Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Carmel Committee Implementation Updates topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Carmel Climate Action Advisory Committee discusses municipal benchmarking, water monitoring, parks electrification and education; approves minutes
Summary
At its Feb. 25 meeting the Carmel Climate Action Advisory Committee approved prior meeting notes and discussed next steps on municipal energy benchmarking, irrigation monitoring, park equipment electrification, public education content and grants; members scheduled follow-up briefings and a city council update.
The Carmel Climate Action Advisory Committee approved notes from a previous meeting and spent most of its Feb. 25 session reviewing next steps on municipal benchmarking, water-usage monitoring, parks equipment electrification and public education for the climate action dashboard.
Chair Tony Rick opened the meeting and the committee voted to approve the prior meeting notes after a motion and a second; the vote was recorded as in favor. The group then heard an external presentation from Mo McReynolds of Indianapolis (reported separately) and turned to local implementation items including EV1/EV2 (energy and built environment) strategies and PE1/PE2 (public education) work.
Jeremy Cashman, Carmel’s chief infrastructure officer, said the city has previously audited utility data and is exploring whether it can compile usage and scope-1/2 metrics for a selection of municipal buildings as a pilot. “We probably just need to get into that,” Cashman said, noting past intern work that found billing discrepancies and that the city has paused major new spending while it evaluates software options.
Committee members discussed water benchmarking, noting the METER project is complete and that irrigation meters owned by homeowners associations (HOAs) are a clear initial dataset to analyze because those meters record irrigation-only consumption. John Duffy, director of water and wastewater utilities, suggested using HOA irrigation meters and some municipal meters as case studies for summer benchmarking and said data could be updated monthly or every two weeks during peak irrigation season.
Parks staff reported limited progress on replacing gasoline-powered mowing equipment because most mowing is done by a long-term contracted vendor; replacing the contractor’s fleet would likely require a new competitive procurement and could raise costs. Parks staff said some in-house maintenance tools (for example chainsaws) have already been converted to electric and staff feedback has been largely positive.
The committee also heard grant and program updates. Jeremy said the EECBG grant procurement is underway on a reimbursable basis. Kelvin Okamoto reported an effort to align the Carmel StreamWatch program with the White River Alliance raft water-quality monitoring and noted adding Carmel locations to the raft reporting would allow data submission to the EPA.
New member introductions included Maggie Miller, a junior at Carmel High School, who described a school-based greenhouse and rainwater-collection project she is developing for the district. Committee members welcomed youth participation and asked staff to consider how student projects might connect to education outreach.
Committee business items included scheduling and leadership: members agreed to discuss nominations and elections for chair, vice chair and secretary at the next meeting. The committee plans to present an update to Carmel City Council on March 17 and scheduled its next regular meeting for March 25 at 6 p.m. in the council chambers.
The meeting produced directions for staff and subcommittees: look into municipal benchmarking pilots for a small set of municipal buildings, produce irrigation-meter benchmarks (HOA and municipal irrigation), follow up with the library about posting solar or usage links, pursue reporting automation options with Neptune and ClearPath software where feasible, and assemble a short council presentation for March 17.
