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.
12 Eyes, one nay. Council Bill 745 has been ordered published. Madam Secretary, if you please, with the next item on our screens and before we go, because I'm going to put an amendment, we'll put this one on the floor, too. Councilwoman, can we please put council for 803 on the floor? Yes, I move that council bill 19, dash 803 be ordered published. Right. It has been moved and seconded. Councilwoman Black, you'd call this out for questions before we have a couple of potential amendments here. Do you want to go ahead with your question first? Whatever you would like me to do. Questions first or you. Have questions on the bill? Or do you have questions on the amendments? Questions on the. Bill. Go ahead. I have some legal questions. So I don't know if someone from the city attorney's office is here who can answer them, but I'll just ask. A couple are related to Tabor. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? Depending on what your first question is, it'll either be myself. Liza's active at the city attorney's office. My colleague. Rob McDermott. City Attorney's Office. Okay, thank you. So I have three questions related to TABOR. So TABOR requires a rational basis for applying a tax to one group and not the other. Can you explain if taxing one group, which is can commercial and industrial? Is in compliance with TABOR. And not taxing all customers. And at this time, I do apologize. I only got this a handful of hours ago offhand. No, I'm not able to answer that question for you. I can get back to you at a later time and send that response to you. Okay. And I can add there. So my understanding is that so long as there is a rational basis and yes, you can tax one specific type of group so you could tax commercial, you could choose not to tax residential. A concern with the bill as currently drafted, however, is that rational basis may not be within the bill as it currently exists. In particular, the purpose provision in this tax bill states that it's intended to to pay for the new office. It does not correlate why it's taxing a certain segment and not another segment. And so do you think that would be a problem if it were on the ballot? I think as it's currently drafted, it's certainly an issue. Again, you can tax a certain group and not another group. But in order to ensure that there's not a legal issue, I would recommend that that's clarified either in an amendment to the purpose statement or actually that's that's certainly what I would recommend. Okay. Well, I will look to the sponsors to addressing that. My other question regarding TABOR is so when more money is collected than as is anticipated, would the money have to be refunded back to the. I don't know that off the top of my head. You can certainly. Councilwoman Black, this is Troy Britton, Deputy Legislative counsel. Yes. If if the the number and the question is over, what if more is collected than the number and the question then yes, under TABOR, it has to be refunded. Back to your previous question. That's not really a TABOR requirement. That's more of an equal protection question. And as the attorney stated it, it's true that you can have different classes of tax classifications as long as there's a rational basis for it. You know, whether it's in the bill or not is debatable, but I think it is established in the record from the committee hearing on Tuesday. Okay. And then if the financial modeling is incorrect, would TABOR require that the bill go back to the voters? Incorrect. In which way? If if more is collected than the number in the question, then there needs to be a refund. If less is collected, then there is no TABOR violation. Okay. All right. And then. I actually have a long list of questions. I don't know how long I want to go. Okay, so so this isn't Taber related, but it is sort of state related. So utilities are regulated by the state. And so I'm wondering if it is allowed for Denver to to tax the utility. So the Public Utilities Commission does regulate rates for utilities, but not taxes. So the public the PUC, would not have any jurisdiction over different taxes on utilities. Okay. All right. I'll defer to Councilman Flynn for now and I have others. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. Press. I just actually wasn't going to comment at this point. But to follow up on Councilwoman Black, could you produce for us a list of various Denver taxes that are not uniformly applied before next week's hearing? Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Guzman. Flynn. Guzman Black. Do you? Well, I guess this is for the I guess it's for the attorneys. But do you see any sections of the tax bill that attempt to grant the city authority it does not have, such as examining the books and records of Xcel Energy? Councilwoman Black, if I may answer that one, this is Troy again. That language is in other parts of our tax code when other entities other than the city collect, collect and then send the tax to us. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Black. Councilman Ortega. I think your microphone's on there. I think I'd like to ask a question of someone here from Xcel, if you wouldn't mind, coming forward. And it's related to the collection and remittance of the tax that would be collected. I asked this question in committee and thought maybe you've had some time to take a look at this. So if you wouldn't mind addressing whether or not Xcel would charge a fee to the city for collecting and remitting the tax. Under this ordinance as it's been drafted. So Jerome Davis, regional vice president of Xcel Energy, and Holly Velasquez Horvat, director of community relations with Xcel Energy as it relates to the collection of the tax. Our position would be that we really, in terms of our business, try to avoid anything of what we term cost shifting. So the cost of administration of this as it relates to this is something that Denver and Denver itself wants. Our position would be that Denver itself would pay for in administrative costs related to this. Do you have any idea what that cost would be? So it'd be a cost passed on from you all to Denver for administering or doing the collection and the remittance of the funds? Correct. We we really don't know what that cost would be. For example, when you talk about exemptions and say you want to exempt all the nonprofits, we don't code our customer base like based on nonprofits. So someone would have to give us the list and we would have to manually each one of those, exempt them within the system, and we would have to do this on an annual basis. Someone would update us and then we'd have somebody that would go in and look at this, have to manually watch it because the system is not set up to do that. Okay. So other than doing that aspect of the work, what are some of the other procedural steps that you all would have to go through to analyze the data over the three year period? And in that kind of thing that's spelled out in the bill. We'd have to have a full understanding of what is meant by commercial and industrial customers. We classify them by rates, so transmission general, secondary general, primary general and commercial class. So we would need to understand from your perspective where you see that being fit based on with the way the bill is written. We need to have understanding of what resources it just says electric and gas. We don't have a clear understanding. Is that also mean our steam customers or are they exempt in this? There would be a number of questions. Gas, transport, are they? Our assumption is that they would be collecting it on their own, the third party gas transporters and remitting it to the city in some other form or process. We certainly aren't set up to accept that from another third party and then take it and then remit it back. Additionally, we don't understand on the rebate piece. Is the rebate coming directly from the city or is the rebate going directly to us to then remit as a credit on a customer's bill? We just don't have a lot of enough information to give you a clear assessment of the impacts. Mr. Davis, were you all involved in the committee that was working on shaping the bill as it was drafted that came before us? So I myself personally was not. But I'll let Holly talk a little bit about if any actions we had in that process. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Holly Velasquez Horvath, director of Community Relations. From my initial response would be that we met early on in May with President Clark and a couple of his key stakeholders that were working on the ballot initiative that did not get enough signatures to be on. Other than that, we were not asked to participate in helping formulate this piece of policy. Okay. And then just one last question. Is it easier to convert steam heat? That is is fueled by gas. Or I'm just trying to understand how you how you convert steam heat to electrical. Well, right now the process would utilize a resource like natural gas. There may be other technologies out there that are available to use now or will be available to use in the future. We don't know them right now. We just would operate the system, sort of how it is set up right now. And I would add, I know that there was a comment about that. The commission has state authority as it relates to the company over rates. I would probably say if, for example, there all of a sudden were multiple cities that wanted this, say, ten or 20. My guess is that the commission would step in and say, Whoa, we need to look at this and understand the full impacts on the company in terms of administrating it. And I think they would exert authority on how that would work. I would also add, if I may, around steam conversion, if that's a you guys might all be aware in addition to the city of Denver. But we recently went through. A steam rate case with the Public Utilities Commission asking for a rate. Increase. Because of our system and the upgrades that we need to make. The Commission recently approved that case through the settlement process, where we are roughly looking at about a 30% rate increase for all steam customers. In Denver through. A phased approach over the next three. Years. That is now in place. Through that process, we did. Agree through. The settlement with the commission and also our customers that we would start a study over the next several years to figure out how we could potentially move off of steam on to electric. But we have just begun that process because we understand that potentially that could be significant costs onto customers. If we were. To go through that path. But we are. In that current initial phase of studying that. So other than the city and county and Denver, a number of our buildings are steam on, steam heat. What percentage of the downtown buildings would you say are heated through steam heat? We don't have the exact as it relates to the percentage, the number of customers far between about 115 and 149 have that exact number. That's the total number of Steam customers. Thank you. I have no further questions right now. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Kinney. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to share some information that I have been working to develop since the proposal came forward, and in particular with regard to the revenue estimate. The estimate put forward at committee is $35 million. I'm not clear if we have several amendments in front of us, so they may or may not be changing that estimate. I haven't quite absorbed that yet. But in terms of setting community expectations, I think that the expectation that I understood that was that there would be $35 million for for climate work. And so as I have gone through and examined the exemptions that were described by the sponsors during the committee hearing, in particular the exclusion of all governmental and all nonprofit entities with 100% rebates. In the case of the nonprofits, I did my best to clarify what information was used by the sponsors and then to go check that with some of the other sources. It's hard. As Xcel mentioned, they do not have a system that separates out nonprofits from other types of commercial properties. But I went to our assessments of the city. And so in the 2018 abstract of assessment, it has a list of all of the properties that are exempt from property tax. In particular, there are four categories religious entities, private schools and charitable entities. Those are exempt from property tax. They are, by definition, nonprofit. They are not the only nonprofits I will state. But I worked with the with the assessor to come up with an estimate of our commercial property. So see if you can follow me here in this revenue estimate. And I did check this with the sponsors. 82% of the revenue is being generated on the commercial side. Okay. So the vast majority of the funds come from the commercial side, not the industrial side. 39% of Denver's commercial property is nonprofit or government. 39%, which means that that portion of commercial is is almost cut in half just with the religious nonprofits. This does not include secular nonprofits that pay property tax. We have other nonprofits that don't fall under this religious or educational category. And so therefore they pay property tax, but they would be exempt under this ordinance. So for folks to understand where this estimate comes from, it's quite possible that those dollars will be collected. But over half or potentially half of the funding will go right back out the door. And rebates. This is not counting rebates to small business that are also written in the bill without really any parameters, as well as rebates to potentially high intensity energy industrial users. I understand the importance of trying to protect those who are vulnerable, but as I pointed out in committee, we have multibillion dollar nonprofit entities in this city who are major sources of energy usage and are capable probably of paying this tax along with the rest of our community. So for me, I just needed to put this on the record before folks vote so that we understand that the realistic amount of funding that this could produce is is somewhere more in the neighborhood of 10 to $17 million. So I just wanted that to be transparent. The 2018 abstract of assessment is available on the city's website, and for me, it's a it's an important reason why I hope we'll be continuing to work on an alternative set of immediate actions so that we can go back to the table to start over on any discussion about a climate tax for something that will generate a larger and more meaningful base of funding, as well as to correct some of the other errors, challenges and omissions that have been made in this rushed process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Kennedy, Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. May I also ask questions of Excel, Mr. Davis, or your designate? I apologize to make you do seated pinball, but. Here we are. This hopefully will be quick and painless. So my first question is, other than President Clark in May. Did anyone ask you to be involved in the stakeholder process? No. Did you tell anyone that you would not participate in the process until there was a bill? There was bill text available. No, not that I remember. And then the last question is about Steam customers. I think I heard between 150 and 140 Steam customers. How many customers do you have? Total. 1.4 electric and 1.1. 4 million electric. 1.3 million gas. Great. Thank you, sir. And ma'am. And, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Hayes. Any other questions before I jump in here? All right. I'm not seeing any. Just a couple quick things. I will point everyone to Slide 13 in the deck from committee presentation. I'm happy to entertain an amendment if we feel that this is more appropriate in the bill. But as our esteemed attorney over here has stated, I don't believe it's necessary, but having to put together some more materials on the stated case on why some customers, not others. But Slide 13 is the one that I presented that shows that industrial and commercial customers pay a lot less to pollute than residential customers do. And so I'll just point to that slide in the conversation that was had in committee to officially get that back on the record as well. Also, you know, I do have an amendment that I'm about to go through that, you know, there was some talk about what can we do as an exemption and what can we do as a rebate. And concerns around the rebates, as we've heard from Councilwoman Cannick on the amounts of the rebates, but also on the logistics of administering a program where we're collecting tax and returning it. So, you know, again, this is different than if we were levying a new addition to our sales tax where we can very quickly pull the numbers based on what other people have exempted in the past and know exactly the number. If you do an exemption per TABOR, it's a little bit harder because we are blazing new, new a new path, new territory, which is exactly where I think we should be on this issue. We need to be we should have been doing that a couple of years ago, and now here we are. How exciting to blaze that path. That path is a little bit more complicated because we don't have that immediate data set ready for us. We were able to get down on, you know, customers, federal government, state government, municipal government, K through 12th grade educational institutions and are able to offer an amendment today that would provide an exemption so that money doesn't have to be collected and given back instead of a rebate. I'll also say that while I respect capsule mechanics thought process and where she's again trying to grab data, where there isn't data immediately ready, which is again why we're doing it as a rebate and not as an exemption. The numbers that we've run don't show that the reductions are anywhere near the numbers that she has. So, yes, there will be refunds and and rebates. And, you know, we don't know the exact number of that. If we knew that number, then we could put it in as an exemption. But again, we're forging new territory and we're trying to to create a pathway where we are generating money, you know, way more money than we're currently investing in in this in solving this huge problem that necessitates even more money than this, while at the same time being respectful to the concerns that this is something that is going to immediately destroy Denver. And so that balancing act between collecting the revenue that we need, doing it in a responsible way, creating pathways so that we're not creating unintended consequences and hardship, I think is, is, you know, we're getting attacked on both sides from that. But I believe that means we're probably striking just the right balance. I just want to point out that I believe the steam numbers you just gave her, a 30% increase phased over time. And no one is running in screaming. That saying that these businesses were facing a 30% increase in their utilities will be destroyed forever and will will have to rise from the ashes. What we're talking about here is a very small fraction of that. So with that, I am going to offer my First Amendment here, and it is I would like to move that council bill 19 0803 be amended in the following particulars. Number one on page two, strike lines 25 through 27 and substitute the following e exemptions. The following Electricity or natural gas customers are not subject to the taxes levied in accordance with Article nine one. The Federal Government, State Government, municipal government, or kindergarten through 12th grade educational institutions, and to a domestic customer whose meter serves a multi-family residential building or other residential common area. Two On page three, strike lines 19 334. Three on page four strikes straight lines one through 11 and substitute the following shall city and county of Denver tax has been be increased by 30,391,224 annually, commencing July 1st, 2020, and by whatever additional amounts are, is annually thereafter. By authorizing the city and county of Denver to levy a climate action, sustainability and resilience excise tax upon commercial and industrial customers consuming electricity and natural gas with a first year electricity rate of $0.0060 per kilowatt hour for both commercial and industrial customers. A first year natural gas rate of $0.030 per therm for commercial customers and a. First year rate of $0.015 per therm for industrial customers. The electricity portion of the tax expires when Xcel Energy Grid reaches 70% renewable energy. The natural gas portion of the tax does not expire and increases 10% annually. After January 1st, 2025. The excise taxes for the purpose of funding the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency show the full proceeds of the tax and any earnings therefore be therefrom be collected and spent without an additional limitation or condition under Article I , Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution or any other law. So that is the motion. Looks like it has been moved and seconded. The purpose of this amendment is again to move what we could get good data on from rebate to exemption to lessen the amount of time that will have to be spent administratively collecting money and giving it back where it was possible. And then also to clarify and provide a clear and concise ballot title. We had a request in councilmembers off from the clerk's office to try and tighten up our ballot language, to assist with, you know, everything that our clerk does. And so that was the second part of the reading was on the ballot title. So we have the amendment is now on the floor. And I said to people would like to buzz in on the amendment. Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Ms.. Thank you, Mr. President. Quick question for counsel. I had thought we might have had a conversation that when there was an exemption and a Taber question, it had to go in the ballot title. I see that it's in the ordinance, but I don't I'm I'm reading it and I don't see it in the title. Am I missing it? No. So I think what we may have been discussing is the number. This has a new number in it. So the new number includes the exempted out areas. Okay. So it's not a requirement that the governmental entities being exempt be named in the ballot question? That's correct. It's just the number has to reflect the exemption. Thank you. And then I will continue conversation on some of the estimates when we get to maybe discussion on the amended bill. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Come on. We can eat each. Councilman Flynn. Thanks, Mr. President. I oppose the amendment. I have a serious question about the equal protection issue. And when we're considering an excise tax, the consumption tax, everyone who consumes it should be contributing to it. It matters. It doesn't matter to me highly that residential properties emit only. I think it was 12% with single family homes and 25% was multifamily or whatever it was. It matters to me that everybody contribute to it in Boulder. The average tax for for homeowners is about $21 a year. Everybody needs to be part of the solution to this problem. And when we start picking winners and losers on an excise tax, on a consumption tax, I think we're going down the wrong pathway and I don't support that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. All right. See no other question or comments on the amendment. Madam Secretary, roll call on the amendment. Black Eye. CdeBaca Eye. Flynn. No. Gillmor. Herndon Hinds. High Cashman. High Carnage. Ortega. I. Sandoval, I. Swear. I. Torres. I can eat. Mr. President. All right. Well, do. Did we get everybody? Yeah. Madam Secretary, please close the voting, announce the results to arise. One day. 12 hours, one day. Comfortable 803 has been amended. So we don't need the Second Amendment because that passed. So. The only amendment. Troy that was the only amendment that I need for that owners. Yes, that's correct. Okay. Thank you. All right. So we have the bill as amended now on the floor. Councilwoman Kennedy, did you indicate that you wanted to discuss that before we vote on the bill as amended? Yes, I have a comment on the bill as amended. Thank you. As I mentioned or alluded to previously, I believe that a climate tax may be something that this city needs to seriously consider. I also believe that it's critical that the entire community be engaged in our climate change. I supported the energized Denver ordinance and actually helped to work with the department to shape it, which focused on buildings over 25,000 square feet. I also supported the revisions to the Green Roof Initiative and actually supported the original ballot measure as well. In my personal vote at home and then the fix that several colleagues did to try to make it more effective, including energy efficiency upgrades with credit, we have done two major components around the commercial sector and it is the largest source of greenhouse gas, which is why those policies were appropriate and its way that a tax on those sectors may be appropriate as well. Residential is 21% of the greenhouse gas emissions and we have passed precisely zero policies, incentives or approaches to help incentivize reduction of greenhouse gas usage in the residential sector, particularly below five stories. Buildings above five stories are subject to the Green Roof Initiative, but smaller apartment buildings and single family homes. Single family homes on par generally use more greenhouse gas, create more greenhouse gas emissions than multifamily for the same square footage. So I believe that the path to climate change involves all of us. And I also believe the sponsors have made a persuasive case about the need for powerful revenue. I, I am very confident in the numbers I ran. I checked with the staff numbers. And I just want to clarify. He admitted to only including buildings greater than 25,000 square feet because that's what he had access to. There was not a data source that was available with the nonprofits other than the assessor data. So trust me when I say that the estimates provided by the staff were not complete, and the sources show that they show that they only included, for example, under religious entities, those greater than 25,000 square feet. The exemptions are not narrow that way. So the numbers I have given you are real because they are based on the entire commercial sector, not just data sources that were used by the staff. And I. It's hard. Our staff did the best they could, but the research did not as we would have perhaps gotten in a longer process. I firmly believe I outlined in committee that I believe there is a path for us to continue to examine this source. I will probably be bringing forward amendments depending on how things go in the next week, to create a path for us to create a data based discussion about a climate tax, potentially with a deadline of reporting back to this Council May of 2020 for the purposes of considering and doing it on track to be able to consider it in November of 2020, I believe that means we have to involve everybody, including our friends. I have a lot of friends. I come from the nonprofit sector. I have a lot of friends who live in residential buildings. I believe that where you have a modest tax of 50, $60 a household, even some taxes in the hundred dollars range for moderate and other income households, that is not a make or break to a housing budget. We can create exemptions for those who have equity issues, but we need to have all sectors at the table and we need to be able to generate more than 10 to $17 million if we're going to do this right, if we need to make it worthwhile. So we need to go big. I believe that we can do that conversation while taking some immediate actions to better fund things that could be done immediately to reduce the climate impacts from the city's own impact. If you remember, we had a presentation at Safety. The city of Denver is responsible for 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions. If you combine the airport and the city and the climate, frankly, doesn't care where the reductions come from, if we can immediately make some reductions in our own building stock in the next 12 months while we work on a ballot measure, the climate wins. So I believe that path still exists. I'll be voting no on this referral tonight and I will, you know, save my comments on the on the ordinance related to the office for a moment. But I believe that saying no to this bill tonight is saying yes to a much longer term victory in terms of a bigger and more meaningful outcome, in particular, avoiding the potential for a veto, potentially avoiding the loss of a poorly crafted measure in the fall ballot, and therefore preserving our potential to win in the long run. Thank you. Thank you. Counsel. Mechanic Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to adopt and echo the remarks that Councilwoman Cohen each made. And and then also to reiterate that my no vote on this is also related to the equal protection issue of of an excise tax applying only to certain people who use this commodity that we plan to tax and would wish to reduce the use of, but not to others. And I do not believe that that would pass, at least my interpretation of what is equal protection and constitutional. And I look forward to the list of what other taxes that we levy broadly on only one certain consumer of a good and not on others. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. Chair. When I we're going to talk about this again next week anyway, right? That is correct. So I shouldn't be too loquacious. I'll just repeat what I said in committee. I talked to the residents of District ten over and over. We made more than 40,000 voter contact attempts by far. If anyone was a single issue voter in District ten, by far the number one issue was climate change. And I said that I was going to take bold steps for climate change. I released an ad that said a mailer that said that I am in favor of climate change for poor those here who's sleeping. Denver City Council's first council dog is had a little surgical mask over his his snout and it was somewhat of a joke. But we do have the brown cloud coming back. We do have serious issues with our planet in Denver and beyond. And I committed to providing quick, bold steps about climate change. And so I'm a yes vote. Thank you, Councilman Hines. All right. See nobody else. I will. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to make a brief statement, and I won't repeat what I said in committee. But the most important thing is that we're solely focusing on commercial and industrial buildings. And when you look at the fact that the next category that contributes to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions is the transportation industry , we're not even looking at that. And I think for us to just hone in on one category and not be more broad in the work that we're doing and and looking at accelerating the the goals that the city has set in, looking at how we move that needle faster to reduce our overall carbon footprint, I think is is critical. And this bill only looks at one sector of our industry in terms of where the tax will come from. I think there's room for some middle ground here to be able to look at how we address this issue faster. But I don't believe this bill gets us there. A lot of our. Key stakeholders that will be directly impacted were not at the table. And I think that's important because we want to make sure that, for example, our city buildings are doing what we can to reduce the emissions from our city buildings. I want to make sure that our fleets that we have at the airport and with public works and with our police department, as we're buying new vehicles that we're looking at technology that reduces emissions in this city. We're looking at hydrogen as one of the technologies. As you know, the state has moved for us being a zero emission state, and we're going to see a whole slew of bills that will come up in this next legislative session. And I think that for us to just hone in on one sector and not that it's not important because we know in Denver it is the highest sector, but we're not including the other categories. And I think this bill kind of misses that Mark. I would love for us to have more of a conversation about how we get at funding the improvements that we want to see happen, bring our stakeholders to the table with both sides represented, and be able to, you know , have something that is is a little bit more thoughtful in terms of the the the depth of looking at how we get there. And so I'm not going to be voting for this tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Or take a council woman GILMORE If you don't mind, Councilman Owens, I'm going to go to Councilwoman Gunderson, Chairman, and. Thank you, President Clark. You know, I thought quite a bit about this over the weekend and with, as you can readily see, the immense push back to trying to do something that really is well-meaning and that we needed to do many, many years ago. And I just for the public who are watching tonight and who want to get up to speed up to speed where we're at in the Safe House committee. Last Wednesday on August 14th, the city a couple city agencies came in and did I believe it was 94, 92 slides around climate change. And so I would ask the public to look at that slide deck. And I'm going to call out a few slides because I think it's important for it to be on the record, but then also for the public to take a look at it. So Slide 15 has that at least 224 locations around the world set an all time heat record in 2018. Slide 16 talks about the average temperature temperature of Colorado rising two degrees over the last 30 years. Slide 17 heat wave days in Colorado are expected to jump from ten per year now to nearly 50 per year in 2050. Slide 19. People of color are exposed to more air pollution. Colorado is one of the states with the highest exposure. Slide 29 Central American Farmers Head To U.S. Fleeing Climate Change. The New York Times. Slide 40 Solar installer and wind turbine service technician are forecast to be the fastest growing job categories in the U.S.. You've got to scroll forward in the slide deck. But on slide 70 for our progress, the cities progress towards our first 80 by 50 goal of reducing building energy by 10% by 2020. We went up. We didn't make a difference. And in commercial we went up by 0.26%. We're aiming for in 2020 to reduce that by 10%. We're not even getting close. And lastly, slide 80, where it talks about HEA emission reductions and that the 80 by 50 goal is by 2050, 100% of heating emissions must be eliminated. Okay. 100% of heating emissions must be eliminated by 2050. And you might ask, where's the plan for that? Will the next slide? Slide 81 tells us right where we're at with that plan. It's called the Strategic Building Electrification Roadmap, and it's under development for 2020. I hope that this is serving as the clarion call that. We're up against. A monumental barrier. And yes, I want to get more money. But the Office of Sustainability, which created this system, a voluntary program for buildings and industries to benchmark their usage, have ignored residential. I haven't had focus groups in my neighborhood. I haven't heard from the Office of Sustainability on how my residents can get access to programs that would help them weatherize their home, would help them pay for solar panels on the top of their roof, maybe 50 or $60 a month for some residential works. But I know seniors and I know others in my district that are on fixed incomes that they go out without medicine, they cut their medicine in half so that they can save money. So 50 or $60 a month is massive for them. And so I just want the public to know where information is to get more information about what we are doing as a city. And I hope that this is the clarion call because, you know, we might have seven co-sponsors of this bill. We would need nine to have a majority where it won't get vetoed. If it gets vetoed, yes, we will have a long stakeholder process that will be filled with lobbyists and others who are representing industry and commercial. I'm sorry, but my residents don't have a lobbyist. They have a councilwoman who cares dearly about them. And I want the commitment. To have any sort of stakeholder process begin immediately and please do not have it in the city and county building. Please do not have it in the Webb building. Please have it in our neighborhoods where the folks that we are all supposed to be representing can get there and share their concerns and share what their barriers are on. They want to do good, too. And they would pay if they knew what they were getting. And they knew that they weren't going to have to fight like hell to get what they deserve. And that is exactly why we put equity language in this bill. It's so important. And if we miss that, then we're not walking our talk. Denver We're not. We're doing this on the backs of black and brown people. Not with them. Thank you, President Clark. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Thank you, Mr. President. I echo many of the sentiments just shared by my colleague, Councilwoman Gilmore, but I did want to also add and point to the hypocrisy in a lot of the statements you've heard here today. We heard from another colleague that we won't generate enough even if we're only generating between 10 to 17 million a year. That is the same colleague that was the lead on the linkage fee for housing, which only was intended to generate $15 million a year to address our top crisis in the city. We also heard about the equal protection clause from a colleague who I have frequently seen. Not put equal protection at the forefront of our decision making. The biggest generator of pollution is transportation. Yet many members who had that complaint have also voted to expand roads, and that incentivizes the use of the transportation causing our problems. So the difference here seems to be who's being taxed and the profit generating entities. It is what distinguishes the industrial and commercial from the residential. There's profit to be lost here, and it seems that that's all we want to protect. And so I urge my colleagues to see through the thinly veiled attempts to protect profit before the planet and our people. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca. See nobody else in the queue. I'm going to give a quick second just to make sure, because I'm going to say a few words and then we're going to vote. Everybody good? Okay. I'm not going to go on at length today because I see I see people here today, including Cathy, who's tried to speak twice on this, a public comment and missed the deadline. And I know is in opposition of this. And I think she deserves, you know, a chance at the microphone. I see a lot of folks who have been in these conversations and in the trenches on this for a long time, who deserve a shot at speaking at our microphone. And that's not scheduled for tonight. So I'm not going to go real long here other than to say that I will echo a lot of what my co-sponsors have said, and they've said it better than I can say it. So I'm not going to say it again. And just one more statistic to pull out as I'm dropping my kids off. I'm no more elementary school kids have two middle schoolers. It was a big day for me. And as I'm dropping them off in a school that was not designed to function in the climate we have today , when it's going to break a record for the heat. This is not something that is happening down the road. This is something that's happening today. And this is not something that we can afford to wait to take action down the road. It is something where we have to take action today. And so I will beg and plead and urge my colleagues to vote yes on this, on first reading, if even if you intend to vote no on it, on second reading, so that we can get to second reading and allow everyone on both sides of this issue to have their moment at the microphone to share with us their thoughts. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Voted zero three. Black. No. CdeBaca. Yes. Flynn. No. Gilmore. Yes. Herndon. No. Hines. Yes. Cashman. Can each. No. Ortega. No. Sandoval. I swear, I. Torres. No. Mr. President. All right. Madam Secretary, please close the voting, announce the results. 756786 nails Constable zero three has been ordered published final consideration with a courtesy public hearing will be Monday, August 26th. Madam Secretary, if you please put the next item on our screens and cancel them, can you please put Councilor 805 on the floor?