City Council Agenda and Packet 2024 12 09 and 10 - SP

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SUSTAINABILITY ADVISORY BOARD ANSWERS FOR APPLICANTS BEING INTERVIEWED Sustainability Advisory Board. Louisville? decisions? contribute to the success of the board? Nisa Bradley For the last 15 years, my career has been focused on energy and sustainability. I am especially motivated by opportunities to take a 'double bottom line' approach, when doing the right thing by the environment is beneficial in other ways too. I believe that cities have an incredibly important role to play in addressing climate change, and I'd bring this optimistic and pragmatic approach onto the Sustainability Board as well. I'm a twenty-year resident of Louisville, and I absolutely love our little town! We lived near Harper Lake for fifteen years, and now in downtown. I served on the Library Board from 2007-2012, including time as President. I really enjoyed it, but had to step back when I had young kids and a job with a lot of travel. I'm now in a position where I could use my expertise to recommit to our city in a new way. At its simplest, sustainability means not consuming more of our limited resources than we can replace in a reasonable period of time. It's a broad category, and can quickly become overwhelming, especially with limited budgets, and limited attention span from constituents. I've read the current Sustainability Plan, and feel that the priorities are all timely and impactful. The decarbonization & energy focus is so time - sensitive, and our actions benefit the entire globe. These topics pair well with those which are acutely local and relate to key Colorado values, such as waste, water, food, and ecological impacts. Rather than suggesting that some of these topics are more important than others, the priorities I'd suggest relate to "how" we do these things, and should cut across all of the key topics. First, community -building: How to engage, and educate our city on sustainability and our related initiatives? Most people support sustainability initiatives conceptually, but they don't necessarily want to think about them all the time. It's important to find ways to engage people at the level that is right for them. Next, realistic goals: For sustainability goals to succeed, they need to be simple, and reflective of the values of our community. There is a critical role for cities to play in advancing innovative sustainability goals, but it's important that they aren't too far ahead of their constituents. Fortunately our community is already sustainability-focused relative to average, so we have the opportunity to be both listeners and innovators. Third, taking action: I'm a huge believer in a short term + long-term strategy. We need pragmatism and quick wins to drive near -term success and engagement, but also a set of long-term aspirations that provide guidance to affect real change over time. With the update of the Strategic Plan in 2025, timing is very good to identify priority sectors and align accordingly. My background is largely in corporate energy and sustainability, working previously at Honeywell, and for the last decade and more at Schneider Electric, this year identified by Time Magazine as the "World's Most Sustainable Company." For much of my time here, I was the VP of Marketing for our Sustainability Business, which is a consulting arm that helps many of the world's most recognizable companies to set and implement their sustainability goals, especially those focused on energy and decarbonization. Why does this matter? Because I understand the corporate mindset, and could help to engage the corporate sector as we set our local sustainability plan, and as they make their own public commitments. Many companies have community engagement commitments, or are open to making new ones, and we should be able to identify local companies, or global companies with relevant areas of focus, whose goals align with ours and can be fruitfully engaged. One example that I've already enacted was creating a Schneider Electric discount for Marshall Fire survivors: https://rebuildingbetter.org/equipment-discounts/. Working with Zac Swank from the City of Boulder and Lisa Ritchie here at the city, SE developed a 10% discount on SE equipment for survivors to build back in ways that were compliant with the 2021 electrical standard. It is critical not only to make solutions simple and affordable for all, but to consider those for whom budget or the challenges of everyday life make incremental effort unrealistic, or for whom access has structural barriers. It's also important to understand that often the most negatively impacted are those who can least afford to advocate for themselves. We need to put proactive effort into considering all of these perspectives, even when their voices may not be the loudest. I've already mentioned my 20-year history in Louisville, experience as President of the Library Board, work with Marshall Fire incentives, and my role in Marketing for one of the world's most sustainable companies. In addition, in my current role within Schneider Electric, I work with companies in our venture portfolio focused on electrification capabilities. Through this, I have had significant recent exposure to residential solar and EV charging solutions. I also have prior professional experience through Honeywell Utility Solutions in other in -home devices and incentives, such as Honeywell thermostats, demand response functionality for commercial and residential customers, utility rate structures, decarbonization techniques, utility program enrollment tactics, ratepayer behavioral engagement, and more. For more information on my work -related background, you can find my Sustainability Business marketing team's blog site at perspectives.se.com, and my current team's focus at several sites, including schneiderhome.com, energysage.com, qmerit.com and evconnect.com. My own professional background is on my Linkedln profile at https://www.linkedin.com/m/nisabradley/. Lastly, we've been on our own home electrification journey over recent years, with purchases of enhanced insulation, new windows, an electric lawn mower, a heat pump, solar panels, PHEV, and a smart thermostat. We are eyeing an induction stove and more. 5o we understand the excitement, but also have empathy for the complexity and cost of the actions that homeowners are faced with related to electrification. Ben Brazda I loved growing up in Louisville as a child, playing at the In my view, sustainability for Lousiville means preserving the small-town feel with an emphasis on old -town and main -street business vitality. It also parks, going to school at LES, and eating at the Blue includes affordable housing and housing accessibility for low-income individuals along with an infrastructure that allows access to businesses and Parrot. Decades later, when my wife and I got married, resources by walking, biking, and by bus. Finally, safety for the community to ensure that Louisville is a place where everyone feels safe and free to live we looked for a house to start a family in and were their lives true to themselves as part of a thriving community. astonishingly lucky to find one in Louisville where we are currently raising our two little boys. I graduated from CU with a business degree and subsequently worked for a financial firm in Louisville before starting my own small business that I still run today and operate from an office in Boulder and a warehouse in Lafayette. By raising a family, owning a home and commercial property, running a small business, and being part of the Lousiville community, I strongly believe that my background, experience, and passion for this town would be a helpful component of this board. The board must clearly work closely with the Revitalization Commission, developers, environmental agencies, Bias in decision -making often results in the underrepresentation of diverse voices as local businesses, as well as residents to ensure a cohesive plan for the city that provides a viable path forward that individuals or groups with more privilege often have greater influence over decisions, is sustainable economically, environmentally, and socially. either directly or indirectly. For this reason, it is critically important to be mindful of and to include members of underrepresented groups when making decisions for the community as a whole. I have lived in this area my entire Ide and for the last 15 years have run a small business with 4 employees and have endured many difficult challenges. I have been on the board of a commercial building in Boulder that has had to deal with many difficult planning and financial difficulties among a diverse group of owners. Ultimately, though, I greatly enjoy working with people and teams to find solutions to complicated problems. i Derek Cole I'm excited by the opportunities that Louisville is taking to make change on the local level, both for things we can directly influence and for those where we can show leadership (eg, the all -electric trash collection) I'm interested in helping Louisville continue to adopt strategies that are beneficial to the environment, the city, and to its residents and visitors. Sustainability involves the deliberate use of initiatives to ensure that the community is able to adopt new ways of doing business to ensure success for decades to come. With a focus on using beneficial technologies, this involves: 1. Promoting initiatives that produce better environmental outcomes while also improving the lives of our constituents (or at least with no net - negative impact) 2. Helping people to embrace practices that produce better long-term outcomes for them and/or the environment - This would include efforts such as education, incentivization, and other assistance in getting past obstacles for adoption 3. Deliberate work with other boards, community groups, businesses, and towns to address potential dangers like fire or outcomes from climate change, at a scale that calls for deliberate action at the city level This is where it's important to make sure we consider as many potentially interested stakeholders as we can. We'd need to see how has interests such as - Who is affected by an effort? - Who could have an interest in the effort? - Who could see a reason to oppose an effort As we try to move something forward, it's an opportunity to lean in and engage the stakeholders who could create resistance or friction, and make sure they see the benefits. Likewise, people with a potential financial interest are great potential allies, if we can help them realize the potential that a new initiative presents. Often it's just a change of perspective that people need to see that there's benefit where they may have not considered Finally, engaging receptive stakeholders to raise awareness of what we're trying to do is key to make things known and to ensure that our residents seem them as achievable. These are all things that have to be considered and examined in all sustainability decisions. While a lot could be discussed, some brief points are: Bias: Biases towards known solutions and / or problem sets is something to watch for. It'd be easy to select the solutions we're more familiar with and to miss less known solutions, which could be better in the long term. One bias to be especially watchful against is confirmation bias-- many of these decisions would have different points of view, and it'd be too easy to give more weight to those we initially want to agree with Power: We need to be careful that we are acting in the interests of Louisville and its people. While it'd be easy to steer efforts in directions we find personally appealing, that would be using of power in a way not aligned to the intent of this board. Privilege: It'd be easy to grow too confident that the challenges people face are known -- we have plenty of different interest groups in Louisville, so we have to be watchful that we're considering them all. By checking our privilege, we can better address the interests of all of Louisville by helping each other consider everyone's status. Additionally, since we have access to more information and experts, it could be easy to lose sight of the educational tasks that need to be done. We need to ensure that we keep going back to what the layman would know, as well as what any specific audience would know, if we're going to convince people to change. I'm a certified Project Manager with several years of experience with multi -year projects and multiple stakeholders. I'll bring this experience to the board to help look at the longer -term impacts of efforts. Also, I've been working across multiple stakeholders with different interests in my almost six years at Google. I'll bring this practice of learning and incorporating multiple points of view to ensure that different stakeholder groups in Louisville have their interests heard and that they get to hear what we're striving for in terms they'll engage with. Jacquelyn Geiger The SAB is the board with which I most closely relate, as it is something that affects my and others' daily lives, and it is at the forefront of mind given the state of world affairs. I also want to give back to my community and serve in a way that I know will make a difference. Sustainability is more than electric vehicles and recycling; it means making decisions that we can live with in perpetuity. The top three areas I think Louisville, CO can embrace are (in no particular order): improve governance and education, identify and re-route food waste, and reduce carbon emissions from not only vehicles but from building heating/cooling. There are more areas we can cover, like improve textile waste and reduce use of plastics, yet these extra two items can be covered in the governance category. By trade I am an aerospace engineer with decades of experience collaborating. The SAB should collaborate with the Louisville City Council, as well as the Denver City Council or Colorado Congress for governance, education, and new laws. The SAB should also collaborate with Louisville Community Food Share to brainstorm and put into effect additional food partnerships and plans. And the SAB should introduce ideas and garner interest from community members regarding additional viable ways to reduce carbon emissions; this could be done via no or low cost community events/gatherings. The Louisville Rec Center is a potential candidate for reducing heating and cooling costs, the SAB should discuss options that will save the community money over time and improve the LRC's carbon footprint. These are the biggest hurdles, so their roles are forefront. The goal is to educate and show people that sustainability is livable. For example, the house my family lives in has been retrofitted with a heat pump, geothermal, radiant flooring, and solar. We rarely use A/C, and we keep the house on the cooler side in the winter. As the Scandinavians say, "There is no bad weather, Just bad clothing." Our house is perfectly livable, and cheap --we just wear slightly warmer clothes inside during winter. Showing others how to do it is key, giving people the experience is also key. It's a matter of hosting community events and having speakers that explain how sustainability really can work if people keep an open mind. One of my favorite aspects about Irving in Louisville is its progressiveness and the community members' ability to listen with an open mind. I've mentioned several qualifications above already: I am a collaborator at heart, my family strives to live in a sustainable way already, I recognize that small progress is better than no progress, and I have ideas. We have two elementary school children and it is important to me that they see this in action and get involved. I also briefly served on a city council board years ago (Building Code Board of Appeals, I believe) so am familiar with City Council. I also know a few professional folks (who are friends) who could be leveraged for consulting on resource efficiency. Julie Herman I have been working toward sustainable solutions for Sustainability means identifying the solutions that meet the economic, environmental, and social needs of a community and ultimately the planet. I over 30 years in various ways in different careers. I would go a step further to included resiliency and regeneration as concepts that should be integrated into sustainable solutions. For example I would believe sustainability provides a framework to create a like to consider both how we can bring back the health of our ecosystems with how we can be adaptive to climate change. resilient and equitable community that understands and values the integral relationship between human and ecosystem health. !see many of these activities already in the works including supporting PACE programs to help local businesses save energy and electrify as well as efforts to work with residential customers to make them aware of their opportunities, especially with the IRA funds, Energy Office, and DRCOG initiatives in play. Transportations and land use are two more very important sectors to consider including how the City can encourage less VMT's and multi use development. In order to identify sustainable solutions it is critical to have diverse voices at the table who feel safe, seen, heard, and valued. A lack of awareness of our personal and group biases, power, and privilege will not foster that environment. I have studied sustainability for decades and have shared the principles in my role as Executive Director of the Green building guild, manager of Demand Management Solutions for E Source, and Senior Product Developer at Xcel Energy. City Council 9-10 December 2024 Packet 14