 Okay, the meeting is being recorded. Thank you, Stephanie. Sure. Right. Welcome everyone. Another exciting day on a Wednesday, lots of climate action, which I've seen none of because I've been in meeting straight since one o'clock, but maybe someday I'll read about it. So yeah, we've got a packed agenda today. So I want to. I'm going to move, move pretty quickly. A couple of resolutions to look at. And of course, talk about our, get the update from the man. And, or ask any questions to them that we might have about the progress report, not an update per se. And then talk about the evaluator. So with that, let's get started on the minutes. And who took these minutes? I did. You did. Oh yes. Oh, you, you wrote it right there. Good job. So I'm not sure who's next. Next in line. I know we kind of switched around. Does anybody want to. Jump in. Stephanie's facing your hands. No, I was adjusting my headset. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Pretty much cycle through everybody. So. Okay. Maybe we can start. Back at the beginning because we've switched around some. So maybe we should, it's just worth it to start back at the beginning. Which unfortunately Darcy, that would be you. No one would be doing. You weren't, you're not, oh, there. I'm sorry. Dwayne. How do you feel? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. With some apology. I have a deadline. At five o'clock. To get a little budget in for something. And I'm, I will admit I'm double tasking here. All right. Thanks for it. Thanks for your honesty. You called me out. Am I the next one? Yeah, I believe so. If you can do it, Darcy, you can make a note in the, in the minutes that Dwayne's on deck next time. Oh, we'll remember Dwayne. We'll remember. Okay. We're going by. Okay, by last name. Yeah, we shouldn't know we start from the top because. Whatever. All right. No, I'm happy to do it next week. Next. Next time. Okay. I can't tell if you're seeing this as two pages or one. We're seeing it as two, I believe. Can you even read it then? Do you want me to make it one? Um, Probably be easier. Add it on my own screen. So it's up to. Okay. I think one. One edit. To propose is that. It says Sarah will work with Chris and Felicity. I think Sarah. Just took what Chris and Felicity had provided and use that to. Inform her cover letter. Stephanie, do you want me to edit these minutes? No, I'll edit them, Steve. I'll do it. It's just easier because then I can post them. Thank you though for offering. Okay. I think. Does anybody want to motion to accept the minutes? I move to accept the minutes. I second that. Okay. I'm going to have to do a roll call. I'm just going to call out in order. Uh, that I have it not alphabetical. Um, do Mont. Yes. Breger. Yes. Rose. Andrew, I'm sorry. I didn't hear it. Yes. Okay. Revy Kumar. Yes. Roof. Yes. Drucker. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. Um, I do see Laura M. With her hand raised for public comment. Okay. Okay, Laura, you can unmute. Oh, there. Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay. Good to see you. I don't see my, my screen and I just wanted to. I just wanted to know if you have any questions. I just wanted to know if you have any questions. I just wanted to know if you have any questions. Oh, Jim is there too. Oh, Jim and Lauren. Oh. And I, I'm not going to interrupt. I just wanted to know if. Martha was here. She's here. Yes. Okay. Great. Great. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I don't see the. My picture. That's okay. Right. Thank you. You're welcome. Let's maybe very quickly through stop update and the account number update. If there's anything that's going to require discussion, we'll save it for another time. Does that sound okay? Yep. So. Two things. For me. The first is that. Our wetlands administrator is going to be going on maternity leave. And that was a former role of mine. So while she's gone, I'm going to actually be helping out with some of her tasks. So I'm going to be assisting the conservation commission as well for their next. Two to four meetings. So just a heads up that I'm doing that too. Cause that'll take a bit of time. And then the second announcement I have is that. We did get a response regarding the brick application. So we're going to be working on that. But unfortunately it was not chosen to move forward. For FEMA review. However. The state like did a lot. And they are actually now requesting technical assistance from FEMA. To do a statewide. Development of best practices for citing renewable energy with battery storage and there. So they basically took what we proposed. And then they decided to do a pilot project and develop something. And use Amherst as the community to sort of serve as the pilot community. So it doesn't mean we'll get chosen, but it, you know, it was really nice to, to. To know that the state was kind of excited about that proposal. So in some ways it might actually even be better than if we just got funding to do our own little project. This would actually, if it moves forward, if FEMA does provide technical assistance, that would actually. Provide a statewide model. So Amherst would be the ones providing that model. So Dwayne, I know I, I added your name and the clean energy extension as a partner potential partner in that effort. I hope that's okay. Absolutely. I assumed it was. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Okay. Sure. That's great news. Thanks, Stephanie. Sure. Thank you. Any e-cac member updates? Yeah, Darcy. Just that our, our, our annual report and funding request. Got into the town council packet very late. That was, that was an oversight, but. Yeah. So I'm kind of short presentation at the next meeting, which I think is on the. Eight. Of February. Yeah, we got an email from Lynn. Andra myself, Stephanie. Asking for a time to talk. Around potentially providing a brief update. And. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the town council. I. At this yesterday, I haven't responded yet. But yeah, so I think. We can figure out the best approach to that. I mean. I don't think we know yet the timeline in order of the meetings for the presentations. I think that's a little, little premature of the. Of the plan. Yeah. We can see what, we can see what Lynn wants. I guess the question had for Stephanie was whether or not. If it was. Can Andrew and I both attend this meeting and not be an open meeting or does it need to be. Posted. No, I think you can attend. Okay. So, um, Andra, you and I can come together with Stephanie and figure out a time to meet with Lynn. Yeah, I would say that, you know, the, the plan. We've never got into the packet at like 430 before a 630 meeting, and I can guarantee you that nobody read it. So, so it would be really good to somehow. You know, flag it. By having some, just a short presentation, you know. Okay. Any other e-mail updates. Okay. Great. Um, I'm going to move on to, um, The update on, um, The progress report and update from Lynn. And looking for something. Sorry about that. I've got the progress report I can share. Okay. Um, yeah. So the intent here is just if you have any folks that had a question or any questions, I don't know if, um, Lauren or Jim, you want to do any free introduction or, um, I'll leave that to you. Sure. Um, I would just say that this is a really. Awesome and rich document and just, um, thank you for all of this fantastic feedback and suggestions on how to improve the strategies. I think it's, um, been a really. Well, it sounds like it's been a rewarding process for you all. And I, I hope that you have a great discussion about it later. Um, and we're, we're still digging through all the feedback and, um, have outlined the, the sort of. Approach that we are envisioning for it in this progress report. Um, so. Yeah. If there are any, as Laura mentioned, clarifying questions or things that are outstanding that you want to ask, please shoot. Okay. I just had a comment. I think, um, the, um, I really liked the, um, the third bullet under item number one, the written structure for the plans outline. Um, I thought that was great, except emissions is sort of buried in there. And I just, I suggested, I suggested perhaps mission. Emissions ought to be a primary heading, not a secondary heading under implementation. Yeah. It can be mixed with why the driving reason behind the action. In many cases it will be emission reductions. Awesome. That's a great suggestion. Steve. Thank you. And then, um, co-benefits on the evaluation matrix, a lot of things are going to have various co-benefits. And I've seen some climate action plans from other communities where they intentionally list all the co-benefits of particular strategies or actions. Um, yeah. So that's definitely bad in there. Absolutely. I think, um, Yeah, I, I'm interested to think through a little bit more, how we might, um, apologize the co-benefits to, to make it very clear for folks. Um, and concise while still. Um, I think, um, these are sort of co-benefits in a way. Um, but they're not quite at that level that I think you're talking about. Um, and so would you just say a little bit more about what you're thinking there? Well, um, I'm not exactly sure how to implement it either. And in part it depends on how many. You know, it depends on how many things are included in the plan. Um, one, one approach. It would be maybe towards the back of the plan would be a big table that has a matrix similar to our valuation matrix that. Evaluates co-benefits. And then each specific action. Could reference that table. I've seen plans encourage. When they discussed each action, there was just a little, a series of icons and the possible co-benefits of each action. Yeah. Yeah, I have definitely seen that and Lenin has used a form of that in various situations. So that's definitely a model to keep in mind. Yeah, I think I totally agree with Stephen and that sort of matrixy version of that is actually can be super useful. There may be some other cases where we want to call things out which are stronger or have more resonance to a particular strategy so that maybe there's, you know, there's some things that actually happen in a kind of a narrative sense as well, but not everything. I agree. I think there may be a couple of really big co-benefits that they could be listed under the why section, secondary co-benefits labeled with an icon. Yeah. This looks good. I liked your progress report. Thank you. Cool. Glad to hear the structure resonated. Any other comments or questions? Okay. So I guess I'll just say while folks are thinking that we will be processing all of the input that the CAC has delivered as we're drafting the strategies. So I've started drafting strategies at this point and we'll be incorporating all of that along the lines of these steps in the progress report as we move through. I know y'all are still discussing your feedback and finalizing everything so we'll be excited to receive the final version. And for now, it's just really great to have the draft and understand sort of how the thought process has been evolving and yeah, I think that's sort of what the second page of the progress report summarizes. Right. Well, if anyone has other questions at any point, as always, you can reach out to Laura or Stephanie and pass those on to us. And we will surely be updating you again soon. We'll just figure that out with Laura as well. So thank you again for all of that feedback and we'll look forward to receiving the final version. Great. Thanks Lauren. And if anything comes up as we look at the evaluator that is relevant to this will pass that info to you. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks. Good luck. You all soon. Yeah. All right. So next up on the agenda is the electrification electrification resolution. So as we just saw in the minutes last week, we are last time we had viewed the resolution gotten some additional feedback from our input from Chris and Felicia on sort of the background behind it. And our to do it and was to write up a cover letter to submit this resolution to the town council and Sarah volunteered or got violent hold we will we'll never know which one it was to do a wonderful job. So I don't know if Sarah you want to just maybe talk through the letter for a minute and then we can, I think we want to try to vote on this today if possible. Yeah, sure. I felt as though our conversation last week helped to clarify any points of confusion. I feel like we spent a decent enough amount of time and the letter that both Chris and Felicia gave to us initially had a lot of the meat in there. My attempt here was to streamline it so that hopefully when it gets to the town council they won't feel the need to spend a lot of time trying to digest and move it forward. So specifically I broke out key points of what we're asking to the state and then the two points charged to the town of Amherst. So I did up to the top that this resolution is non binding, and I think we emphasized as well that the language is intentional so that it is unified with the other 18 or so. Yeah, 18 towns that have done this as well. So, my intent was to keep it short. Chris and Felicia did a great job from the get go so really I just finished and Felicia are here I don't know if you all have anything you want to or need want to add. One of the things we took from this is that there might have been some concern about what Amherst was taking on and what we were asking the state to do. So we wanted to make it clear that most of this was asking the state to make changes to enable municipalities have choice if they want to be able to make their own rules around zero energy or moving towards a carbon free future to be able to do that. I feel like the letter you did really says that very well. And I'm glad you didn't change too many of the bullet points because we're trying to make it, you know all the towns be very similar and so thank you so much for that. But I think we did say that if there was tension or it seemed like there was tension around one of the things that Amherst was committing to do. And I think it was very rude when it was that might feel expensive to say that if that felt like a point of contention to say that Amherst was calling on the state to do this as well. If you know we wanted at least to say we were behind the dress transition transition but if it seems like we're behind all of this, that's great with us to definitely it speaks to what we're hoping to say, it's good to me. I don't know if there were still questions from last time about. Yeah, does anybody have any questions. I think we were mostly all kind of in agreement with it last time. But anybody that wants to raise any questions or concerns about the cover letter resolution. So is our motion going to be to recommend that the town council approve the resolution or pass the resolution. Yes, and send it on to so that we'll be joining with other towns that are doing the same. I think it's like Amherst is way far along this path already especially with this committee, a way to say at the city behind this idea. I want to say one more thing, if the climate bill does go forward. It includes a lot of this in the bill and this will be less necessary, but it's not clear yet that it's going forward without compromises and so this is still an important step to take. Thank you that's helpful context. I don't have the resolution, just for the notes. A resolution calling for a swift just building decarbonization in the Commonwealth. And I guess I will say it, if it helps people instead of saying be it. So we can hear you. Were you going to finish. I think I was going back and forth is what's going on in my mind. I like that it's not changed so I think we should leave it as it is. Okay, great. Does, um, do folks feel, feel comfortable with someone making a motion similar to what Darcy just said or does someone want to make that motion. I can make it. And let's see if this is the right language. I move to recommend that the town council adopt the resolution entitled a resolution calling for the swift just building decarbonization within the Commonwealth. Second. Yep, I'm going to give you the, the roll call. I need to unmute. Yes, yes. Sorry. Dumont. Yes. Drucker. Yes. Rose. Yes. Der. Yes. Breger. Yes. Selman. Yes. Rebecca Kumar. Yes. Okay. Motion passes. Thank you both. Um, as well as Steve and Andra for participating in this program. I think it's. It's a pleasure to have your support and participation on this. Thank you all for all your work that you're doing. I'm really grateful all the time that you're doing what you're doing. Thank you so much. I guess I'll say bye now. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Um, so in terms of like just the logistics of that. I'm forgetting now. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Do I send that? Like. Do I send those two? How does it? What goes next? So I think all you have to do is just write a, um, attach the resolution. Um, address it to the town manager. And to the council president and just let them know that the. Um, the council actually recommends that they. Pass the resolution because it sounds like they're not, it sounds like it's coming from you all. It doesn't sound like they're bringing it forward. As a, as a. Resident petition. They're. Asking you all to basically put it forth. So you're asking the council to adopt that resolution. Okay. Um, you know, a resident request, you know, residents. Brought it forth to the ECAC and you all adopted it as a resolution that you want the council to approve. Go ahead. Darcy. Good to say that it passed unanimously too. Okay. We'll do. Thank you. Um, Okay. Next agenda item is the league of women voters resolution. Okay. So. Okay. Um, And is, um, Hannah and Laura. I'm going to speak to us. I think, I think Martha is. Yes, I just have to. Video. Okay. So, um, Stephanie, I guess you have the resolution, right? I just wanted to speak to it for a minute. Yes. So thank you for inviting me to speak. You are probably aware of the proposed Palmer Springfield wood burning power plant. Despite many legitimate objections, the plant was permitted. And is now awaiting the renewable energy credits that would enable the developer to make the power plant profitable. There are three reasons the Amherst League of women voters is allowed to use the power plant and opposing state subsidies for large scale energy generation from burning woody biomass. The first reason for most reason is the local impact. Wood fired power plants, not only admit more CO2 per kilowatt hour than burning coal, but they admit far more particulates than coal. And while the large ash would pollute locally in this low income area in Springfield, it is well known that air pollution is a major cause of asthma in children. Springfield is known as the asthma capital of the United States. And the Pioneer Valley already has serious air pollution due to our geography that the surrounding hills and the, the windows. And it's also known as the asthma capital of the United States. And the pioneer Valley already has serious air pollution due to the hills and the wind direction and so on. And so the Pioneer Valley certainly doesn't need to have worse asked air pollution and the health hazard coming with it from a locally polluting power plant. The second issue is that this is an important issue in the overall fight to mitigate climate change. I mean, why isn't burning wood to generate electricity on a large scale considered renewable energy? Well, numerous scientific studies have shown that it's the mature forest that are much more effective in sequestering carbon rather than a recently replanted forest. And this reference, for example, the manumit study in 2012 and many other references since one reference that I read published a couple of months ago from a study in Oregon was stating that the largest 3% of the trees in their study area were contributing 35 to 40% of the carbon sequestration. Not only that, but mature forest without having disturbed the soil. The soil is actually having more carbon sequestration too. And so it takes more than 60 years indeed maybe closer to a century to replace the CO2 absorption of the forest that you just cut down. We don't have that time to wait. The next 30 years are really the most critical for climate change mitigation. And recent studies of atmospheric CO2 balance show that it's not sufficient now for us just to decrease our CO2 emissions, but we really also have to be drawing down more CO2 from the atmosphere. And one of the good ways of doing that is by protecting our mature forests. It isn't just tropical forests, but also the temperate forests in North America that make a major contribution to drawing down carbon dioxide. And so it's important that we let the mature forest stand. We let the young forest grow. We can't just, you know, cut the forest down and expect that within 20 or 30 years we have replaced it. And the third reason then is the timeliness. The state's Department of Energy Resources renewable energy portfolio standards are the mechanism for providing subsidies for renewable energy generation. And the Department of Energy is poised to relax the current standards to include large-scale wood burning energy generation as quote, carbon neutral and thus eligible for state subsidies. In the case of the Springfield power plant, the subsidy would be up to $12 million per year. Currently there's a 30-day review period and the legislature's Joint Telecommunications Utilities and Energy Committee is supposed to be reviewing the new rules. So certainly now is the time for a statement to have the most impact. Massachusetts is poised either to become a good example in the fight to control the carbon dioxide emissions or if they allow the large-scale wood burning to receive subsidies, then they will be a rather bad example of the effort to in our fight to control carbon dioxide emissions. And so we need to speak out now. Our League is planning to bring this resolution to the town council at their next meeting on February 8. And so we are asking for your endorsement of the resolution today to pass along to the council. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Martha. That was a great summary and overview. So thank you very much. I guess I'll open it up now for any questions folks might have questions. Thank you, Martha. It is Martha, right? Sorry. Yes. Yes. Sorry. My name. I should need to change that, I guess here. I don't have a question. I just want to thank you for bringing it forward. And. Supportive. Yeah, Darcy. Who's muted. Darcy, you're muted. Sorry. I am one of three. Counselor sponsors that is going to be bringing it forward to the town council at the next meeting. Pat D'Angelo's. Dorothy Pam and I have each agreed to co-sponsor it. So the league will be leading. They'll be making a presentation. But we'll be there to back them up. So we, all three of us are very much. Of the resolution. For obvious reasons. And I would just like to say. That. That I taught school. I taught elementary school art. K through five in Holyoke. And. So many kids. I mean, I could not believe. The number of kids that had to go to the emergency room. And that had to carry. Inhalers. It just really blew me away. You know, I had a child that had asthma too, but. You know, so I was aware of what was going on. And the fact that these kids, all these kids were carrying asthma. And so it came through to me very clearly. How bad this problem is in the pioneer valley. Yeah. Yeah. I want to thank Martha for bringing this forward as well. And I can, we'll certainly go on record that I think. Providing our PSL eligibility. To the springfield plant is a bad idea and bad policy. But I do appreciate the efforts that are being made to try to. Stop that from happening. That being said, I'm, I'm. As some folks know, I was at the OER. And was. A primary part of the decision decision at the OER at the time to get. These electric power plants. Biomass power plants out of the RPS. So I think that's a good point. Because of the findings in the manumit study and numerous other things. So it's a bit. Disconcerting, I guess, that my, my colleagues are putting it back in. So I applaud the effort to. To try to stop that from happening. That being said, I do have some concerns about. Some statements or suggestions in here that are fairly broadly. Disconcerting. Disconcerting. Some statements about biomass generally. Which I think are probably unfortunate because there is. A lot of opposition to anything biomass. Anything about removing a chip of wood from the forest, which I think is misguided. With regard to our. Future energy needs. And for that reason, I'm a, I do have some concerns about some of the language. That may be misconstrued to really suggest to the town council. Or to the town generally that anything to do with biomass is just. Not a good idea whatsoever. And I think that would be unfortunate. And so, and it, as folks know, biomass is an extremely complicated. Issue. And Massachusetts has probably looked at it more seriously and in more detail. Than any other jurisdiction that I'm aware of. And. Number one, there's so much woody and would, would, would material that is not coming from force. And needs to be disposed. And, and what do we do with it? Number two, good forest management is important in Massachusetts. And that's, that's what we do. And that's, that's what we do. And that's what we do for the forest. And for the forest economy. And for land owners to keep their land in force. And if they don't have market for that would remove. Responsibly and sustainably. It's hard to do. Keep, keep our force in good conditions. Furthermore. I. And one reason at DOE when we took it out of the electric. The federal government's study was clear that. If you're going to use wood energy, would woody material for energy. The least effective way to use it for it, from carbon purposes is electric power only. Whereas for thermal uses. In modern. Relatively clean. Pellet or chip. Automatic boilers. Like we have at least two of enamored already. three in Amherst already, those are, and we've studied that at UMass with an air pollution expert with the general conclusions that those emissions particularly wise are comparable to oil. And so it's not pristine, it's not as clean as natural gas, it's not electrification, but it's comparable to oil. It's not, you know, well-fired, well-controlled oil boilers that we have in our schools and so forth. So I think it's unfortunate that there's some language in here that I think just keeps the drum beat drumming along that suggests that all biomass is not to be touched or dealt with. And I think that's something the state has to deal with. In the town we'll have to deal with moving forward. And you know, I definitely applaud the concerns and the opposition to large-scale biomass electric plants in the middle of a city of Springfield. I do have concerns about some of the broader language. I had tried to say in a few places specifically large-scale woody biomass power plants, I guess I said in the last bullet, are there any specific places where you would suggest some change of wording to distinguish that? I mean, it seems it's the large-scale for the purposes of generating electricity that's particularly inefficient and, you know, not a good use of our parts. Yeah. Well, I guess in the second, therefore, where resolution, I guess it is, that the town of Amherst protests the use of state subsidies or other incentives to support energy generation from woody biomass. Yeah, that's too generous. So it's supposing that said instead the words the large-scale electricity generation. That would be an improvement. Would that be better? Yeah, OK. In fact, this notion of energy generation, there's a whole process we had to go through with regard to whether that was strictly electricity generation or is that even thermal generation? So large-scale electricity generation there in the second bullet instead, yeah. Yeah, I would also, you know, I don't know the Palmer Renewable Energy Plan in terms of feedstock, but when I was at DOER that project was kicking around when I was at DOER. Yeah, it's been a long time. Been around for a while. And they were telling us that they weren't taking any wood from the forest. There was plenty of residues, non-forest wood energy. So I guess like the second whereas or third whereas I should say more than 60 years are necessary to regenerate a forest to the prior level of carbon sequestration. It's actually not inaccurate, but it sort of suggests that all wood is coming from cutting trees, you know, for the purpose of burning them. And that's not at all the case. I mean, for what I have read and, you know, of course, it's only what I've been reading is that the their statements that, oh, well, they'll use, you know, castoffs from construction and etc., etc., would only be a small fraction of the total amount of wood that they would need for a large-scale generation. And back when our league first studied this, which was 2011-2012, there were quite, you know, using wood for electricity generation was kind of getting enthusiastic. And so there were, you know, several proposed sites. And they all did this survey of, well, how much forest land would be available? Well, it turns out all the different ones were going to use the same forests. That was kind of a bad beginning. So again, I think it's the large scale that's the clue here. But I would think, personally, that you can't do a large-scale power plant that has to be, you know, 24, 7, 365 days a year just using the, you know, waste material. Yeah, my sense is there probably is enough waste material for Palmer. I don't know, you know, the issue to agree with your concern, Martha, is that, you know, if in fact there is some growth of what I would say better use of wood energy in, you know, distributed thermal only applications with modern equipment, that will start eating into that supply of residual wood materials, which is probably the better use for it. And then, yes, there could be pressure for Palmer to go out and start, you know, looking for contracts to, you know, take more material directly from the forest. So that's a concern. I don't think it's an immediate concern. And it probably was more of a concern when there were three of these things floating around. But yeah, I think that is a concern. I would say that it's not quite accurate to suggest that the, even Palmer would be getting their wood from the forest that would need, and all of that material would need 60 years to grow back. But if the renewable portfolio standards are changed to allow subsidies for electric generation from wood, then surely, you know, it would end up being more than one plant, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, again, then we would be really risking, you know, large-scale forest cutting. Yeah. Ashwin, did you have a comment? No, I lowered my hand. I think if we're, it sounds like we might be ready to move on and that sounds good to me. Okay. So I believe the, what we're sort of voting on is just to, I'm missing the word here, but I think you just want to support the resolution so you all can vote unanimously in support of the resolution. And then when Martha takes it to the town council, she can say the ECAC voted unanimously if it does or not, or voted in support of the resolution. Whatever your final vote is, is what she can bring forth to the council. I move that the energy and climate action committee endorse this resolution. Okay. I'll second that. Well, let me, let me ask if there's would be the openness to change some of the language as we suggested, as was suggested. Yeah. I have, I have written in here the second of the be resolved that we're going to change the wording. You have to move to amend it. If you do that. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry. Can I withdraw my motion? Yes. I would draw my motion. That's all right. You just have to move to amend it. I move to amend the, the motion. The resolution opposing the Palmer Springfield biomass power plant to amend the statement that says the Amherst town council protest the use of state subsidies or other incentives to support energy generation from Woody biomass to the Amherst town council protest the use of state subsidies or other incentives to support large scale Woody biomass power plants. Yeah. Okay. I second that I did not get that so Ash, when you might need to type that up because I couldn't I was trying to take notes too and I couldn't what what is the title of the resolution resolution opposing the Palmer Springfield biomass power plant. And I'm just going to write that we, oh, well, you haven't voted yet, but I'm just going to say as amended and then somebody can tell me what the amendment is. Well, maybe Martha, do you want to send me your amended copy? Yeah, I can do that. When you do that, changing this to the one of the second of the four, be it resolved as I understand it, right? Sure. Yeah. So when you change that, you can just send it to me. Yes. Okay. We'll do that. And that's the version I'll post. Yeah. Okay. So. No. So Ashwin made a motion. Breger seconded. So. For this amendment. Yes. For this, for the amended version. So roof. To, to approve the amended version or to amend it. Well, actually are we, do we have to vote? We have to vote for the amendment first. I guess. To amend. Not ours. No. Yeah. Okay. I think we're friendly amendments. I don't think you need to. Yeah. You just, you're just. Can I just. Sure. Before we go into a motion. Yep. I was just wondering. Okay. So the process here is that we would send this to the town council. With our endorsement. No. Sorry. Nope. No, this is. So the League of Women Voters will bring it to the town console. And they will. And then they will send it to the town council. And then they will state that the ECAC, if you all in the end vote to endorse it. If it passes. That it was endorsed by the ECAC. And you can send a, you can just, you know, Laura could just send a quick paragraph or I could even type something up that just said that the ECAC endorsed the League of Women Voters resolution. And. I'm just curious if there would be any appetite to. Include in a, in a message attached to our endorsement that our endorsement of this. Opposition to the Springfield Palmer Springfield biomass. It should not be construed to suggest that we, that ECAC is. Opposing biomass. In any, in. In all forms. More broadly. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'm potentially open to that myself. I mean, what I'm hearing here is that there are circumstances under which. Biomass. Can be a good thing from a climate perspective when it's used for certain, when it's used under certain circumstances. And another issue that comes up when I hear it, when we talk about this that I think is actually. Important to start naming a lot. Is that whenever we're. Putting something in whenever we're calling for the use of some fuel or some energy source that is not fossil fuels. For it to have an impact on climate change, we need it to replace fossil fuels, right? And if biomass energy is replacing fossil fuel energy, especially in the context of thermal uses, rather than electricity, it sounds like in some cases, at least in some cases, it's a good thing from a carbon perspective. So I would very much support. Naming that we are not, that this does not preclude our support for other biomass energy when it does make sense. And moreover, to take this opportunity to emphasize that we support. Replacing fossil fuels with other stuff. Yeah. So I would recommend that somehow you find a way to put that language. Into your motion. Because that's what can get. Can we not just write that in a. You could. You could. I don't think we should put it in the motion. Yeah. I don't even think we should state it myself. You know, I, I don't necessarily. I mean, I, I agree that not all biomass is bad. I have the pellets. So here right next to me. But. But actually I, I, I do. I personally oppose large scale. My biomass. So I think that the intent here is that we just want to clear. Like, I guess thinking. Like we, we support this. And then we put our climate action plan in there. And it says something about thermal. Heating from biomass and someone on the town council is like, but you said you opposed biomass. Like that's what I think we want to avoid. Well, it actually just doesn't, this resolution that we are probably going to move to endorse simply doesn't say that we oppose biomass in all circumstances. And it would be a gross misreading of this endorsement. To take it that way. And I don't, and I don't think we need to, I don't think it's incumbent upon us to guard against all potential measures. So maybe we don't need to do that. Yeah, I, I, I don't think we do need to. The resolution is very specific about the Palmer Springfield. Power plant. That's what it's for. Let's go back to the original motion, which was that we endorse. This resolution as amended. Is that correct? Okay. It was seconded so we can. Right or seconded. Okay. So roof. Yes. Sorry. What did I say? And what exactly are we voting for? To endorse this as amended or to. To endorse it as amended as, as we, as Martha has promised us, she would friendly, friendly amend for us. Yes. Yep. Yep. Okay. So roof. Yes. You want. Yes. Drucker. Yes. Rose. Yes. Der. Yes. Yes. Selman. Yes. Revy Kumar. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very unanimously. Thank you for your support. I also want to thank you for bringing this incredibly well thought through research. This. I think you made our job very easy. And, and I very much appreciate that. Well presented. Well documented. Thank you for all that hard work. Yeah. I think we're going to be back in 2011 because we were concerned. And, you know, it's amazing that this spring field power plant. Hasn't died, but it's still, still there. That's. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right. Laura. Laura has her hand up to speak. Oh, sure. Laura, go ahead. I'm sorry. I cannot see my, my image there, but. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. I appreciate very much your concern. It's a timely concern. We are the league of women, but it had been starting this as Mark that clearly pointed out since a very long time ago. I have been an environmentalist since the 80s. And I have been working in the field. I have been working in the field. I have been working in the field. In the country. And we should stop. Every. Large scale plant. And all other kinds that contribute to this. Tragic situation that it's happening. So I, I really, I, I, from the deep of my heart, I appreciate it. What you're doing. And thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I saw, I saw Cypher there. Thank you, Martha so much. Yes. Thank you both. And I will send an email to. Folks we, we talked about earlier with. The resolution for electrification and then also noting that we voted in favor of this. Okay. Okay. So. Very productive e-cap meeting today. Next up, I think is just the evaluator. So. I don't have my agenda up anymore. Is that, that's. Yes. Yeah. It's the evaluator and I don't know. I figured you would want to navigate it. So I didn't. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. So first off, I just want to really thank everybody for taking the time to go through this process. I know it was kind of a complicated process. And it was a short timeframe and it, and I'm sure it took a lot more time than maybe you thought it would take. So I appreciate everybody doing that. And on that vein, I guess I just wondered if anybody had any. Any reflections on the process. Did it change their perspective on anything? Do they feel like. They got any. They got stuff out of it or. Or not, I guess. And Jesse. I think it helped. It was challenging at times. And I think I would reiterate what a lot of people have said. Which is. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, it's component pieces. And you really look at this. And then you try to translate all the aspects into an action. And then ask yourself the question, does this reduce emissions? It. It is what I anticipated would be a simple question. And it proved to be trickier and more nuanced and qualified. And. Some of these things that I. Thought would have reduced emissions. I realize. Don't necessarily. And. And I think we should, as we continue to vet this information that comes back to us when we want to land. We just keep asking ourselves for that question. And. And in particular, I'll give one example, which is. I think it would be, I think it would be, I think it would be. Like a net zero energy stretch code, which would affect new buildings. And. I can't say that that's going to reduce emissions. It's, it would less than if the. That same building. Was built differently, but any new construction of as we, as we grow. Our infrastructure. We have to be more efficient. And we have to be more efficient. And we have to be more efficient. And we have to be more efficient. We are putting more things online and we are required to use more energy to support those things. And so I couldn't, I couldn't say that that was a net. Reduction. It's a less than it would have been. Maybe. It's not it. We're not actually driving that number down. And so really pushing ourselves. To where we can actually drive the number down. And, and that's, I think that's the tricky stuff. So I think that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the pushback. It's the stuff that's not about a growth economy and development. And I'm just throwing that idea. Thanks, Jesse. Steve, did you want to. Share. Yes, I found it challenging and the biggest challenge was. Kind of speculating on what the very brief. Description of a strategy. as whether it met the criteria of all the different evaluation metrics. Those, so many of these ideas are great goals, but as others have said, it's all about how they get implemented and as a lot of ifs and depends. So I felt like it was, if I was feeling generous at the time, it's like, sure, yeah, this could probably reduce some emissions or it could help with equity or some of the other aspects. But it was really hard to tell. I felt really sort of stretched as to whether I felt, I didn't really feel confident that my evaluations had a lot of knowledge behind them. It wasn't very confident in those evaluations for the most part, just because one sentence description of a strategy was not enough to evaluate it by. Well, and I appreciate everybody who put in, most of us, everybody I think actually who put in edits and comments to those points. Dwayne. Yeah, I would agree in terms of being really struggling at times with regard to what does this action actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Or is it a plan or it's in an idea or a proposal or something? So, but furthermore, I would say that when Andra and I looked at this, it was like two meetings ago or whatever, we really came to the conclusion that that wasn't really the set of activities. And we'll take the blame for that because that came out of our renewable energy groups. We weren't really satisfied that that was really the core activities that we thought would make sense to go into an action plan. So with some correspondence with Lauren and maybe Stephanie or at least Lara, we did take the opportunity in full disclosure. So when people look at it to change up the set of activities to be a bit more aligned with what we thought were the real actions that we had control over with regard to the CCA as well as non-CCA renewable energy activities that were a bit more aligned with what we think the ECAC would be comfortable with as well as things that we could evaluate better with regard to all the metrics but greenhouse gas emissions included. And we added more details so that it was easier to tell what we were evaluating but even so, I still felt like, I don't know. It could be ND. Great. Any other general comments? And then next I kind of want to talk about next steps. Yeah, Jesse. I wanted to throw out the question. I think Steve had suggested that we all pick a couple of these actions that we like that would make good pilot programs that or that we wanted to percolate to the top to focus on. I'm curious if anybody, I don't know if this is the time or if we have time. If anyone wanted to just mention ones that they were excited about their feeling wasn't ambiguous is clearly beneficial across the board. I have some thoughts but I want to let other folks speak first. Anybody has anything? So one thing that I did was, I guess I was trying to, as I was putting all these, everyone's input together it got me started to think about what the next steps need to be and I was sort of reflecting on some of the conversations we've had in recent meetings particularly Steve, you've brought up greatly several times about, is this reducing emissions and how is it reducing emissions? How to make it more actionable? And I think we're moving in that direction. I think a lot of the comments that folks made are moving in that direction. And then I started to think through just for transportation what would the process be for additional prioritization and additional delineation? And that actually through that process, through that example I actually added a strategy to the transportation or I want to propose to add a strategy to the transportation because we had public transit, we had improved infrastructure and we had transition to EVs but we didn't have we're sort of assuming that an improved infrastructure and a public transportation are gonna reduce use. I think that's an indirect assumption. What we didn't have is the optimization of the vehicles that we already have particularly on the municipal level and the electrification of those vehicles. So how are we optimizing how we use particularly heavy duty vehicles in town? And could that be a quick win in terms of quick emissions reductions and quick fuel savings if we were able to help support the DPW or the police department or other groups that have large vehicles in thinking through optimization of the use of their vehicles, for example. So it's kind of trying to think through timing like what can we do quickly to meet our 2025 goals versus what are longer-term things? What are things that have to be done? Cause public transportation, Amherst may be able to, Amherst certainly can advocate for that and we may be able to prepare and be a welcoming community for growth and public transportation but we're not gonna be able to improve PVTA on our own, right? So like trying to think through really specific actions that we can do as Amherst and we can do as ECAC, I guess, I should say. So that sent me down this pathway of like taking the strategies and really coming up with some specific actions and understanding when these actions aren't gonna be ECAC actions. So like improved infrastructure for walking and cycling, this is certainly something that we need to support but it's not something that ECAC is going to lead because there's the Transportation Advisory Committee, there's advocacy groups that are doing this. So how can we support and raise those voices up? But this is not gonna be, in my mind, an action that ECAC takes on wholly because it's happening other places. So just throwing that out there. So I kind of went through this and figured out there's only a few places where we can actually calculate emission reductions in the entire transportation thing. One is around, and some of them are estimations. So like what do we need to see in terms of EV adoption in town to meet our goals? And then how would we move in that direction? What do we need to see in terms of transition conversion of vehicles that we own in our municipal fleet to meet our goals? I think those were the only two places where I felt like we could really do like a calculation of emissions, which is not a bad thing. Some of this is like, we need the town council to pass a resolution that they wanna support, they support advancements in public transportation or whatever, and those are all important things to do, but they don't directly reduce emissions. Yeah, Ashwin, I saw your hand up and then Darcy. Yeah, so I'm, this is a challenging conversation to contribute to and to have just as it was sort of a challenging assignment to do because of all the uncertainty involved and also because I'm a little confused about process here and like kind of what our recommendations priorities in this conversation are gonna do. And I'm like a little worried that if I don't go to bat adequately for a priority right now, it'll somehow get lost. And that's maybe stressing me out a little bit. Like, I don't know if anyone else feels similar similarly, but like, you know, there's, and then the other thing. So I wonder if we can kind of just clarify what is this conversation gonna surface? What will that then do with respect to the plan and then how will stuff that's in the plan ultimately get forwarded to the relevant pieces of the town government, whether it's the council or other committees? And I think if we clarified that, that would help me to understand what's like important to say and what's important to discuss right now. So I wonder if someone, maybe Darcy could be helpful with that as a counselor to shed a little bit of light on that and others too. But, you know, I guess that's kind of the main sort of concern I have there. And then the other confusion I have a little bit is what does it mean with respect to one of the things that Laura just said? What does it mean to have priorities that ECAC would take on? Because to me, like most of the stuff that's in there is stuff that we're asking the town to do in some way or another. And like, we are just a volunteer committee. So like, I don't, I'm not sure I quite understand what it means for us to take on the priority or what that even looks like. And so those are my two questions that I would, that I would have, that maybe others share too. Yeah, no, those are good questions. Other folks have questions? Steve. I don't know if you want to go to Darcy next. I could wait for... Yeah, I don't know whether I can respond from a town council perspective, but I get a similar question about what, you know, what our process is right now as far as we have 82 actions listed on the spreadsheet. And so, and it seems from the last communication from you, Laura, that you're, you want us to look at them to figure out more about what our actual priorities are. And I'm not sure what that's going to be based on. And I don't, and I'm, I also saw from your example, Laura, which I really liked of looking at just the transportation area of what would be, what could be done in the first year and whether or not it would have greenhouse gas reduction emission, emissions reductions. And whether, if it didn't have emissions reductions, whether it was a step that we needed to take in any event in order to get to the emissions reductions. So that seemed really important to me. So I guess, you know, I keep on going back to the concrete plan, you know, they started out with 200 actions and then they whittled them down. And so I guess I'm also looking to see, you know, what is directly related to either greenhouse gas emission reduction or resilience, you know, climate resilience. And I know that's what the town will be looking for. And I also, I've been thinking a lot more about like what's going to happen in April when we come to the council, whatever date it is that we end up bringing a plan to the council, what is the council going to do with that plan? And from what I can tell from my conversations is that it'll probably be divvied up among a couple of different council committees. And that they're going to look, they're going to look specifically at the different actions. So we need to have solid actions to put in front of them for them to then recommend back to the council that they be adopted. So I think that's all I want to say right now, but you know, I think that there are also some actions that we need to think about whether we want to refer them to another entity because they're not directly related to emissions reductions or climate resilience. So yeah, that's what I would like us to think about. That was what I was thinking. I think of those 82 some strategies, I hope that a vast majority of those can be referred to other groups, whether they're town agencies or community agencies who have the expertise far better than we do. And it would be okay, I thought are nice and if the town council were to say, oh, DPW work on this, see if you can meet this goal. On the other hand, there may be some and it should be a small number of actions that we take on and flesh out and develop. And so one example that comes to mind is the energy benchmarking for buildings that Linnean mentioned as a potentially top strategy. That's something that we may want to form a group of us to research. Maybe we try to find a way that Linnean or some other agency can help us, but we researched that and we come back to the town and say, here's a mechanism for building energy benchmarking that we are proposing. So that would be a case where we are taking the lead and a handful of us are doing the major lifting on a project. So I can see a full range of that, but we do have to be mindful of the number of ones that we take the lead on has to be pretty small. And Stephanie, I saw your hand. Town departments will review this as well. They're gonna review the plan and the actions. And so they'll have some input into the draft plan too. And yeah, I think that these are all really, really good points. And what is, I guess I was sort of similar to Steve. I guess I was thinking EECAC would do kind of a gap analysis on the actions and figure out which ones there aren't other, aren't like directly in a town department or aren't directly in another committee that we would take the lead on or help support in some way. But I think the role of EECAC after this plan is finalized is something that needs to be discussed in more detail as well. Wayne, yeah. I agree with everything stated, but I just wanna also add, I think a lot of our actions, to some extent I think with regard to deep greenhouse gas reductions for the full town of Amherst, the town has certain levers, but they're pretty limited. And so I think we have to keep in mind that our audience is also the town people and actions that they can take. And maybe there's a role for EECAC to outreach and encourage, and maybe there's state town departments that can help with that as well. But when it comes to adopting electric vehicles, adopting energy efficiency audits and insulation, electrifying your home, that's gonna be, there's not a department that does that necessarily, but it's a campaign that has to sort of happen and come out of this plan as well, I think, to increase that adoption. There'll be some natural adoption anyhow with the way the state and the world is going. But I think it's a question of, we're trying to accelerate it. So to try to get, use this action plan as a call to action to the community as well as departments. Yeah, Stephanie and then Ashwin. So I just wanted to say just maybe to sort of quell some feelings of being overwhelmed by everything that's being put forth that, yes, there are plenty of these items are gonna be things that just go to other committees, especially if the town council takes the plan and divvies it up and assigns it, there's gonna be things that will naturally fall to other departments. You're just, you're entirely, a lot of what you're doing is to make recommendations to sort of help guide some of those committees. So for instance, if you have initiatives regarding transportation, you might wanna go to the relevant committees and sort of support them in like, this is what we ask maybe you look into, you pursue the town is going to adopt, has adopted this plan. So we'd like to support you however that may look. So that's naturally gonna happen. And then the other thing I was gonna say, some of to Dwayne's point is, yes, a lot of what you can do in my mind has always been something that's been a role of the committee is certainly campaigns and outreach to the community. Because again, just going back to original numbers, where you really need to make the impact is on the community at large. And so that's the sector that, you're gonna have a lot of opportunity to do things and I think with the, and we've talked about this with the CCA effort, that will lend itself to doing campaigns. And that's also where my work that I do will very much mesh with your campaigns and promotions and we'll be working together. I sort of see it a lot like what's happening with the CCA effort, that sort of the way that I have a role in that is very much like some of the things that we'll be doing moving forward, that I'll be supporting you, you'll be promoting, but we'll be all working together and the town will be, the other town departments will be sort of influenced by the work that you're handing to them basically. Yeah, or Ashwin and then Josie. Yeah, so I think that that's a really promising avenue for us to pursue. I'm all, I've been kind of feeling like this is a good thing to prioritize for a while now, which is getting people set up to access existing opportunities for energy efficiency, renewable programs, et cetera. And while that is something that ECAC can take on, I think we need to keep beating the drum that the town needs to actually staff and or contract that work out. So there's someone systematically going through and making sure all residents of Amherst are doing that because that's what it takes. Other towns I think are doing this too. So it's not a made up thing, but they have to staff that appropriately. And I actually, I would even be wary of saying that ECAC as a committee is equipped to do that work because I think that just needs to be staff that are going through and contacting everyone who resides in town systematically to make sure that people are accessing these opportunities. Yeah, Josie. Here's another idea of something that may be something we directly do. And I don't know if this is an appropriate action for us. I really am throwing it out for as a question more than a comment is, would we be the right group of people to check in on progress and even as part of the plan say, you know, the ECAC plans in a year, you know, maybe we'd present these ideas to a DPW for example. And then a year later, the same person says, you know, how's it going? You know, what are the challenges? I think that could be both really valuable feedback for us and also a way to build, you know, if how can we expect them to stick with it if we don't stick with it? And this is a relationship building and from what I've heard, there are plenty of things from what I've experienced and there are plenty of initiatives and actions and goals and resolutions that are already out there in the world that just don't actually happen. And we call it, I think we call it like the delamination of the building code when the authority having jurisdiction doesn't actually enforce energy efficiency, that kind of thing. So for us to commit to spending that time to follow up with the people we've asked to do others do the things would be the short way of saying that. Yeah, Andra. That's kind of written into our charge in that we give an annual report and one of the things that we have to report on is the progress. So that gives us the, you know, reasoned for checking back. Yeah, and to that point, I guess what I was sort of thinking a next step would be is this plan is gonna have our actions, and then they're gonna have our actions that we wanna try to get done in the next one to five years to meet our 2025 goal. And then I think even more specific than that, I think ECAC needs to decide what are we gonna do in the next year to support these actions? That's not gonna be part of this plan. That's gonna be like our own internal work plan for this coming year. And that's gonna be even a smaller list, right? And it may be like talk to the, it may be as specific as talk to this committee. And these are things we all like, we kind of started doing the beginning of last year because in anticipation of this, and then we got sidetracked for lots of reasons, but like I wanna see us get to a point where we, when we present this to the town council, we also are kind of presenting, and this is what ECAC's planning on working on to help support this plan for the next six months or whatever it ends up being. So where I'm stuck a little bit is on the exact way to make that happen, to get to that point. So I think what we have, I guess I would offer up two suggestions. One is that I think what we have here already in the evaluator is rich and full of information that Lauren is gonna be able to use to update the actions and the strategies and to add in some of these to make them more actionable and to try to address some of the things that we discovered going through the evaluator. I'm not thinking that we need to, it would be the best use of our time to focus on getting the evaluator 100% right. I think maybe the best use of our time now is to go through and start to think through those more detailed actions that may not even be necessarily part of the large plan, but that are actions that ECAC is gonna work on or that we do continue to feed to Lauren to go into the plan. One thing I will say is that in speaking with Lauren and Jim, they are planning on doing some of that high level quantification of emissions. So like for example, if we get X percent adoption of CCA by 2025, it'll result in this amount of emission reduction. Some of those higher level things, but if there are emission reduction about like calculations that we wanna do that's more at a lower level than that, like we may wanna start working on those in the next few weeks or just think about how that would be something we do moving forward. But do folks have suggestions on how, because in terms of timing, I think we wanna get this evaluator and I'm happy to give it in this form unless folks wanna add more to it before then, but give this evaluator to Lauren with all our results and then continue to work in parallel as Lauren is developing the draft with this information and we're working to sort of continue to get a finer point on some of these actions that we wanna prioritize. Yeah, Steve. I think my, what I'd like to see us do would be leave that evaluator in whatever form Leanne couldn't beat it up into, but then I would like to identify some strategies that can meet the 2025 goal and work with some of you, maybe some other people from the community to really turn those goals into actions with steps as Leanne outlined in the implementation part of their document that they sent us today with. Who's gonna be helping? What's it gonna cost? What are some of the things that we can foresee might be obstacles and really develop a plan. Those would be not necessarily in the task groups that we've been working with. So it would sort of become more of a, what are the three or four things maybe that we can develop with the mind of trying to reach that 2025 goal. And then we highlight those as things that ECAC is putting the most effort and work into. Yeah, Darcy. Yeah, I know that Leanne and solutions came up with a list of like, I don't know, six or seven things that they thought were the things that were going to help us meet the 2025 goals. Is that what you mean, Steve, by that list or coming up with a different list? I think that's a good place to start. My look at that list didn't, I didn't identify anything that's gonna help us with the 2025 goal that might help us with the 2030 goal. Some of those things in there I think need to be started, but none of them was such low-hanging fruit that it would give us those reductions in four years. So yes, I would say that list is a good starting point, but if we can think of other items that haven't come up in the task group but that we know are out there or we can steal from other communities, climate action plans, let's take those and run with them. Yeah, I'm gonna just share my screen quickly to show, and this was tab was included in the packet as well. Let me make it bigger. And in some ways, transportation's easier because I think that, right, transportation's easier because I think the pathway is clearer. Like I think it's a pretty clearer, although we might be able to do this for all sectors, I'm not sure, but like it kind of became pretty clear in my brain that like, all right, we need to reduce the need and the overuse of single occupancy vehicles and heavy duty vehicles. It's not me we're gonna get rid of them. We live in a rural area, so we have to be realistic about that, but if we can reduce the need and we can reduce the overuse of those, that's gonna reduce our emissions and then we replace whatever's left with vehicles that operate in with alternative, some kind of alternative fuel be that mostly electricity, but with some of the heavy duties, it might be some other type of fuel, hydrogen or whatever. And so then I went through like the ways we do that, we increase improved infrastructure for walking and cycling. I think like the, I heard a person say the other day that one of the ways people think about this is like, if it's within two miles, you should be able to walk or cycle. And if everybody could walk and cycle to everything within two miles of them, then they would go a long way. And so then under each of these, I sort of went through and said, okay, improved infrastructure for walking. I already said this, but this is something that should be approached with equity front of mind, of course, and it's something that ECAC supports, but probably isn't something we necessarily lead on. And robust and public alternative iteration big project. We can't do it on our own. It has a big potential to reduce single occupancy vehicle use, but it's not, there's no guarantee, right? It's not a, we can only hope. And so then I tried to figure out like, well, what would it mean to actually do that? You know, facilitate, maybe we do some advocacy, maybe we propose resolutions, maybe we facilitate meetings with the colleges, or maybe ECAC doesn't do any of this and this is just stuff that needs to happen and we decide to do something else. Yeah, Jesse. I don't want to interrupt you, let's finish, but then I've got a comment. Okay, and then I did the same for the other two. So this was my attempt at like further prioritizing and going through this, but it kind of made me feel like, okay, the first thing, we know we need to apply for grants for vehicles. We're already doing that. Like Stephanie's already doing that. The DPW is already doing that. We worked on that last year, right? In terms of, you know, ensuring that we were applying for those when they were available to us. Are there, Stephanie and I met with the police chief last year and talked a little bit about some of this stuff. We can meet with him again. Steve, I think you met with DPW. Like we could do that again. We could do education around EVs, consider public private partnerships. You know, there's lots of things we could do. I don't know how many, and these are all kind of necessary to get to the goal, but some of them are not going to be ECAC stuff. So that's kind of where I started moving, kind of moving to that next level of analysis. Yeah, Jesse. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's the exact right direction. And what you're showing us is an intermittent and highly developed step. I can picture a simplified step where it's like, where we're getting to the point where we really are talking about three things, two things, five things, whatever they are, and I think, Laura, maybe that term of identifying the gaps, and thinking about what are the criteria of the thing that we want for the things we're going to focus on? Well, no one else can do it. We have the expertise to really bring value to it. It fits into the five-year plan. It does something for emissions. It has a social equity component. So we start to look through this criteria and I think if possibly we each went back to this list and if everyone came up with one, it's like if you had to just pick one thing, what would it be? And if we brought that to our next meeting potentially and kind of batted these ideas around, I have a feeling hearing someone make a pitch for a particular idea, I'd be like, all right, well, my idea isn't actually that good. I want to go with Darcy's idea, like that was a good pitch. And sort of going through that exercise to get to get to the three or four things. That to me feels like a manageable exercise and it would be a change for us. I think what I'm hearing Steve suggests is like, what would it look like to bring our focus to a task? Sort of similarly, I see like the way we were able to mobilize and be effective with our outreach, even that block party, like pulling that together and those interviews, like when we had a real task in front of us, we were actually, it was very impressive. And I think like launching Linnaean to sort through the ideas and see who else can do it, let them do their thing. And I don't know, something very soothing to me about, yeah, three or four things. I wanted to add to what I said a moment ago and yes, Jesse, I agree with that. The top actions don't necessarily have to be those things that hit the 2025 goal that I emphasized a moment ago. I think if we do some actions that are high publicity and demonstrate leadership, so it could be something that the town takes on that shows the town is committed or it could be things that have a high educational component even if they don't meet the 2025 goal. So the other one that comes to mind is starting the heat pump arise Amherst, the heat pump program similar to the solar rise program. That might be one worth thinking about getting started because of my visibility component to it. The other quick criteria I throw in is ones that we as an individual are personally excited about things we wanna spend our time doing that get us jazzed that make us excited to come to these meetings and do work outside of these meetings. Yeah, and I would say that it also may be things that are like something that keeps popping into mind as CCA, like getting CCA moving and running is something that is gonna be really important to me in our climate action plan. That is not the task of this group. It just so happens that there's three people or four people from this group that are also doing that. But like, so it may be things that we just need to make sure and we may need to help in some way, but that's being run through a different committee. Yes, Stephanie. I was gonna say, but that's not that right now there's kind of an advisory group that's kind of pushing that along and getting just so that it's operational but it really is gonna need the support of this committee. I mean, it's in order to really get Amherst residents to get on board with that. It is absolutely gonna need you all to be like really behind that effort and to really get the word out because it's only gonna succeed if people sign on and if people don't sign on, it's just gonna fall and die. So it's gonna need you all to sort of get behind that effort. And I'm not saying that's the only thing but there's not gonna be, there's gonna be a board of directors and there's gonna certainly be some campaigns and outreach but it really needs you to part, it's gonna need partnerships. Okay, so that was helpful. Thanks, Stephanie. Sure. So what I think I heard Jesse say and I saw some nodding and I think what, I think we send this off to Linnean. In parallel, we do this sort of like kind of identification of the one or two actions that are making us excited for any of the multiple reasons that have been good reasons that have been mentioned. And we talk about those at our next meeting and we're kind of going through this parallel process where Linnean is drafting, is continuing to draft this overarching plan. We're continuing to work on next level under what ECAC is gonna do and what priorities we want for the kind of focus on first and then those are gonna come together. You know, they're gonna send us their draft and it all goes well because all of these strategy, the strategies are the same. It's all gonna like come together to be, I'm confident that that will be the case. Yeah, Andra. So I intended to but didn't read through everybody else's comments and evaluations and I feel like we still have one more step to do with the evaluator. It doesn't mean we can't send it on to Linnean but there's still a kind of group check on stepping outside of our task group assignments and looking as a whole at the actions that are there and is everything that we want there and are we in agreement about I mean, okay, just even that, is everything there? Is there anything missing? That's my main concern that there's still things that we always thought would be there and no one has noticed yet that it's not there. Yeah, so that's a good point. And when do folks feel like it's the right time to do that? One option is to do it right now looking at the evaluator. The other option is to do it on February 19th when we get the draft report and we spend a week reviewing it quickly and giving any additional input so that like the final draft is ready for more wider distribution. Part of me feels like reading it in a report might be easier than trying to do it in the evaluator. I agree. I think, I personally am done with the evaluator mentally but I think the report will pull all these pieces into an easier context to digest and we'll get to see how things play together or don't and I think it'll be easier to look at things more critically outside of the evaluator. Sounds great to me because it is really hard to think on a spreadsheet. And also I just don't want it to feel to anyone that we're backtracking when we do that. Okay, so that feels like a good plan. I don't know if I can articulate as well as Jesse I don't know if Jesse if you want to like write down what you said, can you remember? I mean, I think I would propose that our assignment to ourselves between now and our next meeting could be not to input into the evaluator but read through all the lists there and pick your favorite, pick the one you think we should take on and use whatever criteria you want. It could just be that you love the idea and that's what you want to be involved in, you know? Something your heart and soul is behind and I think it would actually be really a little bit different but a meaningful way to spend our time to hear people make a case for different actions, see where there's overlap. I think it could be very generative. Okay, that sounds good, I see shaking heads. So that'll be the plan for next week. I will make sure that this evaluator gets to learn with all the things we just talked about in terms of the caveats of it and what we got out of it. And I think the other thing I want to make sure we do and Stephanie maybe you and I can talk offline about how best to organize this is I want us to schedule sort of some kind of retreat or something where we can talk through the report together. So let's put that on the agenda for next time as well. And if anybody, any folks have any ideas on the best way to do that, I'd welcome them. I think we're kind of in this challenging situation. So I don't know if the professors in the room have come up with unique ways to get students to work on group reviews of things or I don't know, but just trying to think of how we do it in a way that engages everybody and make sure we all feel comfortable with the plan before we start to communicate it more widely and to talk about how we're gonna do the communication of the draft. So that'll probably be sometime in like, I would imagine like the last week of February, first week of March, we would want to do that. So yeah, Sarah. Just to clarify for next week, we're picking an action from within our respective sector. I can't jump over to the land view. I think I think anywhere. Okay. Yeah, I think that would be good because I'm passionate about other things too. Yeah. Get out of your task group, man. Exactly. I also, I just wanted to plug, I think the in our pitches that we bring to the next ECAC meeting, if we follow that little outline that Lynanne provided to us in the progress reports, action description of the action, why, how metrics and milestone implementation, including leaders, investment, emissions, maybe emissions goes up a little higher, but that would be a nice little format. I think if everybody had like a little one-page pitch sheet, that would be, I think an effective way to talk about them. Yeah, that's a great idea. The elevator pitch. You guys know that for like, when you catch the CEO and the elevator, you got like 30 seconds to pitch your idea before they get to the next floor and you hope that they buy it before the doors open. All right, great. Any other, anything else before we close up today? Just for my, my slow self and clarification, we are meeting again next week, right? Is that what I'm hearing? Oh, sorry. I'm at the next meeting. All right, so I've got a story about that. Okay, so the 10th, I guess it is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Andrew, did you have a question or you were saying bye? I wanted to express my thanks to Laura for really digging in to the details for us ahead of us so that we then could do it ourselves. And I think it's just really very helpful guidance that you've given us. Well, thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that. Yeah, Ashwin. One quick, maybe we already wrapped this up, but I feel like it might be a loose end. The council might want a presentation, right, about our recommendations. That's going to be like the 7th or the 8th. That's going to be before our next meeting. So should we, I know we're out of time, but we haven't talked about like who might do that and what it might entail and what our kind of strategy is with that. Yeah, so I think that's a presentation of the annual report that Andra sent them last a few weeks ago. So it shouldn't have the recommend, it doesn't have any of the recommendations from our plan. And I would say all we're presenting is what's in the report. We wouldn't hit to whatever is going to be in the plan. My take. We do have just funding request in there, though. Right. Yeah. That's the important part. Yeah. Just do folks have thoughts on, I mean, my initial thought is that I would rather us present this plan or present, I don't know if presenting next week is the right to leave. I think it could make a lot of sense to be on the council's radar early and often. And I would be interested in doing that with someone personally. Okay, great. You're just talking about the annual report, though, or are you talking about? I'm just talking about the annual report, which is not related to content from the plan. Okay, I just wanted to clarify. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Although, although, you know, I do think that the annual report does actually have recommendation for that. Okay. Um, okay, well then, Ashwin, we'll pull you into those conversations with, um, Andra and I. And then, yeah. And me. And Stephanie. Um, okay, everybody, thank you so much. All right. Have a good night. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome.