Meeting Minutes

Agenda Topics and Discussions:

1.  PRPA Voting:  It has come to our attention that there may be an effort made by the City Council to take away Jacki Marsh’s independent vote at the PRPA board meetings.  RNL opposes that effort and should take steps to ensure that the mayor of the city continues to have an independent vote.  In communications to Joe Bernosky, the director of the Power and Water department in Loveland, there is no effort to do this being led by him or his department.   If it comes up, it would be at the city council meetings, in his opinion.
2. Actions at this time:  None.  We need to get more specifics on if, how and when this issue might come up
3. Future action, if needed:   letters to the editor (LTE), attendance at council meetings to speak in favor of the mayor’s vote being retained as is

2. Solar Panel Base Rate Change Issue:   Bruce Croissant updated the meeting on the base rate issue:  the base rate increases if you have solar panels vs a normal household with no solar panels.  This should not be the case, and needs to be changed for the new rate structure to be implemented in 2019.  Members of the solar panel committee have met with many of the 9 council members to inform them of the issue and recommend that this be corrected in 2019.  We have a couple to finalize early this year.   New attendees at this meeting who have houses with solar panels also noted that they have seen the issue, and are looking forward to this being corrected as well.

3. Educational/Informational plans for 2019:  There are several opportunities in the next few months to bring in for educational presentations some world class speakers on climate change and related aspects of this issue.   The speakers are these below:

1. Dr. Scott Denning:  Valerie McCullough has identified that he is coming to Loveland to speak on Feb. 7 at 7 PM at the Knights of Columbus Hall at the St. John the Evangelist Church at 1730 W. 12th St (just west of Taft on North 12^th St).
2. Helmut Detlev:  Nancy Garcia has been working with Helmut and he is available to come to Loveland with information on the real issues that the coal plant at Rawhide is causing with air quality and the health problems it is causing on the Northern Front Range.
3. Bill Parton:   Bill is a weather researcher and attended his first meeting with us and indicated he is working on a major paper that he would be glad to share with us in the next 6 months.
4. The action item on the speakers is to set up information forums, publicize them to get maximum exposure, and invite our city leaders to also attend and become personally involved in the climate change issue.
5. We tentatively agreed to schedule our February meeting in conjunction with the Scott Denning presentation on Feb. 7 as it is the same date as our normal meeting.
6. Discussion of 2019 Goals for RNL:  We concluded our session with a open discussion of what goals we should be working on achieving in 2019.  Here are the items discussed:

2030. Focus on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions:   We made good progress on the elimination of Rawhide with the adoption by PRPA and the four cities of the goal to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030.  We now need to also focus on the other GHG emissions from transportation and agriculture.
2031. Election of officials in state, local offices, as well as advisory commissions:  In order to effect real change, we need to get government officials in place that support the efforts to counteract climate change with real effective changes.
2032. Support the methane capture for the new planned landfill:  City council and Larimer County will be taking up finding a new location for a county landfill as the current one is running out of space.  We will need to support the methane capture capability in the new landfill.
2033. Extensive Letter writing campaigns in 2019:  We need to support our efforts by more extensive outreach and information campaign this year.   Example:  the city touts its Rawhide coal plant as being one of the best in the country.  We need LTEs to be written to point out the significant negative health effects on air quality and heavy metals that is causing the increased asthma and other respiratory problems in our area.  And, of course, more generally in the area or reducing GHG emissions in all areas.
2034. Complete the solar panel rate structure changes and billing system errors problems in the city:  We need to conclude successfully the rate structure changes, and get the billing issues resolved associated with solar power.
2035. Lobby for community solar gardens in Loveland:  Loveland is still not a friendly city to solar panel users and supportive of significant expansion in this area.  We need to accelerate our efforts to get the city more supportive of solar.
2036. Attract more volunteers to help with support activities:  We can use help in these areas:
2037.                      Fund raising to support our educational efforts (meeting rooms usually cost money to rent)
2038.                    Maintaining our supporters list, Facebook, our website, email, and expand us onto twitter, LiveLoveland, and other social media sites.

                                                                       iii.      Work on our branding with updated logos, shirts, etc

5. The meeting was adjourned just after 7:30 pm.

The February Meeting will be changed so that we can encourage everyone to go to the talk by Dr. Scott Denning on Feb. 7 at 7 PM at the Knights of Columbus Hall at the St. John the Evangelist Church at 1730 W. 12th St (just west of Taft on North 12^th St).  He is a fantastic speaker who explains climate science and climate disruption in a fair and rational way for everyone to understand.

Next RNL Meeting will be March 7, 2019, at

First United Methodist Church, 533 N Grant Ave. Loveland, CO  80537     6:30-7:30pm First Thursday of each month.

Go to West side entrance