It okay. Well, good evening, everyone in welcome to the FEBRUARY meeting of the Indianapolis City-County Council's environmental Sustainability Committee. Kick things by asking counselors to introduce themselves starting on my right. Good evening, all. Thank you. Avocado Spartans district 6. Good evening and emails in District 14. Thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN Brandon, we need to stick Thank you, MR. Chaired or Kale District. 23, thank you, MR. CHAIRMAN Roberts District 4. Thank you, counselors and I'm John representing council district 7 in the chair of the committee. So we began this year thinking about here in
water quality and we'll continue that into. MARCH, especially because one of our water quality presenters at the push to MARCH crackdown. Okay. So that discussion will be coming up in more detail next month. But I'm excited for this meeting to have. 2 presentations and then a on the committee in just to refresh people's memories who MAY be watching at home are here person. One of the things we try to do in this committee is collect information from experts. Then I think it through and working through and then come up to take to the city County Council. And so one of the 2 priorities are really wanted to focus on this year's or water quality. So we're in the midst of doing
that. Now. But the other thing I'm really excited about doing is we kicked off last year with the airport authority who came to one of our meetings and some detail time talking about the work that they do when it comes to sustainability, which was very impressive. I think that was really, really useful and really sort set a template this year and that I'm trying to make sure that for several of the meetings we have that we and institution or individual in our community who's doing important work around sustainability so tonight we're going hear from
my constituent Bali University. I'm it's been my pleasure and honor to represent Butler for now 3 terms. I met with PRESIDENT. And I know that was sometime late last year. Just about touching based on a lot of commonalities things working on together. And he asked, is there anything from the university's perspective you can use from a resource? And I said, I love to learn more about your sustainability efforts, which is how I met Julia was blown away by what color is doing when it comes to sustainability. In one of the things like I mentioned, want to make sure we're highlighting this important work that's being done. I live. I can see him go fieldhouse from my house, but I didn't know any of this. So that tells you not only is just the broader community
doesn't know this great work butlers doing, but I myself and you can see it from my house. Didn't know. And so this is really great and important work. And so Julian Smith is here from Butler to give us an overview in. I'm gonna turn over to you. Thank It's such a pleasure to be here and I appreciate you having Check my watch on time. So Julia and I'm the executive director of the Office of Sustainability of Butler. We are a relatively new office. We officially got our new name in MARCH of 2024, but we have been around that Butler since 2018 as the center for Urban Ecology and sustainability. Thank And so really, you know, Butlers on mission is obviously to serve students first and foremost. And so a lot of our efforts prior to being the new office was
really focused on Education and serving our students. My apology. No, not And what really became apparent to us is our current students and our prospective students really care about these issues so much so that it's impacting their mental health. And so we've surveyed our students and we realize that a significant portion of our students not only feel the effects of anxiety and grief around climate change, the implications of climate change. But they also believe it's going to shorten the length of their lives. And so that really began a larger conversation on campus around. What do we need to do not only to educate students but the show through action. How we as a university can start to move the needle forward in our own little Butler bubble, but also to kind of share what we're doing. So the rest of the city
and the Midwest region. And so we're really looking implementing data informed sustainability initiatives that are both physically look fiscally responsible, but also promote behavior change amongst our campus community and our surrounding communities and providing that innovative educational experience. The Butler is so well known for some of the share a little bit today about kind of 3 main areas, actually 4 main areas that we're focusing on currently. The first is carbon ising our built environment on campus. And so PRESIDENT Jim Danko signed a climate action commitment in 2012 committing the university to be carbon neutral by 2050. And we've made some incremental progress on that in FEBRUARY of last year, we got approval by our board of trustees to really focus and really try to put
momentum and resources behind this initiative. And so we worked with ppe engineering to help us develop a decarbonization master plan for our campus. And so there's 4 main phases to this. And we're currently in this first phase, which is in the red and that strategic energy management. So that's everything from looking at how our buildings talk to each other and how we can see what our buildings are doing from a computer screen. So making sure their intelligently connected and we can monitor what's going on in our buildings, making sure that we have a motion sensor lighting in led lighting. So starting with the really basic things, but also looking at how we can make our building systems work more effectively together, which is called retro commissioning and then doing
deep energy retrofit, which means essentially replacing systems like hvac systems. For example, and really focusing on how can we lower our emissions profile on campus as effective possible? So we're currently in phase one. Phase 2 is looking at on-site solar and other renewable resources such as geothermal and also expanding ev charging on our campus. And so in reality, these 2 kind of overlap. So when we see solar grant opportunities come up, of course, we're going to go after those. So that's kind of the second phase. But often times those are in changed a bit. The 3rd phase is the thermal transition. So this is looking at how it can we
electrify or entire university in preparation for renewable energy transition. And we really have to time this correctly with what the state is doing with the utility grid. Right? So we want to make good decisions if we convert its all-electric immediately, it would cost us of a lot of money, right? So the reality is natural gas is the cheap option right now. And so we're trying to strategize and plan appropriately for when is the right timing for this effort. So that step 3 is probably 10 to 15 years out for us steps one and 2, our immediate to the next 5 to 10 years. And then the last pieces off-site renewable energy. So what can we do? External to our campus were kind of land limited. Of course, we can put solar on
roofs. We might have some ground area, but we are also probably going to have to rely on other properties. And so again, looking at how the laws shift over time and when we can maximize that, we are have a goal to do this the right way and not just purchase offsets and so offsets. Our goal is to be 10% or less of our total energy usage. And so we really want to invest in our campus, put resiliency into our campus and set butler up for success. Long term. So that's one of our biggest schools that we have. It's a relatively new goal. And so we're not navigating the federal funding environment, the state funding environment and also looking at innovative ways to fund this work as well. It's not going to be funded completely through grants. Second aspect of what we're doing. That's probably a more visible aspect as we've been rewilding are grounds
over time. And so we have about 50 acres of forest on campus. We have a one acre ecology farm. So this is food production that's done in the most sustainable way that we can. We can accommodate. We sell all of that food to our campus dining. We have a four-acre research prairie and we have a series of bio swells and rain gardens that help to manage runoff from Impervious surfaces of the one that's in this image actually drains the lot of Hinkle Fieldhouse. And so we've been working a lot on this over time. We have some you pick beds that our faculty and residents run as well. And so we have history of doing kind of little piecemeal rewilding are grounds that we really started focusing in on
that over the last 2 years with the help of Bethany Danko and the PRESIDENT's office. And so we have a 10 year goal of Rewilding at least 23 acres of our campus. And you can see I have some of the impacts environmental impacts, but also fiscal impacts to our university. So we've started first looking at little areas that are hard to Ersan that argue ounce team hate mowing. And we're saying let's just stop mowing them. Let's turn them in the nomo zones and you can see we're putting signage in there so that people don't interpret that as we just don't care. We're not tending our grounds. But this is intentional. So are also in betting education throughout this. We plan to the prairie behind our sciences building.
We just completed a sciences renovation and expansion and there was an opportunity there instead of covering it with turf grass. We said let's put in a prairie. So we have a functioning prairie back behind that building. And we also have these other pocket plantings throughout campus. The bottom picture, there isn't one of our dorms. We have 2 courtyards and our dorms. Probably one of the most high-profile we things that we did was last fall. We replanted historic Holcomb gardens in native species. And so the Holcombe gardens has been open to the public since the 1950's and it used to be planted with ornamental plants, flowering plants, not necessarily natives during the pandemic for a variety of reasons. Those recovered over with turf grass. And so we had some generous funding from Lilly Endowment and some individual funding and also the Indianapolis Garden Club
to help us fund replanting of those beds, a native species. And so the Indiana native plant society created the designs for this. And then we had a huge volunteer event with 400 volunteers that came out and helped us plant over all nearly 4,000 plants in one day. And so is a huge educational opportunity. It was a way to get the community involved. And a lot of these initiatives are pretty low cost initiatives with a big impact for us. So we have 2 more beds that were going to be installing your the spring or fall. And that will kind of complete the wraparound whether original flowerbeds used to be and in that space will continue to be an educational space to talk to community about what are the benefits of planting natives for pollinators for water, quality for savings on mowing and chemical reductions. But our ultimate goal is to really change people's perspectives on what a college campus or a
formal garden could look like. Another aspect of what we're doing on campuses, looking currently at how we're managing our waste. And so this past semester, we worked with students to do a waste audit. So we went through in counted every single trash receptacle on campus and noted its location. We noted discrepancies and signage and really created about 60 recommendations for our campus on how we can improve our waste auditing or excuse me, our waste minimization in diversion. The majority of these recommendations are low-cost to no-cost it. Also a lot of its staff training, student education, making sure that our processes and procedures are running adequately. And so this is kind of the pyramid of waste priority, right? So the first is minimizing so not even using products in the first place. So we're working with our purchasing department, our dining services to highlight Rick Compo stubble reusable
items primarily in. That's a heavy lift. Moore also reusing items. So we started the campus thrift store with that student led and we're reusing items when we can recycling office items. We're currently composting back of house at our and our cafeteria. And we're evaluating doing campuswide composting. So hopefully we can create commercial route for the city as well on that and that process. The next step is recycling. And then following our trash is incinerated. So our goal is to be 0 waste and recycling. People often think that that is the best thing to do and recycling is actually just one step up from trash. So there's all these other things that are higher priority. When we talk about waste, minimization diversion, we're also putting in analytics. So we're putting in these ai sensors and all of
our dumpsters. We can track our weights and we can track how often are waste is being dumped so we can identify inefficiencies. So we have a dumpster that's being dumped and only a quarter full. We can change our scheduling. There's energy savings for the university. So this isn't just about the environment. It's also about fiscally saving money, money for the institution. And all of this is done with the undercurrent of engaging This semester. We have 12 in turns. And so our interns work on everything from waste audits or we had a student count, every single light bulb in every single fixture on our campus about a year ago. That Emily there in the top left and she stayed with us. So we have it's surprising see energy engineer. So she's getting
those experiences and she's been with us so long. She's essentially a staff person at this point. She's telling us what to do. And so we have students that work directly with us both on our farm space on our grounds with their waste management. Also send students out in the community. And so we have students working with to gardens free willing community bikes. With the Global Center for Species Survival and the White River Alliance, who I think you're going to hear from in the coming weeks. And so we really try to engage students in this way and then educate our campus and the broader community and our work. All right. I think I kept it at 10 minutes. Happy to take any questions. I know that was a lot really quick. So happy to
take questions. Yeah, let me just start with a couple questions for myself and see if others have them. To start. Just 2. Make a note about hope and The having Leno living blocks for men and grown having grown up just blocks from it. I spent many, many, many hours there. And it's really exciting. I tell you. And I talked on the phone. I didn't know. All the work that was being done. Some excited to see the outcome of that later. Coming up this spring. Is. I'd like to invite everyone to Is it time hold out on the hold off until you actually do reveal? Was going to go at any time you go. Now it's not going to see much. I would recommend if you want to see those new planting start to bloom, I would wait until maybe JUNE JULY. So you can actually see some of the
plants potentially and flour over the next 3 years. It will start to fill in over time. So to look maybe a little bit sparse that first year, we're also going to have a volunteer program. And so if people want to come out and adopt a bed, we're going to leave gardeners that coming consistently volunteer and then people in the community can sign up. Learn a little bit about gardening and help doing Sweeting. And that heading in learning a little bit about managing that landscape. And then the second question as the interim director knows, I've spent a lot of time advocating here for the city to have a composting program. And I can tell you just from my own household composting fairly aggressively for the last several years that it is. Materially in significantly reducing trash that we have. Yes, so I'm wondering, use I think you said you're doing it
in a more limited fashion now or maybe I didn't really cover. And curious if you have had that same effect on your on the output of the truck. Yes, for sure. So we are composting currently on average. I think 650 pounds of food waste a month. And so it has saved us money on trash hauling. But of course, we're paying for the compost hauling as well. We are currently working with a smaller company that typically does residential. And so and they only do organics. We have to be really careful about what we put into that way. So meats, cheeses, those compostable plastics. All of those items can't go in. And so right now we're solely focused on the food waste that comes out of our kitchen. Because once you move, it's a front of house where the actual clientele, our students
are using it. Then they're your risk of contamination increases. And so we're currently evaluating the company and that does anaerobic digestion. And so they would be able to except meats and cheeses and so really limit that that issue of contamination. And so we're hoping to expand that program across campus in the near future. Thank I do have a question. Let me go to other committee members see if they have anything. They like that. I think MISTER Chair you mentioned this and I and I agree with us that a lot of sustainability measures often go hand in hand with financial savings and in some cases, maybe you like you mentioned, you, there MAY be a thing that
could be more sustainable, but the financial side doesn't makes sense right now. And so you defer. That's that's finding great might. I guess couple questions because I think this can be applicable elsewhere is do you have any sort of top handful of items that have generated the most financial impact. You know, like. So that's what's most effective. We're very early on in our decarbonization work. That was just to get approved last spring in FEBRUARY. So but we've already so that led analysis. We didn't know where we stood with it. We knew we had done some led conversion. And so we've started doing some conversion ladies and really the return on investment often is a handful
of years, right? And so there's always going to be an upfront investment. But with the energy savings, the staff time and switching out, light poles the cost of replacing light bulbs. The return on investment is as pretty. Have specific numbers for you today, but will likely see the same thing as we're looking at our Waze tolling. Right. And as we're making that more efficient and as we're focusing more on diverting waste, for example, move out ways for setting setting up a move about donation program. And so what we would normally pay for these large dumpsters to come in on campus and remove that waste were diverting that ways to our thrift store or local thrift
stores in Indianapolis. We worked thrifty threads last year to do a small donation program. And so as we ramp those up, we're going to see cost savings some of the larger items. We are. We have to start thinking long term. And so I think as a university or is a business businesses, we often think of capital projects as a first cost one-year return, right? What's it going to cost me up front? And we're really trying to transition our thinking to ok, it might cost a little more up front. But 2030, 40 years down the road. We're going to see significant cost savings, both energy costs, but also in maintenance and operational costs as well. And so shifting
about long-term thinking is a is a culture shift both for us. And I think others that are doing this work. So on the ev charging stations. Is that a mix or is it did you do that to electrify the university fleet or is it just both? And so, it is the University Fleet. Are you seeing cost savings related to that? Already? So we have not yet installed ev Chargers. That is one of our active projects right now. Our focus right now is fleet yes, came out with some incentive programs to help support support version. And so that's really our focus right now. There's a there's a balance here, right? Because
as you install ev chargers, of course, you're increasing your utility. You said you're increasing your emissions profiled. So we're trying to balance that. We don't want to go overboard. But we also know that we're in kind of an ev charging desert where we are. We know we have a lot of people coming to campus for games and for events from out of town. And there's really nowhere convenient to charge their cars. And so we're looking at fleet right now, but also looking at public charging is on the table for us as well. And when we look at the numbers again, we see a return on investment or a payback period of 2 to 4 years, depending on what our what our charter 8 is on ev Chargers. And so really, you know, again, an upfront investment. But we're getting back that investment
relatively quick. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, and I appreciate the the charging does are there because you in the is in my district and is another one of our pretty deserts down there. So interesting that universities that. He assumed to be at the forefront of her are not necessarily, but instead catching up. Still. And we have more and more students are coming with cars that need charged. And, you know, we hear that they're going to the north side of Indianapolis to charge and they're sitting there. You know, that's not ideal for us. And so we know that it's an issue that we need to address on our campus. If they're around charging a car, went to the meeting district 7 seconds from an a thank you, CHAIRMAN Councilor Cahill was kind of
going my couple questions for you where Butler kind of stands in the larger, you know, higher Ed push to achieve some of these things. So curious, just a many of these bragging about but like kind of benchmark where you all think you're at and that then secondarily, like what? Well, Larry is doing make you know what your competitive advantage or what are you doing, particularly well. So thank you. Yeah, those are really good question. So we actually report on a number of platforms. So we report our scope. 1, 2, 3, admissions on a platform by second nature. And that's part of PRESIDENT Dingoes commitment were required report our emissions profile annually and that's public information. So, you on
a second nature and and look up where we stand and also other universities that have made that commitment. So we can kind of gauge where we stand with other universities. We also report the energy star through the city and then the 3rd way is actually through. And this is a mouthful, the association for the advancement of Sustainability in higher education or a she is is a membership group of universities, mostly in the United States. But there's some global international universities as well. And that allows us to look not only at our missions profile looks, everything looks from everything at what sustainability classes are we offering our students? What majors do we have? How many internships do we have? What
is the quality of our work environment. So sustainability also include social justice in dei. And so that's embedded in there along with the operational sustainability, peace. And so that's a way for us to get a really comprehensive look at what we're doing really any any university that serious about sustainability reports through a she it's a huge endeavor. We do it every 2 to 3 years. And so again, we can look at where we rank and they give you a bronze, a bronze, silver, gold or platinum. And so I would say with Midwestern universities were generally on par if on par or maybe a little bit lower rates over right now. But when we look at our parent asked for
institutions, we are we are trailing. And that is something that we take seriously, right? Because it's a recruitment tool for this generation of students that are coming. And they're saying this is important to us. We want to see action in this area. And so we're really thinking about how does this impact our enrollment? How does this impact our reputation as university and how does this impact future generations and our broader community? Okay. So I one question to close with a night. You just kind of hit on I I at this moment, it's the exact right moment to be asking this because I'm a recent college graduate and current college student. And so I do know that that you mentioned 2 things, one that students and families are looking at a commitment to sustainability as part of their decision-making process. But also, you mentioned that
there's anxiety among this generation coming in dealing with the complexities climate change. And so I'm just wondering how win, how is that involved in student life and the recruitment process, a heavy blend that and to reflect that the values that, you know, it's reporting for the actions you're you're now putting forward. So students understand what's happening. That's a really great, great questions. So there's a couple ways we're constantly improving. The first is there's an orientation online that students have to complete prior to coming to campus and so sustainability as a as a unit in that. And it talks specifically about here are
the ways that you yourself as an individual can contribute to Butler's mission to sustainability. So talks about recycling and some of those programs that we have. So they're getting exposure to this before they even come to campus. We have students touring campus. We have a sustainability. Torso were active in that recruitment process with our students. I'm working with a few faculty members to develop a sustainability curriculum. It won't be a major. It's essentially an asynchronous course that all students would take now still needs to be vetted through our faculty. We can't just unilaterally say all students have to take this course. But it's been developed and we're piloting it this spring. And so we're hoping that we also have all
of our first Students are taking a course to understand the basics of what is sustainability. What is climate change, water? Greenhouse gas emissions but also in betting in that actionable items. What is Butler doing and how can you get involved? And then I would say the 3rd way is our internship program. But we're also doing a lot Co curricular. Lisa, we're having we have a month in sustainability month. We have lots of events happening that students can get involved Students were involved in the Holcombe Gardens planting. We have an active sg, a group that says a student government group that's engaged in sustainability. So we collaborate with them a lot. And then we help mentor student clubs that are focused on the environmental aspects.
And then some of my staff and I used to no longer with my new position. But we also teach in the environmental studies program as well. And so every step of the way we're thinking, how do we engage students in these in these processes so that they feel like they have agency and being a part of the solution. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for coming tonight. We're up. We have one quick question that. How many students does Butler have currently enrolled? Well, I don't have an exact number. I just don't know it's a little over 5500 were looking undergraduates. I think by 4700. And so we're growing. Our graduate programs are growing. We also have a
new college. The founders college that we're really excited about. That's a two-year associate's degree for students that are Pell eligible and so they can get associate's degree essentially for free from Butler and then they can continue on to get a butler for your butler degree for a lower cost if they choose to continue. And so our programs are growing and diversifying. Butler's really made strategic efforts to really make Butler more accessible for everyone. It's part of our founding mission. You get about Mueller is doing it and something that happened this weekend. I was excited about just because of my proximity to Hinkle. Whenever there's a men's basketball game. We got a lot of people parking on our street, which is great. It's exciting and it's plan for it. The the but
for the first time ever. This weekend, we had almost the same level of men's parking for women's game. That's never happened before. And so I was like what is happening here? Because I didn't checked the man's get scheduled to see what happens. But to see that many people attend for a woman's Clinton, that's the super exciting. So that's great But again, thank you for your leadership. Thanks for all you're doing that. I know that the first lady I has done a lot on this, too. So we appreciate her. And really appreciate you coming. Think she's been a huge supporter. Thank you for having me today. Ok, up next, we have the interim coming to see us again. So 2 things holed up in for after when you're done. We've been talking a lot over
the years about the work the department has been doing to seek. Grant opportunities in federal funding. And so one thing we were communicating on was with all the uncertainty at the federal level grant funding the doge process and how everything is under review. What does that mean for Indianapolis in the city and the grandson? We had either in process or an expected to get. So I think the interim treasure giving an update on that. Thank you. And thank you for allowing us the opportunity to present to this committee again. Remember, colonels and the entire attack there in the office of sustainability. As always, we have our team when the just stepped out. Our communication director Michael introducing if you have not met dpw. Director Todd Wilson. Thank you for being All right. So
again, here's our lovely team. Open to backfill one of those shortly. Reflecting on our mission. This is where we start. Whenever we apply for federal funding state funding, filling phone traffic funding. Thinking about our mission and the the values oriented and Thrive. Indianapolis, our city's sustainability and resilience plan. The 2 overarching goals thrive, which are then reflected in each of our again, all of these various applications, increasing community resilience by prioritizing equity policy planning and project implementation. And then to achieving green net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, understanding that one cannot be achieved without the other. Again, one of these that these are the themes and thrive. What we do applies to one of the sectors and specifically we try to tie it directly to
an action item. Also wanted to bring this up as a review that in this is true in 2016 as it is now, perhaps the ratios of gotten a little changed slightly. The overall sentiment here remains the same. Our greatest greenhouse admitting sector in the cities and both in city operations, but also in our communities. Greenhouse gas scores majority comes from buildings thinking about energy systems that for that power, those buildings keep those buildings, pull those buildings, send water to those buildings. Heated cooled water to those buildings. All of that is reflected here. Second largest sector being transportation, understanding that that comes from tailpipe emissions, mostly. Quickest
growing sector is waste. Which we MAY talk about a future committee meeting. I bring all that up to share with you that where we prioritize these applications. We want to see advances and reductions in one of these sectors. So we will prioritize buildings and transportation most highly weast, obviously a priority and where we can apply for those. We do our best to do so. As a review of the ira and I aj a slash bail because it's often called ira. And Bill, if you will, has been paused as of JANUARY 2025. With executive order from the Trump presidential administration. Potentially causing all I re I aj granting programs. Between 2020 one and 2023. Our office applied for about 35 million dollars in federal funding. We were awarded approximately 30.8 Out of that. So we're
going to review each of those. And I wanted to add in here as well that each of these grants because we're only a 4 person office, each of these grants adds temporary contracted work into our office to allow for greater capacity to do this work rather than simply relying on for people to do or 30 million dollars worth of work. The first of these that we and the most valuable of which we have been awarded is from the Federal Highway Authority is department, the Department of Transportation a 5 year grant for 15 million dollars. A part of the charging in fueling infrastructure program. This fund a bow where it's anywhere between 25 to 40, depending on
the location of them, the type we choose electric vehicle charging points, not necessarily the ports themselves, but actual locations for those. Is the range about this. What this would afford accompanying that is all the necessary education outreach workforce development that would add to be able to stimulate the sector in Indianapolis. There is a required 20% match as a part of the federal highway. Authorities know fo their notice of funding opportunity. That is attempted to be reflected within the ev installer market, meaning that. Federal that the recipient agencies would necessarily be required to provide that 20% match. However, for some of our fellow Ortiz, that's what they've chosen to do. We chose
to have organizations supply U.S. With letters of support that are ev charging companies that said we be interested in applying for this if it comes up for procurement and we would supply a 20% match. This could be either we didn't include dc here, but either level to compliant. Ev stations is the minimum that we MAY go to dc fast. Partnerships that we identified in our application are threefold, one with indie parks and rec in public property. And then Indianapolis, public libraries. And then a really innovative partnership with the n a a c p of Indianapolis. And then I, as I said, a portion of these funds is dedicated to workforce development. I could blow through all of these. And I'm gonna tell you where you could stop. After each one. We could have discussions, which would you prefer? Each of them are so segmented. I wouldn't expect you have it. Keep
attacking all ago. It stopped after it went ok, so not there. So a question about this one. Over the belt, the innovative partnership with the Some of this. I will say this entire presentation has mastered over as to what the Biden administration's priorities were from the federal highway. Us dot. And now what the current administration's priorities will be. The Biden administration know fo included. Justice 40 requirements that 40% of funding be used in justice. 40 eligible census tracks. Our approach to this because this is a site bay or place based investment was to not only work with organizations that owned public space as and parks, libraries, cetera, that MAY or MAY not be in Justice 40 census tracks. But we know many of which are. But also to
partner with cp to connect with small businesses that MAY be interested in hosting them at You know, service lot level organizations. This is another way to get into the community. That wasn't simply limited to parks and libraries. So that could be houses of worship that could be community centers just trying to understand that it was pathway that we weren't otherwise addressing with parks and libraries. House of worship were. Could be didn't the requirements and that the standards to be publicly available, not behind a paywall meaning it can't be a paid parking lot that then have to charge additional. Would be charged additional. Charge just that to be a publicly available surface or garage potentially. But most
likely service live. We. Ideally don't want to work at the curve. Possible that we MAY, but we understand that those endeavors have been problematic in the public space. And so we want to be very cautious about working at the curb. And so we prioritize partners that own and occupy surface level locks. I just want to take it one step back or not specifically did that charging grant. But so here's that I just the federal money. It's pause just what the slide says. But I don't understand. I guess. Somebody who doesn't deal with the federal funding and everything that's going on. If you could explain what that really means to these programs and this money like if we were, we're at 30.8 million. That's a lot of
money. And so where does that? What are you actually saying week? How does that impact us like on a real-time basis? It was a no. That's kind of the that could be a summation that someone would take from this entire presentation that cities like Indianapolis communities like Indianapolis states like Indiana, some ways gone through incredibly competitive processees to apply for spends lots of time with partner strategizing these grant applications. We're awarded funds and that it was announced that we would receive. These are have moved through. And our to our best effort have moved through the grant agreement process. But JANUARY, whatever it was that that those executive orders were announced, put all of that potentially in jeopardy that we would no longer receive those funds. So it's
developing by the day in Washington and we are bringing this your attention now to understand the we're not only what these projects could fund, but perhaps it's an opportunity to advocate that Senate for these funds to reach Indianapolis. All right. Thank you that that helps a lot more. Just give me the reality of scope of where we're at. So thank you on that point. Like this one, for example. Which is very concrete and easy to understand. We're we're we're in the process of proceeding with the grant. We have the right word. But we hadn't received any of the actual funds to proceed with this yet or we had received partial. Where where? Where are we in that? The status of all of these is that we were working
through grant agreement process but did not have finalized screen cream. It's in any of that where we are either a primary or where we are. Recipients on this. We are the primary and it is our most valuable grant. Meeting great applications so far. So we were we literally have millions of dollars in ambiguous state right now. While we wait for clarity from the federal government, correct? Right. And various agencies are finding various. Progress. It's not. It's not consistent across agency thank you. And we're going to talk about 3 different, 3 different agencies this evening. Yeah, this is dot yes. Just just to clarify counselor Illini's question. I guess. With some of the federal grants that we
receive. We incur the expense and then were reimbursed with with all of them. So have we incurred expense for which we? Anticipated being reimbursed and we MAY or MAY not know. We have not expenses yet because essentially we were rating for that contract. Like the Grand Agreement is the legal contracts between the federal government and our officer, the city's behalf. 2 do certain work for certain reimbursable funds over a certain amount of time. We did not reach that. Okay. Conclusion in that process that we have not incur any costs Bears pointed out when there is some there is one or 2 of these winners minor, but we are supposed to be on those and not necessarily a primer. So we're necessarily in jeopardy at this. Ok, thank
you. Thank you that this. This one was have a to b. I knew about this grand was excited about it. I didn't know the innovative partnership that you had and that not only to make sure that there are charging stations in places where they would be, but also those charging stations could drive people to go to locations. They were never on other way, right? Maybe there's a business development perspective or something that's it's really need to think about that. So hopefully that will proceed. We can hear a lot more about potential. What, one, more than just what we're talking about for, I guess, clarity Federal Highway Administration. My understanding is that they are looking at redefining Nevi as well. And I I think there's a lack of clarity, but I guess I would offer that I suspect one of the things that they're
talking about is that they the nevi standard mandated the j 17 72 and ccs one ports and almost immediately after that announcement after Navy was standardized almost every manufacturer standardized on the Nacs charging port. So some of this MAY be. There MAY be something nebulous. There MAY be something as simple as saying, hey, before we go, building all these given that in the next year, everyone's going to start using a different charging port standard going hopefully forever forward. It MAY be a simple as saying, put the put the charging port for the future on not the not the one for the past. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there MAY be some specific hardware infrastructure vision is to
Navy. It sounds to me there's also some programmatic put potential revisions. I will also say that Nevi in its release far before the charging fueling infrastructure program did account for that. The hard way the infrastructure being changeable being movable to whatever new technology comes along because as you know, this technology is advancing every thank you. All right. Our one of our second most valuable here is sore from solar. For all comes the epa. The Environmental Protection Agency. And in 2.8 million dollars again over 5 years. Our office on behalf of the city was awarded a sub
recipient as a part of were part of 2 coalitions. And so felt so this is part one. You're going to see part 2 part one here is with a statewide organization with a primary applicant with Indiana Community Action Association otherwise known as The name of this coalition has been dubbed so our opportunities, Indiana are soy. As we call it. So this is an organization, a coalition throughout the state who applied for an overall grant from solar fall. We are a portion of that grant objective within this 2.8 million dollars is the feasibility study of potentially adding a solar field to a former city landfill called Julia landfill. That's on the east side. That's now with Spring Hills Golf course. It's not on the course itself. It's a fallow field, but it's a part
of that campus. And then if that feasibility study goes well with some of the understanding that Tilly Regulatory Commission or very considered thoughtful conversations with our utility will be a part of this. We would implement at 5 megawatt solar array on this story on this field and then potentially add a community solar program. So if we want to talk about community sort little bit more nuanced and we can dig into well, understanding first that the feasibility study and all the necessary compliance would need to be done on this solar. Formerly land. That's main landfill before we would move on with the right field as a call from Brownsville right field. And this would be an example of one of those situations. You describe word there be some meaningful consultants engagement to do this for us. Yeah. Okay.
Launch see if I as well. I've heard had many conversations not only the that are interested in this business from a local consultant standpoint, council variance is overall grand for 2.8 or a portion of the great part portion of the grant I think the overall grant with the statewide coalition with 170 million portion would have covered a feasibility study, correct? And depending on the results of the few to disability study, maybe a community so up what? First, a 5 megawatt array of solar panels and then the implementation with the community would be a community solar program. And for those uninitiated community solar programs, it's not where you would hose solar panels on your roof on your property on your multi-family building. You're subscribing to a portion of this 5 megawatt and then you essentially get a
credit on your because you pay a little less than the average rate. And so subscribed to a program that the utility that allows for this you not only benefit financially, but you benefit in that. It's not entirely carbon based you're working with in real too. So again, lots of really thoughtful conversations with our utility needed to execute. And so this particular grant is paused even before the feasibility study. All everything I mentioned tonight paused under executive order. Subsequent legal proceeding. And you are at the same state where you are in the process of finalizing the agreement, essentially in co because we're a separate reason you're not. But got it. However, we would eventually get a subversive be a grant agreement, which would be simpler. But that's got it. Any other questions on the front? Moving on to solar for all 2 point o which is valued at 11.1 million that would come in again with the epa again over 5 years. This coalition is probably in industrial Heartland Coalition
and the primary here skews me is a green Bank located in Cleveland, Ohio. Banks are exactly what they sound finance, the organizations that work on renewable energy energy upgrades to buildings, transportation, etc, and the local lead the Indianapolis Foundation, which is organization of Sea ice. So local foundation work was valuable to this application. Exeter. So across this coalition, I believe the number still stands at 7 states and 16 cities. So 6.16, cities across 7 states that are a part of this industrial heartlands. We're thinking of all the cities that have been, you know, former coal communities and all of that. How can you evolve some of And so. That's where this coalition came in started. In Cleveland, the objective here again, over 5 years is the solar installations that
single and multifamily households of approximately 1000 Indianapolis households. Our other partners here in this coalition from a local level, aside from the Indianapolis Foundation. So United neighbors otherwise known as son and the Indiana Energy Independence Fund otherwise known I e I f which is foundation, local green bank in Indianapolis that now serves the state that our office was involved with helping found. So I'm actually thinking of connecting 1000 single and multifamily households to solar and the energy burden that that would we lease for many of these households, such a lady that is particularly high in energy burden mean the portion of your average household income that's dedicated to utilities.
Questions on this one. Christy. All right. And one of our smaller grants over it happened get Dolly is there's nothing to sneeze that is that the energy future grant. And this is a part of the Department of Energy. This is a one-year planning. Grand are about year and a half planning. Grant where we applied under the name, the to form the Indiana building, innovation hub. And I really credit my predecessor, Morgan Mickelson and another staff member in our office. What Madison, by early for putting this together, the 2 of them really got it done. The objective here would be to connect 7 Indiana cities, some of which are entirely body in some of which were still prospecting on this changes all the time. Folks that
started to identify themselves that with the announcement of being interested in this work. So that continues to evolve. That number of sits cities could change with nationwide best practices for buildings, energy efficiency buildings at policies and programs. So to say something like writing buildings, which is our cities. Ordinance backed energy, benchmark transparency program where we Juliet who was here from Butler talks about reporting their energy to the city Energy star. So buildings over 50,000 Square feet are required by ordinance benchmark. Their utility usage essentially measure aside from what they do and just paying their bills every month and then report that information through energy star. If you've ever bought a appliances are you probably have an energy star rating. There's a very similar program, free software
for the epa that we use to report this information. Michael is the program manager of this program doing an excellent job and so something like that, exposing them at a one-on-one conversation over a year and a half. Approximately talk about programs like this to talk about other buildings programs where cities across the state could move the needle in their building space again, because most as you saw from the previous slide on that big building, that is true of just about every Fortune 500 company, state community, et cetera. That building space is going to be highest greenhouse gas emissions sector brain. Came in. I know I'm going keep your payment something just to levels at the consistent with the rest of the this is in the negotiation process of getting
to the final green agreement to get this when you're planning process, correct. And we have the primary here with the property would operate this with a consultant. And we also have the Environmental Resilience Institute, the organization out of iu Bloomington, iu Indy that sort of a policy shop and move or throughout the state tied in to help us can be in the cities of these local governments. You know, had swarmed and thinking about these grants being on hold was. You know, my top line concern was just the importance of all these grants. But I hadn't thought through the cascading effect of other people and entities that were counting on and waiting for this funds in this work. So it's dispiriting to see that. But I know we're still hoping for the best. Anyone comments me. If I MAY,
I would say that. Well. Sustainability and resilience, space is. Thoughtful and ambitious about much of this work. We are exactly that sustainable and resilient in that things change very frequently in this space. And we always pivoting. Highest of hopes that all of this is. Seeing through and that we can execute These are the last 8 years. And to your point, I don't think the sky will fall in terms of those that were counting on some of this work, that we will find ways to pivot and move forward. Thank you for their positive at that's that's why a certain that we can any last but certainly not think excuse me is the energy efficiency and
conservation block grant otherwise known as ecb. Gee, this is a form of cdbg, which is the community development block Grant, but it aimed at energy efficiency and conservation. So this is the Department of Energy Grant, again, its formula funding, meaning it was capita signed to our city. However, we had to put forth an application to justify that formula Funding coming to us. So we're going to use that again. This is all paused the for energy audits and efficiency upgrades for the municipally owned building our building stock again. Huge, huge humidity sector. How can we to counselor calles point not only make sustainability upgrades that make financial upgrades for buildings. And so that's where
we hope to this 707, $80,000. Another opportunity would be to try out a version of this for the city with a temporary staff position that would be known as an energy manager to think through what this looks like potentially from a long-term standpoint for city and how we MAY be able to see the return on our investment here. The Industrial Assessment Center out of University, Indianapolis do certain department of Energy, certify organization. And so they were written into the grand as opposed to needing to compete with procurement. So any of these any of these? Grants that you provided and maybe this one, the energy managers, the for the first that I've picked up on the record there outside of the
offices time any sort of local match on our on our side here at local level. So all this is purely. We have 3 great staff, able to leverage. 30 million dollars worth of funding. Is that about right down? Yeah. Wire 20%, the only the only one of our programs that requires this this first one. And again, we hope to see that from however, none of the rest of these require, right? So if you are, you know, working through our budget and it would, you know, we support the office of sustainability. But otherwise, it's pretty return on great. Thank you. So for the energy manager, though, as a kind as a follow-up. Who with that with that person said. In the office. We think that's ok, because mean, the office of Financial Management Office as a hybrid, because, of course,
we have sustainability objectives. We also financial objectives. Great now and I'm MR. CHAIRMAN, I looked out and a few minutes. So I just want to say thank you for being here tonight. And project the positivity and just as a common cause. I do have to head out also hopeful cooler heads prevail out in dc and we can see that the impact of these programs is none of us. We do know what we do know what the impact is. And as we are kind of looking to the future of our city, we will be impacted by what happens out there. So you don't you're doing. Thank you very much. Thank you for your education sea. In one more slide. Yes. So this is a similar this is sort of a cabbie out to all of this that we are currently doing this or have already achieved that. This is the only one out the last time
that ecb g formula funding came to Indianapolis or came to any organization through the Department of Energy was during the American Recovery and Revitalization Act. Was the Obama era program as it was known to be our era officers received a funding at that time to do programs that had been held within ihp Excellent partner as always. Some of that just stalled in terms of the implementation, which we understand. We're a little bit ahead of the times in terms of the market. So we're going to repurpose some of those funds with hp for some energy efficiency upgrades on some of their organizations, which again, is already happening. And then for another portion of reviews, repurposing funds,
which we had to check all the boxes in terms of compliance with the deal we which we have done so we will soon be planning to capitalize. Excuse me, the Green Bay we talked about earlier, Indiana Energy Independence Fund so that they can move forward and lending efforts to commercial nonprofit and residential sectors for energy efficiency and clean energy upgrades throughout the city. Questions all. Okay. Well, thank to like phones I like follow and subscribe all Thank for all that information that was super helpful to understand some of the impact of changes the federal level and how affects here. Second council neilson's comments. Thank you for focusing on this and you're and your positive attitude. I also feel good things will get in the right place at the right time. That's going to be a big you have to have a high tolerance
for ambiguity in this Injury. So thank you. And so the last topic we have is in we started off talking about air quality tonight. We were going to have presentation on water quality, which is a to point out we had last year that will now take place next month. I did schedule the discussion portion to assume it would have on that information. So we don't have all that information. So it might be time to but ideas on the table for actions we can take based on the information we receive because quite not quite there yet. But I do want to respect Council Perkins request last time that we have some time scheduled to discuss this. And I have for my piece of information received last
month. Has some ideas. Very positive and what actions we can take based on that information. But before talk about that, I want to open and see if anyone is ready discuss or have any ideas of actions that they like to take based air and water quality or anything else. We've learned about. What's made quick on here. Thank you, MR. Cherisse many represents Geist Reservoir which is, you know, I think the biggest water in all central Indiana. I think it's imperative that we partner with citizens too. Lot of people incorrectly assume that the city or the state manages our waterways in terms of what state does. But a lot of a private waterways are not managing by the city and we have partnership with citizens talk about. That's where thing? Yes, actually spoke to
the government relations lead for citizens as a constituent. And I spoke to her when we're planning this out specifically. I was interested in learning more about the leap District and it could potentially affect Indianapolis, which apparently according to that discussion, was mentally. But I think that's all still developing. We had our we have our one of our friends from the in here. And if anybody read, I read a story that just came out about the leap district, you'll know there's it's complicated with a lot of moving pieces right now. A lot of an and so I think that's something we still need to keep our eyes on. But, that was specific to issue. I'm very open having him come back. I think they do important work and having
intimate water quality of I assume you're talking about missile Connor, who has got work with little bit too. And, you know, I it's important to really emphasize that point as a city, as we all know, a lot of state's and city's manager, the waterways. But you're not, which is, I guess a blessing and a curse in some ways. But chilly MAY be helpful. But I wish we had more of a direct impact. Improve our water is I hear about all the time on the reservoir beneath the water is not the same quality was 30 years ago. But the conservancy district now. It's hard prove we're still depend upon citizens really implement that change. Make for obviously the White River and know your creek other water is we have to we don't have that is much controls we would like. But that's a conversation we can have in terms of quality. That's what you and I collaborate on reaching out to citizens and talk about having that discussion and a future
meeting. Anyone else? I just to do what Nick said. I've sat on the citizens, Energy stakeholder group for probably 15 years now and have heard. Countless presentations like the sewer process and how the water that goes back into the White River. White River's water quality the reservoir water qualities and what they're doing for that. And so they have their own. I'll call it Lake ecosystem, kind of like the airport. And so it's it's just so you start listening and it's like you can just get lost in all the things that they're doing and a really great resource. I also think it's important, you know, that the city of Indianapolis used to water and we don't now. And that's what says. And that's I think that's also an educational
point for constituents and just explaining the services and how their split up and I still don't understand the storm water distribution within the city, but things like that I think are also just important from an educational standpoint. Yeah, that's a great brain cancer. Tony, I am navigating who the right person to contact is when there are sewer issues. In my district, depending on various factors that citizens or the city or some combination of the 2. And that can be very frustrating for resource we can point to, I think could be helpful. I want to wrap things up where I my thinking is I was really impressed by the club ration between I'd him in the city on the No zone action days in the
education around that. So I'd like to bring more attention to that. So this is an a substitute of proposal, but more of a special resolution we can do at some point going into the summer when we're going to have more more knows. No zone action is to help point. Not only 2.2 Positive collaboration that happens between government units but also something that's meaningful and outcome that citizens can use. I would like take advantage of that collaboration I didn't know about and really point to and celebrated for the folks in Indianapolis to understand, the background behind that. So that would be something I would proposed to do something some time later and towards towards the summer before the travel vacation season starts. With that, I think we can wrap this meeting of the
Sustainability Commission. Who want to give me a motion to to order second on favor? I we're