick comment on. I'm curious about kiosks ways to buy tickets. I find that buying a ticket to get on the bus is it's difficult. There aren't kiosks at every bus stop where I can use use a card if I don't have exact change. There's, I can't get change. And, and there's no way to pay electronically on the bus. There's no bus who don't have the advantage of an eco pass card who really value a spread transportation. I'm curious if there's plans in the works to, to make it more accessible. So there are several different options and thank you for bringing up those details this is this is why I, I think it's valuable to come speak of you and this is why I appreciate it is to get those very fine green details. Like the exact change or you put in the 20 and you're paying 20 bucks. So these, these are the types of things that are really important to know so thank you, thank you for, for doing that RTD is moving more towards mobile ticketing and making sure that you can have the tickets in advance. One issue with the mobile ticketing is cash payers and people and unbanked. And so how can you manage that and so having the kiosks up at the front. We have a couple of different areas that were taught that that we're looking at within the stations area toolkit and this is just very broad and I'm going to make a comment on ticket vending machines right now because I have a pulled up. So, give change or catch payments. Okay, so I've just added that comment. Thank you. But we've talked about it. We're very broadly on the pre payment stuff you can go all the way up to fair zones, which is on the, you know, most built up and the side of things where you would have to pay to get into the station.  That's on an extreme end. Are things that and Phil this is probably new to you because this is in the stations area toolkit which we're having circulated yet. And then our things are the pre payment, meaning that we could either use electronic smart card cell phone base stuff as I mentioned or the ticket vending machines with receipts and then you use that receipt. Or a combination of those. But I think I think the important part that I'm really hearing from you is that they give exact change and or use a card is the most important. Yeah using a card would be or some sort of electronic would be just so valuable to I have to go to the ATM and then go to buy something at the gas station so that I can just it's not convenient. It's not a good way to attract riders.  And I guess. Yeah anything else about that you know I mean pain on the bus should we like just completely get rid of payment on the bus. Or or I can swipe my phone or to give a car or something on the bus but Polly has ideas and so does Adam better need say has her hand raised. I used to that for seniors and people who are still struggle with that digital divide we should keep cash available. I'm sorry Polly. Yeah. Cash is good. So we can get change with change. Yeah no cobra doors here. Other people had Polly or someone had a. Well I was just going to well I forget what I was going to tell you. Oh two things. I'm glad you brought that up Kate because you know the Bay Area Rapid Transit has has had kiosks and automatic car.  No problem. Washington D.C. same thing.  But you're right to we do need a cash thing and in fact in Japan everybody just pays things with cash. It's both ways but it's faster for the bus driver having been a bus driver I can tell you you don't want to you're not there to do cash transactions or help get an argument card. Yeah but so you know and the difference is in Washington D.C. I take the I take transportation everywhere I went to Los Angeles they have a beautiful old trains a beautiful old transit station but trying to get the card system to work I wind up in tears and so I just said what the hell I'll walk home because I can't you know nobody helped you and the system is incredibly complicated it's it's ludicrous and it's just a matter of that's how you get passengers by making it easy. Longmont bought the fare box just so everybody in this town can get to work and so within Longmont you don't have to pay anything the ridership this is enormously helpful for people who are low income because they spend a fortune on the bus and they don't have a fortune and they need to just be able to get on the bus without feeling ashamed or something you know. But what I was going to say to Adam is that the original idea you know down on Main Street main and first there is the giant complex that finally got built and it's called Main Street station because it's supposed to be across from our train station and the train station was also supposed to have housing on the top of it that was the plan and we've had those plans for years all we need is for RTD to actually bring us our train and then we could build it but I mean if you had housing right in that complex in the train station it'd be terrific but we do have some housing it's just very expensive but yeah we can be so much more creative in the way we have transit and housing combined because that makes it better for everybody. Yeah thanks for that. I had moved out here and was searching and searching for a way to take the bus and downtown Longmont in the street grid was the closest I could find so I walked to Coffin. And then on the BART Bay Area Rapid Transit in D.C. I think they use the fare zones and where you pay and then you put your ticket in and you can get through and so that's sort of what we're talking about. That's a high level of investment. And so but that's something that is in the station area toolkit will run through the stakeholder working group and see what people think and see if we should keep it in the toolkit and maybe maybe it will advance with time and then on the housing side of things and especially first and main patients. Yeah. I'm going to move along now to the final question if there's time is there time. Yeah we do have a few more items on the agenda everyone but yeah let's let's go ahead and get this last question and Adam I see you had your hand up you wanted to say something really quick Jeff could you also consider having real time tracking of the buses if possible. Hey hot dog how about that huh yeah I would I would second that. That exists already in the transit app Jeff. Yeah I thought I could see it. It's not super reliable. Yes OK that might be true. I think some of the buses have the trackers in them and then some of them are based on where they should be but that's not my expertise. But we're looking at at the stations and our thing including the stations area toolkit aside from the app is having what's called a public information display or there's other words for it. Signage to let you know how long it is till the bus comes so nothing in the stations area toolkit not a promise something we're going to do but something that is like something we could do. The final one that I have is and I don't want to take all your time here. Frequency of stops versus speed so if we can have few stops and high speed and you mentioned the local service the regional also acting as a local route. So fewer stops higher speed maybe more accessible with more stops and slower speeds which is more important to you fewer stops higher speeds more stops slower speeds.  Exactly. I think I think it also depends on whether or not that like the bus rapid transit includes local routes that help people get to the bus rapid transit because I wouldn't necessarily need a bus to stop on in front of my house. If I could take a bus to where it went and that was regular and easy so I got I don't mind the super fast bus only stopping a few times if it's not that difficult to get to the places where it only stops a few times needs to work with the local network. The network keeps coming up is important throughout this entire thing. Anybody else have I see Adam has his hand up. I'm not sure if I'm the last person calling your case certainly can. Okay. Thanks Jeff. I was just wondering is there a third possibility to have both. I know for example on US 287 they had the LD buses and I think there was like an LDX or something like that for express. And so there was an option to tour the front range but also one where you could just get to the destination a lot quicker. Different interlining you suppose was the term Phil used a new term for me. So different. Yeah just make sure we get where we need to go and yeah I think that will be an option and there's been some other other things that have come up as well along along this area. And any any other discussion on sort of you know number of stations lower bus lots of stations lower bus fewer stations faster bus. I'm not seeing any more hands so I'm going to thank you very much for letting me be here. If we could put the presentation back up and go to the last slide please. That has my contact information on it which is why I would like to do this that we all have my info if you want a screenshot or whatever. But it's right there at the bottom Jeff butts J butts at boulder County dot org if you have any questions if you have any comments any complaints. Feel free to email me I would like to keep in touch and then please visit Boko dot org slash 287 and sign up for our listserv. There's a big red button there so Boko as in Boulder County that's how we shorten it dot org and then 287 planning because we are planning for 287 right now so those two things are sort of the cause to action. So thank you very much I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me here and good best wishes in your sustainability adventures. Thanks so much. That was a great presentation. Great discussion. Really appreciate you being here and leading us through it. Thank you for allowing me your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye. Okay. We are now at other business on the agenda. Lisa are you taking us through the follow up action. Yeah, it's just real quick and first of all I really like that sign off of the book on your sustainability adventures. This was just a quick question. I know our main meeting was pretty packed. There was a lot of stuff and I know Mary's not on today, but there seem to be some particularly particular interest or commentary that there wasn't a lot focused on the pesticide aspect of the conversation. In May and I just wanted to ask the group, you know, Polly had brought up at the very end because of some stuff happening at the state level looks like maybe there is some new opportunities to bring forth some additional codes or regulations locally around pesticides and I just wanted to ask this group. Do you want me to bring something to a future agenda that's specifically focused on that and if we want to potentially make a recommendation to city council to look at a, you know, a pesticide whatever it might be resolution or something along those lines. So it's just a quick question I don't know we don't have a ton of time for discussion but it's a question of you all want me to bring something specific back around pesticides and actions. This group might take on that. I would vote yes. How would others, how do others feel about that. I would as well, especially if it seems like there's there's now changes in state law that would actually allow the city to consider its own policy for probably the first time and quite a long time. Yes, policy was the word I was looking for. I think sorry that I couldn't think about. Great. Um, yeah. I agree as well. And I think it would be helpful to hear a little bit about the state policy. Great. All right, something I'll do that. Perfect. And then, um, the next will go ahead Kate. Sorry, I don't know. No, no, no. Keep going. The land acknowledgement piece I'm going to pass off to Polly for that. Well, Annie, did you have sorry did you have a comment on the other piece. Um, I didn't know if items from staff. Yeah, that's what I. Oh, yeah. Thank you. My own revision. Great. Um, and Lisa, I didn't know if you wanted to introduce the subject of future readings and remote versus hybrid versus. That didn't end up on the agenda. I think we were still waiting for information back from other folks on that. So I was not planning to bring that up today. Okay. Um, but thank you for the reminder from my own revision to the agenda. So I am actually going to pass it off to you. Um, I guess Tim and Atra, um, so we have an opportunity for a pretty large grant through the department of energy that we are looking for, um, an approval today for a letter of support from this board on that it's a very quick turnaround that we're trying to pull this application together so I apologize to not get you information ahead of time. Um, but it's also a huge opportunity. And we do have one other thing on the agenda. So I want to keep this pretty brief, but I'll pass it to them. Good afternoon board members, good to see all of you. I'll try to be pretty quick, but I think it's worth giving you just a brief background on how we got here. You know, following the transportation, the rollout of the transportation roadmap for the carbon free and equitable transportation that Francine Phil had had worked so hard and getting together we wanted to kind of start acting on that. And one of the things we wanted to ramp up was, you know, communicating with other organizations locally regionally nationally to help us with those efforts. One of the groups is the Denver Metro Clean Cities organization and they help cities in the areas surrounding Denver to increase their adoption of EVs and build stations and have fleet planning and do outreach and education and all sorts of electric vehicle transportation. They offer a lot of support to cities in those areas. There was a lot to them, probably six weeks ago, I guess. And during and we explained all the things that we were doing they're super interested there's a lot of ways we can continue to engage with them on a lot of levels. But at that meeting they had brought up the opportunity that we could pursue was a Department of Energy grant for a electric vehicle transition. And it requires years to have long mod be a model city for electric vehicle transitioning. That's a substantial grant it's a $4 million grant, but it also requires a equal cost share. The good news on that is that at the cost share doesn't have to be money only it could be into kind services. And we also have a number of partners that will help us complete certain efforts. In those in different areas to use grant money and also donate some of their own time like the National Renewable Energy Lab. Denver Metro Clean Cities sweep there's we have a bunch of different entities that are already on board via is another one I think Lisa right for for local electric vehicle transportation. So we're engaging a lot of partners. One thing that did come up during the calls we had one week to turn around a concept paper for the Department of Energy, in order to kind of frame out what we were intending to do it over the three years and we managed to get that done. And it took Department of Energy a few weeks to and this is nationwide opportunity. So a few weeks later, and Department of Energy went through all the various concept papers and actually we were selected to as one of the cities to go for a full application for this. There was a lot of reasons why they had cities not go forward, due to whatever plans they had in place or information available but we were selected to move forward with the application which is due in mid July. We're looking at $4 million with another $4 million cost share, but we're looking into things and I don't know what at or can you pull up, can we pull up a document on this meeting or is that have to be done through staff or the PDF that I can pull up. Yeah, can you do that. I think we have a copy of the concept paper that kind of outlines a bunch of the different items we're looking at rather than me just trying to rattle them off from memory which I'll do a terrible job of. I'll scroll down a little bit here. Yeah, keep going. There's like a bulleted list that says key items or something. Right here here we go. The key aspects and you can see there's a lot of them because this is substantial grant but we're, we're actually working with multiple departments in the city, transportation and fill and, and Sandy and cash and fleet projects, environmental planning and of course, you know Lisa's group and these group of sustainability and all the opportunities we have with them, and also along my power communications I'm kind of heading up that area. And we're just looking to particularly, we're going to try to focus on under potentially underserved communities and areas and residents for, you know, electric vehicle opportunities, but we're doing across the board just a lot of what we're looking at from fleet planning buying new vehicles on a more rapid timeline, looking at developing a citywide mapping for, you know, our electric distribution network and aligning that with opportunities for the city to engage in transportation installations, multifamily installations and infrastructure. You can just go through this list we'd be happy to send this off if it hasn't already been sent to the group to kind of look at. But what would help us a great deal in our application is letter our letters of support and the city council where we already developed one for city council we're going to present I think at the next meeting to ask for their official letter of support for this. And we're seeing if you guys would be okay with with providing also writing a letter of support to try to just pursue the grant you know we're just filling out the application at this point. It'll take several months for them to review and if we're approved. It would be a project that we would undergo from late this year, but through 2022 through 2024 it's a three year opportunity but, but what it can do is really pass track our transportation roadmap and it really aligns well with our development of the roadmap because it includes exactly the types of points that the Department of Energy is looking to to provide like a model city for other cities around the country to move quickly towards electric vehicle transition and transportation. And I cover that all Lisa and Adara, or is there anything else you guys want to add. Yeah, quickly I think I'm not sure if you mentioned at the beginning but the whole funding opportunity is to really help cities fast track the efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So, we would be trying to kind of pull in some of our objectives that been laid out in the equitable terms, equitable free carbon free transportation roadmap and other plans and bringing them forward. This grant funding opportunity would help us do that. So that's what the Biden administration is really trying to do with this grant effort is to accelerate cities plans, give us more resources to enact what we already have got planned but you know, make that happen quicker. A large focus is making sure that EV access is more equitable across the city as well so that these are the two main points of emphasis for this current opportunity and Denver Metro Clean Cities Coalition they they raised this with us a few weeks back saying this would be a great opportunity because it addresses the air pollution along the front range. It increases our opportunities for diversity and inclusion relationship to EV infrastructure, and it's going to help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that they are really spearheading this in the sense that they think we have a very good chance of winning this grant. And, oh, and we've drafted a letter for you just in case you want to put your name to it. So that's in one of the attachments we provided for you so it's really asking if you're willing to sign that off if you feel comfortable with it. Can I move that we as a sustainability advisory board provide a letter of support for this proposal. I will second that motion. All in favor. I think you have our letter. Thank you. It's a great opportunity. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Kate, we might need to follow up with you specifically to figure out how to get a signature from you if it works to do a digital one or I would hope so at this point but we'll follow up with you on that. Cool. Okay. Do board members have any items. Items for council yes. This is something that Lisa gave me. And it's called land acknowledgement a land acknowledgement statement. And I think I meant to send this to you but Susie Hidalgo foreign also read this aloud and city council does support this. Here's the statement. We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territories to, I'm sorry territory of the Cheyenne Arapaho you and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when land was taken, and to educate our communities, ourselves and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again. So I could send out that statement to all of you but I believe what we're looking for is a letter in support of that from the sustainability advisory board. To clear on what's going to happen with this except that it should be a resolution. And it fits in nicely with our relationship with the northern Arapaho people, but also of course older county as a whole has done a lot in the last few years to try to address some of those issues and and we do hope having an indigenous way. So this is a really a very tiny way to just address the issue of the injustices that happened. Yeah just I just wanted to sorry can I add a little bit more information there for folks. This was also something that had been discussed in different parts of the organization and the museum in particular was interested in drafting a land acknowledgement statement. Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring, as Polly mentioned, brought this the draft that Polly just read to the museum advisory board as well and they approved approved or essentially motion to approve the draft statement. I just thought that bringing it to this board as well because we have the connection to sustainability, the focus that you all have particularly around equity seems like another board that seemed really relevant to bring this to and provide approval for and I would give it more strength when taking it back to council to say both of these boards have approved this statement. As for it'll be then up to council to determine the breadth and scope of how the land acknowledgement statement itself wants to be used but we wanted to have an official statement from the organization that we can utilize for events and I think in looking forward to the fall with the sister cities arrangement with the northern Arapah I believe that's all going to be finalized in the fall and wanted to have the statement in particular completed by for approved by them. Jim did you. That's great. It's great to hear that this council is approving this and it's moving forward and I don't know if other people want to discuss it but if not I will, I will certainly move to provide a letter of support for the land acknowledgement statement. I second that motion. Great. Is there any discussion that you want to have on that Adam. To say I support that as well. And I'd like to know what are the northern Arapahoe folks think about this what sort of feedback. Do you have anything to add or any things that late they like to provide for advice or guidance. I don't think they have even heard about it. I intend to write them because there are a number of issues I am concerned about when we have a turnover of council. And, but I do want to let them know that this is happening and I think it would be also very useful to write some of the chiefs from the Cheyenne and also the youth tribes. We, the youth were everywhere in Colorado and so, and there are many others as well, many other tribes use this land. So, yeah, that's a, I think that my little project is to write them. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, all in favor. Hi. Hi. We will support that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for bringing that to us. So, that brings us too close to the end of the agenda. The last item on the agenda is just to bring your attention to the informational items that are included in your board packet. And with that, would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn. Oh, yes. Great. So, I kind of missed the opportunity early, but could I ask a quick question of Tim, while, while we're still here. What's the due date on or the deadline for the proposal to the DOE. Oh, it's July 13, I believe. Is that right? July 12, 3pm. Yeah. Okay. So, are you guys all fine in terms of having enough help to get that prepared and input and everything? I know you have NREL involved. They're definitely experts on many aspects of this. Yeah, yeah, that's something we actually talked about today. It's going to be tight, but we're all we're trying to get our line items from the various groups of what efforts we expect to put forward. Denver Metro has reached out to a bunch of the partners, so we're on our way, but I can't say for sure we're going to do it comfortably. But I mean, what are you offering to help? So one thing that we do, I have two new DOE grants this year, so I'm doing pretty well on that. But one thing we sometimes do is have what we call red teams. DOE is used to these internal red teams, which kind of do an internal review of the proposals with enough time to be able to make, you know, iterations and modifications to the proposal before it's submitted. So I'd be happy to look over and comment if that would be helpful. Yeah, I think that's, I would think that's a great idea. Assuming we can get everything in time, we will, let's keep in touch on that. I think we have a lot of work yet to do, but certainly some other eyes on it, I think would be helpful. Thank you, Charles. Thanks. While we're jumping around in the agenda, I just, Lisa, on the partnerships that you presented on the Zero Waste Resolution update, is Recycle Colorado included in there? I didn't have them on my list, but that's great. Yeah, and I know Charlie from our, our sanitation manager is connected to them. So thank you for reminding me about that group. Sure thing. Okay. So, motion to adjourn. I'm doing all the motions. I'll move to adjourn. I did second it. I'm doing all the seconds. Oh, I had to beat me to it. All right. All in favor. Aye. Okay. Thanks everyone. Thanks staff for being here, guiding us through this great meeting. Appreciate it.


What is a central bank? A central bank has unique powers that differentiate it from other commercial banks. Some of these powers which influence the public in an immediate and direct way include the setting of interest rates, the issuance of currency and the management of the national payment system. No other bank in the country has such powers which shows the special place of the central bank in the economy. South Africa's central bank is the South African Reserve Bank. It was established in 1921 and is responsible for a wide range of services. The South African Reserve Bank has six main functions which will be briefly discussed next. Setting of interest rates Interest rates in South Africa are set and adjusted to contain inflation. If the expectation is that inflation will increase, the central bank will increase interest rates to contain higher expected inflation. Higher interest rates imply that borrowers will have to pay more interest on amounts borrowed but at the same time, savers will also earn more interest on their savings. The opposite is also true. With expected lower inflation resulting in lower interest rates paid by borrowers and less interest earned by savers. This policy is known as inflation targeting. Issuance of currency Currency comprises of banknotes and coins used by the public. Banknotes and coins are issued by the South African Reserve Bank and used in transactions by the public. This is an expensive function of the central bank often not recognized by the public. It is simply assumed that good quality banknotes and coins will be available for commercial transactions. Banknotes designed are printed with good security features to make forging difficult. After circulation, dirty and torn banknotes must be withdrawn from circulation and these notes must be destroyed. This is also a costly exercise. About one third of the staff of the South African Reserve Bank works in the central bank's distribution and withdrawal function. The cost of manufacture, issuance and withdrawal of currency accounts for more than 50% of the total expenditure of the South African Reserve Bank. Banknotes and coins are not the only way in which transactions can be concluded. A common alternative is the use of debit and credit cards and internet payments. For these transactions to be successful, money must flow from the account of the purchaser or payer to the account of the seller or recipient. Management of the national payment system. The successful conclusion of these transactions and the flow of funds between the parties to a transaction require a well-functioning payment system. Without a payment system, electronic payments will not be possible and all transactions will have to be concluded in banknotes and coins. This will be expensive, cumbersome and time-consuming. The South African Reserve Bank is responsible for the oversight of the smooth functioning of the South African payment system. Bank regulation. No person or institution may take deposits from the public if it is not registered as a bank at the South African Reserve Bank. The regulation of banks by the Central Bank helps to ensure a sound banking system in the country. Economic data and statistics. Businesses and individuals need data and information to make sound business decisions. The economic data and statistics published by the South African Reserve Bank are extensively used in such decisions. Without the data and statistical sources provided by the Central Bank, planning for the future will become guesswork rather than informed decisions. Custodian of South African gold and other foreign exchange reserves. Although commercial banks also hold foreign exchange reserves, the bulk of South Africa's gold and other foreign exchange reserves are held by the South African Reserve Bank. The South African Reserve Bank manages these reserves prudently which also adds to the credibility of South Africa's exchange rate policy. How independent is the Central Bank? The Central Bank works closely with government but takes its decisions independently from government. This independence ensures that decisions are taken in the best interest of the country as a whole and its entire people rather than in support of the government. The South African Reserve Bank is also the banker of the central government which contributes to the special relationship between the central bank and the government. Conclusion The South African Reserve Bank's role has become entrenched in the domestic economy since its establishment in 1921. Given its extensive role in the economy, it is hard to imagine that the country functioned without a central bank for many years but back then the economy and the financial structure were much less sophisticated than is the case today.


Hi I'm Erin St. Blaine for Adafruit and for today's project we are making a jellyfish umbrella. This is a full build video so first we will install the software on the cutie pie and then we'll wire up the lights and then finally I'll show you how I built my jellyfish umbrella. We're going to use a cutie pie PGRW and WLED which is a free downloadable easy-to-use controller interface. You get a whole menu of lights and options and it just takes a couple minutes to install with no coding required. WLED is also great for syncing multiple projects together if you have a Wi-Fi network available. It's a really powerful piece of software and it is my favorite way to control nail pixels so let's get started. Plug your cutie pie into your computer and head over to install.wled.me. Click install and select your board. Enter your Wi-Fi credentials then click visit device. Go to the config tab and go to Wi-Fi setup. Under MDNS give your project a name that's easy to remember. Then you can type this into any browser to control the lights. I'm using umbrella.label. Next click LED preferences. Under hardware setup I've made my length 20 since there are 20 lights in my strands. Pin A0 on the cutie pie is GPIO pin 26. I'm using two data pins so click the plus button and add another strip on GPIO 25 which is pin A1 on the cutie pie and that's all you need to do to get the software set up. Let's wire up some lights so we can play with it. The code for this project is really simple. The tricky part is the wiring. I've wired together six strands of lights to two different microcontroller pins on the cutie pie pico. The four light strands on the top of the jellyfish head are wired in a starfish configuration so they all mirror each other. The two strands of the tentacles are wired together to a different controller pin. They mirror each other but can be controlled separately from the strands on the top. I'm using this neopixel led dot string. This thing is really cool. All the little LEDs are encased in resin and the wires are silicone coated and super strong and flexible. You can flex these hundreds of times and they're not going to break unlike some of the fairy light strands that are available out there. This is my favorite strand of LEDs to use for costumes and festival type projects which are going to take a lot of wear and tear. They also have connectors soldered on to both ends so if you want you can chain them together real easily. We're not going to be using the connectors. We're going to solder in a starfish configuration instead but it is really nice to have. We're also going to be using the cutie pie pico w for this project. This is a pretty inexpensive little board and it works great with WLED. It has Wi-Fi support and everything you need. However, it is a little bit difficult to prototype with. I can't really hook up my LED strand to this without soldering and getting really committed. So I have another board that I'm using for prototyping. This is a circuit playground express board. These things are great. They have sensors on them. They have buttons and switches and they have these fantastic copper pads which I can attach alligator clips to and the alligator clips can then attach to my bare wires and I can test my LED strips. If you don't have one of these I highly recommend picking one up from the shop. You can still test with your cutie pie if you don't have one but this makes it a lot easier. Load up the test code from the tutorial on your circuit playground express. On my strands, the ground pin is in the middle. Power is on the left. If you look close it's a reddish wire inside the silicone coating and the data wire is on the right. First we need to find the in end of the strip. For me this was the end with the female connectors. Cut off the female connector. I like to leave some wire attached so I can use it for another project. Strip about a quarter inch of shielding off of each wire and connect an alligator clip to each one. Power goes to V out. Data goes to A1 and ground goes to ground. If the strip lights up, you've got it right. Mark the wires so you remember which is which. This is important. You're going to have a lot of bare wires during this project. Do the same with the second strand and twist the matching pairs together. Test them again. I have six strands total so I made three sets of matched pairs. Take one matched pair of lights and solder a single red and black wire to power and ground and a colored wire to data. Test them again. Then cover the connections with heat shrink. These are going to be the tentacle lights. Take the other two matched pairs and twist them together into a matched quad. Solder on a single red black and colored wire in the same manner as before. Now we're ready to connect them all together. Connect your two red wires together and solder on another red wire so power will flow to all six strands. Do the same with a black wire for ground. The data wires will get treated a little differently. We want to solder to two different microcontroller pins so we'll need to keep them separate. You can test each strand by moving your alligator clip to each data wire individually while power and ground are shared between all strands. Next we'll wire up the on-off switch. We have a lot of lights in this project so it's best to wire the power directly to the light strands instead of routing it all through the microcontroller. Grab your JST connector and your switch. Cut the red wire in half and solder each half to one of the wires on the switch. Twist another short red and black wire to each side. These will go to the cutie pie. Twist all the red wires and black wires together and solder them. Don't forget the heat shrink. Test again and make sure your lights turn on and off with the switch. Finally we're ready to wire up the cutie pie. My yellow wire is going to A0 and my white data wire goes to A1. The red wire goes to 5 volts and the black wire goes to ground. Once everything's wired up, turn it on. Your light should come on in yellow. If they don't, check the Adafruit Learning System Guide for some troubleshooting tips. I'm using an iridescent vinyl umbrella and a whole bunch of different fabric for my jellyfish tentacles. I really like lots of textures in my jellyfish. I want this jellyfish to be able to open and close for transport, so I'm keeping that in mind during the build process. I put some industrial velcro around the pole above the stopping point and some more on the outside of my battery. This stuff is really strong and I'm pretty confident my battery will stay put, but it will be easy to remove for charging. To attach the lights, I just wrapped the strands around the umbrella's spokes underneath the vinyl. I have eight spokes, so I put a light strand on every other one and then let them dangle at the end. I cut a circle out of organza and finished the edge on my serger, then attached to the top of the umbrella using fray check on any unfinished edges or holes that I made. There are lots of tutorials available about how to do this part, so do a little research for the method that you like best. I used E6000 to glue a strip of secret fabric around the edge of the umbrella and used a combination of sewing and zip ties to add more tentacles. For the ones in the center, I just pulled them through and wound them around, checking so often to be sure the umbrella still closes. Head to umbrella.local in your web browser, on your computer or your phone. We have two different light strands slotted to two different pins. By default, the tentacle lights act like an extension of the top lights. WLED treats the two pins like one continuous strand with 40 lights. You also have the option to treat them as two separate segments and run different animations on the two areas. If you want to do this, click Add Segment and create a separate segment for the tentacle lights. There's a lot of documentation on how this works, but it's pretty user-friendly, so play around with it and see what configurations you like. Choose an effect and a color palette and watch your lights change. When you find a setting you like, you can save it as a preset. Then you can string all your presets together into a playlist. You have control over the order of presets, the length of time they play, and the transition time. Since I'm taking this out to a festival where there won't be Wi-Fi control, I'm going to set up my playlist to start automatically when I turn it on. Take note of the number assigned to your playlist. Click Config and LED Preferences and then scroll down to Defaults. You can tell it which preset or playlist you'd like to start with by entering the number here. This way your project will still run your animations, even when you're not near a Wi-Fi controller. Thanks so much for watching! You can check out the full build tutorial at learn.adafruit.com and remember to like and subscribe if you like more projects like this.