Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Okay, let's get started. I call this meeting to order. Good evening everyone and welcome to the July 22nd meeting of the city of Minnetonka Sustainability Commission. This is our 16th meeting in person and our third meeting this year. The commission generally meets every other month on the third Tuesday of the of the month. The schedule and tenative agenda can be obtained by contacting the city's planning division or by visiting the city's website at minnotonkamn.gov. Residents can provide input on the agenda via email or provide input tonight during this meeting if so desired. The Sustainability Commission first meeting, believe it or not, was on May 2021. Since then, we have accomplished a significant number of useful and practical actions actions for our fellow residents. Areas of review for the commission include air, water, energy, land, ecological resources, recycling, waste management, and other related sustainability areas not addressed by city code or another city advisory group. The sustainability commission has a unique has a unique role here in Minnetonka as we serve both as an adviser to the city council and as ambassador for city programs. As an adviser to the city council, the sustainability commission makes recommendations on city plans, policies, procedures, programs, practices, and proposals that relate to sustainability and conservation of our environmental resources. Final decisions are then made by the city council. As an ambassador, the city the excuse me, the sustainability commission attends events to promote city initiatives with the public. With that, I'd like to um move to uh item number two on the agenda, which is a roll call. >> Tisen Carr >> here. >> Henry is absent. Ingram >> here, >> Meyer >> here. >> Norman >> here. >> Patine >> here. >> White >> here. >> And Gallib >> here. Thank you. There are eight of us. Wow. >> And m Mr. Chair, if I may, as Matt uh Commissioner Henry is not uh here, and I apologize to Vice Chair Patine for squeezing you in there, we will um rejigger and uh if if that's a appropriate word so everyone is more comfortable. >> That's fine. Thank you. Um, next is approval of uh the agenda for for our July 22nd uh meeting which is agenda item number three. Uh u miss do you have any uh changes for tonight's agenda? >> Chair uh no changes were received tonight. >> Very good. Since there are no changes, would someone like to make a motion to approve the agenda? Do I Is someone willing to make a motion to approve tonight's agenda? Is there a first? >> I move to approve the agenda for this evening. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> I'll second. >> Very good. Staff, would you please pull the commission members? >> Carr, >> approved. >> Ingram >> approved. Meyer >> approved. >> Norman approved. >> Patine approved. >> White >> approved. >> Chair Galla >> approved. Thank you. Motion passes. Next we will move to item four on our agenda. Approval of the March 18th, 2025 minutes. Does anyone have any changes to those minutes? If if not, and I read them over and I didn't see a single typo, uh would someone like to make a motion to approve the minutes? >> Motion to approve. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> I'll second the motion. >> Very good. Uh staff, would you pull the commission members? >> Carr, >> approved. >> Ingram, >> approved. >> Meyer, >> approved. >> Norman, >> approved. Patine, >> approved. >> White, >> approved. Chair Gallop >> approved. Motion passes. Thank you. Moving along, we're moving to item number five on our agenda, which are agenda items. Before we begin, I'd like to briefly go over the procedure, especially for those of us that perhaps aren't familiar with the procedure. Oh, we have another one of our members. >> Continue. >> Okay. Um when we at at this point in the agenda, I will um ask staff to present their report to the our to my fellow sustainability commissioners. Um I will ask all sustainability commissioners to ask questions to staff. So we'll have a give and take. Um and then I will ask if there are any final questions for clarification. If no one is registered to comment, um I will open and close the public input portion for this agenda topic. Now, if an agenda topic isformational and having reviewed the topic or the packet beforehand, tonight's agenda items areformational or uh we will be um providing in feedback to staff, no vote is necessary. And if that's the case, we will then move on to the next item. So that is the the simplistic procedure that we'll be following. And with that, the first item is item number 5A. And I will uh turn that over to uh Miss Herland. >> Thank you, chair and commissioners. Good evening and thanks for being here. First, before I start off with item 5A, I wanted to introduce our new commissioner, Michael White. Um, Michael, if you'd like to briefly introduce yourself, how long you've lived in Minnotonka, what um drew you to applying for the commission, anything like that you want to share with the commission would be awesome. >> Um, my name is Michael White. I've lived in Minnetonka for about 14 years now. And I joined the Minnetonka Sustainability Commission because I think sustainability has a big impact on not only my future, but like my generation's future. And um, so I was interested in helping out in any way I could. Great. Well, welcome. Uh, Michael joins us as the second youth commissioner on our commission. So, thank you. Um, with that, I will start off with agenda item 5A. This is a discussion on the 2025 business outreach. It's specific to the climate action plan and adaptation outreach. Um, if you recall, we have a city goal to develop an education and outreach plan to engage businesses on how they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This goal um in a variety of forms shows up in three different plans. One is the climate action and adaptation plan approved last year as we all know. This uh goal also shows up in the 2025 uh 2028 city council priorities. So, this is something that the city council has also established as their own priority as well. And then lastly, you may recall it shows up in the sustainability commission's work plan. So, um that's why we're talking about this tonight. And the chair did uh describe this item well. This is a discussion item. So, I'm considering it, you know, informal. We're just sharing some ideas um based on staff internal discussions of what we've come up with for ideas for the remaining of the year. It is already mid July, right? Um, so we we have half the year yet to start focusing a bit more on business communications. So we have some ideas, but we just wanted to get your feedback. So for this item, um, I've invite invited Kirsten Jagger, our economic development coordinator here at the city, so you can um, get to know other staff members who work on this type of work. She will review the general business outreach process that she uses to contact businesses in Minnetonka. Um not just sustainability focus just within her division and her priorities. So um she will give a presentation soon here and then after that um once we kind of know how the uh the city orients with businesses then we'll talk about how does our sustainability outreach fit into that um and what we can do for the remaining of the year. So with that, I'm going to invite Kirsten to present. >> Perfect. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you all for having me here. As Ally said, my name is Kirsten Joerger. I've been with the city for about a year now and um my career has been focused on community engagement. So happy that we can talk tonight to about how exactly we engage with our businesses here and what that can look like on the topic of sustainability. Um, one thing that I love about my role is I get to work with a lot of other departments. So perhaps um, public safety has a message that they want to be communicating with the business community or perhaps sustainability has a message so on so forth. So it's great to be able to collaborate with other departments across the city um, to work with an important part of Minnetonka. So, um, while I'm here with you today, I'm just going to give you a quick overview about what business looks like in Minnotonka and then how we traditionally communicate with them and then what we learned during a recent business survey that we conducted a couple months ago. So, who are our businesses here in Manka? We have approximately 200 businesses. And I say approximately because we don't actually know. That's one of the interesting things about working with the private sector is um I am constantly trying to learn more about who is here and what they all are doing. Um but they are busy doing their thing and that's great. Um and so we have limited data about what the businesses are that are here. Um that being said, we do know that we have a really strong retail market. We did a commercial market an real estate market analysis earlier this year and we have a very low uh vacancy rate for our retail space um and are expected to continue to thrive in that space even as there may be some um constraints or some um tightening of budgets perhaps for people as things become more expensive. The area that we have here is still really thriving in the retail space and we expect to continue to see that. Um we also have a strong personal service industry here. We have quite a few restaurants. Our professional services are thriving in Minnotonka and we also have a big um medical sector. So that's kind of the main business hubs that we have here. Um what's unique about our businesses here is when people come to Manitona, they stick around in Minnotonka. So of the businesses that we surveyed, um approximately 40% of them had been here for over 20 years. and um we know that on the whole they are pleased with um their ability to do business in this city. So we're starting from a good place. Um in terms of the network that's around us, there have been transitions to the chambers in this area. Minnitanka is part of two different chambers. There's the Weisetta West Metro Chamber and then there's the Minneapolis Regional Chamber. Um there's been an evolution of chambers in this area. The Weisetta West Metro Chamber just got that name in the last half year I would say adding the West Metro part. So they're trying to expand um beyond just um the Weisetta Moniker and they are growing in this area. That being said, they're still very small. We probably have about 40 or 50 businesses in Minnotonka that are part of that chamber. And then we also have the Minneapolis Regional Chamber. So, as the name implies, a lot of that's focused in Minneapolis, but it is indeed a regional chamber and they also are in a time of transition and they're considering joining with St. Paul. So, when you're thinking of the ways in which we're connecting with community, just kind of want to ground it in that. Um, so next slide. I'm old school. I hope that the sustainability commission is not upset with me in saying this. I do still use paper resources quite a bit. Um, we try to make them evergreen. I try to recycle them. But yes, we do indeed still use a lot of paper resources. And I wanted to share um that with you here because one of our top ways of communicating businesses is with our newsletter. It is a paper old school mailed to your front door newsletter that arrives to um any businesses um here in Minnotonka. That happens three times a year. We do have to plan it two months in advance um but it's one of our most popular resources. And then Ally and I connect a lot with other organizations that offer resources to businesses in the area. And then I also get paper handouts from them as well that we share in our canvasing and whatnot. So those are could be Excel rebates or one-stop um resources from CE um whatever sort of programs um min so on so forth, we still have a demand for those here. Moving on, I also recognize it's 2025, so we also do outreach with our digital resources. Um, we do have um an e subscription list. We have a um a business section of our website. People can sign up for our business newsletter there. The target audience of th of that email subscription is business owners or business leaders in Minnotonka. Anyone is open to receive those emails, but that is the target audience. um that is good for our more time-sensitive um opportunities, professional development um events and so on so forth. We also um like to post on social media as well and um do the regular the regular 2025 version of of outreach. Next, and then probably one of our most valuable and time inensive resources is the inperson stuff. Um you all may recognize u Michael in one of those photos. He's in the top left there. He was the um business sustainability awards winner. So that was um a chance I got to stop by his shop and learn more about what he does. Um but through that uh those one-on-one opportunities doing just traditional canvasing, stopping by businesses, chatting, talking about resources, that can be a great way for us to build relationships in the community. We also build those relationships through a partnership we have with the Weisetta West Metro Chamber. We have um a new business series that we started a year ago. So, we meet four times a year. It's a free opportunity for anyone who is either a um who either has a business in Minnotonka or lives in Minnotonka and has a business um to come and learn about the city and what we're doing here. And we've actually invited Ally to be our um our lead for our September session. So that'll all be focused on sustainability. We just started these series, like I said, last year, so it's pretty new, but this will this will be our first repeat topic because we did already cover sustainability last year as well. Um, so that's basically the overview of the traditional ways that I'm communicating with businesses and incorporating sustainability resources in there as appropriate. Um, we conducted our second ever business survey a few months ago and I don't know if any of you are familiar with the resident survey that Minnotonka does. That's an annual survey. It's done by the Morris Leatherman company and we hired the same company to conduct our business survey and we plan to keep doing this every three years. So hopefully we can start to see more trends as we continue to do that. So the next few slides are going to be direct copy and paste from some of the slides that um Peter Leatherman presented to us and the raw data is also all on the business section of our website. So, just like I am old school paper resources, the Morris Leatherman is old school in how they conduct surveys. Um, they do it all by phone and that's actually very intentional because um, as they explain it, the results are more accurate because people are not opting into taking the survey. We they actually do direct outreach to them and contact them. So, as opposed to um you know sending out like a QR code for example and then the people who respond traditionally when people take the time to respond they have stronger opinions and may not fully represent the community. We don't offer any giveaways or drawings or anything. People are very gracious to give us their time in these surveys and um there's no direct benefit to them other than the action that we take um in response to what they said. So um keep in mind the time frame of when the survey was done. We did it from mid January to midFebruary. So the world is changing quickly. Um but we did well I say we the Morris Leatherman company on our behalf called um 400 businesses so that they could have a statistically significant sample size and um had a really good response rate. So, we have a pretty engaged community here and um yeah, I feel confident that the information that they gave us is fairly representative of the community here considering the fact that of course it's not an a survey of everyone. So, I'm not going to show you the whole survey, but um I did want to just point out we have much more demographic information in this. specifically pulled out this slide from the Morris Leatherman company because it shows how many of our businesses own or rent the space that they are in. So, when we're talking later on about what sort of sustainability actions they're taking, keep that in mind that of course that may change depending on whether or not they're a property owner or not. Um, I also wanted to just share that our businesses here are doing really well and they are happy to be here. Um we we were very pleased and also almost shocked by these results because they are just so high and substantially higher than what they typically see across the metro area for how people are feeling about the business climate in their community. So as you can see we had 98% of people who said that it was either good or excellent and we're feeling good about their opportunities here even during a time of a lot of transition and uncertainty given the timing of the survey. So we're pleased with that. Um, when we asked them if they had any what they thought the most serious issue was facing their community, 26% of them actually said that there weren't any serious issues facing their businesses. And another 26% brought up um larger economic concerns such as the cost of living, inflation, and cost of doing business. So, like I said, one of the reasons why we're old school, that Thrive newsletter, it turns out that's actually one of our most popular ways of receiving communications from or that businesses prefer receiving communications from us. And if you think about it, that makes sense. The newsletter comes to your doorstep. You don't have to do a thing. It shows up. You can flip through it. The other resources listed here require a bit more buyin. So, to receive our email subscription list, you have to go to the website. you have to sign and give us your approval to send you things. The website, you know, you're logging on, so on so forth. So, it makes sense um in the general concepts of outreach that that would be the most popular form of communicating. >> Okay. Um sorry about that. Um I'm going to take it over from here. So, um I was just thinking back. So, within the first couple weeks of me starting, Kirsten reached out to me and said, "Hey, I'm doing this business survey. Are there any changes or additions you want me to include?" Um, in the past, I believe that they did a survey in 2020. So, we were looking at those questions that were previously asked and seeing if we can update them. Um, we did include one question that asked, so this was sustainability related. It was, "What actions have you taken or planned to take?" Um and there were different options that they could select. So the three different um options that were greenhouse gas reduction related actions were taking a business energy audit, energy efficiency upgrades or installing an EV charger. So if you look at the chart um we have four different colors here. So the green represents businesses who have undertaken the action. Yellow represents businesses who have plans to take that action. Gray represents businesses who have no plans and black represents businesses that chose not to respond. And I will note in the previous slides, Kirsten's graphs showed a percentage. These are actually um like I guess the amount of responses that were received. So anything in gray actually does in this case represent a specific response here. Um so a couple key takeaways. So, we broke this out between tenant and owner um responses. Luckily, the Morris Leatherman company was able to do that because we know that that's going to greatly change um the perspective of taking an action and if you can um depending on if you own the the actual building infrastructure or if you are a renter. So, we thought that it'd be interesting to see these results not compiled but split out. So, that's why you're seeing that here. Um some key takeaways that I had um and also talking with Kirsten we both had was uh clearly the response is varying between the tenant and the owner. Um we also can recognize that owners seemed to take more actions than tenants. um energy audits were the predominant um action taken. Although the energy efficiency upgrades that were likely following those business or the building energy audits um are not too far after but predominantly the energy audits are the most common action which does make sense because in the case of small and medium-sized businesses those are traditionally free. So the other two actions require some sort of capital investment. So that's not too terribly surprising. Um, and then just last key takeaway is that there are obviously many businesses who have taken actions, which is great, but the gray area represents an opportunity for more businesses to get involved. So, um, let's see. Okay. So, keeping that in mind, um Kirst and I had come up with a business outreach um I guess set of ideas or tasks that we can consider for the rest of the year. Um first, so these were included in your staff packet tonight. So you would have seen um that we were going to review the climate action and adaptation plan, energy action plan, utility program um participation, so the incentive programs and then also the business uh survey data. So we've reviewed that and what I've um suggested here is that we do two things. We target um property owners who own um either small or medium-sized businesses and that's what we can focus on in 2025. It's not to say that that we have to stay with that um going forward, but I think um based on the data, the property owners kind of represent this like lowhanging fruit. I think it's easier to reach them, that they're more likely ready to take action or able to take action than tenants. Um, that's not to say that tenants would not benefit from some of the information we're sharing, but when we go to draft our um, communications, the ideal target audience uh, for the rest of this year would be those property owners. Um, again, these are all suggestions. So, I'm welcoming your feedback and comments as we go through this. Um, task two was to determine an outreach goal. And I thought about this and traditionally my stance would be to focus on just one action takeaway. That's often you'll hear me probably say when we uh do outreach with residents, but in this case I think there is actually benefit to um including more than just one action request. And that's mostly because I think that businesses vary a lot more possibly with than residents do in terms of where they're at with their progress and then also just their business type. um their business type might just you know not uh be fitting for one of these actions. So it just gives more of flexibility um and options there. So the three actions that we would be um suggesting or educating and providing resources on would be one would be that free energy audit and recommended upgrades. And I combine those because when you get the free energy audit, if you've ever had a home energy audit, at the very end of it, you um sit down with a technical expert and they run through all the next steps. They run through all the rebates that are available and really do that handholding. So I almost see those as like one in the same action that we can educate on. Um the second would be renewable energy. So this would be taking advantage of either the utility subscription programs that are available or considering installation of your own solar panels for example. Um and then item three would be that installing an electric vehicle charger um which of course would be more um relating you know a a property owner would relate to that a bit more. So that's why we would be focusing on that. And you can see that there's opportunity for growth in that area too. So just getting the word out more. Um and you can also see that there's actually quite a few businesses that have plans to install them. So they might need a little bit more support is what um Kirsten and I thought. Uh so task three would be to to determine our outreach methods. And based on the survey results, it's clear that the Thrive newsletter is what um property owners or the business leaders are looking to. So, we want to include an update in that. The email list serve that goes out that typically follows the same content and then also doing some updates on our website. Um, we talked about updating the sustainable Minnitonka pages. There's definitely a lot of information for businesses, but since I've been here, I haven't um sat down and worked with communications and Kirsten directly yet to kind of comb through and see what we can update. So, we'd like to do a revision there. also to add um some content linking back from our permitting page. So, our um building permit page back to the sustainable business um information. So, if you go on there and you know you're doing um some sort of project um construction project like uh installing a new HVAC or for example or installing a solar panel, you're going to also get connected with those sustainability resources. Um, Kirsten mentioned that she has invited me to attend the s uh September Minnotonka Business Council meeting and I'll make a plug for this later as well during the general updates, but it would be great if at least two of the sustainability commissioners could attend that meeting. So, we're thinking likely two uh commissioners could attend. So, if you're interested, consider that. I believe it's the 17th. Um, I have it on a later slide, too. It includes lunch. >> Yes. Okay. Yep. So, it's over the lunch hour, which might restrict some of you um who have, you know, day jobs or it um are busy during the day. But we'll talk a little bit more about that. But I will be presenting um to the businesses that attend. That includes chamber business uh members of the chamber, but also anyone is um you know invited to join that too. So, we might be reaching out to businesses who are not chamber members. Um, and then also I have been made aware that the sustainability commission has also been a part of the one-stop business blitz option that we did a few years ago where we uh, it sounds like the commission went doortodoor to about like 35 different businesses and I know the commission really enjoyed that. Um, and I um, so I believe that program um, is supported by Partners in Energy, Excel Energy, and then also the Excel Energy Group. And I've reached out to them. I'm still waiting to hear back, but I intend on meeting with them and meeting with Kirsten and kind of going through options like what that could look like this year. So, um, stay tuned on some updates there. You'll see updates by email. Um, and if opportunities to join something like that come up, it would likely be in August or possibly September. So stay tuned on that. And then lastly, um, developing short Minnotonka case studies for businesses who have received these energy resources or have completed clean energy projects. We've started doing this a bit with our sustainable Minnotonka business awardees and nominees. Um, but we're thinking it would be great to even, you know, include just a small sentence or two of some of these businesses, for example, that you went to during the business splits outreach and what did they do as um, you know, a response to that visit. Just um, highlighting some of those local businesses of all different types, you know, types and sizes on our website so that when we are doing this marketing, we can say, "Hey, go on our web page to learn more." um and almost like fostering a bit of competition I was thinking but also a little bit you know learning experience too and um yeah so then the last bullet is just you know connecting to those sustainable minnotonka award examples so we already have some of these case studies on our website that live on that sustainable minnotonka award web page so making sure when we're talking about the business resources that we're also linking to those examples. So, um, yeah. So, with that, that's the list of, you know, ideas that we have. I appreciate Kirsten for coming and presenting on that. Um, but with that, we will open it up to questions or any other suggestions or feedback that the commission has. >> Commissioner Henry, go right ahead. >> Thanks, Chair. Thanks for the presentations, Christian Alli. and apologize being late today and thank you for squeezing a space in for me here too. It's fun sitting next to the chair. It's about as close as I'll ever get to the chairmanship, but that's okay. A few questions that I have uh based on what you presented and some tactical questions at first uh for Kristen. One of the questions I had was from an economic perspective. You said that businesses like to be in the city and and I agree. One of the places that I think is stands for improvement is the old Dick Sporting Goods in the area where the Bed and Bath beyond is. And there's a lot of open space over there. So, I'm just curious from your perspective, what have you heard from local businesses? We can't force businesses to go in there, but I'm sure your job part of it is to encourage people to come in. So, if you can give us some good news on that area, we'd appreciate it. >> I would love to give you some good news on that area. I do not have any for you yet. it continues to remain vacant. Yeah, that's the tricky part of um working with the private sector as a public entity. Um we are definitely in communication with the property owner and um they haven't had a business that that fits their their needs and and have a partnership there. But we do occasionally meet with developers and interested uh business owners for that space. So, it's definitely on our mind and there is some interest there, but there aren't any concrete plans for that at this time. Part of my job is site selection for businesses. So, we also hear of opportunities that come to us through greater MSP or through um deed. And then when we learn about the uh requirements that certain businesses are looking for, then I scope through what vacancies we have and put forth proposals for available spaces that we have. So, um I would love to be submitting more for that site, but it hasn't happened yet. I sometimes see there's temporary businesses set up about signing up for races or other things or I think sometimes PGA had some things set up in there too. Is that something the city encourages to have transient businesses come and go with that big space? >> As far as I'm aware that has been primarily driven through the private sector. So it's it's happening naturally basically. >> Okay. And I suppose the city doesn't really have much say in the matter. the landlord owner rents it out to people who can find benefit from it. >> Yeah. So, as long as everything's being done legally, then that's theirs to use. >> Okay. You mentioned the West Metro uh chapter with Ridgedale. That's a big economic driver of the West Metro with this new chamber that's coming together. Do you know are there other cities in the area, not just Minnetonka, that cooperate in trying to build more of a critical mass around Ridgale? I'm assuming it's in a lot of West Metro towns best interest to try to build up that area, not just Minnetonkas. >> That's a good question. Um, it definitely is a regional shopping center, so it benefits the entire area. I think primarily we work together through the west the way west metro chamber um in general having a robust business community in the west metro in general benefits everyone so in that sense rising ship um but I don't I can't think off the top of my head any formal things we've been done that we have been doing with other municipal municipalities on the topic other than in the sense that within the economic development world we have our own professional association are constantly sharing opportunities and resources in a more informal way. >> Okay. Thank you. You mentioned Thrive Minnetonka. I'm assuming from what you said that's a purely businessoriented letter. It's not for individual homes. >> Yes, thank you. Good clarification. Yes, Thrive is specifically for business owners. It only is mailed to businesses. Anyone can read it online. It's archived there as well. It's basically the business equivalent to the Minnotonka memo if you receive that as a resident. >> And then conversely, Minnitankka memo is only for homeowners, individual citizens and not businesses. Is that right? >> Correct. Yes. Sometimes there may be the same story, but it could be written in a different way. For example, our sustainability awards that's highlighted in both places. In our case, it's an opportunity for us to celebrate a business in the Thrive newsletter and also make other businesses aware that they could apply in the future. So, it could be the same topic but different angle. >> Okay. Thank you. You mentioned the survey that phone survey that Morris Leman presides over and with 400 out of you said about 2,500 businesses. That's about 16th of the total businesses. from my limited statistical knowledge that seems like it's a significant significant number statistically speaking which is good but this may be beyond the scope but then miss this could be for Susan but does that mean that in the the survey that they give to everybody in Minnetonka since we have a population about 54,000 then they reach and they get feedback from about 9,000 people which is a lot to get a survey response from >> commissioner my least favorite subject in grad school was statistics. So, I'm not going to pretend like this is my forte, which is exactly why we retain the Morris Leatherman company. It's not a onetoone correlation or ratio in that sense, though. Um, even with a larger population, the number that you would need to reach out to to get a a statistically significant sample um remains smaller. So, I don't recall I don't know if you I don't assume you know the number of residents that we call. >> Yeah. Uh, Commissioner Henry, uh, Commissioners, I believe that the communitywide survey, uh, is about 800 folks that they try to reach. Um, so more folks, but it's really based on the number that Morris Leman tells us we need to reach in order to achieve that statistical accuracy. >> Is that also given over the winter, January, February time frame to the citizens? >> Yeah, typically that um, survey goes out in March. Um, so yeah, similar time frame. >> Okay, good. And I'm really impressed. So with 400 businesses reached out to, there's only a 5.5% non-response rate. So that means only 21 of those 400 that that you call they everybody else happily does the survey, which takes approximately 17 minutes to to fill out. Is that right? >> That's Yeah. Why? We're pretty pleased. um that doesn't mean that they were called once and they immediately said yes. The way they handle uh these surveys is they call and if someone is not available in that moment, they encourage them to schedule a time to have that survey done, which is why it took place over the course of a month because they'll keep calling back um and try to find a time that works best for them. But I think it also is telling of our community. The businesses are willing to give very valuable time and we're looking for leadership positions to be taking the survey. So, >> well, it's telling in two ways. Number one, that the businesses feel worthwhile to respond to the city, but also number two, that the city is tenacious and reaches back out to the businesses. So, for that, I applaud you. That's really good. I think it's second to last question, but you mentioned the business uh energy audit where you're trying to focus on that where we can get free energy audits with the well with this commission and the and the planning commission too. talk about the home energy audits where we get periodic updates about how many homeowners or how many apartment uh owners subscribe to that and is that the same pool of funds for both business and for homeowners or does the funding come from two separate places? >> Commissioner, um I believe you're speaking about the home energy squad free program that we've been running correct or Okay, so um no. So, the free home energy squad visit that we have been providing um that was um provided with help from the uh MPCA local climate action funding. So, we were able to provide free home energy audits from October 2024 through June of 2025. Um the city covered a third of the costs and the grant covered the other two/3. Prior to that, the city has always funded um half the cost of home energy squad visits for at least a few years. I just based on being a newer employee, I'm not exactly sure how long that has been, but I know it's been for at least a um couple years here. Um that program is specific to home energy squad visits. It's not for the business energy audits. Those are funded um through one-stop efficiency shop which is ultimately funded by the utilities and they provide it for free to businesses. So the city actually doesn't need to use any city funding for those. >> Okay. Thank you. Last I have I received something in the mail from Henipin County about going together on a buy for solar panels for our home and just wondering is this something that the city works with the county in collaboration and number two to join on that one. You're trying to encourage businesses to install or electric charging for cars stations in their buildings. Is this something where the the city or county would consider sending out something equivalent on the the electric car charging stations? >> Yes, thank you, Commissioner. I'm so happy you brought that up. Um we're actually going to be talking about that exact mailer in the next item. So, um that was a solar group by program that the county um pretty quickly came to together with um a switch together program which is a national campaign that's being ran. um they did reach out to Minnotonka residents that fell within their climate action priority outreach areas. So that uh was specifically mailed to residents. Small businesses can take advantage of that. Um so we'll talk about that a bit in the next item. Um, but uh within the short time frame that's been going on over the last couple weeks, I have connected with the county and they are more than happy to have the city help with promotions. So, um, stay tuned on that. But yes, businesses can take advantage. Small small businesses can. >> Well, I'm really glad that the county sent this out and I'm glad that you're considering partnering with them, too. One thing that I didn't see in this mailer that I'd like to see is encouraging homeowners to subscribe to solar gardens. Other ways that are less capital intensive and it wasn't even listed as an option. So, some suggestions if you could reach out to the city if we have follow-up communications. I'd like to see every citizen in Minnetonka know that they can subscribe to a solar garden and what the benefits there of are. Thanks. That's all I have. >> Uh, any other questions? Kristen Diane, [Applause] >> thank you for the presentation. Um, I appreciate the the info that we got from so many businesses and I just wanted to follow up as far as a suggestion for outreach that was mentioned. Um I participated in the program um previously the one-stop efficiency shop and it was an excellent outreach opportunity and appropriately named because it I believe that we saw several dozen businesses and talked with the owners or the tenants sometimes um in one day's time and it was partnering the commissioner with an engineer for Saturday Center for Energy and Efficiency. Um, and that their expertise was golden as far as connecting with the owners, identifying what could be helpful, whether it was a free thermostat or refrigeration rebates or HVAC repairs replacements that they had done in the past year, knowing that they could apply for rebates this year. So, it was very helpful. Um, and I would like to consider that strongly going forward. Um, I also would like to see as a means of um, education for business owners going over our climate action adaptation plan, the onepage summary for businesses um, and if they some other communities like Adina will provide um, recognition on the website for businesses that have looked at that their action plan and taken some action in a positive way. So, it may not be as extensive as the awards program, but it's at least a partial step forward and I think we could talk with neighboring communities to simplify that program. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Commissioner. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Commissioner. >> Um, so I had a quick question or a couple questions actually. So my first question is um regarding uh Alli's uh portion of the presentation. Um one of the comments that you had made was regarding um how we're going to approach some of the businesses and just that uh some of the the property owners seem like the lowest hanging fruit uh based on the data which I definitely understand. How does that look practically um regarding our approach? um does that mean that we will not be reaching out to um tenants? Does that mean that the property owners will be at the top of the list? Can you speak a little bit more to that? Yes, I can start and then Kirsten might have a couple words. So um my understanding is that we don't have um a detailed list that says here are our property owners, here are our tenants. And for that reason, we're going to be using all these same avenues that we would reach, you know, we would use to reach both tenants and uh property owners. But my goal is that we try to focus the written communications to be speaking more to the property owner. That doesn't necessarily mean we exclude the tenant. Um but also thinking about the one-stop shop efficiency business blitz. if there's maybe a way that we can say, can we identify 30 business owners to reach out to and make sure that we're using our time a bit more wisely to reach out to those, you know, just using our time um more effective is I guess what I'm trying to get to. And it's not that we're never going to reach out to the tenants, but it's like, you know, if we're this this is kind of the maybe the start of the implementation of the climate action plan since it's been approved, we need to prioritize, you know, outreach in some some way. And so, for that reason, that's why I'm saying let's let's start with trying to make contact with those property owners. Actually, one other um piece that came out of this is that um I was talking to Kirsten and thinking maybe we can try to start making that list of property owners. Um I don't know what that looks like and um I don't know if it's feasible or if you know people move on too soon, but maybe that's something that can come out of this a joint effort. So, thank you. No, I think that is helpful and understanding. Um I just wanted to make sure that we were not being exclusionary necessarily in our approach. Um because I think it is important although there you can obviously see in the data the difference in the numbers there still was there was to me a lot of uh tenants that were willing to take a lot of the steps especially with um some of the things that like you said didn't require a lot of capital. So I just wanted to make sure that we were being mindful of still making sure that opportunities were offered to everyone but it sounds like you of course were thoughtful about that. So I appreciate that. Additionally, um I was of course very excited to hear that we were you said it was I think the second time that you were repeating uh something in your the series and that it was sustainability. Yay. We love that. You know, that's that's a beautiful thing. And then of course you were ahead of me in um alley and wanting to bring the sustainability commissioners. You know, we love to show up. So of course pending my you know my schedule, you know, count me in. We we love to come and support the businesses and of course tell them everything we love about how they can make their businesses more green. So we love that. I had another question. This one was a little bit more random. It was more so about the slide that you showed um one of the I think it was a seminar that maybe you all hosted for the businesses. It was about AI AI for your business. Did that go well? Can you tell can you speak to that a little bit or do you know we talked a little bit about AI on um sustainability commission. I think it was a few meetings ago and just how that's what that looks like in the sustainability space. So, I'm just curious um for the business owners, did that seminar go well? >> Yes, thanks for asking. That was literally just a screenshot of the most recent eblast that we had sent out. Um it wasn't hosted by the city. So, I like to think of myself as like a resource matchmaker of sorts. Um, so part part of what I do is I subscribe to every single resource that I can think of and attend every sort of meeting that I can know and network with to learn about what opportunities of what things others are hosting. So it wasn't hosted um by the city, but I was hoping that that would be uh timely for our business owners. So hopefully >> even still love that. Appreciate that. I AI is something that is of course I think it's an incredible resource. um we talked about it in a different sense and just kind of the impact that it has on of course the environment because I think a lot of people are not considerate of that. However, it is an incredible resource. So I love to hear that you are making sure that the city is making sure that they offer resources to our business owners which is probably why they love us so much. So thank you for the work that you are doing. >> Thank you Commissioner Commissioner Dave. Go ahead. >> Thank you. Um again thanks for the great presentation and information. and I love data. Um so it speaks to me pretty well. Following on what um you know both um Ashley and Ally mentioned um and in our role as ambassador um what things do you have in no answer necessary tonight but maybe sometime in the future think about what can we do personally as as we've kind of all stepped forward as ambassadors do to to support you and take it forward and connect you have a list Ally she has the plan and we have the energy >> and maybe some time to help just let us know what we can do to step up. >> Yeah, I'll just quick response. So, um I did tell Kirsten about this and as she mentioned, she's new at the city as well. She's been here for a year and so she's getting to know what the commission does. Um, I would say our commission is pretty unique in the sense that you are policy adviserss, but you're also um ambassadors and you like to do the volunteering and you're out um in the public. And so I've explained that to Kirsten and the two options that we came up with for at least the next couple months is to have at uh two commissioners attend that uh Minnotonka Business Council meeting just to be a representative. It's only, you know, about 30 people. So, we don't want to have everyone there taking up the whole room, but we want to at least have a presence and it would give an opportunity for you all to connect and network with local businesses. And ideally, whenever you attend something like that, I hope that there's going to be more networking opportunities for you in the future. But what's really great is if you can um you know, maybe write down your experience so that the next time we come and meet that you can share that with the rest of the group. So, it's like a learning um opportunity that you're just you sharing with others. And since we only meet every couple months, I would encourage you to take note of all those um uh you know, thoughts that you had while it's fresh and then next time we meet um make sure to share that. So, that was one opportunity we came up with. And then the other would be this business splits. We're still working out the details as to what that would look like. Um, but that would be an amazing opportunity to kind of be a part of, go on site, um, and just see what's happening and maybe give some feedback, that sort of thing. So stay tuned. Um, this is just the start of this conversation with business outreach. We appreciate your interest and, um, I'm sure Kirsten does too, and we'll continue to to discuss that. If you have any ideas too, please always share them. >> Well, um, thank you. That's a great answer. Um, many of us work in the uh, business world connecting with architects, engineers, and business owners. Um, I'm wondering if we could, you know, take a look at the list together sometime in a little, you know, huddle of some kind to see if there's any crossover or matchup uh, people we're already working with and might be make the job easier. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. One one final comment I have on that is that I have reached out to the Excel Energy Partners and Energy Group and I let them know that we're interested in considering the business splits again, but I also asked if they have more of a comprehensive list because I know other communities have done so many different versions of business outreach and I'd love for us to consider, you know, all the different ways that we can do this outreach. So, it's very likely they have more ideas. Um but we'll probably start with looking at that blitz again and um have more ideas in the future. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? If not, I have a few. Um first of all, uh Kristen and Ally, thank you very much for the excellent uh presentation. Very clear uh great information. You had uh Kristen you had mentioned or Christian you had mentioned you know 2500 businesses in Minnitankka strong retail market strong personal services the restaurants the medical sector you didn't mention and maybe was an unintentional oversight but the manufacturing sector is there much manufacturing here in Minnetonka I say that because I was part of a manufacturing company here in Minnetonka unfortunately it went belly up but I was just wondering how How many manufacturers are there here in in the city? >> Yeah, chair, good question. Um, I didn't mention it because I was mentioning our largest sectors and manufacturing is not one of our largest sectors in terms of the makeup of our commercial real estate. We have less industrial properties. Um, so it is still part of our community and an important part of it. Um, but it is not as large as it is in some of our comparable communities. That's what I I kind of assume that. Thanks. Um, also, you know, some of the actions that that we could take, you know, targeting small to medium-sized businesses makes a lot of sense. They're the ones that don't have any in-house expertise. The large companies that employed me, for example, you know, where they had an environmental health and safety manager director, they have in-house expertise. And I think most of those folks have been assigned uh sustainability actions. So they they should be already involved whereas the smaller and the mediumsiz may not have that option. Um and some of us remember that we were part of the one day business blitz with the partners in energy. Um Ashley, Diane, myself, that was the second business type blitz that we had. We did one before that wasn't as successful. I can't cite the um success rate in terms of going out meeting with people and then saying, "Yeah, they're going to do something." But it was more beneficial from our perspective to kind of do these cold calls with the partners and energy people. And Chris, from just for your perspective or for your knowledge, we introduced what we were doing and we'd knock I've introduced myself as the chair of the sustainability commission about volunteer with these folks and they you know they can immediately start counting their uh the lights and the fixtures and you know they're the ones with the exp then we kind of step back and let them take over and many times it was really good and people were very receptive because they said hey we're here to provide free consulting expertise save you some minimize emissions into the atmosphere. It's everybody's going to win. I remember the last business that I was with the business, let us just say they were not particular, they were not interested in saving money or minimizing emissions into the atmosphere. They just didn't care. They're always you're always going to have people like that. But overall, it was a very positive, you know, everyone's nodding head. Yes. It was a very positive uh experience. And if you could somehow pre-select some folks that might be might be good candidates to go and and visit that might be even more useful for us. But I think it we all felt it was a beneficial use of our time and the partners in energy staff time too. um and the people that reacted to us, you know, it was it was a it was a it was a a very beneficial um endeavor for everybody to do. So, I'm I'm very in favor of that. As far as the uh you know, the September Minnotonka Business Council, if I'm available on the 17th of September, I have to check my calendar. I would also be interested in uh participating too. So, thanks very much. And uh I think uh you know with the partners energy staff support we could somewhat replicate what we did which was really beneficial. And I think it was I think the business people were they were happy to have folks from the partners energy program leading the discussion as opposed to staff or volunteers from the city. um I think they were more uh conducive to doing something. So I think it was beneficial and I think it's it's a good use of our collective time. Thank you chair. Just one comment on that. Um I forgot to mention you hit on half of that point that I meant to make earlier. Uh so the two reasons for focusing on small to medium-sized businesses is one like you said they tend to not have in-house support on energy um related operations. The other is that they don't typically have a utility account manager. So like Excel Energy or Centerpoint Energy uh does not designate an account manager like the city or like a larger business would. So those account managers um act kind of almost like Kirsten and I where they're connecting them directly with um very pertinent information and resources. The small to medium businesses don't have someone doing that. So we're filling that gap and that's what the energy action plan and the climate action plan explicitly state. So I just wanted to clarify that. So thanks for bringing up that point. >> Thank you Ally. Any other questions for Christopher Ally? If not, we'll move to item 5B. Ally, >> great. Thank you. [Applause] >> Oh, let me add uh to conclude, I will open and close the public input portion for this portion and that topic on the agenda. Thank you. >> Appreciate it. No public comments were received on my end. >> Correct. Okay, so we're on to item 5B. Uh, this is a discussion of the 2025 residential solar outreach. Um, again, this is another discussion item. Welcome your feedback. Um, I'll be sharing some ideas that I have for um, residential solar outreach for the remaining portion of the year. Um again, similarly to the last item, we have a 2025 city goal to host an event to educate residents about installing solar at their home. Um so to um the the point made earlier about educating on both solar panels and um utility uh rebate programs or the solar gardens that you can participate in. Um it's not that we're not focusing on the community solar. It's that the goal that's written in um the plans on this slide are specific to how we can educate residents about installing sal sol solar at their home. So for that reason, that's kind of why we're focusing um specifically on solar panel installation. Um you'll see this goal in the climate action and adaptation plan, the 2025 2028 city council priorities and then as uh the 2025 sustainability commission work plan as well. Um so as was shared earlier, Henipin County is currently partnering with Switch Together. It's a national partnership of local governments. So that's both cities and counties throughout the entire US as well as nonprofits. Um, you may recall hearing about the solar power hour in the past. I believe Minnotonka has hosted one of those. It was hosted by MREA. Um, it's a solar group buying program. Um, that initiative on its own is somewhat defunct, but they are now a partner of this larger national partnership. So, they're still ongoing, but just in a different way. So you can think of this as more of a a larger version of that is how I'm um imagining this. So if you're not familiar with group brideowns, um they facilitate this program um that kind of assists residents in joining in on installing solar at their house, but you're doing it collectively. Um there's a lot of people signing up to have in solar installed at the same time. Um the goal is really economies of scale. It's just making solar more affordable, easier is the biggest piece and just overall more accessible. Um, and we'll get into more of the details in next slide, but wanted to showcase just uh you can see some entities that you might recognize on here, cities from, you know, all over. It's certainly not all of them. Um but from my understanding this uh Henipin County starting this program has been um very a a quick instance. I think switched together reached out to Henipin County within the last month or two and Henipin County you know read through all the materials and just hit the ground running on this. So it's been a very a new new update for me to receive this as well. So this is essentially like a brand new program and they just sent mailers out um at the beginning of July. So this is quite fresh. Um so the question is you know how does switch together work? So they first these group buying programs um they first start out with they're organizing a group purchase of residential uh rooftop solar panel installations. So first they select a solar product that they think is you know the best. I I don't know exactly what criteria they use, but I'm assuming that they're looking at lifetime warranties, the cost, um the products, where it's coming from, all sorts of um information there. So, they're selecting the product that they believe is the best. Then, they're getting um an estimate from a number of on-site solar um installers, and they're doing that through issuing a request for service quote. And so um they through this program which is a bit different than the um solar power hour program in this case they're estimating how many people are going to participate. So this is within Henipin County. So it's all Henipin County cities. I believe that Henipin County was estimating around a 100,000 participants maybe or maybe that's how many that they made communications to but they came up with a number and that went in that number of participation went into their service request. So when they were getting bid responses the um solar installer was saying exactly how much it would cost per um kilowatt hour which is a bit different than the past programs you might have seen. In the past, they were trying to um kind of encourage people like the more people that participate, your solar is going to be cheaper and cheaper, but people felt a little uneasy not having a specific price. So, in this case, when you go to sign up, you know exactly how much you're going to be paying. Um but overall this um larger request for service quote just spurs this competitive bu bidding process um between the local solar installers and ultimately they're trying just to lower the individual um cost to install the solar panel. So um if you go onto the website you'll find the uh this type of information. So they're saying that the bids in general save just over $5,000 per installation. So, if you were to go out and get your own bids, likely through this group buy program, you would be saving around $5,000 for your installation. And again, that's just that economies of scales um through that um competitive build bidding process that they were able to lock in this reduced rate. You can also further um reduce your rate by going through the utility incentives, which is the Excel Energy programs, where they're going to be paying you back for kilowatt hours that you're putting onto the grid and not using yourself. There's also the federal tax rebate. Right now, um there's the 30% tax rebate for any solar installation. And I did confirm that um the goal of this program is to have um everything installed and paid for by the applicant by the end of this year, which is the new um instituted drop dead date or the deadline for the federal rebate tax rebate. So, um 30% tax rebate is fairly significant. So, I wanted to make sure that if you do participate, you will um be able to utilize that. So, I would say if you're interested in the program, make sure to talk to the program entities and that you will be able to lock that in. But, as far as I can tell, they're doing everything in their power to make sure that that is a reality. Um, and then I also wanted to share in case you're just not as familiar about the process to install solar outside of a group purchasing, um, you need to know a few different pieces of information. You need to understand a kilowatt hour. So basic or sorry a kilowatt that's the measure of the system's output. We also see it defined as watts. So um 1 kilowatt is 1,00 watts. Um and I share this because I wanted you to know the average size of a solar system, residential solar system is around 8 kilowatts or 8,000 watts. Um the average cost is typically defined in the cost per watt. And so that's around two and a half dollars to around $5. So if you're a resident and you want to do this, you kind of have to understand all of this background knowledge and be able to speak in uh you know in this sort of language, if you will, um when you're going out to the bidding process. So it can be very confusing um and you have to take the time to understand it. So going through the goo group buy program, you kind of just don't have to understand all of that or don't have to take the time to um fully grasp a lot of that. But just so you're aware, um outside of the program, if you install the average 8 kilowatt size installation, you're going to be um expecting to pay around 20,000 to $40,000. And that's before any of the utility rebates, but that's that's the standard cost. So, if you want to think about that, you know, going through this group buy program, you're going to be saving on average around that $5,000 mark from what you otherwise would be paying. But again, that's based on the average u solar uh panel system size. So, if you do want to install a larger system, that cost is going to increase um based on the per wattage that you're installing. And I will say I looked at our previous solar permits that were pulled and we had anywhere between a 4 kilowatt hour installation installed on our residential um properties up to over 25 kilowatts. So um you know it just really depends on the homeowner, but I would say on average eight seems to be the most common. Um switch together communications. So, Henipin County um has sent out this mailer um and my understanding is that they sent it to Minnotonka residents as well as other residents within the county that fell within their climate action high priority areas. So, it's very likely that not all Minnitonka residents received this. If you did, it's because you fell within a certain geographic location that the county prioritized. um webinars. There will be two webinars hosted. The city was going to help promote this webinar, too. Um the Switch Together Partner Solar United Neighbors Group will be hosting this on August 5th of this year um at 700 p.m. I have the URL link there. It's quite long, so I also included a QR code in case you're listening and want to um take a screenshot of that. Um, so this mailer goes through it, it's just a one-page mailer. There was no second side. It just hits on all of the high points that I just described. The program benefits, how do you register? Um, I had a couple residents reach out to me asking about this. And I had learned that um, when you go through the program, you um, sign up and to lock in your bid or estimate, you must pay a $150 reimburseable fee. So, um I I don't know if they say it on here. I I can't quite remember the language. I think they say reimburseable, but essentially what that means is if you don't go forward, you will get that money back. It's just to um you know, when people submit the bid, they want to know that people are actually going to move forward. So, that's the reason for that. Um in terms of how the city of Minnetonka is going to help communicate this. So, I was very happy to hear that the county was more than happy to have Minnitonka assist with communications. Um, there's no limit to how many people can participate, which is really great to hear. So, for that reason, we're we have included it in our draft memo that's already um probably at the printers right now um that will be going to all Minnitankka households um in early August if it hasn't already been mailed out. Um we're doing kind of an update on the cityowned solar panels and then we're doing um a a tidbit on how you can participate at your own home. We share the switch together website. We make it clear it's a Henipin County program um but that we also were able to advertise for that webinar. So if you have questions um I would encourage anyone from the sustainability commission to listen in. I think it'll be very informative for you all. Um, I can imagine this is not the uh the last group buy program we'll be seeing. Um, but yes, so that will be in the Minnitonka memo. It'll also go on our social media email list or website. We'll be promoting it um which is actually the website that's included in the Minnotonka memo. So, it'll also draw some attention to our sustainability page. Um, and another actually outreach opportunity for the sustainability commission is the August farmers market. I was thinking we could tailor that table to helping to promote this. So, um, Dave, uh, Commissioner Carr is already signed up to help, but um, we're always happy to have more than one commissioner attend. So, if you're available on that August date, um, I'll share that date in the general updates later today or at this meeting. But um if you're interested and want to help promote this program can join that August farmers market. Um and then just in case you're interested and want to know um the process for signing up, I went through it myself just to see what the steps were and wanted to share that here. So you go to switchto together.com/henipin county. Um you will uh find this homepage at the bottom left corner. There's a register today. you click that green link. Um, and actually really quick here, I will make a mention about the business participation. So, I have confirmed that small businesses can participate in this. Um, it's not necessarily being promoted by Henipin County to businesses, but they can participate. Um, and there are some caveats to it. um in under the FAQs, I believe they have to be under a certain size of um installation, but um if you meet all their eligibility criteria, you can participate. But if you see on the front homepage, it really is targeted to just residents. So um once you uh so step two is to after you hit the register here, you enter in your home address and it'll determine your roof suitability for rooftop solar. Um, so it takes into account various degrees of information. Um, you know, the the slope of your roof, the angle of your roof, whether you're facing south or east or west. Um, the age of your roof is a huge factor. Um, and I would say is probably one of the most limiting factors other than canopy coverage. So you if you have a bunch of trees in your neighborhood, like all these different factors go into consideration. Um, I believe that they're likely using some sort of GIS tool to associate um, your address to this result, but I plugged in my address and they said, "Congratulations. Um, your home is likely suitable for solar." Um, so they go on to discuss a little bit more about the program um, talking about the the recommendation you will receive. Um, some other questions that they asked. So the next step was to provide your contact uh who your utility is and then if you have incomequalified details. So um if you are income qualified, you likely can um qualify for much more significant discounts. I was talking to the program uh sponsor or coordinator on the phone and he said in some cases you could get this installation for like $1,000 depending on if you qualify for certain um income qualifications. So they're really I I think that the county's focus is to connect with um folks that would be eligible for these. So that's one of the primary focuses, but it's pretty incredible how much um assistance you can receive. So, if um you fit with one of these criteria, I highly encourage you to continue um looking into this program. And then step four is to review the personal quote. And that quote um includes several different estimates. So, based on the I'm trying to think of So, we put you put your address into the map and I think that it actually has you draw um kind of like a square footage around your um roof. So, you estimate that and through the the address and the estimate of the square footage, it's estimating how many solar panels will actually go onto your roof. And through that, they can then estimate the system size. So, that kilowatt, mine actually fit right within that average. It was like 7.6 kilowatts. Um, it'll estimate your annual production based on how many solar panels you're um likely to install. They'll estimate the monthly loan payment over a 20-year time frame. They'll estimate the electrical savings that you would have, so the amount deducted off of your existing utility bill. Um, they'll estimate the 25-year net savings. And then again, they'll present you this information on what solar panel product they have. Um, and I will say some of that is I think that they're saving some of that information for at the end of this because this program is national. So there's people from all over the United States going to that same landing page. So you have to go through the process to figure out what um what the package is for the Henipin County program. So that might differ than someone out in California, let's say. Um, oh, and this is where that um information about the $150 deposit, so that's the term that they use. They say it's fully refundable if you decide not to proceed with your consultation. Um, yeah, it you'll you'll receive that back. So, um, they say within one week, you'll receive a welcome email from Centauri Systems. That's the solar panel um, producer. I believe it's possible that they're also the installer, too. Um, but they did say that you after you go through this process and after you make that deposit, then they do a remote site survey. Um, and it's possible they might come on site, but um, one last piece of information is that I've confirmed um, you must sign up by September 10th. So, it's a short time frame, but it allows for us to at least um, kind of work with them to promote their webinar. I believe there is another webinar on September 10th, but given it's the last date to sign up, my focus is to um promote that uh August 4th or sorry, 5th um date. I have uh encouraged them to consider hosting more webinars. So stay tuned on that. We'll see if they do or not. Um but with that uh I will I guess open it up for discussion. I think at this point the the main pieces of feedback would be on how the city can help um to promote this. But with that, I'll open it up for questions. >> Thank you very much, Ally. Do does anyone have any questions for Ally? >> Um yeah. So I was wondering how many watts would most households be using? Cuz you said >> that 8 kilowatts is the average. So, how far would that actually get you? >> Yeah, I appreciate that. So, um I don't I'm not 100% certain of the answer. And if anyone has solar on their roof, they might actually be able to know, but my understanding is that they try to match your um energy usage with the amount of solar that they put on your roof. So, that's why they often say that the first step really is to make your home as energy efficient as possible because you don't want to install more solar on your roof than is necessary. So once you um do the energy efficiency um trying to make your home as efficient then you can move on to the electrification piece you know uh switching your gas appliances to electrical all of these things come into play but in generally in general speaking I think the idea is to have um all of your electricity coming from the solar panels and anything else that you generate that you're not using is then typically sold back to the utility and that's where you're getting money back through those utility incentive programs. Um, but that all depends on how much you're using, how much you install, and if you um participate in the utility programs or not. [Applause] T >> Ellie, I could speak to that the question as far as how much um solar panel capacity can be placed on a residential home. And there is a limit of up to 120% of one's annual electric use. That's reviewed over the past 3 years, I believe. So, if you want to maximize how much you can produce, um the ideal would be to electrify your home like Ally referenced, um to put electric heat pump, convert um put in electric EV chargers if you anticipate getting an electric vehicle um and maximize your previous annual use of um electricity. And then you can do up to 120%. Um, we're lucky in Minnesota because Excel does rebate excess use on any given day. We get paid back exactly what we would be charged by Excel. There are some states where that is not the case. Um, thank you [Applause] >> Michael. Go ahead. Um, so I know you mentioned earlier that there was a when you like register there is a um check for if your roof is suitable for solar panels. Um I was wondering if that's like a problem like a severe problem or um cuz I know a lot of houses like especially mine they're kind of old and I'm kind of doubtful for the um suitability of it and is there anything we can do to like remedy that? >> Great question. I think it depends on what factor um is limiting you. So um if your h if your roof is older, I mean an ideal scenario is that the roof be replaced. That might not be an option. So that's where you think, okay, maybe installing solar on our house isn't the right option for us and you can look into other solar opportunities. Um one would be joining a community solar garden. So, you're not installing it on your property, but you're buying into a larger solar system that's installed elsewhere, and that would be through the um Excel Energy process that you'd have to go through. Um, in this case, they're very much focused on just getting people to go through the switch together program. Um, but both you and um, Commissioner Henry raised a point that um, for example, in the August memo, I believe the language we we put in there is, you know, if you're interested in this program or other renewable energy um, programs, go to our website and that's where you would find the larger um, array of options, if you will. So, [Applause] any other questions for Ally? T >> I had one other question. Um you mentioned the participation number was estimated for um switch together program. Um but then participation was unlimited. Was that for the webinar? Is is there a finite number of people? >> Yes, great question. >> Can participate? >> Yeah, I don't know. I wish I know exactly how much they estimated. I don't um I'm assuming that's somewhere in their agreements, right? But they didn't let me know on that specific number. Um I asked that question and I mean at some point I would imagine it would have to max out because they do have an installer, you know, and the installer can only do so much work. However, I believe that their response was that they had multiple installers. So I want to say that there was maybe four contractors that were a part of this pro process. Um, so they seemed to think that capacity wasn't actually much of an issue. Um, which was really great to hear because my concern was that, you know, if we promote it, we have no idea how many people maybe we'll have a lot of Mitankka residents interested. But they really had no concerns. So at this point, um, you know, as many people that want to participate can. Um the reason for the differences is that they initially estimate the the participation to have the contractors be able to provide a bid. Um that being said, however many people participate, that bid is locked. So whether it's over that estimate of participation or under, everyone will still get that same rate that was initially bidded on by the contractor. [Applause] >> Okay. Uh, no. Oh, Matt, go right ahead. Sorry. >> Thank you. Can you talk about the the bid process? You alluded to it right there, but it's about the power of group buying. And are you saying that once people buy into the program, then that's when the county decides to buy solar panels in mass from one supplier? >> Great question. I don't know the answer to that in terms of the logistics of actually purchasing the product. It's possible that the contractor actually might purchase the product. I would almost um certainly expect that the contractor would I doubt the county would be at in the the process of that. Um >> yeah. Does that answer the question >> partially? Sorry. Yeah. Could you repeat it again? >> No. No, it's fine. It answers partially my question and then a follow-up question could answer the other partial part of the question too. But from a contractor's perspective, so if you >> are interested in getting solar panels and then you put out the bid and then is that when individual contractors bid on the individual homes or is it that everybody who I think you mentioned somewhere about a 100,000 estimated respondents to this letter? That's what the the county is expecting. >> Yeah. So then I think my answer to the question is probably the LA the former but I hope it's not that out of a 100 thousand that one and only one contractor is selected and then they exclusively can install solar panel on everybody's homes. >> Yeah, thanks for the question. Um I should backtrack and say I'm not I'm not certain if 100,000 was the participation or the communications rate. So don't quote me on that. However, um what my understanding is is that when the contractor presented a bid, they likely uh probably included this um average cost per watt, for example. So, it's already the cost of um the solar installation is already estimated. Um and so it won't vary from um I guess household to household other than the size of the actual installation. So everyone will be getting the same cost per wattage. Um and that's what the the um contractor initially bid on if that makes sense. So there's really no varying degree between quotes. It's just whatever solar installation size you want is what's going to vary your cost. >> And when Dian was asking some questions, it sounds like there's no concerns about capacity. So my I'm assuming the answer to the question is the former where we have a lot of contractors and then they can bid on individual product projects and then if you have a if you want to go forward with the solar it's not just that everybody has to contract with the same contractor. That would be a log jam. >> No. No. It sounds like you're saying so the county has already locked in the bids and the contractors. So there's I believe they said four contractors and they've already said we will do all of this work for this price. So the resident does not need to work directly with any contractor. That's already figured out. So basically the the resident just says this is the size of my solar installation based on some of this review that the website does and the contractor reaching out. Um but the price is already set in stone. The only varying factor for cost is the solar system size on your unit. And so there's um yeah, you're just basically entering into this agreement and then they probably figure out who your contractor is based on availability. I don't think you as a homeowner have any opportunity to select who of the four. It's just going to be whoever is available at that time. >> Thanks. In your screenshots, you showed Centatori Systems and you said you weren't sure whether that was the name of the contractor or the name of the solar panel provider. >> Is that right? So, >> correct. I don't know off hand. Again, it's a county program. So, I'm just kind of operating off of whatever they've provided online. Okay. >> Um, you could certainly go online and look it up and then if you do go through the program, you would find more information there. >> Okay. So, it could be that a few of my follow-up questions are not applicable to the city. I can read. >> Yes, we do not claim to be, you know, the product owners or um you know, the full uh I guess bucket of information here, if you will. If you have specific questions, I would just recommend going to the website. They have a whole um customer service desk available. They have Q&A um information. Um all of the technical aspects will be answered on their website. >> Okay. Thanks. And if I if I may, I would just add on to that that as Ally and I, we we meet weekly to discuss the sustainability commission, to discuss the work plan, and one of our goals, as she said, in in the work plan, in our strategic uh priority is um this solar type education. And when we saw this opportunity with the county, we thought it was a good opportunity for us to make use of what the county is already doing rather than taking um the city's time uh to to recreate the wheel, so to speak. And so that's why we thought it would be a good idea just to amplify um what the county is doing and why we don't have a lot of um specific answers, Commissioner Henry, to how the county came up with this program. >> Yeah. Thanks, Susan. Then I'll I won't ask any more questions that are specific to the program itself, but I'll relegate the questions just that are applicable to the city. Do you know how many Mitaka properties have solar currently? >> That was my question. >> That was one sorry. >> Oh, yeah. Sorry. What was that? >> No, that was one of my questions for you. Go ahead. >> Yes, it's great question. So, we do report that in the um is it strategic? Yeah. uh we do uh know how many have been added. So for about the last 10 years, we've been tracking uh building permits, electrical permits for solar installations on houses and um commercial properties. And so we can go back that far and tell you we have these this many. I I can't do it right now off the top of my head, but that's certainly something we can bring back to the commission. anybody that installed prior to probably 2015. Um we don't we haven't been tracking that. >> So sorry. So in response to that, so um I have been reporting that on the city council strategic priorities is that it's so it's actually on there is a dashboard data dashboard on our website and I believe we're around 700 um but again I don't have that specific data but you could actually go on that dashboard and it will show it on there. But we're tracking that um because when whenever there's a strategic priority um and I'm looking at Susan because I keep getting confused between the the terminology there, but they do a performance metric and the way to measure how we're doing on the goal is to then measure, you know, some sort of um quantifiable piece of data and that is how many installations are in the city. So ideally um we're quantifying that by the building permit information and I actually think that it went back to 20 2008 I want to say. So sure yeah yeah you absolutely could. So stay tuned on that but I can certainly share that on a later time but we are reporting on it. >> Thanks Ellie. Is that dashboard on sustainable Mitaka? >> It's on the city's homepage. So Susan will pull it up so you can watch how she navigates to it. >> Okay that's good. You mentioned that not everybody in the city received a letter like this and the county somehow they looked at they prioritized sites. Do you know the criteria of that? Was that maximizing sun exposure or were there other criteria that were involved in the selection process? >> Um so when I asked the county who received it, they said that they selected um climate areas of high priority. So, and then they also said that it sounded like um h households that would be income qualified were also of of priority. So, I imagine they ran some sort of um you know GIS analysis to determine the location. So, other than that, I don't know for certain. So, you would have to direct that question to the county. >> Income qualified meaning that they have enough income to pay for it or income qualified just the opposite where >> the opposite. So, they'd be income qualified for um assistance programs. Okay, back to the first point about climate priorities. I think we all could benefit from a cooler climate and I'd like to see this mailer being sent out to every person in in the city. That's my personal preference, but I'd like to see specifically what their criteria is and why they chose not to send it to some people. >> Yeah. So, thank you, Commissioner. So, um, that's kind of, I guess, one of the reasons that we stepped in to say, you know, we can help promote this and that's why it went into the Minnotonka mailer that does go to all Minnitonka residential households. So, now all Minnotonka households will be informed and I was happy to hear that the county was okay with that. Um, again, going back to capacity of their installers, I imagine that's why they did not um contact every household within Henipin County because that would be several thousand. I can only imagine. Um, so all Minnitonka households at this point have or will be notified come August. >> Well, thank you for picking up the baton and running with it. I think it's important that all citizens have access to this. This is probably another question for the county to stop me if it is. But do you know why they they restrict access for some small businesses? It seems like it's beneficial to everything. I'd like to encourage every business to apply for this. Um, I don't have the answer off the top of my head, but I did read about it on the FAQ. So, you would have to go on to the FAQ to learn a bit more. Um, I know that there were some income or not, sorry, not income, but there was some eligibility requirements and I have to imagine it, um, deals with the contracts that they made um, and the capacity of the the installers here. So, >> yeah, that makes sense. Do you know the average ROI for some of the 700 solar installations in Minnitonka? >> No, we do not calculate that. >> Is there any anecdotal evidence where homeowners have come back to the city to say, "Hey, this is great. I'm glad I I invested in this and I paid my investment back in this much time." I'm thinking if we as ambassadors go and promote this program, that's one of the first questions people are going to ask us. So if we can show a dollar value on that one, it's going to be really beneficial. >> So thank you commissioner. So the program is telling you that in um if you look on this slide there, it shows an estimate and the ROI is essentially the monthly savings or the savings um the 25 year net savings. So it's projecting that for you. Um so that's information that it's providing you upfront. Um the other instances that we have and we're trying to collect more of that anecdotal data is through the sustainable Minnotonka award program and you saw businesses like the engineered products um co come through here and they showcase their entire project and they share that ROI data with us. So we're eliciting that feedback. Um it's just up to the private entity, you know, whether you're a resident or a business to share that. Um but going back to the last um item that we had about collecting those case studies, that's the data we're looking for. You know, not just to share that you have completed a project, but what what are the the benefits that you've received and obviously cost savings is is one of those. So, >> thanks. Oh, so you're saying that the 25-y year net savings, that's the ROI that the county gives us. um um that would be the savings that you're going to see with within a 25-y year period that the program is estimating for you. To add on to that, the the screen that Ally is showing here is when she went into the system, she utilized the information that was given to her from the county mailer, went online, entered this information, and then the system tells you as an individual based on your current use and what could go on your home, what your um rate of return would be. Um certainly, it's going to differ um for for every user. And so I think that using this tool is is better than just giving an average. >> Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Last question for Diane. You mentioned that the 120% threshold of annual average annual electricity usage. Is that a Minnesota statute or how did that 120% threshold come about? >> I'm I'm not positive if it's Minnesota or Excel. Um >> but one way or another you can't put more capacity than what your maybe the previous years had. >> That's my understanding. >> Okay, that's good to know. >> And as far as at least one example, uh we put solar panels on in 2018 and at the time they said the return on investment would be about a seven-year time frame. And I think um I think it will be a little bit longer because we put solar panels on first and then we electrified with EV and heat pump. So our electric use has gone up, our gas has gone down. Um when we add both of both fuels together, um we're saving about half of the cost with the heat pump in particular. Well, that's really good testimonials. So, we need to capture those things and then have a little guide whenever we go and do a tableling event so we can share those stories with people. >> But the price of solar certainly has decreased over the decade. Uh return on investment should be a much faster turnaround. But and I I also wanted to applaud um Minnetonka participating in this program. It'd be great if it could be a fast turnaround uh with installers. Um I did look and there are many things, many barriers which are being eliminated. Um the 25 year um warranty on the product. All of the companies apparently on their website um agreed to a 25-year warranty and 10 years on uh service. Um the uh as far as home sales it does uh the estimate is it increases solar panels will increase um house sales um 4% value on the average and it's um there's also um for HOAs um Minnesota has allowed uh solar panels to be put on HOA homes. Um, and I believe that's a new uh restriction that was alleviated. So, thank you. >> Thanks, Diane. >> Thank you. >> Any other any other questions, Ashley? >> Uh, more so comments. Um, number one, I did want to address uh one of the comments that was made by Commissioner Henry um regarding um wanting to make sure that we highlight some of the anecdotes surrounding um just getting I guess positive messages out about solar because I do think that is something that's really important. Everything that I have learned about solar since being on the commission, I have learned from our fellow commissioners. um Commission uh Commissioner uh Meyer just as she spoke right now about her experience with her solar panels. Everything I've learned about solar on your personal home I've learned from Commissioner Meyer or I've learned from um Chair um Gallum. So, uh I think that I that's something that I think we every time we have a meeting it comes up because of their personal knowledge everything that she just shared with us about the three years that they look back the 120%. So I think that's something that is really nice about which is why it's so nice that we have you know residents who have personal knowledge that they're able to highlight in these meetings. I think that's fantastic. Also when we're in community and doing our ambassador work it comes up as well. So I think that's uh something that makes uh this a very enriching experience. So uh I appreciate that. So I hope that you both know how much you know I appreciate that. I think we all have different things that I always say that are kind of our passion areas. I know that solar is something that's important for both of you all. Um so I do love those. Um, I think that we've talked about it before about like possibly like, you know, highlighting those things in like some of our social media things. And so maybe that's what you were alluding to a little bit is like potentially like trying to do that on some of the social the and maybe that's something we can circle back to when we're doing our planning later on is potentially trying to highlight um some of our um focus areas that we're passionate about, our passion projects uh on the city's websites or the city's um social media pages. But I do think that we that is something that we talk about. That is something that I have learned a lot about just from the commissioner. So, I think that's done very well. And then once again, I do thank Commissioner Meyer for even just sharing her knowledge. Now, uh immediately she's like, I have an answer for this question. Three-year look back 120%. I was like, here we go. I'm taking notes now. I know a little bit more about solar. So, I think that's something that I just wanted to make sure I highlighted really quickly. Thank you. >> Thank you. I I have one question, Ally. This is a Henipin County program. Okay, so you know residents are signing up through early September. Let's say X number of people in Henipin County sign up. There will be a subset of those people from the city of Minnitonka. Will you in the future be able to go back to Henipin County and and quantify how many people that are in Minnetonka that have participated in this program? and would Henipin County provide us with some information so that we could reach out to some folks you know and ask them how it's going at least anecdotally I mean you know we don't need a database a public database but >> I mean it would be good for I think it would be beneficial for us to have that information and I would think that it could be it would be readily available from the from the county am I correct >> I think you're correct yes um based on my communications with them. They've been nothing but um wanting to be willing partners with us on this, you know, and have us assist with that. Um so yeah, I I don't I mean aside from, you know, private data, right? I think that they might have to go through a process of >> um it's it's possible when you sign up to this maybe you are signing something that says, you know, I understand I'm a part of this program and I'm um you know, allowing my information to be public data. I don't I don't know. But, um, I can only imagine that they'd be willing to share some of that with us. >> Yeah. I I have another question. And as most folks here know, many years ago, we signed up with a private community solar garden is at the time. I thought that made a lot of sense. I don't know if that company which is out of uh Colorado I won't mention its name um you know would have if if they typically release the number of customers they have or at least at least the number of customers in the city of Minnetonka that they use. I mean you can ask me yeah and and I and I can tell you that approximately 88% of my household's electrical usage comes from solar and I can share that with you but I don't know that you could call up company Q and say okay how many folks in Minnotonka didn't want active system but they wanted to participate in a solar garden and they have within the city of Minnotonka I don't know if we have that information >> so I think you're asking how many people participate in community solar >> yeah do we know. >> So, we do actually that's a number that we report on um to the green subsidies program. I don't have it off hand, >> but it requires that they go through the utility which I think is almost always required where um in order to participate you get the credit through your utility. So, um it's a part of the utility community energy reports that are actually public data. you can go on to um XL Energy's website, but we do have that information and that's something I could bring back to one of the future meetings >> if it's not extremely ownorous and >> we already collect it. We collect it annually. So, >> okay, that'd be good. Thank you. That was my my question except um are there any other questions? Because if not, I want to thank you for presentation. I I hope we've answered your questions because you were looking for feedback. >> Yes, thank you. Lots of ideas. And with that, I'm going to open and close the public input portion for that agenda item. Uh, and we'll move to item six, which is report from staff. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you for a great discussion. Um, we'll move on to general staff updates. Um so first we're going to start out with um an update on the Everything Electric exhibit that was held at Summerfest on August 28th or sorry June 28th I'm next month not last month. Um thank you to those who attended that. Um so we had four just over 400 people um engage with us directly. That means we had a conversation with them. However, over 6,000 people attended this event and we were in a phenomenal location um in my opinion where I almost certainly feel as if everyone that was at the event likely passed us um because we were we were at the entrance of the soccer field which was the whole area where they had a bunch of children's activities and everyone was there for children's activities. So, everyone passed us, right? Um, but we we had four vehicles on site. We had one plug-in hybrid um electric Jeep. We had um a Cadillac L. We had the um Yep. We had the electric EV Blazer, which was um a police department vehicle at the city of Minnotonka. And then we also had a Hyundai Kona um electric vehicle. So um have some other pictures here. We had a whole series of educational um posters printed thanks to our communications staff. Um we were also located right next to the playground which I felt was really helpful because when kids were playing their parents wanted to come over to our um our uh vehicles. Let's see what else. Sorry this might go past. So that was the the Jeep. I felt that the Jeep got a lot of interest. Um, I think it was really fun for kids. We had a lot of kids sitting. I saw a lot of people of just all ages. Um, I think it was really eye-catching. So, it was really fun to have this, um, bright blue Jeep present. Also, um, I was surprised. I think one of my takeaways is that I feel we should always have a plug-in hybrid vehicle. I think I underestimated um, you know, people still in that transition phase that might have some hesitancy towards converting to a full electric vehicle. There were a lot of people asking um the owner of this vehicle about it and just um what it means to go to an electric vehicle and um kind of how to get your toes wet, if you will. So um I think that made quite a big impact. Um that's another example of our signs. We had another uh we had an electric ebike there too that was actually owned by the police. So you can see our police chief there. He drives this EV Blazer. So, it was fun to have some police presence there for some of the period. Um, and then we also had a robot mower there, which drew actually a lot of attention thanks to Cher Olive's son, Mark. Um, that was really amazing. We had a sign that actually said, "Come see a robot mower." And that got a lot of attention. Um his feedback was that a lot of people just didn't know that robot mowers existed. Um it was quite interesting learning from um some people that uh were seniors, you know, that were saying that, you know, they don't want to mow their lawns anymore and how helpful this could be for them. So that was really great. Or just people that lived alone were really interested in it. So, it was kind of a a cool um combination of like serving a need and also going electric at the same time. But that brought in a lot of um interest as well. We also had some electric lawn equipment over here. We gave a lot of um light bulbs, LED light bulbs away. We also had um a survey going on with a drawing to win um some family passes from the Marsh or Willist. So, that was a really great way to collect some data, too. We just asked if people um sat in an EV today, if they drive an electric vehicle, and yeah, we were able to collect some information there. Um we also were able to rent this partners Excel Energy Partners and Energy um electric vehicle charging display, which was really um fun to have. Initially, we were just going to have a poster with a, you know, a picture of it, but to see one, I think, in person was really exciting. And one of the EV drivers that, uh, drove the Cadillac, he was like, I should, you know, and plug it into my car, which I thought was kind of a cool version of the display, too. Um, and the planning division actually had a zoning um, table next to us, and we brainstormed and came up with um, an activity to get uh, children and their families to come over. So, we had uh spin art there and it was a great way to kind of chat with the parents while the kids were busy doing something and it was actually wildly successful, much more successful than we even expected. So, that was really fun um to just try that out. So, um yeah, just wanted to share some feedback there um based on the commissioners that helped that day. I think they were all um supportive of it and we might hopefully try that again next year. Um we also have uh another version of that that we'll be hosting at the city's open house in October. We will likely talk about that at the September meeting um September sustainability commission meeting. That one will be less focused on personal vehicles and probably more likely focused on what the city is doing, the city's vehicles, cuz that's how that event um is already kind of set up with showcasing city um equipment. But we'll also have some education and resources how you can participate. But um so moving on, um if you haven't seen in your emails, you should have received an invitation to the joint tour um between the city council and commissions. I shared it in one of the Friday E-News emails and then Karen Telga um our administrative assistant in our department also shared an RSVP. So if you're interested in joining um that's going to be on July 31st at 5:00 p.m. until 8, I believe. Um and we're going to take a tour to different businesses in the city. We'll make some stops at solar related um either businesses that have solar or solar installers and then also the city's newly installed solar. So, I think it'd be very relevant to the sustainability commission. Um, is there anyone that hasn't RSVP that would like to RSVP now? The RSVP is due on the 24th, Ellen. Okay, great. Anyone else? Okay. Oh, >> I'll alternatively RSVP. >> Sounds good. Just to add to that, we will be meeting actually the tour starts at 5:30. We will be meeting at 5:00 at Ridgedale uh Commons Park where we will uh feed you before uh getting you on a bus with members of the council and all of the other commissions uh have also been invited. >> Thanks, Susan. Um just put a reminder here that our next meeting is on Tuesday, September 16th. That is the third Tuesday again. Um, and then going forward, if you're able to share if you're um not going to be present the Tuesday before the meeting, that will help us just kind of keep track of the meeting packet and make sure that we will have a quorum. Um, so that worked out well this week. Um, so let me know if you have any concerns, but if you're going to attend, no need to RSVP. This is more just if you know in advance that you cannot make it. We totally understand that emergency situations or sickness or whatever comes up. So, if that's, you know, with within the week's time frame, no, no worries there. Um, the Home Energy Squad visit campaign results. I Let's see. I have some notes on this somewhere. Um, so we did submit for the grant reimbursement in the final report. Let's see if I have it in here or not. I don't know if I have it somewhere. [Applause] Nope. Okay, I'll try to remember off the top of my mind. So, I believe we had 392 home energy squad visits completed between October 2024 and June of this year. Um, the rate that we complete, so the the rate that uh home energy squad visits were completed from January to June of this year was double the rate of the last year um previously. So, we double that rate within six months essentially than it was before, which is pretty phenomenal. Um, I'm waiting for more data to come back. Um, and that will tell us likely even more successful results within the true um campaign, like the what did we call it? We called it like a special campaign period, a promotional campaign period that we ran through uh April through June. So, I think the rates were even higher. Some of the data I looked at was um suggesting that we even increased it like two to yeah three to four times the rate of signups and we normally do which was really exciting. Um, unfortunately we didn't use all the funds, but um, we tried and it was just honestly kind of like a little bit of an unrealistic um, goal, but I think that the success of the the rates in comparison to previous years is very indicative of um, how successful it was. So that was really exciting to see. Um, again, just waiting on some specific data where it'll maybe suggest which type of communication was most successful. So, ideally, I'd like to see when people signed up and then correlate that with when we did a promotion to see if was the memo most successful, was the postcards most successful? Um, was our tableabling events most successful. So, stay tuned on that. I think that will help inform future outreach campaigns um going forward. And I would also um say that during that successful part of the campaign where we really hit the ground running um that was also oddly over their slowest time of the year which I found out. Um so it's also pretty interesting to see how successful it was even though it was a general um like slower time of season for people. So um stay tuned on more info there but just wanted to share. Oh, and then actually one other piece I wanted to note is that onethird so 30% of those who signed up actually um were income qualified for income assistance. So I believe they meet 80% of the area median income. Um so 30% it was 120 visits. So I thought that was um really telling to see like who we actually provided outreach to. the postcards that we sent were those um who were in the highest uh climate vulnerable areas too. So it goes to show that um I think we reached the people that we we were really hoping to reach. So that was exciting. But again more d more data will be provided on that front. Um for the organic sign up um I did receive a confirmation of data. I believe it was for the end of May is the most recent data I received. We had 2700 people signed up, which is um I believe over a thousand more people than we had expected. Yep. >> Alli, when you say 2,700, is that 2,700 households? >> Households. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for the clarification. 2,700 households as of the end of May. >> How many households do we have in Minnotonka? So, we can calculate a percentage. >> Is it around 14 14,000? Okay. >> So, I know that the signup rate is higher than we had, you know, the public works fac uh public works staff had estimated at this point. So, I think that's great to see that there is interest. >> I don't mean to jump in ahead, but I have a quick question. You had mentioned that we didn't use all of the money allocated for the home energy audits. >> What happens to the to the money? I mean, it's in a it's in an account or it's in a it's an item. Can that be carried over into 2026? >> Great question. So, it's on a reimbursement basis. So, if we didn't request it, we just don't receive it. >> Okay. >> So, it would be at the state. >> So, what do you think the likelihood is of getting some money for 2026 for home energy audits? Is it do you think it's low, moderate, excellent? >> Yeah. So, great question. So we as a city we have a budget for the home energy squad visits to subsidize that for residents um our own city funds. So we do have some funding left for that. So we will be now going forward if um a resident wants to get a home energy squad visit they will pay half of the cost like previously um before the grant period. >> So we'll continue with that. Um there is a a significant amount of funding left. So we do have that uh through the end of the year and then we will continue that into 2026 for this period. So >> thank you. >> Yep. >> Um and then the last item I had was on sustainability ambassador signups. Um so I had mentioned that farmers market table uh commissioner David Carr is helping us with that. Um just based on the discussion and um seeing how you know effective it is to have personalized experience. Um, I don't know does if anyone else besides uh, Commissioner Meyer if you have solar panels, but it would be really great if one commissioner with solar on their household um, could be in attendance because I I just think that'd be really helpful to have that personal experience um, to be able to share. So, okay, great. So, Commissioner Meyer will be joining that as well. Um, and then let's see. So, the September when >> Sorry, Ally, real quick. >> Yeah, sorry, Commissioner Meyer. I know I signed you up by default. Thank you. We appreciate you. Thank you. >> You're welcome to take my place if you want to, Commissioner Pot. >> I got to check the C the court calendar. I will get back to you though and see if I can squeeze it myself in there as well. >> More the marrier. So, if we want to have more than two, that is completely fine. Um, so the next item was the Wednesday, September 17th business council meeting that we talked about in the uh first regular agenda item tonight. Um that is the meeting between the city and the west metro uh chamber. So that is on Wednesday September 17th from 11:30 to 1. I believe Cherub and Commissioner Patine had expressed some interest. I know the timing might be a little tricky but for now um I'll put you both as tentative and we can maybe continue to circle back together. It's a little ways from now. So wonderful. We can coordinate driving as well to that. I'm not honestly sure of the location to be honest. I want to say it's offsite, but stay tuned. Um, that is all I had for my update. So, um, with that, I'll send it back to the chair. >> Thank you. Any other questions or comments? If not, I will open and close the public input portion for that agenda item, which is 5B, I'm sorry, 6A. I apologize. 6A for our notetakers. With that, we will move to item seven, which is a report from our commissioners. Is does anyone have anything to share with the fellow commissioners? If not, there's there's one little item I want to just mention. It's unfortunately not very positive, but the Health and Human Services Climate Office has gone dark under the current federal administration. Staff's scattered to the wind and the office is being shuttered. Not a surprise. Um, it's unfortunate, but as I pointed out in the past, the city initiates, Henipin County initiates, the state of Minnesota initiates, and the federal government regresses. That's the way it's it is, and that's the way I believe it's going to be. So, we're on our own. Well, with our other agencies, no federal partners. That was the only thing I wanted to add. Uh that was Dave Grethead. >> Just a note, um maybe offline somebody can give me uh some advice. I'm going to get my whole heating and air conditioning system replaced. I have to on my home. So I'd like to get the data from that back to the commission somehow in pieces and parts. If anybody has a template or form or something, I should be like tracking the past costs, the future costs, what it costs to install and rebates and all that so I can calculate all that and bring that back as a anecdotal story. >> Thank you Dave. Um, with that we move to item eight, which is other business. If not, we will move past item eight. We will go to item nine, which is adjournment, unless there are any objections. >> Sorry, let me go real quick. Sorry. Sorry. >> Yes. >> Um, one thing I'm sorry because I think this happened since our last meeting because we canceled the meeting prior to that, which I wanted to discuss very briefly, was the event that was held at the marsh, the >> Please help me. Um, >> a clothing swap. >> Thank you. The clothing swap. Wow. First of all, you did a fantastic job, Ally. That was such a success. I only was able to stay for what, the first half. Um, >> who? Commissioner Meyer, were you there? Yes, Commissioner Meyer. Yes. Uh, yes. Also, our youth commissioners. Uh, fantastic. Uh, I was blown away by how popular that was. Are we not going to need a larger location? So, for everyone who's watching it, we um did a clothing swap. We had people come and drop off items. I believe they had the opportunity prior to to drop off items that they were interested in just donating. Then we had individuals bring items as well that they wanted to drop off um that they were no longer in need of, but they also could pick up items that they maybe wanted to swap out for other things. Um it was ran like a welloiled machine like you might expect um per alley and um we were tracking the weights. I don't know, I'm sure you probably have final numbers, but um it was I was blown away by how many people showed up, how many people were interested. I uh know that we had talked about inc increasing the frequency of potentially doing it and based on the response from the community, I would imagine that's something that we hopefully can do more often. I especially think that it's great even if I think we talked about on the commission potentially catering it to um even specific um uh like themes. So maybe around like children's clothing or in the fall like you know like fall or something like that. But uh I was really blown away. I thought it was organized very nicely. Um, I think I think there was an event here this day because I know I came here accidentally at first. Um, so, um, but, uh, yeah, I was blown away by the response of the community. There was a lot of people that showed up and so I just that I wanted to highlight that event um, because I thought it went really well and I thought it was planned really nicely. It's always great to see the commissioners showing up and volunteering um, in the community and um, just job well done. Is there anything else that I missed? >> Thank you very much. It's very easy to move on, you know, finish one thing and move on. So, I appreciate the the look back there. Um, I think we had over maybe like 10 volunteers uh which was so helpful and honestly that event couldn't have been ran without the volunteers. So, appreciate you all for being there. Um, we also had a set of volunteers that are not on the commission there and um that was kind of the start of me creating like a sustainability commission or sorry, sustainability volunteer list which is really exciting um and something that I hope to grow and I see you all as ambassadors to that. Um, but it was fun to kind of meet some other people that are interested in this sort of work. Um, I don't have the statistics on the data just because it's been so long at this point. Um, but I will make a note to bring that back at the next meeting too. Um, but thank you. Yes, it was very fun and I know that the marsh, even though it was a smaller area, I know the marsh uh was very excited to have that programming there. Um, and a lot of people from or that are members of the marsh and people that are not members of the marsh and had never been there um enjoyed coming to this space too. So, yes, thank you. I want to agree, Ashley, that it was an excellent event and it was a feel-good. Uh, residents were helping each other, trying on clothes, helping kids identify and kids clothing was a big hit. Um, we were also able to promote the free home energy audits right there. Um, but people were lined up 20 minutes before start time. So, all ages. >> Yeah. And I'm sorry, I wanted to add one more thing. I forgot. Um, that was my first time being going to the marsh. So, I got a personal tour from Commissioner Meyer, which was fantastic. Um, she gave me the tour around the whole space. The space is fantastic. Um, so that was also another great reason to like bring me to the Martian to be able to see the space. So it was wonderful for many reasons. Yes. >> Thank you. Any other comments before we uh complete item nine? Okay. Um, our last item of the night is adjournment. Would anyone like to make that motion to adjurnn? Is there a motion for my fellow commissioners? >> A motion. Thank you. Is there a second? >> I'll second the motion. >> Seconded. >> Uh, do we need to pull the members or >> you can just do a voice on this? >> Or do we should we just raise our hand or all those in favor raise your hand? It's unanimous. It's it passes. We are adjourned. [Music] [Music]