Today we are talking to the director of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation, Dr. Missy Stults, about A2Zero, the climate millage coming up on Ann Arbor’s November ballot, and a little big dreaming. This is the first of two episodes where we’ll talk about this millage; this one we’ll get informed, and in the next episode, Molly and I will talk more about getting involved.
Links from today’s conversation:
- Here’s the language to order the Millage, which includes the Attorney General’s approved ballot language;
- Here’s the resolution which discusses how Council intends to spend the millage if passed;
- A2Zero (which, as Missy reminded us, is more than a plan, it’s a framework and a practice);
- and information about a prospective sustainable energy utility in Ann Arbor.
Come check out our episodes and transcripts at our website, annarboraf.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AFers on Twitter and Facebook. And hey, if you wanted to ko-fi us a few dollars to help us with hosting, we wouldn’t say no. Support the show
Transcript
Jess: Hi, and welcome to this episode of Ann Arbor AF, a podcast for folks trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann Arbor. We discuss current events in local politics and policy, governance, and other civic good times. I’m Jess Letaw, and I’m here with my cohost Molly Kleinman. We both use she/her pronouns. We’re your cohosts to help you get informed, and get involved. It’s your city! Let’s jump in!
Today we’re talking to the director of the Ann Arbor Office of Sustainability and Innovation, Dr. Missy Stults. I have a note that says “insert fangirling here” and that’s just a continuous thing. I’m just going to be fangirling this whole episode. We will be talking about the A2zero plan, the upcoming climate millage that will be on Ann Arbor’s November ballot, and maybe a little big dreaming. In talking about the climate millage, Molly and I realized that we really needed to have two separate episodes this one. The first one is to get informed. As a city employee Missy can educate us all day long about the millage, but can’t engage in any advocacy around it, and that’s fine. So next episode when Missy isn’t around, Molly and I are going to get deep into opinions about the different aspects of the millage ballot proposal. Are we going to fight? I don’t know, we might fight a little, it’ll be fun if we do.
01:28
Molly: I feel like there will be less fight by the end of this episode, but we’ll see.
01:32
Jess: That’s right. Neither one of us are from the Midwest, but at this point we have like that midwestern ethic now, so like it’ll be the nicest fight ever if we do. So yeah we’ll do that and we’ll share some suggestions for how you might get involved.
01:48
Molly: Yes, so before we get into this conversation with Missy we’re going to do a quick election update. The primary election in Ann Arbor is now less than two weeks away. And there are some specific opportunities for getting involved when the election is getting super close. These involve volunteering for campaigns. Even if you haven’t volunteered for campaigns yet this season, there’s a lot of last minute stuff that needs to happen. Things like setting up yard signs at polling places, doing lit drops where you’re not even knocking on doors, you’re just dropping off door hangers. So again, when we talk about our introvert-approved election participation, these are all introvert-approved. And the last one is handing out lit at polling places on election day. And this is one where you do have to see people, but you don’t have to actually like interact with those people, you’re just giving out literature as they walk into the polling place. These are all things that even if you haven’t been volunteering on the campaign these candidates are going to love having some extra hands, extra people to help with those kinds of activities.
If you haven’t voted yet, if you haven’t made a plan to vote, get cracking. This is the election, where this stuff is going to get decided for the city. This is how we decide who our next Council Members are going to be. It’s super important so get out there.
All right, and now shifting to our guest of honor, we are so excited to have Dr. Missy Stults here with us today. I’m going to give you a little bit of her bio real quickly and then we’re just going to start talking. Dr. Missy Stults is the Sustainability and Innovations Director for the city of Ann Arbor. In this role, she works with all city operations: residents, businesses, the University of Michigan, nonprofits and others to achieve a just transition to community wide carbon neutrality by 2030 as outlined in the A2zero carbon neutrality plan. Prior to joining the city, Missy worked with cities and tribal communities around the nation to advance their climate and sustainability goals. Missy has a PhD in urban resilience from the University of Michigan… urban resilience is like such a cool thing.
03:53
Jess: So cool and like that job description was cool, right?
03:57
Molly: Yeah! A master’s in climate and society from Columbia University and undergraduate degrees in marine biology– so you like, actually, did the marine biology thing that, like every little girl dreamed of?!
04:08
Missy: Yeah I wanted to study whales, so like literally double down on the dream. And my husband studied sharks so like. We got it in our house.
04:20
Molly: That’s amazing! Undergrad degrees in marine biology and environmental science from the University of New England. Welcome Missy we are so thrilled to have you here. And to get started, I just read your bio, but can you tell us a little bit more about what your job is and what those words mean?
04:38
Missy: Yeah for sure, and first and foremost, thank you so much for having me, I think this is going to be the most fun that I’ve had in a really long time. I want to fangirl back at both of you as well. And don’t stress, I am the Midwesterner on the line so I’ll teach you how to fight with kindness. That’s how we do it.
My job at its simplest, the way I think about it, is to make sure that Ann Arbor actually is the most sustainable and equitable city in America, if not the world. And that is not a joke! That’s a really big undertaking, so I think about, how do we make sure today’s youth, Ann Arborites and future Ann Arborites have clean air, clean water, a viable planet and have access to all of the things that we love and often take for granted that we have: The ability to walk and bike safely around our community, the ability to invest in local shops, local produce etc, and all of that sort of an undertone is the climate, the weather, that we experience has to be habitable for folks. So how do we integrate all of these things that make Ann Arbor extraordinary and how do we maintain them so everyone who wants to be here can be here and experience that not just today, not just tomorrow, but hopefully forever.
05:50
Molly: That’s awesome, that’s some big dreaming, which we talked about.
05:55
Missy: Oh, I skip to the end sorry, that’s like every day dreaming in our office, so I don’t know.
06:00
Molly: Those are big dreams for me. That’s really cool. So what brought you into sustainability? Clearly, this has been an interest for you lifelong.
06:09
Jess: Since the whales.
06:10
Missy: Since the whales! I grew up in Indiana and I have always been captivated by the ocean and megafauna like whales and so true story, I was absolutely gonna be the person who like solved climate – no, not climate – the communications barrier between humans and whales and so that was like. See? I can’t even talk about whales without talking about climate. That’s how much I think about climate now. But I loved it, and that was sort of the path. And then, while I was in my undergraduate program there was a required course on environmental ethics and it happened to be that we talked about the ethics of climate change. And that course is unequivocally the moment that things pivoted for me. I realized everything that I cared about was going to be impacted and already was impacted by climate change, whether those are the glorious whales, that we have out in the ocean, whether that’s my family. The people that I love, the places that I love, that I found respite, I found joy, that I find myself, all of those things were impacted by climate change. And I felt the calling. And so that was the moment that I knew I was going to work in climate change and I tell people I don’t work in climate change, I have a life purpose, which is to help address the climate crisis. So it’s a blessing, it’s also a little bit of a curse because you never stop working on it or seeing it.
07:23
Jess: [Sarcastically] We don’t know anything about that here.
07:25
Missy: [Also sarcastically] Yeah you wouldn’t know anything about that? What?!
07:29
Molly: Those jobs that are also callings, it’s really hard to have boundaries when it feels so important. So, what kinds of things… tell us about a day, like a day in the life of the Ann Arbor Sustainability Director.
07:46
Missy: Is the word back to back meetings? I feel like that’s the truth. Every day is different, and I wish I could give you the visual like I would show you my calendar. Because I don’t say no very often, because I think we have to change the culture, like a culture of “yes, and” is really important in our work. Whether that’s challenging systems and institutions that are perpetuating inequality. Or extractive systems that are extracting from people and the planet that we live in, we have to keep thinking and challenging those systems and it’s really easy to say no it’s really hard to say yes and find a way to work through that. So I say yes to too many meetings, so that would be the downside of that. I’m gonna pick a day and tell you what the day looked like.
Molly: Awesome
Missy: Because, why not? Let’s make this real.
After family stuff so I have a kiddo, we get the kiddo ready and we get to school. We come in, we have a team meeting every day. A little touch base to see what happened yesterday, what’s happening today, what’s on the horizon, who needs support, who has capacity? Really creating that culture, if you will, we think of ourselves as like an ecosystem. So how do we support each other and our individual and collective roles? Then pivot on this particular day into a meeting with some solar installers to talk about how we can expand solar deployment throughout the community. Then pivoted to a discussion with my boss, as part of a regular check-in. I then went and talked to our friends at Top of the Park for some collaboration that we do with them, which was super fun and great. Worked on a zero waste campaign with some of our collaborators in the public. Did some design work and met with some of our A2Zero ambassadors to talk about a project that we’re trying to do with realtors to help when people move into the community or are leaving the community, that they practice sustainability principles in that work, and working to educate folks and make sure they know the opportunities that exist. Super fun. Then join the 2030 district in a webinar on A2Zero, and how to implement it, good times had by all. Then started talking about contracting processes to do this work. I really know this is crazy boring, you’re getting it, right? It’s sort of like…
10:00
Jess: No this is awesome, The hashtag for this episode just became “good times were had by all.”
10:07
Missy: Yeah and then often we go into public meetings in the evening, so part of our ethos is really authentically and effectively engaging with stakeholders, and rarely is that through really big centralized events. It’s often by going to a meeting, going to a Housing Commission site and talking to stakeholders there. Working with meals on wheels to do some education and outreach with homebound residents, so we’re bringing their perspective into the work that we’re doing. Or being at the libraries and talking to folks. So we spend in one month alone, I just calculated a previous month we have 26 public events on the team calendar. So that’s really important to our work.
10:44
Jess: There’s something kind of lovely that working on the climate means working with people and, like all these people, there’s something really, really lovely about that.
10:54
Missy: Yeah I think it’s the booster shot of energy often is working with people. And sometimes not, but sometimes when we see positive change that actually cascades through a person’s life like there’s nothing more rewarding. We won a small grant working with Community Action Network (CAN) and the Bryant Community Center. $25,000 it’s not a lot of money, but all the money went to deploy solar to two households that were struggling with energy poverty, one of the individuals was about to leave because they couldn’t afford their bills anymore, and all of a sudden that program just allowed them to be able to stay in their home, and like I said with that and I think it’s never enough, our work is never enough, the climate crisis is so big and overwhelming and yet for two people, it was just enough.
11:48
Molly: That’s really incredible. And so all of this work that you do is structured in some way by the A2Zero, is that right? So I’m going to shift us now to talking about that plan and how it shapes your work.
12:02
Jess: I’m going to pick up the thread here because continuing the fangirling idea I need you to know my recent ranking of top municipal reports, and this was the thing we did, A2zero came up at my second and the only reason it wasn’t first is because my work is in housing. And so the housing affordability and economic accessibility report had to be first, but this is so much up there, to the point where I’m pretty sure, Molly help me remember, I might have propositioned, the report in the episode.
12:33
Molly: I think this is the one you said you wanted to marry.
12:36
Jess: I did yeah it got a little weird so I.
12:38
Missy: It is single right now, I think it’s open
12:42
Jess: I’d like to think that it’s open. So tell me, give us the overview of the report, what is it, where did it come from, why does A2zero matter?
12:53
Missy: Yeah so first and foremost I’m going to frame this A2zero, is not just a plan, it is a framework, it is a policy, and it is all of the actions that we are taking to hit the goal that I’m going to give you. And this came from City Council, in November of 2019 they passed a climate emergency declaration, and this is important because a climate emergency or an emergency in any situation means there’s an issue and you act like there’s an issue, you unleash resources to respond to that emergency, human capital, financial resources. You challenge things in an emergency because you have to, you have to rethink systems.
So Council declared a climate emergency and set the goal of being carbon neutral, zero climate pollution, for our entire community by 2030, and so A2Zero is the plan, the framework, the actions about how we’re going to achieve that. Important things to know: My team, the team gets so mad when I say this but I’m just gonna say: It’s wrong. It’s wrong! Every plan is wrong, the instant you write it. There’s not fidelity to every word on that page. There is however fidelity to seven strategies that are the foundation upon which the entire plan and framework is built and those seven strategies have to be achieved, to be carbon neutral as a community. And justice and equity are not lenses, they can’t be lenses because lenses are a vantage. I can change my view. I can take off my lenses if I don’t want to see things. And so the goal, one of the fundamental principles of A2zero is equity, that we have to center this work and equity, acknowledging that those who are hurt first and most by climate change are those who have done the least to contribute to the problem, and they should also be the ones that benefit first and most from the solutions that we’re putting into place. Another core principle, there are three values of A2zero equity, sustainability, and transformation. I’ll stop rambling after this one. I want to bring transformation into the discussion because it’s one that people often are sort of like “yeah that sounds nice, but like what?” And the reason we centered it was doing what we’ve done historically isn’t going to address the climate crisis, it’s going to exacerbate inequality, it’s going to perpetuate climate change, it’s going to lead to more housing unaffordability and a greater housing crisis. So we can’t keep doing what we’re doing and expect to get out of the situation we’re in, we have to transform the things that are holding us back. And that takes a lot of bravery and that is very challenging for local governments. to take risks. We call it “failure positive,” to be okay with exploring something and having it not work. And no I’m not talking about a bridge, I’m not talking about a road, I’m talking about programs that we’re going to try because, there isn’t a roadmap, there isn’t a bike path, there isn’t there isn’t a really clear pathway on how to do this, so we’re gonna figure it out. Together.
15:50
Jess: My whole nervous system settled into that. Molly, you have a story that’s pertinent to this transformation.
16:00
Molly: I do well, so the first time Missy and I met, the only time we’ve seen each other in person was at the Transportation Commission meeting; it was the last one before the pandemic hit. And Missy had come to present to us about the A2zero plan and I came home just really stoked and excited about it, so this is back in early 2020. I love it, it was so ambitious, this idea that we’re going to get to carbon neutral in 10 years was so ambitious. And then, of course, everything locked down, and I was just stuck at home with my partner and kids for a long time, and we ran out of stuff to talk about so I’m talking about the A2zero plan and how cool it sounds, and I was like “the goal is to get to carbon neutral in 10 years,” and my kid, who was seven at the time, was like “everyone’s gonna have to stop driving their cars!” and I was like, “that’s right baby, everyone’s gonna have to stop driving their cars.” And it was incredible because she’s little enough that, like all of the haze of how things have always been done, and that fear of change hasn’t settled on her yet, and so, for her it felt so clear and logical. But when you talk about transformation that’s the the level of transformation that we’re talking about, right? Really humongous, not just in transportation, which is obviously my focus, but in housing and energy generation?
17:19
Missy: yeah I mean let’s be real the pandemic, there were weeks that we saw a 50% reduction in vehicle miles traveled. Because people were not moving about the community, but we still were working, and so one of the things, like I told you A2zero, there’s not fidelity to every one of the 44 actions, although we are as a team working on 37 of them, so I just want to be clear y’all like. We are running. Do not think that we are not. But telework isn’t in there. We evaluated telework in 2019, 2020 before the pandemic, A2zero was adopted in the pandemic. We were sequestered. But we didn’t put telework in because we evaluated it. We just didn’t think we’ll ever have this kind of adoption, well, here we are. And let’s name it that telework is not equal. Gross disparities in who has access to telework or who doesn’t. But we are trying to figure out a telework program to continue it because it is having a significant impact, a positive impact in many ways. Again, not an equal impact so there’s work to be done, but that’s just an example of, “wow the pandemic actually taught us that something was possible.” Look at the stories. I’m sure you’ve seen them, stories in like India, where people saw the mountain ranges for the very first time because pollution, but we were not running factories at a level and people can…
18:34
Jess: Breathe.
18:35
Missy: And they can see, and they can see physically and I think they can see, perhaps in a more existential way what’s possible.
18:45
Jess: This is making me think. We pose questions all the time that we have absolutely no intention of answering. And for me, one of the things that I’ve thought about a lot is, “what does success look like coming out of the pandemic?” We’re using a lot of benchmarks. I’m on the board of the DDA. I talk to downtown business owners and workers all the time, and some of the restaurateurs are saying, “we’re seeing pre pandemic sales and we’re exceeding that.” And that’s great. There’s something else that I’m hearing, which is that traffic is returning to pre pandemic levels and that’s given as an indication of success which makes my skin itch and I’m wondering if, as we are – we’re still in a pandemic like let’s keep affirming that we’re still in a pandemic – but, as we are adjusting to this new normal can we also adjust to what we’re using as benchmarks for success.
19:37
Missy: I think we have to. I mean, I think that’s a really astute question. Again, I’m a little in my head on this one, but I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what really matters. I think, for many of us, the pandemic was this moment of like, “Oh! I thought it was really critical that all of these things happened, and they didn’t.” Now know I am also guilty. The first year of the pandemic was so different than the second year, I remember slowing down and spending more time with my family cooking right at the beginning. And that was a celebration, and we would walk and get the ingredients and we’d spend more time doing local and now we’re back in the hustle of quick family dinners, so I don’t know that I learned my lesson as much as I should. But I think what you’re raising is really important, stepping back and evaluating, “what does this actually mean?” The things that are sitting around me, they don’t make me happy or provide joy. Cuddling with my kid and sitting in the grass with my neighbors during the pandemic and getting to know them, that brought me joy because I had a sense of place, and I knew people, and there was a connection. Humans are social, even if we’re introverts it’s cool, we are inherently social beings that want to belong, and belonging, maybe that’s what we should focus on more than the stuff that we have.
20:54
Jess: We’ll talk a little bit more about that, when we get into the climate action millage and what the dollars get us and what they don’t.
21:00
Missy: [jokingly] I mean, as long as this stuff helps decarbonize.
21:05
Jess: let’s be clear about the goal. So with that, maybe let’s transition into that conversation. We’ll talk a little bit about what the millage is, what it’s doing, and why we’re talking about it now.
21:17
Molly: To start I’m sure you have an elevator pitch for the millage at this point, so maybe just give us that and we’ll go from there.
21:24
Missy: I probably need to have a better elevator pitch. What I say to folks is the community climate action millage is about making an investment in our future, in our people, in our place. It’s about investing the resources needed to equitably decarbonize. We don’t have the dollars to do this and we need to be honest about that. This money doesn’t exist. And that climate change is going to cost us dollars, the question is whether we’re going to spend those dollars responding to the impacts of climate change, because we haven’t prepared or, because our grid goes down frequently or because whatever it might be, the cascading effects we experience. Or whether we’re going to spend those dollars to invest in us. And the future we want. We’re going to spend dollars anyway, so the millage is an opportunity to make an investment to proactively prepare our economy, our people, and our place.
22:19
Molly: It’s sort of like investing in preventive care, instead of emergency rooms.
22:24
Missy: I know you didn’t ask this but I’ll share it. I sometimes wish I didn’t have my job. To be honest, and I wish we didn’t have this millage because what we should have done is 30 years ago started to take the actions that we needed to take to address the climate crisis, we knew the science was clear. But we didn’t, and so the best time to ask act was yesterday, the next best time to act is today and that’s where we’re at. I can’t change the past, all I can hope to impact is the future.
22:54
Molly: So what kinds of things would this millage be paying for? You mentioned that we need to invest in these things in ways that are equitable. And I’m curious, so you mentioned the solar panels on a couple of houses, this is a much bigger scale, so what kinds of things are we getting there with this millage?
23:16
Missy: yeah yeah. Well, so the message is crafted. There’s an actual budget that’s out there for folks and it’s crafted around those strategies, those seven strategies that I talked about and I’m sure that for most folks that doesn’t necessarily mean much but I’m going to use that just to help organize that thinking. So one of the strategies that is really, really personal for a lot of us is about materials management and we can think about that. From a zero waste perspective or a more holistic circular economy when I’m done with a piece of whatever it might be, my cell phone. I’m looking at my cell phone, and when I’m done with that there is still a lot of useful life in all of this, that is just not as a cell phone. And so, how do I keep that in productivity, so the millage proposes a bunch of things to advance the circular economy. Simple things like expanding recycling, and commercial and multi family sites getting compost services into those same spaces, where we have never had sustained funding to do that. Sure, maybe one year we have surplus funding but that’s not great to have a one year program you have to have sustained revenue to launch those kinds of initiatives. Expanding reuse programs and our reuse businesses. People want to help manage materials to keep them in use, but we have to invest in that, and in those people, to bring them forward. Which actually is delightful because we’re investing and we’re in fact literally economically investing in our community and climate solutions. It’s refrigerant recycling programs, we have some on the side but refrigerants, most of us don’t ever think about them, but they’re very high global warming potential if they leak, so we need to properly manage those.
That’s just one example in the circular economy space, but then there’s a lot more money and I’m happy to dive into it. I’m going to pick up the other one around low income programs, because to me this is really, really critical. I’m going to name it. I am cisgender, white, and really, really privileged. I happen to live in a House that has solar. We have a battery, we are all electric except for our furnace, and that wasn’t what we bought. We’ve been making that deployment. A lot of people can’t, that is expensive. Also, I think it’s wrong to blame the individuals for the climate crisis, you and I did not create it, the institutions in the systems around us created that problem.
25:37
Jess: And not everybody agency over their home.
Missy: Yeah!
Jess: Like Ann Arbor is something like 55% renters. Folks like us are not going to either be able financially or able legally to make those improvements to the homes.
25:50
Missy: Absolutely! It’s everywhere in the system, this is one of my pet peeves and I recognize I’m going on a slight tangent, is when we people blame. I think that’s what institutions want us to do, especially those that are the cause of these problems, because then it’s our fault. Then we are responsible for the solutions. We didn’t create it! I’m not BP, I’m not the oil industry that lied to stakeholders for a really long time. So this is not in the millage, but I will tell you, of course I’m thinking about joining lawsuits to sue these entities that are responsible for the impacst. And it should be stated, the millage is not enough money to do every single thing we need to do. sThe millage is a really, really important financial step to help us do things, but it is not done, and so I mean I fundraise a lot in our office, a lot, to try to unlock additional capital to do this work.
Now that I’m totally on a tirade bringing it back to the millage and potential budget. So things like low income programs. We run a pilot Aging In Place Efficiently Initiative that helps low income seniors stay in their home, doing aging improvements like grab bars, stairs, trip hazards. Really, really fundamental things but also then doing energy efficiency work. The grant funding is gone, we were oversubscribed, we had more demand than we thought was possible and poverty hides in plain sight, especially like in the senior community, it is actually quite rampant here.
27:14
Jess: What what is it? It’s something like one in four seniors in Ann Arbor live below the poverty level, one in four.
27:20
Missy: Absolutely. I had the situation where I was biking home, and I saw one of our signs for the program pop up at a neighbor’s house and I was like, “I talk to that neighbor all the time and I had no idea”. And then assessments came in and I realized, “maybe they’re falling and we didn’t see it.” It’s just hidden. So that’s one of the programs that would get support from the millage. There’s also programs to expand weatherization services so more people can actually get access to the kinds of services that are being provided. There’s programs to do direct buys to lower the cost or completely ameliorate the cost for the kinds of services that make a home more comfortable, more affordable for folks so that we’re not leaving people out of the green economy. That’s really critical. And there’s support here for businesses as well. There’s a lot of bulk buys, because we can do a lot through that. So, Ahhhhhh, I don’t think I directly answered your question.
28:19
Molly: You 100% did answer my question. Because I’ve been really curious about this, and I’ve talked about this with Jess a little bit. But I have, I have some reticence about this millage because of past experience with millages that were meant to solve a problem of money when the problem was actually political will. So the example that I use is the new sidewalk millage which passed in 2020. Where there’s a sidewalk gap, and the city is going to put in a sidewalk, they used to assess the homeowner or the property owner to contribute to some of the costs of sidewalk. And there was a lot of always a lot of property owner resistance. Frequently sidewalks would get killed by Council because of an outcry of the handful of people who own that property, as opposed to the many people who walk through there. And so there was this idea, “why don’t we add a millage?” Another tax, we can make the entire city pay for what really these property owners should be paying for, but it will remove this barrier and then we would get more sidewalks. So we pass this millage taxing ourselves and property owners are still objecting to sidewalks, Council is still voting them down, and now we have millage money we can’t spend. And when we talk about the climate crisis, there are some humongous things that the city of Ann Arbor could be doing right now to address them that don’t cost us anything, like legalizing apartments all over the city. Like prioritizing transit, prioritizing walking and biking over cars, and we’re not we’re not doing those things. And it’s about politics, it’s not about money. And so I’m curious on this millage about that interaction between will and funding, and if there are ways that this millage is addressing those political pieces.
30:11
Jess: And actually so that’s a heavy and complicated question and I want to add my weight on to it, if I can. Political will is part of it, and I’ve been in sustainability in one way or the other, since I was a kid and I went out with my dad along the side of highways and picked up trash. And I was trying to figure out, “Why would anybody throw garbage on the planet?” and 30 years later I’m still trying to answer that question for myself in a lot of different ways. So political will is one thing, but one of the things we’ve talked about a little bit on the pod, and if you put me in front of a beer, I will vent about this a lot, is that we cannot spend our way out of the climate crisis, it is about behavior change. And Missy I absolutely hear what you’re saying, that our systems and our largest institutions have failed us, and it’s still going to require behavior change on all of our parts in order to get to where we want to be. So, in addition to the political will question, my question, my tension around the millage is, “what do we need that the dollars don’t pay for?”
31:21
Missy: I mean amazing and, yes, yes, yes to everything that you just named .
I’m going to take it from a few angles, one from the millage perspective. Starting with: can we even spend this. What I can share is I think everything that we propose I’m looking at it in the background we’ve already started, so we already have the program structure in place, we’re either piloting it. we’re working with collaborators to scale it around local food so it’s sort of a different beast from that perspective. doesn’t mean that it’s not but that’s completely possible that we will have challenges and allocating resources in any one given year partners Evan flow capacity changes, all of that is true. But I do want to share that things like that aging in place program: we already have the structure, we already have the partners, we’re already doing it. And we know we have a waitlist of people ready to go. Same with our local food movement, which is part of the support that we have. Bulk buys and discounts we’ve already got people asking for So those are a little different, I think, then, the example that you gave where we have to get residents to agree to a sidewalk in theory, we I think they’re probably fruits, but they’re different fruits, if that makes any sense the two two messages to the. To the point about. behavior change yeah you’re right and one of the most challenging things about this job is that it’s not one behavior. And it’s not one change, it’s a lot. It could be as simple as when someone is looking to replace a furnace and they’re thinking about a heat pump. Heat pumps deliver heat and cooling differently than a furnace does; it’s actually much more stable, so you don’t have large fluctuations. It’s not the Marilyn Monroe image of air just shooting out – that’s not how they work. And that’s different, and some people don’t like it. Other people, over time, we have helped them understand that actually this is a much more stable, efficient system, and you are more comfortable.
That’s an obscure example, but the idea is that it’s our job and our responsibility to keep pushing to expose people to these technologies to these changes; to make it as easy as possible for people to do the next right thing. (What Frozen 2 tells us!) That’s a lot of what we think about in our office and then at some point yeah, then you make it more challenging to do the wrong thing.
33:46
Jess: A couple of cultural notes about doing the next right thing: Frozen 2, and that’s language out of the recovery community! All you can do is the next right thing. I just wanted to lift that up because I love it so much.
Oh, I had something else clever to say, but I was excited about the recovery community thing.
34:05
Molly: I’ll ask the question and, if it comes to you, we’ll bring it back.
So we’re curious: we’ve been asking you questions about the millage that come from our twisted podcast brains, but what kinds of questions are you getting from regular people? It’s clear you do with a ton of community engagement and outreach. What are the questions you’re hearing and what are the responses that you have?
34:29
Missy: Questions are often: What will the millage do for me? That’s a very human, natural response. We talk a lot about the bulk buys, the programs. Especially for folks who can least afford a millage, a lot of the dollars are meant to go to greater savings for them than what they would contribute through the tax structure. The business community also ask me that question. We talk about the fact that there are structures and systems in place to help support our commercial enterprises or institutions making these transitions as well. Although there’s a lot of emphasis on residential, whether that’s rental or single family home or multifamily, whatever it may be. I would say, those are the most common questions. I get a lot more statements.
35:26
Jess: “I have a question” and then it ends with a period.
35:31
Molly: Jess, you remembered what you wanted to say?
35:35
Jess: I did! It was reminiscent of the cultural thing.
Let me preface this by saying that the words “stability” and “efficiency” are my love language, so when you’re talking about heat pumps, I settle into the conversation. The fact that you brought in the Marilyn Monroe image as a way of talking about furnaces is super funny and interesting to me. Molly and I have had a couple of conversations on the pod about what it means to talk about change, not just through policy, but through culture. And now I want a Marilyn Monroe picture about heat pumps! And I just wanted to say that out loud.
…not necessarily the skirt blowing up, we can divert from the male gaze and that’s fine, but what is it? what’s arresting? what’s funny? what’s lovely? that also says “heat pump.”
36:19
Missy: I think that’s so cool! I don’t know why I want to share this, but I want to share a real example of what this work is like.
Last summer we were hearing little chirps: I want to talk about heat pumps, I want to talk about heat pumps and you’re like…I can’t tell if this is 12 people, or if our community really wants to talk about heat pumps? So let’s go ahead and organize a meeting on heat pumps. Probably four people will show up, but let’s do it. So we organize this meeting. We bring in folks to talk about heat pumps, how they work, and their value. 250 people show up!! And everyone on the team is like, This is great, what a successful event! – and I am in the background having heart palpitations. I was like, Oh, my gosh what’s going to end up happening is, All of these people are going to go and they’re going to call an HVAC person, they’re going to try to get a heat pump and they’d talk them out of that heat pump because our contractors aren’t comfortable with heat pumps (even though cold climate air-source heat pumps work in our climate), oh my God, what are we going to do? So then we call Michigan Saves and they’re like, Yes, that is exactly what is happening in our market – let’s fix it. So we get a grant, and together with Michigan Saves, we create a contractor training program which launched last year where we train contractors in HVAC. Certainly electricians don’t really need it, but training plumbers on all things electrification; it works, it works in our climate, here’s what it looks like, here’s how you understand it. Then they get a badge; and then, as consumers, you and I, Molly, we’ve got to find someone to do HVAC work, we can go on the Michigan state’s website and we see who’s electrification-ready now.
This was really, really cool; but the wickedness of this work is often there is not one problem. It is not just educating the public. Now I have to make sure the contractors actually are comfortable selling it; and then, oh by the way, our electric rates are really high; so I’ve got to figure out how I get electric rates down for operational purposes. Add supply chain issues and…it’s not boring work.
38:19
Molly: Super interesting, and it leads perfectly into our next question. Before I ask it: what’s Michigan Saves.
38:24
Missy: Sorry, everybody! Michigan Saves is our state’s green bank. They help provide financing and support resources, including vetting contractors to help us do efficiency work, electrify, any sort of activities that we have to do. Pretty cool institution that we collaborate with.
38:45
Molly: You mentioned all of these things that go into electrification, and one of the challenges is the cost of electricity. There’s this other thing that you’ve been working on, the SEU, the sustainable energy utility. We have you here to talk about the millage, so I can ask you this in the context of the millage, but if it makes sense just to talk about the SEU on its own that’s also fine. Is there a connection between the SEU and the millage? Talk to us about that.
39:20
Missy: Good question. For those who aren’t familiar: the SEU, or the sustainable energy utility, is a concept that is completely and totally legal in Michigan law. It would effectively be a supplemental utility to what we have right now with DTE who is our investor- owned utility. The idea is that the SEU is a limited poles-and-wires utility. It’s not about distributing power but generating clean, renewable, reliable local power. So it’s about solar and storage deployed on commercial multifamily and residential households throughout the community. Super exciting. Lots of information available on our website; and please, please share your feedback with us, because Council is asking to understand if this is something we’re interested in.
In terms of the millage: we have money budgeted to initiate the SEU, or whatever slides in. If the public were to say we don’t want to do the SEU and do this local deployment in this way, we still have to do local deployment. There are other ways we could do it, but we’re going to have to make investments in renewable energy as part of our decarbonization pathway. Right now there’s $650,000 that’s slated in the budget each year to support the SEU; but over time, the SEU, if we do form a utility, has to be self- sustaining, so this is just seed capital.
40:36
Jess: I want to make a note: I know that we’re talking about a lot of really dense stuff here so in the show notes, as we always do, there’s going to be a link to the millage language, a link to the resolution authorizing the millage language, and – you guys know, I always say this, I’m going to do it again – read the resolution! It’s interesting. This one is less so for the whereases and the resolved, although also great and very clear. It’s the memo that’s attached to it that’s really wonderful. Actually, if you want to develop or renew your crush on Ann Arbor (if you ever had one or have one now) there is an amazing detailing of Ann Arbor’s efforts in the sustainability/ electrification/green (actually green) work over the last 40ish years. It just – when we talk about climate, a lot of it is depressing and frantic and hard; and that memo is really, really uplifting. And the resolution that Council has already discussed and approved, talking about how they will spend climate funds if this is approved, is in there. So: basically all of the stuff that we’re referring to, all that’s going to be in the show notes, and I just wanted to remind you guys.
41:50
Molly: So we’ve talked a bit about what the millage would pay for, and you’ve talked a bit about what happens under your office, the Office of Sustainability and Innovation. What else? What is outside of both of those things? What’s out there that we don’t currently have a plan to fund that we could be doing that other cities are doing?
42:12
Missy: You are going to stump me… Let me say what other cities are doing that we’re not doing: well, there are reasons. The things that are coming to mind, we can’t do legislatively, like a ban on the ban. We have a ban on the ban, and now there’s a ban on the ban on the ban that’s been introduced. For those who don’t know what that means: we tried to ban single-use plastics. In particular, we tried to ban the plastic bag at grocery stores, or charge a fee. Then the state legislature put a ban on the ban. Now a legislator is trying to put a ban on the ban on the ban so we can bring it back. So we try to think in that space: Okay, we can’t outright ban it, what can we do? We spend a lot of time working with peers around the country, and a lot of time with my peers in Michigan, because our regulatory environment and legislative environments are the same. To think about how we play in them, how do you play in that landscape.
Molly, I know you want an example, and I’m having a hard time because we don’t really say no.
43:14
Molly: I mean that’s that’s an answer. That counts. That’s really useful to understand.
43:20
Missy: Sorry, Molly – the only thing that I did remember that I didn’t address – it was in your earlier question about what the millage can’t solve. We’re going out for a new master plan as a City, and we need to have some real conversations about what our land use profile looks like, what’s allowed where and how.OSI supports that; we lend staff to that, we will be working and helping facilitate community discussions. It is really uncomfortable for a lot of people, but the truth is we’re already talking about it, we are already having these conversations; we just need to daylight them and make a decision.
43:57
Molly: Because land use is one of the real big ones. It’s one that we talk about on the podcast all the time, and the way it intersects with transportation as well. This connects to something that Jess and I have been talking about periodically, which is what we’ve been calling urgency gaps; this feeling where something feels very urgent to us and that we really want our leaders to be taking aggressive action on quickly. For me, a lot of it is often around transportation safety. I say a lot that every road death is a policy choice, and we could be making different choices. Any day we could be saving lives. Climate change, writ large, is in many ways the quintessential urgency gap; where we’ve known what we needed to do, and our leaders have not felt that same sense of urgency. I’m wondering on the smaller local scale, if there are things that you feel are on fire that others are not responding to you with that sense of urgency.
45:04
Missy: The truth is…almost everything that we do feels that way. Explicit example, this is what I’m bringing into the space, but just based on what I’ve been working on this morning: We have the science to power our energy system with 100% renewable energy and to stack storage in there. It will increase your stability, will increase resilience – and we won’t. We won’t because we continue to have inertia within that system and our utilities continue to penalize folks for doing distributed energy resources; things like rooftop solar panel systems, when they’re actually assets on that system. We make it so hard to do the right thing in this space. Our contracting policies often make it hard to do the right thing in this landscape. Who we see, who we reward, who we highlight, and the stories we tell make it hard to do the right thing.
I am a localist. My PhD advisor was a nationalist and we often would discuss in very fun ways, where we thought things should be nested. I love local work. Local work is visceral; you can see it. I can see fingerprints, my team can see their fingerprints on the things that we’re doing. The other side: when it doesn’t happen, it hurts. It hurts really bad. “If only I would have done a little bit more, or if only I would have communicated or if only if only…“ It’s sort of been that space. But at the same time, I will never be incentivized to tell the public everything we’re doing. We are so busy doing that I quit social media within a week of starting at the City, because I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t I couldn’t handle the toxicity that exists within the community. And yet, what was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to run at these kinds of initiatives and activities and see actual change on the ground, or was I supposed to step back and tell our story at the cost of moving? That tension was really tough. They’re both needed. But local governments aren’t incentivized to tell their story, so we tend to be critiqued a lot.
This is not just in our community. Every local government I’ve ever worked for – in academia, I was taught to critique local governments. And yet, when I talked to the people doing the work, I was blown away – blown away – by what they were actually doing and how they were doing it. As a manager of a unit, it’s really tough to want to prop my team up, tell their stories, and blow wind into their sails; they’re the ones doing the really cool work, the transformative work.
I don’t know where I’m going to take this other than to say for me, VMT reduction is really, really critical. It’s a big deal how we’re going to transition our systems. And yet: I can’t get our transit agency to make a commitment to carbon neutrality. I can’t get people to want more bike lanes. I go into meetings and people scream at me about bike lanes and I’m like, cool. Tell me what you need to tell me; I’m going to receive it, I will be your punching bag right now. And we will build trust, we will move past this issue, and we will find a way to collaborate.
That was a tirade that had no single goal, but it’s very consistent with our urgency gap.
48:28
Molly: You nailed the urgency gap for sure. I think it also can help us transition into the final stage of what we wanted to talk about with you today, which was to do some dreaming.
You just shared a lot of the frustrations that you have, and the challenges with how much work you’re doing versus how much you can share, and telling the story about what you’re doing is not received the way you might want it to be. Leaving aside telling all of those stories and the yelly people about the bike lanes: let’s dream a little bit bigger.
49:00
Jess: Also, I really appreciate the way that you talk about your team. I’ve had the great good fortune of being able to intersect with many of them in my own professional and organizing capacities. Just yesterday, I was in a breakout room with Galen who held space for a lovely, challenging, complicated conversation around community engagement. Where the conversation drifted was not, How do we get more people into the conversation? It was more along the lines of, Are we asking people the right questions at the right times? And then, of course, always: Are we asking the right people? All that to say, your team is really enabling some lovely work. I’m wondering if there’s anything you wish for for them to be able to do or accomplish that we haven’t talked about under the framework of A2Zero, under the aspirations of the climate action millage. Let’s get beyond paper and the dollars (which is a fun place to start) but: what do you wish for them?
50:20
Missy: There’s no limit! The people in this office are exceptional. They care, they’re driven, and they give so much more than the public will ever see. They give their being to this work; their identities are tied into this work. I think my job is to remove barriers so they can just run. Looking ahead like: okay, yeah, we’re gonna have a contracting problem here, so I’m going to get ahead of that, I’m going to get it out of the way and just keep going. Get those solar panel systems, get those electric vehicle chargers; let’s run after that grant to put in 50 miles of bike lanes; let’s do it. Pivoting to to the conversation about dreaming, it’s just always holding space for what ifs. The thing on my whiteboard that I see every day is, “Challenge the impossible.” That’s the world that we operate in. If I could grab one wish for myself, it would be for them to never feel the weight of the work, but to feel the lightness of success. I want to take the weight from them and let them just fly.
51:42
Jess: I don’t think we can do better than that. Molly, I think that’s a nice place to stop.
52:00
Molly: So is there any last thing you want our listeners to know about A2Zero or the climate millage that we haven’t talked about?
52:11
Missy: I recognize the millage is front and center, but what I want to share is that achieving the goal of A2Zero and what the millage is meant to support is about a just transition to carbon neutrality. Achieving that is aggressive, and audacious, and scientifically essential, and we have every single thing that we need in our community to do it. We have the people; we have the passion; I think we actually do have the political will. I think, though, we have to raise our hands to be part of the movement because it’s going to require every one of us being involved in some way, shape or form. And I am excited to work with every person that’s listening, and every person that’s not, and every person that’s not here yet but will be here, to figure out how we do that; and, really importantly, do that in a way that’s transferable and scalable to other places. Because what a shame if we figure it out in Ann Arbor and no one else can replicate? That’s also not just. So: we’ve got our work ahead of us, a lot of work. But god damn it, we’re going to do it. Because…what’s the alternative?
Molly: And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor AF.
Come check out past episodes and transcripts at our website, annarboraf.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AFers on Twitter at the a2council hashtag and Facebook in the Ann Arbor Housing for All facebook group. And hey, if you want to send us a few dollars at ko-fi.com/annarboraf to help us with hosting, we always appreciate it.
We’re your cohosts Molly Kleinman and Jess Letaw; and thanks to producer Scott Trudeau. Theme music is “I dunno” by grapes. You can reach us by email at annarborafpod@gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!