Tuesday, December 2, 2025, 9:30 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee
The Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee met on December 2, 2025 with a full quorum. The committee approved minutes from its October 22 meeting and adopted a 2026 meeting calendar, moving the late-November meeting from November 25 to November 10. Staff from Austin Climate Action and Resilience, Facilities Management, and Austin Energy briefed the committee on a plan to add solar to roughly 120 city facilities via an upcoming RFP, with an estimated 75 sites and 25 megawatts of potential capacity, under a tight timeline to secure a 30% federal tax credit by commencing construction by July 4, 2026. The committee also received a briefing from the City Controller's office and outside counsel on the scope and purpose of gas franchise agreements ahead of the Texas Gas Service franchise renewal, whose current agreement expires October 15, 2026, with staff indicating a negotiated agreement must be ready for the May 7, 2026 council meeting. Finally, Austin Watershed Protection answered questions about a memo briefing on a potential 2026 bond, including project prioritization and bucket funding. No votes were taken on the briefing items.
0:02 It is nine thirty three. I'll call this meeting of the climate water environment parks committee to order.
0:09 Uh, it is Tuesday, December 2nd.
0:13 We are at Austin City Hall in the boards and commissions room.
0:17 Uh, there is a full quorum present.
0:20 And I understand we have two speakers this morning.
0:23 Yes, we do. Alright, well, without further ado, let's get rolling.
0:28 If I can have mark May followed by paul robbins.
0:54 Okay. Uh, I'm, uh, mark mary.
0:58 I, uh, live in d five.
1:00 I was here last, last minute to, uh, talk about park funding.
1:05 I wanted to, uh, to, uh, continue that, uh, conversation in light of what has gone on in
1:12 last month or so.
1:13 So, prop, prop q has failed in, you know, a response to this vote.
1:18 Council chose to cut more than $5 million from our parks budget rather than find other funding sources or
1:29 re a consider past optional costly project.
1:34 This is pretty frustrating because at almost the same time you voted to cut park funding, Austin parks foundation,
1:43 uh, uh, showed us their latest irs filing that showed they actually continue to, you know, accumulate wealth
1:51 and are now sitting on more than $23 million.
1:55 While the city considered layoffs to write right of the budget, a pf added two more highly paid
2:02 employees and now spends more than one a million dollars on their top, uh, seven employees.
2:09 Does it really take a million dollars in annual salaries to figure out where to spend the acl
2:15 check in our parks every year?
2:17 Is this a wise use of public money?
2:22 I'd say no. Simply don't understand how you all let a pf, uh, continue to hoard cash.
2:29 You seem to, uh, prefer funding cuts to asking a pf and other nonprofits that benefit from our
2:36 parks to do more.
2:38 How could you not raise the daily maintenance fees charged to charge to acl?
2:43 Why should voters trust your judgment with a future parks bond when you can't seem to take the
2:49 smallest obvious steps to improve park funding?
2:55 If I take a step back, I'm guessing that you think of yourself as park people, water people,
3:00 climate, climate people. Since you're, since you're part of this group.
3:04 From my point of view, I, I believe being on the c-w-e-e-p does not make you a parks
3:10 person. Well-crafted phrases on a campaign flyer do not make you a park person.
3:17 I believe it is how you vote that makes you a parks person.
3:21 It's what you advocate for when it's hard.
3:24 And when people with influence don't want to spend money in parks, I think a parks person, uh,
3:31 considers the impact on the general fund when voting for optional projects like a new turs or concrete
3:39 caps over I 35.
3:41 This means actually recognizing that every optional dollar you choose to spend elsewhere throughout the year is a
3:48 dollar that can't be spent on green spaces or parks or, or to help us, you know, prepare
3:53 for a warming world.
3:55 A parks person sees the inherent value of green over gray.
3:59 Please consider my comments.
4:01 And
4:12 up next we have paul robbins and we also have a request for one additional speaker, if that's okay.
4:19 Okay.
4:32 Counsel, I'm paul robbins. I'm an environmental activist and consumer advocate.
4:40 Most of you know that I serve as vice chair of the resource management commission.
4:46 Uh, I'm here to speak before your presentation on pending texas gas service franchise negotiations.
4:56 You have delegated the task of public review to the resource management commission.
5:01 Our commission will likely be making a multifaceted set of recommendations at our January meeting.
5:10 I am asking you to give us 30 minutes to make a formal presentation, uh, when they are
5:17 completed regarding the presentation that will be made this morning.
5:22 Our commission was not given advanced notice of this.
5:26 The presentation appears to frame the issues and solutions in my opinion, too narrowly, uh, citizens austinites are
5:37 anxious about affordability in Austin and the narrow framing of franchise issues will not help this.
5:46 I will give you my personal observation that while the city cannot place specific rates in a franchise,
5:55 I believe we have the right to place generic guidelines, uh, concerning collection of capital recovery fees, advanced
6:06 review of proposed capital expenditures, progressive rate structures, and assistance to low income rate payers.
6:17 Regarding the company's poorly performing energy conservation programs, it is true that the railroad commission, uh, regulates programs
6:28 administered by gas utilities.
6:31 But if the city ran its own programs funded by an increase in the franchise fee, these will
6:39 likely be exempt from state regulation.
6:42 Regarding the length of the franchise term.
6:45 25 Years May indeed be the maximum, but as far as I know, it is legal to have
6:52 it as low as one year.
6:56 Uh, I'm the only person in the room who's actually worked on three rounds of franchise negotiations with
7:03 the company or its previous owner.
7:07 So I have, uh, some background in this.
7:11 Again, I'm asking you, uh, to give the resource management commission, uh, a 30 minute briefing at a
7:20 meeting after mid-january. Uh, you'll have to excuse my demeanor.
7:26 I'm still recovering from an injury.
7:30 I probably look like two cats drug me in, but I made it here.
7:37 Thank you for being here.
7:43 And then can we have cohiba white?
7:50 Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
7:53 Um, on behalf of a public citizen, I just wanna say we're really excited about, uh, the progress
8:00 that is being made on moving forward with putting solar on city buildings.
8:04 This is a great opportunity for the city not only to lead on reducing emissions, set a good
8:10 example for the community, but also to cut cost.
8:14 And obviously that is of significant need at this time.
8:19 Um, the one thing that I would suggest, um, perhaps making a bit of an alteration, at least
8:24 from what we heard at the joint sustainability committee, was that staff was recommending, uh, setting a pretty
8:30 high threshold for the size of building that they would go out for rfp, uh, or bid on
8:37 in terms of getting installations.
8:39 Um, and, and the reasoning was just that those, uh, larger rooftops do get the best economy of
8:45 scale. Um, but that was not to say that staff was indicating that smaller, um, installations would not
8:51 still save money. And I would just suggest that given the, you know, outgoing kind of budget constraints
8:58 that the city is going to have, we should be taking advantage of all opportunities to reduce operating
9:03 costs. So even if, uh, there is, you know, somewhat less return on that investment for smaller, uh,
9:11 facilities, it is still a return.
9:13 And I would just suggest passing a very wide net when, when offering out, putting out that rfp
9:20 and allowing the market to respond.
9:23 You will have some companies that definitely wanna work on the bigger projects.
9:27 There are other companies that don't have the capacity to work on those larger projects, but might be
9:33 very interested in the smaller ones.
9:36 And that's still an opportunity for the city to cut cost and also have more solar capacity.
9:42 But overall, I'm really, uh, excited as is the joint sustainability committee about this progress and about, uh,
9:48 the departments that have been working together to get to this point.
9:51 So I encourage y'all to move forward in an expedited manner, uh, you know, today and, uh, as
9:58 those rfp results come in.
10:00 Thank you. Alright, uh, we will now move to our items.
10:09 We'll start with item number one, approval of the minutes from our October 22nd meeting.
10:14 Is there a motion?
10:16 Uh, vice chair Ellis seconded by Council Member Siegel, without objection, the minutes are approved.
10:23 Um, we'll go to item number two, which is our meeting schedule for calendar year 2026.
10:30 I will just point out that currently, uh, we set November 25th as a meeting and as much as
10:38 we all are thankful for being together, I don't think we want to meet the day before thanksgiving.
10:44 So, uh, I'm gonna propose that we move that to November the 10th.
10:49 And, uh, with that, if there is a motion with the calendar with November 10th, I see it by
10:56 Council Member uchin signed by vice chair Ellis.
10:59 And without objection that those dates will be approved.
11:03 Alright, that brings us to item number three, briefing on solar on city facilities.
11:09 And, uh, let's see.
11:11 We have zach ballmer and who's joining you?
11:15 Zach. Whole crew. Whole crew.
11:18 Zach plus crew.
11:35 All right. I'm zach baumer, director of Austin climate action and resilience.
11:40 And I'll let my cos speakers here each introduce themselves before we start.
11:46 Good morning, rohan lila, climate project manager at Austin, climate action and resilience.
11:52 Morning, I'm kit johnson, city architect with, uh, facilities management.
11:58 Good morning, tim harvey.
11:59 I'm the director of customer renewable solutions osland energy.
12:05 Alright, thanks team. So we are really excited today to give you this update on, um, our work
12:12 on exploring solar on city facilities that we've been working on over the course of the last five
12:17 months together. Uh, so first I'm gonna cover an executive summary, then a little bit of background in
12:24 our approach. Uh, then my other speakers are gonna cover, uh, options for adding solar, our initial site
12:32 screening, which we've been going through over the last few months.
12:35 Um, and then our request for proposal process that we are rapidly approaching here, and then scheduling next
12:41 steps. So first, the, the resolution which brought us to this work.
12:47 Uh, this was an item from council that was passed back in May.
12:52 Uh, there are four parts to this resolution.
12:55 Uh, the first one, uh, the first part is what we're gonna spend the most of the time,
12:59 uh, explaining today. It's our assessment of sites, um, and how we would go about, uh, maximizing solar
13:06 addition to city facilities.
13:09 Uh, the second point there was about, um, uh, the concept of a revolving fund, which there was,
13:16 uh, a parallel resolution that was passed during the budget process.
13:21 We have a parallel process that's going, um, going on right now to analyze, uh, and propose how
13:27 we could actually create a revolving fund.
13:30 Uh, we're likely gonna get to the details of that in the coming months.
13:35 Uh, the third item there was about, uh, collaboration and sharing with other local governmental entities in the
13:43 Austin area. We have held a call with as many other local governmental entities as we could in
13:48 October, uh, and shared all the information about this project and this program, uh, the work that we're
13:54 doing, uh, and offered our help, uh, and our information to them so they can pursue this, um,
14:01 this type of project that they would like.
14:02 So we feel like that's been a, a productive collaboration with our, our local, uh, neighbors.
14:08 And then the fourth item on the agenda there was about worker protections.
14:12 We are, we are, uh, planning on including a work site agreement as part of our rfp that
14:19 we're gonna be releasing.
14:20 So we feel like we will properly address, um, all the labor stipulations in our, um, in our
14:25 contract as we move forward.
14:30 So as, as you can, you can see from the speakers up there, this has been a very
14:34 collaborative team effort. My team has been the overall sorts of sort of project manager and coordinator on
14:40 this. Uh, the facilities management team has been key in terms of sharing all of the detailed information
14:47 about our sites. Things like ages of roof, things like accessibility.
14:52 Um, and so we've cast a very wide net in looking at, um, every single possible, uh, city
14:58 facility that we could analyze here.
15:00 Austin energy has really been key, um, in terms of their subject matter expertise.
15:05 They run a solar program, so it's been great to have their knowledge, uh, on board in terms
15:12 of, uh, analyzing all the detailed, uh, electrical server analysis for buildings, as well as in, uh, advising
15:19 us about how we might, uh, finalize this rfp and get it out on the street.
15:24 Uh, next finance and procurement has been, uh, really essential to this, uh, discussion.
15:29 'Cause we're talking about, um, a potentially complicated contract with lots of sites, with numerous bidders with a
15:37 large dollar amount. So, uh, those staff have been participating in all of our meetings over the cl
15:42 last five months and advising us on how to be most efficient and effective in this effort.
15:47 And then finally, uh, this project could not get to this point without the help of, um, out