 Welcome to the July 14th 2021 Burlington Electric Commission meeting. My name is Lori Lemieux and I am the board clerk for the commission. And I would like to call this meeting to order at 5.31. This being the first meeting of the new fiscal year this is the Burlington Electric Commission's organizational meeting and the first order of business is to elect officers. At this time I want to open the floor for nominations for chair of the commission. I'd like to nominate Gabrielle Stebbins as chair. I'll second that nomination. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none. I close the nominations. By way of roll call please indicate if you are in support of Gabrielle Stebbins as chair of the Electric Commission if opposed say nay. Commissioner Shagman. Yes. Commissioner Herndine. Can't hear him. Commissioner Herndine. Oh he he he was here and then he left us. Commissioner Moody. Hi. I now turn. Thank you. Welcome to the chair of the commission again this year. Gabrielle and I'll turn the meeting over to you for nominations for chair vice chair and board clerk. Thank you Lori. So you only need that many to that many eyes I only heard two but. Oh I I should have said I sorry if you called me I spaced out on it but yes. OK. Thank you. Thank you Lori for kicking this off. Commissioner Herndine. Yeah that was easy. Well you're welcome to please say your vote because I didn't hear it personally. Are you in favor of Gabrielle Stebbins as chair of the Burlington Electric Commission. Yes I. Thank you. The eyes have it. Thank you everybody. I really appreciate it and I also appreciate when you reach out when you have concerns as as many of you done have done at different times so thank you. Next up on the agenda is the election of a vice chair if there are any nominations now is a good time to mention them. I'd like to nominate Scott Moody as vice chair. 7th. I'm sorry. Who is the second. Thank you. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Shagman. Hi. Commissioner Herndine. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you and next we have the election of a clerk. If there are any nominations. I would nominate Roy Lemieux as clerk. Second. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Moody. Sorry. Sorry. Hi. Commissioner Shagman. Hi. Commissioner Herndine. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Thank you. Thank you vice chair and thank you clerk. So moving forward. On the agenda is the agenda itself. If there were any recommended changes or edits from the agenda that was shared with the commission last week. Now would be a good time to mention them or if there were any edits or suggested changes from the the management team. Now is a good time to raise it. Hearing none we'll move on to minutes from our last meeting from the June 2021 monthly meeting. If there are any substantive content related edits or suggested changes. OK. Hearing none. If there could be a motion to approve. I move to approve the minutes. Second. Roll call. Roll call. Sorry. My mic was off. Commissioner Stebbins. Hi. Commissioner Moody. Hi. Commissioner Shagman. Hi. Commissioner Herndine. Hi. Commissioner Whitaker. Hi. Motion to approve the minutes passed. We do have someone from the public. Mr. Jamie Hand was with us tonight. Excellent. Welcome Jamie. Thank you. I'm just listening in because I'm interested. Thanks for joining. If you ever feel like chiming in please do. We're glad to have you as a Berlin Tonian and as an energy expert yourself. So thank you. Next up we have the public forum. We do have a member Jamie. Thanks for joining. And Paul Alexander. Thank you. It appears as though this is our first sort of hybrid approach. And thus far there have no been there have not been any. Yes. The public. But the public is invited. But thus far there are you guys have really worked the IT well in terms of you know everybody can see everything and we're not having sound glitches which is great. My other job we tried this on Monday and there were sound glitches for about two hours. So kudos for figuring this one out. And General Manager Springer thanks for forwarding also the information about what is required for public meetings when you do this sort of hybrid approach. So next up we have the commissioners corner. I do have a couple of things I want to raise and just mention. But first off to the other commissioners are their items that you all want to say during this initial upfront period of the agenda. I always like when like it when models turn out to be right. And I see on page 13 of our notes that we were how should I put it at came it's at the Y sorry at the YMCA they have met the standards set by the models and have therefore received their full rebate. And I think that's great. Congratulations. Yeah. For anyone who might watch this it's unusual or it's not the common practice to provide 50 percent of the incentive upfront and then 50 percent after there's been occupancy to see that energy savings have really been achieved. When you look nationally this isn't the common practice and it's a great opportunity for the utility to continue to connect with the building owners and to really see that the incentive dollars are achieving the goals that we have set. So. Any other comments from the commissioners corner. I finally looked at the revamped website and I'm impressed. Very user friendly hearing nothing else. I'll just say thank you to Mike Canerick and the team. There's been a resident who has been struggling with how many utility poles are surrounding that particular property. And there are a lot of regulations and requirements that are outside the scope of VED's control which means that meeting a specific you know Berlintonian's request is not always possible but I appreciate the efforts by the team to really figure out how to shield some of the lighting so it's not directly falling on the property and rather focus more on the river etc. I also did and perhaps on this. Sorry. Go ahead. This is my I was just going to say thanks and point out as you noted that it was really a team effort and Andy Elliston and Anna Sohovic have done the lion share the work here and I were just participating but it was nice to be able to help these folks understand even if they didn't hear what ultimately they wanted to it was good to work. Thanks Mike. I mean it's always disappointing if you can't please the customer entirely but I really appreciate your efforts and the and the modifications that you did ultimately identify that you could do. Not sure if now is an appropriate time. Maybe we'll do it at the tail end of the meeting but just flagging that August is if there is not that much going on sometimes a month during which this commission doesn't meet and we would wait until September so I'll just flag that as something that we should touch upon and General Manager Springer I see you getting ready to speak but then also maybe needing a moment and the other piece is just we should check back in if the determination is that we do not meet in August we should check back in in terms of how how we want to monitor COVID and a return to public meetings potentially starting in September public in-person. So I'll flag this too and perhaps we can hold them off for now. Sounds good. I just want to can I also give a shout out to the BED team for the map for e-bike charging. I've never seen that before. You know I look at a lot of maps all the time but I've never seen the location to charge your electric bike so I think that's super cool and a really good resource. Thanks. Yes please. Brief comment on the August meeting. I was going to flag this in the General Manager update but I'll touch on it now. It may be that we actually would benefit from having a meeting in August because we've looked at the timeframe for bringing the revenue bond proposal that we've discussed with you to the voters in November and that will likely require bringing it to the city council in late August or in September and it may be that having a vote of the commission to recommend that prior would certainly be something we would want to we would want to review with you and give you the chance to weigh in on and vote. So normally I do understand we wouldn't necessarily have an August meeting but in this case we might have something very substantive for you to look at in August. Well personally you know we've all volunteered to show up 12 months a year not 11 and August is a is a bonus for the summer and I think if if the commission is going to figure out a way to support the team in the city to reach net zero by 2030 then we need to come up with other ways to pay for that and so a bond discussion may be critical. I might add maybe you and I can check in on the other items that we normally address. You and I can check in you know as we used to you know at a 9 a.m. Tuesday morning meeting or what not to to discuss budget finance and then the August meeting could really focus on on the bonding vote and proposal. Mr. Herndy. I'm happy to meet on an August. I've always thought it kind of self-indulgent not to so I'm ready. I agree. Bethany and Jim. Yeah I'm on board. Yeah me too. Thank you everybody. What would be helpful is I know you send the packet out in advance by by a few days. This is this is going to be a meaty topic so perhaps to the degree that you can Darren I know your your plan right now today is really to focus on the the general manager update but to the degree that you can to tee up what you are doing because I know this commission they're going to hear it in August want to think about it a bit and and read it and really they may not we may not be ready to vote right on that night. So to the extent that we can try to tee up as much pre-homework in advance that would be helpful. OK so we will keep August what is that 11th and we will also I guess during that meeting we can we can tackle two items both the bond piece as well as how the team wants to return to in person in September or a hybrid depending on your health status and the vaccination status within your household. So we'll keep those two for August. Other items sort of administrative items hearing none. Feel free to move on to the general manager update. Excellent. Thank you. And I will I'll touch on as much as I can on the revenue bond to tee that up as requested. A few other items first. Sent an email to all of you so I hope you're aware but I wanted to just flag it that we will be having our BED night at the ballpark for our team on July 29th with the Lake Monsters. If any commissioners are interested in joining please let Lori know and we can work with you on that. It's a tradition that we've had that we have a couple of nights each season at the ballpark where we're able to interact with customers who have signed up for e-billing and provide them with some materials on energy efficiency when they come to pick up their monster money which is part of the e-billing sign up promo and we'll be doing those on July 21st and July 29th and on the 29th we're also hosting an employee night at the ballpark. So any questions on any of that let me know or let Lori know just wanted to let you know that it was in your inbox or it should be. Update on our operations we are a couple of weeks in now to our new remote work pilot program which began on the 6th of July. Our offices are open for customer visits. We've had customers coming in to see our customer care team not at a particularly high volume but at least several in most cases each day. We have set up a what I think is a fairly forward looking remote work pilot program really built on the principle that we saw what the impact of reduced driving did for emissions in Burlington as part of the net zero update that we had in April. And we want to do our part to lead by example in showing that we can continue to have a lot of flexibility and reduced driving even as we hopefully emerge from the pandemic and move back towards more typical operations. So we have folks who are in the office and working off of teams and having flexible schedules. We've given each area of the company flexibility to create rotations and schedules for their team that works. Obviously we continue to have some folks in the organization that can't take advantage of remote work and need to be on site. Some folks may be able to do some remote work but not full and then others may be in the position where they can do remote work a large portion of their time. As part of the pilot though everybody is being asked to come in spend some time at the office just so we can reacclimate so we can test out how this technology works in a hybrid fashion. And we've been doing that and there's some some things we're learning as we go and maybe some updates we'll need to make for our conference rooms from a technology standpoint for example. But I think so far so good and we'll be doing some surveys along the way to account for the employee experience and feedback and also to try to account for how much we are reducing driving in terms of you know how much are people's commutes being reduced. Can we quantify that for BED and then share that information with the commission and the public as one example of the impact an employer can make with remote work. So we'll be carrying this pilot through in all likelihood through the end of 2021 and we'll be looking for some longer term policy as we head into 2022 on what this will be for the long run. We had has not yet been signed by the mayor I think that'll be forthcoming but we had an important policy outcome when the City Council advanced I believe unanimously a renewable primary heating ordinance for new construction. This is one of the proposals that we've been working on along with the charter change and along with the weatherization for rental properties. This policy essentially says to a new construction project you have to have a renewable heating system that's sized to meet at least 85 percent of your building heating needs and if you are looking at that you can certainly look at options like heat pumps and geothermal but there are other options that are available under the ordinance. Advanced wood heating biodiesel district energy renewable gas there's a variety of different options. The emphasis being on renewable and there is an exemption process that looks at incorporating a carbon price and incentives to make sure that if a developer was seeking an exemption that the lowest cost renewable option would compare to a conventional option incorporating all incentives and a carbon price at a hundred dollars a ton which will then increase year after year for purposes of calculation. So this is a fairly strong policy we've talked with the Building Electrification Institute. They've certainly been a help to us on this as they've been on other policies and it sounds like this is something that is I don't think we're the first to go in this direction but we're certainly on the leading edge and it's exciting from a policy standpoint to be to be doing that work with our colleagues at the Department of Permitting and Inspections as well. In terms of the rate case the rate case has been filed since we've last convened. It's it's at the PUC. We have a web page which I put in the packet that folks can visit off of burlingtonelectric.com at the rates page that shares a letter from me that went out to all customers in the bills this month explaining the rate case and why we had to pursue it and what the outcomes are relative to the rate case. It's also the place where customers can sign up for the energy assistance program that we're offering this year to help offset the rate case impact for customers who qualify. And so that web page is available. Please share it with any folks or networks that you're you're in touch with who might be able to help more customers be aware of the energy assistance program. So we appreciate if the Commission can help with that. That's a great support for us. We're going to try to reach as many customers as we can to let them know about the energy assistance program. We've discussed it in the North Avenue news and we've done some other outreach efforts and we have some more that will be coming in the coming weeks and months as well. We had two six question. For a very easy copy and paste could Mike send that to the Commission and we can post in Front Porch Forum. Mike you good with that. For sure. Thank you. Thanks very much. Appreciate that as well. It'd be great to have Front Porch Forum posts on that. One partner that we've shared that information with and this is Segway to our Defeat the Peak program but we had two successful events already this summer with Defeat the Peak. Our two nonprofit partners that were part of those two events were the Family Room in the Old North End of Burlington and Make-A-Wish Vermont and those two organizations were chosen by the winners the co-winners this year of the Jim Reardon Public Service Award Kathy Chamberlain with Make-A-Wish as her selection and Brian Riley who selected the Family Room. We had great visits with both of those organizations to present our ceremonial check and a real check for their participation with us and both organizations are doing such tremendous work and certainly with the Family Room we've we've talked with them about the energy assistance program and we'll work with them to get information out as well to folks in the community who might be eligible Make-A-Wish Vermont is located in Shelburne does great work with kids around the state. It was very very touching to hear about their work so Defeat the Peak doing what it's supposed to do in supporting great community organizations and motivating folks to reduce energy use during these peak periods. So perhaps we'll have more events through the summer. It's certainly not over but we think that so far those two peak events were successful and are currently kind of we're assuming at this point are the the leading events for the summer so far. We'll see what else comes along. Lastly I think other than the revenue bond the district energy an update there. We've had continuous intensive work with the joint owners of McNeill to look at getting to a place where everybody on the joint owners is comfortable with the structure of a potential term agreement term sheet. James has done tremendous work in that regard weekend and week out with the joint owners. We had some good news recently where this is not final but this is kind of a first step in a process where Senator Leahy has posted as part of the Congressional Directed Funding Request for this year's federal appropriations bill that the district energy project was included in his list of requests and we're hopeful that that would obviously make it all the way through the process. There's still quite a bit more process to go on the federal side but that's good news from a first first step standpoint. And we continue to work on the economics as well as the operational piece. Our colleagues who've been working with us from Evergreen will be visiting Vermont later this month to do some additional work with UVM Medical Center and UVM who are two of the key partner organizations here and we are continuing to kind of I think we're moving towards wrapping up some of the discussions with the joint owners and I think we have a few more months of work ahead of us here on district energy but we're hopeful to be able to provide a report out on where things stand with this Phase 3 work sometime in the hopefully in the early fall. But we'll keep the commission posted as we go. The news about Senator Leahy's request being the most substantive news this month and something we wanted to share. And then lastly the revenue bond so we're actually in the midst of putting together some information for Moody's as part of a periodic review that they do for us and in that context we've done a look at the potential iterations of the revenue bond. We'll share with you all of the details that would accompany request for consideration and vote. But basically the things we're looking at are first and foremost what is the magnitude of the of the revenue bond. Is it a authorization for a single amount or is it something that we're going to ask for kind of a couple of tranches and have authorization for a couple of tranches which would help spread out the spend over a longer period of time. We're looking at our capacity to move some of the projects that are capital projects that would be a part of this alongside our conventional capital project program and what the spend would look like what the kind of workforce capacity would look like to move those projects forward and we're looking obviously very closely at the incentives and how we may through the revenue bond essentially be able to front load some of the spend on tier three incentives and help us accelerate the pace of adoption assuming customers are interested. That's always the precursor here but be able to accelerate adoption in a way that really mitigates some of the budget impact that might otherwise associate with an uptake in incentives that was enhanced from where it is today. So there's there's a couple buckets of things that we'll be looking at in the revenue bond. One is going to be electric grid upgrades that would help us facilitate additional electrification for the long run. Munir and his team have been working on that with James and his team really dating back to the IRP and we have that document to help guide some of that thinking with the revenue bond. There's technology systems that we are looking at upgrading that may be appropriate to include in the revenue bond because of their key role in facilitating net zero initiatives including dynamic rates and other things that we've talked about and then the other bucket being kind of the incentives and the way that we might be able to appropriate include those in the revenue bond and be able to use the revenue bond to front load some of the adoption without it being a significant impact on a given year's budget because it'll be repaid as part of a debt service model and really align the revenues that return to us from these tier three projects with the kind of the expenditure with the debt service that we would be paying out. Right now when we do a tier three incentive we're paying for it out of our operating in a given year and we're seeing the revenue come back over in some cases it could be 10 years 12 years 15 years depending on the measure if we're able to align the debt service with the return from those tier three projects that could be a benefit to us in terms of mitigating some upward pressure on our budget even as we support more customers and moving towards electrification. So that's a kind of a synopsis of some of the things we're looking at some of the things I expect we would bring to you in terms of the types of spending that would be part of the revenue bond. And again we're looking at the magnitude we can support and whether it's a single request or essentially a request that would span two different tranches and would cover more years. I'll pause there for questions and I would note Emily may have or James may have more to add on that. Mr. Herrington actually you said I want to know what the hell is it Trunch what is this word Trunch. It's like a face or a bucket like you might do 10 million in 2022 and 30 million in 2024 and those are two different tranches technically it's a French term it's T-R-A-N-C-H-E just means like a tier category bucket group yeah slice French for slice slice she's just showing off okay got it wow I'm impressed I'm impressed. The BED vocabulary hour is continuing. So one other thing Darren if I could which is the solar test center at McNeil is moving into the permitting stage now there have been site visits with Encore and UVM and I think it's safe to say that UVM also was a recipient of lay he funds related to research around that solar test center so that's they're very they're very very excited about the solar test center. Who is the who is the UVM contact. Kirk D'Ambrowski and Dan Harvey. Darren you mentioned magnitude in the last sentence or so the elevator speech comment about what's going on here with the the bond is we're accelerating the attempts in the direction of natural I presume and you don't have a magnitude set up yet but is a rough rough number. Yes what we're looking at is probably in the range and I'll give a range because it's very much that at the moment of between probably 15 million on the lower end and perhaps as big as 30 million on the upper end and that 30 million would likely assume that we were seeking multiple authorizations such that because of the way this works in my understanding you have a limited number of years in which to spend down the proceeds from a given revenue bond in that case we might be looking at something that would stretch over a longer period of time whereas if we did a single revenue bond it might be a four year period and if you did a bigger amount you might look at doing it in two tranches slices buckets I'll use all those words and that might stretch over a longer and I presume at a certain point there'll be a expanded elevator speech for public consumption. Absolutely we'll look to be providing more detail I view this really is as exactly what you said Commissioner Heron Dean which is we want the ability to accelerate adoption of these incentives accelerate our progress towards net zero and we're looking into this because I'm not I'm not clear if this is the case this may be one of the first revenue bonds of this type for this purpose that's been done looking at helping you achieve a net zero goal and a major climate goal for municipal utility. So this might be a financing mechanism that we're early to take on and maybe it could be a model for other utilities that might look at doing this type of thing I also view it kind of as a separate discussion we are likely under financed in terms of our capital needs if you look at our given year capital spending it's been you know seven eight nine million depending on the year and we only currently are getting about three million a year from the general obligation bonds so the revenue bond will help I think in some ways supplement the GEO bond in terms of providing financing for a capital program that we need to keep the grid reliable and upgraded to meet our net zero goals but it also the revenue bond will help us accelerate progress as you laid out. Okay and of course there will be a question asked in the elevator about what this might mean for rates. Right absolutely and you know we're looking hard at the at the rates you know for future years as well we've talked about there's there's this new authority that you can do up to two percent annually without having to go to the PUC that certainly is is an option that we'll look at but I reluctantly raised the point that we could have likely justified about a 13 percent or maybe a little more than 13 percent rate case this year based on our actual need and obviously we'll monitor as we go into next year but we only asked for 7.5 so there's a possibility that we may need an additional request that's beyond the two percent so that's something we're working on we're modeling we're actively seeking additional knowledge of the the benefit of the revenue bond from a rate standpoint is if we are able to include its year release in it it will be a benefit in terms of mitigating what would otherwise be potential upward pressure from from increased adoption under that program it won't solve all of our rate need by any stretch but I think from a revenue bond rate case standpoint we'll be able to make an argument that the revenue bond is all things equal and positive. I would just add Aaron I'm sorry no go ahead I would just add that yeah the situation right now is that we are expensing incentive payments as they occur and under the revenue bond we would be able to essentially to capitalize those if we were spending more than we needed in the front end of the program and then we would draw on that capital as we comply with the RES and outer years so it actually solves an incentive problem up front which is we are currently any incentive we offer hits us on the income statement in the current year. So to clarify I mean what I've heard best far is is that it would help certainly with electric grid upgrades can you help get a little bit more into the details of how it helps BED help ratepayers make these shifts essentially to keep the incentives going but to have a longer time frame from which Burlington Electric can pay those incentives back over time while paying the homeowner or the business owner immediately up front is that the thinking. Yeah I mean can I take a pass at it if you want sure. Okay right now is we offer an incentive for someone to convert a fossil fuel use to an electric use and that sales increase benefits the electric utility over the life of the measure but we offer the incentive in the first year. Right now we consider that incentive to be an expense in the year it's offered so if people are taking us up on electrification measures and we're having to send out incentives out the door then we're going to expense them under the current proposal and if those expenditures are in excess of what we need to comply with tier three that's fine we can bank the credits but we will still take in the income statement hit on the front end. We're going to create a cash pool to use to pay the incentives and that will not become an expense until we actually draw those credits out of the bank and using to comply with Vermont statute so we will be able to offer incentives faster than we're comfortable doing with the hit on the income statement in the front end if we do it the other way. And just from a climate standpoint everything James said is spot on from a climate standpoint net zero goal and the RES goals are different trajectories the tool we have obviously the main tool we have from a regulatory standpoint to help customers of ours who want to switch to an EV or a heat pump or an e-bike or any other technology is our tier three program but if all we do is meet our tier three goals year after year through 2030 we're not nearly at the pace you'd want to be to help achieve the net zero goal. Not that not that incentives are the only thing that get us there we need a number of other things policies and other funding sources but this will I think in some ways better align our ability to help meet net zero with these tier three incentives and not be as constrained by the year to year tier three goal because that program continues beyond 2030 and as James said you can bank credits so we can essentially front load some of our effort here as a means of helping to accelerate our progress towards net zero and that's something you know we're seeing with heat pumps as you look at your packet we continue to see the residential adoption under the Green Stimulus Program is growing at a pretty good clip you know we'd like to see it grow even faster but that's an example where if under this proposal we would never run out of the ability to support that whereas under our current budget you might reach a limit where you had to say wow we've actually met our target this year we can't necessarily provide additional incentives and that limitation which we've never reached previously but which could theoretically happen would no longer be as big a concern with the revenue bond. Yeah the very simple example Gabrielle is if someone brought to me the world's best tier three measure huge major contribution to our net zero goals all of those things but it was too much to absorb in this year's budget I would have to turn them away. With the revenue bond you'd have the funding to do that now and incur the expense for it over time and recognize the tier three credits when you need them. That's really the big difference is you know you can break that link between the incurring the expense and the benefit and the cash flow. So two questions one is the intent would be to use this bond to go beyond the tier three requirements. To accelerate them not necessarily to go beyond them but it allows you to incur them faster than the tier three statute requires you to and you store those credits for future years. The tier three statute sets the magnitude you can't do anything about that but what I'm saying is that if our if our tier three requirement is 10,000 credits this year and we got a really great proposal for 20,000 credits that we didn't have budgeted we couldn't do anything. This way you could actually do that measure store the credits and you're paying it off to the bond over time where you're also seeing the electric revenues from that increased load over time too. Okay so it's really more about what I mean not necessarily quantity. It's shifting the quantity forward. Yes sooner it's not okay yes and the expense into the outer year some of the outer years where you have revenues from the new measures electrification measures to pay for the debt service. Right now those revenues haven't materialized enough to pay these incentives yet they will over time. Okay and then Mr. Herndine I see you're blinking. Let me let me just ask this one other question and then I'll pass the baton. The thought is still to keep aligned and I apologize for the details of the weeds but for viewers a measure like a heat pump or whatnot that is approved through a tier three program it goes through something called a tag technical advisory group it goes through a full review process of how many kilowatt hours it's going to save how many kW it's going to save etc etc so my question is the thinking is not necessarily to use this bond to provide incentives to technologies that haven't gone through the tag process it's still within the tag process or is it and both? It could be used for custom measures and it certainly would be used I think like is not for prescriptive measures which are the ones that go through the tag so you know again the the hula heat pump geothermal heat pump was a custom measure you know it could fund either but we certainly are having a fairly significant response to our prescriptive measures which are things like cars and heat pumps all that do go through the tag. Okay and buses were a custom measure at the time they were done. Thank you Commissioner Herndy. Well I guess physically this this makes sense we know that all of these measures almost all of them anyway if they're done earlier rather than later more of an impact because the cumulative dumping of CO2 goes on until we shut it off so everything else being equal we'd like to move fast in general this is one way to do it if we can afford it okay great. That's exactly it we want to you know a heat pump that's installed today versus a heat pump that's installed in 2029 there's a lot of emissions that we're going to reduce over those intervening years and so as much as we can make progress now and build some momentum towards the net zero 2030 goal the better the revenue bond will not achieve all of our goals on its own but it's a financing mechanism that will help us accelerate progress and at the same time it'll give us the ability to upgrade the grid in some of the places we may need to so that customers in the future who want to electrify will have the ability to do so. And again revenues from those measures would cost better than the way we're doing things if we can do it this way. I guess that's a long elevator film we'll make it more concise. It's a great idea this nurse is helpful. Now this is the start and this is why you know I sort of first of all I think it's really critical that we do have the August meeting because we will drill you with questions so that you're ready as you move forward in a friendly way. But also you know I've asked this for a few times now I feel like we have this you know the model that Synapse did that says if we do this much widgets this much gadgets we can get to where we need to be but going back to the conversation of and what does that mean not necessarily for BED but what does that mean for the individual who is buying the heat pumps and how do they pay for that have you guys had an opportunity to think about that a bit and and when might you have an opportunity to think about trying to get a sense of what that looks like you know if if Burlington Electric is providing this level of incentives from from the customer economic perspectives to address you know affordability not leaving low and moderate income or or renters behind that sort of thing. Well in the heat pump space at least one of our ongoing engagements with building electrification institute is actually around designing a really more sophisticated than we've ever had on our website a customer calculator to be able to put in all of the inputs that you would need to get a kind of a custom economics for your home in terms of a heat pump which of the electrification technologies that we have right now the heat pump is maybe the more challenging in terms of the customer economics. I think with an EV we can make the case that if you're buying a reasonably priced EV and you're getting some of the incentives and you're charging off peak you're going to save money relative to the fossil fuel choice whereas with the heat pump you might save on air conditioning but you might break even at best on your heating and so being able to look at the BED green stimulus incentives adding the low income incentive if somebody qualifies for that looking at their current fuel use what it is how much it's costing them looking at their air conditioning options that they're looking at and being able to give them a really granular economics for their home is one of the things we're doing with building electrification institute that could be helpful I think in speaking to the customer side economics for one of those significant measures for us which is is the heat pump which is going to be a big one going forward so that's that's one piece of it I think in addition just you know being able to reconnect with customers now that we're reopened and having our energy services team being able to work with folks is critical we also have great relationships with some of our credit unions and in fact one of the things that we've discovered in the course of looking at electrification is folks are going to need electric panel upgrades in a lot of cases and some of our existing credit union partners already are making that ineligible use for their energy loans and so that's something we're looking to promote over the coming weeks I know Jen Green is doing some final work touching base with some of our lending partners and Mike canerick is looking at providing some some new customer facing information because that's one of those nuts and bolts things that comes up when you're thinking of it from the customer side we can talk about the economics all day of an EV but if you don't have room in your electric panel or you don't have the appropriately updated electric panel and you need to make that investment before you put in a home charger and get an EV we've got to find ways to help you with that or you're going to just stop in your tracks and you're going to say I'm not doing this and so that's something that's another thing that we're looking at I know GMP is looking at that too and that's something even that the electric infrastructure piece of the infrastructure bill maybe could offer some funding resources for but upgrading those electric panels maybe one of the key barriers to electrification in Burlington once we get past some of the early adopters and so having financing for that something that could be critical so just a few thoughts there there's there's a whole lot of work in that space that needs to take place but those are a few things that we've been thinking about and we've also been talking to engineering about load limiting devices that actually allow you to fit things into a smaller panel by basically automatically curtailing them they don't allow them to run at such a level as would overload the panel it's something that came out of an earlier delta climb so we may be making customers aware that those kind of devices exist as an alternative to panel upgrades so interesting as someone who bought my home in 2008 and was still knobbing too but I I kind of think panel upgrades are sometimes a good thing but Emily anything you want to add in this area or are you waiting to jump in for the financial update I'm not waiting to jump in I'm happy to jump in I was just standing by commissioners any other questions on this okay hearing none thanks for the you know prelude definitely it'll be helpful for us to you know as you as you start to pull some of these pieces together when you feel that it is appropriate to do so to share that with the commission because I suspect simply getting a packet you know a week before the august meeting you may end up having a lot more questions at the august meeting and getting some pushback in terms of voting right then because we won't fully understand it and therefore may need it you know more back and forth with you all so really appreciate this intro so shifting now to the financial update okay I'll see my screen with the June loads great so here is our monthly update on loads during the pandemic hopefully now recovering from the pandemic however loads in June did not show a lot of recovery residential use was up more than we had seen in the spring about six percent compared to baseline commercial however was lower than baseline by almost by a little bit more than that six point three percent which is you know kind of the lowest it's been since January as a system overall we were down 3.2 percent reasons why our best guess is that June was warm as you remember so we saw more residential cooling potentially driving this up however with some of the even though we have you know restaurants service businesses starting to come back we have some office locations and you know larger institutions that perhaps are not cooling at the level they would be where those buildings fully occupied so there's probably a you know a baseline cooling but not to the degree to which they would be cooling the buildings if they had them full of people so that's why we're guessing that for as hot as June was we'd be projecting a greater commercial load than we saw I think I have to do something here to flip over to the financials can you see the financial packets are still showing the loads right now it is showing the financial highlights budget versus actual hey it worked great yes okay so these are May results for FY 21 we had a net loss in May of just about 600,000 compared to a budget of 1.6 million most of this is due to timing of rec revenues which as you recall from last month we budgeted to receive all of our rec revenues in May we actually received most of them in April so April looked a lot better than budget May looks a lot worse than budget particularly right here in the power supply revenue side so you could see like that that variance is 2.1 the total net loss for the month is 2.2 so without that timing difference we would have been very close to budget for May also affecting the net loss obviously the sales to customers which as we saw here in May we're down 2.1% overall as a system that's that's resulting this $106,000 variance here on the expense side of the ledger our supply overall had a favorable variance of 185,000 and I'm going to go down to a detail slide I don't always show but this month I'm going to please excuse the scrolling okay so here's the the first page showing the power supply breakdown here's the 184,185 and variance that we just saw in the income statement and as always that's made up of different components right fuel was over budget McNeil produced more than budget purchase power was under budget and then transmission continues to be over budget and I wanted to point out here that we have added a couple different pieces of information to this slide so not only can you see the expenses and revenues for the monthly budget and actual and the year-to-date budget actual but we've added the megawatt hours of load served for that same time period and then the volumetric measure the dollars per megawatt hour served so you can see that overall for the year we have less than a dollar variance per megawatt hour served on the power supply overall just pretty darn good and we expect these trends or you know we expect this variance pretty much to not move much for June and the the fiscal year and result the final result for FY 21 and then James I'll just ask did you want to kind of add anything at this point this is a very cool metric thank you for putting it you know front and center on this page absolutely yeah the the I believe that the power supply cost per megawatt hour has been on the dashboard for some time right but it has you've had to look at both yeah it's nice to see it here absolutely I agree okay I'm gonna go back up to what okay so then operating expense we had an unfavorable variance of just uh $45,000 then the other major variance here is another income mostly driven by customer contributions to capital projects that have been delayed our order for COVID so that's overall we have a net income for a year to date to $1.3 million it's almost a million below budget given that June was you know less overall than we may have anticipated any thoughts on where we will end at the end of the June you know so next year's sorry next month's financial statements yeah I can um I've well I had a note to cover that later but I can cover that now go ahead go with that it's fine so we are projecting at this point a net loss of a little better than this or actually sorry not better than the variance we're projecting a net loss of about three quarters of a million and again that includes the unbudgeted it includes a million that we didn't budget for of pension liability okay okay the adjusted that service coverage ratio is going to take a hit we're projecting it around 0.88 in that range we will not have preliminary financial results for FY 21 until the end of July the team is working on closing June and the fiscal year now and obviously we won't have true audited official results until just before Halloween as usual so essentially if we did not have that million pension which in future we have planned for next budget if we did not have that we would be landing it 250,000 that's right even with the COVID effects that we've seen in customer contributions and the sales being down and otherwise yeah not bad I also want to share that we do have actual true real cash position results for June 30 that were below budget but better than our projection and a very healthy 105 cash sorry 105 days cash on hand so we were able to close June with a very solid cash position which was a great effort by the whole team is it do you have further questions on kind of projections for the year Gabrielle no it seems as though Darren wanted to chime in Emily totally anticipated what I was going to mention which was just the cash year end number and the days cash on hand number and we continue to see really strong days cash on hand results and we continue to see very challenged adjusted debt coverage ratio results and even with the rate case that will improve the adjusted debt coverage ratio some but it won't resolve it fully and so this will continue to be part of the discussion but that was just what I wanted to mention yep okay thanks so then I'll continue down for the May results we are as of May about 60 percent spent on the capital budget I believe last month we were around 56 percent cash on hand we had about eight million dollars we were actually very close to budget here at the end of May we were I think we budgeted for like 7.97 and here we are closing at 8.1 and then you can see the credit rating factors as of May 1.01 for the adjusted debt and 117 days cash on hand the 60 percent for for the last month of the fiscal year seems a little bit lower than past years is that timing of customer expenditures yeah some of that is I do anticipate this will jump up a little bit in June I know there was for example I know there's a pretty major project at Neil that is wrapping up that will probably see expenses hit that in June however I don't I don't have as good handle as you might Darren I we don't I think it's typical that we don't completely spend our capital budget it is typical it's been more typical because of IT forward over the past few years whereas now we're starting to to really move on that program and I do think I do recall you know several things moving in June that will add to this list things that got done so you know some areas we certainly went through everything we needed to and and others we may have been able to under spend a little bit we did actively seek to defer projects where we could to try to preserve a stronger cash on hand number heading into fiscal year 22 so there may have been some intentionality behind some of the result here well and also I mean Jim Rudin it's a timing issue you know distribution obviously you know a lot of that work may or may not be able to be done in December January February and it you know just because it's everything's frozen but I feel like I've seen that number I feel like I've seen Munir push to get you know that taking some supply chain issues particularly on the distribution side oh here's Munir he can speak to that but I know it's taken like months of lead time for some of the equipment yeah I mean a couple projects really related to the material we couldn't get them in time we still don't have the material for them but I think what Darren said is we had to defer many projects to preserve the capital are you guys coming to deferments I know you said in the past meetings that you are but I it's my job to keep asking every month is that that's for Munir I'm sorry can you repeat that I didn't hear the deferments that have been chosen I mean it forward is a challenge to you know slow it down but it's also there's also potentially a value there to get it a little bit more right in terms of what we need but some of the distribution deferments Munir you're comfortable with those choices that have been made yeah as they are we defer them to fiscal year 22 so we're gonna be we're gonna get them done in this fiscal year you know there's like three projects one of them is customer related we're addressing the lighting issues the relocation of the poles the other two really related to material we don't have the material we're waiting for the materials once we have them we'll get them done everything costs more if you defer it Commissioner Herendine I see you popped up anything you wanted to ask no thank you no right now Emily is there more typically the end but is there more any questions or comments from the other commissioners thank you very much for your hard the next item is the strategic direction but but I'll just throw in that I had a great almost hour long conversation with someone from KPMG today regards to the audit coming just to the other commissioners it was really helpful to hear you know from the auditors that for the five commissioners we should be looking at the audit as and and as the auditors as a resource in terms of particularly if we get an SEC statement or filing or notice and just wanted to also say to Darren and Emily and the team you know that that certainly the close collaboration and the transparency is appreciated and recognized but just to the commissioners happy to answer any questions if you have it but it was helpful for me to have sort of a normally we have a at the end of the audit we have a commission and auditor discussion and this time around we had a prefront conversation but it was just helpful to hear it more as a resource and in terms of if the auditor's question if the auditor's role is to ask the questions and then to count the beans then the commissioners you know our our role can really be to take those findings and be supportive and proactive in terms of how to work with the BED team and the city to move forward in a proactive way if and when any items are identified but so just wanted to share that if I could just briefly this is not an official agenda item topic but you know relative to that I just want to recognize that there's just so much important work going on particularly in the finance and then the policy and planning areas and some of these topics that you've mentioned obviously the revenue bond the rate case filing the audit which is beginning process and then the work with Moody's for their periodic reviews and then some of the IT forward work those two areas in particular have quite a bit on their plates and those teams are doing quite a bit of excellent work right now obviously we're doing that without a finance director with Emily filling that in an acting capacity and I also wanted to just highlight in case anyone missed it in the report that we also will will no longer have Sue Fritz with us she is after six years moving on and has done some great work at BED and we have posted for an IT director that's current and then once we're a little further along with that process we will post again for a finance director I know we've we've talked about that in the past we didn't want to have both of those open at the same time because a lot of the interview team would overlap so we're going to try to manage the IT position first and then we'll move to the finance director position afterwards sorry so I thought that the finance director position had already been posted a couple of months ago am I misunderstanding nope you're correct we posted number of months ago in fact back towards the beginning of the year we had a pool of candidates we decided at that time not to proceed with interviews based on the pool and had decided to repost the position later in the year and so we've we've not done so yet that was kind of in the middle of the pandemic and I don't know if we would have gotten a different response potentially at a different point in time so we're hopeful that as we're coming out of the pandemic and Vermont's doing so well and people are are thinking now more about these types of positions that we may have a different type of response for the finance director position how is the team doing this is a lot of work it's a lot of work I'd let Emily answer that one she's she's got a better read on it I think well first of all we have sue for another several weeks so we have time to talk about transition and we've begun doing so immediately and the finance team you know both the IT team and the finance team are we have some long serving employees we don't have anyone who's like super brand new I mean everyone you know has a good grasp on their role and have a relationship with everyone so I think folks are holding up fine you know I think that the finance team in particular has really you know they there's it doesn't take much to oversee them I guess you know what I mean like I coordinate with them weekly um and but they are quite self-sufficient in terms of knowing their operational roles and completing their monthly tasks and so for for me it's kind of some of these higher level efforts that Darren mentioned so but you know that said everyone it will be great to have directors in place and that is certainly the goal as soon as we can and yeah unfortunately with the finance director the pool was not of the the quality or quantity that we felt comfortable proceeding with interviews and we're hopeful that we'll have a better result now that you know the situation with the pandemic is better someone to ask I know I could go to the Burlington city website but another ask to Mike can or if if a quick blurb and link to the job descriptions could be shared I'd be happy to post it on my LinkedIn and and to try and spread out through my you know other job energy networks and see if we can learn some fantastic talent to Vermont and or just grow talent within Vermont we'll get those to you and we've been doing some social media posting and getting the word out probably in better fashion than we have before since we're really eager to find some good candidates but we'll send that your way also okay I'm sorry folks it's a lot of work and I appreciate particularly Emily the fact that you've now been multiple directors for like over a year thank you moving on to strategic direction next on the agenda all right I am going to share my screen briefly and just pull up the copy that you all have from your packets should be on the screen now if you can see it yep all right we have three changes only from the version that we discussed at the last meeting all are in response to comments from the commission the first is that we've added the word sustainable right here in our mission statement in response to comments that we heard I think particularly from Commissioner Herndine we like that change that's excellent and we've added it for the mission statement we've also made a change in the 2030 vision over here to we have the words by eliminating fossil fuel usage previously we had reducing and eventually eliminating we've taken those words out for sake of clarity in terms of what the vision is what the mission is and then the last one was over here in the innovate to reach net zero energy item number one we have advanced district energy battery storage projects and local renewable energy production including customer and community-based projects both I think we were grappling during the last meeting about whether one or the other was the correct formulation and we certainly support both and are partnered with customers and with community projects including both is representative of our our ongoing work and we made that change I think otherwise there were no further changes from the version that we had discussed previously and the clean copy is in your packet and I believe ready for consideration so thank you for those changes a lot of them are very clean but also more direct and pointed I have one question which is whether or not people have feedback as instead of using customer and community-based it would be customer and community-owned projects just to make it I feel like based is somewhat not as clear as owned clearly we are going that the commission I mean I'm speaking on behalf of the commission but presumably we will continue to support the power supply team to look at clean energy projects for Burlington Electric to have within our portfolio but I'm just wondering to make this a little bit clearer what the feedback might be to have it be owned rather than based silence I have that effect sometimes not often well are there any exceptions under the present definition that wouldn't be covered if you change it over to your definitions rentals or cooperative deals I'm not sure which is which is the broader term I guess I would say I think when we think of renewable projects we kind of have three categories we've got the you know Burlington Electric owned projects which would certainly be community-owned projects because we're a public power utility our customers own that project the community owns that project if we own it there's certainly customer-owned projects which I think of as traditionally net metering projects although in a limited number of cases we have some customer PPA projects as we talked about but you know customer has solar on their roof they own the solar panels they sell the energy to us customer-owned project I think the category that we would maybe not be covering here explicitly although I don't I don't view its omission as a prohibition on our pursuing it unless the commission would see it differently would be a PPA with a renewable energy developer so if a a renewable energy developer had a solar project and they retained ownership of it and sold the output to us there are instances where that takes place as well we tend to be supportive of those if they're reasonably priced and particularly if they're located close to us in Burlington or in the nearby area those are kind of three categories that I think we pursue and if they're renewable and local we've typically been supportive as long as the price is reasonable so given that what's what's the better the what's the better lingo here to cover that that's a question for you Darren I mean I'm uncomfortable if you'd prefer to have an emphasis on customer-owned and community-owned projects as long as nobody on the commission would be upset with us if we pursued a good you know PPA deal with a renewable energy project that didn't meet one of those definitions if it was a good price for our customers I'm certainly comfortable with the emphasis on those community-owned and customer-owned projects if that's the commission's desire well to your point I hadn't thought about you know if you enter if BED enters into an agreement with a larger you know developer that then sells individual sales to homeowners so maybe it's customer-owned and community-based and I don't I personally do not foresee a future in which I would say Burlington Electric should not enter into a PPA with a you know a reasonable renewable energy project I personally can't imagine I mean it's always project by project but that's how we do this and I don't see that the language as drafted if it said customer-owned and community-based would preclude that with your lawyer eyes do you see it as precluding that? I do not I see this as kind of creating an area of emphasis that the commission and that the organization has but I don't see it as precluding in any way and as long as I think we all kind of understand it that way if we were to bring you a PPA to consider that was in that category as long as this nobody sees it as prohibiting that I think we're in good shape I personally don't and in full transparency the the reason why I am specifying customer-owned is only because we've seen utilities in other places within the U.S. that pushes back against customer-owned and I want to be clear that this is a joint effort it is Burlington as a municipal utility as well as customers as well as community-based projects that that's how we get to this end goal and it is not one or the other or the other but it will take many different approaches that ultimately weigh price location type of energy etc exactly I think your last comment carries the day Gabrielle when you bring up the specter of these other states that are sucking it to utilities and to knit maybe you name it um if your language pushes against that great so I'm convinced I have it correct whatever you say whatever you said I'm convinced I think we'd be adding one word which would be owned after customer so it would read customer-owned and community-based yep and just Darren you know do another skim and make sure it doesn't feel like it's precluding the municipal utility to do this because that is not my intent completely understand other comments questions otherwise I think this looks great okay I agree it looks great I'm naturally have one comment under strength and reliability number three I guess succession planning is sort of a standard buzz phrase basically what it means is labor or staff succession right correct when I look at it I first go and then I oh yeah okay that's what it is is it redundant just to stick in labor or worker or staff succession or is this term so well known it doesn't matter I mean we can certainly add the word staff if it if it helps make it clear that's definitely what we're thinking of is we have number of folks who have tremendous expertise who may be leaving us for retirement at some point in the not distant future and doing the work to make sure that those transitions are strong and that we are in a position to transfer knowledge is very much the spirit of what that bullet represents okay well then I would just suggest inserting the word staff got it anything from Scott or Jim and just to note that Bethany did have to leave for another meeting so I want to just compliment again my favorite subject which is innovate to recent zero number four continue to track and report to the community on progress I think the statement is perfect as it is I just really like it so I'm going to tell you that thank you is the commission ready to make a motion yes okay I'm ready if I move that we authorize that's the word this uh statement for our strategic direction as presented and with today's tiny changes and roll call Lord Commissioner Stebbins hi Commissioner Moody hi Mr. Shagnan hi Commissioner Heronding hi thank you thank you everyone and and thank you to the team I know that this is uh you know every year we keep brushing it off and checking off what we've accomplished and then tweaking what we need to tweak so I appreciate the effort it is important to have a vision and a direction so next up we have commissioners check in this is the close out of the meeting if anyone has anything they want to add at the tail end or or raise or questions nothing okay so we'll see each other in August and otherwise let's let's have a motion to adjourn second Commissioner Stebbins hi Commissioner Moody hi Commissioner Shagnan hi Commissioner Heronding hi thank you meeting adjourns at six fifty six thank you everybody very much ready be well you