CITY-COUNTY ADVISORY BOARD ON CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC EQUITY

200 E. Wells Street City of Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Meeting Minutes CITY-COUNTY TASK FORCE ON CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC EQUITY Ald. Nik Kovac and Sup. Supreme Moore Omokunde, Co-Chairs August Ball, Pam Fendt, Julie Kerksick, Ted Kraig, Ayanna Lee, George Martin, Janet Meissner Pritchard, Pamela Ritger, Erick Shambarger and Rafael Smith Staff Assistant: Linda Elmer, lelmer@milwaukee.gov, 414-286-2231 Legislative Liason: Luke Knapp, luke.knapp@milwaukee.gov, 414-286-8637 Thursday, April 9, 2020 2:00 PM City Hall, Room 301-A 2:00-4:00 P.M. Meeting convened: 2:03 P.M. Members present via telephone: Sup. Moore Omokunde, Ald. Kovac, Barbara Richards, Rafael Smith, Julie Kerksick, Ted Kraig, Erick Shambarger and Pam Fendt Members excused: August Ball, Ayanna Lee, George Martin, Janet Meissner Pritchard and Pamela Ritger Also present: Linda Frank, Gordie Bennett, Luke Knapp, Bruce Wiggins, 1. Introduction of members. 2. Review and approval of the minutes of the March 19th meeting. Ms. Kerksick moved for approval of the minutes. There were no objections. 3. Review and approval of the final draft of the Preliminary Report. Ms. Kerksick wondered if the introduction needs to reference COVID-19 and how this may affect the task force's work relating to budget changes. Sup. Moore Omokunde said he is hearing a lot of doom and gloom about money from the federal government. Ms. Richards wanted to include the importance of using electronic means to get public input as well as adding text relating to COVID-19 and its impact on the minority community and economic equity. Other members did not support adding the COVID-19 text relating to the minority community. There is already text relating to electronic outreach methods. Ms. Richards wanted a sentence added about having a Climate Emergency Declaration as one of the recommendations. Sup. Moore Omokunde thought that would be an agenda item. Ms. Frank thought that would also be included as a recommendation. Some members thought a Climate Emergency Declaration would be part of the report, while others thought it was to be an agenda City of Milwaukee Page 1 CITY-COUNTY TASK FORCE ON Meeting Minutes April 9, 2020 CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC EQUITY item for today. This will be an agenda item for the next meeting. Ald. Kovac believes the Council should take formal action, but what should be done in addition to that since everything is now being done remotely. Ald. Kovac asked if members wanted to rush this through tomorrow or have the next Council take up this matter as part of its course of business; no one wants to drag this along. Ms. Kerksick said the task force should wait for the new members to be in place, but she doesn't want to wait a long time. Mr. Wiggins saw value in getting the new people on the record and getting it as one of the first items to handle. Mr. Smith agreed also with waiting for the new term, as did the other members. Ald. Kovac thinks the fact that this report was produced is note-worthy and Sup. Moore Omokunde agreed. Ms. Richards and Ms. Fendt both thought the co-chairs would be the media contacts, not individual members. Ms. Fendt thought it made sense to delay it until new members are seated and to sketch out a plan to speak to new members. Ald. Kovac thinks the ideal would be a one-hour presentation before a Committee and Sup. Moore Omokunde thinks the county board will be familiar and supportive of this task force's work. Sup. Moore Omokunde suggested having members formally come before the committee and members are free to reach out to their local representatives. Ms. Fendt would like a friendly e-mail sent to members to give them a "heads up" about the forthcoming report. Mr. Kraig would like to correct in the finance/funding section relative to a duplicate (bullet point #1 and #32 - page 40 and page 46). Mr. Knapp will combine both into one point. Mr. Shambarger noted that this option has been pursued, but unsuccessfully to date. Mr. Wiggins wondered what the appendices are as none are listed. There are only 2 - the Energy Burden map and the other is a brief desciption relating to green house gas emissions. Both indices are in the file; Mr. Knapp couldn't merge the documents, working from home. Mr. Shambarger said that on page 15, on the first bullet point, note the data hasn't been received, not that they refused to provide it. A note will be added that the data will be provided after April 15th. It will be changed to read that "it has not yet been provided." Ms. Kerksick moved to accept the preliminary report, as amended, seconded by Ms. Richards. There were no objections. 4. Update from the Budget Office relating to the Promise amendment. This item was held and will be on the next agenda. 5. Creation of a Vulnerability Assessment Work Group. Ms. Richards would like to create this work group. Mr. Smith asked what the objectives of this work group would be. Ms. Richards thought it would bring both the climate and economic equity aspects to the community and this would also bring in input from all aspects of the community across all sectors. This would be bringing it to a broader audience. She supports going sector by sector for outreach to and from the community. If this isn't a separate work group, it could be part of what every current work group does. She would like to expand the matrix she formerly created to show what it would look like if we did something versus if we didn't do something. COVID-19 has shown that we can all act together and we need to build on that momentum. Ms. Frank would agree with having existing work groups incorporate vulnerability as part of their responsibilities. Ms. Richards will send some documents to add to the legislative file. 6. Adding additional members to the Task Force and who those members should be. City of Milwaukee Page 2 CITY-COUNTY TASK FORCE ON Meeting Minutes April 9, 2020 CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC EQUITY This item was combined with item #9 at the request of Mr. Kraig. Mr. Smith is opposed to adding additional members as it becomes too unwieldy. Mr. Kraig supported having a task force of fewer members with a stakeholder committe being larger. Ms. Kerksick is also concerned about numbers, in terms of having too many members, but she doesn't want to lose the input from non-members. Mr. Wiggins said it needs to be community-wide in order to get support and right now the major missing component is the business component. Ms. Richards said businesses of all sizes need to be included in a stakeholders' group to meet and agree what needs to be done. The stakeholder group, per Ms Richards, would be a body that would work on advancing the recommendations of the task force. The original members were appointed by Sup. Moore Omokunde and Pres. Hamilton's office and most members are active and involved members. No members are objecting to a stakeholders' committee. Ald. Kovac noted there is also a lack of utility representation. Ms. Kerksick said she doesn't really know how she got appointed. Ms. Fendt didn't know if a stakeholder group was proposed as a means to get more community support and no businesses are rushing forward to attend these meetings. Sup. Moore Omokunde is concerned about how "stakeholder" is defined and Mr. Smith agrees and he thinks the task force needs to focus on equity more than it currently is. Mr. Wiggins suggested leaving the decision to city/county boards as to whether a stakeholder's group needs to be created; Sup. Moore Omokunde did not support that idea in terms of giving away any authority this task force has. Task force members did not support adding more members to the task force due to a fear that with too many members it becomes unwieldy. Ms. Richards suggested having Stakeholder Partners, rather than a committee, so they could then decide what they are willing to commit to. The Education and Outreach Work Group will create a list of Stakeholder Partners. Members can e-mail Sup. Moore Omokunde as to who they think should be outreached to as Partners. 7. Layout of a timeline and outreach services. Sup. Moore Omokunde would like to have smaller, virtual meetings, as well as call-in to radio stations. Both Ald. Kovac and Sup. Moore Omokunde are happy to go on a radio talk show. Item 10, hiring of a consultant, was discussed under this item as well. If there is no funding for a consultant, what is the task force's response? Mr. Shambarger said there is some money that could be used. Ms. Frank said that an emissions report update is needed for 2023, so that will be a cost, and the big-cost item will be developing the strategy for emissions reduction and draw-down. Mr. Kraig said Madison allocated up to $250,000 and the other cities' scales seemed to range $250,000 to $500,000 and all had consultants involved. Mr. Wiggins said the cities either need to have quite a bit of money or have commitments from nonprofits, which all takes time, effort and money. Ald. Kovac said maybe the Stakeholders will need to fund this based upon city fiscal constraints, particularly with the drop in the stock market. Ald. Kovac said there might be funding in the private market. Ms. Kerksick also suggested that part of the task force work will be to get cost estimates for each of the work group's recommendations. Sup. Moore Omokunde agreed a ballpark amount needed to be calculated. Ms. Kerksick wants a sense of urgency related to the need to raise funds. Mr. Smith asked if city and county staff could looking at anticipated, proposed federal stimulus money. Mr. Shambarger said the Intergovernmental Relations Division is already working on creating a "wish list" to spend additional funds on. Mr. Shambarger said he wouldn't ask for more than $100,000 in this fiscal climate. Ms. Kerksick said the work does need to be done to put dollars onto the recommendations to see how it would be costed out. Ms. Fendt City of Milwaukee Page 3 CITY-COUNTY TASK FORCE ON Meeting Minutes April 9, 2020 CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC EQUITY agreed with Ms. Kerksick and also care needs to be taken that the jobs generated are good jobs. Ms. Kerksick suggested that all the work groups, if they haven't already, detail what a consulant would do and the costs of such consultant work. 8. Creation of a Climate and Equity Action Team. Mr. Kraig said the Action Team is the internal city-county meetings and Mr. Kraig thought they should be separate from the Stakeholder Partners. Mr. Shambarger said there are additional city employees who want to be involved with this. He calls the go-to people in the different departments his "green team". Mr. Bennett said he and Mr. Shambarger talk frequently and he can assist in creating a list of employees who are willing to assist and he can also recruit additional employees. Mr. Shambarger would like to have some state employees and boards involved as well. He thinks this group can be created administratively. The county does have an Office of African American affairs, as well as a number of supervisors, for the equity component. 9. Creation of a Committee of Stakeholders. This was discussed as part of item #6. 10. Discussion relating to the need for a consultant and the specific tasks thereof. This was discussed as part of item #7. 11. Discussion relating to the Clean Energy Toolkit, contained in file 191039. Ms. Frank said that there are a lot of resources that are in this tool kit for Wisconsin and work groups need to take advantage of those tools as appropriate. 191039 Communication relating to the preliminary report and activities of the City-County Task Force on Climate and Economic Equity. Sponsors: Ald. Hamilton 191923 Communication relating to the final report and activities of the City-County Task Force on Climate and Economic Equity. Sponsors: THE CHAIR Ms. Frank recommended adding an agenda item on implementation of short term goals. Meeting adjourned: 3:57 P.M. Linda M. Elmer Staff Assistant A recording of this meeting can be found in file 191923. City of Milwaukee Page 4