Building_development

47:14 I'll note as a specific example here, the rapid decarbonization of municipal operations. In practice, this means that electric vehicles are being treated as the default assumption in the upcoming budget where feasible, and capital projects, new capital projects, are expected to align with the city's new green building policies. These priority areas are intended to guide department planning within current service levels while still allowing room for innovation to occur. We also recognize that the city is facing a constrained budget. While staff will continue pursuing outside opportunities wherever possible, we also recognize that grant funding alone will not be sufficient to meet the city's broader climate goals, and meaningful progress will require continued discussions about long-term funding strategies.

48:06 The next major body of work in the CAF update is revising the strategies and actions outlined in the document. When the original CAF was adopted in 2022, the city was at the beginning of its climate action journey, so much of the direction in that original framework was focused on building the foundation for future work by developing plans, policies, and internal capacity. These included actions such as developing an EV strategy, establishing green building policies, conducting a vulnerability assessment, conducting assessments of city infrastructure and communities, and incorporating climate-smart principles into the transportation system plan and comprehensive plan. So now, with much of that foundational work now completed or underway, we're in a position to refine the framework and place a greater emphasis on implementation of those plans and policies in the strategies.

49:02 We've also heard from staff that in some areas that were strongly supported by the community, the city is not always the lead agency or the primary implementing partner, so as part of this update, we're considering how to better clarify the city's role and identify where collaboration and advocacy may be more appropriate than direct implementation. And then finally, we're the first iteration of the CAF focused heavily on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Both staff and community members have expressed a desire to start that shift towards resilience and adaptation measures, as well as actions that preserve and protect the city's natural environment. The last topic will carry forward into the community engagement component of our process, which we will talk about next. So as we transition into summer, we get to shift our focus outside to community engagement. This slide shows the main goals of that process.

50:02 It's an opportunity not only to report back to the community on progress that has been made, but it's also an opportunity to listen, to learn, and make sure we're all still moving in the right direction together. It gives residents a chance to share their current priorities, raise concerns about unintended harms or consequences, and help shape the next phase of climate action in the city. Coming on the heels of the comprehensive plan update, we're also in a unique position to build on conversations that many community members have already invested heavily in, particularly around resilience and adaptation. Through that process, neighborhoods including Fruit Valley, Fourth Plain, and Mountain View helped articulate what would make their communities safer, healthier, and better prepared for the challenges ahead.

50:51 As we expand these conversations citywide, we also hope to return to those same communities, reconnect with those residents, and work alongside them to help advance some of the solutions that they themselves identified. That opportunity for continued partnership and co-implementation is one of the most meaningful aspects of this next phase of engagement, and we are eager to get that underway. So together with the engagement and access staff, we're organizing our efforts around three separate tracks designed to give us both breadth and also depth on two areas of particular concern. Our first track is general outreach. That's the breadth. This is our opportunity to tell the story of what we've been working on, to have those open houses and tabling events, to conduct surveys and report stories that we can share via social media channels to raise awareness and invite interested parties to get more involved in the process.

51:49 And with that, I will hand it over to my colleague Lexi. Thanks, Rebecca. Good afternoon mayor and city councilors. Lexi Farina, Climate Fellow. So continuing on with building on the three tracks that we've identified for engagement. The next one is around healthy and safe climate smart homes. And this is a distinct focus because we recognize that our greenhouse gas inventory buildings are the second largest source of emissions community wide. And as Rebecca mentioned, through the comprehensive plan engagement process, we heard continued concerns from residents about the ability for their homes to withstand extreme heat, smoke events and other climate impacts. So the goal of this track is really to understand and inform city actions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on our existing residential buildings, as well as thinking about how we can create homes that are safe, comfortable, and have healthy living environments

52:47 as the climate impacts intensify. So within this track, we recognize that home means a lot to many different people. So we hope to engage in conversations with homeowners, renters, and others who have unique living conditions and needs to really understand resident priorities, barriers, and needs to support programs that encourage things like electrification, energy efficiency, and climate vulnerability measures, things like air condition or filtration opportunities. We also hope that these conversations can help us understand the incentives or services offered that would encourage participation in future program activities that would address these areas.

53:34 The third and final track for engagement opportunities is around Brazilian and connected communities. As Rebecca highlighted, that was a big area that came out of the comprehensive planning process and an area where we learned from our three priority communities of Fruit Valley, Mountain View, and Fourth Plain, where they wanted to see action be taken in this area. So we're excited to use this opportunity to treat implementation as an ongoing and visible opportunity for more engagement and collaboration to actually put some of those actions into progress, rather than continuing to have the same conversations over and over again. We also hope that this track will be able to broaden some of that outreach to other neighborhoods and communities that are experiencing significant climate impacts to continue to identify broader local needs and concerns and build on those community resilient strategies.

54:32 And just to give you an example of some of the events and activities that we have planned to carry out the goals of those three engagement pathways, we have some planned for broad engagement as well as focus conversations. You can take a look at our Be Heard page that's already up on the website, and we have an online discussion forum that's live, just to provide some information to the community around what the climate action framework is, what the update process looks like, and ways that they can get involved and have their voices and ideas heard throughout the process. We'll also be tabling at community events throughout the summer. We'll be at events like Movies in the Park, the Juneteenth celebration, and the Sunday Sounds concert series. We're especially excited to partner with Council in the community forum on June 22nd to collaborate and engage residents in ideas around how we can shape a climate conscious feature for Vancouver.

55:27 We'll be participating in Pacific Northwest Climate Week for the first time this July, and the team is working on putting together some exciting events for that week. One of those that's already on the calendar that we're looking forward to is a bike ride to tour some of our favorite heritage trees, so we invite you to join us and we look forward to sharing more information on the other events that will be held on that week. Finally, just getting into some of our more focused conversations, we have some workshops planned with environmental justice focused organizations, potentially supported by the Washington Conservation Action, again to build on some of the conversations that were started as part of the comprehensive engagement update, and so we want to really take that opportunity to build on what's been heard and continue to engage the same group of people, so that we can put some actions into place.

56:20 And lastly, we are planning some conversations with partner agencies, neighborhood groups, and the business community to ensure a diverse group of perspectives are included in the update process. And then finally, just to wrap up with some next steps, just to be able to carry out the engagement activities laid out in each of these three tracks, we plan to do those, as Rebecca mentioned, throughout the course of the summer, kicking off with the community forum on June 22 that we're really looking forward to. We'll also be continuing the coordination with city departments to review the current CAF strategy actions and revise those as needed, as well as develop the work plans with priority actions for the next several years.

57:06 And then finally, we're really excited to welcome a new intern this summer, Ezekiel Vils will be joining us through the Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership Program, he is an undergraduate and will be joining us for 10 weeks from June through August. We're excited for him to help support some of the engagement activities that we have planned this summer. So with that, I'll pass it on to Rebecca to close us out. All right, well, this concludes our presentation slides. So as we move forward with these next steps, we wanted to check in with Council and ensure that what we've outlined here before you today is still in line with your direction and your priorities. And we're also, of course, happy to take any questions you might have. Councilor Stoeber, did you have any questions or comments? Let's go backwards. OK, Councilor Harris, Hanson, Paulson, Fox.

58:04 OK. Councilor Fox, on the Concert Washington Conservation Action Group, you said you're having some discussions. Is this as part of a workshop series or what does that look like? Well, we're still in discussion with them, but as they were one of the parties that helped convene a lot of the comprehensive plan update conversations, they brought together a lot of community based organizations to participate in some of that development. They also coordinated with the Clark County comprehensive plan update and brought together a lot of equity focused organizations to participate in that work. And so we're hoping to continue our relationship with them.

58:49 And WCA has indicated that this would be a great opportunity for them to continue those relationships that they cultivated with the community as part of that process. So we'd like to work with them to continue the conversation specifically in Fruit Valley, Fourth Plain and Mountain View. That would be our primary focus for those conversations to really take some of those recommendations that the community made and see if we can work together to advance some of those. Some examples of that would be putting together a community phone tree list. If there's an emergency situation, who in the neighborhood can we call? Who needs to be checked on? Putting together some of those emergency preparedness steps. So that would be an example of one sort of process that we'd like them to carry forward if we're able to align our schedules.

59:37 And could you tell us a little bit more about the kind of the uptake on the EV toolkit, the EV installation toolkit? Isn't that what it's called? Something along those lines that was just completed? I would love to check in on that and get back with you. My colleague Stacey Dahlgaard who has just slept before family leave. So she'll be out for a few months, but we can check in with Laurel Priest in transportation planning and I can get you an update for that. Because I'm imagining that kind of highlighting that toolkit at these tabling events would be something that would probably bear some fruit as well. So folks know it's available.

1:00:21 >> Thank you so very much. Let's go ahead and get the fruit valley for all action plan update. And Shannon.