Alright. Good evening. This is the City of Northfield City Council meeting for Tuesday, 02/17/2026. It's 06:48PM, and I'm calling this meeting to order and requesting a roll call, please. Mayor Zweifel? Here. Councilor Ness? Here. Councilor Peterson White? Here. Councilor Soukup? Here. Councilor Beamer? Here. Councilor Dahlen? Here. Councilor Holmes? Here. Thank you. Next is our open public comment. Is there anyone here who'd like to make a comment to the city council this evening? Alright. Seeing no one,
we'll move on to the approval of our agenda, noting that there is a supplemental memo. So I'm looking for a motion to approve our agenda this evening. Councilor Beamer. Motion to approve the agenda. Thank you. Is there a second? Councillor Soaker. Second. All right. Is there any discussion on the agenda? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Those opposed? The agenda carries. The next item of business is our consent agenda. It's a list of items that we vote on all at once, and those should be coming up. You should be able to see those at home and on the screens out in
the, seating area. There it comes. So looking for a motion to approve our consent agenda. Councillor Ness? I'll move the consent agenda. Thank you. Is there a second? Councillor Dahlin. Second. Thank you so much. All those in favor of the consent agenda, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Thank you. Consent agenda passes. That brings us to reports from the mayor and council members. And we'll start over with the Councillor Nes' side of the dais this week. Thank you. This noon, we had a CVV meeting,
and they're in the middle of changing bookkeepers. So they have stopped their advertising program temporarily completely just so he can get caught up and make suggestions. And, I don't even know who the new bookkeeper is, but that doesn't matter. But they found some places where they can improve processes. So, other than that, things are moving on there. So thank you. Thank you. Councilor Peterson White? I have nothing to report. Thank you. Councilor Soukup? I have nothing to report.
Councilor Beamer, I hope we hear something about the omelettes. Oh, the omelettes were fantastic as always. Beyond the Yellow Ribbon had their annual omelette breakfast fundraiser on Sunday at the VFW. I worked at bust some tables and served some coffee, running around like crazy. Huge turnout. We were partnered with, Opendoor, and it was just a massive turnout. So thank you to everybody that came and participated in that. I hope you enjoyed your breakfast. Mhmm. Councilor Dolan. Thank you, ma'am.
Nothing to report except that I enjoyed the breakfast aforementioned. Counselor Holmes. I don't have anything from the past report, but I do want to invite fellow council members and anyone from the public to a meeting at Carleton next Tuesday evening from six to 7PM in the at the Multicultural Center. It's a public meeting to talk about, the potential for a or the proposal for a transit hub to be on campus in, a series of strategic changes that they're proposing to reduce vehicle traffic on and around
campus. They're going to be applying for seeking a conditional use permit. So they're having a public meeting to, for those of us to learn more about the project, view the preliminary design, and and provide any feedback. So, again, that's next Tuesday, the twenty fourth, from six to seven in the Multicultural Center on, the address is 210 1st Street East. Thank you. My only thing to report is that I will be at the mayor's youth council tomorrow morning, the all boards meeting. So that brings us to our regular agenda.
We have one item on the agenda tonight, which is, a discussion, around our sustainable building policy. So Administrator Martig, do you want to introduce our new staff member? Thank you. We have Sarah Povich, our sustainability coordinator, who we brought on board. She can she'd like to give a little bit of background of herself, maybe as part of her introductions or integrated in that, that would be great. And Risi Karim, who's in the audience as the assistant to the city administrators, helping to transition, those duties over and and helping on this policy as well.
I did note, earlier that Scott Wapat, the community development director, wasn't able to be here this evening. So he's been working on this particular issue as well, and will be involved as potential action comes forward at the March, meet likely at the March meeting. Thank you. Sarah. Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here today. I will talk about the sustainable building policy, but first, let me introduce myself a little bit more. So I have a bachelor's degree in economics and environmental studies from UW Madison, and then I went on to get my master's in public affairs and public health.
While I was working on both of my master's degrees, I sort of got connected to Dane County's Office of Energy and Climate Change, where I sort of got into sort of governmental sustainability, climate data, and sort of, government policy a little bit. Next, I went on to a fellowship through the Department of Energy where my host site was at the city of Rochester. So not too far from Northfield where I helped with various sustainability issues and policies, and I'm very excited to be here now for the city of Northfield. So first, just some level setting. So passed in 2019,
we have sort of a climate action plan that has two main components. The first component really be focusing on our greenhouse gas emissions reductions or mitigation strategies. The plan specifically calls out a 100% carbon free community by 2040. And sort of the second component here is building a more resilient community to prepare for ongoing climate change. Regarding our greenhouse gas emissions, sort of, an assessment done in twenty twenties found that 86% of Northfield's greenhouse gas emission footprint
is from the energy used in building. So that is sort of the large, orange part you see in the graph. And this really suggests to the city of Northfield that prioritizing building strategies is one of the biggest ways we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions across our community. If we dive a little bit deeper into that data, about 77% of community, the community's emissions came from commercial businesses. This is both the light and the dark orange. This is really important because the sustainable building policy primarily applies to projects receiving financial assistance from the city,
which largely falls under the commercial building category, but it does include, apartments and sort of housing. So I do wanna commercial development is a big word, but that does include housing and multifamily developments. So in line with sort of all of those facts as the sort of city priorities, the first one is sort of to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. Sort of the this will have the largest impact on our climate action plan. Some of the ways we're looking at doing this, is sort of high performance building envelopes and systems, making sure the systems are right sizes to support the building envelope,
being electrification ready, and trying to reduce on-site fossil fuel use as our grid gets cleaner, by 2040. The second sort of piece of this is to support the resilience and durability of all our sort of infrastructure by using durable materials, and designing sites and appropriate systems for it to account for heavier rainfall or and hotter summers. These are just a couple examples. I'm not gonna list everything under these main priorities, but these are sort of some of the main buckets. So sort of translating that into the sustainable building policy.
Its clear purpose is to support the Northfields Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and new construction and enlarge renovation projects. Its application is really when a development receives financial assistance from the city that comes as tax increment finance grants, loans or land write downs. There are some other financial mechanisms that do apply to this policy, but from a high level overview, those are some of the main ones that affects. So the sort of key takeaway as I sort of dove into this policy the
past month or so is that the sustainability policy is currently not achieving its intended purpose. There are a lot of different challenges and I'm sort of here today to sort of present all the challenges we're seeing just to sort of get you informed about where we are and sort of then build progress to building something better. But because it's so such a big policy and pretty detail oriented, today's goal is just to make sure you understand sort of the challenges we're currently seeing, and hopes that when we come back with a solution, you'll be able to understand some of the technical components
of that policy. So with that, I'm gonna sort of break down the sustainable building policy. So there's two main components, in the sustainable building policy itself. So I like to think of it as like two different buckets of sustainability mechanisms within the policy. The first mechanism bucket one is sort of the sustainable building rating system, which are all the following rating systems that a building has to go through and sort of get a minimum of silver or compliant. This bucket is sort of not the purpose of our my presentation today,
but I wanted you to be aware of this bucket existing in terms of a sustainability mechanism. The second piece of the policy is sort of the Northfield green requirements. The Northfield green requirements has three components under it. So it has a predicted greenhouse gas emissions, which is sort of a calculation. It has an energy efficiency standard and it has a renewable energy standard. These, Northfield green requirements cannot be altered without city council approval. And sort of these are where our main challenges or policy tensions are coming in. And so that's what I'm really gonna focus the rest of the presentation on.
So policy tension one, I'm gonna start with sort of the renewable energy component. So in the orange box, you'll actually see the text that's in the policy itself. The first part really just requires developers to do sort of an evaluation of on-site renewables to see, their cost and their feasibility. And the second part requires them to install if cost effective with a payback period of fifteen years. So one of the tensions we're sort of seeing right now is the interconnection timelines. And so just so that we're all on the same page,
interconnection means the process of connecting distributed energy into a utilities electric grid. And so that's really connecting solar to the electric grid. It's the most common way for things to be connected. Technically, solar does not have to be connected into the grid, but it's fairly common to connect it into the grid, at this point in time. And sort of as, we've learned that there is a lot of congestion in Northfield currently, and so connecting to that grid is a real challenge. And there's a queue from three to five years for interconnection.
And what Excel sort of means by congestion, right, is that there's a chance when solar is connected to the grid that if the building isn't using all the energy the solar is producing, the solar would then push energy back towards the grid during periods of high congestion. Their concern around this is sort of like, you know, a different sort of metaphor for this is like trying to run your errands at 4PM on a Friday in the cities. Right? Like, that's not the ideal time to go out on the highway and do all of your errands with all the congestion. So they really don't want power being pushed back to the grid,
and there's sort of a queue for that. So this sort of makes solar sort of infeasible for developers for the next couple of years because there's a long interconnection timeline. That means that there are sort of limited alternatives without grid interconnection. So one of the options that we are aware of is sort of geothermal systems. I think Northfield has really a great level of expertise in the sense that Carleton has done a lot of sort of geothermal, but there is some sort of technical complexity and timeline constraints. From community development's perspective, they have a lot of, oncoming development,
and I don't think we are able to sort of match the technical complexity and the timeline with, sort of the developments that are already applying for financial assistance. So this is definitely something we're interested in exploring further and learning more about. I just don't think we have the technical expertise to sort of help developers through this process at this moment. So that is policy tension one. Does anybody have clarification questions on this? It does get kind of technical. Okay. I'm going to move on to the second policy tension two. So the second one is really focusing on the energy efficiency standard.
Again, the orange box has the official text from the policy. I'm really focused on the second piece of this. So currently, the majority of our projects are new construction and major renovations that are would, apply to the sustainable building policy, which means they are required to meet sustainable buildings twenty thirty guidelines. Sustainable buildings twenty thirty guidelines are expected to achieve a 90% reduction in net energy use and carbon emissions relative to 2,003 levels. So to meet a 90% reduction,
a developer would have to install renewable energy or they would have to purchase a large amount of renewable energy, offset credits. And so sort of the tension with this is that the interconnection timeline does not really allow developers to install renewable energy on-site, leading the sort of main solution to this to have them purchase the renewable offset credits. Those renewable offset credits can sort of be purchased anywhere in The United States and there's a large market. And so while they would help meet 2030, they don't really help advance Northfield's climate action goals because it does not reduce greenhouse
gas emissions within sort of the city of Northfield. So that's sort of a summary of policy tension two. Any clarification questions there? Okay. The last policy tension is sort of to calculate a greenhouse gas emissions. The description goes through what exactly that metric needs to be in in terms of a measurement. But once the big sort of policy tension here is that once the emission number is calculated, there's currently not a standard that requires greenhouse gas emissions reduction. And so it doesn't really help advance the goals of the climate action plan instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
And so as a high level overview of all the things we just went through, one, we have a calculation for greenhouse gas emissions that does not have a standard for emissions reduction, so we're not advancing our climate action goals of reducing greenhouse gases. Regarding the energy efficiency standards, the energy efficiency standards are not clearly achievable by current policy. They're technically achievable, but it does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the city, and work does require some technical complexity. And finally, we have the renewable energy standard, which sort of we're having,
constraints with interconnection and sort of that delay from three to five years. As a result, this policy is not currently, effectively supporting our energy emission reduction or climate resilience goals. And sort of my role is to sort of help realign this policy so that we're meeting some of those goals. And so, let's briefly talk about solutions. So, like, as I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, my main goal is for you to really understand the complexity of this problem that we're facing, and then we'll bring back more solutions when we have them more fleshed out.
But from a high level, likely, we're gonna have to do propose an amendment, and that staff recommendation is still be to be determined. I'm working very closely with Scott and community development on what they may that may look like. Largely, that might just be a small amendment to allow the current one to be more feasible. The sort of long term solution is to actually do a full review and update the sustainable building policy to create a clear, achievable, and locally appropriate framework that advances North Northfield's climate, free goals by 2040, with the final adoption by you,
city council, of course. So but the long term sort of solution does require us to sort of meet with technical experts out in the field. So that's sort of more of a long term solution of twelve months. However, we do have developments currently applying for city financing, so we have to make the current policy operate a little bit better in the short term. So we have a short term solution of probably coming back to you within the next month, with a recommendation of how to amend it so we can allow developments that are in progress to move forward. And then the long term solution would be to present to you in several months
once we've had the time to collect more data, to meet with more experts with, a new policy that will hopefully meet our goals better. So that is all for my presentation, but I'm happy to answer all of your questions now. Thank you. Are there questions from the council? Councilor Ness. I saw councilor Ness move first. It was a twitch. If we do not put solar into XL's grid, for instance, let's use the ice arena. If we just put solar on top and use it only for that building, is that acceptable
to excel? We have to so the most common way is to connect back to the grid. And that allows us in the case where power where the building is not using all the power to push it back. There are cases where you could install a battery on the back, and we're sort of investigating what that may look like, and that probably would not require sort of a long interconnection time frame. I think that requires more meetings with Excel, and so I don't have a confirm a 100% yes quite yet.
So we're that is a solution we're looking into, but would need to meet more with Excel with. Counselor Ness. But if you put a system on there that you know is not 100% usage for that building, let's say you go 75% or 50 Mhmm. And then do put some battery backups or some sort or send it back into the ground, would it I mean, does Excel have any say on that sort of installation? Can they say, no, you can't do that,
but we're not hooking up to their grid? I believe, if you would like to phone a friend, Councillor Boehmer says he has the answer to that. Thank you, mayor. Doesn't necessarily work that way. I at work, you may not know this, we work with Cedar Creek Energy frequently on solar projects on the homes that we build. And the one one of the most recent ones that I've worked with them on, the homeowner actually chose a battery a battery pack system. It adds a significant fee to it,
just for residential for residential dwelling, and it's still that energy still has to go somewhere. So it's still there's still there's still energy that gets pumped back into the grid, so to speak, regardless. It's it's at a much smaller percentage. I could only imagine I mean, there was two huge battery packs in this home, rather large home. I could only imagine what those battery packs would look like and probably cost on a project the scale of the ice arena. But it it, in short, it doesn't necessarily work that way.
The energy has to go somewhere, and typically, the solar panels will produce more energy than than the building can utilize. So that energy then has to go somewhere, and it typically goes back into the grid. And also, if I could call on administrator Marchek, I believe you were on the phone call with Exel when this question was asked. Thank you, Mayor and Rishi Karim was as well. Some of the details of that particular project, happened before Sarah was on board with us. But, yeah, Councillor Beamer kind of covered it that we even got a grant for a micro
or for some battery backup on the NCRC building on a much smaller piece. But so we are exploring that larger option, but that isn't available right now. So I think that the short answer is no, it still requires an interconnection agreement on these solutions and under state law, it's all regulated through the PUC. And so the city doesn't have really any opportunities to that. So unfortunately, that's not a solution at least yet for us, but we're still exploring particularly the battery backup options if there might be those. It's just harder on a larger scale.
So it goes that was covered. Since I was speaking, I was going to also note that what was there is probably about a half a dozen cities that even when we set up the sustainability policy originally that we've kind of been mirroring on, and I think we're not unique to some of these same challenges. In fact, I think there's kind of a cohort that's been meeting ongoing. So these although Sarah is new, these have been emerging issues and we've been prepping it for her arrival and along with our new community development director. So it's something that's been an issue and in our work plan that we've been
building towards and now we're really digging into it. So I just wanted to add that. So if there are any questions around maybe other cities in dealing with that, Sarah might be able to answer some of those as she's worked with some of those communities. Would you like to chime in as well, miss Pavic? Sure. Yeah. I would say our general framework aligns with sort of what all the other cities are doing. They all sort of have, building rating systems, so requiring some sort of lead or green cities. That's bucket one. And then bucket two is sort of their city requirements. I would say all of them require predicted greenhouse gas emissions,
some energy efficiency standard, and some renewable standard. Some of them have different pathways that you can pursue, but ours is pretty aligned with what other communities are doing. I have a question about benchmarking the greenhouse gas emissions and best practices for that. So can you walk us through that a little bit as we just heard that, we have we have the benchmarking, but it's not leading us to our goal. Correct. Well, yes. And I would also say with the benchmarking, I'm running off of data from 2020,
and so we are looking to try and up bring up that data to 2024. That is sort of in our work plan for the next year, and so I would anticipate a presentation where we sort of give you more updated numbers. Right now, we're sort of running off of the, 86% is what sort of buildings are you currently using. Right? I would say in terms of, a carbon emissions reduction standpoint, new construction, is probably one of the biggest places we can sort of early on design make sure those building envelopes are stronger or sort of re re catch those systems earlier.
Once the buildings are bit built, those retrofits become more challenging. I'm sure Jack can speak a lot better to sort of more retrofits and sort of all of those elements. And so what we're really trying to think through is how do we sort of take this opportunity of new construction and major renovation and really sure ensure that aligns with the two main priorities of the climate action plan, which includes the reduction of greenhouse gases. And so how are we helping developers sort of talk about that? What does that look like from their perspective?
How do we speak on common terms? And so there's definitely areas of improvement throughout this policy that we can sort of better collaborate with developers, with technical expertise and bring them all together to sort of one understanding. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that, especially the gap because I know we rely a lot on the greening of the grid as part of the emission reduction numbers. And so but there is that gap, as you mentioned, with the buildings themselves and the envelopes and the efficiency within the building. So thank you for bringing those up. Appreciate it.
Other questions? Councillor Holmes? Yeah. Thank you for all of this information. It's really helpful. And, I'm just curious. Are we as we look at the commute, that sorry. The climate action plan, we have a couple I mean, we have the goal of what we wanna achieve by 2040, but we also have by 2030, which is within that three to five time time your time, the three to five year time frame for that interconnections. Do we anticipate that we are not gonna be able to achieve our goals there
because of this block or whatever what what whatever is happening with with Excel? Is is that gonna is that gonna prevent us from being able to even achieve our goals? No. I appreciate that question. I would say, I'm hesitant to speak to that because I don't have data up through 2024. And so to use 2020 data and sort of jump to that conclusion, there's sort of a lot of data gaps there. I would say, I am slightly concerned about that goal. I do think there are other policy mechanisms and other things in sustainability we can do. I think it's a real disappointment to this community,
not to be able to install solar. However, sustainability can be advanced in many different ways, and so we can still pursue stronger building envelopes, trying to build towards electrification and other different mechanisms. Those are just two examples to sort of, align with our goals while we try to engage at serve with the PSC and work with Excel through that problem, which is probably gonna take a little longer. Could I ask a follow-up question to you? So that just reminded me, about, Trump's plan to push back the retirement of coal plants and will that that's that
is impacting Minnesota, I believe. And so that will impact the greening of the grid and the, emissions reductions that we were kind of counting on to reach that goal. Or is that too speculative at this moment? I would have to verify this. This is sort of off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure the state has a policy that requires investor owned utilities to sort of work towards carbon free electricity by 2040. So don't quote me on that, but sort of that's a state policy. And so, I would say our state is a little bit more insulated because there are climate
action sort of goals and plans from state legislator that still excel and our utility our investor owned utilities have to build to. Thank you. Alright. Counselor Holmes. Along those lines, as we look at alternative ways, I know it was mentioned that geothermal could be a possibility. One of the things that I'm very cognizant of as we as we look at this policy is, one, to to help us achieve our climate action goals, but, two, to make it easier to do development. And I hold an assumption, so I just wanna kinda get see if I can test that assumption that geothermal
is much harder to install than solar and more expensive for developers. I mean, that's an assumption I hold. I have no idea if that's true. Do you have does mister Beamer have I feel like he's responding over there. So that's a really interesting question, and so I'm sure, I would say there's probably gap in knowledge. Right? I don't know that a ton of developers have an like, the knowledge base and confidence probably installing geothermal. Now that's just an estimate. I haven't, you know, engaged with a ton of developers quite yet.
We did I recently attended sort of, a conference that sort of was all about geothermal just last week, with Minnesota housing. And with if you're able to stack incentives correctly, geothermal can pan out and can be affordable. I do think that requires a fairly robust road map, and I do think the city has a role in sort of building out that road map and making that road map more clear for developers. That road map is we don't currently have at that time. The geothermal rebates from the federal level are available through 2032.
And so from that point, there is federal money for geothermal. And I think it depends, when you're talking about technical complexity, what sort of geothermal you're looking at. So there's sort of one model of a Darcy well, which is one well that goes really deep, and then there's sort of the one that goes across a lot of land. And the cost on those vary vastly, and so it sort of depends on the development in a case by case basis. I would say, we're very interested in it because I think Carleton has a lot of sort of knowledge on how that went for them,
and we can tap into that knowledge and sort of try to learn more about that through that perspective. And if we can create a road map, I do see it as a potential solution. I just don't think we have all the support tools ready for developers quite yet. Thank you. Councilor Beamer. Thanks. I'll just follow-up on that with counselor Holmes. They because I've done a little geothermal too. So, tip typically, the geothermal I mean, like she was saying, you drill you either drill one and the horizontal is a boring.
Both very, very expensive. Drilling you're basically drilling a well and and you're running the tubes in there and then feeding those back into the house, or building or whatever. And the ROI on the ROI on the on the geothermal tends to be dragged out a lot further than it is on the solar too, based off of expense to install versus when you actually recuperate those costs and start seeing the savings. Solar, most reports are somewhere in that eight to ten year time frame, and geothermal is probably more in about a fifteen year time frame.
So, a lot more difficult and definitely much more expensive to to actually install. Thank you. Other questions? Councilor Ness. Do you know if the city has ever put a calculation on what the sustainability policy costs a developer or a building contractor to put up a building? So that's sort of a really difficult to answer because I think it varies a lot by project. Like, single family housing is really different from multifamily housing. I think, generally, the research suggests that the cost is if done really correctly,
and there's sort of a lot of people supporting the project, is that a sustainable building is about one to 3% more expensive. I would say that in order to get that sort of closer down to that one to 3%, the contractors and builders have to be supported, and sort of understanding not only installing those, but, like, the purpose behind installing those. Because as as a builder probably knows, there's sort of stuff that happens during the project where you have to sort of troubleshoot on-site right away.
And sometimes when that troubleshoot troubleshooting happens, that's when sort of, that expense can cause a difference. Councilor Ness, you have a follow-up? Yep. Thank you. That's just curious because I've heard from a housing contractor that it costs them between 15 to 25% and a commercial contractor from 20 to 30% more just with our sustainability policy added. Thanks for sharing. I'm definitely interested in researching that. I think we I don't have any numbers to present to you behind that right
now. I do think, we do have a consultant who's prepared to provide us those exact numbers on what this sort of costs. Yeah. Also important to keep in mind the return on investment for those. So councilor Peterson White. Yeah. I I mean, I think these are really interesting questions to be asking, and that's a big range, one to 3% versus 25 to 30. Is that what you're saying? And I think that the but the the cost to the contractor building the building is a different thing from the cost to the owner of the building. Right? Like there are many green measures like for instance,
I replaced all the lights in my building with LEDs this year, which makes the building greener and also saves a ton of money. So, I and I'm curious whether that one to 3% you quoted is just kind of upfront construction costs or if that reflects the cost of using the building. I think it's a general sort of in total of so it would include design and operation in general. And so I do think developers and contractors are really concerned about the upfront cost, and so I think that's where we need to tease out more of those numbers and really understand that.
Yeah. And, also, if I may, ensure that we're we're recognizing that contractors are not the only people paying for buildings. Right? And they're not necessarily the people who are gonna live in them and pay the utility bills and things like that. So, the, which is not to say that we don't wanna make it affordable and reasonable for contractors and ideally appealing for them to build sustainable buildings, but that, the upfront cost isn't the end of the story in terms of, what a building, quote, unquote, costs. So, anyway, I I think it's a great thing to try to quantify.
And, also, I think it makes sense that people who are looking long term at the sustainability of a building are gonna quote a different number than the people who are just talking about what it costs to build it. Yes. I was just going to, see if folks wanted to transition to some comments about, the sustainability policy, give some staff some direction and feedback, based on what you've shown us here tonight. I've been, yes, prompted by Councillor Boehmer to move us to that. Thank you. I printed off the policy and made some notes on the policy.
One of the big concerns I've always had with this policy is the policy gets attached to you know, and I don't necessarily have problems with the policy being attached to to public buildings that are being built by the city. But where where where that line gets crossed for me and that I'd be start having issues with is, you know, we have we have people coming in asking for financial assistance via TIF,
you know, grants, fund, any other types of funds or anything like that, conduit financing, whatever whatever that may be. They're asking for assistance to build this building, and then we attach a policy like this to it that forces them to spend more money on it. And whether you believe it or not, this policy makes you spend more money. Lead is not easy to achieve without spending more money. That requires you to put more energy efficient equipment in there than what code tells
you that you need. This is this this policy is some people might know, this has been, like, one of my angst type things since I got on the council. You know, the guidelines and the other problem that I can't I guess I have is that, you know, we're trying to we're trying to get more housing in a town where whether that be via via apartments, multifamily dwellings, town homes of some sort, or even a single family works workforce type housing. And when we have policies in place like this,
the builders go to Dundas, which is what just happened. I if we want to move forward with trying to achieve our strategic plan goals in getting more affordable housing in town, we have to take a really deep look at policies like this because this is what keeps builders away from us. And I I have a very good hunch that there's some projects in town that may have moved forward if they weren't tagged with policy like this. It would be interesting to hear from from those people that haven't moved forward with
them, to see what their thoughts are on it. I I'm really, really glad that this came in front of us because I think it's a good time for us to take a really deep dive into it and and potentially do something that puts a moratorium with this policy since we can't reach actually move forward with some of our strategic plan goals as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Soukup? Thanks. Sorry. I have one more question, and it's a little bit related to what councilor Beamer was just talking about. I'm I'm curious. It's just a process question between now and when you come back in March with,
the kind of the short term amendment. How are you going to arrive at whatever that amendment might be? Are there gonna be, obviously, you and director will be working on it, but are you involving other stakeholders, anyone from the development community? I'm just curious how you'll arrive at that and how council then can be informed about what's happening along the way or how we might be helpful with input beyond just comments tonight. Yeah. Absolutely. I you know, because we're trying to come back in March because there are current applications that would
apply to this policy, it's more gonna be a more shortened timeline. I see more investing in sort of community engagement specifically with developers as more of a long term solution. I feel like anything we would do now wouldn't really sit down and honor sort of their concerns and really talk those through. And so this sort of short term is going to lean more on sort of, expertise and some technical assistance of what we can do, manage it now. And sort of the long term solution would involve more of that community development.
The short term amendment is likely not going to add any more requirements. We don't have all of the ideas flushed out quite yet, but it's likely gonna lean on what's already existing in the policy. So it's not going to add new, I guess, unexpected surprises to ongoing current development right now. Counselor Peterson White. Thank you. Well, I I guess, first, I just wanna say I really appreciate this very clear, presentation. It's really informative and excellent, and I appreciate the conversation about this. You know, I I think we probably can all agree that we don't wanna have any requirements
in a building policy that are impossible to meet. That seems really clear. And we and and so I appreciate the attention to the points in here where, we are essentially stymied in for the for the time being at least. And I think, figuring out how to address those in the short term while also looking at a longer term solution makes lots and lots of sense, and I appreciate staff's attention to that. I think when it comes to the policy overall, I certainly agree that we do not wanna create standards that make any kind of
building in Northfield prohibitively expensive. That would certainly be counterproductive. But I do think it's very important that we acknowledge that climate change is also very expensive. And, we as as humans, have been really only looking at the short term consequences of our actions for, you know, a hundred and fifty years or so, or maybe longer in terms of whether the choices we make about what we build and how we use energy, how we use other resources, whether those are contributing to, destructive climate change or not.
And, personally, I believe that climate change is real, and I believe that the choices that we make as a city have a direct impact on that climate change. I think one of the challenges as local policymakers is that there is no sustainable building policy we can write that will entirely avert climate change. And so it can be tempting, I think, to say, well, we better loosen that up so we can build some cheaper houses, and we'll worry about climate change later. Or we'll hope that somebody else does something. But to me, that's not a sufficient response to the to the crisis of climate change,
which is in fact very much upon us and which we have already seen the effects of in Northfield and throughout the world. And I don't mean to be sounding kind of, like, grand about this, but the these are the stakes. And, and I think it's it's important to say why we believe we need a sustainable building policy or not. And it is going to be it is it is not gonna be cheaper to make things more sustainable. Hopefully, making things more sustainable will eventually become cheaper, and we'll figure out better ways to do it. And it'll be easier for builders and developers to do things that are more sustainable.
And I think we're learning more all the time about how to do that, and I'm very optimistic about that. But if what we're hoping for is some situation where we can believe that we are doing our part to fight, avert, reduce climate change, but also we are not making anything harder for anyone, that that reality is not going to arrive. So, and I I just think that's a hard truth. Right? So and and what we need to what what I hope, I guess, as a local policymaker is that we can arrive at solutions that are manageable,
that seem that that we are able to communicate about those in a way and collaborate with the private sector in our community with builders, developers, homeowners, businesses, to help them see the long term value for them and for the whole community in taking these steps. And that is what this policy should do. I think that's what we're working towards. I think it makes sense that it needs some revisions. Things are changing all the time in the world of sustainable building. But, the it is for my part, I'm not gonna back down from the fact that this is one of our most
important shared responsibilities as a community. And it, you know, it's, we need to keep doing our part, but figure out a way to do that that we're actually gonna be able to get people to do. So thank you. Thank you. Councilor Dolan. Thank you, Mayor. I only have two quick points. In your study and looking ahead, the more input you get from stakeholders, the better and all the stakeholders you've mentioned so far. And then my second point is that my I think the stakeholders, because they know from where they speak, they can be succinct and qualified.
So whatever time line you put them on, I think you can always go for a tentative succinctness and qualified opinion from the stakeholders. And I would just welcome all of that data. Thank you. Counselor Holmes. Thank you. I am glad we're looking at this. I think it's important. I mentioned this last week, and so it's great that it only took a week and it's here. I do as much as I said before, you know, I think it's I I think it's holding that balance between, achieving our climate goals and the the values that are held very deeply in this
community, and that have been expressed by community members for for decades, if not longer. And and ensuring the policy that we have is able to balance that and allow for development to actually occur. But I do think it's critically important that we don't take any steps backwards when it comes to impacting our climate. So I can't fathom putting a moratorium on any climate actionanything that we would want to do to achieve our climate goals. I do think it's important for us to look at how can we achieve those things.
I think any solution we have demands both, minimizing the impact to the climate and also supports developers to be successful within our system. And I think our responsibility as a municipality is then to figure out the policy that can enable that, but then also to miss Hansen's, point earlier in terms of and I and I mentioned this, last week as well after coming from the Eller's conference that we have to incentivize. We have to, with whatever levers we have available to us, that we help support the developers to be able to be successful.
And so I think that, you know, whether that's going after grants, whether that's going after whatever we have available to us, that's that's our role. So I think that, again, I think it's that balance, but that for us, it's looking at all possible levers to work with all the stakeholders. Thank you. Counselor Soukup. I'll just add, briefly that I I just wanna echo the, I feel like the goal of of just finding some balance. There seems to be I mean, there's kind of two things in my mind happening where there's the reality of what's
happening with the grid and Excel that's making the policy just not work. And then there's a question of, is this the right policy for the goals that we're trying to achieve in general? And so I'm not I think when I think about, costs, I think about housing specifically. The upfront cost is really a big deal. Developer housing builders don't eat those costs. They pass them on to home buyers, and renters. And so I'm just trying to think about the balance of if we cannot connect
to the grid right now, and I'm not gonna use the right terminology when we talk about that. But if we can't successfully buy down energy costs with using solar, then what is what how many people are being prohibited from that that cost entry point that's not actually contributing to our goals. And so I hope that the short term amendment kind of reflects where we're at in this moment. And to councilor Beamer's point, the goals that we have in terms of our tax based diversification and our housing
goals. I think that, like councilor Peterson White said, I think that we have to do our part to combat climate change as a municipality, but what does that part look like realistically right now? I hope that we can just find that strike that balance. That's all I have to add. Thank you for the for daylighting this and for your presentation tonight. It was excellent. I too agree that, we shouldn't have a possibility that's imposs a policy that's impossible to achieve. And
it is unacceptable to me that in Northfield, we do not have access to the cheapest form of energy right now. Completely unacceptable that Xcel Energy has not upgraded our grid, and we do not even have that option here in Northfield. And that's not gonna help us solve, this short term problem. So I thank you so much for doing something to stopgap this measure. But I am gonna do everything in my power. I'm gonna email everyone I know and say, you know, Northfield has just suspended or re amended their sustainability policy because we have no access
to solar energy in Northfield, and that's unacceptable. So I just wanted to make that, really clear tonight. So, any other comments? Councilor Beamer. Thank you. I just to just to be clear, I I'm not saying we need to kill the policy. My my point is in the short term because in trying to enforce a partial policy seems kind of ridiculous to me. And and until we can update the policy to what it should be and and what works for
us and what we can make work, I pause the policy, moratorium on the policy until that time arrives. My guess is there's people probably waiting for us to figure something out for them. At some point, you know, some developers or builders or who knows what. And to try and enforce a partial policy seems kinda silly to me. That's why I threw the word moratorium out there before. So I just wanted to make sure that we were that I cleared that up. Thank you. Other comments we'd like to pass along to
To staff as they work on a short term solution and a long term solution for us. Thank you all very much for the discussion tonight. Thank you for your presentation. Next up is our city administrator update. Thanks, Mayor. I'll be brief that, from last week, just one legislative update is there, the sales tax bill isn't the primary one that we're still working on getting some the bill drafted for that. And again, this session is just kicking off. But the, representative Purcell did offer to, clarify what we need to have done is working with the adviser's office and is
supporting for the the bill. I'll be following a similar path to first get it started in the house and then work with our senator to see if we can gain our senator's support on that as well. So those are two, just one update from last week. This is, our week of of the city administrators update where there's a lot of detailed updates that go out. So I think I'll just focus on that one for this week rather than cover other items tonight. Thank you very much. Councillor Ness? Move to adjourn. Thank you. Councillor Beamer? Sorry. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, we are adjourned.
Thank you, everyone.