Tuesday, December 2, 2025, 9:30 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee
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