 meeting of the popular planning commission. First, we have to approve the agenda. Taking everyone's how to look by now, so. That's so moved with the addition of a conversation on the natural resources section if we have to actually add that. Okay, we don't have to formally add that because that's just going to be an informal discussion at the end if we have time. Okay. Thanks for the productivity. Do we have a second. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion from Stephanie and second by Marcella. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Agenda approved. The first thing the agenda after that is comments from the chair. Yeah, I actually don't, I don't have anything. I think for me, a little rusty getting back in because we had an extra week off. But, you know, nothing's happened. It seems like things are moving along with the city plan here. So this seems all good. But I've got nothing that I haven't said recently before. Does anyone else have anything to bring to the group. Okay. Well, next on the agenda is general business. Don't believe we have anyone from the public here. We have a quick question for Mike real quick before we start now that we've lifted the statewide restrictions with the 80% coal reached is there any discussion within city hall to open it back up to have us do in person meetings. Yeah, so with the end of the the emergency order, a number of our shortcuts for the open meeting law come to an end as well. So we now have to be incorporating the public into our meetings as we go forward. The public is going to be closed till July 6. So I think the way we may end up with one more meeting that will be virtual like this one. Where again if somebody is interested and we can make special arrangements to have them come in for public meet for public input but the expectation is that when we start doing the July meetings we will be able to do a hybrid. So I think that's going to work as I'm not going to be sitting here in my office. I'll be sitting up in the council chambers and there's going to be two stations set up one for the host, myself, and one for the public so the public could show the screen and the council chambers and if somebody has public comment they could come up to the to that computer and give input at that computer kind of in the same way that we used to do except it was a microphone. We'd also table public would sit in the chairs if they have a comment they go to the microphones that way it gets recorded on the orca in the new way because you guys want it to stay in the remote. The way we're going now will just have to have me up in the council chamber so we have a public access and City Hall will be open from 537 30 during those meetings so that way anyone can come in and provide input. Or they can go online, as they can right now and join the meeting. So we think that'll maximize the amount of public input that's available. And it won't be a big imposition it just means I don't sit in my office in my own chair I have to go sit upstairs. You know, after all this is done, Mike, if you brought your chair up there, nobody would say anything. It's like the smallest and you know, just, it's a new world. So, so thanks for bringing that up guys. So so that we're all familiar is there anyone that's not vaccinated at this point out of the planning commission. Yeah, can you ask that question. I guess people could say you know, I have the right to say no. My, it's my health privacy rights, but no one did that so seems like we're vaccinated. Nobody answered you either but but I am vaccinated just so you know. Okay, thank you, I am vaccinated to so. Yeah, so City Hall is still closed and the reason why City Hall has has remained closed is to give it was set up in advance that the timing of July 6 had been set up a few weeks ago. In order to give everybody the opportunity who is a staff member who works in City Hall to get vaccinated before the City Hall is reopened to the public. And that's why it is set up the way it is because a number of the younger staff didn't get the opportunity to start vaccinations till late so in order for them to get both vaccines and the two week window before. So it was July 6 that was the date that would work out. So if people are wondering why we're not reopening right now that's that's the reason why is is not all the staff have gotten through their two week window after their second shot. Okay, I think that we'll probably revisit the idea of everyone, mostly returning physically probably near the end of the summer. Maybe out the first meeting in August, by the way. So, maybe after that we can talk about coming back in. What do people think. Okay, sure. You said you're going to be out the first week of August. Yeah, the first meeting in August yet. Yeah, I think I will be too if it's not first week. I'm going to be out the August 23rd. If that was our first in person, I would miss it, but I'll catch the next one. Yeah, and when you guys go back to in person is up to you guys there are a number of committees that enjoyed the zoom format and want to keep going. So it really is up to you if you want to keep going in the zoom format you're welcome to. The only change is with my I'm going to be sitting. Okay, that sounds great. Yeah, I know we're not in a rush, but we'll have to we'll have to eventually deal with that. Okay, so next we need to consider the minutes from a 24th. Everyone can take a look. Okay, do we have a motion to approve the minutes? Or do we have any edits first or anything to discuss about it. Motion by Marcella. Do we have a second? Yeah, so someone else second. Second. Okay, a second from Aaron. Those in favor of approving the minutes say I. I. Okay. Minutes approved. And that brings us to the energy chapter and I believe that Marcella done some work on it. It's up to, I'll leave it up to micah Marcella if he wants to walk through the chapter. So I'm the comments that I made, I did like suggesting in the Google doc and it was in the document. That's titled dash barb comments, BC comments. So I left barbs comments in there added a few of my own and there was some stuff that Barb wanted to add that was a little bit specific like that I wouldn't be able to do without diving into research which maybe I can do but I didn't not for this and then I also. There's one other part I kind of left as is and that was the longer discussion about aspirations and goals and outline of implementation approaches. And that was just because I thought we'd go back and check that out a little bit more closely after we're finished, like voting and being okay with those so I kind of left that as it was but tried to do a little bit of tweaking in the top and it was mostly just sort of nitty nitty kind of little things so. Yeah. I'm sorry so I just want to make sure I'm looking at the right document which exactly is in the energy plan folder. There is three word docs and I was in the one that's energy plan chapter dash. BC comments. Do you see that one. Because I've had originally put comments in that one I just thought we'd keep it together. You guys want me to pull that one up and share it. It looks like we're all in it. I just put a link in the chat to it as well. So how would people prefer to do this should we should we have someone go through it out loud or is everyone okay just sit quietly and read it for a bit. I think it might be more orderly to just to read it out loud so that we can address things as we go come to think of it. So let's just let's just do that do we have someone willing to read through it. If not I will. Okay. You really don't want to. No, I can do it. Okay, we're ready. I have a lot of practice reading bedtime stories and things like that. So, you know, but I'm not I'm not going to do it in that time. Can you do the voices. That's exactly what I was going to ask. I'm going to stop and ask you guys go questions and things. Anyway, all right energy plan chapter first draft introduction. All this aspirations in the city plan are found in this energy chapter. The global consequences of burning fossil fuels are well documented and addressing the changes of the challenges of climate change will be a generational effort. And a local scale. Is that a barb inclusion where it just says example. Sorry, the green example was what I put in because barb is the red. So she said she wanted her suggestion was how about specific Montpelier issues here. And she gave a couple of examples so I wasn't going to. I don't feel like I should decide on what the example is but if barb had an example she wanted to do. I thought one way this one way to frame it would be at a local scale. Montpelier example and then at a global scale. There's this other stuff so it kind of puts it in perspective it's just a frame it. So we would need to land on an example, I guess. Okay, can we just generally say ways in which Montpelier is affected. Like for instance, at a local scale. Montpelier is affected by climate change. It looks like Mike's typing which is great. Yeah, I was, I was, if you guys want me to try to throw something in a local scale. I would just suggest not directly referencing the 1993 flood. It just feels like a little tenuated at 28 years old. Not that it's not significant but we can say increased flooding risk. Yeah, it also opens the door to the questions about to what degree was that climate change and degree was other things and just keep going Mike or yeah, flooding. Yeah, I'm not as good just doing these on the fly here and resulting flooding that could occur. Sure. I mean, we could, we can mention erosion, weather fluctuations. And Michael throwing. Let's go rainfall and I don't know what other things we would expect. I mean it's going to be warmer and hotter during the summer. Well, I think it's it's increased rainfall, increased precipitation causing additional flooding or erosion issues. It's the potential for more severe droughts. In the summers and potentially impacting water supplies probably less of an issue for Montpelier than other communities in the state. It's also increased freeze the cycle challenges in the winter that caused the lovely potholes that we all love and enjoy. It makes that worse. So I think there's a lot of other related pieces. Do we know that the climate models are going to show increased rainfall. Like definitively. I always think of it as like, there's a kind of a note I recognize the recognition that there's going to be more extreme weather events, but I don't know about overall precipitation trends. Yeah, I would suggest that we might be on safer footing if we were to say experience more. Yeah, like more severe weather events resulting in, you know, potentially resulting in significant flooding. I think it's both. That's fine if I don't know enough about it to know what the model show so if there's increased rainfall, those models are great. I think it's a good point though that the increased rainfall is one thing increased rainfall in 24 hours because of the storm is the whole other thing. Yeah, somebody wants to jump in and throw something in there. Yeah, I think the thing I have heard definitively is that over time will probably end up with more snow in the winters. Doesn't mean it's going to stick around more but it'll snow more mostly because we pick up a lot of our moisture from the Great Lakes so when it's cold the Great Lakes freeze over and we that's why we get more of our snow and the more of them in the shoulder seasons. But they're expecting us to have more snow because of the fact that the Great Lakes won't freeze so we're going to end up getting more snow during the winter, although it'll keep getting warm and then melting off. It's just tumbling on how to do this freeze thaw thing. As long as we don't have more than one person typing will be okay. Somebody offer suggestions to change that or something. Take my back out there hyphen cycles. Thank you. That's looks good to me right there for a general accurate statement. Is everybody good with that. A global scale sea level rise to potential for mass extinctions more frequent and destructive storms harsher droughts and more flooding are all possible within our lifetimes and those of our children. Thank you. Thank you for watching these realities. The city council has adopted policies to both adapt Montpelier to these changes as well as minimize and hopefully eliminate our contributions to future climate change. Well, Peeler can do our part to make a better future for generations to come. I think that's another bar. Oh, are you talking about the red? I was seeing this in the parentheses there. Oh, yeah, yeah. My document had like two different shades of red. Yeah, that's what we have. Oh, sorry. It's green on mine. Okay, I must be the pink then. My stuff must be the pink. So I just, I just did a little worse missing there. Montpelier will do its part to make a better future for generations to come. Still don't really love that. It doesn't feel necessary. Yeah, because of the prior sentence, it feels like we're repeating ourselves. Strike it. Let's do that. I think that this chapter is overall longer than I would want it to be. So. Yeah, it does have a lot more words than it needs to be. Yeah, which also makes me question whether we need to add something on sustainability. Yeah, I don't think we necessarily do anyone else. I mean, what's, I guess I would want to know what specifically she means if like what's the, what's the different point about sustainability. Because if we're talking later about energy policies, that's more specific than general sustainability. Does she mean like, if we can, if cloud change keeps going and we keep having these more severe storms, it's going to be less possible to live in Montpelier, due to those things sort of what she's getting it. Oh, maybe. Yeah. I don't really know that's speculative. I didn't make a suggestion. I think we're getting bogged down, largely because we're not clear about what the function of the introduction is, is to move to some more substantive sections get through those first and then we'll have a better sense of what we should plug into the intro. Yeah, like, I mean, let's just move along. So let's forget sustainability thing and long set. All right. I mean, I think in general a brief intro is fine. We don't need to dwell on this. The Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee was founded in 2010. Okay, previously this discussion of city committees. They were in other chapters. Is this is something we decided to keep in. I'm having trouble recalling. What do you mean other chapters like a different part in the plan. A whole different part. Yeah, the other the other I guess historic preservation was the last one right when we went through that there was. We had a discussion about what to do about these other committees and whether we want that up front or somewhere else. Historic preservation Commission was mentioned in the introduction of that. Okay. So as long as it's consistent. I'll take, I'll take your word Mike. So the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee was founded in 2010 to act in advisory capacity to the Montpelier City Council energy issues. In charge of identifying and nurturing potential energy saving projects and opportunities and forming and engaging city residents on energy issues with a special focus on building weatherization and partnering with other statewide groups such as the Montpelier Foundation and the RN's VNRC to foster a long term far reaching project schools develop and developments that will ultimately serve to either reduce Montpelier's energy use or actively meet its energy needs from renewables. That is a long sentence and I'm definitely adding an ox for common. Are we good with that? See a big need to worth that too much there. February 2014 me I recommend the city council adopted a city white gold net zero Montpelier and short this means that the city is committed to becoming the first state capital to produce or offset all of its energy needs electric thermal and renewable energy sources and set the target date to meet this goal at 2030. This was further expanded and clarified in October 2018 with the adopted city council goal that Montpelier will become the first 100% renewable energy capital city and eliminate all fossil fuel use with the following deadlines. By 2030 100% of energy used for municipal government operations are electrical and transportation will be renewable or offset. By 2050 fossil fuel use by will be eliminated entirely and 100% of energy needs from this floor is essential commercial will be met renewably. The plan is separated in municipal and city wide energy use with different target dates as shown above. I think projects have already been completed in these first years including a common including partnering with the state of Vermont to expand the capital complex district heat plant. This project created a utility to provide heat from a sustainable biomass plant to private municipal buildings. Next the city participated in two group net metering solar projects to replace 70% of the municipal government's electrical usage. Do we do we want it looks like it looks like a bar change and she wanted to mention schools there. municipal government and school electrical usage. I mean the schools are part of the municipal government but I mean do we want to call them out or not I think is the question. Is it municipal buildings and schools. Or where does it go. Some some city buildings in some schools is. I think how it's laid out I don't remember. Actually it's because this is the electrical and this is. I would say for 70% of the electrical use so it's mostly the buildings. I would just say to replace 70% of 70% of municipal electrical usage. Let's say building electrical ease. Building electrical use. Okay. So go use instead of usage. Okay. Okay. One of one of the arrays is located in the city. I think we should delete that sentence. Put in photos of them with little captions about where they are because people will be like, why is it in Sharon. Yeah. Sharon. I'm struggling with this section a little bit because it is a website and I think myself comment is spot on on the side here that it should be a website. I'm struggling with captions explaining what's going on because it's this definitely doesn't this is not reading like a website. Okay. Visual we can make it the more we can break things out the better and the more it's going to make sense. And that's that's fine. If you want to take that out that was, like I said, that's part of my stuff I'd recommended. So we mark it like that. Yeah, that would be fine. Yeah. You can do like heat plant and then caption that says this heat plant provides a sample, whatever debatable building 70%. Oh, no, and then you two solar arrays because everybody loves a good picture of a solar array. And then put it down. This is this together these two solar arrays replace 70% and then make it it'll break up the space. Don't forget a picture of a car trigger. Oh my God. That's a big deal. Yeah, I'm sure once we get to building the website will be going through and making additional edits. I think a lot of a lot of this is to make sure that we're all kind of agreeing on what we want to say and trimming it down. I think there's probably something to be said for having because these are very concrete, concrete, obvious physical things that people can look at around this wealth, sort of around the city. Having to do with energy chapter so I think there could be some benefits putting these things in here. But I think with photos and locations that would be nicer. When I wrote it I knew it was too long but I felt it was easier to leave it a little bit long rather than go through and take stuff out. It'd be easier to leave it a little long and kind of find out what we think is the most important to keep in and trim back the rest. We're breaking up these different projects by paragraph to kind of go with the idea of making it kind of by size pieces like bullets and having the photos with them. Next it says there have also been significant conservation improvements at the water plant and water resource recovery facility as well as an innovative organics to energy system added to the WRRF, which will heat and power the facility. And if it proposed phase two is completed, produce power for sale to the grid from the purchasing of high concentration organic waste. Of that thing. What is otherwise known as the sewer plan. Yeah, it's going to be beautiful. So that the next paragraph says I stated above the plan is bold and far reaching. Do we need to proclaim that. And we'll take many big and small steps in order for us to become a model for other communities around Vermont and the country. I don't think we need to qualify the plan. Well, it's more just that it's as stated above, we don't need to say it twice. Here I'm going to try something you can tell me. I had a general question, Mike, about the use of the word plan versus the word chapter. I'm going to go into the energy plan, natural resources plan are those individual plans to go into the larger plan or they parts of the one place because I was changing it and then I was like, oh, maybe I misunderstood because I kept saying it. It's, it's all semantics but yeah I tend to flip back and forth from the, you know, an energy plan or an energy chapter and sometimes they'll talk about the housing element because that's how it's described in the statute. And we can, we can agree to format it in some way and say when we say plan we mean the city plan and otherwise use the word chapter and we can just go through and do kind of search for places. Make sure that we refer to an energy chapter, as opposed to the energy plan. It's up to you guys. I think I would require that or prefer that that that when when talking about a specific chapter we use the word chapter and we're talking about the entire city plan. Refer to that as the plan. Your other thoughts. So I just, I cut cut down the sense a little bit and just change it to, and in this case, Mike I mean this is the plan here. Because I mean I read it is referencing more than just the energy chapter that there's other moving parts here. But are we are we specifically talking about the energy chapter when we say the plan will require many steps for us to become a model. I was when I was writing at my intent with it. It was referring to the energy plan but. Okay, well there I just avoided that problem. It will require a mini step starter for us to become a model for other communities around the country. So what do we want to mention behavioral change being required planning commission. I don't have anything intelligent to add to it, but if barb had an idea of something to say, but I don't have like a point. Yeah, I'm thinking about if we what would it take to have everyone in Montpelier have an electric vehicle. If you get a renewable source of energy for everyone's house in Montpelier. What does it take for everyone to have an electric vehicle. Does it take upgrades to their electrical system for these really old houses so that they have enough power to actually plug their car into their house. Like there's a lot that goes into that and I by 2050 feels like a really strong target. I think I need is to 20 lines to go in every home gets that anyway. So maybe I don't need electrical upgrades, but I mean you definitely need some but I think for the most part the infrastructure already in place. I think what barb is referring to, and I'm just trying to speak a little bit for her is I think she, she is thinking more in the camp of it's not just going to be technology changes. It's not a matter of whether I just weather rising everybody's houses and getting everybody to drive electric vehicles. She's referring to behavioral changes like not driving anymore. And, you know, you have to live your life differently. Not sure I necessarily agree with that but I think that's where she was trying to go is that you're going to have to change your behaviors. We're not going to be able to eat tons of meat anymore because you know it's just you know it's not sustainable for everybody to be eating a ton of meat so we have to make behavioral changes in addition to these technical changes. I feel it. I agree with you that's probably what she means and I, it's not that those that's not true. I just don't know that like we can't force my pillow your rights to do that. So, if we want to talk about behavioral changes we could talk about the way that the structural changes that are going to happen that we are planning for will support and enable people to make the behavioral changes that they want to are sustainable to minimize their own footprint, etc. That they can live here feeling like they're supported in changing behaviors in support of climate. So I just think I mean I just wrote this as a way to note it without really going trying to go too far like ourselves talking about here so changes won't be technology upgrades and behavioral adaptations that moderate enough or is that just that statement cause any concern for anyone. This comes in later when we talk about aspirations and goals we can say, you know, net zero types of goals can't happen without behavioral changes. But people might argue that behavioral changes can't happen without the infrastructure to support them. So I talk about it in that section of like how did we, how did we get to these aspirations. It's because of this structure we're trying to build up to support. I just don't want to be too repetitive, you know. Yeah, I mean for what you're saying it's like we should move this entire paragraph down is up. That's kind of what I'm thinking, because, because the rest of the intro is just talking about like okay global global like point why do we even have this chapter, then it goes into a little bit of history. Then it talks about sort of some specific stuff that we've done to date. And then we start talking about like a kind of a more aspirational stuff so I feel like that, that could go. So this is mostly like Mike's first draft. It looks like Mike you were thinking you like this out as past than present and future. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, a little bit of that that's it was meant to kind of wrap up the introduction so if all somebody read was the introduction they would kind of get a bite of what what we're doing. Without getting into too much of the nitty gritty of what we're doing. I just didn't want to leave the introduction kind of hanging with the end of the list of things that we've done I kind of wanted to kind of bring it full circle a little bit with a closing paragraph. We could say like in the aspirations outlined below or outlined in the next page or something will support. Yeah, it just seems to me I kind of, I feel like we were always just begging for trouble when you start talking about how behavioral changes are necessary and how we did this kind of becomes this. You know, very. What do you call it like puppy dogs and unicorns. Yeah, and I just feel like I mean I think I saw I'm sorry to, I think this way you put your sayings but I feel like we can just sort of talk about how the efforts that are contained in the chapter itself will help facilitate the kinds of changes that are necessary to help, you know, ensure a better future, you know, energy wise climate wise, you know, and we think that these things will help achieve, you know, broader goals beyond, you know, just sort of the local impacts or something like that, but to sort of delve into this like more existential questions about who we have to be in order to solve climate change I think it's just probably not necessary here. So, I, I mean, I can give us I can try to take a stab at that language I'm not going to be able to do it. That's very second but if people are interested in maybe that approach I can do that offline. Yeah, I think you're, I think I'm on board what you're saying, because we can only control the sort of structural support for individual choices. So, Aaron you're proposing to just to rewrite this paragraph is that what you're saying. Yeah, let me draft an alternative and we can sort of weigh the two. But I just not going to be able to do it right now I was talking, I just have to think about it for a second to go through the plan, but I don't go to stab and circulated to the group. But I guess I can't do that. But we're, I think we were planning on voting tonight. I also consider just keep the first sentence and the last sentence and chop out the middle, which would be another way of just buttoning up. There will require many steps in order for us to become a model for other communities around Vermont in the United States. We cannot fix global warming climate change by ourselves but we can think globally and act locally into our part to ensure the planet we leave will be one that is sustainable. So if any change you want to make here I mean this is this is the intro so it's not substantive so do you guys want to shorten it like Mike saying or do you want to try to reword it. Oh, we're going to have something now just keep going and I'll bring it back. Okay. So, next we have work completed to date this looks like barb. What do you think about the stuff that bar included here and how does that fit in with the way we're structuring other chapters. So this was a little bit surprising to me. In her email her comment was that we didn't talk in the introduction about all the great things that Montpelier had been doing and I'm honestly just I. I kind of thought we talked about district we talked about municipal solar we talked about waste to energy. We didn't talk about every single thing that's been done but at the same time we are trying to, you know, just kind of hit the biggest of our highlights. And, and some of these, I guess depends on the stylistically what we want do we want to be getting into the, you know, exactly what we've done percentage wise for energy improvements to all these pieces. One of the things that I thought I had is that we do have a section couple down this, you know, the summary of past efforts so if we did want to have something, you know, this, I don't think this is introduction material. But that's just my some of my, my thoughts that I'm not sure this fits here. Does it fit better in summary of past efforts. Yeah, I agree that it's duplicative to what is already in the intro. I would be fine with it I guess in summary of past efforts. Okay I just moved it down there so we can revisit when we get to that part. I guess that way if somebody did not read the intro but they just wanted to look at past efforts in a bullet list. That would get them all of it. So we'll keep going for now and we'll get back to that. How does the energy plan relate to the other chapters. The energy plan is closely linked to nearly every other chapter in the city plan some chapters amplify the energy plan goals directly for example, fortability is an important objective of the housing plan and making units more efficient through weatherization helps achieve both our housing and energy goals. And then lastly the utilities and facilities chapter looks to energy efficiency and operations of plants as well as the district heat utility and thermal efficiency of our buildings to support sustainable budget goals. I think the only thing to note there is that we should make sure that once we tinker with these other chapters that actually still says that. The housing we actually the housing working group is we were going to plan to actually remove some of the aspirations and goals that are very transportation heavy and just leave it to the transportation chapter for instance. So there might be some tinkering that affects some of this. Anyways, other chapters in this plan require consideration of complementary policies to support the energy plan, for example the transportation plan priorities prioritizes the ability to live and work in my pillar without a car there by supporting reduced fossil fuel consumption. Supporting this is the land use plans goals of fostering a dense mixed use downtown with good sidewalks and bike lanes. Further the transportation plan support for public transport transit transit ride sharing options and electric vehicle charging stations. And then that seems like Barb asked if that's in the transportation plan also work to advance the goals of the energy plan. And yes electric vehicle charging stations. It's in this the various plans I mean we may as you say as we proofread we may have to go through and make some tweaks because if it gets if electric vehicle charging stations get pulled out of the transportation plan because they're talked about in the energy plan. We just have to make sure it ends up landing in one of them, and we won't know that till we've gone through and have the final versions of all the plans and kind of go through and proofread them for consistency. Okay. So I think she had she had some doubts, or some questions about. We've had debates about a little bit about you know what is, what is our is a what is our future is our future no cars in the downtowners our future, you know, electric cars, because whichever future we choose. There are different strategies for implementing and and the choice that has been laid out is that we are moving towards an electric car future, not towards a nobody has cars we all use public transit future all walk bike public transit. And that's that's that's a choice that's a vision choice but our choice was the one that even me act felt was the more viable future or the more likely future is one that we're going to be transitioning to electric vehicles. So we obviously are hoping for and planning for additional active mobility more walking more biking, but that we're going to need vehicle charging stations to support the electric vehicles. Okay, I think I think that's fine. So far. I think our cell is I think Marcel is changes here and improvement to what I had so. So moving on. Another chapter that supports energy plan. I'm just gonna say this chapter is the national resources chapter which has strategies to develop carbon sequestration management plans for city park land. Okay. Is that right the way that has written city park land. We kind of, I mean, I feel like I need, we need to. I just put a note that was like we're going to need to finish the actual resources plan person then. Yeah, I was just thinking like our capitalization conventions throughout the. Oh yeah. Yeah, I think it should be non capitalized there. Nice work around. Yeah, well, yeah, that's kind of a big part of my job. Using words to work around problems. So anyways, from all pillars. Park lands. Park lands. In order to offset some fossil fuel use. I didn't know what. This seems like I don't know what that is. Yeah, this discussion is about the natural resources chapter, not, not the energy chapter. Yeah, yeah. Natural resources is also a chapter with the impacts of hydropower and water quality and natural aquatic communities could would be considered. I highlighted that because I honestly don't remember if it's in there, I think it is in there, but it should be is considered. Finally, the natural resources plan addresses urban ecology with goals of more street trees and greens bay, both of which play important roles in addressing the heat island effect of our downtown and saving energy in the summer. Again, we can trim pieces out if it's just too extraneous in summer. Hey, sorry, I just wanted you guys to know I just added a alternative paragraph to the info. Okay, we'll do this next one to just finish the section then we'll go back out. The historic resources chapter is one area where we find some challenges. I thought about this way this is presented and I didn't end up coming up with anything better. I think at the point, trying to say that like some are going to some chapters amplify the energy plan goals directly and others require some sort of thoughtful work to make work. But I didn't come up with a great way to say that. Okay. And I thought I thought maybe it is fine just the way it's written. But as long as we don't think it reads as an, you know, damn that historic resources chapter, if only we could just dump it, it would make everything easier, you know what I'm saying. I just wanted to read like the challenges are inherent in this process because there's competing interests and many different things that we value and we have to figure out a way to make them come together. The historic chapter does talk about this topic. So that was one of the pieces of this. This is kind of a mirror image of what is in the historic chapter that we already approved. That just talks about, you know, we've got a lot of goals doing the historic is one of them but you know one of our challenges is how do we balance, you know, energy efficiency and weatherization, which is an important part of the energy plan with maintaining historic integrity. And it just says there's a there's a conflict, there's a challenge there to balancing these two. I think it's fine to acknowledge tensions. I don't think I don't think that it's this is stated in a way where one chapter is contradicting the other. Yeah, I didn't end up. Yeah, that's part of whale. I think it's okay. Okay, let's scroll back up to Aaron's paragraph. It looks like the initiatives discussed is that what you wrote. Unless I'm crazy I think this is new so I'm going to read it. Yeah, the initiatives discussed. The initiatives discussed in this chapter seek to create a cleaner and more sustainable energy future for the city the transportation the transformation of more people energy infrastructure and use over the next 30 years positions to see to be greater stewards of the global environment and more resilient in the face of a climate of changing climate both locally and globally. These changes have enacted will better ensure that Montpelier the Montpelier residents of tomorrow will enjoy the same quality of life of those today. So that's to replace the paragraph immediately above it right. Yes. Were you thinking it would replace anything else Aaron or just the paragraph above it. No, I just think it would replace the one just above it. It's fine with me. What are the people's thoughts. Agreed. Good. Okay. Stephanie and john you have like one and a half seconds to object. Yeah, it looks good. All right to move on. So I'm looking at the summary past efforts section. The energy plan is a relatively new addition to the city plan as the supplement below as a catalog of the key reports have been developed over the past 12 years in the city. Some key energy planning efforts and plans include. And then this was unfinished but we moved the items that are wanted mentioned down here. This looks like it needs more work. And so if we're going to vote tonight. I mean, could we leave this to you, Mike to further flesh out and we'll just approve it with the idea that this will be completed later. Yeah, we actually did that with the housing, or with the historic as well. We kind of recognize that. Now that we have the format and the pieces put together. We would have to take some time to work with the historic preservation commission to come up with the list of all the projects and the same thing here is, you know, I'm going to have to go back and work with me act to try to find what reports have been published. But there are only like three that I found. So there aren't a lot of technical reports but we can change this to read a catalog of key reports and you know I can just tweak the wording there to also and projects would be good. Yeah, yeah. Well as a catalog of the key reports and projects that have been developed over the past 12 years. And yeah, I mean I trust your discretion to just include these these examples from barb if they make sense to you. We're watching. Okay. Sorry I just decided I didn't like what I suggested there. So that was you. Okay. It looks good. Looks good to me. Okay, so let's move on unless anybody else has anything to say about the summary past efforts. Okay, map. So these are just the components to the map that will be included here, Mike. Yeah, they're going to be a set of layers are certain ones. So remember I don't believe there are any required maps for the energy plan. I don't think there are but I'd also maybe suggest that we just refer to the RPC one, because I don't think there's any like utility to these maps, no pun intended but like no, no one's going to be looking at this to figure out where there's a power substation or like it's just kind of feels like a map for the sake of a map, you know, which usually I'm all for but in this case, if it seems like maybe we're creating work for ourselves where we could be spending our time on things that are more useful. So considering we, we haven't in the energy committee wasn't interested in doing the. There's a there's another act that was done for the energy plans which lets you be able to approve locations for energy facilities, specifically usually it's for solar facilities to basically get them approved faster. So, if we had those maps or if we adopted this mess but the energy committee wasn't interested in doing that work so you know if we wanted to do that we would have had to have those maps but we didn't go that route. So yeah, I agree with john I don't think there's maps for the sake of maps. When I was developing this list I was just trying to, you know, kind of roll off the top of my head what would be some possible map layers, but they're, I don't think there was much that's there. I could be wrong about this so take this with a huge grain of salt but I'm fairly sure that there are some very real Department of Homeland Security issues with mapping at utilities. I know that there is for certainly distribution lines. I'm sorry transmission lines. But I don't know if the distribution stuff would be problematic either, but just enough. It's just another reason not to include a map. I don't know we want to wait into those issues, if they exist. Okay, but you're not advocating against using the, the regional planning commission maps though. No, I mean, it exists. Okay, I don't know we want to be developing map layers. So, and then publish them. We should have a whole more security chapter. We have, we have a lot of these and it wouldn't be hard to do but again. Unless there's like a reason why we're including them. I don't know why we spend too much time doing it. Also, I think I thought this was kind of interesting. There's been a big shift at Homeland Security over the past number of years where they now have a big open data site where they publish all of this stuff. I put a link in the chat there. So in other words, you're saying I'm wrong, which is totally legitimate. Yeah, you know, I'm sure if there are things that that are have security concerns that they don't include all of that but but yeah it's interesting that that culture has shifted a little bit. They now make that openly available. Sounds good. Yeah, so when we were talking when we were talking about the maps before when we did the historic chapter what we were talking about was being able to develop a map and kind of inserting it into the conversation above maybe in the introduction, you know when we were talking about having photos. The map would be inserted in with the text so it would be in support of something that is being talked about. So I think getting to john's point. If we're not talking about anything that people would intuitively be saying oh I wonder where that's located let's see it on the map. I mean people want to know where the log road solar facility is you can put a map and show it but I don't know how useful that is. So again, well I think we can revisit the map when we get back in there to kind of see is there a map that would help the reader to better understand or could we, you know, tell a better story if we had a map or a table that would show something so. And this actually should say probably maps and tables. Okay, sounds good. So the next part of the chapter is the kind of narrative explanation of the aspirations and goals. Has anyone checked to make sure that this reflects what we did last meeting. I don't think I don't think it does does it sweet. Because we and we still had to talk about this strategy so I haven't been in here to go through and readjust this which I guess I can do for next meeting unless my cell wants to go through and I can yeah or so. I can remind me though would we need. So we, we agreed. We agreed on the aspiration and goals, right and then we agree on a strategies to the collapsed strategies. No, I put that together and that's the that's the second of our conversations. So as soon as we're done with the chapter will go to work on the strategies. Okay, I'm happy to, I don't know if that'll delay us that I couldn't make the aspirations and goals match what we had agreed on and take a stab at the writing implementation approaches I guess we would have to do after the fact so I guess by the end of tonight I could work on all of that for next meeting with that delay or both though. And so, but that's fine I guess, as long as we're not shredding the same grounds. We can vote later. As a reminder, did we have we kind of did we cut it down to one aspiration. Yes. We cut it down to the, I because I have it pulled up the spreadsheet pulled up popular will be a net zero city by 2030 for municipal operations and 2050 community wide. Yes. And then for goals, it was everything in column J. Yeah, there's a new energy. There's a template energy goals and strategies for city plan. There's a new one that's on the drive as well. There's a new one. Yeah. I figured I would save the old template, because it had so much information before I deleted it. So I just wrote a new one. Okay, so so Marcel, did you catch that if you're going to be like adapting these that there's like a clean one that has everything you need. Like, I like how you noted that every single goal related to the single aspiration. Hey, we made straight A's. Why don't you know. Okay, so maybe I'm the one who's slowly uptake there because it looks like all of you are already in that document. So, okay. We can do that. So, so Marcel, are you going to write new language? Is that what you were saying for just sort of go through and add just make copy edits to what you're trying to read through and make some notes as well. Do we like the way it's laid out being just a list of aspirations and goals first. How are these going to look on the website? Are they going to be, they were going to be listed out right so would this be a second list. It would be a hard time remembering what we decided it would end up looking like or maybe we didn't know yet. So I think the thought of what was in going to be in the written part of the chapter was to give people kind of that bite sized piece and I think this was a little bit long probably. I really have to go into the implementation strategy where all of the cards and everything are. So if you wanted to understand the energy plan you could get a brief introduction, little history of what's been done. And then kind of an introduction to the aspirations and goals and strategies here. It wasn't meant to talk about every strategy or every goal but was really just try to go and kind of lay them out and the historic was three paragraphs. And then the implementation was three paragraphs so it was relatively short. I mean it's a shorter topic but my only concern was just to make sure that the newly stated aspirations and goals are the topics being discussed by the language here. Which we didn't really cut much so I imagine it will be. But so our plan will be to approve the sections other than aspirations and goals and then we will revisit that at the next meeting when we have new text for it. Is that sound good. Yes. Okay so the next section here is the outline outline the implementation approaches it says. Those are the strategies so that's that also has to wait. Okay. So Mike you said that you were going to work on a draft of the strategies for this and then we'll look at that later, based on the new goals. No we have that already for you in the template that you were just in. So if you go to your Excel. Okay. Okay, so that sounds like we're at a good place to switch over to that then. Let's do that. So if everyone can open the template and under the strategies tab. We have 12 strategies. Yeah, so what I did with the, when we did the other one we started to group them together so I started rather than calling them strategies I started started to kind of label them as kind of initiatives. Because usually involved the number of different related strategies so. A couple of them, especially if there were projects tended to kind of fall into their own category. So this was, if you remember, like eight pages of strategies. So condensing it down isn't too bad at least I thought it wasn't too bad. So the, the, if we go back, we got down to eight goals. So the municipal the first four municipal energy use is talking about electricity, 100% renewable electricity for municipal facilities purchase all equipment. Must be net zero. So it's municipal fill facilities to 100% renewable energy, and then the other four are related to the 2050 goals of how we get the community. So in the strategies. See we got the first seven are related to the municipal, and then the others are back to the community. So one for municipal building efficiency initiative. So one of, I guess I'll just read it so this is one of the key outcomes to achieving the 2030 goal is a reduction in energy used in our existing buildings, these efficiencies will come from following energy audits, and the findings of the net zero implementation plan, once in place the actions identified will be implemented through the annual capital improvement plan for large projects in the net zero revolving loan fund for small projects, and the capital equipment plan for vehicles and equipment, some net zero purchases, purchasing policies should be adopted to guide those projects and purchases. This is the first of our four major 2030 initiatives. See if I can find my. So, and then we had a couple of individual projects that really didn't fit into those one was a project to meter the fire fire station for district heat fire station is currently metered with city hall, and this is a project for tracking weatherization efforts on both buildings it's been estimated to be 5 to 7,000, which is why it hasn't been done yet. And it's been spent for not actually doing anything other than meeting the building. But me act has identified that. So the second major one and you guys can stop me if you've got something you want to change is the municipal electrical generation initiative so, although Green Mountain power is projected to be net zero by 2030 the city has a goal to measure renewable power for all electrical electricity used by municipal facilities. Much of this was done through the net metering solar projects and Sharon and log road. There are also additional generation opportunities in phase two of the water resource recovery facility upgrades currently under development in 2021, which would be sold to the grid. I'd like to study additional generation opportunities have presented. This is the second of the four major 2030 initiatives. The next one future municipal facilities and future vehicles must be net zero initiative, although no new municipal facilities are being proposed at this time. This plan recognizes that when new facilities are proposed and constructed they should be net zero at the time of operation. And the future policies should be extended to the purchase and replacement purchase of replacement vehicles as they come up in the equipment plan as well. Similar to the other initiatives this one will be guided by the 2030 net zero plan and implemented through the capital improvement plan and capital equipment program and supported by policies to guide the construction and purchases. This is the third of the four major initiatives. This is an individual project, which is the bio fleet biodiesel fleet tank project is anticipated that a percentage of our net zero goals will be accomplished by shifting to biodiesel for heavy equipment like front loaders back hose and tandem dump trucks. This shift will require new fuel tanks at the DPW garage to support those vehicles. Electric vehicle charging stations. It's anticipated that a number of vehicles will be replaced with electric vehicles in order to meet our net zero goals. This will affect such items as police cruisers, small utility trucks and other cars. A number of EV stations will be needed to charge these vehicles when not news. So, whether this is a simple project to install them or a program over time will be determined by the net zero 2030 plan. And then the last. Hold on, I just want to make sure before we keep going this just so does anyone have any feedback so far. We just shot through half of them. Seems like some good where. Okay. I mean there is a lot there for each one of these pieces but I think it kind of does group them into bite sized pieces that could be prioritized. And, and if we're going to be net zero, you know each one of these pieces would have to get accomplished so that was my thought in trying to group them together. So the last of the municipal one is the municipal fuel switching initiative, which is some municipal facilities are in district heat and meet our 2030 net zero goals while other facilities still need to undergo fuel switching. Similar to the other major initiatives. The initiative will be guided by the net zero 2030 plan and implemented through the capital improvement program expansion of the district heat service, or use of biogas produced as a part of phase one of the water resource recovery facility upgrades underway in 2021. This is the fourth major 2030 initiative. And finally, that's the question of how do we get all of our facilities off oil and onto some renewable. And so there are a couple of approaches for doing that. Some of them that are close to the water resource recovery facility can take advantage of the extra methane to heat their plants. So basically the city garage building and the sewer plant itself can be heated with methane recovery. So heat can cover some facilities and the rest we have to plan for shifting. And then I think these next ones. Again, this is looking at how we're going to do for 2050. This is community wide so this tends to have completely different strategies. It's easier for us to convert municipal stuff because we don't have to deal with the public we just have to do it ourselves so the first one is looking at the building efficiency initiative so this was the one where we grouped all the weatherization and electrical efficiency. The municipal 2030 version of this initiative, the intent of these implementation strategies is to address electrical efficiencies and weatherization in private structures. Unlike the municipal 2030 initiative though the private privately on buildings must be addressed through a combination of assisting. People landlords and businesses with energy audits, coordinating public outreach about the value of energy efficiency, creating a weatherization fund and adopting ordinances such as energy labeling ordinance and the Vermont building energy stretch codes. These still need to be fully discussed and identified in a future 2050 net zero implementation plan. So, for this and the next three more generally, I, well I think I support the goal and I think we should keep it and keep a lot of these things I'd like us to consider not adopting any mob pillar specific ordinances. I think for a number of reasons. One I don't I don't think that we necessarily get there's a whole lot of benefit to it. And it comes with a lot of overhead and and some complication. I agree that the state adopts an energy code that puts us there anyway, but for us to create one and administer these separate ordinances in Montpelier when we're trying to, you know, every house that gets built in Montpelier ends up with between 30 to 50% fewer homes that are built outside Montpelier and that blows away any efficiency residential efficiency standards. But, but in the last like decade. Most of the homes in the county have been all built outside of Montpelier. So if we can just focus on making it on really getting things built and inviting people in the Montpelier and then if we can do that. So if we can get the net zero homes built without having our own ordinance, then I think that's how we, that's how we went and that's how we get there. But for us to, to just adopt these for our own city of 7,000 people, I think would be would be a mistake. So I guess all I would propose is scratching any reference to any ordinances or codes, but everything else looks fine. What other people have to say about that. I hadn't thought about that but it the way john explains it makes sense. It would, if anybody else feels like they have the expertise to talk about that. What was your rationale in. I think it was you and me at working together right so, and I'm not asking you to like we're about john just just what what was the thought about the need for the ordinance and the strategies. So my, certainly my, my concern if you notice over in column, oh, I actually have some calm I've made some comments on these next ones that come up. Yeah, I've felt that the 2050 stuff hasn't been well thought out and hasn't been well debated and I think I think me act would probably disagree with john and that they want to be net zero and so therefore we should be doing more on that there. If we're going to be net zero, my complaint about this was actually I thought this was very weak implementation strategies there's no real regulatory changes to drive transition. So you know we want to be net zero with respect to these things and mostly it was. But what they're talking about doing is assisting an energy audits and public outreach to tell people how important it is to weather eyes. The two ordinances one is the energy labeling ordinance, which, you know, I'll, I will, I will say here in the planning context, I was not a fan of it I don't think it's going to be effective I don't think it's going to have. You know it's not a direct it's not having a direct impact and what I look at when I do things is to be deliberate about having a very direct effect and not going to say well other communities that adopted and energy ordinance, or labeling ordinance what it is is when you sell your home that you've got to go and reveal what the energy efficiency status of the home is in hopes that either the buyer or the seller will want to invest in energy efficiency either upon selling or upon buying that structure. And I feel there's better ways of getting to people it's it's not helping existing homeowners do weatherization which is where I would have targeted. So I mean I'll agree with john. The regulations are probably more important for the new structures that get built to make sure that they're energy efficient, although most of them already are. I would have preferred if I were writing the implementation strategy in this section I would be working on a program where we've got funds to try to help people do weatherization I think I would I would be attacking this issue with programs, not necessarily with the you remember we had the five boxes. You got plans and permits and programs and projects. I would not be attacking this with permits, as much as I would be attacking this through a program and I want to see a good program in the same way that we talk about the accessory dwelling unit program, where we take a pot of funds and we advertise and we find homeowners who are interested in putting in an accessory apartment and then we give them money to help subsidize they're doing that, you know and I think we could do a program for energy efficiency where you could go through and say hey, we will we're putting $50,000 a year into an energy efficiency fund. We will match every dollar that efficiency Vermont gives you we will match it locally with another dollar. And that way it'll help to defer the cost of people doing weatherization and I think that would be a strong way of helping people achieve this building efficiency initiative. It's not what they chose to do. So that was, I agree with john. I didn't want to get in here again this is what me act was looking at at doing. So they kind of kick the can a little bit down the road to say, we need to do a 2050 right now they the city is doing the 2030 net zero implementation plan so they're looking at the municipal government and they're developing a plan to have a consultant they're trying to make sure that this would be something to be done down the road. I don't know if that really helps but maybe that gives a little more information. Do we have any interest in changing it then away from a regulatory inclusion to a program that would require some funding. We have ideas for that. I guess I did put is our it's already in there creating like a weatherization funding program. We've got in there so it is it is in there I think that's the key. That's the biggest key to getting there is that that program will get you there rather than these two ordinances but because we do already have a building inspector we couldn't, we could enforce to a higher building code. If we wanted to because we already have the building inspector to do that. So it's already labeling ordinance we've it's already adopted so it really is. It said although it says adopting ordinances such as energy labeling that energy labeling ordinance was adopted a couple of weeks ago. So that would have to get amended. Tell us tell us more about the ordinance like what what process led to that being approved. Long story. I know it's been something the mayor has really worked hard at for a number of years through the energy committee and recently kind of led it through the adoption process. I think it was adopted probably a couple of weeks ago two three weeks ago, maybe before. So it really just looks at as we said it's energy labeling so when you sell your house you have to go through. And there are a bunch of requirements that you have to go through and do this energy. It's a it's a tabletop energy audit of your house. So you would go through and enter some some information about your house, and it would come up with an energy profile. So that you're required to provide that at closing and there has to be a signed thing and it's got to get recorded in the land records and that's the basics of it. I did not know that personally. Yeah, according to some statistics of other towns upwards of 30% of homeowners will invest in some kind of energy improvements that otherwise wouldn't be done according to the research. Because they have to disclose it to the seller and then so they're going to want to look more competitive. Yeah, so either the buyer wants to be more competitive, which doesn't really matter in our environment. Or the buyer might want the information and use it to make energy improvements to the house that they've just purchased. Okay, so that changes some thinking for me because it seems like the ship may have sailed I mean we can we still don't have to include it in the plan just because it's something already in existence but doesn't seem like it's going to hurt me thing, possibly to include it since it already exists. Well, what are the people then there's the question of the stretch codes which that would be a if we have that in the plan that would be something we're saying we're aspiring to change the building code. That's not something that's taken place right Mike. No, it has not taken place. I think in this one and then in if you look in like number nine where it says sticks such as the adoption of ordinances to require net zero standards. And, and then after that, develop an ordinance or codes to require buildings being built after a certain date to be net zero. So my proposal would just be to remove any, any reference to adopting any new building codes or building ordinances. What other people think, Stephanie, what do you think that sentiment I think the done makes a really good point that we kind of get lost in our little city sometimes and forget that we, we live within a county and within a larger area and the impact of someone buying five acres in Cabot and building a house is going to be a lot greater than house built a month earlier that's not perfectly net zero so I'm on board with that. I mean, it's an interesting tension because I mean if we, if we have this goal, then certain things have to happen. And if we're not requiring them to happen, then it makes that energy goal difficult. It's going to be more difficult, but it'd be easy to meet if we had no new homes built, then they would all be built to that standard. So, I still think it's a, it's a local goal it's not easy. And this doesn't make it easier but I do think that the more homes that we can get built the more we're really working towards the spirit of this. I think that we're, we are especially with new homes being built to the current residential building energy standard which I'm sure will only be increased across the state we're really talking about the margins. The impact there, I think is, again, not, not very big and I think that we tend to discount or overlook the cost of customizing and administering and building our own ordinance for the city. And what that means not only for the city administering it but for anyone trying to build in Montpelier to understand that they have to play by a series of different rules. So, this isn't to counter anything you're saying but my understanding is that Montpelier's building code is non standard already. Is that true? Like, like anyone building anything popular as of right now would still have to learn some special. So, our, so commercial we enforce the state rules. So the only difference that we have compared to other communities in the state is that we enforce the building codes on single family and two family houses as well. So. But the state ones. Okay. Yeah, we're just enforcing this the state codes. Okay. And, Mike, what municipalities in Vermont have a different building code with it's like like Burlington, I think. Does it have its own building code? I think, I think there are eight communities that have taken over the enforcement of building codes. So, you know, everybody else you've got to go to the state if you're a commercial or industrial building, you'd have to go to the state for a permit. Here in Montpelier in Williston and a couple other places, Burlington, you'd go get a local permit. Not all of them enforce residential codes. But we enforce the residential code. Now what sometimes people confuse is there's also a rental code. We don't enforce the rental code where Berry City does enforce minimum housing standards. So that's there's sometimes people will confuse that the minimum housing with the building codes. And so in strategy eight here where it references adopting ordinances such as dot dot dot the Vermont building energy stretch codes. I read that to mean that Montpelier would have a, you know, different building code than other municipalities. Does that mean something else? Yes, in this case this would mean something else. This would be layered on top of so we are not currently enforcing energy codes beyond what's in the building and life safety codes. So, our building inspector is not enforcing any of the, any of those various energy codes. But we could and we could adopt the stretch code which is a higher standard and enforce that as a requirement above and beyond. Are there other municipalities doing that? I don't, I don't know that it's possible there might be but I don't know of any. Okay, so I think, I mean, I think that's some important context there so that we, that goes to John's point, I think that where we would be making it uniquely more difficult for to build a Montpelier. What do other people think? I guess I feel like I agree. I wouldn't, it's, yeah, it would be too easy. I think Stephanie's Cabot example is a good idea would be too easy to just live outside the city, which wouldn't get us what we want. Okay. But I do feel a little out of my, I do feel a little bit in deep, deep water in terms of my understanding. I'm with you. I'm catching up on building code related background info. If we, if we want to remove this, is there a sentiment that we should at least inform me act about it to see if they want to provide us some further feedback. I definitely don't want to see a situation in which we're, you know, battling it out with me act in front of the city council later discussion. Well, the discussion about the, the adopting the codes. And, you know, that I think some of the, the arguments for it are, you know, they can, you can try to show that over a long period of time, some of these things may come back and have value over time. And again, it gets against my point is not that we shouldn't like I support the goal of us trying to get build net zero buildings. It's the, it's just the creating the bureaucracy around it. It's not, it's not helpful. And I don't, I think it's like not only for this personally, I feel like for this plan, and what we should be commuting communicating as the city is that we are welcoming people here and we are going to work together to build homes for, you know, for new households to come to the city and that's really what we should be emphasizing and we are going to be a net zero community and we are going to have all these other amazing things but I think like we very easily water down the, you know, we want X many more houses in Montpelier over the next 10 years but we're also going to have, you know, the highest energy standards for preservation standards. A lot of these other things that then all of a sudden it just becomes pretty exclusionary in terms of, you know, who could potentially build a home here. And I think you could we could still accomplish these things, especially with a lot of federal dollars coming and we could help people leverage that to build those things but but we don't need to again create a lot of red taped for us to be able to do that. Okay, so is anyone opposed to us removing and then and and I'll ask john in a second that to specify which which areas he's talking about that in general is anyone opposed to removing some of the regulatory ordinance requirements in here. And then we'll let me act now, we'll ask Mike to, and then we'll and ask Mike to forward that along. Does anybody post that generally. I'm not. Okay, Stephanie already said she wasn't. And, and I'm not. So, okay. So, so john, will you point out the specific parts we should delete here. I think I got the first one. I think I took care of number eight okay and you just struck that for nine. That's fine. Hey, 10 may have to just go out there. Can we can we figure out a way to rephrase that as an incentive. Instead of removing it. For one thing is the only strategy that's under goal seven. So that one is looking specifically at new residential and commercial building so I think this goes back to the question of. And I think the best analogy I can, I can, I can give is or best saying would be you know don't let the, you know the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I think sometimes, you know, in striving to be net zero. We actually end up blocking being good so you know do we want to be a community of 10,000 people who is 90% net zero or do we want to be a community of 7,000 people that is net zero, and which one is better. And they're looking at in number 10 is the fact that all new buildings if we're going to be net zero by 2050 then we've got to start making new buildings meet our net zero requirements. And that was why they wanted to get an ordinance in to start moving in that direction. I think they were talking about developing an ordinance and phasing it in but I think that doesn't change john's concern of of administrative overhead and other red tape. And again maybe the state ends up getting there at some point, or, you know, they can leverage some kind of funding to push new development to incentivize it to reach those higher standards. Getting using the the carrot or not, not having a month clear specific stick I guess is like us to avoid. Yeah, I mean I will say that the energy committee did have a number of initiatives that kind of, which we already had cut out of here which talked about, you know, well we need to get higher efficient, you know fuel efficiency standards in our vehicles so we should, be doing things to make more efficient vehicles and I think there are a number of times are just things that are not within our ability to do. And maybe in this case this is something we do have the ability to do but the question is whether it's advisable to do. You know maybe sometimes we do need to wait for the state to do their job and maybe sometimes we do need to wait. You know and I think me act is probably looking at that. No we should be leading the way. And not waiting for the state we should be leading the state to doing these things. So this plan is only going to take us to 2030 I think that's like a, you know, something to keep in mind here so with this. This goes to the 2050 goal, which is ambitious, but you know, this plan is not bringing us to 2050. I'm just thinking of like if we could have, I'm in favor of having that goal in the city plan and I'm in favor of having obviously we need a strategy to go with it. One that can be more like a carrot or at least neutral that kind of brings us to 2030 and sets us up for the 2050 goal. One carrot I could put in could be just, you know, to talk about in here. We could tie our tax stabilization policy and most commercial and industrial buildings that come unless they're in the TIF district where they're not eligible for tax stabilization. A majority of the projects that come in that are commercial and industrial go to this city council for tax stabilization and that could probably be a very good. You know, just incentive to go through and say, you know, to peg your amount of tax stabilization you are entitled to, to the degree to which you achieve the net zero, you know, whether it's by percentage or by number of years so I could certainly add this to number eight. Basically just add reference to new buildings and number eight. Yeah, existing private structures. So I added new and existing. I'm like the issues. Oh, how about when we go back to inform me act of what we're considering we could ask for and if they will be willing to come up with an incentive based strategy. And I think that's a collaborative approach that maybe can in the long run, avoid tension over this. What's the planning commission think of that. Yeah, it seems like it's that's sort of what this does in my mind. But yeah, I think also communicating like we are supporting all of the goals and a lot of these very ambitious strategies so hopefully this isn't seen as as too much of a breaker departure. And that we just have a lot of other goals and considerations. But to go along with all of these things I think is very supportive of what they've put forward and it's not, you know, this has been going on for about a decade so it's not out of the blue. So is that okay Mike can you can you let them know, like, right away and ask for, hopefully a turnaround within a month, or at least a response. Yeah, well I think what I'll do is wait. I mean we've got this one and then we were going to touch up the rest of the energy plan chapter, those last two sections. So if we have that so they can kind of get to see the whole of what we've put together. If we want to wait just a couple more weeks we can send them the whole thing. Okay. If you're okay with that. Yeah, yeah, my only concern is when we when we table things for a while then we go back to them we're not fresh anymore and then, you know, time gets wasted a little bit. That seems fine we just need to note that as far as the chapter goes we're just it's just the aspirations and goals and strategies sections of the chapter that we haven't reviewed. And for the strategies themselves here that it's strategy number 10 that we're still considering. We're out of time so did. So, so obviously we didn't finish the strategies yet. So, yeah, like, like you're saying that you want us to finish this next meeting and then you'll go to me act. Yeah, I think it would be better for us to have something. You know I think you should feel comfortable. Every all of the various committees that worked on their chapters worked within a silo and worked within a, you know, an individual set of goals. You guys are the first I've got to run but see you guys. All right, you guys were the first ones to kind of take a look at how things may compete with each other. So, it's perfectly fine for you guys to be going in and saying hey in order for us to continue to advance what we want for for housing. We need to adjust and roll back a little bit on the energy plan and then that's going to go to public comment that's going to go to comment from the me act. And that's going to eventually go to city council and city council can make their changes and they may put put the weight back in and think that we can have our our cake and eat it to. And I think that's it's just, you guys have the tough job of making that first cut to go through and say you know what I think this is too much and I don't think we can. I don't think we can be both net zero by 2050 and accomplish our housing goals at the same time. We should be more energy efficient and as energy efficient as we can. But right now our priority is building housing. And if that housing is not net zero, that's okay. We want it to be energy efficient, but it doesn't have to be net zero. And I think that's just the statement, and the public will have to respond to that and the city council and me act will have to respond to that. Okay, well, let's, let's, let's go with, I mean, I would still like to involve me act before I get city council I'd like to avoid agreed. I don't want any surprises and I don't want any battles that are easily avoided so. So let's go with that plan we'll pick this up net at the next meeting, both of these things. We're going to have some language 1111 and 12 for anyone who was looking at those was that big a deal. Those are the two housing ones they're just grouped into reducing vehicle miles traveled and fuel switching. Basically, how do we get electric cars so people can review those for next time. Yeah. So with that, we know we need to pick up next time. We'll pick up the, the natural resources changes potentially next time. And do we have a motion to adjourn. We have a second. We have a motion from Stephanie wasn't and second from Aaron. Okay, those in favor of a journey say hi. Hi. See you in two weeks. Thanks. Thanks everybody.