How Do I Sign Minnesota Banking Form

How to industry sign banking minnesota form online

few minutes after here uh and as i mentioned in my email we're going to record this um just uh for this several folks that weren't able to attend that wanted to be able to see it afterwards so um emma's who's helping will start recording great and we'll just go ahead and get started um so i'm larry kraft and i'll ask you all to introduce yourselves in a moment but i wanted to give you a bit of background as to how this meeting came about so i was elected to st louis park city council about a year ago and what a year and um and my you know what drove me to to run for office really was building on the climate action work that was initiated by young people in st louis park yeah kind of my key driver and looking to implement the climate action plan that we have in a way that we can achieve some aggressive goals and you know learn things from others and maybe share some of the things that we learn with others too to help it spread right because while each of us each of our cities are really critical in this um it doesn't work unless this becomes critical in a lot of other places and so earlier early last year as i was getting involved with the league of minnesota cities and trying to impact some policy proposals there i also got exposed to the minnesota house solutions caucus and started giving some thought about well is there and had some conversations is there things for city officials specifically city elected officials that care about climate and clean energy where their cities may have goals or where maybe they want them to have goals to help push those things forward and also recognizing that many of the things that we need we can't control directly at a city level we need we need help from the state and sometimes federal and um you know got involved with some with one a um initiative in particular that abbey finis will tell you more about some of you may already know about around building energy codes and and thought that well it seems to me like there's a gap there's an opportunity for um for cities for concerned elected officials to work together for two ends one being to influence state policy and regulations to help cities meet goals and then also to accelerate the learning and spread of city level best practices and policy ideas um and you know the the the second one there the acceleration of the learning and spread there there are and i think always going to tell us about this too there are some interesting things going on at a staff level which i had heard about and one of the things that i heard from some of those staff level interactions was it can be really helpful to have electeds involved or understanding as well and so and there may be kind of a companion approach to things going on at a staff level so so that was what initiated i had had a number of conversations with some of the folks on this call and others i did speak with um patty akem who started the house climate solutions caucus over the weekend she was encouraging about this and so that's how this can be i also got input from from a couple others here and so the purpose of this meeting really is threefold to you know from from those of you that are here to determine interest in participating in this um and you know pros and cons identify topics to explore if we decide to go forward in future calls and then just get input on a date for next meeting not going to set a date but just get input from folks with that um i've been working with the folks at great plains institute um three of whom were on this call and one lola schoenrich will be our facilitator and so with that um lowell is a vice president at great plains institute i'll turn it over to her to further facilitate oh actually wait first um what we're going to do is introductions i thought i would model the introduction that i'm going to ask for but it's um your name your city role a client actually a thought on why you came to the meeting like what maybe and then an initiative a climate initiative energy related initiative in your city and i'll put the that into the chat here and if you hear something that's interesting um you put it put something in the chat about it at the end of the meeting with these and other things that come up we'll we'll be doing a poll emma will guide us through a poll too that will help us determine future topics so in terms of intro um larry craft st louis park city council member at large for just over a year now um i described why you know i came what kind of initiated this meeting for me and one initiative in st louis park we just launched a solar sundown program where we're trying to double the amount of inbound solar in the community we have a goal as part of our climate action plan to provide 10 percent of our electricity from within the the city bounds and so this program is one that um adds an incentive on top of the federal um tax incentives that were there and what it does is it adds four percent to the federal incentive so it kind of backs up the federal incentive to what it was a year or two ago right now the federal incentive is 26 percent or maybe it's yeah 26 this would make it 30. and then we've put an extra 2 percent in in a targeted area that's more of a disadvantage or lower income area to improve even more there so that's that's one program that we're um doing now so with that let me start i'll call on folks around as we go um and are actually i'll turn it over to let lola facilitate from here on and you can introduce yourself i'll sure um and while i'm introducing myself let me suggest uh that you go ahead and change your name a bit i bet everybody knows how to do that now so it includes the name of your city um or if you're not from a city then who who you are with if you click on your name you can rename right uh so so i'm lola schoenrich i work at great plains institute and lead our communities work and i also work with abby finis and emma pearson who are also on this call and i'm so excited to uh meet you all let me also suggest that as people talk if you hear something that you're like i love that idea uh put something in the chat or go you know that little button called reactions that has like the little clappy hands and so on feel free to express yourself if you hear something that you totally love or you that you don't understand and i'm going to start with rita and kevin and dwayne because rita i'm going to guess you're from bemidji because there's paul bunyan and babe and i love it i can't wait to get up there again thanks uh lola i'm rita albright i'm the former mayor of bemidji i was mayor for eight years i didn't run for re-election last fall and so i'm somewhat footloose but larry and i connected at the league national league minnesota cities down in san antonio and that's why he connected with me and i said sure i'll hop on for a while and see if there's anything i can help with so that's why i'm here and the thing that the city has done here and peter lindstrom knows this well because he was at the department of commerce when this was a program that he ran and that was the guaranteed energy savings program and so we had it very briefly you the city does an energy grade audit we identify places that we can do conservation mem um efforts in our buildings we did a 2 million dollar project that provided the upgrades to the envelopes and lights and motors and and furnaces and whatnot in nine buildings and so that is a 15 probably a 15 year payback and we're saving an annual energy and we're also saving taxpayer dollars so that was a good project and more cities should do it how about kevin thanks i'm kevin staunton i'm on the city council in the city of edina and i came to the meeting because i was invited by larry who i met last year i think at the league of cities the national league of cities conference but i didn't think i'd see so many familiar friends and all familiar faces so good to see everyone um my colleague carolyn jackson who's also on the call has served as the chair of our energy and environment commission for several years before joining the council this january so she's going to be way more current the one thing i wanted to mention that edina did in the last few years was we started a community solar garden on top of the public works building thanks in part to a gpi grant that helped us accomplish that and it's been a great success and all i all i'm sorry about is that it hasn't spread more quickly to other places so that's our story uh let's jump to carolyn since you're also great thank you i i have this ipad that i haven't figured out so i i'm sorry my city's not on there um so i'm carolyn jackson i'm a city councilor in edina i was just elected last november and as kevin said i was formerly the chair of our energy environment commission i'm here because larry invited me and he has as our neighboring city really been a driving force to try and get as many people as possible to have climate action plans so we are finally this year going to get our climate action plan put together and the process is underway i'm excited about that last night we did something that's been a passion of mine for a long time and we have a tiered billing system for our city our municipal water something that we have a new billing system and so we can do it tiered so when people are sprinkling during rainstorms they will pay a penalty for that um and it you know you guys probably already all know this but pumping water takes a lot of electricity so this is something i've been wanting to do for a long time and i'm just thrilled about it we also have a building benchmarking for buildings 25 000 square feet and larger their energy use is now available it's up and running and still some of them are coming online with that and we passed organics recycling and we're one of the few cities that has done an opt-out rather than an opt-in program and so we're it had a little rocky start with our um residents they're like why am i paying for something i don't want to use but we found with recycling that really ups the percentage of people who did regular standard recycling and we're hoping that they'll do that with organics recycling as well and it's going to be there we're going to try and do a comparison with st louis park and some of the other cities around us to see how efficient that is and if it's worth the the grief that the residents have been giving us but i hope it is because i'm excited about that too they don't get to opt out of the price they just get topped out of the can exactly uh thank you let's go to dwayne hi there folks uh sorry about it i'm only uh it's good to see some so many uh uh friends from the past uh san antonio was a great trip um uh my name is duane lohmann and i've uh from the city of bloomington if you don't know where that is the lovely home of the mall of america which i'm sure you guys all know where that's from or community uh just south of edina i'm a city council member i've been on council for three terms uh seven years uh so far helped to get our sustainability uh commission up and running again we used to have a natural resources committee in bloomington and the reason why i'm here is um well this is a generational uh work that we're doing here and what we want to do is we want to make sure that the next generation uh inherits uh you know the greatness of what i inherited i love to camp and that type of thing and uh and so as we pass down uh what we have to each generation let's leave it better than what we what we found it uh one initiative that the city of bloomington has been working on we've got several well the thing i want to tell you about is something that a young person started in the city of bloomington i've been helping to work with her it's our environmental justice committee and so we are trying to to blend in both justice and environmental issues and i think that's going to be important for us as we as minnesotans uh look to uh to gain a competitive advantage you know one of the things that has been an advantage here in minnesota has been our educational system uh because who wants to come to a cold place on the plains and so we've got to be thinking about that from a demographic standpoint how do we get folks to come here uh from different different demographics and i think that this is a good uh a place or a template to start that conversation i want to apologize i'm going to have to leave at five o'clock i've got church on wednesday nights and i gotta get to that so um but uh thank you for letting me be here and uh one of the things i would love to have a conversation or talk about is environmental justice sounds great um thank you so much duane how about jody you're next to dwayne on my screen no thanks i'm jody brennan i'm from the city of shock p i'm on the city council and i'm in the middle of my first term and i am also on the shakopee public utilities commission i think the biggest thing that we're working on currently our electric vehicle charging stations and then also working into fleets in both the utilities commission and in the city of shakopee we're in the middle of an rfp for our waste and refuse and one of the requirements or one of the things that we're looking for is organics recycling right you know i just i just got notice of the meeting very shortly ago so i'm i'm not real prepared on everything so i think that's all i have to share with you right now oh well the utilities is also working for uh clean uh clean energy in the next in the next few years steve thank you jody steve with the woods behind you those are um uh prairie plants um in our front yard um that that was obviously taken in the fall um so i'm speaking lindas um the city of moorhead council member and i'm really happy to be here um like dwayne i have to run actually to a meeting in eight minutes um planning commission um where i would love to get an urban gardening zone um put on so we can actually be more intentional about green spaces and stuff uh but that's strategic initiative so one of the things morehead's done um we have a board of public service this year um uh voted to become carbon neutral on all of our electricity so we're carbon free we have um for all electricity and moorhead now that being said uh we are also part of the um southwest power pool that had to turn on all the generators um during the cold snap um and in fact we had up we had a a we're trying to change the name um it should be a planned power outage is a better terminology so it doesn't cause panic but yeah we had we had power outage due to texas and and electrical you know grid issues which just points to resiliency issues and climate effects um you know that that happen so um i'm really happy to be climate or carbon neutral or carbon free i should say um in our in our electricity and that really builds upon the capture the wind and capture the um sun the solar garden and um wind generator projects we've had for many years um uh beside that the big thing that i'm most excited about is this spring we're written in a food forest um and there was 99 approval in fact most people are like why can't we have one next to my house why do i have to walk all the way to north morehead um that was and so i i still want to know why there was one percent that was voting against this but now they had reasons um primarily having to do with um attracting or being nuisance wildlife but i'm happy to be here great thank you steve is there anyone else that has to leave in eight minutes or six minutes now then let's keep going michelle hello i'm michelle tovan i'm a city council member in grand rapids i'm in the middle of my first term so two years in um i'm here because i got invited you know thrilled to be here um lots of people i've seen before and some i haven't so nice to meet you all um i mean that and i just think this is really important we can't keep kicking the can down the road and hoping someone else is going to take care of this we've got a handful of climate initiatives including a community solar garden but the one i'm the most excited about right now is we are going to be part of a pilot program for an autonomous vehicle shuttle program will be the first rural community in the country i think wow so wow pretty pumped about that we're working with may mobility and it'll ust be you know a couple routes through town but um one it's handicap accessible which is amazing but hopefully you know a potential future form of public transit for rural areas too so i'm looking forward to that oh fantastic uh thank you you're gonna have to keep us up to date on how it goes uh angelica do you say angelica or angelica it's angelica thank you um so i'm angelica contreras from city council shakopee minnesota obviously minnesota right um the reason i'm here um well was because last night we were talking about our strategic plan and um i was because of colvin i wasn't thinking about you know spending and doing other stuff so i said hey we're part of the you know the green steps cities let's focus on that how can we better ourselves this year because we don't know how much the pandemic's gonna hit us then who knows how our financial numbers are gonna you know be so let's focus on other stuff and my reason i know we have like green energy um like jodie mentioned that we're working on those are those are you know initiatives that we're working on but my thing was i've been invited um through our high schoolers our young um uh students and i just want to continue working and supporting them about what got me was that they came to us asking at least to me and they said what can we do we want to do something they did something before but covet hit and that never went anywhere it kind of got stuck so i want to just be able to have ideas and help them support um i came up with i was looking at the best practices last night and yesterday and i came up with 27 and 29 number two number 27 of 29 that i asked the city for us to work on it's like let's see how we can start some initiatives there so that's why i'm here i just want to learn more so thank you fantastic welcome susie me suzy sorry it's okay um hello everybody it's so good to see you all there's so many faces um i call myself covet ahead sometimes in these circumstances where you get to see so many of us that are spread out across the state so hello i'm susie nakasian i'm in my 11th year as city council member in northfield minnesota just south of the twin cities but i got involved initially when i heard that the polar ice caps were melting um back in 92 i know 2002 in northfield and um couldn't believe it and join the eqc and i think like many city leaders i've met it really was my inspiring cause to get involved locally um i'm a transplanted new yorker but i have old saint paul dna and i've been trying to make sense of that ever since um but i i i moved here 20 years ago from new york and what impressed me about minnesota is um the the creativity and the brain brainness of these great ideas particularly at the local level um and green steps is the best i mean i was just so excited about that in the comp plan process which we don't have in new york uh for public opportunity to really change the world uh then on the negative side as a new yorker i was astounded by the absence of structures for sharing ideas and um sharing anything and particularly when it comes to transportation which would be my focus northfield's doing great we've got a sustainability plan i ran a climate forum in 2012 um paul douglas is a great speaker i recommend um and we've just been pumped ever since we've got a lot of stuff going on but the one thing we're still working on i really hope we can advance takes intercity collaboration and and that's transportation um i'm astounded by the metrocentrism in our state which focuses so much on the metro and just there's no public transit in northfield there's nothing south of the metro um and i'm from new york and i don't understand so i've been working on a regional rail line as my friends in need dyna know and shakopee who joined on board with edina in support of our rail to support um the return of regional passenger rail on existing rail infrastructure uh so that's what i would like to um talk about or pursue as a group but i'm also excited about this for what i call r d rip off and duplicate research and development which is take the best ideas i'm taking notes already with so many ideas that i've heard that i didn't know about we have a small staff in northfield and i just hope we can use this group to share the best practices that green steps is so brilliant in sponsoring and um and make them possible for even a greater network of um of our city leaders across the state so i'm really excited about this and i thank larry for calling us together fantastic uh and then uh i want to go to the other larry larry from golden valley good afternoon everybody uh and thanks larry for setting this up and inviting me to attend my name is larry fonest i'm on the golden valley city council in my eighth year and also liaison to our environmental commission and we are very heavily involved through that commission in a number of initiatives including green step cities we are making great progress on step five and we also are in our six month of relationship with excel energy and their partners in energy program um we will be developing uh shortly publishing actually a plan to uh reduce our electrical and energy usage in the city of golden valley in three major sec sectors and that's government uh residential and industrial and uh we are going to take the next 12 months to roll out that program and work with our public relations office to educate our public to how they can make a difference in their own abode or in their own industry and we're looking at excuse me tremendous energy reduction uh if this comes about the way we envision it perfect thank you uh pete do you want to quickly introduce yourself and then emma and we'll end with abby and then abby you can keep talking good afternoon everybody peter lindstrom like rita i'm a recovering mayor of the city of falcon heights mayor for 12 years and on the council for a couple terms before that i'm good to see all of you my day job is with the clean energy resource teams where i work with local governments and schools on clean energy and energy efficiency issues and uh two years ago i was appointed to the med council and one of the really interesting things we are working on is a program called solar for vouchers and that's where we are helping landlords with technical assistance to install solar and in exchange they agreed to accept voucher holders affordable housing voucher holders great thank you pete emma do you want to say hi to everybody up you're talking but you're on mute hi everyone i'm emma pearson i'm with the great plains institute with lola and abby and working with larry to get this started and i'm excited to be here um and i'm abby finis with great plains institute i lead up our efforts providing technical assistance to local governments on climate and energy and i was asked to provide an overview of what's been going on with various levels of city action in the state and a couple of examples of what other states are doing around uh getting their cities together to push for accelerating uh climate action at the local level so i'm going to sorry i have this whole presentation here that you can't see and i can see um so let me just share real quick all right that should be good um so i'm going to provide a little bit of background information on what we call a community energy network which several of your studies are participating in and how we use that network as both kind of a learning and sharing resource but also a place to go when there's a call for action for various kind of ad hoc initiatives um that are occurring at the kind of state policy level as well as regulatory and then a couple of things that are on the horizon there and then i will provide a couple of examples around different city coalitions that have happened and are somewhat one of the inspirations i guess around this effort and then if we have some time we can discuss um but we'll also move into the broader discussion for the meeting um so the community energy network is an effort that's headed by gpi inserts so pete lindstrom and melissa polish and i and emma is a part of it um got together and thought well why don't we create a space for cities to come together and originally the idea was around procuring renewable energy and specifically solar in communities because there was a lot of interest in city operations solar so we um when we first started over a year ago we were the renewable energy procurement network and uh 20 to 25 cities or so participate and it became clear that the cities wanted to continue to participate in this type of network but they weren't totally only interested in solar they were interested in natural gas and building efficiency and electric vehicles and a whole wide range of different topics and so we put our heads together and decided to i guess rebrand it to be the community energy network to make it a bit more encompassing of different topics um and we also reduce our meetings from monthly to quarterly and so what we do is dig deep into a particular topic about every three months or so and um it's really you know a place for cities to share what they're doing learn from one of one another um and and learn about other topics that come up as they do so you can see those kind of action opportunities that are over there larry you mentioned partners in energy a number of cities have participated in that and that's something that we can share the results from that with other cities and get them actively involved in that um but i want to highlight a few that we have had in the last year where we've gone to these cities to get that call to action to work on some some policy pieces first though here's the quick shot of the cities that um tend to participate on a regular basis there's a handful more that are notified but don't tend to make it so if you don't see your city on here feel free to reach out to me um and we'll see if there's a staff person or if you want to participate you're more than welcome to we are going to be doing another call out for our cities to join us because we just got the results back from the greenstep cities survey of cities that are interested in participating in this type of network um so the first initiative that i'll talk about is the building energy code and i'm sure you're all aware that in minnesota cities don't have the authority to enforce um building energy code above the the standard of the state or below it for that matter um which is a hindrance for many cities climate goals or their energy goals so you can't require buildings to meet these higher standards and have lower energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions and so there is an effort right now better buildings for minnesota where we are pushing for legislation that would the way the legislation is written now would um basically accelerate the adoption cycle of our building energy codes such that we achieve net zero energy buildings by 2036 and so we have been convening a number of cities to get them to sign on to this effort and uh and support support the the city letter for this and right here is just an example of the city of red wing signed on and it's very much in line with the city's climate action plan so it was it was an easy sign-on for them um here's just a quick kind of what we're asking cities to do sign on to the letter talk to your legislator um pass a resolution and support or submit your individual level letters um so just i'm gonna kind of rush through some of these for for the purpose of time but if this is something that your city wants to support we basically have until the end of march for any final um cities to add to this we have about 14 cities or so right now uh and we'd love to get additional cities if this is something that is consistent with your community um the other that i'll just kind of brush up on is an opportunity to participate in um for those of you who are not in excel energy uh maybe it's less of an opportunity but right now excel energy is doing their integrated resource plan which is essentially like the comprehensive plan for utilities and it's an opportunity for cities to weigh in and ensure that this plan is reflective of local goals so like larry you mentioned before that they have a 10 in boundary solar goal is that reflected in the resource planning for excel energy or not um it's currently very much underestimating the amount of solar that is expected to go on the grid so it's really important for these cities to come together to make sure that their goals are incorporated into the plan so you can see here a number of these renewable electricity and carbon reduction goals that cities have um within excel territory so it's really an opportunity for cities to weigh in the regulatory aspects in a way that cities just really haven't before um so those are a couple of ad hoc approaches that we've had and the idea was you know it's one thing to have an ad hoc approach and and be able to kind of pick and choose what your city is interested in supporting and another to have a more intentional effort behind that um so this would have been a lot easier i think from my my standpoint if there was maybe a little bit more intentionality versus going out and trying to find cities on a tight timeline the last one i'll note is just kind of an opportunity now there's no effort behind it but the pollution control agency currently is looking for comments on the clean car rules so this is getting to what kind of cars are sold in the state of minnesota and increasing access for hybrid and electric vehicles and other fuels um so this is happening right now uh we can send out these links if yours if you wanted to submit some comments on unclean car rules for that um i'm not going to talk a lot about a green bank because i'm not an expert but there was a a report recently that was completed that looked at what um the implications of a green bank in minnesota would be and the green bank is essentially a pool of capital that can be used to support other capital to finance projects that have climate or energy or other environmental aspects to them and um there are a number of green bank programs across the country um they're really useful at providing that additional capital where it's needed reducing risk on financing for defaulting on loans those kinds of things and really kind of help serve this this niche market to help accelerate various uh sustainability initiate initiatives in communities um it's something that you know can be a real boost to existing programs like we have the commercial property assessed clean energy program and other financing programs in the state so it can really boost that and help to accelerate um some of these more capital intensive green energy projects so that's kind of a very quick summary of some of the big things that are going on in minnesota um and i will say just the last thing on the green bank is there is an expectation that um there will be federal dollars that will become available to help provide capital to states to to boost this and so the big question usually is where is the money gonna come from and it sounds like there may be uh an opening for federal dollars to be used for that um so i really upped my powerpoint skills on this one and drew the states of utah and colorado on here um but i want to just highlight a couple of different program approaches that these two states have had so the communities the colorado communities for climate action um is probably one of the strongest coalition groups of cities in the country and it's a group of i think 30 to 40 cities 35 participating local governments um that are working together to advance comprehensive policy at the state level um and so you can see the policy statements that the statement that they included here um really extending that authority so that gets back to the building energy code what authorities do cities have to enact some of these strategies that would achieve their goals setting the new climate protection goals at the statewide level um reducing carbon through various policy initiatives and then making sure that it benefits all communities and so this is an active group in colorado that is working with its legislature each year to push forward these policies and then the other is a little bit of a d fferent example where there were some cities in utah that wanted a hundred percent uh clean electricity or renewable electricity um rocky mountain power wasn't interested in providing it because they you know they have a lot of coal assets and natural gas assets that they were using and so the cities worked together and with the legislature came up with a bill that basically said that cities could opt into a renewable electricity program that rocky mountain had to provide for them and it had to be additional they couldn't just be you know buying up wrecks from other existing renewable that existed the cities had to opt into it by resolution and that the costs basically had to be with those cities they couldn't be spread across all of rocky mountain customers and then you could um customers like residents and businesses within those communities could opt out of that if their city were to often do it um so there's there's some backstops there but by and large it sounds like people are not opting out so um that's another program where cities work together to to push for a policy that would help advance their local goals and ultimately you know rocky mountain came along and is is being cooperative with this and so they'll be looking to get these 23 cities 100 renewable by 2030. so that was a very quick rundown of a lot of things um i don't know well then larry if you wanted to move to the next kind of larger discussion or what you want to well done abby thank you so much this is designed to be a really high level overview so so don't feel bad if you didn't memorize all that we won't test you at the end but rather it's an opportunity to hear some of the things that this group could go deeper on and we will pull you on that at the end abby there was one question clean car rules that has not to do with charging stations correct that's right yeah it's really it's about um we don't have a lot of options to purchase electric vehicles in minnesota in the same way it's basically adopting um california's law um and there's a lot of kind of federal rules around um uh standards for for vehicles and so california gets to have its own and then you could states could adopt california's rules and that's essentially what this one would be doing has to do with air emissions yeah and so it's looking at zero emission vehicles primarily so let's get into the um discussion if you have specific questions put them in the chat and abby can answer them for everyone larry you're welcome say something i i do you know thanks to abby for that rundown you know so with that and i mean i think we think there could be an opportunity here to coordinate better more intentionally and have more power to get things done that our cities need done from you know across the state perspective so i think that some of the discussion that i want to have is is you know do you agree with it that that there could be um what thoughts you might have on the benefits what concerns you might have um and you know the the kind of conceptually there could be two sort of angles here that we we tackle on a meeting-by-meeting basis one being a policy that we need at a city level at a state level kind of thing and then also kind of a sharing kind of a thing like what do we want to dig into for for policy sharing among cities and that might tie in with stuff that abby's group the community energy network is already involved in right so anyway so but i want to really want to hear thoughts do you agree you you agreed enough to come to a meeting once when larry asks you and i would and i would say uh i i also like saying no is okay because we are busy right and so i don't want to spend my time on stuff that isn't going to have value but it seems like there would be and so i want to get your thoughts so i i put this in the chat but when i was in on the energy environment commission the bloomington energy environment commission held a joint meeting um and we had people from all across the state uh three years in a row and i don't think they did it last year because of covet 19. but boy there's a lot of things that's virtual but yes they did it virtually okay um and um you know boy there's just so much energy and people the number of cities participating is huge and i'd like to you know if we're going to do this build off of uh the baseline that's been built there already because um there's just it is one of the best experiences i've ever had is is that that joint meeting um and i'd like to have that be part of our efforts if we're going to do something together carolyn how are you thinking we would do that by inviting environmental commissioners to join this this group you know having that i just like this all part of the that annual meeting that you're talking about i just like to get the notes from what was covered um and have that as be part of our agenda i mean they've already done so much work to share ideas and cover topics and stuff and abby i don't know if you've been part of that um but and certs is a part of it um i know you guys all are familiar but boy it seems like that'd be a great place to start especially on the sharing ideas among different cities um because it's a great collaboration um uh we have a colleague diana mcewen who helps yeah so good idea susie did you have your hand up i did i i'm so enthusiastic about the idea of networking and continuing this and incorporating it into received conversations that are already underway my concern is for um i don't again see any mechanism through which smaller cities can share and i said r d right rip off and duplicate the good examples from other cities i take no shame in that each one of the initiatives that you guys have reported on your cities should come automatically with the user generic versions that another city can take and run with there's no sense that our our staffs are duplicating efforts and the city smaller cities like mine 2006 we don't have the staff we're doing great as a small community but so i would love to see in addition to meetings an online portal where we can aggregate northfield passed a that that thing last night from the pca about the out of the cars that they're the changing standards that you were just speaking of for the sales of energy cars we did that last night but we didn't have any information about what other cities had done in the state we just did it um and i i i could get so much more done if if i could have a user-friendly version of of other initiatives um and uh there is no platform that i know of green steps does a great job of leading us with that structured you know it does so much but i need a resolution that template that kind of thing like add water and stir uh you know the staff have a slack channel what uh well slack is this kind of abby explain what it's this short thing on my computer yeah and i think that maybe there's a gap in in communication that's happening so i get beth kellis out of northfield is a rockstar member of the community she's great she's great but but the city leader the city leader there's no network yeah absolutely and so we did you know we shared um st louis park's comments on clean car rules with the cities and in north field and rochester and so there's some sharing there but i think you're right that there needs to be this this larger um piece of people juanamingo and elk elbow don't know anything about that right i mean right we've got 867 cities in northfield in minnesota right and um the other thing i put on the post and i could take the answers offline but i was approached to see about support for the innovation act the energy act at the federal level that dean dean phillips is bringing forward i think with angie craig and i would just offline love to know whether cities are supporting that federal initiative for energy innovation um we don't have to do it today because i really love this staying it with the saying with this what we could do it inside the state but i'll just share that the city of bemidji did pass that resolution um two years ago i think year and a half two years ago for the um the dividend act in the federal government yep we did pass a resolution we got we got skunked by bemidji again well i just put in the chat though we are really behind the eight ball because we're not talking about sustainability here we have a volunteer sustainability committee it's not a commission it's it's just um it's bemidji state university-led mainly and um we haven't got a climate action plan we haven't set any goals we've done guaranteed energy savings program but um that's kind of we've done ev charging stations you know we're just not um it's not on our radar really here and i would love to get it on our radar thank you how about other people do you want to come back to another meeting yes it just also shared that i'm really interested in grand rapids uh your you have a public utility that the city owns and so you did a solar project with that but i'm also interested in yours kevin hi good to see you again by the way in edina um and so we had an opportunity for a solar project with our local energy company and the council was split on that and failed four to three and i look back now we've had two solar projects come before us and i haven't been able to get them across the finish line and that's one of the big frustrations for me so understanding that it would be different here than in grand rapids for example where you own your utility company but i'd be interested in seeing um edina's as well yeah for north right the solar garden concept is is so what i think is ingenious about it is you don't have to you know there there really isn't anything for the city to invest in you step aside and you just you just lease space that you're not using to someone who will produce the energy and find the subscribers and there you go and you don't have to have the expertise i get it when people are kind of reluctant to become solar energy producers and and not know what they're getting into this way you can kind of sidestep it and just facilitate it so and and you know what the argument was here it was in a spot where we owned the property and they said oh that's good development land it's been on the market since 2010 it's never sold it's not a desirable lot uh and and so you know three years ago we had the opportunity to put a solar garden there and reduce energy use in our arena and they said no because oh we could sell that lot and so it's not only the the the value of the energy that we we didn't produce but also the that opportunity cost that we lost there you know lola yeah so related to that um you remind me in the comprehensive planning process in northfield um coming from new york i was impressed that if you stick your thumb in the soil in northfield you can actually grow a couple of feet taller it's like the richest soil i've ever seen in my life and we were we were developing it indiscriminately of the soil quality and so i when we redid the zoning land development code i introduced through the example of dakota kota county instead of ag holding which is the standard minnesota terminology for farms waiting to be sold so you can retire to florida i it's a joke um i parsed it and we have a public benefit district which says here's the land it's always right at the punch line when i know that's on the internet ah right so you begin to plan that green infrastructure into your zoning code which right now just says plow it under and create paradise you know so um i don't i could share that there are a couple of examples from our development code and then then we zoned the ag that should be egg where the spinach goes you know where it should go in the 11 weeks that we have to grow it um so comp planning and those best practices are a place to see people's tricks and innovations in that regard would be we're about to revise our code and i'd love to hear your tricks so i'm also interested and i'm i'll let carolyn go first you raise your hand first well i want to answer your question because one of the things that larry raised is policy in a state level and you asked about climate action plans they're really expensive we're spending 92 thousand dollars on a consultant to come in and we're assured that this is a budge break that this is not expensive that there are much more expensive consultants um so one of the things that i pushed for as a commissioner and i would love to see is something on the statewide level where it is a recipe here are you know 30 things and green subsidies is kind of like that but here here are the elements of climate action plan you know debate among yourselves you know but but to have that basic structure ready because nobody's got money sitting around for these um big climate action plans it's a hard decision to make to spend that kind of money for doing something that you think is is a really good idea but you're not gonna it's a hard argument to make yeah that's a good idea i also had a question do any of you have um ordinances around community benefit development um so that development has to you know have a community benefit or any around social determinants of health as far as development and um how it affects the health of the community uh whether that's based on accessibility you know how far it is to the park in the grocery store or whether that's based on um you know utility use but community benefit agreements that require developers you know if you want to develop here you want to do this multi-family you have to do this as part of it um and i'm just curious about that i know a lot of times we have uh local you know affordable housing as part of a community benefit agreement but could there also be climate action goals tied up with that and with development we i don't know i haven't heard it called that but in st louis park we do have something like that where if a developer is getting some kind of a conditional use permit or a variance pd or asking for investment via tiff then they have to comply with affordable housing goals as well as green building goals and you know normally you're not allowed to have a different code but if if we're investing in if we're doing something special for them then you can put that requirement on them and so we do that works quite yeah there could be could be a lot of borrowing of that affordable housing leverage uh trick into the environmental sustainability area yeah it's worked very well in the sustainability area for us so so i think there you go all right i think it maybe it's time to um to kind of shift to our last section and just sort of debrief the meeting here and kind of what comes next um we're going to start emma hopefully you're ready for some polls but i really encourage you on this to i mean this is what we decide to make of it and so please be uh quite frank in your responses um and what you're interested in or and or not um and then we'll kind of talk through what you know um and then maybe you could fire off the first poll yeah i'll go ahead and launch that so this we're asking uh we i can tell there's a lot of interest in talking with one another what what might you want to do more of together impact state policy regulation learning sharing what each other are doing both neither take me off the list and like you you can see when we're starting to get enough answers to close it all right can you see those results yep yep that sounds like a resounding both cool all right now how about the next one them all right this is are you ready for that one so this is a list of some topics that have been raised in the in the meeting here that could steer a future discussion item all right i tried to kind of lump them into specific categories we can always dive into them further as we go forward but here's a list so this will help inform what we go deeper on at future meetings and emma you can pick more than one right you should be able to but if you do pick them all it won't give us as much information as if you pick fewer so one question i have is some of these you know i feel like we have experience with i'd be happy to share it and then others i don't have any experience with but be interested in learning so so the there are some if i was just to respond to the ones i'd be interested in learning more about th t would be a fewer number but i don't want to suggest that i'm not interested in sharing what we've worked on i had the same response to the question kevin it matters are we listening or presenting and so we might want to ask the question again from i bet you're going to get different answers i just spliced that two ways so that's such good input i love that i love it too should we do it again only uh this time answer by with what you're interested in learning more about and i did it based on that let's do the first one based on what you're interested in learning about yeah where's the where is it where's the question again did you put it up again i'm gonna excuse me i'm sorry i'm not oh no no you're totally right yeah i'm gonna relaunch that so what are we doing this time what you're interested in learning more about oh my god and then what i'm teaching about too because some of you have like grandma ray in your vehicle shuttle program and rapids very cool that's grand rapids oh is it grand rapids sorry sorry it's not northbrook susie well you know i'm looking for the hudson river how are we coming emma look at that so environmental justice and then rural transit autonomous vehicle that was super interesting green banks we'll take that to be inclusive of financing in general which for residents and businesses is so important good stuff good stuff i'd want to do it again larry only this time do it what do you want to you know what are you doing that you'd want to share sure then we'll be able to that's great that's fun emma are we gonna know who said what i am unsure i will figure that out we'll find out well if we'll probably learn about it but there's only one person that knows about it then you're only going to get one vote for what that is so it wouldn't be very clear on no but if if uh if we're able to tell who that one person is then we'll call you up yes the autonomous vehicles one is me michelle we now know where you live so we're coming i'm coming to i want to brighten it it's gonna be a little bit yet but a little bit oh that's exciting like i think i want to ride in it they're gonna have um human drivers in it for the first little bit until people are comfortable isn't that cool that's cool yeah that's cool oh a lot of people know about organics recycling yep uh autonomous vehicle yeah this will be great this will be really great so how'd you like this format some combination of networking a presentation sharing what you're doing some updates on some of the policy work i thought it was great i thought it was a well good mix of information anybody have constructive criticism or suggestions next time how about whatever this is susie i i just um i i bet you that there are maybe i sense that there are maybe four or five times as many ideas as where it came up going on in these cities and other cities and i just i do wish that there were a way to easily even on a google doc aggregate activity in a public way so electric vehicles google doc city officials can say oh yeah the city of elk elbow um did this and that you know and then the contact information like if you make use of the public marketplace we can take or leave we wouldn't have to discuss everything as a group but it creates a shared platform kind of like you'd get at a lmc remember those meetings we used to attend in person um but but it does it virtually and so many cities don't participate in those convocations that it might and then if we can train people to um create generic versions of their good work so other cities could steal them that's even better does that i hope you guys laugh when i say that it's a joke about stealing good ideas right um but it is i mean let's use the best of each other so some some shared platform that's not in addition to our conversation where some of the other ideas can go because they're not there's so many topics that we just we didn't touch on yet why don't we think about that and we'll come back with some suggestions um what one one idea just second carol uh one idea is that the league of minnesota cities runs uh green step cities kind of a female lister type of thing it's not exactly what you're asking for because it's not that you can look something up exactly um but people do ask questions anybody done stuff less and such so that's one idea yes and uh you're not the only green step city person that's asked for a more robust sharing platform although i have no criticism of the program it's phenomenal all right okay um okay other ideas uh carolyn i guess my question is um do we who do we need to add to our table who needs to be here who's not here great and um yeah that's put your ideas in the chat here why don't you okay you mean like city names carolyn you thinking yeah i got those i got the list yeah well one great idea um you've probably gone after a lot of them larry well i i you know i'm one kind of one person in this but with some help here you know uh several other folks here helped but um yeah i think it would be great to have well should be here and uh and then get assistance in if you have contacts inviting them to the next one you know it there's nothing better than saying hey i attended this thing it it with someone you know and it was worth it right it'll be worth your time um you know that's the way we'll get more folks and and be able to amplify the work we do and the power we have are we only i'm looking for city participation um i know that the midwakaton sioux community is very involved in energy programs and i may get be able to get somebody from shock vape and why couldn't community i think that would be really interesting i i don't i don't understand the what ramifications that would be but i think that would be really interesting i i think it would be fine yeah i think all right great let me see what i can do they're involved too aren't they in the organics recycling they have a foothold they have a there's a professional role of that community in that so that's a great idea um uh is there anybody on this call that would be interested in uh like being part of an email exchange or even get on the phone for 20 minutes and brainstorm not just cities but names and who knows who so i had told i told larry and many of you know i have a good list from when i organized the democratic municipal officials um which i was hoping would get to more get to more policy um it was fun it was pretty good but um i think i'm learning that the more specific you can be targeted with people's time the better uh but i'd be happy to play the name game with that spreadsheet from the past and the current one i just went online myself and got the names of current not we need bipartisan participation obviously absolutely right and this is a non-partisan gig but yeah that'd be fantastic susie and then that was michelle and pete and carolyn great and emma you wrote that down okay perfect um last question in the last minute um we're proposing meeting monthly uh is there is there a day of the week that works better than wednesday you have an eighth one it's a joke that at least one person had to leave for church thursday i'm open no not thursday friday you don't want to meet friday evening is 4 30 a good time is four better five better what do you think easy if we did four o'clock maybe we could get the guys who are going to church there you go yeah all right four o'clock wednesdays yeah and also planning commission i think um from where he had he's gone to planning commission so if you meet a little bit earlier you can avoid those two problems great perfect on the wednesday too if it's the first wednesday yes second or third no first wednesday works great okay done four o'clock first wednesday thank you all thank you all so much oh thank you all right thank you thanks everybody okay bye-bye bye good to meet you all yeah here too