A bill for an ordinance establishing an excise tax on electricity and natural gas for commercial and industrial customers to fund the office of climate action, sustainability, and resiliency, subject to the approval of the voters at a special municipal election to be conducted in coordination with the state coordinated election on November 5, 2019. A Bill for an ordinance establishing an excise tax on electricity and natural gas for commercial and industrial customers to fund the office of climate action, sustainability, and resiliency, subject to the approval of the voters at a special municipal election to be conducted in coordination with the state coordinated election on November 5, 2019. Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-13-19. This item was postponed to 6-1-20 at the City Council meeting of 8-26-19.
13 eyes. Bill seven. Seven six has been postponed to September 23rd. Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? And, Councilman Hines, will you please vote council vote 803 on the floor. Mr. President, I move that council bill 803 be taken out of order. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. This one's mine. So I'm going to make some comments on 803 and 805 together, if that is if that works. But we'll vote on them separately. Thank you, Madam Secretary. So 803 and 805 are our climate bills that of that we have been working on? And you know, I just wanted to bring everybody up to speed. Today, we'll be asking for a postponement of these bills, one to June 1st and one to November 3rd. So we have been working hard on on addressing climate in the city and addressing the emergency, the crisis that we have for our planet, for our people, for our environment. And we were able to work with the administration and get to some areas of agreement. And so I want to read that in that where we're headed and why we're postponing that today, so that today we announce the the administration and the seven sponsors of this bill. But today, in conjunction, we'll work on the following. Establishing a new Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. That's one of the bills that we were taking up. And this office will be established by ordinance with the city council. We are going to work on it a little bit more with the administration and bring it back before October 31st. And it will be fully functional and stood up by July 1st of 2020. It will combine personnel from the existing Office of Sustainability and the Denver in the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment and also the Climate Team. And in addition to that, the mayor also has agreed to in the budget proposal that he brings forward. The city council proposed an additional $8 million in 2020 funding to expand efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And we are jointly immediately launching a formal process to examine Denver's current climate work, identify gaps, analyze funding needs, and engage experts, interested stakeholders and a wide range of community members in a process to look at how do we tackle this? And it will conclude by the end of May 2020, giving this Council ample time to consider a referral to the ballot for November of 2020. And in conjunction with that will be delaying these bills since the beginning of working on this. And, you know, I want to say first and foremost, thank you to my colleagues who put their name on this bill and sponsored this and stood up and said, hey, this is really important and we need to do and we need to do hard work, but we need to do that hard work now. I also want to thank there are a lot of members from the resilient Denver team and also from the broader community who have honestly been pushing the city and pushing all of us to do better and to do more and to really put our money and our efforts where our mouth is not just stand up and say , hey, we are still committed to the Paris climate accord but continue to show slides where we are not on that glide path, but to actually engage in the tough conversations and the tough work to get us where we are aligned with all of the scientific standards that have come forward when it comes to climate change. And also, I want to thank, you know, all the stakeholders who pushed back and said, hey, this process is moving really fast. We get the urgency, but we also want a seat at the table who promised to come and join that conversation over the coming months to work hard as we work together to tackle, you know, an issue that is unlike any that humankind has has faced. And so I really want to thank everyone for coming together in that. And and so the essence of what we're doing, what was important from the beginning was we needed to elevate this work. We needed to make sure that our climate team was well positioned within the city to be driving all of us as leaders to make sure that we're meeting these targets. And and so this new office where we were going to put our climate and sustainability efforts will do exactly that. We knew that we needed to take more aggressive action now and as soon as possible. And so the commitment to new dollars in the coming budget for 2020 are those dollars that come now and then. We need to really take a hard look and have tough conversations about how do we transform the way we live, the places where we work, the places where we play, the infrastructure of our transportation systems and how we cook food and have those tough conversations and come with a robust plan on how we're going to get there and how we're going to fund that. And this allows us the time to do that while still taking aggressive new steps with new money to take action now and really bring everyone together. So to be back and with us with proposals and solutions coming forward. So I really wanted to thank everyone. And again, we'll be pushing out the first bill. 803 We will be postponing until June. First, because again, the commitment is that we will have a stakeholder process to come forward with these solutions and these ideas that will wrap by the end of May. And so leaving this on the table again sends the message that we up here are committed to solving this and to finding the funding that we need to solve this. And we're going to engage in this stakeholder process with this, knowing that this is not just a fake deadline, this is a real deadline that this bill will be coming back. And similarly, with the commitment to get this an ordinance to for this council to vote on, for this new office moving the bill that proposes the office in 805 to November 3rd, because we have a commitment, a shared commitment between us and the administration to do that hard work and get that in front of council by October 31st. So these allow us to continue to push for the change that we need. So I see a lot of people lining up to talk. And again, feel free to talk about 803 and 805 as we did last time. But we will vote on them separately on the motions to delay. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I when I ran, I talked about the planet. I talked about how my mom's a hippie and how I grew up around the five national forests and rural East Texas. And it feels really weird for me to live in District ten, by the way. Perfect ten is perfect, after all. But it's really it's interesting for me where I came from and being so connected to nature and then where I am now living in a condominium, high rise, having a view of another condominium. High rise, well, an apartment high rise, but whatever. Climate change is real. I've said that many times. I said that the first day I was here. We got inaugurated on July 15th. That night, the I think the first thing I said was climate change is real. And I am committed to working with with everyone who is willing to to join the coalition to make sure that we make bold, meaningful steps now. And and I'm I'm glad that there that we can work with the executive branch and the mayors. So thank you. Please relay the the excitement of working together with the third floor. And and and, you know, the rest of the administration. I'm. This isn't the end. So we're certainly going to work it with, you know, hand in hand with the administration in this stakeholder group. But we need to keep pushing. And and this isn't this isn't it? We're going to keep going. So thank you for coming here tonight. Resilient Denver. Thank you. For all of those who care about climate change. And and thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Councilman mechanic. Thank you, Mr. President. I have a quick question about the timing. It's my understanding that the agreed upon date to kind of report back is May. And then if this motion to defer is only till June 1st, it doesn't allow much time for the council process and interaction before you kind of have to make a decision on this one. We might not have had any time to debate the report, so I'm just curious why June 1st versus like August 1st, so that we actually have time to interact with what comes back before this vote comes up again? Great question. Again, the commitment is to engage in this deep process and get there. I'm hoping that at the end of that, we will have something new to file starting then and starting through our council process in June. And I don't want to wait all the way until August to have that, because I do want next time to do a better job of making sure that we have all the time. And so I would like to get through the process, having a stakeholder input that informs what we then file as soon as possible after that stakeholder process to again also keep an eye on us to say, hey, if, if the stakeholder group has come to something that is bigger and broader and bolder and better at that point, we will have this in front of us to make sure that it's top of mind and be able to file a new path forward and start it through the process. Okay. I guess I'll just comment that I think what that really means then is that if the idea is that a bill is done by the end of May, in fact there then needs to be a lot of council interaction from, you know, not every member will serve on this work group. And if in fact, your goal is to have a bill before this June 1st date, then in fact you need to start engaging us like in April so that we have a couple of months to interact. So I just want to point out that by making the bill deadline June 1st, it means you actually have to have the analysis and engagement stuff done then in time for the bill discussion to emerge rather than plopping a bill at the same time as the report. So I'm a little concerned about those two things happening on top of each other. I think the goal here is to separate them out with some space. But I will continue to listen to the discussion and I appreciate the parties having stayed at the table to find some common ground and some immediate action in terms of the $8 million additional investment, which I think is not the net dollars, it's just the new dollars. There would be probably the base dollars as well. So I look forward to the budget process as well. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. I'll just also add that on that June 1st date, we could decide at that point that, hey, this isn't ready for a full bill. We could further delay or we could say a bill is imminent and we could kill this bill entirely at that time to create that space. But it again, puts a very real end date to the commitment that both sides have made to having that process completed. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, I want to thank you for. Your leadership on this issue. I want to thank the mayor for coming to the table. In what were. Not easy negotiations on this. Everybody was on the same page, I believe are real close to the same page. On the need to aggressively address climate change. We just needed to do a little bit of wrestling on exactly how we were going to get there. And I appreciate. Not only. The the other co-sponsors of the bill, but this was truly, from my view, an effort of virtually this entire council. I know Councilwoman Kenney played an invaluable role in. Not only. Urging us towards. Compromise, but at the same time. Working hard to to offer amendments to the bill in the in case it does move forward at some point. Councilman Ortega was busy as well in that type of regards. I had great discussions with with our other council members who were not fans of the process that we were involved in, but worked hard to move that move this forward. I find it extremely interesting that as we if we meet the timeline that this proposes, that will be coming to our proposed solution on perhaps funding streams or additional processes almost are right on the heart of April 22nd, 2020. That will be 50 years from our first Earth Day celebration that the former the late Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, spearheaded. So I'm extremely excited the direction that we're heading in. And thank all involved for getting us here. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman, Councilwoman Joyce. Thank you, Mr. President. Just so that I'm understanding is the process next to use the existing bill language as a starting point for conversation or to start this from scratch? I think the commitment is to go in with, you know, again, an open mind on where we go from here to really dig deeper into what do we really need and how do we fund it. This was the catalyst for that conversation. But that, you know, as we heard, there were people who didn't feel that they were at the table from the beginning and had their voice. And so to start from ground zero with the shared path that we need to be able to get to a place where we can do the work and fund the work that needs to be done as set by the science. Okay. Thank you. And just so I can mention, I appreciate the fact that a pause was taken to collect more input and engage District three stakeholders. I have a number of small businesses, art and business districts who reach out to our process, our office. I'm sorry on why they couldn't been couldn't have been part of that process, not that they opposed the goal, that they recognized the impact, but that they didn't want to be rolled over. So thank you so much for the courage to bring this bill and to both through this pause. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Sandoval. Thank you. So I would just like to also share my sentiments that. Thank you, Councilman President Clark, for being a bold leader on climate change. During my campaign, I often talked about the next seven generations. And oftentimes you'll see in my office or in my house, I use seven generation products. And I think that a lot of times when we're making decisions, we're not making decisions based on the next seven generations. We make them based on what's going on in our current climate. And I just want to say that my sister, Kendra Sandoval, who had worked for the. Administration, had talked to me. Often times she has her. Master's in sustainability and from Naropa University. And she sent me a beautiful text this morning when I was talking to her about this compromise. And it said government should protect people and regulate corporations, not protect corporations and regulate people. And so I just thought about that deep today when I was thinking about this bill and moving forward on a compromise. And I think that this is shows that we can all work together, even though there's five newly elected members here sitting here with you, and that we can work with the administration and the mayor's office. So I applaud the mayor for taking this bold step as well. And I look forward in the next year to coming up solutions for the next seven generations of Democrats, for the world and for my kids and for my grandkids. And I just want to thank the co-sponsors. I don't think it was easy to make this decision. And I just want to say that I don't think it was taken lightly for you all to come to a compromise. And I just want to say thank you for doing that. I really just honor that. And I respect where you came from. And thank you, John, for your work on this. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right. Any other comments on this one? I will just add again, thank you to the administration for continuing to work with us as we were barreling down on this deadline. I'm so excited about how we move forward. Thank you to all of the citizens and the groups that have been involved so far and will be involved from here on. We're going to have a lot of hard work to do, but I'm really excited about that work. I also want to give a shout out because I think in the midst of this and talking about how we're not doing enough, I don't want that to seem like that is a criticism of our current sustainability staff or our current climate staff, and they do amazing work. And I hope that you all will hear this as a renewed statement that we have your back and we are ready to push with you and for you to do the work that you all know and keep telling us that we need to do and that we're here to to help make that possible. And thank you for the amazing work that you have done so far on that. So with that, I believe, Madam Secretary, first we need to just vote to take it out of order so that then I can propose this postponement. Is that correct? Okay. So this is just the vote on taking it out of order so I can propose the delay. Madam Secretary, call. Black Eye. CdeBaca. Eye for an Eye Gillmor. Eye. Herndon Hines. Eye Cashman. I can each. Ortega. Sandoval. Sawyer Eye. Torres. Eye. Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary. Please close voting in US. Results 1339 as council zero three has been taken out of order and now I move that council bill 803 be postponed to Monday, June 1st, 2020, and that has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black Eye. CDEBACA No. Flynn All right. Gilmore, I. Herndon, I. Hines. I. Cashman Kenny Ortega. I see an evil eye. Sawyer No. Torres, I. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting and notes results. Two days. 11 eyes. 11 days to nays. Bill 803 has been postponed to June 1st. All right, Madam Secretary, if you put the next item on our screens and Councilman Hines, will you please put Council 805 on the floor?