##VIDEO ID:lmSn770rPTk## Carol Migot present president, and Siobhan Meehan present. And that is it. That is the role. As always, I'll let everybody in the that might be watching this meeting that we need more members and I've been spreading that word at the citizens Academy, which is really a good experience, by the way. So has everyone had a chance to look at the minutes from the last meeting, which was in September, and do you have any amendments that you would make, or did you notice any? No, I moved to approve the minutes. Okay. We have a second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. A lot has happened since our last meeting. We don't have anybody from the public here, but I have been trying to listen to public comments and go to the board of Commissioners meetings in order to kind of keep tabs on post hurricanes and the info in which we'll be hearing about tonight in detail. So, Tommy, do you want to take it away with a vulnerability assessment comparison to what actually happened? Did you have a chance to look at it? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Chairman Ito, members of the committee, we're going to have a short update tonight on sort of a post hurricane assessment of the vulnerability assessment. We've been working on the vulnerability assessment for quite a while. The general status of that study is it's finalized, DEP is still working through their final reviews on the deliverables for like the grant reimbursement and things like that. But, you know, we wrapped up the technical portion of the study kind of over the summer, back in the spring, and he's been working through the review process and making minor changes to, you know, certain types of deliverables and things like that. But now, you know, that was that's all desktop study through GIS and modeling and things like that. And for better or worse, now we have some real life data on, you know, what happens. And some of the implications for storm surge, in particular for, for our city. So we're envisioning in the near future, we'll probably be doing after we get final DEP acceptance on the vulnerability assessment. We'll probably want to do some updates with based on lessons learned from like real storms, particularly Hurricane Helene. So a quick refresh on the vulnerability assessment kind of key findings. The vulnerability assessment was looking at two things over time, one of which is tidal inundation, which you'd seen before. That was a sort of smaller inundation map focused on, you know, year to year tidal surge, not surges, but tidal inundation from like high tide events and king tides and things like that. And then, as you see here, we also had done some assessment on total combined flooding risk for. And that's combined storm surge and rainfall. So here we've got just as a refresher, the 100 year combined flooding map from the vulnerability assessment and the tan slash yellow is the extent of what would be a 100 year event for combined storm surge and rainfall in 2040 coming up. And then you can see around the fringes, there would be a little bit of additional impact based on sea level rise for that similar storm in 2070 and 2100, based on the NOAA intermediate high sea level rise projections and just to reiterate, the one thing that we always the question we always get is what's a 100 year storm? It's the storm that is got a 1% chance of occurring in any particular year. So it's a statistical storm and people want to know how does that relate to something that's more tangible that they might see on like The Weather Channel or Bay news nine or something like that? So what we tell folks is this, this 100 year storm, the impacts roughly correspond with what would be a category two level storm surge from the national Hurricane Center. So that was you was literally almost a hundred years since we had something like that. Yes. Right. Yes. It's been it had been 20, 1921. Yeah. 1920 I can't remember if it was 21 or 24, but it was the 1920s since we'd had a really a direct hit with a with a hurricane here in Tarpon Springs. So good news is, is that the Hurricane Helene was not A1A statistical 100 year storm for us, seemingly compared to what we've modeled. We experienced a nine foot storm surge roughly depending on which data source you go with. And you can see here a little bit of the this was the last modeled inundation run provided by the National Hurricane Center before the storm impacted the city. It's pretty close to what we actually experienced. The GIS department is still working on the final mapping for the extent of inundation. That's going to take a little while to put together, but that's underway. But this is a rough indication of pretty much the extent of where we had storm surge inundation during Hurricane Helene. So what how was the city impacted? So we had a roughly nine nine foot storm surge during Helene. This impacted roughly 4 to 600 residences that the storm damage assessments are still ongoing. They estimate that to date, probably around 100 or more commercial properties were impacted by flooding. Some of the major impacts to us from a city operations standpoint were loss of wastewater, service due to inundation of lift stations. Wastewater lift stations tend not to work very well when they're underwater. We had some that were legacy lift stations, that the electrical panels were inundated and they were obviously disrupted. And then, you know, they tend not to turn back on after they're filled with saltwater. But others, you know, continue to operate. Well, if the electrical panels were raised up. So this resulted in some major disruption to sanitary sewer service in coastal areas. We did have some areas where if you have inundation in homes, you've got lots of saltwater going down drains and things like that. So that's far beyond the capacity of what normal wastewater lift stations are designed to accommodate. So in some areas you had, you know, stations that were the service was disrupted by the volume of storm surge that was entering the sewer system through a variety of means, including through people's homes and floor drains and showers and whatnot. One interesting impact is we did have a temporary disruption of emergency services in some of the coastal areas. This mirrors exactly what you hear public safety folks talking about pre storm, which is if you're in an evacuation zone, you need to please evacuate. If there's a dangerous storm surge coming because there was areas that we were mapping out in the emergency operations center where the storm surge was too deep for emergency vehicles to get through. So any residents that were still in those areas were not, would not have been able to be served by like, say, fire or police in the event that there was an emergency, just because there was no way to get a truck through there. So that was that was a new situation that we hadn't experienced in the past as much with the with the coastal flooding, one very large impact that we had that we were very honestly quite lucky with, that we only got nine feet and not like a little bit more was we did experience significant on site flooding of the advanced wastewater treatment facility, which interestingly mirrors exactly what we had been talking about in the vulnerability assessment and what we had been assessing through that study. We had significant inundation there. It it didn't we were lucky in that it didn't cause a lot of permanent damage to the facility, but there was some big operational challenges that the staff were working through during the event. But luckily the water went back out before it permanently damaged any critical systems. And then obviously as, as people might know, just driving around the city, we did have significant damage in like coastal parks, particularly sunset Beach. You know, Sunset Beach had quite a few feet of water on it. So that restoration is kind of still ongoing with some of the coastal parks and things like that. And recreation facilities. So we learned some interesting lessons from this during the storm. And immediately after that, we, the city staff, were able to implement, you know, either during the storm or thereafter or ongoing. One of the big takeaways was focusing on improving mapping during emergency operations. This was kind of new for us to have this type of storm surge event in the past. When we have hurricanes, we're mostly focused on like downed power lines and local power outages and, you know, getting roads cleared from debris and things like that to provide emergency services back, back through the on the back end of the storm from like downed trees and that sort of thing. The storm surge was a little bit different. And we were focusing on mapping where those services were disrupted. We also were trying to focus on improved public communications because this was a new event for us from a storm surge perspective. And then long term, two of the biggest disruptions to services like that were ongoing after the water receded were clearly wastewater service. So we've been working with Pinellas County. They have a utility coordinating group that's been meeting periodically since the since the storms and is ongoing and they'll be probably continuing to meet over the next, you know, foreseeable future to address these sort of like, emerging items. We had had a program in the past to focus on hardening our wastewater lift stations, like installing new waterproof or more waterproof lids and access panels on top of the lift stations to prevent, you know, if they were to be inundated to reduce the amount of water going into the sewer collection system, and then also erasing the electrical panels, trying to get them up to above the 100 year flood elevation from some of these older historical facilities to so that they'd be resilient. So when you know they're not going to work right away, if their power is out, if you've had a major storm surge, you're fairly likely to have disruptions to power, but you can restore service much more rapidly if all the electrical systems for your pump stations are still intact. And so there's been we've had a big push in the last month to focus on any of the areas that were inundated where we had our rebuilding electrical panels to raise those up and try and get those up to standard as rapidly as we can, so that if we were to have another event, they would be more resilient and be able to restore service more rapidly and we the other thing that was a big takeaway was we we're probably going to be looking at some additional recommendations in the vulnerability assessment on providing some additional permanent storm surge protections at the wastewater treatment facility. The current key project that we've got right now is the electrical systems and elevating those. So those are the most critical. We had about a foot and a half, two feet to go before we had, we would have had water in our electrical room in the operations facility, which would have been quite deleterious to wastewater operations and safety of staff. So we'll be looking at not just elevating those, but focusing on some other hardening. So getting back to lessons learned, improve mapping. This one's really interesting. We I do want to acknowledge our GIS staff Matt Smith, he created this mapping tool during in the Emergency Operations Center on the fly. When we requested it. And so it's you know, it's not quite as polished up, but it was a it was something that we implemented on the fly. And what it did was it combined the storm surge overlay maps in real time as they were being updated by the county and the National Hurricane Center, and we overlaid that with our some of our wastewater and water infrastructure. And then we turned that into a live map where we could go in and look. And as we were doing post-storm damage assessment, we were able to update statuses of all these different lift stations in real time. So you can see here the red dots indicate this is what we were seeing probably the day after the morning after Hurricane Helene came through. The red dots are lift stations that were just out of service for some reason or another. Either not communicating through our SCADA system. We had verified loss of power. You know, some iteration of that. The green ones obviously were the ones that were working, and the orange ones were ones that we were we were updating status as we went. We're doing emergency response. The orange dots represent lift stations that were either on generator or on a bypass pump that had been deployed, and the service had been restored. Very interesting. If you look at those red dots, they tend to very, very heavily line up with the storm surge projections from NOAA. So they did a pretty amazing job of predicting what was going to happen. And the damages that we experienced bore that out. But you can you can see there's a few kind of like outliers, like up in like the Brittany Park area by the county line. That was, that was, that was like a local power outage. So we did not everything was related to storm surge. We did have some like local wind and power outages and things like that. But the vast majority of the lift stations that were damaged were due to storm surge and impacts to the electrical systems or otherwise local power outages in those areas as a result of the storm surge. Knowing that and having a little bit better mapping tools, we were able to do kind of real time updates after the fact. We want to restore service to people as rapidly as possible. So this was a new practice that we put in place immediately after the storm was trying to go in and look at the wastewater collection system and use that live mapping feature to provide the residents with some real time updates so that people could know, like, hey, the service disruption was different than we would normally experience. So in a more wind driven storm, you large areas of the city are sort of without power, so everyone's sort of in the same boat. Storm surge was a little different. We actually didn't in Helene. We didn't have very much wind damage kind of in general. So we had large areas of the cities that might still have power and the wind comes through and they might have some stuff blown over in their yard, but they might be largely unaffected. But we have this other kind of 20, 25% of the city that was very, very affected. And. You know, so we put this together and we were doing about every six hour updates to let people know, all right, as we're restoring service, where is it? Okay. When can you start counting on that wastewater service so you can get in and start working on your home and things like that? Get trying to get back to normal. This was a new practice that we put in place. This is something that was provided through the State Emergency Response Team. It's called a Tiger dam. This was provided to the city free. Unfortunately, they didn't have one available for us. This was a new thing. They've been rolling out this year for Helene. So we're a little bit white knuckled with the water coming up through the wastewater plant. And actually let me go back real quick. We did that map over there kind of is a rough estimation of the extent of the storm surge flooding within the wastewater treatment facility. We had some pretty extensive flooding going up into, like the sand filters and. We were again, very concerned about if it kept coming up, having potential permanent damage or having wastewater intruding into the main influent pump station for the wastewater plant. And hydraulically overloading the facility. But we were able to luckily, it didn't get it didn't come that high. So for the next storm, we knew that this resource was available. We were able to get out ahead of it early, and the state was able to provide a contractor to come in and install this Tiger dam to protect the operations building at all is that that's about 36in. That's about three feet. So how does that differ from the aqua fence that the hospital was using? The Aqua fence is it's more of a hardened hard barrier. So they like link them together and they mechanically bolt together. This is these are actually take a long time to get it in place. Yes a storm I think it takes an entire day for the entire day for Tampa General Hospital. How does this go? This is more of a little bit of a rapid response type system. You know, the states again, we're still kind of working through the post-storm like, hey, we've got these new resources. How do we manage them best in future events. But these are basically inflatable plastic tubes. So you don't need air or water with water. And so that's really cool. They're heavy is heavy and can hold in place. Yeah. They are anchored down to you can see those straps. Those are tied into asphalt anchors or or but if the water is higher than three feet, sure. Yeah. We actually had to deploy a pump in there just in case. That was the city of Saint Pete used one of these at one of their operations buildings at a wastewater treatment facility, and it worked really good until it was overtopped. And then it sort of turned into a bathtub. Yeah. Which, you know, if it was going to flood, it was going to flood anyway. Once it got over that elevation. But they did have to go pump it out after the fact, so and make them taller at all. Or is that, is that the maximum height that those are designed. These can go to 48in is the kind of maximum height I believe this system can go to. But that provided this, we didn't have a big storm surge event for Milton because the storm stayed south of us. But as a matter of perspective, this was a really nice security blanket for us to have. So and it really shows the like it really speaks to like what is resilience? Resilience is trying to there's kind of a few things you can do when it comes to sea level rise and storm surge is and the solutions that are ultimately come down to hardening facilities adapt or or have a like some sort of retreat by design type of system. So in this case, we're talking about the resilience side of things, which is how do you restore service most rapidly after if you experience damage or if you experience a catastrophic event and having a nine foot storm surge, you could the water would have intruded. If you look in the top right corner. Those are the sand filters we had about a foot and a half of water around those sand filters that was directly connected to the Anclote River, and that's a relatively flat site. So we would have a few more feet and we would have had potential problems in the operations building. We wouldn't have been able to operate the wastewater treatment facility. Having three more feet around this facility. Now you're kind of prepared for maybe a 14 or a 15 foot storm surge before you start having to worry about any permanent damages, which is a game changer. So these storms were incredibly back to back. So I'm certain we hadn't even really entirely recovered. Like where all the lift stations in in a fixed or before we headed into Milton or is are there still some that are not in operation? Sure. The answer is yes and no. So during Helene we had geez, it was sorry. It's kind of all running together. I think it was the 26th of September that that hit. Yeah, I believe that was the storm came through on Thursday night by Friday we had wastewater service restored to probably 80, 90%, at least on a temporary basis. It was, you know, it wasn't a full service, but we had bypass pumps set up at some of the critical places. We still had a few individual neighborhoods where the damage was too extensive, and we were trying to pull in additional resources to get that done. But we did have by Saturday after the storm, which was only like probably 48 hours or so, we at least had temporary service or like a minimum level of wastewater service set up to the entire city again, which is pretty impressive. And it's really a testament to utility management and the hard work of our staff. They worked a lot of hours to try and get everything back up and running. That being said, we did have temporary like pumps and generators in place for quite a while after the storm, and in some areas we for by the time we got to Milton, we did not have permanent repairs in place yet. We were still waiting on parts. We kind of went through a lot of critical spares inventory very rapidly due to the extent of the damage and I believe we still have one wastewater lift station. We've got two that are on that are still not on permanent service right now. So we've got one that I'll show you in a minute. That's on a bypass pump still. And we've got another one that they're working on. Final electrical repairs. But that's again it's on a bypass pump but they're still waiting on parts and some electrical work. So yeah here's, here's an interesting one. This was a new one for me. I've never had a wastewater lift station burn down before. So this is the River village lift station. We usually don't put them in like little structures or little huts like this. This was this is an older one. So that's that's how they built it back in the day. And this is a low lying area. There was a lot of flooding in this area. It's right along the Anclote River. And they there was an electrical fire because of the storm surge inundation and it took a while to get Duke out to cut the power to that. So this one was on fire for an extended period of time because it kept reigniting from the electrical arcing. So and for that reason, you know, it's a lot of the pipes like melted and things like that. So that one took a little while to, to get restored and back up and running. But that area was also fairly heavily impacted. So there's very few residents that were still there, like needing wastewater service in that area. So and there you can see that's that's one of the responses we did was, you know, getting that bypass pump installed and providing at least a temporary level of service. One other kind of interesting thing, too, is you can see that that stub of a wooden power pole in the lower left of the big photo that was the power service line to that, or that was the pole that provided power service to that lift station, and it actually burned all the way down until it was even with the ground, because the electrical damage. So that was that was something we hadn't really seen before either. But again, within 48 hours we had this temporary, you know, service in place. This is another one. This is the Roosevelt Lift Station. This is over on by the Roosevelt and kind of Canal Street area, just to kind of just to the south of the sponge docks along that that canal. And again, you can see that's us, you know, going out and getting this was very heavily inundated. The electrical systems were permanently damaged and ultimately had to be replaced. So this is a little bit of a sea change for us. And we're in the past we've been focused on wind events and very heavily focused on having a generator plan and having lots of generators and moving forward, we're probably fairly likely to be focused on having some pumps because, you know, they're a little bit more versatile. You can put them in place in loss of power, but you can also put them in place in the event of permanent damage to the electrical and control systems. And you don't need the electrical systems to be functional. So that's kind of a quick snapshot of what we're looking at. Again, really the moving forward, we're going to be very heavily focused on infrastructure resiliency. We are lucky not to have any permanent damage to other sort of critical infrastructure. We did have some other damages, you know, again, like Sunset Beach. And we had some like flooring damage at at the recreation facility at Craig Park and things like that. And obviously we're trying to get that all back up and running because it's an important community resource. But without having those basic, essential services in place, it's difficult for people to return their homes. So that's that's what we're going to be focusing on, is trying to harden those critical infrastructure facilities and updating our plans. And that'll likely be reflected in the vulnerability assessment. So any questions on that? Well, I know it's not a city, but do you know anything about Howard Park out at the beach. Because I heard it's going to be six months to a year until that that's opened. I would have to double check on. You're right, that that's a county park. So we we've been pretty focused on city facilities. We do have Sunset Beach kind of partially open right now. And we're we're out there. Right. But it's cordoned off. You can't go out out onto the causeway. Yeah. So I they said the damage is really significant. But that's way out in the Gulf. Sadly. But I thought it was amazing how quickly you all got it back. Back together. I had a they're still working to everyone's still working. Well I had a line in my, our our power line. We lost half of it. The neutral part. And it was arcing through the storm like six times. And they said our, our house could have burned down. So it was it was really scary. Yeah, yeah. Scary. I have a bunch of bamboo in the one corner and the bamboo was hitting the line, so we only had partial service for five days, and we didn't really want to bug them because everybody else was, you know, we could run our TV and our air conditioner, our refrigerator and our air conditioning, but nothing else. So and then five days later, a crew from Alabama showed up and fixed it. So it was it was pretty impressive. And so last night we were at the Citizens Academy, was touring the fire station, and, you know, it was awesome to actually hear from their perspective. You know, a lot of the a lot of the information regarding both of the storms and, you know, the biggie was that they were extremely stressed getting the calls through the night, you know, from people who were really in trouble, you know, or considering going up to their attics, which would be a place where they'd be completely entrapped. But when people were told to evacuate, they really needed to mind the authorities on that. Because of the situation, the danger. But the worst thing was the fires that they could not get to. And those fires were started by the lithium batteries and I think that this has been a big lesson for anyone who has electric bikes, power tools and cars and cars that, you know, you have to remove them from, from areas where there's potential flooding. I mean, I knew a lot of people I've I've know a lot of people who lost vehicles, but to lose a vehicle and have your house burned down, it's is well, the double evacuations were heeded. Much better for Milton. Oh, yeah. Because, you know, people died in the first storm. The Gulf beaches were just so this issue about cars. I'd just like to put that out there because lots of people lost cars, both mostly non-electric cars. But but one thing that the city could do is the city could designate some areas where people could move their cars and set up a system where they move their car. They have to sign a release or something like that, but at least people would have a high place to put their car, and then they can Uber back. Or, you know, there could be a shuttle shuttle, right? But I know that in our neighborhood where the rehab places is high and all of our neighbors move their cars, there, and I had told someone who lived on Doric, which flooded terribly like eight feet to move his car there, and he moved their car there, and they ended up sleeping in their car because that was safe. Wow. So but that would be an easy thing for the city to find, like a lot of people park in the Publix parking lot. They move their cars there because it's high. And I'm sure there are a number of places like that that could be, but they'd have to be managed, you know? And probably a release of insurance or something. But I think that could be done and it would be a really easy service for people because people are always concerned, where can I put my car? And I know in our neighborhood lots of people move and they park all over the place. They we have them park in our yard because we're high. And we didn't, you know, we don't get the flooding, sure. But if it were really high, 15ft, we would have. But but that is a big issue. And easily I think people would appreciate it. Well, just as a point of information, though, if someone is moving a car from an evacuation zone, then they and themselves should be completely leaving the area right? So I think that would eliminate to a certain extent, the need to designate those areas for an expected storm surge. Sure. And, and, and when you evacuate, you would need to presumably make plans for how to manage that situation. Right. So it is complicated. And I'm not at all saying that's not there's not value to your idea. There certainly is. But I think the bottom line is he the evacuation orders first. And you know, maybe you do need to leave one car in a high place and leave town and the other. And so there are ways to explore that. But I think making sure that as Chairperson Menino stated, you know, heeding the evacuation orders, that would be the very first thing. So there should be less humans and less material property in the risky areas during the storm that a lot of non evacuation places flood. And so people want to move their car. No matter what. It's just like a lot of people get flood insurance, like we get flood insurance and we're not in a flood zone because we know that it's statistical. So I think that this would people would very much appreciate seeing the city do something like that. Yeah, that's that's an interesting idea. I'll be sure to pass that along to the emergency management folks. And thank you for that too. Like I, I live in right behind Howard Park and we're and see bordering on d my back neighbors are d and so we're in this little island and so and then you go down the hill and it's all evacuation. So that's like what we are. Yeah. You know it gets a little complicated. It's just not so clear cut that. No. Because you know we're told not to evacuate because of the roads. You know, the problem with the roads. But at one point I put my car at the middle school, which is pretty close. When I went to that, went there for to shelter and then put my car over there and there was a big palm tree or something, and I'm like, no, I'm not. You know, this guy was handling the where you're supposed to go. And I'm like, I'm not going there. That the that thing could fall on my car. So, you know. Thank you very much for the excellent, great presentation and the update on comparing what was theory to what was reality. And thank you, Holly. And to continue with the item two, which is Climate Action Plan update. Next, next year. Okay. Okay. So something that ties right into everything that Tommy was kind of talking about of course, we were talking about vulnerability assessment and we're talking about resilience. So that's kind of one of the reasons that the city should have a climate action plan. Right, is what are some of the actions that the city can take to become a more resilient city to climate change? So this discussion about the Climate Action Plan, the Climate Action Plan itself is really just focused on the local government operations. So it's policies and potential actions that the city could take to reduce emissions from city operations. Just to clarify that, okay, so why are we doing the Climate Action Pla? Well, it is an action that was listed and decided upon as an important action in the sustainability plan. So action 16 draft a climate action plan with actions to transition the city toward clean energy goals, including increasing on site renewable energy production and the use of electric vehicles and alternative fuels. Create staff incentives to encourage the use of alternative modes of transportation and the transition to electric vehicles, as well as action 18, which rolls into the climate Action Plan. So we've kind of combined these two. Action 18 is adopt an official greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets such as 30% reduction by 2030 and 80% reduction by 2050. In local government greenhouse gas emissions, those were just examples given in the sustainability plan. So that's just kind of a concept of a direction that the city could go in and then lastly, action 48 from the sustainability plan also ties into this. So the creation of the sustainability of the Climate Action Plan rather sort of lays the groundwork for a future discussion on what kind of climate in all policies or sustainability in all policies, resolution or statement could the city possibly utilize to guide local decision making? So these are all in action or sorr, implementation year 2024 start time frame or 2025 start frame time. Start time frame. So we are right there. Obviously working on the implementation through this study. All right. So just to set the baseline what is the city's greenhouse gas emissions baseline that comes from the 2019 data which was compiled in a 2022 study. So the local greenhouse gas inventory was created in 2022. So if you look in the first column where it says 2019 baseline, that is in metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and it's listed by sector. So we've got the city's buildings and facilities. We've got street lights and traffic signals, the vehicle fleet, solid waste facilities and lastly wastewater, water and wastewater treatment facilities. So all total it's 9217 metric tons of carbon dioxide. So we have a consultant Iclei. And they modeled going forward what happens if we do nothing right. The business as usual. If the city just keeps operating the same way going forward. We looked out to 2050. So these increments starting in 2025, 2030, 2040 and 2050, what would happen? Well, there's a little gradual reduction in 2025. By 2030, you start seeing a little bit more. In 2040, you see a pretty significant reduction. And then by 2050 there's a even more significant reduction. Those reductions are largely due to Duke Energy, who is our power provider. It is due to their goals and policies and strategies that they plan to put in place to reach net zero by 2050. So that is Duke Energy's goal by 2040. They have the goal of being 80% of the way to net zero. So that's the big reason that you see a huge decrease by 2040. And then by 2050 they make it all the way to net zero. Why do our emissions not make it all the way to net zero? Well obviously we have a vehicle fleet. So that's if we were still using gasoline vehicles business as usual. You know, nothing really changes from the current. And we have some hybrid and EVs, but obviously we would still be, in theory, producing emissions. There are still some emissions from the water and wastewater facilities, as well as some legacy emissions from buildings and facilities. So just inherently by Duke going to net zero, we don't necessarily make it all the way there unless the city were to take some action. So the next question is what would it look like if the city did take some actions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to relying on Duke to largely do a lot of that work for us, since the bulk of the power that the city uses is from the grid. So the Duke reduction to net zero is an 82% reduction from our baseline from the 2019. So that's kind of the starting point, right, is if we do nothing, we still benefit from our emissions, still reduced 82% just through Duke Duke's actions. Now, if we modeled multiple scenarios for us. So we have a we have the business as usual as the first two columns on the left, and then we have a light action scenario. So we modeled several different categories. And I will go over those in the next slide. And then we have a more moderate action scenario. And then we have the most aggressive action scenario. And you can see with each of those the city's emissions would reduce a little bit more right. So in the light action scenario the city's emissions reduce or we have a reduction of 84.6%. And then in the moderate it goes up to 86.3. And then in the aggressive up to about 88%. So it's a gradual you know, sort of layering of steps that we could take to make our actions a little bit more aggressive. So I'm going to show you the specific things we looked at for the moderate scenario, just to kind of give you an idea of what that would look like. So we modeled solar installations on city facilities, and this number was sort of a we kind of started with a ballpark. And this may change. So we were looking at new solar installations every five years. Now we said 20,000ft■!S. Once we really get into it and start looking at city facilities and the amount of space that we have to utilize, that might change depending on what we, you know, find out is really feasible. But that is, you know, kind of a starting point for the moderate scenario. We looked at fleet vehicle electrification. So the moderate goal would be 50% of fleet Electric by 2050. But we specifically only modeled the passenger. So the cars in the city fleet, of course there's a wide variety. So we modeled the passenger vehicles, light duty trucks and diesel light diesel on road vehicles as well as off road, which is small utilities, equipment, gas, different, you know, small carts and things like that. And then lastly, we looked at building retro commissioning, retrofitting to ensure that buildings are, you know, running in the most energy efficient way possible. And this would kind of be done on a case by case basis. You know, the city's done a lot of this kind of worked along on this over a number of years. So it would really just depend on, you know, does this equipment need an upgrade and if so, can it be replaced with a more energy efficient option. So each of those things would be looked at, sort of on a case by case basis. But what the moderate scenario shows is that again, it would be an 86.3 total reduction from the original baseline of 2019. So Duke again is doing the bulk of that. So we're using grid power. Our reductions our emissions go down a lot because of their actions. But then the city says, hey, you know what? It's not enough to do nothing, right? We still want to do our part. We want to lead by example. So we're going to put some policies in place that help us also continue to reduce our emissions. So it's, you know, an additional 4.3% above what we would do if we didn't take any action. Right? So that that's still good. And we could, of course, be more aggressive on some of these. So that's kind of the question too, is the question is if there's, you know, the leadership were to decide, hey, you know what? Let's be more aggressive for our vehicle transition. Let's you know, maybe there are policies that we could look at that would help us do more in certain areas. So that's kind of where the modeling helps us get to being able to show, you know, our elected officials, our leadership, the possible directions and levels of, you know, commitment. They could make. So the question, of course, then where should we focus? So this all the modeling kind of zeroed in. What floated to the top right. Well again the majority of city emissions are due to the power that we use from the Duke energy grid. So we're relying on them largely to reduce their emissions and in turn, ours. But what do we as city have the most control over? Well, the fuel that we're consuming. So if we cut our fuel consumption, we're obviously going to cut our emissions and the production of clean energy to reduce our usage from the grid. Right. So we so the two things that really float to the top are solar installations and fleet electrification. So those are kind of the two action areas that make the biggest impact. So in this table it kind of all have varying levels of impact. But those two are very high impact right. So the smaller you know, electrification or electrification of smaller things in the fleet, those are smaller numbers. But they could still come into play. But the biggest are going to be the light duty trucks in the fleet, along with in the passenger vehicles. So very high impact, high impact. So it kind of just illuminated this pretty pretty easily. So we if we were to focus on those things, what would some of our policy recommendations be? Right. So obviously one of the policies that we would stay in line with is or I guess a policy that we would state through this plan would be the city should continue to participate in the Duke Clean Energy Connection program, which is helping Duke achieve their net zero goals, essentially. So the city pays fees on some of our electric accounts, on some of our bills, we pay a fee, but we also get a reduction, and that money goes towards what we pay. Duke goes towards them, you know, building more solar facilities essentially, or whatever their alternative power mixes, that's going to help them get to net 0 in 2050. So it's obviously very important for a company the size of Duke to partner with its large customers, such as cities and counties, and have buy in from those customers to help them achieve their long term goals. So us participating in the clean energy connection is an important part of that. All right. Policies for fleet electrification. Right. What might that look like. Perhaps it would be a policy that the city, the department that is evaluating vehicle replacement should consider electric with every vehicle replacement. Righ. It might not make sense. It might not be feasible. It might not turn out to be the right thing at that time. But to at least look at that, look at the options and evaluate it, and then potentially have, you know, a policy that we're going to create or work on a master plan of some kind for the fleet electrification process and then for solar installations, some of these things are actually already kind of online due to our sustainability plan. And one of those is conduct a solar feasibility study. So that's actually going to happen in this fiscal year in 2025. And that will of course, help the city prioritize facilities that are maybe closer to solar readiness. Where should we prioritize our investment? And you know, expect to get a good energy savings and a good cost savings from those investments? So that's kind of on the horizon. Very soon we'll continue to collaborate with solar partners. We have collaborated with the Solar United Neighbors before, you know, just really looking for opportunities to make any connections where, hey, we're going to file for our tax credits through the investment and the IRA, which is essentially we file with the IRS and they will credit us back for a percentage of our investment in clean energy. So through our solar array installed at the reverse osmosis water plant, we are eligible for a tax credits on that project. So once we have kind of money coming in through that program, we can reinvest it into future solar installations. Other energy. You know, clean energy transitions. Those credits are also available for electric vehicle purchases and infrastructure. So it's really there's a lot of potential for money to come back in and get a little a little kickback, a little rebate. So that's really, really cool that the federal government has prioritized, you know, helping local governments fund those important steps that we can take. And then lastly, you know, energy efficiency upgrades for facilities. Again, that would be one cost and savings justify it. There are some programs for rebates for certain equipment. Again, upgrades that are super energy efficient. If the building, you know, materials needed to be changed out or or made more efficient, you know, it would in some cases justify perhaps spending a little bit more to make it the most efficient. And also get a rebate at the same time. So really, just evaluating those on a case by case basis and the next step is really choosing the best combination of realistic targets and policies for Tarpon Springs, while also acknowledging that there are still many unknowns. Right. So we don't necessarily know what electric vehicles are going to be available in 15 years. Right. But we're talking about having the policy that says evaluate if it makes sense. You know, at that time to pick an electric or a hybrid or something over a gasoline or diesel. So that's kind of. Yeah. So and, you know, just really wrapping it up and thinking about what are the benefits of having this climate action plan created. It's a roadmap of actionable items. So steps through these policies and kind of listing out specific projects that help the city lead by example on climate action. Right. So hey, if the city is doing it that says citizens, citizens of Tarpon Springs, this is important, you know, to us as a city, because we serve you and we want this to be, you know, a sustainable place for years to come. It also lays the groundwork, again, for that climate in all policies, either resolution or statement of some kind, that would go into a policy document and again, benefits through energy efficiency. That does lead to cost savings in many, many cases. And again, we would potentially be in line for tax credits through these investments in clean energy. And lastly, we you know, the report really details a lot of our risks. And it links back to the vulnerability assessment. So it really ties everything together nicely. And it will kind of talk about obviously just the background information of climate change that it is in fact, you know, it is real that we need to acknowledge it, that it is important to do the work to reduce our emissions as a city to, you know, just take take the action. That is, there's a there's a kind of path before us, right, that we can take the action or we can do nothing. So that's what it's going to lay out. So that is the yeah, that that is my last little bit of the presentation. But if anyone has any questions about kind of where things stand. So I'm this is great. This is really good. And I really appreciate it and I appreciate it for a number of reasons because it creates a pretty optimistic view. One, because really by 2030, 20, 35, we're going to have all new technology. I mean, things are like moving like this. So this is with old technology. So when you think about all the new technology, I mean we're probably way beyond electric cars. And you know, all sorts of things, not big panels for solar, you know, all of this. So if this can be accomplished through old technology, just think what happens with the new technology. Now the thing to sort of take a little pause is we have a new administration coming in that doesn't really acknowledge climate change. And it's unclear what that's going to look like for the near future. I mean, we're going to cycle through it, but are those grants going to still be available? Are we going to be able to get those rebates? Are things going to be we have that big infrastructure bill with climate change thing in place? Is that going to be voted out? So there's a lot of unknowns. There are in the near future. But one hopes that there is enough momentum to get us through the near future and that with new technology, I mean, there are really brilliant people working on all of this and that we can at least be optimistic that by 20, you know, 50. If Tarpon Springs is still here. You know things. You know what? We've just been through may not be that unusual. So you know, we do have to plan, but this this report really sets it out nicely about, you know, with what we have, how we can proceed and that things can, can be more positive. Yes. Well, there's always a place for, you know, there's a place for hope. And I think local action is, is that place right. We do what we can, you know, on this level. And there are certainly a lot of unknowns. You know, we don't have 100% certainty that the IRA funds will still be there. However, I feel, you know, I feel good that they will. And, you know, it's not a grant. It's a it's a it's a dedicated pot of money that would take some pretty intense action to repeal to roll that back. So, you know, I think until until we know differently, we stay the course essentially. Yes. And so, you know, this is right. Stay the course. And these this shows that incremental action does have an impact. Right. So even if we can only do what the city can afford to do, it will still be in the positive direction. So in the in the city's annual budget cycle, are we going to be requesting certain things every year to implement a lot of what you have mentioned in the climate Action Plan, like, you know, the replacement of the vehicles? I mean, I'm sure that that's part of the city budget anyway. But is it is it more that's that's one thing that's actually quite topical. Right now because there's a lot of money that's being drained from. Well, I, I listened I listened to the BoCC meetings and I know that there's a lot that happened with the with the hurricanes. That was, you know, kind of impactful to the income. Yeah. So I don't really want to go super down that road, but I would say, you know, in any these are long term plans. Righ. And as a city you have your ups yours and you have your down years. And this year we spent quite a bit more money. But a lot of that's going to be FEMA reimbursable. And that's this will have to manage. You know the folks across the hall and finance will have to manage our cash flow carefully. But you know, we don't have those numbers yet. And we're going to see where things are going. But on the planning side, I think that's very optimistic. So we have we have a new city manager, as you all are likely aware. Mr. Rudd, and one effort that is really starting to gain a lot of traction right now is a refocus on capital planning. And just this afternoon, we were submitting, you know, all the departments over the next few days are going to be submitting draft capital plans and things like that. Certain divisions are very well developed. Capital plans. Certain ones were kind of, you know, a few years out and that sort of thing. So there is going to be a large effort to kind of formalize the capital planning process and inclusive of vehicles and things like tha. And part of that is identifying funding sources for priorities and. These things will we're submitting projects that include this, you know, solar and things like that. The vehicle maintenance or the vehicle replacement thing, that'll probably be a little bit more of a case by case like vehicle by vehicle type of analysis every year, just depending on what's due for renewal and that sort of thing. But yeah, no, that's definitely going to be a formalized process as far as how this this happens moving forward and finding funding for these, these programs. And is this going to be presented to the BOC or how is that happen? That's a great question. So we're not quite there yet. Right. So this is kind of we are presenting it to you all to our committee, you know, kind of as our as our first, first audience, the report itself. So we have kind of the body of the report and then we have the technical appendix. That is all the, the modeling that Italy has done and provided and kind of, you know, wraps everything up as far as the background information. But then we really want to tell the story, right, of why this is important and what the, you know, again, accompanying policy actions and projects and things like that could look like in the future. So that is not quite ready for sharing. We won't be taking this to the BOC probably until early 2025, sometime. We don't have it, you know, on an agenda yet. Just because we want to make sure that it is, you know, really ready and so I'm, I envision that we would be bringing, you know, you all a draft report perhaps prior to taking it to the BOC. So this is really your first, you know, first, first share on what we've been working on for the last couple of months. And, you know, just refining it and making sure again that it it it tells a clear story and is you know, going to hopefully be a document that does, in fact, you know, have enough information, background, future, moving us forward. Right. So that I think this would likely mirror what we did with the sustainability plan. So this is kind of our probably like 80% draft, you know, like this is where we're headed. Holly's working very diligently with Italy on finalizing them. So there's still some stuff that we're going to be like cleaning up in the model and that sort of thing. And, and technical writing. But we would bring you all a report. We were planning at this point that we would potentially include our sustainability and all policies or our climate in all policies statement. As part of this document. And then from there, it would go for you all to recommend that the board adopt it, just like we did with the sustainability plan. And then we would take that recommendation with the final draft to the board at a time that we could have a board meeting, or that we could have an agenda spot for the board and that's where this would go from there. Yeah, I've certainly heard sustainability mentioned more frequently in the last two months than I have in the last decade. In this town. So yeah, I would say that that's the upside of everything we've been through. Yeah. So I'm just curious that the scenarios that are modeled by acclaim, are they based on other cities that are ahead of where we're at right now? And no, they're just they're they're just theoretical models. They're just based on what we think we have the capacity to potentially achieve here in Tarpon Springs. Just specifically our city. So it would be interesting to see what other other cities are doing. I mean, there are a variety of, you know, neighboring cities in both Pinellas County that they have climate action written into their either sustainability or sustainability and resilience. They call it an action plan in that case, or, you know, there are obviously many, many cities that have committed to something like net zero. I think, you know, for us, for tarpon Springs, it's again, there are unknowns that need to be acknowledged. And, you know, to be fiscally responsible as well. I think that sometimes when people sign on to agreements, it can be very like bolstering and very energizing. And that part of it is excellent. But is it is it is it tangible? Right. Is it a goal that we can feasibly reach? And what are the actionable steps that we could take to get there? So I think we wanted to build in just that dose of reality as well as you know, that we can't do this all on our own. So it's kind of that multi-layered thing, right? We're relying on Duke. We also have things that we can do. And again, maybe through technology, maybe the pace does accelerate right. But how do you you know what we did not have anything that cleared our path to a net zero goal in 2050 immediately. Right. So we don't have enough things that we can put in the capital plan. We don't have enough. You know, of all of the things that you need to say, yes, we can definitely commit to achieving this. So for us, I think it's again that that being wise and planning for things that we that look pretty doable and again, as you get in it, maybe it just does go faster and then we update this. So just like the sustainability plan this could be updated in five years if we see hey guess what we are already well on our way. And we didn't realize that we had already done more than we thought we had. So it's a it's a, you know, a document that can easily be updated, changed. You know, the goal is to redo the, the, the baseline essentially to, to update the greenhouse gas inventory every I think five years is what the sustainability plan said. So you know, before long we'll need to check in on our baseline again. So you know it's just really it's an ever evolving concept of saying, okay, we modeled it. And this day and time. But will that change. Yes. Yes. Those the things that we can do, the possibilities to do more will evolve. So I was happy to hear that this is going to have a beginning part to establish why this is important to do. And for two reasons. One, it makes the document like a holistic document. But there are many people who don't really accept this, and we need to be as clear with data with with sort of summaries of what's going on, to make it clear. And even if people agree with it, redundancy is very important with something so important as this. Right? Because this is our future. And if this fails, if we're in deep doo doo for use a technical term. So a really good introduction clear with specific statistics will really help to complete and make a really strong document. I think that's a great that's a great point. And I think that that's exactly what the goal is. You know, again, my draft is not ready to share. But it is something that it it it tells the story and lays out, you know, we did want to link it, obviously, to the fact that the biggest driver of climate change is human consumption of fossil fuels. That will be stated very clearly in this report, that is science backed and, you know, so that's that's what we need to acknowledge if we would like for 2050 to not look like, you know, some of the neighborhoods did after Halloween, to be honest. You know, if, if, if the modeling that is in our vulnerability assessment were to verify, you know, in 2040 and 2050, there are some neighborhoods that would have standing water in their streets. Right. How do you get to your homes? How do you go about your daily lives and your businesses? So these are all really pertinent questions and timely, as you stated, chairperson. And I know that, you know, we just went through this, right? So it is still top of people's minds that this is a real possibility. And you know, there are lots of incredibly smart people doing modeling on the future of, you know, extreme storms and things like that. And while the number of storms may not increase, the intensity certainly has. And that is projected to continue. Right. So it's not that we will necessarily see more hurricanes, but the hurricanes that we do see, that could of course, potentially impact Florida because we know how vulnerable we are, are likely to be stronger storms. So that is something that, you know, it's how do there's less predictable, far less predictable. Because who would have guessed that Helene would have gone all the way up into Asheville and devastated Asheville? And I think, sure. You know, unheard of. It's planning for how do you plan for disasters that you don't know you need to plan for, right. Just any, you know. So it's just being aware of your vulnerability. And, you know, there's two other things. I mean, more than two other things. But in Florida and if you look around the country, one of the things that's especially if you look outside of Florida, where there's not ocean climate change affects them, and you can see how it affects us. So one of the things like in Arkansas there, effects of climate change are twofold. One, they get lots of rain, way more than they've been having. And drought. Well, we have the same thing. And it's all about the warmth of the ocean and evaporation. So with warming of the oceans, more evaporation happens, more evaporation, more rain. The other thing is more evaporation. But the rain doesn't have to come down where it evaporates. So you see it moving in weather patterns and then you have drought. We know in tarpon, like Siobhan and I live in the dry part of tarpon. So you other part of tarpon gets rain, but we don't. Well. And the reason is because it it hits Lake tarpon and it decides, oh, this is a nice spot. I'm just going to rain right here. And then we have the thermals from the Gulf. So we're in a really dry. Yeah. So the weather patterns with extra evaporation put more rain over there. And we don't get it. It'll rain at Publix. I'll go to and then we won't get any. We won't get a drop. Yeah. So it's really interesting. So it's not just hurricanes because the intense rain causes flooding. Yes. And tarpon has issues right. There are numerous. That's right. We've got more water. There are a number of local threats, not just extreme storms. So those will all be identified in the report to mention those things. Drought. They are rain, hurricanes, all types of things. Because if you just focus on hurricanes it doesn't. It tell the whole picture, current and future. I will just give you a quick overview, the current and future regional threats that are discussed in the plan. Sea level rise, extreme heat, extreme rainfall, persistent drought and extreme storms. Yeah, yeah. And so extreme storms obviously are the rainfall we'll get into, you know, other flooding, stormwater flooding that kind of thing. So it's all it is all linked. And it is all it will be covered. And there are. Thank you. Current factual links. You know references to very current and pertinent research that is being done on these topics. So I just. Excellent. Thank you so much. I just saw that even out people who plan outdoor events, big concerts and things are thinking this might not be a model that we can sustain because of the weather. So undependable. I wanted to ask, what do you think the state's response to the hurricanes was? Do you think it was a good response? But you know how much support did you get from the state? Yeah, I'm not really. Like I said, I was focused on a certain area of operations within utility operations and we are kind of getting a little bit off topic. But I will say, you know, we did receive good support from the state. You know, we requested when we requested resources like generators, they were able to help us with the resources that were requested. And but but in my experience, we were mostly working with local partners like the county and things like that. And that's something that's risen to the top of a lot of discussions. So I'm part of, you know, multiple networks of other sustainability coordinators and managers and resilience officers around the southeast and even those in North Carolina. So impacted by Helene. One thing that they mentioned was the importance of having those interlocal agreements. So, as Tommy said, it's really about having your neighboring having agreements set up in place ahead of time for, again, any disaster. Right? Maybe it's you don't know if it's going to be flooding or you know, what the case may be. In some places it's wildfires and some places it's, you know, who knows what. So we have a myriad of things. But the important thing is having those partnerships set up ahead of time so that you can rely on them when you need them. So it is a lot of reaching out and making sure that those things are in place before you need them, instead of at the last minute. Yeah. Well, thank you very much. You're very welcome. That's a very good start. Good good good good. All right. Third item for discussion is upcoming meetings. And yes that's right. So that's the question is who. I know that there was some you know there is always uncertainty about everyone's schedule in December of course. So that's just I want to open the floor for everyone to kind of say whether or not they think that they would be able to attend or would think it is a value to have a December meeting, or due to the timing that we look to you know, January is perhaps the next time to reconvene. So that's up for discussion. I guess, is the third the third Thursday is the 19th of December. I can do that. Dave. Yeah, I, I could do that as well. Third on how was our application. Have you heard that there's any applications at the clerk's office for I was going to do a quick update on that and staff comments. Okay. I am not going to be here on the 16th of January. I am involved in in directing and hosting a conversation about. About climate change, about ocean and inland water at the Ringling. Okay. In the so Big theater with some scientists. That being the case, if we're all available in December, I think that we should take advantage of that. And go ahead and schedule a meeting. Okay. And we can revisit January next month. Right? We will right confirm or make the appropriate motion at the at that time to if we have more people. Sure. If we were to have and that will be a discussion. But I will say the window and that's closing a little bit. Yeah. Just for sure. For sure. Schedule agendas and whatnot. So but what do you mean it's should we move that to the let's make sure we keep it in the correct section. Well yeah. We'll come back to that one instead. Okay. So items so then so upcoming meetings December is okay. Everyone is okay with that. Great okay. Items for the next meeting. So what did we talk about for the next meeting. You know I was talking to our floodplain administrator last night. And I think it would be awesome to hear a little bit more about what what she does and her job. She was very she's been very busy. She's not. I'm sorry I missed that. Who Megan from? She's the floodplain administrator. Yep. The flood. What floodplain administrator? Floodplain emergency management coordinator. Yes, in Tarpon Springs, correct. Tarpon Springs, she was at the fire department last night. Yes. And it it sounds awesome. We can reach out to Megan and see if she's available. No, I tried late December. Tends to be kind of dicey on people, but we'll we'll talk. Yeah, we'll see if that's possible. Yeah. We'll see if that's a possibility. The other thing we could do is talk more. Oh good. She. Yes she is. She has a big job. She has a very big job. So it would be cool to kind of hear maybe firsthand how what she does links something we could talk about a little bit further if we have it, depending on where we are in the process of kicking it off, would be the solar feasibility study. If we're kind of if we're far enough along in in starting it, I guess I don't know. Yeah. Maybe we were I was thinking January would be better for that, but so we might we might not be able to do that in December. But that'll kind of be a evaluate as the time comes closer. If we get through scoping we'll be working with an outside consultant on that. So if we've got like a final scope and we're working down the road to starting the project, we might be able to do an update on that. Or if not December, that would be a good January item. Okay. Yeah. And the one other thing we had kind of kicked around to is oddly enough, oh, by the way, the city manager kind of extends his apologies. He didn't he didn't have a full schedule yet, so he scheduled his Main Street meeting tonight. Yes. So that might be something that we could bring back as a future item, as a discussion on the Main Street Initiative. So they aren't having that. They are having it tonight. Yeah. It's just it's at the same time. So I know I wanted to go to tha. Yes. We apologize that we, none of us could be in two places at once. I do think, yes, that we should make sure that everything, you know, if there's a way to share. He did mention that there would be a second meeting, I believe, on that. A potential second kickoff. I'm not sure something along those lines. So we'll see if there's either another meeting or information that we could have, you know, to share on that. That's an important program I was involved in. They had a big conference of it in Saint Pete a number of years ago, and I was part of the program for that. And we met a lot of people who do major main streets in Florida and it's a really great program. So the more we can know about it, the better. And when is tha? When is the you don't know what the next meeting is? I don't know what the next step is. I think we will have to wait until we we'll see when that schedule. Where was this posted? I'm curious, was it was it open to the public or. Yeah, it's a public meeting. Okay. And where where is it taking place? It's at the Cultural Museum at the heritage. Yeah. The heritage center. Yeah. Heritage center. I got an announcement from Karen Lemons. Okay. Oh, yeah, I might have missed that one. Okay. And we can. Staff comments. Okay. In order about. All right. Yeah. So a couple things. You know we already talked about Main Street. So yeah again city manager just want to extend his apologies. Yeah. He didn't realize we had he was looking at an incomplete calendar. So he really wants you all to be, you know, all the committees to be able to participate in that. That's a big initiative for him. So. And then the committee review. So committee. So there is a kind of new initiative within the city kind of administratively, Paul Smith is kind of taking the lead on it, looking at all the city committees. We're not the only one that is a little bit light on membership. So they're going to be doing some work looking at kind of all the committees. And then there might be also some other stuff that comes out of that. As far as just nuts and bolts things, trying to get all the bylaws and things like that kind of a little bit more uniform amongst all the committees. So just wanted you all to be aware that that's kind of happening and that there might be some, maybe some committee improvements coming u, coming up, or we might be changing our bylaws or something like that coming down the road. But it's just now kicking off. And one of the things they're also gonna be looking at is working with the city clerks to try and focus on what can we do to increase membership across the board. So that's that's ongoing. Regarding membership. Yeah. Just for next month, we're Holly's doing a great job continuing to try and do some recruiting myself a little bit. But she's really taken the charge. So we're trying to find members and but as far as December and January goes for like quorum, we'd probably we've only got like a couple of board meetings to try and get members in for next January. So we'll just think about if I think at this point, unless there's a little bit of a surprise, we'd probably with the holidays coming up, we it'd be difficult to find additional new members before the next board deadline. So we're probably looking at this group again for, for January. So yeah, just the way just the, the sequencing of everything, it's highly unlikely. Shaking your head. Yeah. Unfortunately it's just all the required steps in the process. And this has never happened before where there's been kind of a deficit. Yeah. Yeah. That was that was one thing I was discussing with Paul is that there's, there have been committees in the past that have had to like, go on a little bit of a hiatus because they're like struggling to find membership. Obviously, we're trying to avoid that. And there's other committees that are sort of like not standing committees. This is a standing committee. So, you know, sometimes they'll activate a committee and bring it back and say, oh, hey, we need to have this committee again, or that's not doing any work right now. So we'll not plan on having meetings. So yeah. So that's that's happened in the past that there's been times where, okay, there's not a quorum, we're going to work on recruiting until we can get a quorum, and then we'll start having meetings again. So but the good news is sustainability won't stop if we miss a meeting or two. So Holly is keeping everyone honest and working on implementation. My husband said. You're the sustainability committee. You should be sustainable. We're trying. Yes, that's a good point. That is. Holly, you have anything I guess one fun little update is that we have hired an intern, so we now that is obviously there's a whole process for her to officially, you know, come on board as a city employee. So it's in it's in process. But hopefully by December she will be here December. Or if the holidays obviously sneak up on us as they as they seem to do sometimes it could be January, but so I will share, you know, more details obviously as that all unfolds. But that's very exciting to have someone coming on board to kind of do a lot of, you know, legwork and research and help with some of the initiatives. And do, you know, maybe lots more little small wins and, and fun, fun things that we can talk about and share. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. And she would be working a lot on kind of the communications aspect as well. So yeah, we'll we'll keep you posted on that. That will be wonderful. Yeah. Who is this. What's her name? The intern. Well, she hasn't officially been hired yet. She hasn't started yet. Yeah, yeah. Try and get through the whole background check and hiring process before we start putting people out in the public. Yeah, but I think I think, you know, assuming everything goes well, it'll be excellent to have to have her on board. So. Right. Okay. So any committee comments I'm concerned about the trees, the tree damage after the storm. You know, replacement trees or canopy. We didn't get damaged as bad as because I've been all over the place with my job. And Saint Pete just took a terrible, terrible hit. They lost so many, so many of their oaks. Yeah. So, you know, the as part of climate change and, you know, heat islands and everything, it's very important to keep keep that going. Yes, it definitely is. And I know that, you know, we are lucky to have an arborist who's on top of kind of planning and, and helping with. Yeah. So, so much planning is going into creating a master plan. And yeah, we're with tarpon. We love our trees. And that is also part of the climate action. That's sort of a separate discussion too, is how important and valuable the trees obviously are. Is drainage. And, you know, swales of. On on the trail there, there's some swales that and on Lemon Street too. Some demonstration swales on how you can do passive drainage and it would be great to do more of that. You know, we're just Florida in general, just has terrible, terrible drainage problems because of the development and not anticipating. You know, we were in trouble before. And now we're really because that's part of my job. We do a lot of drainage mitigation. And I've I've seen just terrible stuff. And, you know, because I've done a lot of storm repair work for my clients and really bad this one guy designer I was talking to, he works at Earth Scapes garden room, and he said that he's in Safety Harbor and he meant to put some drainage in hard pipe drainage between himself and his neighbor and Safety Harbor didn't get a lot of problems because they're high. They're high. And it just that water ran through between the two houses and so it's two bedrooms and a bathroom. Got, you know, got water in it. And so now we've certainly learned a lot about where our vulnerabilities lie for storm surge. And for rainfall too. Yeah. Yeah definitely. And there's so much work that could be done. You know take some vacant lots and you know I'm sure you're all, you know, looking at that. But we have this ongoing problem where right where, where where Carol lives on Riverside and Riverside is just where it's floods all the time. We're just not able when we have just a storm, we're not able to go that way, to go to town. Yeah, it's bad. Supposedly, when they do the bridge, they're supposed to put a new drainage somehow, but I mean, is that going to be pushed back the bridge repair now that all of this has happened, I I'd have to check this construction schedule. We were talking with project administration that that was still kind of scheduled for like late spring, early summer. So it's still the last time I talked to them. It was the beginning. The drainage was supposed to start in January. Okay. Because they want to do the drainage first before the bridge. Yeah, I'd have to check on the construction, but it's still on the docket for like this year basically. Yeah, it was another thing that I heard at the fire department. Is that certain vehicles of theirs can't go over the drawbridge, so it's really imperative to get replace the globally, you know, there was a conference that just finished up too. So if you have any interest in seeing what is being discussed at a global level, that almost all of the meetings from the convention are on line right there on YouTube. So that's all I have to share. I have a question about that. That corner Chesapeake and Riverside. You know, across the street, which is the continuation of Chesapeake, where they were doing the repair. Remember, they were putting in the sewer line from the other street down into Riverside because there was the station there at the corner, you know, where I'm sure. Yeah. So, right before the hurricane Helene, they filled it all in. Yeah. So have they completed the project? Yeah. That project is complete. Okay. Now, the other thing is, is that the road is not paved. And I hope it's going to stay not paved because if it's never been paved, it was just rocks before. But then we get at least some absorption of the water. If you pave it, it's going to just cause more runoff over there. And there's no place for the runoff. Are you talking about the Creek Drive alley? No. Chesapeake alley. You know that. Would this might be a topic for some future future discussion, but there are other there are things that were taking place in Seattle to create easements that were more that had better water absorption. Right. And I think it's a it's like a whole new topic. So we might have to pavement that for that to another meeting. But it is really worth looking at that because those are some of the things that are solutions for the future. Well let's look at that next meeting. They're called permeable surfaces permeable surfaces. And some some pavers are actually permit permeable. Yeah that's been here for a long time. Yeah I know in Chattanooga they were doing it when we were building that big sculpture there. Okay okay. All right. Well I think that we're at the end of this, this meeting agenda. So was there. Anything else or can we look for a motion to adjourn? We're looking for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Or we can make the motion to adjourn the meeting. Yes. You have a second. Yes, second. We're adjourning the meeting at 732. Thank you. So.