P1011 CITY BUILT FOR THE FUTURE: CLIMATE ACTION IN ATLANTA

I'm here Sam I need 30 seconds one second sorry okay so when Leah comes back I'm going to go ahead and let start letting the nice people in and then we're going to get started hey co-workers how are y'all doing great evening excited thanks for being here thanks for agreeing to do this class take my ID off all right Sam I'm ready Shandra you coming on camera oh are we already recording oh GE hey everyone we're just going to let a few more people in and then we're going to go ahead and get started

hey everybody hey hello good afternoon good evening greetings hello hello hello all right Leah it's 603 if you want to go ahead and get started thank you happy to do so good evening everyone thank you all for being here my name is Leah Laro and I'm the director of neighborhood planning for the city of Atlanta's Department of City Planning and I am very very happy to have all of you here with us tonight for uh our mpu University class this is a part of our planning track P11 if you are enrolled

in our citizen planner certificate program you'll need the course ID number it is p 101 City built for the future climate action in Atlanta I am really really happy to have with us tonight A couple of my colleagues I see well several of my colleagues a couple of folks from my team I see Samantha Terry with us who is the mpu University registar and program coordinator senior for training and education evening y'all and I think I see Tony he disappeared from my screen but Tony mcneel is our progra

m coordinator senior for outreach and engagement initiatives Tony awesome thank you once again for joining us tonight I want to go over some of our classroom rules before I do that I often forget to say this so I'm going to remember to say it this time because my internet was out last night so I'm reminded but we are still even four years into this pandemic we are still subject to technology probably more so now than ever before but we are certainly subject to technology and sometimes connection

s go out if an instructor loses their connection please be patient with us while we wait for others to jump in and kind of carry the Baton of course I will get into our rules real quickly and then we'll begin our instruction please keep your microphone muted at all times this helps us to cut back on background noise and feedback and other in interruptions to the microphone if you plan to take notes this is a very good time to grab a pen and paper to keep notes and you can also feel free to grab

a snack right now in our inperson class classes we do offer snacks and whatnot but for our online classes we cannot give you a snack so if you need a snap please do take a quick moment to run and grab something before we begin instruction also please make sure you keep your camera turned on if you are taking this class for course credit if you are not enrolled in the CPC program or you don't need credit for any other reason you're not required to turn your camera on we do appre appreciate if you

're able to do so we appreciate having cameras on it makes for a much better and more personal instruction experience uh but if you can't it's understood as long as you don't need credit for this class if you would like to ask a question during Q&A to raise uh please raise your hand to get in the queue and I'll show you how to do that momentarily and last but not least our most important rule is that all questions must be relevant to course content if the instructors did not struct on that topic

then it is not relevant to this course content we will provide contact information at the end of the class so if you have additional questions that are not appropriate for this environment you can certainly direct your questions to uh the mayor's office of sustainability who' be happy to answer any questions that you may have that are not relevant to course content but if you raise your hand to ask a question please make sure your question ends in a question mark and is a question and not comme

ntary and please make sure that it is relevant to course content at the end of the class you will get the um uh Sam go back one for me please at the end of the class you will get the presentation that is utilized in any course materials you'll receive that via email so I'm telling those that are here right now at 6:07 p.m. if you see someone come into the chat and ask if there going to get a copy of the presentation you know that they were not here on time if you asked that question you weren't

here on time but yes you will get a copy of the presentation at the end of the class if you would like to raise your hand to get into the Queue at the bottom of your screen you should see a button that says reactions if you click on that button you'll see a popup that then says raise hand at the bottom of that popup box if you'd like to go ahead and practice if you haven't done it in a while or you have a new version of zoom and you need to try it out feel free to test drive it we'll go ahead an

d lower your hand in just a moment but once again to raise your hand you'll click on the button that says reactions at the bottom of the popup you'll see a button that says raise hand and that is how you enter the queue you'll be called in order and again please make sure that your questions are relevant to course content all right so without further Ado I am super excited to introduce to you uh one of my colleagues from the city of Atlanta she is the city's Chief sustainability officer and I wi

ll tell you I think it's been about a year if not more when she first mentioned to me that she wanted to teach this class we had already completed our course work for our course assignments rather for 2023 course offerings for 2023 and and she was very patient and waiting for our 2024 course catalog we are now into 2024 and without further Ado I'm introducing to you the city of Atlanta's Chief sustainability officer Shandra Farley thank you so much for being here Shandra thank you so much Leah a

nd thank you so much to the npu University team yes super excited um and actually even before I was at the city I may have sent a couple of Gils to this team about when are we going to do something on sustainability with npu University and um that was maybe back when we kicked off our our clean energy Advisory Board which which we will talk about so I am super thrilled to to be here tonight and again thank you to the NP University team thank you to my team and thank you to everyone that has regi

stered and and showed up tonight uh we're super excited to be here and looking forward to talking to everyone about what our office does I think you know even me and probably many here have been involved with various iterations of sustainability and resilience offices um at the city of Atlanta so we're going to talk about what we're up to um as a city as the local government and we'll also be weaving in ways um as how that is relevant to our residents and your um ability to take action um becaus

e we can't meet all of these ambitious goals and build um a greater quality of life in city of Atlanta um without doing it together so looking forward to this evening very much and so we are super official official with our uh course name and City built for the future and as we talk about City built for the future I know many of you have been on many courses and uh also keep up with what's going on at City Hall many um particular npu leaders so the mayor's agenda mayor Andre Dickens agenda uh on

e safe City one bright future and under that there are four pillars uh sustainability and resilience officially falls under the City built for the future pillar however we see our work um as critical across all four of these pillars efficient and effective local government one safe city um and a city of opportunity for all and we can keep going Michelle and now I'm going to turn it over to uh J L who is our director CT of urban egg and Food Systems greetings everyone give thanks for that Shandra

um so when we do this grounding and acknowledgement let's try something different today so um if you're able to if you're in a comfortable place you're not driving or riding a bike or doing something like that you know close your eyes but this grounding and acknowledgement is um basically as we talk about sustainability and resilience and a city Bild for the future we want to make sure that we're inclusive and a in you know things of the past that have gotten us here so uh just close your eyes

if if you're able to and I'm just going to touch on a couple things I'm not going to read it verbatim uh but we definitely think about in our grounding and acknowledgement the land the territories practices and cultures uh we definitely want to acknowledge and ground ourselves in the traditions and the history of indigenous peoples First Nations Mogi Creek people uh also of course people of the African diaspora uh who were brought here unjustly and those who have also who have been here uh befor

e all of that and after that and then of course our latinx communities additional countless migrants and immigrants uh we want to make sure we uplift all that continue to show up show out represent and create just Equitable inclusive and anti-racist communities and practices for all of our benefit here in Atlanta and Beyond uh of course we want to give respect and gratitude and support to all humankind living beings in the intersecting overlapping social identities and factors uh some of those c

ould be gender identity cast sexual orientation race class religion disability physical appearances and height um no one is free until we are all free uh that is something that has been articulated by uh many people Fanny L HR Emma Lazarus and Dr Martin Luther King Jr as well so um that's our grounding and acknowledgement uh for those of youall we are also uh connected to the office of equity diversity and inclusion so there's our moment to kickoff that thank you thank you Jou really appreciate

you grounding us today and definitely directly related to our our conversation so I'm going to take us through a course overview what we're going to talk about tonight and kick it off with some grounding in what our office is and what we do so tonight we're going to focus on the fundamentals what is sustainability what is resilience we hear these words all the time there're over 300 definitions for sustainability we're going to talk about how we frame it here um at city of Atlanta for our work w

e're going to talk about our clean energy plan our food access goals and as I mentioned we're going to talk about tools and resources that we can all um use to take action on climate change we going to have a call to action on how to get involved and then we're going to dig into some Q&A we definitely I want to leave plenty of time to be in dialogue with everyone here tonight so this is our team uh everyone uh who who was on tonight we are super excited I want to thank thank my team for all the

work everyone put in Beth Graham um who worked directly with the npu team to get all the logistics down and this is a a good representation of how we work within our office the mayor's office of sustainability and resilience but also in partnership with other departments so we are a mayor's office we are an executive office of the mayor there's about 20 um mayor's offices and then we have about 20 operating departments the department of City Planning is one of those that we work very closely wit

h and uh when we get to our Urban Agriculture and food system section we will definitely talk about um that format and and how that works so we've got our Deputy CSO um our directors team we've got our climate and energy Associates we have a new management analyst which we're super excited about um and then we've got fellows and partners from DCP and then uh those who are working very specific to programs like weather eyes ATL which we will talk about later this evening so this is us this is wha

t we focus on we were officially codified as the mayor's office of sustainability and resilience in the city Charter on December 5th 2022 I remember that because that is my birthday so it was a very nice birthday gift um that wasn't planned it just happened to be the last city council meeting um of 2022 um our mayor Andre Dickens um has done a lot of work to prioritize sustainability and climate resilience he's an engineer he gets it even when we talk about his vision um I talk about how for me

that really sounds like a vision for environmental justice he has elevated the chief sustainability officer position back to the mayor's cabinet so all those 20 plus Executive offices and those 20 plus operating departments every Monday morning at 9:00 am except for when we're not we're all together working on how to drive our goals forward and that interdepartmental collaboration is critical to achieving our goals and so this is what um it says about our office in the city Charter but the main

thing to focus on is that we are rooted in science-based analysis informed by the community and so what is sustainability what is resilience you heard me mentioned there are few hundred definitions of of sustainability uh multiple definitions of resilience we can talk about resilience from a climate perspective we can talk about resilience from a community perspective an economic perspective this is what we have settled on as how we Define sustainability and resilience this is really connected t

o our our grounding exercise that jol led us through because when I think about sustainability I think about the indigenous principle of seven generations and understanding the decisions that we make today should sustain us seven plus Generations into the future and so in talking about our work we have sustainability and how we Define that we have resilience both on a foundation of environmental justice the 17 principles of environmental justice um you'll get to talk about what you believe envir

onmental justice means later all working together to address the inequitable impacts of climate change and again all of those things together is how we focus on climate resilience so even when I'd say mayor's office of sustainability and resilience I'm generally saying or typing sustainability and climate resilience we want to be really climate forward as we are talking and speaking as climate um and the inequitable impacts of climate that are falling disproportionately on marginalized communiti

es is critically important as we move through these goals and so even here at the city you can see our uh way back in 2012-ish you know we had our the power to change and then 2015 we had our climate action plan and then 2017 we had Brazilian Atlanta and then 2019 city council officially adopted clean energy Atlanta and then we had a decarbonization road map what is decarbonization how do we focus on getting fossil fuels out of our out of our buildings um out of our transportation and the Atlant

a City design as well um really spoke to a lot of what we are talking about when we are driving for a more sustainable and a more climate resilient Atlanta so climate resilient at L will be the next strategy that we will be developing together and here we have talked about what climate resilience really really means we know we've got to address these impacts but we also want to make sure not only that those impacts are not getting worse but when we do suffer from those impacts that we are able t

o bounce back better and Achieve conditions that are more Equitable not less through that recovery so we've got time for for our first question we've gone through our our overview so we want to hear from you um how do you define sustainability and resilience and would welcome all of you to start dropping your uh dropping your responses in the chat and I'm G to click over so I can see see some of those coming see some of those coming in local economy absolutely I love that that's first actually u

h particular when we talk about sustainability when we talk about climate resilience when we talk about the clean energy transition all of that is rooted in a more fair and just economy green infrastructure Community oriented growth absolutely oh yes my Wi-Fi must be slow because now they're coming in fast and Furious I love it opportunity to survive and thrive oh hey Britney seeing all these folks that I know in the chat thank you all for being here so this is great keep them coming particularl

y as we continue to go throughout this evening think about what sustainability and resilience means to you and next I will turn it over uh to my colleague uh deputy chief sustainability officer John ridel and our clean energy programs associate Michelle Madan great I'm going to be talking about clean energy Atlanta which is a vision for 100% clean energy future um this resolution our clean energy resolution was passed in 2017 by city council and it's a CommunityWide goal um for 100% clean energy

for all atlantans by 2035 so what even is clean energy um it's defined in our clean energy resolution as um energy that's derived from these sources below so wind solar hydroelectric geothermal biog gas and wave technology sources um and basically what goes under clean energy is renewable it's a source that won't run out it's natural and um self-replenishing it's a zero emission source that does not pollute our atmosphere and um also included in that could be energy saved by Energy Efficiency u

m so the solar and the hydro are both um both sources that the pictures are um within Georgia and then the solar is um um rooftop solar on our Martin Luther King um Junior Recreation Center so yeah here are our interum targets so for our next one which is by 2025 at 30% we're about halfway there um at 15% but really pushing for 2024 and 2025 to make big impacts um and and we really want to at the city lead by example um for municipal operations so to really get our our operations to 100% clean e

nergy and then also just build on Energy Efficiency programs and also to continue to push for Action from regulators and utilities so greenhouse gas emissions these are gases in Earth's atmosphere that trop heat and um underneath that are some examples of ghgs um and then methane which is CH4 so like an example of a human activity could be waste decomposition and land fills so basically rotting waste um can release methane and if you go to our um to the Chart the pie chart to the right um our la

rgest emitters are going to be energy so it's the yellow orange and red bars and then um the transportation is the 30% which is um like the medium blue color and um yeah so greenhouse gas emissions they lead to global warming and climate change which uh warms our planet the last thing I'm speaking about is um our commercial building Energy Efficiency ordinance and this is for large properties commercial and um multifam that are greater than 25,000 Square ft they have to Benchmark their electrici

ty gas and water usage um and there's also an audit component in that for um an energy audit that's on a 10-year cycle but this is a picture of our Atlanta energy map so we've been working past couple years on this but developing um this visual for property owners and the gray um are uh properties that we still need to work with um to get them to submit data and the other colors are are buildings that have sitted have submitted uh data and what their metrics are thanks Michelle uh I I appreciate

it and uh picking up in your point in terms of uh where greenhouse gas emissions come from uh and building energy and transportation being such a high uh greenhouse gas uh emitters um it's the city of Atlanta is considered a leader amongst our our peers and we like to think um if you could do it in Atlanta you can do it anywhere uh you know it's great when a city in New York or California um has a sustainability whether that's for for buildings for uh uh building performance standards um I but

when Atlanta does it uh especially our Southeastern uh Regional cities and counties uh take notice because it's heavily scalable um so the city of Atlanta was one of the first to have a Sustainable Building ordinance which the city leading by example uh requires all new construction uh for the City of Atlanta over 5,000 square feet to be lead silver certified uh and back when it was uh originally passed that was considered uh leading standard however it's uh this the slide sustainable infrastruc

ture updates has updates uh in the title for reason uh it's because um it's not enough to meet the the crisis that we see uh it's not enough to uh really move the needle in terms of Energy Efficiency on clean energy production for our uh clean energy plan and our climate action plan um and and so time for uh for an update um because again the city leads by example and we want to uh we we want to hold ourselves to the highest standard and and hopefully model uh for other buildings and other priva

te nonprofit uh building owners uh multifamilies to uh to join us um we also have the electric vehicle Readiness ordinance we're one of the first in the in the whole country to pass this EV Readiness ordinance and uh what it means is that uh for all commercial new uh new buildings uh as you can see with the the the little EV riness chart uh on the right um for 20% of the electric vehicle uh 20% of the parking spots they have to be uh EV ready meaning they have to have the size uh for for wiring

you have to have the electric paneling done you have to mark which station which uh parking spaces are going to have electric vehicle stations in the future uh but it's really uh now we have standardized language for uh for these since they've come out and really it's not EV Readiness ordinance it's really an EV capable ordinance the city of Atlanta I seen other local governments Implement uh true Readiness which is putting in uh like a drier uh 220 volt plugin so that you can just plug your lev

el two charger in or uh have an Eevee installed so uh city of Orlando has two to 3% for new um uh for new construction uh commercial building parking lots to actually have to put in um e TV uh charging stations for multif family uh and for other commercial buildings um and then we also have solar permitting uh the city of Atlanta wants to be a leader in terms of when people whether you're a business whether you're a resident wants to put on solar on the rooftop to make it as efficient and as eas

y as possible uh Soul smart is the designation to uh that benchmarks where we are we want to uh redesignate as uh Soul smart gold and actually go for platinum the next slide uh goes a little bit we talked very briefly about uh electric vehicle infrastructure this touches on our transportation emissions the city of Atlanta has uh long really over this year this one over oneye goal uh that's really ambitious to really expand our electric vehicle charging not just for the exploding growth in our Fl

eet and our city staff uh but as well as uh being able to make sure that there's Equitable uh electric vehicle charging access uh for for communities that uh as you see in our uh the city of Atlanta's charging map here uh where you don't have a charger for two uh two plus miles um and and in order to enjoy the benefits whether that's clean air whether that's uh the the lower maintenance and fuel cost of electric vehicles uh it's not a chicken and egg scenario there has to be electric vehicle inf

rastructure so uh over the next 90 days 20 electric vehicle uh electric vehicle charges at City Hall Parking Deck over the next 180 days uh doubling our city-owned EV charging across our city-owned sites uh which are also marked in this um uh on this map as well as future charging stations and then by uh 2025 expanding 250 uh electric vehicle Chargers uh charger ports uh across the city of Atlanta especially focusing on uh low income justice 40 uh and low charging access communities um and this

allows us to be able to continue to uh Electrify your Fleet going forward uh we just completed a fleet analysis which looked at the top 100 vehicles that are ready for uh that were best candidates for E replacement most of them were light duty some of them were were medium duties so think light duty is your sedans crossovers trucks uh medium duty is your buses and shuttles heavy duty is really really heavy vehicles uh big haulers big fire trucks um but the average predicted lifetime savings was

around 45 to the 31% and that's without the IRA incentives and so going to the next slide uh the city of Atlanta also just hosted electric vehicle day uh for our city employees uh and we actually uh as part of this we had uh ride and drive experiences for City staff to be able to uh experience uh driving and different electric vehicle models um as well as uh looking at Innovative uh partnership so the city of Atlanta's partnered with her Herz uh to support uh rental and uh electric vehicle ride

share opportunities a Workforce Development opportunities uh we're partnered with Atlanta careers Academy through APS um uh and we've done uh a really cool curriculum as well as um hers actually donated a a Chevy bolt uh to Aca to to help go through and uh for students actually work on it um really I mean what we're looking at uh Arc um in terms of federal funding because there's a lot out there we put in an application for CFI round one unfortunately uh we didn't get it it was over a $30 millio

n uh application but arc our partners uh did receive it and so they are going to be installing 300 to 400 level two free level two Chargers over the next 18 months and uh we're certainly going to be pushing for uh a good portion of those to be with in the city of atanta proper especially in low charging access communities uh we're also taking advantage of direct pay for the first time uh when we purchase EV Chargers and EVS for our Fleet to make sure that uh we take advantage of that and get tha

t money back and we're also looking at Innovative uh charging models looking at our rideways how can we do uh rideway charging on our streets um how can we uh work with third parties if we can't pay Upfront for it how can we utilize City properties to be able to host EV charging but not uh when we don't have when we don't have the funds to be able to pay for it uh for companies like envir spark or block power or Tesla to be able to use those sites uh to be able to provide electric vehicle chargi

ng and so it's uh all hands- on Deck mayor Dickens says it's a group project and it certainly is to be able to meet uh all of our ambitious sustainability goals uh and uh also quickly touching on our solar Atlanta program we have 27 uh uh installations through our partnership with Cherry Street energy uh across our portfolio think Parks and Recreation Center think we've seen uh the MLK Aquatic Center uh think Department of watershed uh management facilities Public Safety headquarters um fire sta

tions all all all across the board and now we're expanding to the Atlanta airport um and so as the city of Atlanta uh continues to expand our uh our our solar how can we think innovatively we now through this most recent Amendment are able to um take advantage of renewable energy credits and actually uh are looking at Pathways to sell renewable energy credits uh made uh captured by these solar panels and then uh utilize them to support renewable energy and Energy Efficiency uh for our buildings

in our community uh so I actually have a question uh because I didn't want to dive too deep into wonky energy uh but wanted to see uh if anybody knew on average how many kilowatt hours are needed to power uh your standard household in one year uh go ahead and put him in the chat holy oh wow I can't that's a lot of zeros Brook um that that is really impressive Lee uh you're right um what around 800 to 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per month uh which totals to about 9,600 to uh 12,000 kilowa

tt hours annually and as part of our solar Atlanta program just to put that in context uh the city has produced over uh 200 million uh kilowatt hours oh sorry two 2 million kilowatt hours which averages to about 2,000 households uh year uh years worth of 2,000 households uh in Atlanta just as a part of that program and it's growing um so thank you for uh y'all's guesses and uh putting yourselves out there and with that I'm going to introduce our Urban agriculture director jolu so I'll pass it ov

er to you thank you yeah good thanks John AR um before I get started I'm going to put my sunglasses on because you know presentations are better with sunglasses right and um you know also before we get started I think we're going to pull everyone and see if you remember all of the words to the grounding and acknowledgement anyone all right we'll pass on it no um great to be here again um again my name is Jay Olu bayu I'm the urban Agriculture and Food Systems director uh I've been at the city of

Atlanta working at the city of Atlanta for about three and a half years now uh it's been great to be a part of this team and I've been working in urban Agriculture and food systems for over a decade so uh looking forward to sharing a little bit and you know maybe helping some people ideate and think about how this um relates to climate and sustainability and resilience um next so this is a slide just to show you some quotes from um our mayor Andre Dickens he is definitely uh involved aware supp

ortive um about how we are going to address food insecurity how we're going to address uh food Justice how it connects to climate equity and Justice uh but here's some statistics right one in nine Metro atlantans live with food insecurity that also includes one in six children um this was a stat that I was ready to share yesterday if need be uh yesterday we had the inaugural uh mayor's first uh youth town hall and I will say it was wonderful to hear the youth uh speaking about and asking questio

ns about everything ranging ing from personal health mental health climat food housing it was wonderful but this is a statistic that we know exist um and of course again mayor Dickens is on record to show that everybody every family uh should have access to healthy food convenient locations Etc so um I am not a person who works alone uh there is a urban Agriculture and Food Systems team um and we're working on it in a couple different ways so speaking of a couple different ways um here is our mi

ssion we are cultivated committed to cultivating a resilient Equitable inclusive just and accessible food system for Atlanta uh our vision uh ensuring all residents live within a half a mile of fresh affordable food by 2040 uh we're also at some point going to even expand that language to include culturally relevant uh because we recognize that having access to food and even defining food is important and then also making sure that you know folks are be able to celebrate their cultures uh their

ethnicities and be able to have access to that not necessarily have to be relegated to one particular part of town to get a particular type of food you know we want people to be able to access it and in our approach here we do this in a couple of different ways this is not an exhaustive list uh but just showing some of the different areas um that we work in collaborate in partner in uh and support so everything ranging from community and neighborhood Farms Gardens food forests neighborhood food

stores rain Gardens pollinator Gardens comp post and carbon collection systems uh controlled environment agriculture which is a growing Trend that's been going on for some time uh that's where you're growing usually um maybe in an indoor environment can be outdoor using some level of light lighting um and not necessarily soil-based uh Community advisory and steering committees so this is something that we think is extremely important um to not just operate in a place of you know thinking that we

're the subject matter experts or or we've been you know hired to represent the higher city of Atlanta which is true and also recognizing that the community um is where a lot of the wealth of knowledge and experience is so we want to ensure that we're having Community advisory and steering committees so this is not an exhaustive list of our approach as I said before but it is just giving you an idea of how we approach uh this Urban Agriculture and food systems work this is a really good slide an

d I definitely want to give a shout out to Shandra on um the the image for this but uh sustainability climate res resence and food uh food security is a standard for evaluating climate resilience you will see that in USDA EPA United Nations uh there are several other organizations uh internationally nationally and locally uh who do measure food security uh and you know align that with climate resilience wasted food is actually the largest category of waste in Georgia landfills um half of the was

ted food in Georgia comes from the Atlanta metro area so not solely the city of Atlanta but definitely the Metro Atlanta area for those who may not know well it's actually next rotting food produces methane which is a greenhouse gas worse than carbon dioxide so you know as you see in this picture there's a lot of I mean some of this looks like things that actually could probably be edible of course um others of course maybe de composed a little bit um not necessarily something you'd want to serv

e but this is one of the worst things that we want we don't want to continue to contribute food uh wasted food food that spoiled or just waste in general uh to the landfill um we'll talk about it in the moment but uh what we'd like to do is to be able to recover that food ideally while it's still edible uh get it to other places um and the redistribution type of way and then you know lasting getting it into the soil which is a composting and Organics recycling So speaking of that the Atlanta pha

ses of local food you will see diagrams like this this is not um this this diagram here is something that is kind of common you'll see it if you do a Google search you'll find something similar um so you know we look at it from a clockwise way if you want to go around from right to left some people will start with Recycling and composting because we know that for any kind of healthy nutritious food you actually need to have healthy nutritious soil uh for for sake of here we'll start with product

ion so you know we have farmers in the city of Atlanta there are approximately a little over 20 Farms that we have on our fresh food access map um that you can see where people are farming uh not to talk with folks who are doing farming that just may not be uh registered or we just may not be aware of there are a lot of Community Gardens there are people who are growing on their balconies front yards backyards sidey yards rooftops Etc so production is where it is right we want to ensure that uh

we're continuing to grow food um I like to say you know grow something know your farmer grow some food um so we go from production there's processing as well um what do you when that food besides eating it just straight from the plant in its original state um but what happens next how do we turn uh apples into apple butter how do we turn um strawberries into strawberry jam how do we turn Tomatoes into salsa uh things of that nature uh aggregation and distribution so the food's been produced uh n

ow it's been processed and now it is getting to different places this is another way and another actually this whole will are areas where you can think about ways to reduce uh greenhouse gas emissions um from the packaging of different things also to the transportation of different materials the distribution of it um all the that and even how we cook our food so then you've got the aggregation distribution consumption is where a lot of us right kind of interact with food at a very maybe a more r

egular Pace uh how are we eating where are we eating at home in a restaurant um at a pantry you know things of that nature and then recovery and redistribution I'm sorry so one of the comments recovery and redistribution as I said before we get to the compost and Organics recycling um there are a lot of organizations within the city of Atlanta some of them who have been institutions for 30 plus years some who have been created more recently in response to the covid pandemic um and other emergenc

ies that are here to actually recover food before it gets wasted and redistributed um of course in good condition safe condition um so that we're not putting a lot of food into the landfills and then last but not least or the beginning for some people uh the recycling and composting um another way that uh we were able to help the environment is by sequestering carbon um so by putting those food products into compost piles creating a compost um material um and then becomes an amendment we're actu

ally able to sequester carbon in that process and then my putting compost back in the soil which is the best firm uh form of amendment or fertilizer if you will um that also is bringing uh carbon back into the soil so this is just a way to look at our local food phases um and again we do work in all of these areas um and we partner with a lot of folks and support a lot of folks uh in these areas this slide you know there are a couple of different logos on here um again these are some of the big

kind of buckets if you will of where some of our work is so Atlanta uh is urban agriculture in Atlanta uh that was probably poined around 2015 or so um so that is you may have heard of Atlanta our website is atlanta.org or ent.com um but there you can kind of keep up with a variety of things and see what's going on uh aglan grown is a program uh that we have on the team and the team is the urban Agriculture and Food Systems team uh this is about business development increasing the number of mark

ets and opportunities connecting folks in the urban a and food system space or businesses with u markets whether that's you as your household your community restaurants uh there's some branding in there and convenings and meetings uh Food Matters food waste in cities again we're looking at that food recovery redistribution uh also looking at the composting so um Food Matters is actually a program through the national resource defense Council uh nrdc uh we were a city uh that went through some of

their programming and some of their uh reports and trainings uh and we continue to still uphold and uplift uh what we've learned from Food Matters and we're going to actually look to be in another cohort as well grows a lot is one of our really popular programs where we have underutilized and vacant city properties that we then make uh available to community members to start a community garden or a community Farm um pollinate Lanta it's kind of a term right now but it's basically about pollinat

ors um two out of every three bites of food that you eat is made possible through pollination butterflies bees bats Birds uh a whole variety of other insects um so pollinators are extremely important uh they're beautiful aesthetically they have um mental health benefits and physical benefits um and can be beneficial when you grow them and then also they're very important for us to be able to eat and trees are great pollinators we have the urban Food Forest of Browns Mill which is the largest pub

lic Food Forest uh in the United States of America at 7.1 acres and then we also have a wonderful site called The Outdoor Activity Center um which is stewarded by West Atlanta Waters Shadow liance guwa uh that is a 20 plus Acre Site with an old growth forest um that we're working we're continuing to work with them um and establishing that as a food forest and then just one example of a partner organization we work with uh truly living well Center for Natural Urban agriculture has a community com

posting lab um so we've been uh partnering with truly living well over the years full disclosure I trained as a farmer at truly living well in 2013 for six months and I also worked there for two years so uh definitely one of my alma moders um but this is an extremely important um project in community composting it's one of the larger scale Community composters you'll see in the city of Atlanta and it's a place where you can literally drive there pull up learn about what's happening drop off your

materials sometimes you can purchase compost uh it's a really engaging um environment and that's led by think green ink and truly living we so kind of in closing here for this section um you know Atlanta's Urban Agriculture and food systems work is climate smart and resilient so the USDA the Department of Agriculture uh they Define climate smart goals as increased excuse me one more backr yeah thank you uh increase productivity um so intensifying and growing more enhance resilience adapting to

climate change reduce emissions uh mitigating greenhouse gas emissions um and our work is aligned with these goals we work to increase food security equity and Justice while upholding techniques such as conservation tillage cover cropping nutrient management AGR forestry composting and more so U hope you learned a little bit about Urban Agriculture and Food Systems and look forward to staying T connected with y'all stay tuned for more and I know that Shandra is next on in line thanks so much J w

e definitely had some good questions going in in the chat John R's been keeping up with some of those around methane and a question about groundworks Atlanta and the partnership with Atlanta so I know you'll catch up catch up on those so great uh great in the chat so now we're going to f Focus back on uh a City built for the future and as I mentioned that is one of the mayor's four pillars of his moving Atlanta forward agenda and officially where uh sustainability and climate resilience effort s

its but as I mentioned we show up across everything right sustainability uh acting on climate um and actually Urban Agriculture and Food Systems officially again sits in a city of opportunity for all so really appreciate Jo J making the connection to um our local food economy and um uh climate resilience and acting on climate so a few of the programs that we have open that um are helping our our residents uh move this city forward um in a sustainable Manner and in an equitable manner that's goin

g to help us be more climate resilient um is our weather eyes ATL program uh we're super excited about this pilot program um that is aiming to reduce energy burden on Atlanta's most energy burdened households what is energy burden how much you pay on your utility bills every month so the higher your bills related to a household income the higher your energy burden city of Atlanta dep Atlanta proper depending on which data set you may be looking at is either in the top three or five for highest e

nergy burdens in the nation and we also know um related to some mapping and a lot of research that's been done over the last few years that we have six to eight npus in south and west and southwest Atlanta that experience energy burdens that are sometimes 35 Plus times higher than npus and neighborhoods north of north of I20 let's say so weather eyes ATL was admit to address energy burden and support the mayor's goal to reduce energy burden on 10% of most energy burdened households we have a num

ber of Partners National Association of minority contractors uh greenlink analytics which has been helping us with the mapping uh revalue has been focused on the actual Audits and fits of the home and sustainable Georgia Futures has been out for the past like eight months knocking on doors they've knocked on over 5,000 doors we've got over 400 surveys and now we're working with those surveys like uh to see if those folks that answered the surveys can actually be um a homeowner officially a homeo

wner and meet income requirements to be pulled into that program so super excited stay tuned for more updates on weather r another program that that we have for residents that we are partnering on is our Georgia brigh program um this is offering another solution to try to get more solar on more houses across the city of Atlanta um Georgia brigh uh our goal in partnership with our friends in Savannah Georgia and a few others uh municipalities and nonprofits across the state and our partner capita

l good fund have a goal to install solar on 200 homes um across Georgia and we are focused on homes that are making $1,000 or less a year that includes a lot of city of Atlanta employees when we were presenting uh when Deputy Sidell and I were presenting this program um to the mayor's cabinet the mayor stepped up and said hey that's a lot of our city of Atlanta employees uh how do we get the word out so we'll actually be doing a webinar on the Georgia bright opportunity um just for our employees

and capital good funds and partners of the Georgia brigh program are looking to connect with your npu so if you are interested in having the capital good fund and Georgia brigh team and maybe some of the solar installers come talk to your npu or give you a brief presentation let us know we'd be happy to connect you with them and so let's talk about Federal f in John R mentioned Ira we we trying to do better with with our acronyms there's so many that you can fall into and I did drop a link for

um the inflation reduction act as I wave to get the lights back on in the room that I am in um the inflation reduction Act is uh passed by the Biden Administration it is historic climate legislation and so there are a lot of opportun unities for us to take advantage of the inflation reduction act at the city um but there are Lo also a lot of opportunities um for you as residents uh and consumers to take advantage of the inflation reduction act um there are tax credits on electric vehicles I live

d without a car for about 10 years and when I had to get a car I got an electric vehicle and I got a discount off the sticker price and uh a tax credit so something else that will be rolling out this year is the home energy rebate program that's going to be run by um our state energy agency so definitely stay tuned for that we will continue to be supporting a lot of Education um on those efforts as well and we are super excited to be one of 25 cities selected for the Bloomberg American sustainab

le cities challenge uh some of you may have heard uh about two years ago there was another three-year challenge called the American climate American cities climate challenge there's three C's there and this is sort of a part two of that and the what's unique and important about this challenge at this moment is that it is specifically focused on addressing uh the two most pressing ill uh issues of our time one is climate change and two is the racial wealth Gap so we are super excited to have thre

e years of technical assistance dedicated to the city of Atlanta we will have an innovation team uh this will be a two to three person team um that will be working with the city on ways to innovate around programming for the city as a local government so Big C city of Atlanta and and also small c um the ATL so we will be uh looking to continue to engage residents um in our part Community Based organization Partners like some of those that work with us on Georgia brigh some of those that work wit

h us on weather rise and some of those that work with us um through our Urban a and Food Systems and Atlanta programs all coming together to help us generate new ideas um and push forward while being able to leverage some of this technical assistance that we will have access to over the next three years and before we wrap up we're get to Q&A we've got one more question with everything that we have talked about today and as many times as we have spoken about how important environmental justice is

to our sustainability and climate resilience goals drop it in the chat what does environmental justice mean to you I'm really looking forward to the feedback on this question the chat's been hot I love it and uh now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Beth Graham thank you Shandra yes the chat has been hot um thank you for the engagement in the chat and now we are going to talk you through ways to be actively engaged um as we have said throughout the presentation this evening mayor Andre

Dickens says moving Atlanta forward is a group project and so here are ways for you to become engaged as we continue to advance the goals or developing the city of Atlanta's new climate action and resilience plan we're going to ask you to scan this QR um code um once you receive the presentation for you to share your feedback and inform the plan development then um we have the next up um as we advance the city's um 100% the city's goal of 100% clean energy one for 100% of Atlanta we have the wor

k of the clean energy Advisory Board um which is a member 26 member board appointed by mayor Andre Dickens it was one of the things that were first accomplished when I joined the city of Atlanta back in 2023 um once you receed the presentation we invite you to scan this QR code to be part of the resource network uh the clean energy Advisory board has four working groups and we invite you to join to be able to advance that work and and share your Insight lastly as J Olu walked you to the city's g

oals to achieve access to fresh food affordable food within a half mile by 2040 here's an opportunity for you to be able to find where those food sources are located throughout the City by utilizing the fresh food access map with that we are going to transition I think the next slide opens us up for Q&A um and with that I'm going to turn it over to Samantha who will help us um walk through this process hey everyone so if you have a question that was not answered in the chat we're going to ask th

at you raise your hand again you do that by clicking on reactions and clicking on the raise handbar and then we will acknowledge you based on the order that you are received [Music] Miss Colette oh wow that was so quick I wasn't expecting that um thank you I am um one of the things that we talked about is theery burden and the uh impacts of climate change on um health and our energy bills and we really feel that um in English Avenue Vine city which is a Brownfield site so what as part of the cle

anup the EPA has been cutting down our tree canopy we're already at 20% so by the time the EPA finishes we'll be doubled so when I looked at the number of kilowatts that we use that is increasing are there any plans to work with the EPA to help um save the C canopy or or preserve as much of it as they can or at the very least when they plant trees to plant uh faster growing trees because it for the trees that they cut down when they replant it it'll take 25 years at a minimum for those trees to

mature thank you for that question Colette and bringing that up uh we just recently started having uh check-in meetings with EPA about that project so our first meeting with them uh was about three weeks ago we've had one and one upcoming internal um specific meeting about that between my office parks and wck and and City Planning um who manages you know our tree protection ordinance Etc so I appreciate you flagging that it's definitely um a priority concern for for us as well it's alado what I

was wanting to ask about you said about the sustainable um solar panels and Georgia giving all that I wanted to ask about the storage the battery storage how is that addressed because I know that it has to be a part of it and I never see that in the and when they when and when I ask them they don't understand how to tell me John R you want to jump in on that one absolutely and there was actually a similar question um sorry about that camera off uh similar question within uh within the chat um I

put an answer directly from the website um from from Georgia brigh uh and from our partners at Capital good fund uh but it that the solar panels are are done so that you don't have it's a it's a lease so instead of having to pay uh upfront you pay uh you enter into a lease with this nonprofit cdfi um uh capital good fund they're able to take advantage of the federal um uh federal tax credits uh they're able to take advantage of other Federal resources that are out there uh there's about to be an

announcement from the e the Environmental Protection Agency because I'm trying to watch my acronyms uh for a $250 million uh uh solar for all and this is across it's A7 billion fund but $250 million for Georgia um and that can continue to help uh support um uh support uh low Med income uh solar and battery program so it I would say the the if you want more you have okay so you're telling me that you would have to leas you won't you won't have your own solar panel so if you get extended amount o

f energy that in some places they can sell back to um the electric companies will we have any control with that so depends if you live in Georgia Power territory uh that's what we're uh most used to here in the city of Atlanta um unfortunately and we've engaged with the uh The Regulators that regulate Georgia Power it's called the Public Service Commission in these formal hearings uh not going to get too deep into it but the city of Atlanta has partnered with other local governments who share 10

0% clean energy Ambitions and uh unfortunately when you put uh if you produce so much energy and it goes back on the grid uh Georgia Power will pretty much pay you a fourth to a third what they're going to be reselling that energy to your neighbor at um and so when you take a look at our uh 27 uh Municipal solar uh projects through uh through solar Atlanta those are all behind the meter so none of those installations produce so much energy that they go back onto the grid and because that's so th

ey're behind beers okay okay that's right cor you won't own them you would have to lease them through a third party that I gu to okay but but the batteries allow you to be able to produ like to have a larger uh installation uh where the more you put on uh your your roof uh the more uh the more economies of scale that you have in terms of payback um and the more uh you're able to uh produce clean energy for your household and of course batteries uh are are are uh getting more and more popular in

terms of outages um and so uh when Georgia Brite was first launched it was really focused on solar um but now uh because the inflation reduction act has included uh batteries that if they are put on with solar they you can take advantage of those um those incentives and so uh that's why it's a part of the program and right around 67% of uh the 24 participants uh thus far who've signed a lease are uh have have also signed a lease to include batteries um and and so yeah that thank you so much for

the question and feel free if you if you have any other uh out I will right thank you m we're I'm with Eco action and the community definitely wants to know sounds great um yeah a lot of these things that that I can do as an individual growing my own food compost wasting my kitchen waste putting solar panels on my roof require a a a substantial footprint um in terms of land area and um that then is sort of countered to this goal of increasing the density of the city um so if I lived in a high-ri

se apartment there'd be no place for me to compost I wouldn't have a roof because there'd be somebody living above me etc etc so I mean do you consider the the tradeoffs there of increased density versus the inability to do these things happy to yeah have our team chy in uh the clean energy transition is is all about tradeoffs um I will say particularly in the oppressive regulatory environment which which we are in in Georgia so um I know that jolu will have solutions for uh composting if if you

're living in a in a multi- family building um recycling is is tough as well we have a multif family um re recycling ordinance um there are a number of great examples of multifam um facilities that are able to use um solar where residents are able to benefit from that and developers are able to benefit for that just not here in Georgia um so on those things those kinds of questions I encourage enourage you and everyone here um to reach out to your public service Commissioners the elected officia

ls who make the decisions about how much you pay um every line item you see on on your utility bill um and for many of the things that we are talking about that many of our neighbors and um other states are able to do um that that we we are not yeah and um this is jol again um Urban a and Food Systems director uh it's a great question and um I think one of the things about food and Food Systems and general is sometimes it gets siloed in its own area whereas actually food and the discussion of fo

od should be connected to Transportation should be connected to housing um should be connected to Parks and Recreation right so I think it's important kind of going along with what Shandra said um to be in touch with your elected officials uh be in touch with the different department Ms and say you know hey we'd like to see more food in Parks or hey what is the city doing as far as um controlled environment growing things of that nature um because with the increased density quite frankly we're g

oing to need more food as well and we recognize that um food comes from a variety of places and it's not that a 100% of everything has to be grown locally and at the same time you know I think all of us probably at least most of us can say that during the early years of the covid pandemic you experienced at least one time where you went to the grocery store and there was nothing there or at least or a minimum not what you wanted there right so local food systems are extremely important uh for su

stainability climate resilience Etc and the way you can do that is to you know have your voice heard uh lastly I'll say that currently the city is doing uh plan a comprehensive development plan uh throughout the city of Atlanta so I don't have the website at the moment but I think that's a great opportunity for folks to express what they would like the future of the city to be and look like that website is Atlanta for all.com uh Williams thank you um good evening I have uh two questions number o

ne with regards to the energy and the Georgia Power bills are you is the city um speaking with Georgia Power with regard to plant vogle um the nuclear plant because unit three at the plant has come online and they said it's like servicing I don't know 20% of Georgia but unit 4 there was an article I believe it was today or yesterday that that's supposed to come online between April and June of this year and that project was supposed to substant or is supposed to substantially um have a positive

impact on the bills the power bills of residents so um since nuclear is considered like zero emission clean energy um have you guys put that in so that that's a sustainable um you know project that the city can benefit from and the residents because Georgia Power every every other year in the legislature they come up with a a a rate increase that is always approved so I mean not only are they passing cost to us but it doesn't get better it just keeps getting worse and they get approved every tim

e so is the city going to you know go in and and kind of say hey we need to see the benefits for our residents and um and make this sustainable for this you know for this power plant um you know to help with the programs that you were just mentioning that's question number one so I'll let you answer that that's a great um complex question Tanya I'll um answer is simply as as possible one uh the city's Energy Mix is Georgia power's Energy Mix so we get our we are a Georgia Power customer we're ac

tually the largest Georgia Power customer in in the state thanks to the airport um so so that's one so when we talk about our 100% clean energy goal um and Michelle Madan can probably drop drop the link in the chat we are we are looking at the George power energy mix so so that's one thing to remember so the our three primary strategies for reaching clean energy are one um to make our buildings as efficient as possible uh reducing our energy consumption two um is to procure more renewable energy

that's why our solar Atlanta program um that John R talked about is so important and then three we'll have to buy some renewable energy credits we're looking for in innovative ways um to to do that where we are actually able to sell based on what we're producing from our solar that we can reinvest back in into projects so just wanted to give that um overview of George power and where the city's energy comes from two we are actively engaged at the Public Service Commission so the city started fo

rmally intervening in the regulatory process at the Public Service Commission back in 2019 this is generally a process it's called the integrated resource plan that happens every three years um this is when Georgia Power presents its 20year plan um for meeting its energy needs but they come back to the commission all the time particularly related to plant fcal um as you mentioned so I will just let you know that we are there intervening and not just alone as the city of Atlanta we do this in par

tnership with our Georgia local governments Coalition which includes Atlanta Savannah city of decar Athens Clark County and the Cab County so we all work together on that and so that's what we are able to do from the city perspective obviously focus on um our energy needs as a city but also energy affordability for for residents so I'll encourage you again if you've never been to the Public Service Commission to make public comment if you never reached out to your public service commissioner sta

rt doing that um start doing that today okay my second part of my question was it kind of piggybacks on um Colette she spoke about the EPA in English Avenue um and Vine City and primarily in in English Avenue doing the um uh the mitigation uh or remediation and so you mentioned that you guys have had your first meeting with the EPA and I guess my ask would be um from on your next meeting to put onto your agenda that um because the EPA what they're doing is as Colette said they're it makes it eas

ier for them to remediate the soil um when they just you know cut down and remove the trees but many residents especially like some of the older ones they're like they're happy that these large trees are removed because they're always scared that they are going to fall or limbs are going to fall in their house or the tree itself however what's happening is that the EPA in their budget theyve already been allocated money for tree replacement and it's not a one for one because when I say trees I m

ean these are trees that are probably eight to 10 some of them eight to 10 feet in diameter if not more I mean they're very very old very very large trees and so when you take down a tree just in in this conversation clean energy you just increased that person's electric bill in the in the summertime in Georgia because there is no shade now and so their house is probably you know 10 to 15 degrees hotter and they have to use more power but with regard to the EPA and what I would like to see and a

sk that you put on your next um agenda when you speak with them is that they are required to replace trees that they take and that they retroactively go back to the people that they have finished and remediated their their lead in their yards and go back and replace the trees because they could put under story trees midstory trees so those are going to be trees that you can put on Miss Miss Tanya yes have a question do you have a question my question I'm sorry Leah I'm sorry so my question is on

your next agenda could you bring that up and require them to retroactively plant th you know those types of trees and replace because the neighborhood is really starting to look bare that's one and then number two Could you actually make that a a a requirement and then require them to give a pamphlet of some sort to these people because they're taking the trees and then just leaving the the neighborhood bare so sorry I didn't mean to get longwinded but that's the question can that be a requisit

e on your agenda for your next meeting and then come back with deliverables to the community and the mpu with what was said and what and work towards that becoming a reality period thank you L thank you Leah be happy for you to email us at sustainability and resilience at atlantaga.gov so we have a record of that that we can share um with our other departments that are also working on on this topic okay can you put that in the chat is it or is it in the chat uh we'll drop it again yes thank you

Miss Moore um thank you so like back to the EPA thing my question is so I know you guys are meeting with them is lindsy Street park one of the things that maybe because of the thing that freaks me out is how they clean lindsy Street Park and can we help whenever that gets into the mix can we have like a real plan how we do it so we don't clearcut lindsy Park thank you for bringing that up I know Parks and Recreation um is in that group of people that we have been meeting with lindsy street has d

efinitely um been a part of that that conversation again I'm happy to help filter back um to that group and then I think we definitely want to understand I'd like to better understand um how EPA is communicating back um back to the community and the park and and the friends group I call them every week I call I call Ron Oliver every single week every other week I'm just afraid that one day I'm going to go out there and they're going to start hacking it down and we really want to see if we can do

some alternate remediation and okay I want to point out to everybody that our golden rule for these classes is that all questions have to be relevant to course content um we usually also add that they should be beneficial to the entire entire class we don't want to focus on one neighborhood I also want to point out that my colleagues in the mayor's office of sustainability and resilience are public servants that means if you email them they're required to respond to your emails that means if yo

u call them and I know them they're they don't even have to be required they'll respond regardless they'll answer your calls they'll return your calls they'll respond to your emails so don't feel like you have to come to this class to get all your questions answered about what's going on in your neighborhood you don't you can email them at any time you can call them at any time let's get some more questions going for the good of the class Mr Scott hello uh thank you I I hope my question is relev

ant it may not be but um I'll let you know if it's not all right I'm gon try to make it quick um I have a homestead and I'm working to start my own garden at home and I have a bunch of trees on my loot that I want cleared and I know there's like a tree protection ordinance in the city of Atlanta do you know what the incentives are for that like for replanting trees that are cut down that actually falls in our department the department of City Planning I suggest you call the office of buildings a

nd I'll ask someone from my team to drop the phone number in the chat it's three it's 404 330 6150 404 330 6150 that's in the office of building buildings in the off in the uh arborous division thank you you're welcome my pleasure Miss holiday well I know we've talked a lot about trees so far but I want to I want to say that I would love to see the office of sustainability actually take a more active role looking at the fact that trees play so such a critical role in terms of what we need to do

in terms of climate protection uh you know it takes 20 to 30 years for a tree to actually provide a good benefit environmentally and as a result all these trees we go out planting aren't going they're good but they're only going to play a role in 20 or 30 years trees have been shown to have a health benefit to have a heat reduction benefit they red reduce utility costs they provide uh mental health benefits and I've even read a study from an epidemiologist talking about trees providing a reducti

on in gun violence so all of the things we're looking at we need to look at trees not as a an aesthetic it's not that they look pretty in the northeastern side of town which I live in uh as a an aesthetic thing but they provide a benefit across all of frankly all of Atlanta all of the country in terms of really significant future benefits like put bluntly do we want to breathe do we want to let our CH grandchildren breathe do we want to do we want to provide a world for them that is something th

at they can live in so not a question sorry about that Leah but just a comment well I guess a question what role should the office of sustainability be providing in this effort yeah thank you Carol support we all agree over here with in my office with everything that you said uh tree canopy has been tree canopy and tree canopy recommendations have been present um in if not all of but at least our most recent uh plans and we work directly with our department of City Planning uh we work very close

ly with our senior arborist and the tree planning um commission who lead the city's work on developing our our tree protection ordinances and uh other items so we're working together we agree with you um it will certainly be a component of our climate resilience action plan that we are developing um particularly as it relates to Urban heat island um and uh mitigating extreme heat so we have a survey for that and uh Beth will drop that link again in the chat and look forward to your your feedback

there so if we've been having let's say less than positive responses in terms of input Are you a good resource for that I'm hearing you right now I think you're you sound very well versed in all the places that you need to get get input and keep pushing this forward M Ward sany you there all right we may have lost tany are there any other questions I see there were Miss doson um hello uh I'm uh I live in Petry Hills um in uh South Buckhead and I am asking for the role of the sustainability depa

rtments uh in this battle with styrofoam snow which there is a current ordinance against um uh councilman foki passed it in November of 2023 but um our our n neighborhoods um in significant styrofoam snow which means basically little styrofoam pellets that are going all over our neighborhoods and the reason I believe this is pertinent to everyone um in in the class is because it's getting into our waterways it's getting into P Street Creek which channels into chattah huchi which flows to South A

tlanta as well as other tributaries all across the area um I've been working for over four months now trying to get um this cease and assist on this pra practice that is um coning our Park and our soils and our streets and our um water runoffs and um and all of that so my question is is the office of sustainability aware of this issue and if so what is their role in trying to get the ordinance enforced in regards to um making developers and Builders accountable I was not as um aware of this Laur

a when you mentioned it I think I remember hearing something about it but I definitely appreciate the flag and I'm happy to follow up with uh council member foki on what the status is okay thank you um in this case um councilman froi what well the ordinance was passed unanimously by city council it is in effect supposed to be an effect um but the enforcement of it has been a challenge um and um has been it so I I I appreciate you reaching out to him are are Council people working on trying to fi

gure it out as well as councilman Shook and council person Norwood so um that we're very frustrated it's it's it is um it is contain neighborhood and it is impossible to clean up it is the size of bird seed so this is an imper petu contamination of our neighborhood and water and soil so so I appreciate you okay thank you thank you um Mr Lee your hand was up and now it's down did you have a question P sure um I was kind of not to ask but you know just in case what does office of sustainability su

ggest that we as mpu Leaders do in terms of educating our community on all the information that you've given us because uh it's definitely been a lie I know because I've been working with y'all um all y'all um so with that I kind of ask on behalf of everybody um how can we as mpu Leaders better disseminate this information that you have given us so that we can directly Engage The the key things that are going on with our areas and attach them properly to you all good evening Khalifa I think I wi

ll turn that question back to you as a clean energy Advisory Board member and a founding member of the npu community leaders group that was specifically formed to bring information from the clean energy Advisory board meetings back to community uh what has worked maybe let's start there and then uh maybe what hasn't worked um that we can focus on to do better I appreciate that um all right so with that one have the session again but also two having it specifically with each mpu um it's a lot it

is a lot I saw L fact I was I know it's a lot but the fact that we've been working on it this [Music] long and the questions are still out there and in that frustration of that is why I say that um we'll probably have to be a special meeting of some sort external to the actual mpu meetings But ultimately this is what the purpose of the MP universities are for and and I would have hoped it would have been like a hundred that would have been in here um so working something out between the MP unive

rsities and actual coming to the npu meetings is key also a further pushing of weather rides I know we were really working on getting um the weather rides to do a lot of the campaigning in our most energy burden communities but I saw they they're started stretching to the other npus now um H being one of them as well which I represent um but tackling the weather R program and stretching it out um tagging in our multiple partners and Community organizations to do the work whether it be a church o

r the schools I also say a tag in the aps a lot of the people who would benefit from the energy burden of those who would be most willing to engage it because they're trying to pay bills to feed themselves and their children um APS is one partner which I don't think we've really been able to tap on too strongly and they definitely should be pulled into this conversation and do more work in it especially being they a large property owner in the city of Atlanta Mr Lee you have another question you

said what oh she asked me you have another question no did I have another question no she asked me a question to give an answer so I was gonna end on APS because me and APS we doing our best to get better in our relationship but um that's really just the key thing in terms of how we're moving about with all the things we're talking about when it comes to the tree conversation and energy conversation um and all the other sustainable things we're moving along with that so yeah if I if there's any

thing else I would definitely appreciate um the rest of the team to be able to tag in because I know for sure everybody's gonna be emailing you guys up because we have a lot to work on appreciate y'all thank you for your service and Leadership Mr Lee and we'll look forward to that next npu leaders meeting um so maybe we can dig down into some of these issues and help C uh issues but focus in on some things because it is a lot and so if we need to you know reestablish our our meeting series that

um you all were hosting um we're we're at the ready um at the ready to to do that um I just want to point out I there's no one at the city that I'm aware of that uh feels more passionately about engagement and getting people getting good information in the hands of the residents the people the stakeholders we we we meaning the city of Atlanta the department of city planning my team we really do work hard to get information out but at the end of the day people people seek information that they be

lieve is important we we produce 40 something classes a year some of them have 200 people some of them have 20 but it really is based B on what folks well one had 200 people I think on average the the average attendance for these classes is 48 Sam is that about right is it still 48 last year yes this year we've been averaging about 70 about 70 okay so with 65 folks in the room now it's really not granted you know it's not the 500,000 people that live in the city but it's still a pretty decent um

number I think for people who you know may have worked all day to day have kids and other things to do don't be discouraged by the numbers I certainly am not I think there's a pretty good number of folks uh that that demonstrated interest especially for a firsttime class so um well I'm encouraged by the turnout personally all right any other questions I don't see any hands go one if you have a question the reactions button at the bottom of your screen going once going twice alrighty without fur

ther Ado we gonna wrap this up I'm going to um ask Sam to close us out before she does that I want to uh give a special thank you to Shandra and team to all of you that contributed to the instruction tonight I appreciate you so much for being here and thank thank you for sharing such a wealth of knowledge with everyone oh that's a great point iay Thank you thank you for leaving that in the chat uh for those that are not able to attend our classes almost all of them stream virtually on Facebook a

nd almost all of them are uploaded onto YouTube and you can go to YouTube mpu Atlanta find the class that you're interested in grab that link and send it to anybody that you think should be watching the class uh so that is I I strongly encourage you to do that as well um send this link to anybody that you think should have been here tonight and wasn't all right um thank you again Shandra and team and thank you to all of you who are are who are here with us tonight and uh Sam is gonna take it fro

m here thanks everyone Leah Samy you're on mute I just talking to myself sorry y'all thanks everyone for coming tonight and participating our upcoming courses for mpu University you can actually see on the screen we have about six coures oh not next month um we have mpu 101 which is next week our introduction to invest Atlanta is following and then we have a new class to our series it is actually an in-person course so there are limited slots the registration is open for that course and if you a

re interested in registering for our lived experience exploring housing affordability through exp experiential learning set at five times fast that is on a Thursday May 9 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in person uh oh wait a minute and um if anyone wants to take a screenshot of this page to find out about our courses as well as visit mpu atlanta.org you can do that as well then our next Community open house for oh for plan a uh is Tuesday April 9th at Trinity Presbyterian church I'm going to leave the scree

n up a little bit for anyone that wants to scan that code and go ahead and register because you would like to participate in our plan a process and if you want to know anything about npu all things mpu neighborhood planning units as we are celebrating 50 years of neighborhood planning units please follow us on Facebook Twitter Instagram and Tik Tok at mpu Atlanta on next door at City Atlanta neighborhood planning units and our as our day has placed in our chat all of our videos can be found on n

pu Atlanta on YouTube all of that said good night everyone and also check your emails there's an evaluation for this course we also put it in the chat as well please please please please please please complete those valuations it will take you less than five minutes thank you and have a good night thank you great night everyone thank you you good night everybody good night good job y'all