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Approved Minutes - 2021-10-18 CITY OF LAKE OSWEGO Sustainability Advisory Board Minutes October 18, 2021 Call to Order / Roll Call Kathleen Wiens called the October 18, 2021 meeting of the Sustainability Advisory Board (SAB) to order at 6:30 p.m. over Zoom. Members Present: Buzz Chandler, Stephanie Glazer, Jay Hamachek, Susan Mead, Mark Puhlman, Matt Schaeffer, Anna Wallin, Kathleen Wiens, Councilor Verdick, Kara Orvieto, Kim Roeland Members Excused/Absent: Olivia Reinhart Staff: Amanda Watson, Sustainability Program Manager Public: Duke Castle, Rick Cook, Andrea Platt Announcements from Board and Staff Kathleen: LOSN and Oswego Lake Watershed Council’s 3rd annual tree summit is on October 30 via Zoom, will focus on climate impacts to LO’s urban forest. Jay is part of a group of LOSN members providing sustainability input on the Wastewater Treatment Facility Project and shared updates. The project is at the 15% design stage. City staff project leads presented to City Council and held a public outreach meeting last week. Sustainability related questions are focusing on potential for capturing methane emissions, biosolids processing, and water reclamation. Matt: LOSN’s 4th annual EV Fair at the beginning of October was very successful. Over 400 people attended, 50 EVs, and 7 dealers, all of whom want to participate again next year. Stephanie is a member of the City’s Middle Housing Code Advisory Committee, which has met 6 times to discuss HB 2001 and how to implement it via City Code. Discussions incorporated diverse perspectives and representatives from multiple City advisory boards and commissions. Councilor Verdick noted there will be more opportunities for community members to offer their input over the next few months, and encouraged SAB members to get to know what is being proposed and share their feedback with Council and the Planning Commission. Approval of Minutes May meeting minutes were approved. Public Comment Duke Castle shared that LOSN will be holding a forum on Living Buildings on Nov. 17 where the engineering firm PAE will share about the design of their new HQ in Portland. PAE designed the new Lakeridge Middle School in LO. Rick Cook spoke about the Rassekh Park development project, which is in the design phase. He has concerns about the current design of the park, which is adjacent to sensitive natural areas including an City of Lake Oswego Sustainability Advisory Board Minutes October 18, 2021 Page 2 of 4 active beaver habitat and a wildlife corridor that goes through Pecan Creek. Would prefer the parking lot and entrance to be on the east side opening to Stafford Road rather than on the west side of the park opening onto Atherton Drive, to reduce impacts to sensitive lands and from traffic noise and congestion. LO Watershed Council will be partnering with Lakeridge High School students on stewardship projects at Pecan Creek. A group he is working with in the Stafford Hamlet is inviting the four cities to come together and discuss how the Hamlet could serve as a regional carbon sequestration zone. Regular Business A. Review Agenda Stephanie Glazer reviewed the meeting agenda. B. Introductions / Meet and Greet SAB members introduced themselves, sharing how long they had been on the Board as members or alternates, their areas of expertise and interests related to sustainability, and what projects and topics they have been focusing on during their time on the SAB. Amanda Watson, the City’s Sustainability Program Manager who started at the end of September and will serve as staff liaison to the SAB, introduced herself. C. City Council Update Councilor Verdick shared that three major areas of focus for Council currently are the new Wastewater Treatment Facility Project, middle housing implementation (HB 2001 and 2003), and community policing. On Wednesday, Council will have a Special Meeting wrapping up the initial phase of the community policing project, sharing learnings from the process. This will be an ongoing process and City Council is very committed to continued evaluation of not only police but all city services to ensure the city is addressing everyone in the community’s needs. She noted Council is also looking for public input on Rassekh Park and how the park can work for all of the community, as well as on the new Recreation and Aquatics Center which is also in early design stage. D. Overview of SAB Priorities for 2021 Acknowledging that SAB meetings had been on pause since May and several new members had joined since then, Stephanie and Kathleen led the group through a review of the SAB’s 2021 priorities and discussion of potential new and continued areas of focus for the coming year. SAB will need to go through a formal goal setting process for 2022 and should start that at the next meeting in November. Stephanie walked through the SAB’s December 2020 memo to City Council that outlined the SAB’s 2021 goals: • Advance Climate Action Planning – We are almost there on the solar goal, which originally had a 5-year time horizon. • Promote Cleaner Air – Relating to landscaping equipment, SAB decided not to focus on a ban or mandate, but on voluntary measures that can support and enable a transition away from gas- powered landscaping equipment toward electric (e.g., demonstrations and/or vouchers for electric equipment, educational engagement with homeowners and landscaping companies). City of Lake Oswego Sustainability Advisory Board Minutes October 18, 2021 Page 3 of 4 • Advocate for EV adoption – Members of SAB and LOSN have been great champions for the EV goal and a lot of progress has been made on outreach. Duke provided an update that EV registration grew by over 50% last year during the pandemic; more than 1500 EVs are now registered in LO, which is close to 5% of all EVs registered statewide. Duke and a group of SAB and LOSN members were looking into what it would take to support EV charging at multifamily buildings, but had a lot of difficulty accessing property managers to get their input. Property managers were also not hearing from their tenants that they wanted charging, with the exception of some condos. They are proposing pole -mounted EV charging in the right-of-way as an alternative approach to increase access to charging for multifamily residents. PGE ran a pilot in SE Portland, and the City of Melrose, MA installed a number of chargers through a partnership with National Grid. Duke and the group would like to pilot the technology in LO. Next step would be to do a study to understand cost and scope the relationship with PGE, then develop a proposal to present to City Council. Amanda will connect with Duke and PGE to learn more about their pilot. Stephanie was in favor of supporting the initiative; SAB will need to talk about how they would want to support (e.g. a memo to Council). Stephanie also noted that a pilot would not fully solve equity challenges related to access to EV charging; there will need to be a critical mass of options for people to reliably access overnight charging. Amanda flagged that the Planning Commission had as a goal for 2021 to review opportunities for policy or code changes to support expansion of EV charging infrastructure in partnership with SAB and Transportation Advisory Board members; she and Planning & Building Services staff will be tracking the rulemaking process for the State’s new EV Ready Parking Standards and related policy changes and opportunities for the advisory boards to collaborate on implementation. • Advisory and outreach role – SAB has done a lot of public education around EVs, GPLE, and deconstruction. Would like to hear more from the new youth members about how SAB can assist LOSD green teams. LOSD has a new Teacher on Special Assignment for sustainability and SAB could offer their support. Would also like to do more outreach to other Boards and Commissions, Neighborhood Associations, etc. on areas of crossover. Still would like to update and make better use of SAB’s website for engagement; Amanda would be the one to manage this and will look into what content and pages can be added. • Priority actions in SCAP – SAB had provided input to City Council on SCAP actions that should be prioritized for the near term. There’s a lot going on for the EV adoption goal. Additional work on addressing GPLE has been paused since earlier this year City Council awarded a multi-site right of way landscaping contract for electric-only equipment. Improving resiliency and enhancing climate adaptation was a big priority; SAB had lots of ideas that can be unpacked in future meetings. Including an assessment of sustainability and climate impacts alongside financial impacts in city decision making was another; Moody’s and other credit rating bureaus have started looking at cities’ climate preparedness in their bond ratings so there is also a direct financial impact if we don’t prepare. SAB would like to support EcoHome LO as needed. Amanda said the interns did a great job of developing the program, a little more work to be done on the website but it’s nearly there. SAB members each shared which priorities they are currently working on and what they might like to carry forward or add. Common areas of interest were EVs, multifamily recycling, resiliency and preparedness for climate impacts, electric lawn equipment, reducing building demolitions (promoting deconstruction), engagement with LOSD on sustainability in schools, protecting the urban tree canopy, and improving connectivity and safety for walking and biking, including safe routes to school. Susan City of Lake Oswego Sustainability Advisory Board Minutes October 18, 2021 Page 4 of 4 suggested organizing a big event around Earth Day to engage the community -- enthusiasm for this idea and suggestions to include a repair fair, EV and electric landscape equipment demo, advertising Certified Backyard Habitat program. • Buzz – EVs; recycling (esp. implementation of SB 582); resiliency; exploring zoning code changes to facilitate solar deployment • Matt – electrification; EVs; sustainability at schools; updating SAB website • Susan – multifamily recycling and changes to the recycling system with EPR; tree canopy; resiliency, esp. equity aspects; Earth Day event • Mark – implementing air quality actions in SCAP around lawn equipment electrification and wildfire smoke; tree canopy • Jay – Wastewater Treatment Plant project; stormwater quality and green infrastructure; lawn equipment electrification • Kathleen – transition away from GPLE; trees and environmental protection; reducing demolitions • Stephanie – tree preservation and planning for climate impacts on tree canopy; GPLE; connectivity for walking and biking, incl. safe routes to school • Kim – resiliency and adaptation, esp. nature-based solutions; connectivity for walking and biking • Kara – sustainability at schools; community outreach; Earth Day event • Anna – safe routes to school; sustainability at schools and opportunities at the intersection of the environment and equity Wrap Up & Adjournment Next meeting in November will focus on goal setting for 2022. Stephanie is not available at the usual meeting time on 11/15. All members present agreed to reschedule the November meeting to 11/8 to ensure both co-chairs can be there. Stephanie Glazer adjourned the meeting at 8:35 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Amanda Watson Sustainability Program Manager