 So it tastes like candy? It doesn't taste like candy, I don't like it. We're recording now. Okay, so we need to identify someone to take minutes today. Yeah, maybe you can point your break. That's volunteer, thank you. Next up is reviewing the minutes from our last meeting, which feels like a piece a week ago. Minutes are an appropriate place to re-say something. But at some point on the page it just says tell them to comment about the town. Inventory was not satisfying and that is an important piece. He looked through the data and said the populations were off. I would rather say that it is an important piece because it appears that some of the assumptions are incorrect, not the calculations. Here's some of the assumptions are incorrect. We should verify that if we embark on a new bench marking exercise. Actually that's very satisfying. Do you want to say what's satisfying? I don't want to offend anyone. But I do want to push for making sure the assumptions are. No, that's fine. I didn't really review these minutes. I'll make a motion to accept these minutes. Depending on Jesse's suggested change. As amended. That's like that. Can vote. All those in favor of accepting the minutes. Everyone that is here. I was looking at you when I was saying that. You want to introduce yourself? You've been here before. Feel free to join us if you want. My update is technically off the record because it hasn't been made official yet. I would appreciate it if you don't put this in your notes. We received word that we received $100,000 MVP action grant to create our climate action plan. We did not get the CCA funding portion of that request. Really, for our purposes the bulk was creating the climate action plan. The timeline is really kind of crazy tight. We don't even have the official award letter yet and because they reduced our budget request, I had to submit a revised scope of services which I have done. I sent that in today. It's due Friday but I wanted to get it in as soon as possible. So the way the timeline works, I met with the town's procurement officer. I know this isn't a general item. Can I just kind of launch into this? No, if there's any other updates, this is kind of a big thing. The one update is that we have started interviewing for other committee members. We did a chunk. But then we're having trouble scheduling the last one. So the last one is not until the end of January. Anytime soon but that process is going on. We'll probably have someone possibly be our first meeting in February. Potentially our first meeting in February. That's absolutely the earliest date we'll have a new member. So as far as the MVP process, so I met with the town's procurement officer. And we are going to need to, while we're hoping to put out an RFP for our consultant, but this has to be something that the town manager approves. So the procurement officer actually has to sort of write a letter and make a pitch for doing that. And so I'm going to provide him the scope of services that I just worked on. He'll write something up based on that. It's kind of identifying the where and when and it cites little documents and state procedures. So that process will happen. I think honestly the earliest we could actually get a consultant is going to be probably later like mid to later February. So again our timeline is really tight because we're supposed to expend the funds by June 20th, actually not even the 30th, but June 20th. So I did inquire to the program that they allow extensions. So I'm waiting to hear back. I just wanted to know that right off the bat. I think at the very least it may be a situation where we at least use the consulting services and there may be some we may get sort of a final draft if you will, but there may be some additional writing that I will probably finish up at some point if the timeline is out and we have to have our consultant funding completely spent by that date. So the consultant has to we would have to utilize the consultant services completely by that date and expend the funds by that date or very sooner after. Does that mean they have to be completely finished with their product or is that we paid off their invoices? Well that's what I'm saying is I'm not sure if they have flexibility in that that's why I was inquiring if we can have an extension because it may be that we just utilize their services and have at least a final draft of their product by that date and then if we have more work we want to do on it we can. So that's that's why I asked about an extension so I'm not sure. What time does it spend at $100,000? I mean some people are like building infrastructure with their MVP action grant so it's on. That's when they had to get shovel ready. Right exactly. And I did I mean I had clarified that I had phased the two projects and was actually calling the CCA project phase one and the Climate Action Plan phase two which would have given us another you know a full year and that's not how they awarded the grant so for whatever reason I think they felt like we could do what we need to do in that amount of time. I'm not sure. I'm advocating for an extension the state does do that for other grants like the Green Communities program you know as long as you requested before a certain date because they're trying to adhere to their procurement and other deadlines and accounting purposes so I'm advocating that we get an extension almost right off the bat but I actually don't think it'll be difficult to spend that funding in that time because you know the way that I sort of looked at the timeline and calculated it out it looks like the bulk of our outreach would happen in March so probably like around the second week of March to the end of March would be when we could do all of the community outreach and then coming back and getting that data you know there's April and May to sort of get the data and sort of lay something out so it's just I think just while we shouldn't be waiting for the consultant to arrive we should be having discussions about how we want to move this forward so that when they come we're pretty organized about moving forward. We can't spend any funding until we actually have the contract in place but that's not going to happen. No the contract has to be signed and in place otherwise you don't get reimbursed for anything we've spent so we're kind of limited as to when we can't even spend the funds What was your estimated start date? Um so um thinking somewhere around like the third or so week in February So the idea would be to um I mean when do you think you would have the contract signed because then we could be ready to put out the RFP Right well so that and that's happening already I'm working with the town's procurement officer around that piece so um so that's happening now that's in the works but as far as having the contract signed I don't know when I mean yeah when they turn it around like I said I just submitted the scope the revised scope today so they have to get it review it and then they're never particularly quick about drafting these documents in fact I'm still waiting on the VW settlement official award letter if we still haven't received the official letter yet let alone the contract Off the record officially congratulations The award is that for hiring a consultant or is it for developing a climate action plan? It's both But all the money has to go to the consultant? It doesn't have to I mean the way it's kind of laid out it will go to the consultant in interpretation I mean it's for right now the way the money is laid out it's for a consultant for interpretive services for engaging a community member for child care and food We have documents now or very soon we start to spend the money to get them translated? Not until we have no because we won't get reimbursed Well what's the contract? Until we have the contract Before the consultant because there are going to be three weeks or so to put out our fee, responses before we get the consultant we could start spending money after the contract We can't so you're asking if we can I mean we can't so we can't We can't enter into any agreement or secure services from someone until the contract is in place Not the consultant contract The contract for the funds We don't have to wait for the RFP I was confused about which contract We don't have to hire a consultant before we can spend the money We just have to get the contract and then if the people are finalized on our own translate Ideally though when we work with the consultant they also created a lot of those materials Once we have the consultant and they're dedicated they have specific tasks that's what they're completely focused on Even though again our timeframe is tight they're going to have the funds to support them focusing on this work So But I do think there's things that we can start doing today to start discussing particularly around the sectors and start getting all of that teed up You basically want to be telling them what you want I mean that's all for you to figure out Do we have any individuals or companies out there that might respond to this RFP Yes, there's a whole list of MVP consultants under the planning segment and although the process is a little different for an action grant for the planning grant you're actually encouraged to just take that list and pick whoever you want Because we have to go through our procurement We can still go through the list though of providers which are familiar with this whole process They will include the adaptation and mitigation issues in it even though it's through the MVP Because that's what we got funding for which includes adaptation, resilience So the plan is not just a mitigation plan It's climate action, adaptation, and resilience Any input on who gets hired? Della, do you want to pull up that document? Yeah Cause we're kind of like selection team So it looks like the town manager, if I understand it correctly the town manager has to decide whether they want one of us to be part of the interview process I expect that the town manager will probably speak with me about that but ultimately this is really the town manager's oversight because this is a staff driven function really I'm working with this committee and certainly this committee is driving a lot of this but at the same time it's a staff function to actually make it happen. It's the town manager's responsibility to make it happen in response to the charge by the town council which has directed him to do this He ultimately has to say that's just how it works But he'll take recommendations Laura can take it from here in terms of that about this, for this meeting and then she had a conversation with the town manager Assuming that someone from ECAC, in addition to Stephanie would want to be part of the interview process Again, because of open meeting laws and everything there's a couple options and we have to do it really quick just the people's schedules so we're going to have to fit into the schedule that the town sets So I just wanted to get a pause for folks if we want to designate one person to be like to try to go to all those meetings and do the interviews or whether we want to do like we sort of did with these superintendent department head meetings where I sent out the times who can come to which and we just sort of rotate as we Having different people make it harder to compare but scheduling may be a problem I'm willing and able to make my schedules very flexible This is a leave without pay Yes Okay, is everybody fine with that? Certainly other people can volunteer Can others of the committee come to some of the events? That I don't think so actually because it's an RFP process so it's not interviewing yet because sometimes there's proprietary information that's shared and it's also up to the town manager how many people I would certainly recommend that someone from ECACP on that committee but it's actually the town managers purview to say yes or no I doubt he will say no but just so we're aware I think that we haven't in our charge to create this climate action plan What seems to be the engine of this whole thing is that we have MVP grant and so the town manager is in charge but I think it's important for him to integrate us into the whole process because of our charge It's our climate action plan I'm just telling you what the process is I'm not suggesting that he won't in fact I'm pretty certain that he will either of you know typically for these processes for hiring consultants you don't have a huge team of people interviewing for the consultants you usually have like three to four maximum individuals that's what we did with the MVP planning process as well Would it be appropriate to make a request of the town manager to include a member of ECACP? That's what I will do I will tell him that you all at this meeting decided that you would like to have one of you present and I would recommend it anyway I think the most important piece is that we know what expertise the person for company or whatever organization who's hired for it needs What I would recommend you all do is identify how we will evaluate the consultant it would be helpful if you all sort of identify the types of things we should include in the evaluating and making a recommendation so that's a part of the process and that's where I need to give feedback to the procurement process Is part of the scope of work for the consultant will be to explicitly interact with ECACP? The consultant will definitely be coming to some meetings but it won't be that the consultant will come and individual members will be reaching out it will be a more coordinated effort as it was with the planning process so most of the time I will be the liaison between the consultant and this committee but the consultant will come and present to this committee feedback will be involved in the outreach we're going to have to accept their report to some extent there will be a draft that will be presented to you there will be a draft that will be presented to you towards the end of that time period and then there will be an opportunity for comment and revisions and then there will be a final that will be presented to you and then the final step is for them to present it to the time consultant if their proposals will come in prior to the interviews will we be able to see their proposals? for those interviewing? again because it's part of that process just think of it as if you were hiring someone in a job and you have a selection committee you don't share the information with others outside that committee so you'll have to trust Steve and myself that's why I'm saying if you all have your evaluation criteria identified then that is what Steve and I will take into that review so yeah so that's a question do we feel like that's a conversation we want to have now is that something that we need more information to discuss at the next meeting? you probably want to see it the RFP the evaluation? actually I think it will be included either in the scope of work I would just like to formally say I personally formally think it's a good idea to have Steve do them all we need a vote on that or a look around the room if you want to make it formal go right in we interviews aren't going to be until so what responses do by 2.10 so interviews will be sometime in mid-February so we can always I assume we will ask the time manager before that whether or not a member of this committee would be allowed so we'll know by our next meeting so we do get a vote that might make more sense to do at the next meeting because we already have our selection criteria and we'll know right now would be Steve if but next meeting we'll know if Paul's actually willing so how soon responses will be done by 2.10 it would be nice if we you and I were involved in the RFP crafting so that's kind of the process here now I've already submitted the scope of work so the procurement officer pretty much writes up because a lot of it is just boilerplate and technical it's based on the scope of work that you've written the scope of work is literally just a table that was submitted as part of the application for the MVP it's one consultant that does both the mitigation and the adaptation it's one consultant who's going to help us write the whole document what I suggest that this document be is really kind of a precursor to other versions and this might be just a sort of setting the stage and identifying what it is you're going to start with and that you'll be updating and maybe revising and creating a bigger document next time around I think I don't think you have to have it I think the timeframe is so tight and I think the funds are you know they're generous but at the same time somewhat limited for the kind of like you could focus on identifying a few projects that you want to start out with like CCA maybe you want to start with that so that we can then request funding in the next MVP round and expand as we go along I don't know that you want to the reason why is because I think it's a really tight timeframe I don't I feel personally like it's tight and that you would maybe not get I agree with what you're saying I would actually frame it slightly different like I don't think we would expand on a plan but I do think we've talked about in this group is developing a flexible framework that is going to identify the kind of high level what we want identify a couple projects we're going to work on and probably identify a pathway by which okay every year we're going to update the project list or we're going to do this like we're not going to I don't want to expand it as an expand what you're doing so much as identify the project list so yeah of all over time so are you seeing the consultant as being involved in the outreach process? yeah just to sort of help us as they did last time they'll be the ones to sort of schedule having the food they'll work with the community engaged member coordinating that childcare they'll have the materials they'll print up materials for us to help do outreach so yeah they'll do a lot of that so they were an actual like a organization that brought along a couple of volunteers interns does it mean it's the exact same firm we're going to go with cause we don't know who's going to respond but yeah we're looking to them to assist us with it that's the best use of their time since we'll have an outreach person and we did a smashing good job of running our own you know workshops and outreach but we want them there to sort of take notes but not run it the way that they do with MVP planning I think that's an open question did we have an outreach person? we're going to engage a community member to assist us like we did last time with the planning process and that's to sort of again because we want to do this differently and we want to bring our outreach instead of always inviting people to come here we're going to bring our outreach out to the community so that person is going to help us with securing locations spreading the word and I'm not saying it's the same person I don't know how this is going to go this time I think just in terms of engaging the community and them feeling engaged and involved it would be probably better for it to be more of a town of Amherst eCAC workshops with introducing or having the consultants to provide technical information with the town it's not going to be exactly the same as MVP but they're going to be there to support us they're going to need to take notes they might even help guide us to some conversations if they think we're missing something or they may suggest things I think we want to rely on their expertise as well as part of the service that they could offer to relieve all of us from having to do a lot of that logistical work and legwork and there are a lot of skills in facilitating conversations that get better with practice but I also really think that if we as committee members are more front and center with the community that's that's appropriate and you will be this time you're going to be having your sector conversations but you all should be leading a lot of those discussions so the scope of work should you talk about you know what I apologize but I'm not sure what I have to say it's not in that how do you want to receive the evaluation criteria so one thing we just talked about community engagement we want to have them have experience with that but I think facilitation skills yes they're giving us pointers I think distilling the information is really important in the logistical work so I think having someone with that experience is important I think having someone with experience doing climate action planning would be a plus right more than a plus and climate action plans that we have looked at don't like them all I would put an environmental justice experience in that even though we will have someone who is doing the after-outreach again I agree so environmental justice experience meaning like they're familiar with it specific to environmental justice they've done planning work with environmental justice lenses applied otherwise I think it might be too broad sort of separate but related but the fact that we're a community where 51% of households are rent or occupied so doing a climate action plan for a suburban area full of homeowners most the majority of units are occupied so a similar demographic climate action plan experience they should at least know that ahead of time and maybe be able to respond to that could be one thing that we could ask in terms of an evaluation how would you approach climate action planning process with a town like ours well with a major institution and two smaller institutions that have a huge impact that being said their scope is not covering the campuses they're looking at the town but they might address it in ways of how to engage or coordinate but not in terms of mitigation of what they may do is look at what the university and the colleges are doing already so they'll probably reference their existing plans and try to suggest how we fold that in I would suggest that the person should know perhaps some experience with community transportation I don't know that we need them to know that because we have experts for working with we just need to be able to get information because that might limit us in a way that we don't they're going to have the wrong view of CCA we have consultants the ability to work across with other consultants because you guys will be hiring a consultant for the CCA work and with our committee someone that's done it with this type of setup we have reports and information that they can refer to done by the consultants and they also will have access to the CCA task force so we can meet with them originally that was all written in here make a wish list I would put in experience in working with the agencies, state agencies, and other grant programs legislation it would be useful if we wanted to do something they are familiar with programs and policies that are available or even on the docket that we might say we want to do this that doesn't exist yet I hear two different things one is familiar with existing programs but also someone who is perhaps familiar with strategies to help us implement and advocate for new programs or new legislation do you know if anyone will be on the list that is not within a reasonable proximity and can that be an evaluation criteria or is it more like they have to demonstrate that they can be within our community for a reasonable amount I think the issue of proximity as well as the ability to commence work immediately how much of this is travel expenses and how much of it is carbon what's the embedded carbon I don't think there's any good consultants long way to do this in my view the comments we don't leave Boston they have to be Massachusetts based it should be worth it's a consideration if there's someone within 20 miles that's different than 200 if there is anything to it I don't know about firms from the Cape I think it's a good extra points for proximity closer is good but it's not but in quality of work and experience I would weigh that way more than I would proximity so maybe they can have points for that I don't know closer if they have an electric car closer if they have an SUV I don't know he can try there's an opportunity to actually try the procurement process that we want the partners to go through it needs to follow state procurement but I would put in something with regard to having expertise on energy efficiency programs and technologies approaches to building making buildings energy efficient as well as renewable thermal technologies as well as renewable energy and distributed energy knowledge and expertise as well as familiarity or work in financing options for those types of projects so experience with plans that have included that with a goal or objective to look for local ownership and investment opportunities in these energy systems that's good what other areas of expertise are we looking for that could be helpful looking at some of the best climate action plans what are some of the things that are incorporated in there that we hope will be incorporated into ours have you read a lot of climate plans in the NEMS yeah well I can't say I've read through them cover I've certainly flipped through several you know and I don't know I mean again like I've always said this is like each community is a bit different and it's hard like we don't have the resources Cambridge has so you know what they do is fabulous but sometimes I feel frustrated when people say look at Cambridge because it's like yeah because look at what they can afford to do and so you know it's like there are components of different plans that might make sense and I just want to look at them again I think about this everyone should sort of take a look and see what they like and maybe you know say this we've had this conversation before so well I would like to add while we do have on the balance side of the 51% renters we also have like global landowners and Cambridge doesn't have forests the way we do for fields we actually probably have more carbon sitting on our town than they do at Cambridge is so I think someone that has that sort of humanistic approach as well as ecological lands that can look at forestry and agriculture as well as soil sequestration one of the things that would be really interesting to think about too is that you know when we have large scale solar coming in we're seeing forested areas get cut for development of solar which seems to me so very intuitive so on a carbon balance it's actually very good I would like to see the numbers on that pretty much much of the environmental impact statements of forestry products and all that sequestration that tend to ignore the secondary carbon like soil carbon and the forest and the accounting has not historically been accurate and particularly for older primary forests there's no better thing to do then and that's something we may sort of propose is we have all of this conservation land in town we just leave a lot of it there's just ways to be thinking about this a little differently you know again we're sort of planning and moving forward my concern is that there's also a lot of opportunity and we've discussed this before a lot of parking lots around town where we could be installing solar rather than you know clear cutting forests and other places where we could be installing solar I'm not sure if it's in their scope of work per se but could they do a one thing we talked about taking a stab at it CCA is looking at GIS mapping or whatever of opportunities for solar within our town parking lots, land where it may make sense I think that would fit under development of project pathways for implementation and I think what we'll find is that potentially we're not going to find one consultant that can do all of these but do they have networks for which they can subcontract pieces to help us fit some of these and have they done that before and it would be that's one of the things that we probably do want to include in our scope is to sort of repress that they assemble a team and address broader issues beyond just the development of the plan itself for those applicants that have done more than one climate action plan, I'd like to see that those plans are tailored to the communities and they're not a pretty kind of style so that when you have some confidence that they come to hammers they would be able to consider our agricultural base, our renter base, our demographics are effective it shows the flexibility and creativity and it's a slightly modified plan for other towns I think that comes to that question, how are you going to approach the process with our town and it'd be nice in the interview for them to have a fairly good answer to that We can request reviewing plans that they have worked on and we can request exactly more than if it's more than one community we want to see these two or three examples Would it be a criteria that they have already produced some climate action plans for other communities? Absolutely, we can absolutely request that one of the criteria we would ask for who and we could go with them up Well they can submit them too we did that even with the planning process, we asked for them to provide the summary of findings that they did for other communities, so we actually got to look at the reports that were done for different communities I'm not sure I'd be opposed to someone in the group that hasn't done a climate action plan if they've done similar or not work that demonstrates that they could do a climate action plan so I'm not sure that it's a required element that they have completed climate action plans before but I'm also willing to shut them out just because they haven't done it yet If they had a really deep expertise in listening and facilitation and interpersonal skills and climate mitigation and adaptation they'd have to have some content in order to remember that these are all pre-screened so the MVP has like 200 people we can choose from or something based on the fact that they've been deemed appropriate so we've made out these people anyway Are we allowed to go through that list and make email recommendations? Yeah you could definitely go through the list because that's already out there I'm not sure because we're going through our town procurement process I'm sort of assuming that we can just use that list to sort of see who we may want to invite to interview and send the RFPs to so it would be good if you all have some Where is that list? And you want to look under the planning MVP planning process and there's a list of providers that you can look and I'm sure it's been updated. It's huge I've never seen a bigger list It's not the most user friendly Yeah it should be under the planning and insert that link into the minutes or instructions on how to find it Yeah So Stephanie it sounds like the town could both sort of put out a call for anybody to apply out of that list but could also invite particular groups to apply? Well that's what I'm double checking I don't know that 100% for sure. I mean for some instances I've been involved with procurement where we've literally just sent an RFP to or an RFQ to a specific business and invited them to provide a bid. It doesn't mean they do, we just invite them to and sometimes we'll get a few responses and you know we're done I mean it depends So I'm not sure about this one This is the scope Yes For the most part it's kind of intentionally fairly general so that we have room to do what we need to within the general description of what's out there like you know schedule outreach, conduct outreach. I would want them to know from the start maybe not in the RFP but certainly in interviews that they would be working with a very experienced and professional energy committee who you know want them to do different settings to handle it. I haven't clicked yet but it's already happening. Well yes and no I mean I think the thing about having the expertise is that you can review what the consultant is providing. I think the way it would work that is how would you best utilize the ECAC which is a group of The expertise on ECAC And if they say oh well I would use them then that's not really what I'm talking about, talking about like how do you work with an active citizens group So we can provide at least before the interview process a list of our items. I don't think that's necessary. It's more how they work, how, it's their style. It took a while but I mean to mass.gov slash doc I don't know if this I can try to get it up. Let's not get two in the list. These are not all consultants that can do. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah I mean I'm only like on page two or three and I'm only at the B's. So it keeps going. And I think we have to place an ad so I'm not sure again that's why I need to check with the procurement officer I'm not sure where the ad is placed. It might be like on Massachusetts sort of registry. I don't know that it wouldn't be like we wouldn't be putting it out to this MPP list. That's not Right so how does these people get aware that this is out there? What I'm saying is we wouldn't necessarily put it out to everyone. But anybody can check what's out there and anyone can put in a proposal. Is that correct? Yeah I think that's the thing. I'm not sure about this particular procurement process. I think we have to leave this to Stephanie. Yeah but I think we could look at this and to recommend to you or at least inform you of a few that stand out as being You can let me know which consulting firms or agencies that you either worked with or have knowledge of that you think would be suitable. And I would not send it to me saying I would recommend. I would just send it to me saying these people I've experienced. So that would be an action for anybody that has time and experience with some of these groups if you look through and you have some people that fit that criteria or people that you're like 100% do not work with this group. Send that to Stephanie. Or maybe. Or you've had experience that you would elaborate on in person. I'm not going to do that. So I think we've got a good list of expertise that we want. So those tasks and see that we've covered those is there more than below five? Part of it is not as there's a community outreach which is tasks two and three it looks like creating a draft of a climate action plan has four. That's a lot of pulling together of ideas. And those ideas are not going to come just from community outreach. They're going to come from us. They're going to come from their own expertise. Again it's just general. We'll pass by this being accepted to the town council so we don't pay them until the town council. I just don't see them. No. Okay. No. Take it back. It's a good idea to have an outsider present to the town council. That doesn't mean they're presenting. It means they're just there for their helpings. They're not necessarily, but this committee will do the presentation. I do note that the bulk of the money is on this developing the plan. And there's a lot on the project management. Are they going to have to break down the budget as presented here? They, you know, it's like anyone who gets a grant they are to charge it all with that. This is the whole budget. This is the budget of everything. There's a required matching which is the grant. Again, take those numbers. What's in the green, the match you have to sort of take with a grain of salt because that's just basically us sort of providing what we will. And it's actually more than we're required. We're technically now that they've revised the budget award amount. We really are only required to provide 33,000. There's extra in there because I do think there's going to be extra time. But that includes our sort of magic money like our time. Your time is in there. Your time is in there. The community member is in there. Again, the interpretation. Everything is in there. Good. It's great that you got this. We didn't exactly plug it. And Steve, to your last point, I think that we sort of had that written but I think pulling together ideas from many sources to build a coherent plan I think is an important thing. We also talked to people from other communities Well, you do that anyway with your men's group but I mean we talked to them in the green field of the towns that we talked to all the time. We can all do that and give that information. Yes. If there are aspects of that when you meet with a consultant you may want to say there are aspects of this that we like but it would be nice to sort of have had some cohesive thought as a group about that before meeting with a consultant so that it's not throwing out a million ideas it would be nice to sort of... Well I think so I think we have a decent list here that could just be cleaned up a bit and then we have a couple questions but I think we'll have time to refine this a little bit so people think of things. Do we have to write the RFP now? Yeah, well so again I'm not writing it but I'm just doing this. The scope of work is basically it's kind of in this what this is going to help with is the evaluation criteria. That's what this is. And so that will come after the RFP. That will come when you're actually doing the interview. Yes, it will come. Okay, so I do need this now. Okay so we'll send these notes so what I have for everybody here is community engagement. We talked about logistic work, facilitation skills, climate action planning experience either a plus would be with a place like ours or a good approach to how they would approach a place like ours. Environmental justice experience with community engagement and planning experience working with committees and task force, pulling together ideas from many sources to build a coherent plan. Experience working with or understanding the agency's policies and programs and strategies both current and potential future proximity expertise or network subcontractors that have expertise and doing you said on energy efficiency programs and technologies, renewable thermal technologies financing options I think the same would be true for transportation the same would be true for land use and agriculture as we kind of talked about like figuring out okay what are some projects, how would we pay for them, what are the programs available, what are some innovative approaches experience with efficiency expertise with energy efficiency programs specifically with renters I think would be helpful as well. Did you have it in there? Yeah, that's in there. Is that sound? The first line of experience with community engagement I think it's in here but we specifically said like varied and diverse community engagement not just you know Newton, Cambridge and Summerville but the great thing. I think it's specifically named environmental justice community. It is I suggest something so they tweak this a little bit like I might include the sectors I might reward things to include the sectors as you said because you just mentioned you know what just know that I'm going to tweak it a bit What do you think about asking them to submit in their bid their embedded embedded carbon to fulfill this I mean okay it sounds a little like out there but shouldn't we go in that direction just to think about it and see if they can think that way We can add a requirement to what the town would be asking them to include as part of their application package. I just worry about that a little bit only in that I think it is important to think about it I just also when I hear Sarah Drake for saying when you're looking at the current center even that building isn't when you're looking at embedded carbon I think it's a different term of embedded carbon I think it fits in with I mean I think we could ask them to give us a couple bullet points on how they're going to lower the environment impact of this work What if the question was how does the operations of your firm track its own carbon consumption like how many ever looked into it I'm sort of getting at it as a you know can you do embedded carbon calculations It would be interesting to see if they thought of that Yeah we can have this be an optional point honestly I'm not sure in terms of the evaluation criteria when I meet with the procurement officer you know this is also going to go through a process they're going to look at it but the USAID asks us of all of our grant recipients there's precedent for it it's not like completely out of nowhere we could throw it in and if the procurement officer says don't do it then I don't know if it belongs in the evaluation criteria or if it belongs in the scope of work under project management how are you going to manage this project how does your firm manage a project like this and minimize carbon impact so it could be maybe that could be part of the interview questions that's a good point I think asking it is not just for how they would handle how do they operate is this their local job but then they're flying Singapore to do their other planning work it's worth not cut this conversation off but I think we've got some good input and we have a little more time on the questions I think because the interview process is not happening immediately if anybody thinks of some burning questions before now February whatever so the other thing that was on that document in terms of discussing and then I want to be aware of the rest of the agenda items so maybe we table this for next time is when I was brainstorming sort of okay given the tight timeline what could we do to start what do we need to do to be completely ready to get going on this top at mind is this kind of sector outline sector work how do we want to do this how I mean I think we've talked about there's different sectors that we know of there's kind of sub sectors under all of those sectors you can cut them and slice them in many different ways this was my attempt there probably is different other ones but like what are we I imagine I guess for this process we're going to want to have some sector specific outreach work in addition to like these larger more community based outreach work in terms of the people that are going to be like actually so like for the commercial properties or the rented properties like the landlord or the team of six or whatever they are that almost the properties like how are we going to target outreach to them so I don't know if people have thoughts on how we go about this do we want to form sub committees for each of these sectors do we want that to be something that one e-tag member leads with other external people from those sectors do we think that these sectors will be sort of prominent parts of the climate action plan that's my thought based on what we've heard from so I mean I think transportation, building energy use and renewable energy were kind of the three main sectors that popped out of our outreach so far we know that education is an overarching goal and agriculture and land use is a sector that didn't come up as much but that we know we want to cover and then I think the barriers here are not a sector in themselves but I think that's something that we have to make sure we're laying onto every all of the things that we come up with this is not really so much at this point getting at what are the pathways and strategies to mitigate carbon in these sectors but but more how do we outreach to these sectors to get their input get their buy-in, get their thoughts, get their engagement to identify it could be research as well that's where I like the consultant to spend their time is I mean in our case we need a climate action plan that gets to our e-cat goals which are substantial so and I forget what they are but they're great and so at the end of the day we need a plan that says okay this is you know all these rental properties by 2030 or 40 or whatever it was to be reduced by 80% or 100% and it's like how do you get from here to there we'll have to start there and work backwards it's energy efficiency and it's different energy sources I'd really impress on the consultant to really dig into what is that pathway and what are the barriers to get there and how do you overcome those barriers we're going to get there on this grant I mean at a fairly high level it's not like building by building by building but sector by sector I mean how do you address the residential properties the rental residential properties how do you address the single family you might identify some broad goals like that and sort of add those to the plan that may you know sort of identify what the end goal is or how you're going to try to get there without maybe being too specific I mean some of the things you're going to have to get very detailed about because you need to start with some projects but I think there might be others that you're just sort of starting to create the pathway I really think that we're going to be doing that gathering the people you know finding right people to talk to about agriculture and having you know us establish a good relationship with them and kind of put to them here's where we need to go you know how do you see it and then the consultant could like hold the information together I don't think they're going to provide that kind of expertise but we're not going to really get that maybe from a company you know a planning commission I think Laura was proposing was that one or more of us is a captain or a leader in each of those categories and how to shepherd it through community input working closely with the consultants on that aspect and then reporting out to us really taking charge of that section of the climate action plan I just want to remind you too that because this is the MVP planning grant you do need to refer to the summary of findings document in terms of you know definitely what the vulnerabilities are which we've already discussed but also you want to look at the communities high priorities that were identified in that document as well they may not be exactly what yours are but you do need to reference them in some way because that was part of the process in that whole planning process is identifying high priorities and they may not be exactly what you have but you need to find ways to tie in one thing that came up during the outreach sessions was communication and that really should be something that's included in this document outreach people who don't speak English as a native language some of that needs to be examined as well and included in the grant So are we in the former MVP outreach all these different stakeholders were invited to the two days of outreach are we not envisioning that that is going to happen that's a conversation how you want to do the outreach with the consultant when you get the consultant I don't think there's a specific you have to do it one way or another it's how you all want to approach this I mean I certainly have in my mind a way of how it might go but you might have something different and I think you need to I think you also need to rely on that consultant and maybe help you with that too I do think it would be I heard this described to me by an executive coach or person but you want to have what's Oz and that example is 80% reduction in energy use of our rented buildings but to go out to the landlords of those buildings and say this is what we want how do we get there if you try to get people to Oz immediately it may have a back we might know in our head what Oz is for each of our sectors and then what are the smaller steps that we can start taking with our community with the people that need to make the changes I've seen some analytics of what does the growth rate or the market penetration of these activities need to be to get to Oz and so are we appropriately planning this thing out so that we even come close and for example as I always harp on it's like Massave we're nine years in a row best in the country but to get to 80% 80% of our buildings need to be essentially net cart and net zero or they all have to be 80% but in any case they all have to have some fairly substantial work and I wouldn't mind some analytics so if you know right now Massave is serving Amherst at 10 houses a year or something or 100 houses a year I don't even know and is it like would that path get us there or is it double triple or it might be like 100 times more or can it not get there because it isn't you know it's only good for low hanging fruit yeah and how far can it get us there and then the remainder has to come in with renewable thermal or some other options that still provide the comfort that people need so does that have a great task wherever in terms of building energy in the sector so either make sure the consultants cover that or find people or do it themselves I really think that we're talking about outreach we're talking about involving our residents we have to set I mean we have our big goals but we have to set our we have to base on those we are going to be able to figure out what the goals are for these sectors let me finish you know the idea of us being captains and having our areas I think that means developing relationships pulling people together to talk not about our agenda about their agenda and you know that's how you get people buy it and then you know after a couple of meetings you know in conversations you kind of understand each other you move them to the next step so that will be yeah I agree I think we've done some of that not targeted and I think it's really going to depend on who we're meeting with right so I think that that's I mean I think that's another vote for having sector leads that are like having a sector lead that reads through the MVP first one summary findings and like with the lens of transportation and then identifies like the groups of community members that maybe have we if we've gotten all the information we think we need from we don't want to you know we heard that we don't want to continue to ask the same questions we have to make that so but like we haven't done we've talked about trying to set up a meeting with the landlords and we haven't done that yet so like that's going to be a lot of relationship building but we're not going to go to them and be like tell us what you want we're going to go to them with a much different approach I think what's your what issues do you face around energy use in your buildings you know I think we have to start totally open what are your concerns and it's a strategy and a series of discussions I think also we have to get also to educate them about the towns adopted these rules these these events at this point and you know we're here and we've got to get here and so it's we've got to worthy worth we're more of the experts than they are in terms of of strategies technologies approaches they have some expertise in terms of how you go about financing these things potentially in their universal finance and so forth and their challenges and barriers and all that so I think it I don't want to I think we need to go beyond as Laura was saying sort of the listening sessions that we've already had and you know hear about all the things we always hear about that are great but it doesn't get you 80% it doesn't get to the scale it doesn't scale to where we need to go you might want to even think about some of your outreach as a specific sector do you I mean you open up to the public but you specifically invite the people from that sector to sort of meet with you to have that conversation so it's open to the community but you really want to engage those people so that you have that conversation of you know it's an educated response as well as educating those who are there as well it depends on the issue I wouldn't want to invite the developers in town to a wide open meeting to have to face you know people who are going to just be diametrically opposed to anything they do so I guess I'm just saying that you I mean you steer it and you format it so that it's not that you know I mean you may want to you also you need to the developers because they're going to need to be doing things differently I want to talk to them but not in a you know space where they can't talk and talk to some of the key land people land lords and it might not be the first and only meeting but I could see a meeting where you're talking it's about how do you penetrate these technologies and so forth into the rental market and we sort of focus on the land lords but you also have the tenants there to be part of the conversation of what they're willing to do what they can do what you know their barriers are how they're willing to play in with this as well and a really good facilitator and moderator I just want to clarify a question is this that we're talking about is that a separate track of outreach that this group does separate from the consultant does this consultant track or are these maybe we don't know it how do these things overlap or are we just queuing up people for the consultant to grab is the consultant doing more of a survey broader I mean from my perspective I think we want to I don't know I think that maybe we need to think through this a little bit more in detail but I know we do but we've already done the kind of general listening sessions so I think we need to start teeing up these more targeted in depth things either we do a few of them and we get help like from the consultant where needed and then we bring the consultant in with our own board to start doing more of it we bring the community person on board when they're available but I think for the larger scale community outreach I actually want to be like outweaching with a draft report and more detail and say listen to you here's what we have now tell us if we captured everything you know so I don't think we want to go back out to the community early in the process and be like hey we're doing this help give us input like we've already done that piece so I guess it's a mixture but I would say to the extent that we can get some things started and teed up we're going to be better suited to meet that timeline I think we need to go to the community with fairly specific concepts their feedback on those concepts and then we refine those concepts into proposals and we might take them back to the community listen to be adjusted this I don't think what do you think of it now I'm also thinking those need to be fairly specific and often fairly technical so the consultant can help us and we also have to I just want to say I think we also want to think about how should we best use strategically use these consultants which are fairly short because we're going to be doing outreach well beyond June and many years probably of the CEC group and so how you know what is the best use of the consultants who have some expertise and resources to spend in this six months of initial and so if you think to like what are the things that we struggle with getting done I think some of the analytical work that you just talked about is one thing like doing all that background research I think we always about wanting to do it but it's hard to get done compiling everything into a coherent thing I think that's hard to do and you definitely don't want to see this I mean you're not you don't want to be doing the MVP planning process again you've done that you know so you really do have to think about I think what Steve you were right on about saying that you really need to bring what is going to happen what you're what's being proposed to move forward this is the plan out to the community to get reactions to that I think that was right on so would it make sense for us to to do the up the list and come up with a kind of a digestible all bitter pitch pause for each sector just as a way to help us start as a group starts articulating where we're going and we don't have existing residential property on there I like your idea about digging it up I'm not sure setting up the target of odds is the thing to start that makes me want to lie down in the field of poppies identifying strategies that can make progress and put an eye towards how fast is that progress going to be moving us forward not necessarily saying is it going to get us over the goal line but I'm also wondering if we want to use the smaller groups or whatever it ends up being to sort of key questions research analytics that we want the consultant to do in addition each of the teams could tee up research needs also to have ideas and then consult research other action plans and try to find ideas that seem to work elsewhere could they work here the plan will be high level but it will be addressing our goals presumably right so that it will have strategies that attempt to get us to our goal by 2015 by 2030 and then I didn't mention this before it's a big chunk for interpretation because it's also to interpret the plan and to actually have a plan in other languages so that's part of so that it's really for the whole community as well as much as we can get in every language but the three languages that we identified last time was being the three primary languages in town so again we're going to have interpreters and we want to sort of rely on them heavily and I think try to do more to engage those that didn't come to the meetings like we didn't have many people from the Mandarin community attend or from the Portuguese community attend so we want to maybe really try to get more specific targeted outreach so that we can get them engaged in the process with the interpreter so that we'll have a plan that's in those languages that will be challenging. Do you have an RFP for the interpreters too? I'm imagining that this climate action plan by this summer is going to be address all these different sectors and some of the ideas will be few of them who might be ready to begin implementing and others will be medium term that we need to do a little bit more work and we hope to get them implemented by next year and some of them may be quite a bit more work but there's legislation that is required so there'll be a series of things and every year we have a new plan and some of these things move from longer term or medium term into the short term into the implementation phase but we have reasonable goals for what we can produce this summer with a fairly defined list of what we can actually implement but also describe what we're going to do. So you're saying that would be part of the plan, the fact that it is continually at home? Yes, I would say process rather than plan as a climate action process because we're expecting this to be updated regularly every year. We're not going to get the definitive plan that gets us to our goals in six months or less. We're going to have a process that's going to help us get there over the years. I think that's what I was trying to say earlier and I wasn't articulating it well but that's thank you so much. So we're talking about the CAP climate action process. Yeah and I think under that would go, I think there would be a section of the plan that needs to include how do we make this all work, right? Like how do we update it, how do we do the inventory and when do we do it budget needs to do that for other staffing levels and other areas. Yeah it goes back to Duane saying that the consultants are going to be over this fairly short time but I think it helps establish a process that we can follow after they're done. That would be a really huge contribution. I think that's like I said that's what I was trying to say earlier. Part of the framework that we can use over and over again and just as long as that framework includes regular actionable items where it's sort of like alright town council here time to do this. And I think unless we're getting pushback on this plan, I'm dubious that it was a success. If everyone just says yes again this is easy as last time we're not asking anyone to do it. The challenge that I accept is how much can you educate us to be able to continue this process without their help after six months? There's going to be changing technologies and if we become actually not if we when we establish the CCA in the inter municipal effort I think that's going to weigh into all of this as well and that will change things a bit for us as a town. So I'm going to show you volunteer for certain sectors. I'm sure how best to plug in. Is that no punitive? Let me just differentiate because renewable energy is a little bit different I think in that are we talking, are we envisioning there distributed generation renewable generation that's not sort of part and parcel of a building. It's not addressing the building directly, but it's local renewable energy generation, or maybe even district heating or something that's serving that is in the town, but not necessarily connected with an individual building. It's sourcing, it's like the dozen site source, right? Yeah, but I think with building energy use if we're talking about bringing in energy pumps and so forth, sometimes that's renewable energy too or at least classified, but I wouldn't ever think that's separate from this. Yeah, so I think one of the things that we should probably do is if we do, I think last time we tried to do this, I think we split it up too little. So I think it's easier to be like, oh I'm doing transportation and I really think that bike and walking needs to be a separate piece. I think it's easier to split it up once we've started than to start really splintered and then try to pull things together. But to your point, yeah, when I said renewable energy here I was not including on building and I wasn't thinking about like geothermal or heat pumps or anything like that, or ground source. So, but yeah, so I was thinking more of like deployment of solar or... Yeah, a battery store or something like that. So that would be my suggestion is that we don't like I think with inner buildings for example, I mean like you summarized nicely the way we kind of know what we've got to do. It's going to be a different audience and different approach for new buildings versus existing buildings versus renovations versus buildings like, but we know the general sense and then we'll need to tease it out, but I don't know if we need to tease it out right now to say like one person's going to focus on renting. Because I think the other thing I want to make sure we do is that we're pulling out the cross-cutting ideas and making sure they're getting dealt with in an overarching holistic way. So like the procurement, like if procurement keeps running up as or, you know, as that's an issue, that's a larger issue beyond just individual sectors, I would guess. Like costs and finances and stuff like that. So you're saying we should have a couple of people for building energy use because there's going to be a lot of different solutions. And people have different amounts of time, I think. So that's the other thing I think we need to be aware of that. And there may be obvious things that need to be done, but getting those into a way that they can be implemented and accepted in Amherst to be involved in the work and those cases. In other cases, it might be learning about what could be done. There might be some things that we just do, like offer a workshop for landlords on energy efficiency programs that are available to them. That's something EnergySafe is doing right now in Springfield. We can do it here. And that would be an example of a, we don't have to wait to do that. It's like ready to come on in. So we do have some obvious people here that have expertise. And I can certainly take, I think I did transportation because we didn't have anybody but not because we didn't have anybody because I did it. But you did your outreach to different people. Those can be something different. I mean I'd be interested in doing, I think the building energy and the agriculture, the two I would want to be involved in. I'm also really curious to engage in the building energy because we're all there. So maybe there's other. For me the renewable energy, I could be focusing on the town boundaries outside of the CCA and that could be expanding residential solar parking lot tops incentives for medium small to medium scale in town. I can imagine working on that. Yeah the programming, I've always thought like if we had more opportunity to do more of the solarized kind of effort. Because that was really successful. Yeah that was one that I would look into and say could we do that again? Do it better? And better and more and you know we can do it with other technologies as well. So that's the kind of thing that the CCA program might lead us to. I do think that people on the CCA task force should split up in the different sectors so that that perspective is always. So I think there's two ways we could do this. We could sort of like, people thrown out things they're interested in. We could assign people. We could potentially spend a chunk of our next meeting actually breaking up. And if we're in the same room? Breaking up into being like, so we don't have to commit today. Or 16 feet apart. Who's here? Who wants to look at what? And sort of getting within our little teams talking through like how we would actually approach this. And then sort of setting some real and then setting plans based on that. Does that sound like an okay approach? On the 29th. So let's plan on doing that on the 29th in that way. I think we have some ideas here and we can split up in that way. But that also might help to say actually this is a bad group we need to fix it. Or I don't want to like commit us to something and then have it be like renewable energy really needs to be over here and you know whatever. Okay. I just want to throw it out there. The notion that it's not just about renewable energy. It's like the generation of all power. And kind of trying to understand where it's coming from. What is good and what might not make sense. I would say you'll have many opportunities to contribute that to conversations on going. Okay. I think there's some other things on the agenda. So yeah there is. So let's move, move. I think that was really good discussion. There's more. There's more agenda. I mean I'm going goodness. So quickly I think we could report back on the budget meetings that we've had. So in our last meeting we had an action item was to set up some meetings with department heads, superintendent and the police chief superintendent and IT director. So we attended the meeting with the police chief and the superintendent. IT director did you all get to go? Yeah. Okay. Do you want to give any feedback? We had a nice meeting yesterday with the IT director Stephanie and I. Very nice guy, very detailed knowledge of what's going on in the town. You can almost tell us exactly how many computers are out there and where the monitors are. We agreed that with their relatively rapid turnover they're always sort of getting better equipment that takes up less space and presumably uses less energy. They're interested in tracking their energy and would be willing to do so. They haven't always done that when they've taken out old equipment and put into new but we talked about wanting a kilowatt meter and there's other ways they have to monitor energy. So I think they'd be happy to help work with us to move into a place where they can put the energy impact on the operating budget into that capital planning process. I think we have some good real partners there. Yeah, it's enthusiastic about it even. Yeah, you're so excited about the challenge with each channel to measure you. And it's a little bit too about how well even though the stuff that they buy is getting more energy efficient in some areas there might be more of it like the town meeting room. That may be a little as some of the efficiencies or if they expand put some new projectors over at the bank's center for facility groups that could as well. But we also agree that we don't want to shut down the town and they're going to be really comfortable. Great. And I would say that similar meeting with Chief Livingston and meeting with Mike Morris and Rupert, who is the new facility's manager. He's not new. For the schools. He's not new. He's just his title and specific. Okay. With Chief Livingston yeah, I mean very interested in the vehicles I think they've already actually done some of the stuff we talked about. So he's already built in to the budget, the price of the hybrids instead of the traditional gas. They buy, he would be interested in if they overturn particularly the patrol vehicles every two to four years. So I think we have and they have 13 to 15 patrol vehicles. So I think that starting, and he's aware that the LAPD is testing out electric vehicles. And so there's work happening to, and he would be he would not be opposed to doing all electric vehicles if it started becoming more common on the market please. So yeah. So I think he's, you know, they're already all set to do hybrid, patrol hybrids. I think that you know it's more about just making sure we're keeping conversation open about electric vehicles as they come online. He does, we learned a little bit about the gas. So we were talking about the operational versus capital budget. And he says that they all fill up at the north fire station. Yes I do that because yeah, and so we could potentially track gas savings. They have gas, they have it by car. That was the piece of information that was useful. I have that information about tracking the gas usage, but it's sort of an aggregate and he said they actually have individual vehicle data. So we could pull like a car that they're replacing, we could pull the last year of data and then say because of this, you know. Would these be, these are not plug-in hybrids, they're just hybrids? These are not plug-in hybrids because we did talk about the fact that to get plug-in hybrids they would need charging stations. And that was also a dis-part, so talking about things that come up that are cross-section. So that came up with a school discussion too. The plug-in hybrids you know, we have that, and this is where I was sitting there and said, I can get funding that will cover the cost of the charging stations. There are programs and incentives and opportunities, and I've done it before with the facilities director. That's how we got the two electric vehicles that we have in town now. So there, you know, it shouldn't just be an assumed barrier because there are opportunities. It seems like people carry vehicles every year. Yeah, and so I think there's definitely something we could do there around and he seems, he's already doing it. So if there's anything we want to do to formalize that process, like what they have at what we looked at with car procurement from somewhere, like a Burlington, had like the car, I think he'd be very open to us formalizing that. He's already kind of doing it and we can push him a little bit more. So do the cruisers are they in service 24 hours a day with different shifts of patrol people? Because that was an issue I was wondering about with the charging. Are how many cruisers do they have and do they work around the clock or at least need to be available around the clock? They need to be available. They need to have all needs to be available. I don't know and they may all need to be available on Saturday night and not on Monday night or something. I actually said that they do less patrolling than they used to. Just out of necessity because they have a lot more paperwork. So it's not necessarily a good reason. That's the carbon dioxide strategy. We can know. But I think the thing with the police is that they get like a catalog and they want to buy Fords. So when Ford comes out with a plug-in hybrid they're going to buy it. When Ford comes out with an electric hybrid they're going to buy it. So I don't think it's us giving him, I think it's more of he's willing to buy what they offer. But for us to start them thinking this is the same with the electric buses. What routes? What beats? Can an electric, all electric cars be used for this purpose and others have to be hybrid. And my sense is that if the LAPD says we used these electric cars and they worked he would be like okay sure let me have them. I don't know if our input is going to actually help in that situation. They have a fair amount of vehicles but quite honestly if you really want to put effort into transportation you should be looking at DPW. DPW has the largest number of vehicles in the community and some of them are extremely large and they don't have in the EV equivalent. But that's why we were able to get funding for the roll-off vehicle because it was a more efficient model newer model, newer engine. But those are, I mean I really think DPW is really somewhere to focus. And it's lovely I mean this is great and it's lovely but that is really great. I'm going to keep tapping these So these are the people that offered up to us and so then I think the next phase is targeting people that didn't respond to Stephanie's first call. Well we chose transportation and IT equipment as two areas that we thought might be the easiest to begin a new process. So I think we should probably with these two think about that not how to influence their decision but how to incentivize decisions in the direction that is beneficial to our community. But they sound too easy. Well so they can also be leading, you know, to demonstrate leadership. But it might not teach us what we need to know in order to develop a climate impact process. Well what I'm curious is with Chief Livingstone I mean it sound like he planned to put in more capital budget for the hybrid which is great but that's where that might not translate to other people. And I'm wondering he did that but it didn't sound like he was I mean ideally he does that but now is he going to get less budget for operating costs and not be able to pay back, you know, internally in his budget the extra he paid on capital costs. Yeah so that's where there needs to be some translation. He's sort of foregoing, you know, if he could make that decision to put more capital in pocket for the next vehicle he needs to buy the savings on the operating side that would be sort of more systemically And we didn't get into that much detail but he did tell us who in his office does the budget fill in the amounts of Sonya. I want to see that IT is putting in cost savings as part of the effect on budget line. How can we do that? So what does that communication look like is it like does the town do case study and it's a little bulletin that goes like what happened? Maybe we do case study. That's the thing. So we currently have a policy and we have a fuel efficient vehicle policy and it's outdated. I mean it's the states template so the states is outdated doesn't mean we have to wait for the state to update it. We should and that's why we looked at Burlington as an example of sort of a direction we could be moving in. We want to inspire them but I think there's a degree to which you want to inspire and there's a degree to which you just want to have this be the new kind of policies. Inspire and require. So one thing could be that based on these conversations we sort of write up what that plan is going to be for sustainable I.T. or purchases of things that plug in sustainable vehicle purchasing and then we take this back to Chief Living Snoutstone and Sean and say like hey are you supportive of this? And then that helps us get other people potentially to say the chief's behind this. See that happening is like in department head meetings when those are like okay this is a new policy and you know yeah I did this and it worked that's where that would be effective. I can imagine writing up those set of guidelines particularly for I.T. at the moment how could you calculate and include a reasonable impact future impact on budget kind of do improve that. And then maybe something similar to be guidance to any department for opposing vehicles here's some guidelines on how you calculate the energy impact on budget. So if we could help them write that up like do it draft so that it's easier for them and then it's up to them to bring it to the department meetings that's probably the best communication vehicle and then it's coming from them. And also I mean we can help by providing information about what's new what's available you know I was just at my rec Chevy and they are you know I said you know we have a ton of fans and I was there for my own but I asked them about you know provision of fleets and you know in the school department we have a ton of fans fans that are school buses fans that are just used for whatever I don't even know what they're used for but there's like 15 fans part of the middle school and he said that Chevy is you know in the process of making an electric fan so we just are being able to provide them with that information okay Chevy's ready with their new fan or whatever yeah I think that that's an important thing to build into ideally into these policies and the work so that they're doing it as well as us because I don't think we can reach everybody but just to transition then to the conversation with Mike and Robert which I thought was really interesting gave a lot of idea one thing that Mike is really interested in us doing is he doesn't want to have he would like if possible for us to give him guidance to town guys on net zero for renovations and net zero just generally for other buildings so I think that's something that we need to think about when we think about buildings yeah this is Mike Morris the superintendent of schools so he you know and sort of just guidelines around like you know the need to be flexible for new technologies and renewable ready and low like the things we know about kind of net zero that we you know he wants to be able to point to those with some authority while doing his work then we went into more discussion so he's asking for input so a reading between the lines if it gets to the point where the project is a renovation he doesn't want to have to fight for the environmental attributes of that it would be much easier for him to be able to say the town has a policy around renovations and new buildings right now the net zero by low is only new buildings so is he suggesting that an immediate amendment to the by low I mean I think we have to think bigger than that because that's still only addressing the municipal buildings but yes I mean that would be his initial thing is that if the by law if the by law I think in his worst case scenario if we're pitting a renovated space over a new building and the only factor that's different is the net zero he doesn't want to be in that position he would like for the net zero to be on the table for either situation I think that's now and we've mentioned it a couple of times is that one of those things that we should not wait on just like a proposal now well I think we would need to talk about whether that's us or the council like who we didn't make the net zero by law yes it would make sense for the task force the net zero task force to propose which included town employees and community activists two of the current councilors too or it comes out of our building subsector to say like hey building sector we've identified this as something that we want to act on quickly like who do we need to mobilize what do we need to do as a group if that group is still enough in existence it would be great if they could come up with some kind of proposal get our feedback on it and we could potentially endorse it but then they would get to the council about it I think that would be a great route so to me that's like the captains of buildings getting asking for a group of residents to do some work for them it's an exception I think we are likely to be working at a higher level than the details of proposals and shepherding it through the process well we would make a recommendation on that more the development process not the official approval process so we have like no minutes left so that was a big part of our discussion we talked about procurement we talked about electric buses and they brought up some really interesting challenges that I haven't thought about the plug like not just getting the charging stations they like physically don't have the electrical load to plug in anything else because that building is really the high school is old and it needs a whole utility upgrade I don't know we didn't get to that and they have a really hard they need more flexibility in the utility structure and how they pay their bills which like red flag for I don't know what CCA or something but they have to pay peak during the day they have a lot of challenges with I think there's ways that we could fit into so those were the that just made me think like we have to be thinking holistically about some of this stuff maybe that builds into the new school like I don't know whatever but it's not as simple as procuring more school buses and it's not just the things we hear about around it's like some fundamental infrastructure challenges as well so yeah like how do we build these things together with projects so for the next meeting quickly we talked about the sector work splitting up into sector groups we just talked about this building thing as part of the building sector group we didn't get to the discussion about the annual report so we can talk about that as well anything else and we should done the reading of the greenhouse gas report and see if it's got the right assumptions but that's not something we should kick down the roads because we're using these numbers to frame the next thing you're talking about the inventory? yeah is that something our consultant can do or do we have to do that internally I guess if the consultant doesn't warm up the way you might want to do it first I could write up a little brief target of the assumptions yeah go through and say like here are the places that I think we can be more accurate I mean we could either come come already prepared or discuss the next meeting just some questions up for Steve to ask the consultants it's often helpful to have like three or four questions that you ask each consultant or each interviewee comparison I want to have a conversation about this grand B report we heard about it in a pvpc meeting a year ago or something where they found that their municipal buildings would save gobs more money if they did not connect to the grid with their solar put it on they used it when it was sun shining and when the building was in use and it never gets exported there's like all sorts of fees I want to find out about that that seems like something to put on the renewable sector is granting this this report makes sense I don't have it I didn't want to get my hands on it okay wonderful anything else otherwise any last public comment for coming I want to thank you for the work you're doing I think it's really exciting it's exciting to see that each week you're bringing lots of new stuff that you're getting from town departments we said changing the culture it'll be one of the challenges and it looks like that's happening so I'm at least one person who greatly appreciates what you're doing and thank you very much and I just want to say for you guys to come up with a concrete map of how you're going to get to 2025 and 2030 goals because when we were talking about it initially you said well we'll do it with low hanging fruit I think if folks don't see that there are difficult actions, difficult strategies that need to be embraced it's easy to say well 2025 a little hard we'll put it all up to 2030 so I personally would like to see you come up with a bit of concrete stuff thank you so much for the work you're doing okay perfect thank you what's happening they've been developing for years they're going to hit the market I think next year so it's like twice they're based in Michigan they're going to get high gains they're going to do that