Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority to order. Roll call, please. Here. Joest. Kim? Here. Naker? Here. Yang? Here. Chair Johnson? Here. There are five present, one absent, that being Commissioner Joest, and she is excused. Item number one is approval of the minutes, MIN 20 five-seventeen, approval of the HRA meeting minutes from the month of March 2025. Alrighty, thank you. And I've had a chance to review the meeting minutes. If anyone has any questions or items or edits or anything that is related to the meeting minutes, speak now.
Alrighty. Seeing a motion from Commissioner Nacre to approve. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Aye. All opposed? Five in favor, zero opposed. The minutes are adopted. Item number two is a staff report, SR 20 five-forty six, Healthy Homes HH and Power of Homes POH programs citywide. Alright. So this has been a long awaited time to really hear more about the Healthy Homes and Power of Home program. I personally am really excited to hear a little bit more about the guidelines in this really opportunity and important time. I know it was a heavy conversation within our council as well as within the
HRA last year and so I'm really excited to see what all we put together in this time. So Director Newton, I'll hand it to you. Thank you, Chair Johnson, commissioners. Project Manager Danielle Sindelar is here to give the presentation on this new program. The program is in partnership with Chief Resilience Officer, Russ Stark, who is here as well and Curt Schulz is also here from our team who works with Russ as well. So we kind of have a partnership with Russ and working on these kinds of initiatives. And so Danielle will give a presentation, but all three are here to answer questions. It is a new program, so you'll be hearing this briefing today. And then next week,
the guidelines would come for approval. So any feedback that you have or questions or concerns, today is the day to listen and see if there's anything that you have questions about. Thank you. Hello. Welcome. Hello. Okay. Can you hear me okay? Awesome. Thank you, Director Newton and Chair Johnson and commissioners. I'm excited to be here today. I'm Danielle Sandler. I'm a project manager on the housing team. And firstly, firstly, I wanted to say thank you to Russ and Kurt, and then also Dave, who is the new clean energy, project management tech who will be the day to day manager for these programs, you know, when they launch.
And then also Pat Thistlehorse who did a lot of, the early research on this. And then, also Dean Portnelson helped us a lot as well. And, he just took a job outside of the city, but he wanted to say thank you for all the work he did on that. And so today I'll be going over these two different programs. And just to set the stage a little bit, we structured them as two separate programs because Healthy Homes got a one time allocation of a million dollars through the ARPA funding that we got at the end of twenty twenty two. And then Power of Home has a $300,000
allocation from the Excel Energy franchise fee that is intended to be reoccurring. So just for simplicity, in case one of them, were to not get funding in the future, then it would be easier to kind of plan them out logistically. But our intention is to pair the funding with projects if they're applicable for both and have a joint application to make it easier for people who are interested in both programs. So first, I wanted to have a little video for us to, talk about or just to kinda get on the same page of energy
efficiency. Alrighty. There might be an ad here. Bear with me. Germans have figured out a way to There we go. And so this is from the Minnesota Department of Commerce who is in charge of the weatherization, assistance program for the state. And so you might hear some references to that but it's very applicable to what we're planning to do as well. Series of systems including the building exterior, the mechanical systems consisting of heating, cooling, and ventilation, and the electrical system which includes lights and appliances. When these systems work well together, your home is a more comfortable, healthier,
and efficient place to live. And that can add up to saving money too. Most homes, even recently built ones, can benefit from a review of their systems and equipment. Sometimes things need to be maintained, repaired, or replaced to increase efficiency, to keep your family safe, and to prevent future problems from occurring. So when we visit your home, we take a top to bottom look at how these systems are operating and where they might need improvements. This is called a home performance review. It's the first step in improving how your home works. After we complete the review,
we suggest things that can make your home more comfortable and save you money. These improvements could include replacing or upgrading big ticket items like your furnace or water heater, or insulating an attic space or walls, or adding weather stripping to doors and windows. But our program is not a window replacement program. Other things we may do are clean or upgrade your bathroom fan to improve the airflow or change light bulbs or thermostats to increase efficiency. All these improvements will be done at no cost to you or your family. And speaking of costs,
when you weatherize your home, you reduce your energy bills and lower your energy burden. Many families with lower household incomes often carry a larger burden of energy costs than they need to. This means that those households typically spend a higher percentage of their income on energy than other families do. Reducing your family's energy burden means you'll have more money for other things. Weatherizing your home can also improve the health and safety of all your family members. Improving the air quality of your home, ensuring proper operation of furnaces and water heaters,
and reducing hazardous conditions such as mold or mildew can all help reduce the effects of asthma and other chronic diseases. Plus, the Minnesota weatherization program is good for the environment, good for your community, and good for our state and the planet. Your weatherized home will be better able to withstand the effects of our changing climate, including protecting your family from temperature extremes. Because a weatherized home is better for everyone. In my There are more videos if you're interested, but, we'll be linking those for applicants in case they're just curious more about what the
process is. But, yeah. So the goal of these programs is to, improve the homes of lower income residents so that sorry. One second. Let me figure out the okay. Sorry about that. And so our goal is to improve the energy efficiency of homes of people in Saint Paul who cannot afford some of these costs upfront because, you know, making repairs to your house can be really expensive, and there's a lot of people who just can't front that money even if it might save them money month to month longer term. And so as you can see here,
we did a little bit of a landscape analysis just to see how we could best use this money to complement the other programs that are available to our residents because, you know, there's already some great partners doing weatherization work in this space, notably the Community Action Partnership and then also Energy Sense Coalition. They implement the, Minnesota weatherization program and then also the Xcel Energy. They have some funded programs as well. But they are smaller nonprofits, and they have to prioritize a lot of their regular funding. So when we initially asked if they would be interested in taking on the Healthy
Homes funding and fully implementing that, they did not have the capacity to do so, understandably, because of the one time allocation. And so then that's when we started talking about what would that look like to bring that in house and whether or not we could do that. And so the money that was applied for through ARPA, it was initially supposed to support projects that might not be able to go through these normal weatherization programs because they have too many repairs to qualify. Because, again, you know, smaller nonprofits, they have a set,
scope of tasks. And so sometimes there's things like, knob and tube wiring that is really expensive to replace, and they can usually only cover up to about 15 to $20,000 of those pre repairs. Or also there's a lot of insulation that has asbestos in it, and the house can't be weatherized with that. And so those are the kind of things that are prohibiting projects from participating in the existing programs and causing them to get deferred and, you know, naturally because the cost is too high. And so, we designed these both programs to be grants because,
also, there's a lot of loan programs offered through, you know, Minnesota housing and also the homeowner rehab program here and center for energy and environment. But there are a lot of people who may not qualify for loans or something we've heard too is that, you know, as people get older, they might not feel as comfortable taking out debt, or different cultural practices like Halal lending might not be, you know, aligned with, like, a typical bank loan. And so that's why we wanted to focus on having these as grants so that they, you know, more people could access them and not have to worry about the ongoing financial commitment.
And it also eases some of the staff burden as well with loan servicing. And then for power of home, which focuses more on improving bigger ticket appliances, you know, such as installing a heat pump, which can replace the heating mechanism in a house and provide cooling or, you know, replacing a clothes dryer with a heat pump clothes dryer that is more efficient. You know, there's not really anything besides loans right now out there to finance these things, and so we wanted to bring, you know, a free option that people could take advantage of because those items in particular are
really cost burdensome. So specific to healthy homes, so as I mentioned, this one is focusing on homes that can't participate in the typical weatherization programs because of outstanding repairs. So that's the health and safety measures highlighted here. So that involves a lot of the hazardous, materials, abatement, you know, fixing plumbing issues or, you know, a small issue with the roof or something. Our goal with this is not to necessarily, you know, go cover a ton of deferred maintenance or fully rehab a house. It's really trying to focus on those things that are prohibiting the house from getting
weatherized. And then, also to ensure that the property gets weatherized because that was part of what we promised with ARPA funding of ensuring they did both steps of, securing the building envelope and, you know, making sure that that part that actually will save the money gets done. Our goal is to also install that for them as well. And so that's a lot more of, you know, the ceiling of the home with air stripping or caulking. And then, you know, if a window is broken or something, we could fix that. And then also adding insulation is another really big one.
And then and this is designed to to follow the best practices of other weatherization programs that focus on the most cost effective measures for each project. And so for both programs, we intend for them to be offered to homeowners and renters so everyone can benefit. The Healthy Homes program, we put at an 80% area median income level because the initial proposal was for around 300% federal poverty level. And in order to align with our other programs that are rooted in AMI, then we decided to pivot to 80% which is still considered low income.
And then for rentals, in order for them to qualify, at least half of the units have to be, income qualified and I'll get into that a little bit later of what that means and what that would look like for an applicant. And so for the property itself, it cannot already be weatherized and has to have the repairs, like I mentioned. And we intend to get deferrals from the existing weatherization partners as well to kinda ease that process. And the award amounts, we intend to be 5,000 to 50,000 to kinda right size those projects.
And then as I mentioned, there would be no repayment. It'd be a free grant. However, it will be paid to a contractor. Thank you. I see commissioner Yang's hand, so I wanna give her a chance to ask her question. Thank you. Thanks, chair Johnson. Just a quick question here. I know in the video and also on this slide that you're on that it says this is not a window replacement program. So thank you for being super explicit about it. I do wanna share that this is commonly questions about resources for a window replacement program is commonly what I do get though from residents in my ward who are
interested in weatherization. And so in PED, do you all have any resources you can share with us? That way we can pass it on to those interested residents. Yeah. Yeah. I believe that the, homeowner rehab program does cover windows, and so we could definitely, share information. I believe it's, closed right now because we have a wait list still. But and then also too for this program, we would consider, you know, repairing or reconditioning windows and just improving the quality of the existing windows if it were to make sense. And yeah. Please. And, chair,
council member, I think you were asking if there are other resources outside of the city. Right? Yep. Yeah. Between the city, outside of the city too. Yeah. We can put together if we know of any other resources for that as well. Thank you. And then, yeah, and then also too so, of course, we want to extend these public funds as much as we can. And so we're, you know, looking at what other offerings are out there. Xcel Energy has a lot of very favorable rebates that will apply to many of these items. And then also the, state has, rebate programs as well. And so the staff will help coordinate what that looks like,
and the rebates would come back to the city as we would be paying the contractors on behalf of, property owners. And that is to similar to the emergency rental assistance program from Biddigo that we talked about. It's to avoid kind of like that benefits cliff concept where you're putting the tax burden on the homeowner even though that's not really their responsibility. And so then also, yeah, as we all know, the federal investments are a little up in the air right now, but, the IRA tax rebates are still technically in place.
And so we intend to, you know, provide resources to free taxation services and whatnot so that people can claim those to themselves, and they would not have to be paid back to the city given the difference in timeline. I see Commissioner Nikker's hand too. Thanks, Joe Johnson. I may be skipping ahead just a little bit but I'm it looks like when you say the audience is homeowners and renters, we really mean homeowners and landlords. Right? We're talking about the owner of a rental property can apply. Yes. So, yeah, chair Johnson, commissioners,
the applicant would be the, the property owner. However, the tenants are part of the application process to verify their income. Sure. And with programs in the past as well, you know, just trying to make sure that everyone is on board with the project before moving forward. And the Healthy Homes in particular, we didn't require a rental cost share because, it's more just basic repairs and the benefits are more immediate to the renters. And then also too, we didn't, build this into the explicit requirements, but something that we will be considering as well as who's responsible for the bills
as well just to make sure that tenants' costs aren't increasing and same with homeowners as well our goal is to lower everyone's costs so. Sure. And just sort of continue my question, so it looks like there's both health and safety measures and building envelope measures two different buckets of work that we would pay for. But it strikes me that for landlords, all of those elements that we list under health and safety measures like asbestos or loose wires or pest management, smoke alarms, those are all we can require those through our certificate of occupancy program.
We wouldn't need to be paying landlords who didn't have those things in place to put those in place. And I would assume we would not pay them to put those in place. We would use our department safety and inspection certificate of occupancy hammer to make sure those were in place, and we would only use our dollars to help with the actual weatherization. Is that how you're thinking about the program? Trey Johnson, commissioners. So the current setup is so that the funding would cover all of it for, rental properties as well. And, my understanding is that for and,
you know, of course, I'm not in the in DSI, and so, please Director Newton, please chime in if, I missed something. But my understanding too is that properties that were that are, you know, not being built brand new right now, they have, you know, kind of, like, historic conditions that can be waived in. And so even though we wanna build somewhere with knob and tube wiring right now, there are a lot of properties that have that. And, like, it isn't necessarily something that we would require to be changed through a typical,
like, certificate of occupancy program, but, when they are looking to weatherize the property is something that they would have to opt into doing. Sure. Yeah. And maybe there's sorry. Sure. Maybe there's just two categories here because it seems like I mean, I moved into my house. It has not been to wiring totally fine. Mhmm. Different and totally recognize that that might need to be changed to weatherize. But that's different than past management, that's different than plumbing repairs, loose or damaged wires. So I'm just I don't want to be rewarding landlords of affordable properties for not fixing these things with public dollars.
That's kind of what I'm getting at. I want to make sure we have that distinction in place. Sure. Yeah. And, Chair Johnson, commissioner, something too that we built into the requirements for property rental property owners is that, they have to show that they spent funds on maintenance in the property within the last twelve months at least through, their tax return. And then we can also review the DSI permits as well to make sure that they're investing in it already on a regular basis and not, again, covering deferred maintenance because that's, yeah, like you said, our not our goal to cover their work. And Chair and Commissioner,
I'll add that as we bring these guidelines and these are great questions because this if this becomes too administratively burdensome, then it doesn't make sense, right? So we've got to make sure that we're covering the things that we would like to, but there's a reasonable amount of administrative burden with this. So it is a new program and we're thinking through those questions. So these are excellent questions. And so keep asking. Thank you. So can I, as a follow-up and kind of along the lines to, when we're talking about renters, or homeowners and renters, kind of what quantifies it, are there unit restrictions on the renter piece?
Is there a certain what is the size of the restrictions? Yeah. Chair Johnson, commissioners. We're focusing on one to four unit properties. And what and walk me through what happens if one unit, qualifies and then the other three don't. So in that case, only yeah. So if it was, you know, a single family property or a duplex, then they would meet that 50% threshold and would qualify for the program. But if it were a three to four unit and only had one unit that was qualified as low income, then, they would not be eligible for this program.
And do we happen to know just kind of, like, as well if there is, I guess I'm just thinking about, like, the available resources as well and just really trying to get into, is there room for prioritization when it comes to, like, maybe which areas or what homes, what rental property units that we think would be helpful for this? Like, I'm just kind of thinking of what I'm thinking of scope. That sounds, you know, does and just kind of where where we would be able to invest most. And so I'm just kind of wondering, like, when you've been talking about the pool of applications and capacity and just all of
the different things, like, what has what does those discussions look like and what does, if at all, some of the prioritization or even just focus areas of where one might wanna spend time on related to homeowner properties or rental properties? Is there a preference or are they kinda equal right now? Is like, what is the scope in mind here? Yeah. Sure. Chair Johnson, commissioners, so right now, we're planning for it to be a first come, first serve process, or at least that's what we've discussed thus far, to kind of align with some of our other programs as well.
And, yeah, our intention is for it to be available citywide and, yeah, just essentially if a homeowner chooses to partake, then they can apply, and rental properties as well. And, yeah, so there isn't any, like, prioritization built in. And, also, too, because the bucket of funds is smaller, we don't anticipate that we will be able to have many applications. And so like I mentioned, our goal is to, source deferrals from the existing weatherization providers and then, of course, advertise so that people can apply as well.
And, yeah, essentially, we we do have we built in an in, like, a in geographic qualification for the income qualifications so that people wouldn't have to, submit their income documents if they're in an area that, is considered like a Justice 40 census tract, which was a federal initiative that focuses on low income areas and their intersection with different climate and housing and health factors. And so our goal has been to try and see how we can have it citywide and reduce the barriers for areas where we think it would be most applicable.
But, yeah, we are open to your feedback, of course. Course. Yeah. I think as a follow-up to that, you know, and I'll just say, kind of from the record but also as an initial response, I see value in potentially prioritizing, spaces where there's significant cost burden, especially as it relates to Xcel and Xcel Energy payments. And I know that they've been doing some work, especially around equity and tracking just kind of where we have some of the most cost burden families, but also where we have some of the highest utility bills, where we have some of the highest energy bills and, like, really just thinking about where the focus could be and especially on a space where
I think every dollar invested from this program should be, truly prioritizing spaces that really need that and, especially because there's there's it's not that big of a fund. I'm would just simply say as a resident, but also as a council member who represents Ward 7 on East Side Of Saint Paul. There's a lot of conversations around what this what this looks like on the East Side and not to necessarily just, to speak for all the East Side folks that are here, but for myself and also for, Ward 7, I think there's I think that it's really important to have everyone be able to
access the opportunities, but I also think there's something to be said for some prioritization when it comes to what we are seeing, related to the cost of utility bills, the amounts of, it's kinda skewed a little bit. A lot of the datasets that I see also focus on certain areas. And so I'm just wondering if, like, we've taken that into consideration. And I see our resiliency officer coming up. And so, Russ, I'm sure you are looking to respond. Chan Johnson and commissioners, thank you for the question. It's a really important one. And we've thought a lot about that question. Because of two factors,
one, relatively small amount of initial dollars here and really the desire and need to get started so that we can get some experience with the program delivery, we wanted to make sure that we're getting projects in the door and done in the relatively near future so we can gain some of that experience. We've had a lot of conversation about if if we had more resources in the future, how might we do something that was more geographically targeted to some of those areas, like census, block groups that are the known highest energy burden and potentially a very different program
delivery model where it's like, a a possibly something like a block by block approach. We don't have enough resources to do that yet, and we think it's really, as I said, really important to get started and gain some experience with the mechanics of how projects like these will work. Okay. Commissioner Yang. Johnson, I really appreciate what you're bringing up about the question of prioritization on who are we serving and and how do we decide on on who we're serving in the first place. I want to share right off the bat,
I'm very opposed to just the concept of first come, first served. There's many programs that I can think of right off the bat that I've always thought, why did it, you know, why did we do it that way or why did the state do it that way or whoever was hosting whatever program it is. And I have many reasons why. I mean, during the pandemic, it was really clear like we have such a wide and growing digital equity gap, especially in areas of concentrated poverty. And that was a huge focus of that of many of our staff and a
lot of organizations and nonprofits were working on closing during the pandemic and we put a lot of investments into it as a city. And there's also on top of that, when you think about language barriers too and the need to do intentional outreach, especially to the households who we do want to prioritize serving through a program like weather of homes, for example, like that is really important work to be done that I would really like for us to do and be really thoughtful about. I would, you know, just bringing us back to the conversation when we were deliberating and voting on franchise
fees, I was very I was very opposed to, you know, us being aggressive about like imposing additional fees and without considering like how would this impact our most our heaviest like energy burdened families. I mean, it's really going to be them who gets hit hardest when we do impose additional fees. And I would want to make sure that because now we have a plan for the program here, we've approved an additional month of the franchise fees that we are really being thoughtful about how we can ensure these funds do go back to impacting those families who
are most energy burdened. And so in terms of the application process, I'm not sure if there is going to be a collection of utility bills or, I know you talked about income and all that, but if there was a way where we could evaluate like what is the energy burden of that household and consider that as a factor in how we are prioritizing who we serve. I know it's going to be a fairly small number of households that we do serve in the first year here,
but it's going to make a huge difference for those households. And I know for the ones who are experiencing the highest inequities is going to make an even more impact for them that they get selected for the program here. And so I wanted to share that because I do want to see prioritization and I feel that that is really important if we are thinking about how we can roll out an equitable program here in such a diverse community like Saint Paul. Chair Johnson and Commissioner, it's a really good flag and set of questions.
A couple of things. One, we do think that a big source of the projects will actually come from those projects that our partners at Community Action Programs and Energy Cents Coalition had to defer on because their resources couldn't cover those needs. So these are already identified homes of income qualified residents who would have qualified for those programs who haven't been able to get the improvements because the cost of their pre weatherization or other improvements was too steep for those programs to cover. So we think that's a really kind of relatively low hanging fruit way to get
resources into homes that where we know there's a need. The second point I'll make is that to some degree the the more you try to get down to sort of the level of the individual homeowner the less that would be a basis on which to sort of say, we're gonna pick this geographic area to run a program in and then, potentially not have to test the actual income, and and energy cost at that kind of fine grain home by home level. That's like the the the more fine grain you try to get, the harder it will be to find the actual specific projects to do.
And so that's that's the line that we're trying to walk here. Again, because the programs are new, one of the things that we need to do is to gain experience on just simply program delivery and how all the mechanics are going to work before we think about those opportunities to scale up. We really feel like we we need to get the the the experience in doing this before even requesting more funds to do something more like what you're talking about. Okay. Thank you, Russ. And, was yours a follow-up or was this Just a clarification. Can you just can you say a bit more about community action partnership?
Like, like, what sort of interaction or potential partnership is gonna to that you all foresee us having with them? Yes. Chair Johnson, commissioners, so our plan would be to, you know, just share the information about the program with them and let them know that they can refer projects to us if it would be a good fit. And, you know, a lot of times people put together a very similar application package. And so, our goal would be to make that transition as easy as possible. But at that point, we would essentially take over the project because,
they don't have the resources to finish it due to the high pre weatherization costs. Okay. I would love to, dig deeper into the conversation offline. I do wanna share that I have a resident who's been really interested in this, and I met with them the other day. They mentioned they did mention the community action partnership and was asking how can we form a partnership with them to not duplicate work. And it sounds like there is already a lot of data being collected through that organization that could be used for verification of, like, eligibility and so on. And so maybe that's something that you all are already digging a bit into.
And so I would like to have more discussions about it with you all. Yeah. One one thing before Russ, you jump in. Chair Josh and commissioners, so our goal with the income qualification was definitely to try and reduce the burden on that because, you know, when people have to submit a ton of different documents, it's hard to find everything, and it just can, you know, be a prohibitor to people actually applying. And so, we have a few different ways that people could income qualify where they can either share about like, share your proof of enrollment from another program that they're enrolled in,
similar to how we have in the emergency rental assistance program, and then also the income qualified census tracks that I mentioned that overlap with the different climate housing health factors. And, and so our goal would be to minimize the stuff that they have to submit. And then also, too, when we first received the Healthy Homes fund funds back in November 2022, the goal was to outsource this and because we acknowledge there are already great weatherization partners in the city. However, because it is just a one time allocation of $1,000,000
and, it was not the groups have to prioritize their recurring funding and making sure they deliver on those programs first. And they did not have the capacity to take on one time funding this small to expand their services significantly and have to hire more staff. And so, we would love to work with them more, but this is essentially the more that we could find. And we've had a lot of conversations with them and EnergyCents leading up to this as well to just figure out, like, how can we work together most efficiently to make it easier for homeowners and, you know,
capture those people who are not being served by them right now. And so, yeah, Russ, anything to add? Chair and commissioners I'll just add that we've had we we have had those conversations with both organizations and both report that they do keep lists of these projects that they essentially just weren't able to fulfill because of the limitations of of their funding amounts and the needs of those homes. And so we suspect that those projects are going to be, again, the lowest hanging fruit to identify places where there are needs for the combination of
these two programs, to serve initially. And from from from those conversations with the two organizations, they run into this all the time. This is not like an uncommon occurrence where there's an income qualified home. It needs weatherization. There are too many other associated kind of pre weatherization needs for their funds to cover the cost, and so they just move on to the next project where they have enough funding to to do the work. And so, we're we're very hopeful that that will make it relatively easy for us to identify these early projects, get projects out the door, get that gain that experience,
from the program, show show the results. Right? And so and so, yes, to your to your earlier question, we're gonna need to know, the current energy bills when we actually get into a specific project so that we can determine, you know, an estimate of the energy savings that can be realized from these investments. And then, ideally, they would sign off to give us the access to that energy data for a few more years so that we can kind of track the actual impact because the overall goal here is to lower energy costs for households that need it.
Thank you both. Commissioner Kim, did you still have a question? Yes, I do. Thank you. So just a few clarifying questions. One is so then just to regurgitate that, it sounds like then what we're hoping to use is sort of, like, we are filling gap funding in some ways. I don't wanna call it that, but it's, like, there's a gap of resources that kind of, a, helps them even become eligible and, b, even to, like, reach the pre authorization piece of it to even be, like, efficient. Right? So there's is it that we are filling a gap between assistance amounts to kind
of like fully fund that one project project? Am I catching that correctly? And I don't think that funding is like maybe a fair assessment, but like we're putting in a share to ensure that the project is is not only done to completion, but done to kind of like the measure in which we'd want it to be done for for power of home and pre weatherization projects. Is that sort of fair? Am I off track? Chair and commissioner, the, the especially with, CAP RW projects, what commonly happens is that they can only spend a certain proportion of their overall funding on the pre weatherization measures,
and pre weatherization measures can end up being quite expensive. And so those projects just don't happen at all. And so potentially we will go in with both projects or both programs, Healthy Homes and Power of Home, if there are Power of Home needs, and actually just fully cover that project. The the coordination that would be required for us to potentially do pre weatherization and then go back to the other organizations to see if they could then if their funding would then, be eligible is is a sort of potential next step but will require there's some
complexity there. Yeah. Right? And so the the deeper you go Yeah. On this subject, the the the more kind of layers of complexity there are. This is exactly what we're trying to get into, like and and I keep saying this, but we really need to get the experience of these programs to to better learn the ins and outs. We're not gonna get this perfect from the jump, and we shouldn't expect to. And we we hope to come back, with improvements after we've learned, from the experience. Mhmm. I really appreciate that. Right. There's sort of, like, this dance around, like, are they eligible?
Like, not the highest best use of these dollars, but, like, where are we plugging in to sort of, like, the the necessity and the need? Is the portion of the funds coming from the other funding, it looks like it's a state of Minnesota application. Is the funds coming from the state of Minnesota that CAP is facilitating? Do you, by chance, know? Because when I looked at the cap sorry, just I just really quickly looked at the application because we were talking about like is it in other languages and how accessible is it is and it looks like it's a Minnesota energy program. So is there there that sort of requirement is coming from the state.
And I'm sorry to ask you a question that maybe It's a state run program, but it's actually, typically federal weatherization dollars. So there's federal requirements flowing through to the to the state run program. Okay. I really appreciate that. Yeah. And then lastly, just like as we think about, as you said, like, you know, all the gate, we have to try our best and see what we find and make improve processes as we go because we don't, I think perfection is sort of an unfair standard. One food for thought and maybe this already exists, but we saw this happen with a coordinated entry program for Ramsey County. They did like a one application that rules them all and that person could kinda
qualify for all the different programs And they're doing it right now for immigration services. Like, you can apply for one. They're sort of, like, centralizing that, but then everyone can kind of I don't know what share, but then it's easy. They can take a copy, bring it to someone else. And I'm just sort of thinking further down the road as we think about, you know, potentially a lot of our climate resiliency sort of falling on, state and local municipalities to to lead the charge. Just sort of thinking around, like, what are those future alignment pieces that are really gonna help consumers navigate, programs like this. So just food for thought because as you were talking to the judging,
I was like, I wonder how many times they have to apply for different things then. So food for thought down the road, but we'll reiterate it, I'm sure, in a couple of years. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for for that. I think one of the things that I'm still working to wrap around, I'm going back to some of the healthy home space. And I know we have a few more slides to get through too. So I want from a facilitation standpoint to have us do that. But I think it'll head into some of the next, the next slides or such with the eligibility. But when I'm looking at healthy homes and I look at the different health and safety measures piece and then I look at the building envelope measures piece,
I see a pretty big distinction and, like, what would be eligible and what individuals could apply for. You know, like, for example, if most of my application is for just pest management or mold and radon, mitigation. And that's it. Could you talk a little bit about when we say first come, first serve, what that actually entails? Because to me, that looks a little bit different than the, like, weatherization process in some I'm not understanding the draw as to why if as a if I'm not a homeowner or a one to four unit property owner,
if most of my intent is to do health and safety measures, how that relates to the overall goals and, like, what I'm not understanding the tie there, and I'm not understanding what would make me have to also then apply for some of the other, I would see, long term visionary things that really would just draw back to, I think council commissioners, commissioner Naker's earlier point of just, like, if I'm a property owner and I have issues with, pests and now I'm applying to this program under Healthy Homes, like, could you share a little bit about, like, competitiveness? That that to me is what's concerning around the first come,
first serve piece, because I, you know, I've been a part of different conversations over the last year and some change. But as it relates to just kind of what the focus of this program is and even just setting up the weatherization process. And I really want to prioritize, projects that healthy homes and power of homes can support. And and to me, that's if someone's coming in for just the eligible expenses underneath health and safety measures, I don't see the link. And so I'm trying to find the link here between those projects. Yeah. Thank you, Trey Johnson,
commissioners. So, totally agree with you. And the the thing is people would have to participate in both like, they would have to get stuff from both buckets in order to do this program. If they just needed health and safety repairs but were not interested in weatherization, then, you know, we would direct them to the, you know, to the like, sign up for the email list for homeowner rehab and other resources that we have in the area that are just focused on that because, yeah, we the goal is to get people weatherized and not just the health and safety stuff. And,
as well also the first step for everyone as well would be getting a home energy audit through the Home Energy Squad, which is run by, Center for Energy and Environment. And they would be able to flag those things for us and, you know, identify what the missing pieces are. So our, intention wouldn't necessarily to be, people apply for specific things and that's it. Rather, we would, kinda walk through the process with them and and work together to figure out what are all of the different things they need in order to get the home ready
to be weatherized and weatherized and then also, any electrification upgrades as well if they qualify for power of home too. Okay. Thank you so much for that because, yeah, that's where my brain was at. I was like, wait. Show me the link. So I thought that was really helpful and and worth clarifying. Appreciate that. Yeah. And then also one more note on that as well. So the minimum award amount would be $5,000 And so, typically, from what we've heard from the existing weatherization programs is that it costs about, on average, 15,000 or so to weatherize a home. So, and then so if someone was just applying for something like just wire repair,
like, pest management or something, they wouldn't even meet that minimum. And, also back to your question as well about the first come, first serve. So the way that we've set it up is having, you know, all of these different eligibility items that people need to meet in order to qualify for the first come, first serve. So, we've tried to kind of build in the prioritization in that way, I suppose. And then, because if we, you know, were to just, like, accept applications and then prioritize later, then we would have to have, like, a set application window and whatnot and,
you know, of course, can talk through those logistics. And, again, like director Newton said, today is the day to share your feedback, and and we wanna hear it. So, but our goal is to, you know, help people as soon as we can, assuming that they do meet the affordability, requirement and whatnot. And something, too, that we've seen with energy burden is that a lot of it relies more on the denominator of your income. And so we do see the proxy of lower income households as being pretty aligned with energy burden as well. And I think that just kind of,
one thing that I would note is from previous, first come, first served type of programs here at the city, we get to a place where we have a wait list that's longer than what was ever intended. And so I do hope that at some point, we will have a cutoff point as well for applications as it relates to what team can actually process. I think it'll be extremely, unfortunate to have folks waiting, and not being able to know kind of like what's going on with the status of their application. And so I'm sure that you guys are all thinking about that. But for, the sake of being able to say it, I think it's really important. You know, what I would hate to see is next year,
we have a long list like we have seen through the down payment assistance program, the homeowner rehab program and that there actually is a point in which you would share like we're at capacity to review applications. And maybe there is like still ability for people to gauge interest, but people aren't waiting and we aren't having a situation where we have maybe a year and a half of backlog to process. So that's just one flag that I have just from what I think I've even heard from our team from PED's team too of other first come, first served based programs that when when we've launched them,
we had more interest. And and we had more, folks who were looking to participate than maybe anticipated. And so I I think it's just really important to note that. Yeah. Thank you, chair Johnson, definitely agree. And, yeah, our goal is never to mislead people and think that they could access something when all the funds are already spoken for. And, our goal at that point would just be to try and find what other resources would be available to them and just, you know, take a few minutes to figure out where they could go instead even if we can't immediately support them with these programs. And,
we always encourage people as well to sign up for the email list so that they're notified in the future when programs become available again. Okay. Thank you. Alright. We'll go back to eligibility. Yeah. I guess quickly before we head to income eligibility, just to highlight some of the yeah. Just wanna highlight some of the differences here. So the main difference is that, the income qualification is lower at 50% area median income because our goal is to beach the most energy burden households since this is more of the, you know, heavy duty equipment that can really change some of,
the efficiency of a home. And, and yes. And so it would be at 50% AMI and then same situation where any rental properties at least half would need to qualify. And then for this one, though, we would require a cost share from rental property owners at the time of signing an application or an agreement before construction were to start at all, to ensure that they're sharing in that cost because it is more of an upgrade to the property. And, yeah, there are the similar, like, two buckets here. We wouldn't necessarily need people to take part in the electrification readiness because they might already have an
electric panel that, you know, is is big enough to handle, more electric equipment. They might already have outlet safety upgrades. And so, you know, our goal here would really to be to leave people with at least, like, one piece of meaningful equipment. And, you know, we would really be exploring, like, cold climate heat pumps, which can provide heating and cooling. So I know a lot of the homes here don't have, air conditioning or essential air conditioning. And, you know, window units can be a huge source of, energy costs as well. So, we see that as a really huge benefit.
And then also too, we built in the potential to have dual fuel systems, which, basically have a backup furnace, or if a house already has a furnace, you can retrofit that typically, so that it has a furnace and a heat pump. And then that kind of can help people ease into all electric heating, to make sure that we're not increasing anyone's costs. And so, like Russ said, we would have everyone ideally sign a release that we can access their existing Xcel Energy data. They wouldn't have to collect all of the bills and send them to us.
And then we have the, technical calculators that the existing weatherization programs used and we can project out what we anticipate people's costs to be, and we can see what type of system would work best for a a given home. Commissioner Haecker? I'm so sorry, Chair Johnson. I know we're on slide two. But sort of keeping with your theme of like high level questions about these programs. I guess I'm just I might be misremembering, so so correct me if I'm wrong. But I remember when we were first talking about these two programs. I believe Healthy Homes,
which was the million dollar ARPA allocation, was for pre weatherization. And Power Home was for weatherization. And when we were talking the budget last year, we talked about you know let's maybe consider combining those because obviously if you need pre weatherization before weatherization then it would be helpful to just apply once. It seems like now things have shifted a bit. So healthy homes seems like it's now both pre weatherization and weatherization. And power of home is now electrification and upgrading equipment, appliances, heat pumps, heat pump clothes dryer, induction stove,
etcetera. And I I guess I'm just wondering why the shift in focus. It see I'm curious both from a cost perspective to to residents as well as an environmental perspective, the advantage I mean, weatherization, I think, is a no brainer. Right? Like, you're wasting money, you're wasting energy, sort of a base level. But a lot of these equipment upgrades seem like things that, I mean, many many homes don't have. I don't have any of these things. I think maybe we have a smart thermostat, but that's it. So why sort of this this really next level as opposed to just keeping to what we were originally talking about? Sure.
Chair and commissioner, great question. You all remember our original intent with Healthy Homes was, we did an RFP. We're expecting those other providers to actually implement the program. We had heard from them at the time that pre weatherization was the gap. When when that didn't work out and we just and we realized that we were going to have to be a project implementer ourselves, it made sense to pair pre weatherization and weatherization together in healthy homes rather than to try to do that hand off thing that I was describing before where we do some of the work and then they do some of the work super complicated.
Power of home, was meant to sort of fill that additional gap of where there are projects, where there's an opportunity to switch over to electric equipment. There's a real benefit to that, especially over a longer period of time as we expect that better resourced households are going to more and more switch to electric equipment. It's gonna leave fewer and fewer folks on the natural gas system, and we're all gonna be paying for the upkeep of the infrastructure for the natural gas system. And so there's this kind of long term concern that if lower income households stay
on the gas system while higher income households are switching to electric equipment, their costs are start are gonna start going up even faster. And so part of the idea with power of home is to try to get ahead of that long term challenge that we see coming. Even though most of us don't have this type of equipment yet, it's gonna become more and more available and more and more cost effective, particularly with the federal rebates that are still coming through the state later this year. So Commissioner Nikhar? Thank you, chair. So fair fair points. I don't remember that being part of what we talked about with Power of Home
originally. So maybe we talked about electrification as the purpose, not weatherization. We talked about the combination. Okay. The the original idea of power of home, which started in here, was, As all good ideas do. No. Was, was to, was to try to do the package of weatherization electrification, understanding that we had these one time funds for healthy homes. Projecting out in the future, I I see us probably, squishing these programs down to one. But for the time being, because we had this one time healthy homes allocation that was going to meet a
particular need, the gap is more on the electrification side for power of home. And so we figured let's let's implement both. Potentially in the future, we kinda squeeze it into one program instead of two, where the where the funding is, through one program. Last one. Go ahead, Connor. Was there any because we can do anything we want with the power of homes money. We can actually do anything we want with either of the buckets of money, right? But is there was there any discussion or is there any consideration about because I get that all of these are needs. But given that weatherization and pre weatherization like in Maslow's pyramid to me are sort
of the base level, and it seems like what we're doing is giving some folks weatherization and advancing other folks significantly above that to a level that as you mentioned very few households are even at right now to would it be better to have all of these dollars go into pre weatherization and weatherization rather than leaving some households not even weatherized while some are again several steps above that? I'm just wondering like, from an equity standpoint and as we're trying to kind of lift all boats, it seems like some are getting really, really, really lifted. And I recognize that eventually that's going to make a lot of sense.
But is that the best use now? Chair, commissioner, it's a great question. We're we're trying to figure out what the what the what the best way to approach this overall set of needs is. The part of the uncertainty comes from the status of the federal programs. We were really anticipating, a a really robust federal partner in this with the rebates. Our understanding from the state is that those are still moving ahead as they were funded, which is about a hundred and $50,000,000 statewide, which sounds like a big number.
But when you think about statewide, it doesn't go very far. We were thinking that those would be, you know, built upon and expanded at some point. And so we were really hopeful about being able to take advantage of those add some local resource, and really kind of do a lot at one time. The the the downside of, potentially kind of weatherizing a home and then coming back, say, several years later and doing the additional electrification work is that you it's it's two projects. Right? And if we if we know that we're gonna need to do both,
there's some benefit to sort of doing as much as we can when we can. And not every project will be a power of home eligible project where it will make sense through that full package. But for some, a particularly old and inefficient furnace, for example, in a in a in a home that doesn't have a source of cooling, where where we can sort of bring them, like, lower energy bills, get the gas out of their house potentially, and cooling all in one package, it's like maybe we should do that because we can, while we're there, while while we, have a relationship with that particular owner.
So that's I don't know what the right answer is, but that's that's the answer that we've come to to propose. Alright. I would also just say, I think, from what I'm gathering too and just kind of walking through the process, I I still feel like there's a need to just make sure that we that folks who are like, the community actually knows if I'm wanting to enter into the pre weatherization or the weatherization process or if I wanna just if I have done that and now I'm getting into the equipment upgrades, like, what order in which one should do that,
I think, for the average consumer? So, like, on a basic level, I think as we're heading into the eligibility slides, no, I'm just kidding. Also, I think it'd be really helpful to just like from a base level, can you walk us through the each step process? I feel like there's like a multipronged approach here. But right, as a homeowner, if I'm wanting to enter into the pre weatherization and weatherization process, it sounds like Healthy Homes would be more likely for me at the time of what you've written here as to where I would go. But, like, should I go there first instead of going to power homes if I'm looking to,
like, upgrade my equipment? But I might actually have a lot of work to do. So could you just, like, in short and very simplistic terms for folks that are watching and really trying to gauge it, my understanding at one point was the pre weatherization and the weatherization process. So for me, the electrification and the electrification and the equipment upgrades, especially because it's focused primarily on a 50% AMI or below, also is like how likely are they, like, at what point would someone apply for that? And is there work they're gonna have to do on their actual home or rental property prior to even being able to to apply to this program?
And knowing it's a smaller focus because I've read ahead, and I see your income areas, but also, like, the the scope geographically is smaller in Power of Homes than it is for the Healthy Homes program of eligibility. And so, like, yeah, in simplistic form, can you just, like, walk us through, like, how are you envisioning the step process? This opens up where should someone go first, or is it that they could go to both? Like, help me understand that. Chair Johnson, it's a great question as as all these questions have been. Because of the amounts of money involved here, we don't anticipate doing a lot of heavy marketing of these programs k.
Because we don't want to, again, advertise something that's not gonna be available by the time people are seeking it. We we think there's a queue of projects that are already pretty known and eligible to start with. But to answer your question more broadly, a non weatherized home isn't even ready for electrification. Okay. And so weatherization is a precursor to elect to electrification in in all cases. And and so we also know that this program this these two programs are going to be pretty high touch programs in terms of, like,
our staff are really going to be walking people through this process. This is not gonna be just some, like, general thing that's out there and you find it and you apply. This is gonna be a pretty high touch process to walk people through, and we're prepared for that. Right now, it's a relatively small number of projects that we'll actually, be doing, and we'll see what that takes, you know, from, like, a staff capacity perspective, and make sure that, we are communicating accurately, right, to the potential customers of the of these programs, how to access them,
and, how they can be packaged together. We're not gonna say we're not gonna just sort of leave it to people to apply for one or maybe the other. It's gonna be a more high touch process than that. Okay. Okay. Question over. Thank you, chair Johnson. I know we are kind of short on time, but I I was just saying, we may have to Please. We may have a I will take the time with the question. Quantity question, because I we've talked a lot about process, promotions, and eligibility, but I'm really curious particularly around, like, just the back end, and even to, commissioner, Necker's point around just like where,
last year in the beginning when we were talking about this and approved this, knowing that was a pilot, knowing it was still gonna be designed, I'm, curious around how like, can you quantify how many projects are we expecting to actually fund? Because I think that will just kinda help helps help set up expectations and to ensure that there's not, like, a tedious process. And then my other question is gonna more so as, like, a follow-up meeting, because I know it's probably not gonna be, processed here. But I'm really curious around the contractor, process. And I'm really,
like, how's the city's approach and, ensuring that we have the capacity of contractors to actually, you know, do this work. So those are the two questions. Yeah. Thank you, commissioner Buie. So, I'm sorry. My mind just Yeah. Approximately 30 between both programs. And like we said, we anticipate that some will be able to share between both programs. And like we said, we anticipate that some will be able to share between both programs. And even though both have the maximum of $50,000 we don't expect that all of that will be spent on each project. And then for the contractors piece,
that's also been a very big conversation for us, because, you know, we wanna make sure that we're being, you know, least least, intrusive as we can in these homes and and just get stuff done as quickly as possible, and get it done well. For some of the more technical and more niche services that are focused on weatherization and, electrification equipment, there are a lot of already established contractor networks, through there's, like, an electrify everything coalition with CE and many other cities in the area. And then also,
Xcel Energy has a trade partners list as well, and those are all folks that they know they can do the work and, do it to the standards that they would be eligible for the Excel rebates. And so our goal is to tap into those existing resources. We're still navigating what the contractor piece would look like. So, again, welcome your feedback on that as well. And we intend to work with the Center of Energy and Environment to, again, do those home energy audits and also double check all the work at the end, that quality assurance. And, they currently work with the city of Minneapolis on a very similar program where they
also source bids for projects, and they, you know, have a list of folks that they have worked with very closely. Of course, we'd still make sure that they abide by all the procurement rules, and we've been in touch with the hero office and Queenie over there the past number of months to make sure we're just covering all the bases. So definitely need feedback on there is welcome. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to do a quick time check for everyone. It's 03:06. We have some time still, but I'm going to ask that we wait and we'll get through the eligibility piece here. So I'm going to let you go through the eligibility slides and then we have
a question slide towards the end. And if Council members have or commissioners have questions too, we can pause during it. But I'm going to try from a facilitation standpoint, to get us through the eligibility slides. Sure thing. Yes, thank you. And so, yes, as we mentioned, our goal is to have a combined application form for both programs. So we can just ask people, are you interested in these things? Again, they would have to argue be weatherized to get the electrification. And then it's up one to four units, and that's because a lot of the programs in this space, once you hit five units or higher, that's considered multifamily.
And the just, like, the mechanics of how it all works really changes and the cost as well. So, and there's also some pretty established programs already for multifamily that rely more on the rental property resources. And then as well, our, we have the city of Saint Paul at your sending list, and it's standard for folks to not be on that if we are fine. And then also for scope of work items, our goal is to make sure they haven't gotten insurance payouts for it just, you know, because then they would be getting double money.
And then, of course, have property assurance, and current on property taxes. For homeowners, we would have a $25,000 asset limit, which is, the same that's in the homeowner rehab and down payment assistance programs. This does not include retirement or, like, your current like, your main residence home equity or anything like that. It's really, you know, bank accounts and just seeing how much kinda like cash on hand. And, again, the focus is to prioritize the families that don't have that upfront money to install
these items. And then for rentals, we would require that, again, they have a current, DSIs CFO and at least a grade a or b, and no, pending court cases or judgments related to, like, poor management of rental properties. And, you know, I think just gets back to the question of what we were talking about of wanting to make sure that we're, you know, supporting rental properties that will be able to carry on the work the items that we're installing, and, you know, just make sure that that's equitable review, making sure we work with CAO on that.
And then also no late mortgage payments just, to ensure that the rental owner is not putting the home in a state of, potential for foreclosure. And that's very rare to see. Okay. And, mister Chen, did you have a question on these these two slides or can we keep I may. Yeah. Go ahead. Just, I think just like a a respectful offering, but many years ago, I used to do a lot of, homebuyer education and financial fitness with, hundreds of families that were qualified for Habitat for Humanity. And the only offering I'd offer here so I get that you're not including retirement home home equity,
you know, things like that. But sometimes, if they don't even have a retirement, that savings account is their retirement. And so I'd hate to see the asset limit because it's only including banking accounts if they don't actually have a retirement account to just sort of reconsider that qualification. And maybe it's just that one offering. It's if no retirement account is present and they have they exceed the asset limit, I think there's something to be said there for qualifying and for a lot of different reasons. Access to a job that even offers one, your financial sort of your financial education and sort of like your financial fitness in your household to understand
that. But just a small offering that if they don't have a retirement and they exceed the asset limit, I would encourage us to reconsider how that's worded for greater eligibility moving forward. But again, recognizing that we're working off a pre established just potentially, but just offering as we think about continuing to expand the program. Yes. The one, I did all that. And then the one question I had for you is since we're doing an asset limit for homeowners, is there a reason why we're not doing one for rental property owners? Yes. So for rental property owners and, Russ, I would invite you to come up here as well. So, typically,
because the rental property is another, you know, home under their name, then that equity would be considered the income. And so just under the way that we've done asset limits before, we did consider that. And, yeah. Russell, I didn't invite you to speak more. Chair, commissioner, certainly interested in your guidance on this question, but our general assumption was that most rental property owners would exceed an asset limit anything close to this, and given that the goal of the program is to benefit their tenants and not
them, we're trying to we're trying to identify properties that qualify so that the homes can be, more affordable from an energy perspective. Okay. My my thought process on that just initially is just I I really hope that rental property owners are that are able to access these resources and these fundings, are not doing that in lieu of making the choices to pre weatherize or weatherize their buildings on their own. I see some I have some hesitancy just simply based off of just, like, where some of the eligibility spaces are that like,
if you were if it was for, like, a big entity that owns a small unit's property, but it's a, like, nation nationwide, developer or property owner property owner company that has multiple properties that they own in that same community, It could be a small one to four unit, but it's like a multimillion dollar property owner management space that has acquired several properties. That that to me is not as high as a priority for, you know, necessarily when it comes to, like, where to best best use these $30.30 dollars unless there's significant cost burdens to, like or energy burden households in those spaces.
And so I would just, you know, caution you that just because I am looking at your income area slides and where they are, that there are times where those one to four unit homes, buildings are owned by major like, very big asset holding entities, especially on the East Side. And so that's just something that I would bring us into the fruition of that conversation, but appreciate that. Thank you. Continue. Yes. So HUD just changed the income limits yesterday, so this is the latest for moving forward the next year. And then as I mentioned as well,
our goal is to streamline the income qualification. If a property is located in, one of the shaded areas respective to the program, then because, again, it was using that justice 40 criteria that analyzes, the federal percentile of low income households in that area and also overlapped with various health and housing and climate factors. So, you know, number of people who are told that they have asthma, for example, or, you know, number of people that are unemployed. And so that our goal there is,
you know, again, just like how many times do people have to apply for stuff. Let's just let's, yeah, let's make it easy as much as we can. And then, for this as well, we would have them, still homeowners submit the asset limit information and, yes, very good point on the retirement note as well. And then similar to emergency rental assistance, we would also accept any proof of enrollment in another income qualified program. And then we can also do the typical tax return, other documents as well if people wanna go that route or don't have,
one of the other options. And here's just a brief overview of what the timeline would look like for an applicant. And, again, our goal is to do as much of a project at once as we can and, kind of back to the electrification equipment as well. You know, when someone's furnace goes out in the middle of the winter, they're just gonna do what they can to get get it fixed as soon as possible. In that moment, they're not thinking, oh, how can I save the world with my home equipment? You know? Or how can I help the climate? And so part of the, qualifications for power of home is that we have these life expectancy thresholds for the
equipment, so that if it's under a certain age, then it would not be eligible for replacement. But if it's nearing that point where they need to start considering a repair so that they're not getting to that emergency situation, then we would, help cover that. And so that's kind of another layer to make sure that we're not just you know, because it is the most sustainable to use what you have already as long as you can, and so we don't wanna just, like, go ahead and rip out a brand new furnace for the sake of, replacing something. So that's another aspect as well.
And then, yeah, as we've mentioned, the, outreach plan, we intend to prioritize sourcing referrals from, the programs that cannot serve them, you know, but, of course, still share with the, on city's social media and whatnot. And then if we are having trouble spending the funds, then we have additional opportunities as well. And then, yes, I mentioned the energy cost calculator because, again, we wanna save people money, not add to their burden. And so, we have the energy calculators built out where we can model different systems and talk through that with the homeowner and figure out what works best for them and make
sure that we're not just putting stuff there that will increase their costs. And then we also intend to have a or we have started working on a welcome packet that would, you know, have a road map and let people know that we're, you know, with them to kinda figure this out together because it really is a case by case basis, and it is all very technical. So, and, yeah, as Russ mentioned too, we intend to, know, obviously keep track of our successes and figure out where we could grow the program in the future and make it more efficient. And so, you know, we intend to collect feedback forms and,
of course, track all the expenses, funding sources, and, you know, where we get the projects from and whatnot. Thank you so much for that. And, I see commissioner Kim has a question. Yeah. Question and a comment. First of all, just thank you so much for the information. Earlier today, we had a presentation that said 70% of us are visual learners, and I I really do appreciate, the visuals. They're kind of drawing out, meaning in a different way. Like, I don't think I've ever looked at a air source heat pump before, so now I have. So maybe we'll be able to recognize it. But thank you for the robust information and fielding all of the questions. It means a lot. I think, if it's not an indicator,
climate addressing climate at the local level is really important. And so we're asking questions to be like, how far does this go and how are we taking a crack at it together and with certainly finite resources. But I just really appreciate the referral, the referral model and, the intentionality of kind of like looking at, you know, both impacts and successes. And then, like, we have to weigh our what's happening at the federal level and but still with an eye on making sure that these programs get implemented with fidelity. So one question and then another respectfully submitted. One is, what's the timeline for the project?
I appreciate that. But what's the timeline for the program? Like when are you hoping to, you know, reach out to CAP and say, hey. We've got this program. We wanna hit go on it. What what does that timeline look like for us? And then, like, when might we hear that the first project was was completed? Yeah. Thank you, commissioner Kim. Great question. So our goal at this point is to to hopefully launch around mid May, by May. As I mentioned, we are still navigating the contractor piece and, of course, wanna make sure we have that ready to go before we promise anything to people. So, but as I mentioned, we've been working with Queenie in procurement to navigate that and have various different options
to consider. And then, since we are trying to hope to do everything in one instead of having the kind of, like, stage model, Then, we anticipate that it would take about, like, four ish months for a project to finish, including, like, from when they apply to all the way being done. And so, you know, our our goal is to get started as soon as we can while it's warm out and and get to people before it gets to next winter even though we have snow right now. So Yeah. Yeah. That's our our tentative timeline. That sounds great. And my my other respectfully submitted,
and I just really appreciate you even entertaining them so early in this process. But, as I look at the healthy homes income qualified map and the power of home income qualified areas, I really just wanna lift up that the Northland Community Center is, like, so close to that. But there it is a geothermally solar powered community center that we are about to cut the ribbon on. And as we think about block by block approaches and I look at the neighborhood around it, of which, of course, I represent, But thinking about, you know, I'd love to start now or think about like, you know, energy storage and thinking about block by block approaches and how this can kind of
help the larger system as we start to think about, what does the next phase look like. So we're especially submitted by thinking about the ways we can sort of tap into the city infrastructure, the heights, I think about the heights to the case could be coming up online. And so just things like that as I look at the impacted areas about how we're utilizing our own city infrastructure to help support kind of like this network and and initiatives. So respectfully, respectfully submitted. And thank you so much for for presenting. Yeah. Thank you, commissioner Kim. I I definitely agree. We know that community based energy sources are another thing that help lower costs,
and, you know, even, like, on-site storage for individual homes as well. So that's something that we've been kind of researching as we go along with this. So the and we'll continue to do so that as we consider the future of these programs, we can build that in. So, and, yeah, thank you all for your feedback, and we will definitely, consider it all and have more conversations. I appreciate that a lot. And I know that we have a couple items that I think will be coming up for this week too. So I wanna give us some time between now and our council meeting, but I do wanna say thank you for bringing this forward to us. I will just say for myself,
I may have some follow-up questions, and so I probably will be in communication with you all just as I continue to just this program is really important to me and several, and many of my constituents as well. But I think that it's really important that we just have a pretty clear understanding of what it's gonna look like, and I would like to just have some follow-up discussions with you prior to the approval. If commissioners have questions that they want to get some further clarity on, please do, reach out to me, reach out to Danielle, reach out to Russ or director Newton as well, and I'm sure we can get those to you. I personally would probably just say,
like, it might be helpful to have, like, depending on how those questions and answers go. I know that this is slated to be approved next week. We might wanna consider putting it for the sixteenth instead. I think that's right date wise. I think I have the April dates listed in my head at this point. The ninth would be next week and the week after that. But, Yeah. Just throwing that out there is that there's an option for that if people need more additional time. And I don't and I think it still coincides with some of the time line you're looking at. But thank you guys so much for taking the time to present about this. It's really important.
I see, members of the needles, Minnesota here too. Thank you for being here, and thank you for your work, to all the staff that has been working on a lot of our programs, this, this year and into and I'm sure for a long time, but thank you for particularly looking at what is possible and being futuristic envisioning of what we continue to need to have significant investments at this time in climate. And I'm glad that we're getting to do that at the local level. And so I just want to say your work is really important. It's really a priority to many of us and all of us on this, body. And so we're looking forward to hearing from you and continuing that discussion.
If there's no other further comments, we stand adjourned. Thank you.