 And yes, we're now recording. Great, thanks, Stephanie. So, maybe just to start it will give Lori a chance to introduce yourself as our other new member to you. Hi, I'm Lori Goldner. I'm a physicist who spent my first 17 years at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, and now I'm at UMass. Been in Amherst 14 years now. And my interest in this is through I have an interest in science policy generally and in social justice. And this seemed like a really good opportunity to serve on this panel committee. Great, wonderful. Well, we're very happy to have you and to have a full committee for the first time in a while. So that's exciting. Okay, we'll get started first with minutes. So, Lori for your benefit. We have each install as well I don't think I explained this last time. Each week we rotate who takes the minutes. They don't have to be super detailed is just, you know, to get a summary of what we discussed and what you know Stephanie also takes notes and helps to fill in any gaps you know so. So we get a full picture of the meeting. We're trying to review them as we're trying to review them ahead of time so that when we come to the meeting we can just vote on them. Typically if you've missed the meeting, you have sustained from voting on the minutes. So, at the beginning set the next minute recorder which Vasu has unbeknownst to himself taken over lead as organizing. So, the suit tell me who the next person is. It's it's doing so it's on the meeting minutes it's in that same order of committee members listed there. Okay, great. So Dwayne you're on time. Yep, I'll get myself. Great. Okay, well with that we can, as long as everybody's had a chance to look at the minute that was attending in attendance last time. Somebody can motion to accept them. Or make any comments of edits that they want to make. And then I'll get started. I'm sorry, is this your first person and I'm sorry, Lori first, and then Andre. I wasn't there but I noticed I'm listed as minute taker. I think that's not supposed to say minute taker. No it is supposed to say minute taker. It is. Yeah, that's obviously did it. If you're present or you're not, if there's an X in your column in the present column and you're there and if it's empty then your or blank then you're not. I wasn't looking at the title. I was looking at that as being absent. So I apologize. I just corrected it. Thanks. Great. So, and Don was the mentor last time. Okay. So I'll come in together. Don, I'm not here yet. I'm going to start. I don't want to disparage Don's notes, but I do like a little more detail than we discussed this topic, just to remember. I found, my mind went blank when I was reading the minutes. I know we did, but what did we say? So not every word that everybody says, but more my preference. Yes, Wayne. I just want another slight typo I would suspect. Is it the year is 2022? Yep. I didn't catch that. Sorry. Thank you. Don. Okay. Any other comments or edits? Well, for the life of me, I'm just editing the old minutes to start the new minutes. I can't figure out how to put X's in these boxes, but I guess. I can take care. Don't worry about it, Dwayne. I can do that. Anything that you read blank, I'll. Okay. I don't want to. Miss anything here. Okay, go ahead. Move to accept the minutes. I second. Okay. By voice vote. In no particular order. D. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Selman. Yes. Rose. Yes. Goldner. I've seen. Raghavan. Yes. Breaker. Yes. Draker. Yes. And roof. Oh, your association. Thank you. All right. The minutes are approved. Great. Okay. So next agenda item here. Public comment. Do we have any public? We do not have any public. Okay. So we can skip that for now and move on to staff updates. So my apologies because I am really scattered today. So just a few things. I mean, nothing earth shattering has sort of happened in the last week in terms of from our last meeting that I reported out on the working group, the solar bylaw working group is still kind of not been officially, I haven't been officially given the go ahead. So, but I anticipate that will be very, very, very soon. I'll probably check in with the town manager tomorrow. So there's that piece. And then as far as the the rental disclosure bylaw effort, mostly we've been still, Steve has been really great about working with the RMI folks to put a database together of information on rental properties. And so just trying to get that, it's one of those things that it sounds like a simple request when you ask it. But as I think Steve is experiencing too, it's just to get to the level of detail that we're trying to get to really requires a bit of sifting through the information and trying to get it accurate. So thank you so much, Steve, for all you're doing behind the scenes on that piece. And let's see, I'm trying to think of what else? The solar landfill project is pretty nearly starting to wrap up, which is super exciting. We are at the point where we are, they're gonna be putting up fencing within the next month or so. The fencing also includes fencing on the South landfill. So because of the wildlife habitat, because that was part of the conservation restriction was a requirement that we put a fence on the South landfill. So that will be happening in a few, I would say three weeks to a month or so probably. So there will be a fence going up there. And those are kinds of the things that I've been working on for the past week or so to in two weeks, other things too, but mostly just kind of a lot of balls up in the air right now. So if someone has a specific request or update you want, please feel free to ask. I'm wondering if there's any update on the project with some family outreach? That's the one that I just said we're working on the data request. Oh. So getting that data. Data. We still haven't signed that contract. There were things we had to iron out on our end and that I fully expect by the end of this week we'll get that sort of finalized. So yeah, I don't know why these, and I don't know if it's just because of the nature of being somewhat virtual still for the most part. Everything seems to be taking much longer in terms of the contracts with the state. I don't know why. Any other questions for Stephanie? Okay, so I think I wrote this in the email I sent everybody, but now that we have a council liaison I want to give Anna an opportunity if she has anything to bring to the attention of the group to do that now. So Anna, if you can come off mute. I can, yeah, sorry. Hi everybody, I am driving actually after this Stephanie, I'm gonna ask you to put me in the audience because by our rules of procedure I'm supposed to sit with the audience. Sorry, I read that this morning. So couple updates and I'm really curious about what you were just talking about with the rental thing. So I might follow up a little bit more with I think is it Steve and Andrew who are working on, Andrew, Andrew, sorry, Andrew who are working on that because we on Monday had a council meeting where we looked at for the first time a draft of a rental registration bylaw. And so some of the components of the bylaw include what information we are gathering as part of the rental registration process. So I had requested some ads to that. To give you an idea of the process we just looked at it for the first time on Monday and it was referred to CRC, Community Resources Committee and they deal with all bylaws that have to do with zoning and planning. So it's gonna be there for a while because it was really, I mean, it's a long document and it's really drafty right now. So I would say if you are interested in, basically, sorry, I'm gathering my thoughts here. Basically, I think that there's a lot of opportunity for getting some of the information that would help you with the rental sustainability question in that bylaw. So I think it can help you gather the data. So I'm happy to work with whoever wants to work with me on that and look at what should be added when people are registering. I do know that what they're trying to do the biggest change is that they're trying to make it so that landlords can't self register so that they have to have a registration every year. So that gives us a lot more opportunity to gather that data consistently and with regularity. That's the same thing. So that's the one. Are there any questions on that before I go to the other? And I can't see, so just start talking. Anna, I wanted to just check. Did you say that it's not only revisiting the form, but also the bylaw itself? Correct. So it's revisiting the bylaw. It's the rental registration bylaw itself. It's rewriting the whole thing. It's actually proposing to resend the current one and include this new draft. So it's gonna be a long process. So I'd rather you all get in right now and that way you're in there versus having a much more finished draft and then having to try to fight for edits. At least that's my thought. I mean, if you all are like, we don't want a part of this, then that's fine, but I think that from how I'm understanding how things are working, it might make the most sense for, you're welcome to reach out directly, but also please keep me in the loop because I can advocate. And so I'm happy to do that. So just let me know if you look through it, let me know. Okay, so it's because we have a lot of information. A lawyer advised us about what kinds of things we might be able to include in the bylaw and we should be considering those now. We thought that we do research first, but if it's already being worked on, this might be the time. So when you say a bylaw, what is the bylaw that you're considering? What is it intended to do? That was the bylaw we were talking about, I believe. To register rental, to register rental rentals. Dave, is that right? Yes, I think some of the things that we thought might be a nice addition to the bylaw would be energy reporting of rental units. And that's still kind of an idea that we're batting around. And I guess we could work on that and maybe that could get into this round of revisions. The idea would be that rental properties under the bylaw would be required to report some aspect of the building's energy score. So it's not actual energy use of the tenants, but it's a rating of the building. There's a couple of different standards that could be used. But honestly, we haven't done the homework yet to really know which one we'd want to propose and what the costs would be and the other logistical factors. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not, Stephanie has a... I'm sorry, I can't see hands, I apologize. No worries. I just wanted to say too, and for clarification, that this effort that we're working on right now is basically has been a data gathering effort in terms of the grant that we have, the proposal that we have. So we weren't even sort of getting to the point of whether we were going to try to create a policy or a bylaw, like that really, I might have called it that in the beginning only because that's just what flowed out of my mouth at the moment, but I really think, you know, they might be, I think there's some shades of gray, I think what they're working on though and what this group has been working on would be something that you could incorporate, definitely could incorporate into the rental registration bylaw, if that's what you're working on right now, these are things that could help it, but they were a little bit separate. What we were specifically looking for was a building disclosure, energy efficiency disclosure bylaw. That's a little bit different. Yeah. So where they started with the draft bylaw was that they had apartments, so this isn't just apartment buildings, this is like renting a room out in your house or maybe that's that example, but rental houses too, right? And so they had included that they wanted to know a method of heating and then what the heating bill was. And so I had asked them to say method of heating, electricity cost, because as you get into electric heating, you're not gonna have a gas bill. So there were some edits that I knew my very limited knowledge was able to kind of suggest some modifications there. And so hopefully that they will include some of those, but I think what would be really helpful is if you could look at it and say, this is what would be good for us to know in terms of getting that data, because I think you're right, it sounds like this will just be helpful for you in data gathering. And now is the time to kind of get that in if it's doable. So I'm happy to send the draft they sent, but it sounds like it's gonna undergo really serious changes. So I can kind of keep you appraised if that's the best mode. And then feel free to go through me or go directly with CRC. Mandy Johannicky is chairing that committee. I think at least Stephanie, Steve and I should see it as it is now. Oh yeah, and it's in our packet. You can look at it now. I can email it to you, but it's also in the council packet from Monday. I submitted four pages of comments on it. So I know that there's gonna be a lot of changes to it. I don't want you to go through the whole thing and then have a time wasted. So yeah, I just need it now, but yeah, just to glance at it know that it's gonna change a lot. Yeah. Is there any other questions on the rental registration one? Well, just to wrap it up. So it sounds like either you, Anna or Stephanie can pull the draft. Stephanie will pull the draft and send it around with the caveat that it's very drafty and there's a lot of comments already. I think it'd be helpful to maybe think through what would be the best process because you mentioned, Anna, that it would be helpful for us to incorporate feedback now versus later. And so it could be something very easy. Like here's a list of what we want, put it in, or it could be a longer process. So I think we need to kind of gauge that before we figure out how we stay involved in this. So I'd like to bring that back up maybe at the next time, just to make sure we don't lose track of it. And for clarification, do you want me to send that to the whole committee, to everybody in the ECAC or just to Steve, Andrew? You would send it to everybody, I guess. Okay. It's a thrilling read. Okay, thanks. So the second by-law, because these are the fun things in my life, the second by-law is the demolition delay by-law. And this is coming from, apparently it's been years in the making. It will also be, it was referred, it will also be going to CRC. And basically this is a by-law that forces is a strong word, but forces buildings to go through hearings before they're historic. Buildings over 50 years old, which count as historic apparently, to undergo a hearing process before renovation or demolition can happen to historic attributes of the building. So this is another one that based on a conversation I had today should also see significant changes as it goes through CRC. But to give you an example, it's the reason why the old Bertucci's building that's now Garcia's, the demolition delay by-law is why that building is still standing because it's over 50 years old and was determined they had them wait for a year, I believe. I might be, I mean, definitely please, definitely please correct me if I'm wrong, but they had to wait before they could demolish it. And in that time, they are encouraged to either find a buyer for buildings or things like that. My biases are showing, I have some significant concerns about this by-law. But what I think, where I think there are implications is that there's nothing in the by-law asking the question of fossil fuel implications of leaving a building standing versus demo and rebuilding something in its place. So I don't know how to craft language around that. And it's not something that I'm asking you to necessarily do, but what I asked CRC to include was language about what are the current energy sources, uses, things like that. If you have advice on what would be helpful in terms of capturing an understanding of emissions for an old building in order to evaluate whether or not it is a more sustainable option to demolish it and rebuild versus leave it standing knowing that there might be limited retrofit options. If you could give me some guidance on how to ask that question, I would appreciate that. Or if you want to read the by-law yourself and go straight to CRC, also fully have my encouragement to do that. But I want to kind of bring your voices up as much as possible. And for whatever reason, they've given me a megaphone. So I'm happy to use that if it's helpful. Questions. Now, Jesse. I'd be happy to take a look at that one because that's in my wheelhouse, I would say, loosely. Awesome. And what would be the flow there would be, you'd send it to all of us and I would make a recommendation. I would kind of create some language to present to this group and the group would say, yeah, let's add something like that and then give it back to you. That could be fine. If you want to bypass me, you can also send it straight to Mandy Jo. And I mean, I would ask that you CC me just so I know that it went, if that's what you do. But either sending it straight to her or sending it to me to bring to her, either is fine. I'm not on CRC, not one of my committee assignments. So either way, it's going to be Mandy Jo. Okay. Yeah. And then similarly, any questions you have about it, right? So like it might not, if you read the by-law, which is also in Monday's pocket, if you're looking for it, if you read it and you don't understand something or you think that you just have general questions, let me know and I can ask this pair as well. Does the, it is included in the by-law, does it say who wrote it and where it came from? I can tell you that it was a multi-year process from the historic commission working with town planners. Okay. That's, yeah, yeah. It doesn't say individually. I can tell you these are on the historic commission, but yeah. I know. Thank you. Yeah, Stella. Does it include kind of tree preservation and vegetation management or is that run separately through separate process? That's run separately. Yeah. I believe that's a separate process. Stephanie, do you know? Yeah. I believe it's a separate process because this is only for buildings. Trees on historic grounds, I believe would go through the tree ward and then the shade tree committee. Interesting. Because I would imagine, and I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it's kind of for the benefit of anybody watching the recording, the placement of the trees obviously influences the energy consumption of the building. So I can imagine that that would factor into the demolition considerations. And as far as the process goes, sometimes what will happen is if there's a relevant issue, if it does go before the shade, like it depends if it's a public shade tree, then it would go before the public shade tree committee. If not, it might be part of the historic process, I'm not sure, but what would happen is they might ask for advice, review from another committee to then guide. So even if it isn't part of the process, they may look to another committee to help. So if you had some knowledge and you wanted to weigh in, you certainly can. Okay. Yes, really. I mean, my understanding is that, and I could be totally wrong here that the shade tree committee more is like, not as concerned with the tree building interaction. Is that true? Or are they thinking also? They're concerned with public shade trees and preservation of public shade trees. Yeah, I'd certainly be happy to weigh in with respect to the kind of positioning and energy savings of the tree on the building. Okay, great. Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, Anna. That's really helpful. So Stephanie, if you wouldn't mind just pulling, since you're already going in there, pulling both those bylaw drafts. Yeah, I'll get them both. Thinning them out to everybody. Steve and Andra can take a look at the one on the rental registration and Jesse and Stella can look at the other one. And then we'll figure out what we want to do after that. I think that's it for mine. If something else comes up, I will email you, Laura, that I appreciate the audience and let me know as usual. Let me know if there's anything I can champion for y'all. Okay, thanks, Anna. Thank you. Okay, great. So let's move on to ECAC member updates. Yeah, it's Wayne. Just as a general announcement, I'm happy to inform everybody and invite everyone to UMass's energy transition symposium on campus on May 3rd in the student union. I believe, yeah, split between the campus center and the student union. It's primarily an opportunity for the campus to bring together primarily through two poster sessions, all the clean energy-oriented research, student research particularly, on campus across disciplines. So it'll be very inter or multidisciplinary. Also, please do say that EEA, Massachusetts Energy Environmental Affairs Secretary, Kathleen Theod wrote. Theod. Dear Herides. Dear Herides, I got to practice at home before I shake hands with her. We'll be providing keynote comments for remarks around 12.45. And then also at the end of the day, more like three o'clock, I think it is, there will be a presentation on the, what the campus itself is thinking about and moving forward with regard to its own carbon mitigation plan. I've alluded to that in the past. It's still not under, it's still under wraps and will remain that way for still for some while, but by come May, the anticipation is that there will be more of a public announcement, but there'll be an opportunity to hear more about it in a presentation at about three o'clock. I think I did send everybody an email on this today, along with other people as an invitation, but it'd be great to bring people in, not just from the campus, but from outside the campus and the community. Great, thanks, Dwayne. Any other ECAC member updates? Yes, Steve. I guess I can report, I did meet with Billy Spitzer of the Hitchcock Center last week and we had a great conversation. Nothing definitive has happened or is coming out of this yet in terms of community education. Ideas are still germinating and honestly, I haven't done much since I've spoken with them. I have some notes of things that I need to get back onto. So still thinking about it, but not a lot of action on my part, at least on that front. And then second thing as Stephanie already noted, I just received this data set from the RMI folks. They pulled together all kinds of data on rental properties in Amherst from the permitting system and town staff was really great to combine data from two different universes. One is the permitting system, which is the annual permit for the rental permits, and then from property cards. And so the property cards are providing us information with the year built on buildings and the heating source and the fuel type among other things. So I'm going through trying to make sense of that, make sure there's not too many duplicates or omissions. And then the RMI folks will help us analyze that. And the goal here was to get a sense of what's the range of building ages in town and styles of construction and heating sources and all of that. And that's gonna then help us figure out how we can improve energy efficiency for the benefit of renters with some kind of a strategy. But this will be the first step to help us understand what the landscape is as far as rental buildings go. So it's a great data set. That's really, really fun to look into it, but there's still some quirks we have to understand before we can analyze it. Great, that sounds exciting. Is there a timeframe on that? I'm sorry, Stephanie, you already said this, are you? I'm hoping to get my review of it done in the next couple of days. And then I think the RMI people might work on it a little bit more. And then just to get the data set cleaned, then I don't know how long it would take them to do sort of a housing stock analysis. That may take some weeks, perhaps longer. I don't know what their schedule's like. Great. Yeah, Lori. Informational question, since I'm trying to get caught up on all the stuff. Who is RMI? RMI was formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. And we've been working with them for a couple of years now. And there's a RMI is supporting a coach, which is a woman from... Where's Cora from? Brookline. Brookline. Brookline, thank you. From Brookline, she has worked as an activist in her town. And one of the things RMI has been doing is helping to sort of advocate for fossil fuel-free buildings. New building construction would not have fossil fuel connections. That's one of their aspects. We've been working for a year or so now on this idea of improving rental building efficiency in town for the benefit of the renters. And so we've been working with the Cora, this woman from Brookline, and she's been helping us. We've looked at other communities that have done some similar things in other states. I don't know that there's any community that has such a thing in Massachusetts quite yet, at least what we're thinking of. So we're working on that. And we also, as Stephanie mentioned, we have gotten the grant that we're gonna do some outreach and connection with folks in rental units. And so that is also, that's the contract that needs to be finalized and the network will go forward. And there'll probably be some surveying of people that live in rental housing to find out what their interests and needs and desires are. And then we'll put that in a magic box and come out with a solution. Mm-hmm. If I can help with any of that, let me know. That's all very interesting to me. Okay, great, good, thank you. Okay. Yeah, and hopefully that will be an outcome of our retreat is to get everybody figured out what things they're interested in working on. All right, so I think next up, a review of the Ithaca presentation. I know I was able to join for most of it and I don't know if anybody else was able to join, but it's like Lori was and Vasu, I remember so I saw your name on there. Yeah, Andra, I don't know if you wanna give a little summary of the event, you had a great turnout. Yeah, it was a really great turnout and we had people from all over will be following up shortly, sending out their recording and I would love to hear other people's feedback about it. Clearly there's some different laws in New York allowing them to do some things that we are not able to do at the municipal level, but they're relying on a lot of similar kinds of programs that the state will help fund and using this public-private partnership to make it happen. It's just a humongous enterprise that they're venturing to do and it clearly is taking almost a full time coordinator on staff. I believe they have two different sustainability coordinators when it's doing everything else and Louise is doing this. And then on top of that, they have the block power, the company coordinating all the details and running all of the programming, arranging for all the contractors and really working closely with the community. They emphasized many times how important building the trust is because it can't be done otherwise. And it can't be really perfectionist about it. You have to go at this retrofitting as a catch people exactly where they are and grab those who are ready first and then get the momentum going so that more people want to do it. So, but they're trying to do it in eight years. So, pretty awesome. I actually missed a lot of the detail and haven't had a chance to watch the recording yet. So I would love to hear other people's additions. I could. Are you muted? Am I muted? Laura's muted. No, I was muted, sorry. I didn't know if Jesse was raising his hand or if he put it back down. Okay, Lori, go ahead. Yeah, I could just add a few things to that. I think one of the things that struck me is how much more is necessary beyond the carp, for example, that that's just an outline and there's so much more beyond it. But the other thing I think is worth mentioning is that Ithaca is a much larger town with a much larger permanent, you know, population and a much larger tax base. So in some ways, it seems to me that if we're going to do something on that scale, it might be worthwhile bringing in other municipalities in the area to make a bigger, you know, to be able to have the resources to do what they did not do what they're doing. I don't see that we would have the resources to do the sort of thing that they're pulling together by ourselves. That's my impression anyway. Yeah, fast too. Yeah, I completely agree with you there, Lori. I don't think we should try to match or emulate their model. I think it works for them because of their size. I like the aspect where block power is going to be the central contact for finance, the government, the community, I think that, you know, enables the committee to work, focus on, you know, just the portion of the strategy, the overall strategy and block power is really doing the tactical work. I think that that is beneficial. You have a private equity who's funding the whole thing. I mean, that was an interesting leasing option that they put forward as well. So I don't necessarily think that we should follow that model, but whatever works in a much smaller town and, you know, the CCA is a perfect example where maybe there is a potential where we can work with Northampton or other towns to, you know, come up with a similar plan for Western Mass. Yeah, I thought that the points that Andra made about, you know, being flexible, not trying to get the perfect solution. I think sometimes we're guilty of that, like trying to find the absolute perfect solution and not, and as a result, not getting things done. So I thought that was good advice. I also really liked the block power example because I think it is an example of, and I think that that's an example of this, right? Like, ideally, right? Everybody would own their own heat pump and, but that just made, that's not going to be feasible. So like, we need to be open to different models of funding and supporting and, you know, moving forward, some of these things. I thought it was really crazy that Ithaca is a 70% rental rate. That is a lot of rentals. And, you know, a lot of, they were talking about how a lot of their rentals are owned by people that don't even live in the country. And so they have some unique challenges there. But I left it inspired by the idea of like thinking outside the box. And I think we are capable of doing that. We just need to like have a little gumption, I think, or I don't know what the right word is, but so that was my, those are my takeaways. Yeah, I think we just have to start somewhere, right? Yeah. They're going for it. I think we should. Yeah, definitely. Yes, Stephanie. So, and I mean, again, it's just being reviewed and I have no idea what would fly and what won't, but in terms of the ARPA funding, I did request that we have some kind of a program to try to do outreach to, especially low income residences, but residences in general for incentive funding towards key pump installations, sort of something that was kind of, I was thinking about that when he was talking about all the work that they're doing and feeling like that was like a step. And I loved what he said, just to sort of reiterate what was said earlier, but just that, don't make perfection be the enemy of the good, like it's really, it speaks to a lot of what we do honestly. And I think this is sort of a philosophy. I was appreciating him saying it out loud because I really feel like a lot of the times that's how I feel about the work we do, or at least the work that I've done over the years in town is like, we try to do as much as we can with the people that are really on board and we hope that other people are inspired to get on board and that that's how we build the momentum. But I thought it was really great and I really appreciate all the work you all did to pull it together. Definitely. Yeah, it's Wayne and then Laurie. Sorry, I think Laurie had her hand up first, but she's muted. I've already had my say on this issue, so go ahead, I'll speak after you. Okay, and I speak from someone who registered but could not, ended up not being able to make it. So I look forward to the summary and the recording it sounds like, Andrew you're gonna provide because it sounds like it's really important. I guess my one question I have is, I completely agree with the comment, I think Basu made about block power bringing and Ithaca bringing some new ideas with regard to funding and so forth. I'm also wondering whether there was any talk in the presentation about new technology approaches and I don't mean necessarily things other than heat pumps and so forth, but I'm thinking more in terms of, I mean, they are block power. So I'm wondering if there's any discussion about taking a whole block by itself and converting a block at a time as opposed to going house by house by house and trying to do more community oriented heating through district heating and sharing equipment. So everybody doesn't have to make the change over themselves and go through the whole financing process but having entities that might provide heat through more community wide, could be small, could be large but community oriented heating systems. They say anything about that? They did talk a bit about, I mean, they did talk about some data. I think they provide some, I'm gonna get this wrong. I think they do provide some data analysis and data support that is more innovative and they do provide an innovative financing model. So it reminded me of like leasing solar basically like you would lease the heat pump, they would pay the upfront cost for the heat pump and charge you a monthly fee that would, but they have external funding as well from different foundations and stuff. So I think they use that to make sure that the fee they're charging you is equivalent to the energy savings that you're getting so that it's not actually additional money out of your pocket or a very small amount if they can't do it exactly, right? So that I thought was pretty cool but there was something about the data. That's who it is. You might know this better. Yeah, I mean, it's like the internet of things, right? So every house that has retrofits will be connected to this one database where they can analyze and figure out how efficient it is. And from a technology standpoint, I mean, really it's only data from an IoT internet of things standpoint but nothing around how we can make or purchase more efficient heat pumps, for example. No conversation around that. Yeah, Stella and then Laurie. I unfortunately wasn't able to make it because it was a bedtime, but I do plan to watch the recording but in the meantime, I was wondering whether they're doing anything about shutting down streets or making any like pedestrian only or how they're addressing the transport end because it feels to me right now, like in Amherst, this is based on conversations on the parents mailing list, conversations with undergrads. There's a little bit of a unique moment with respect to like pedestrian safety, obviously with the recent death and then the recent like severe injury and just I bike all the time with my a two year old and it's like getting increasingly scary. And I feel like like we're in a moment, I just be curious how Ithaca is addressing that. The term like pedestrian dignity came up in a course recently, like people are definitely talking about that. And I feel like now is a moment where there could be some momentum that I wonder if there's lessons from Ithaca. I wonder if this, if like ECAC has a role to play. So that's something I'm curious about right now. I can answer some of that in the case of Ithaca, they've been on top of the, I mean, they've been really working at this green stuff for many years. You wouldn't believe how their trash collection works and they're recycling and that sort of thing but their whole downtown area has been blocked off for cars from ever forever. They have an enormous downtown walking mall and the cars all go around the downtown area and there's buses everywhere. So they're already set up pretty well because they have two colleges on either side of town, sort of similar than we do, but much bigger. They have pretty good mass transit and walking areas already set aside. So that didn't come up at this discussion at all, I think. Yeah, no, this was focused on the heat pump program, but that's a really good point Stella and something we could add in to the retreat discussion because we have talked about, I mean, transportation was one key sector in our carp and we talked about like, how do we reduce, it's not just about electrifying everything, it's about reducing demand and making things walkable and bikeable. And so yeah, let's put up maybe a pin in that to bring back up during our retreat process. I think the retreat sounds like a good place for that. It feels in activist communities, I've been a part of, there's this phrase, moment of the whirlwind and it feels like a little bit of a moment of the whirlwind right now with respect to transport, even though it may not be like where the energy is here right now. That sounds great. Any other thoughts on the Ithaca presentation? Yeah, so if I can add the other couple of things I wanted to add, the one couple of concerns I had is that block power is not a nonprofit, right? So I have to ask, I actually asked this as a question, I guess they didn't have time to get to them, but I was wondering, what, who else works in that space? Who else works in the same competitive space as block power? They seem like a really interesting company and we should be talking to firms like that because they're the ones that know how to actually do this, right? We know what we wanna do, but they know how to do it. So who else works in that space and who on this committee is familiar with those companies if they exist? And then also, let's see what was the other question I had here of, oh yeah, what happens at the end of that? They were talking about these 15 year leases they have and I was wondering, what happens at the end of those 15 year leases to the equipment? It wasn't clear to me from what they were saying. I assume that it just goes to the homeowner and at that point it probably needs replacing too. So they're probably looking at another 15 year lease or what happens? And also, I'm wondering what is the rental rate in this town? I can't believe it's that much lower than Nethicus. Because we do have- 50% of our housing is rental. Yeah, so it's pretty high too. Did you say about 55% under? Maybe, yeah. That's my recollection, yeah. Something like that. Yeah, but I feel like we always say we're the highest. And then I hear 70 and I'm like, oh no. University, it's the par for the course. Yeah, good questions. Okay, yeah. Well, Andra will look forward to getting the recordings from that. And again, I think, you know, it was good timing for us to have a bit of a retreat and talk through what we could do on this topic beyond what we're already doing. The other point that was raised, a question that was asked was whether, I had to cut off in the middle of the questions because of bedtime too, but there was a question about whether they do schools and that actually was how they started, right? Was with schools and some other larger churches or places of worship. And so that got me thinking like, oh, well, that would be an interesting thing to think about. But yeah, so, okay, great. Well, thank you again. Oh yeah, Jesse, go ahead. I just want to jump piggyback on that. We recently did some work for a town on converting buildings to net zero and they started with municipal buildings downtown. And one of the pieces of feedback that I heard was they wish they had started with the schools. I think there's a lot more constituency and there's a lot more energy. There's a lot more engagement. There's much more use, utilization of those buildings. And so school buildings are really ripe for this work. Great, I think that's a good segue to our next topic anyway. Any last minute points on this? Yeah, Vasu. Yeah, one other thing that was brought up was around the rental population because it was so high the question was raised around whether the renters would have to move out during the installation process. And so Block Power said that they could get the installation done with them a couple of days without having the renters move out. Just they'll just be going in and out of the house. So, yeah. No surprise. Is there anything else you want to know? I'll also just mention that local energy advocates is having a follow-up meeting on Tuesday, 29th. To start talking about regionally what are the possibilities? Massachusetts, what are the different kinds of barriers for us? Yeah, I'll send that out. I think we'll have a link soon. Great, perfect. So, I think we've got on the agenda here retreat discussion and I sent you all an email about this but actually I wanted to, before we go there, touch on Andra's, so last week we had talked about getting some talking points together about net zero. I was thinking even more about it since that meeting about how it feels like this is an opportunity for ECAC to be able to come out and as sort of the debates are starting just to swirl around the new school and net zero. I think we have an opportunity to come out and provide some for lack of a better term bipartisan language and facts about net zero and sort of help to ideally stem some of the misinformation that may or may not come out as we get closer to the end of this process. And it seems like now is a good time to start doing that. So, Andra, you had forwarded out some talking points about the net zero bylaw but I wanted to just have a general conversation to see if folks think that's a good idea, good use of our time. Like how would we do that? Just throwing out the idea here. I'll just share that to my mind, this is a really great moment to grab people's attention. They are going to be thinking about the school and we can frame it in terms of this is a building for the future. This is a building for our children to both see a model of the way that we all have to start living is transitioning to an all electric building and having that be seen as it's becoming the norm. There's a lot of schools already, net zero. So, we can frame it in terms of this is where schools are going and let's be excited about it. I'd like to help build for the community support of this first net zero building. This first net zero building. Yeah, Stephanie. So this might be opening a can of worms but I had a resident reach out to me and I had sort of been thinking about this as well and it's something we haven't really talked about much but resilience hubs and the idea of this new structure, this new school being a resilience hub really hasn't come up at all and I just think like, as you say, Andra, the timing it feels like, well, this is the time if you're gonna talk about this because you're talking about bringing two schools together if there's any time to be talking about creating an opportunity for having a resilience hub in town now is a good time. And I think people get nervous when you start talking about that stuff because immediately everyone starts thinking, oh, bigger storage, bigger this, bigger that, more dollars and but I feel like we should be at least having the conversation when it really hasn't come up. So I just, like I said, at the risk of opening a can of worms, it doesn't have to be discussed tonight. I just, maybe this could be something that we consider as one of the retreat items as well if we're gonna talk about the school. So anyway, just throwing it out there. I think Stephanie, I just like to quickly comment that I don't think that's a can of worms. I think that is a very simple and easy co-benefit of this type of building. It just adds more value and reduces long-term costs. So I don't, can of worms? No, good idea. Yes. What is a resilience hub? That sounds like jargon to me. Jargon, you don't know. Well, part of the thing about, I guess in some ways, a resilience hub is really kind of what the community needs. So it can be anything to a community like, for instance, it can be an emergency shelter as one component of it or it can be a place where people can go if they need access to technology because they're looking for jobs. I mean, it's one of those things where you really wanna get the community around what are the functions, these uses of this building and some of it is, it can be a sort of a shelter in an emergency, a climate emergency but it could also have other features that help people beyond just being a place to sleep. It can have things like technology as part of that, like a job center, technology access for people to try to find jobs and work, showers, they can have showers, if there's already a gym and gym facilities, it could have showers for people. Again, it's really one of those things that requires the community to sort of come together and have a process, which is in part, I mean, I know, Jesse, what you're saying is that it's structurally, it's probably an easier thing but I think determining what that is is partly a community process that would take maybe a little bit of time and more time. So that's why I said it's kind of a can of worms but at a baseline, it could be a shelter for the residents but I think it's the idea about how this that it's more than that. Yeah, it's Wayne. Yeah, I think this is a really good opportunity for ECAC as well in terms of opining or setting some issues straight or at least bringing issues forward with regard to the value of net zero. That being said, I think with my sense out there and in Amherst is that there's really not that many people who would push back on net zero. It's more, is it worth the extra, not worth, but is it, how does the town come up with the extra X million dollars to do it? So I guess my question or suggestion is that to the extent that we hypothesize that it doesn't cost anymore, let's bear that out and let's have, let's put the onus on the, and again, this relates to Stephanie and the town that we don't have control over but it would seem to me that we would want the proposers of this building put the onus on them to demonstrate that this thing is not gonna cost anymore. But if it is, give us a very clear pro forma of how much more it's gonna cost and what are, and over the 50 year lifetime of the building, if not longer, what are we expecting to save? So we have that information, not from the town, not from ECAC, but from the building developers or the proposers, the architects, I guess they are, I don't know in fact terms there, to have information to share with people. And then the challenge is really with the arcane way that the state supports financial school buildings and the issue that we've talked about before in ECAC with regard to trade-offs and budgets between operating budgets and capital budgets, how does the town get over this potential need for some additional funding? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely a spot that ECAC needs to be in. I think I'm actually pretty optimistic that we could show that this will cost no more for capital. And even if it costs a little bit more for capital, we can clearly show the operational cost savings. There was just an article in the globe afforded on to everybody that was talking about a proposed building code rule in Massachusetts and most of the numerous experts testified that construction costs associated with new electric build is less than 1% compared to building constructed with conventional fossil fuels. I feel like five years ago, that was 8%, right? So the number's coming down. And so I think we may be able to show with a little bit of data that it's actually not, we're building a brand new, if we're building a brand new building, putting in an oil furnace is actually just as expensive as putting in a heat pump system and then we're saving money with the heating overtime rate. So I wanna, I don't know, the question I don't know the answer to Dwayne is whether the, I've sat in a couple of the meetings with the design team. I think they're really smart people. I think we have a great team. I don't know if they have in their scope to do that analysis between the fossil fuel building and the electric building because they're designing an electric building. That's what our net zero law requires. So we may have to, so first question is out of them is have they done, yeah, go ahead Dwayne. I guess my question then is then how do they say in the newspaper that it costs more? More than what? They didn't show anything else. Because it's the problem. This is the miscommunication, the misinformation that's coming out. So because of the, and I think we are best positioned to help, for lack of a better word, the school net zero committee communicate this in a way that actually is better. So like that avoids, not that's better but that avoids some of the miscommunication possibilities. So right now what they, because the school building commission won't pay for net zero by law pieces, the design team kept those out separately just to show us ballpark numbers. And those got taken out of context is what I've seen. So like they're not gonna pay for the whole building anyway. So it's kind of a moot point but like they would have to pay for the heating and cooling of a building. So to say that this is somehow an extra cost is really not true, right? Because it's meaning that we're not paying for a different heating and cooling system in a different line item, right? So I think there's a lot we could do as ECAC to help that committee make sure the communication is correct. Yes, Stephanie, I saw your hand up and then Steve and Laurie. Very quickly, I was just gonna say that I think it's a matter of members of the committee asking for that information. And asking people to ask people on that committee to ask for that information. Yeah, I agree. So I think the first step would be to reach out to Kathy, I guess, or Jonathan who leads that committee and say, you know, we think this is the data. I don't think they necessarily know. So we need to tell them, this is the data you need to be asking for so that we can help you message this correctly to the community. Yeah, Steve. I just wanted to throw out one word of caution about a net zero building. It's not hard to design a net zero building, but it's hard to operate a building at net zero, especially if you let people into it. And so the current center at Hampshire College, after the building was opened, we took us maybe a year and a half, almost two years before we were certified as net zero. Because it takes a time, and Jesse could speak to this, it takes time to tune up all the HVAC and test the systems and make adjustments. And for people to get used to living in a building that has a somewhat different heating and cooling system. So if the town or some entity is banking on the reduced energy bills, then to offset mortgage payments or something like that, it's really important that people realize that it might take some time for the building to be tuned to be net zero. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, Jesse, you mentioned. Yeah, it never works out of the box. That is very true. Commissioning's getting better and better. And this is where also, I think, simpler systems are gonna get there faster, but also another reason to do schools because there's a pedagogy around paying attention to what a building is doing. You're in the building and creating that transparency around that and being able to be truthful about that. It's just another good reason why it's a school. Also the value proposition, no one's ever asking what the payback is on other building elements that may or may not be necessary. We only have to prove that it's worth it if it's good for the climate and good for indoor air quality and all these other things. But if it's a certain type of flooring that's pretty, no one's like, what's the payback? So I think there's some, it's a really great chance for us to design to our values as a term. Yeah, just to this point, I know Laurie was before me. The bylaw has the commissioning process at the before construction, meaning it has to be verified as, designed for net zero. There's enough solar planned in to theoretically cover the energy use in the building. And that was one of those major compromises made in the process of redoing the net zero bylaw in 2018. So just so people are clear, the only thing in there about actual building performance and operation is a 10 year understanding that the town will do regular reports and monitoring and aspiring to actually function, have it function as a net zero building. Yeah, but I think maybe that's, I think what this is telling me is like, what's the plan to train the staff, for example? Like what's the plan to, is there a pedagogy, like, is there plans to design in a way that pedagogy could be used a little bit more? So I think there's some interesting thoughts there as well. Yeah, Laurie and then Stella. Yeah, again, I have more questions than anything else. So this is an issue that I'm very interested in, but not very up on. So is there a single place to go to learn about what the issues are with this new building? Is there a document somewhere or where would one start? And I guess I can get that information offline later. But also, what does it mean in this context? Maybe this is a dumb question, but to be net zero, if the building is entirely electric, that definition will presumably, or that will change over time how zero the building is, right? It need not produce exactly the same amount of energy or more than it uses in solar, right? If it's using all electric and if electric is getting greener. So what does that mean? No, the bylaw doesn't take into consideration source of the electricity and so on. So it's just net zero as in it must have solar enough to produce energy equal to what it uses. That's what the bylaw is about. Interesting, okay, thanks. Presumably that's on a net annual basis. Okay, because there are other, the thing that goes to my mind when I hear about net zero and using heat pumps in buildings is there are so many other advantages to having heat pumps there in particular. I don't think our school buildings are air conditioned and I think we have mold problems, right? In part because of that. And this is a non-issue anymore if you're using heat pumps. So there's other things that people should be aware of that maybe they're not, I don't know. Yeah, and I think we're required to put an air conditioning into these new buildings per the new code. So we would have, if we did a air sort, if we did a oil for, and we can't do natural gas. So if we did a, because of the moratorium. So if we did an oil furnace then we would also have to put in a cooling system. So these are the cost elements that need to be shown in comparison so that then we can come out and say, listen, actually this is not even any more expensive. So yeah, so that's part of it as well. And Lori, this is still like a pretty early in the process thing. So there's not a lot of information about it. They haven't started the design case yet. They've put out some very preliminary costing just to help the school committee come up with an educational plan, which is basically like what square footage different things would be, so but if there's a page, I don't know, is there a building page yet Stephanie? Do you know? I don't know, I can check. I don't know that they have one yet. Yeah, we'll check that. Yeah, Stella, oh, you're muted. I just kind of wanted to lean into Jesse's pedagogical point and say that just like all the time there's emails on the parents mailing list, like my kids are so concerned about climate change, like how can my kids get involved? Like the earlier and sooner and more the kids can be involved. Like I think that gets to the communication issues. It like gets to some of the fine tuning issues, just whatever, I just think the more that the kids can be involved the better and the sooner. And I wonder if there's a role for us to play in any of that. I know that's like complicated by COVID and like random people in schools and stuff, but. Yeah, but even if there was like as they're designing the building, like I went to tour, when we were looking at doing heat pump systems at the college, we went and toured Eagle Brook, which is like a prep school up the road. And their whole heat pump room is like very neat and open so that students could check it out, right? Like things like that that like we could potentially build into the design or like the solar data, like how can we make sure the solar data is being collected and like the sixth grade science teacher can help the students can look at it, right? Like there's things like that that aren't gonna cost anymore for the plan, but that just if we think about it in advance, they might be useful. All right, so I think in terms of next steps on this, I'll reach out to Kathy and Jonathan and just, and I'll CCU Stephanie and just start the conversation, say that like ECAC is here to help make sure we're getting the right messaging across then to do that, we need to make sure we're collecting the right data and see whether maybe we could set up a quick meeting with them or with the design team just to talk about what we mean by that, like these questions about the difference between like pricing out the fossil fuel system building, even at the highest level would be really helpful for us when we're trying to talk to the community about the difference in costs. So I can do that, yeah, it's Wayne. Sorry, I was just gonna add to that with going back to Stephanie's suggestion about this new school and I guess the other, the existing school, I think Stephanie had in mind that it could be a resiliency hub. I do wonder, and Stephanie would probably be the one, if there is any planning, even at early stages with regard to the need for a resiliency hub in Amherst, a shelter or whatever, if there's any long range planning for that or recognition that it's necessary, then here's an opportunity to also save money potentially by not having to build a whole nother different resiliency hub or retrofit it into a resiliency hub when we decide to do that in 10 years. And again, it sort of maybe bring in the idea that we can take kill two birds here and potentially save some money if we design this with resiliency in mind as well. Yeah, I wonder if there's like a battery store, is there a battery storage requirement in the NutZero bylaw? No, I wonder if there's like a grant out there for battery storage to attach to a resiliency hub that we can attach to the school. Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I'll bring that up too. So data on fossil fuel comparisons, resilience hubs, the point about needing to work to make it run. So like training for staff and other things, pedagogy on the NutZero, all ideas that we've thrown together. Yeah, Lori. Question, are we talking about making the same school building also a resiliency hub and having a shelter in it and that sort of thing? Is that what we're talking about? Cause I wanna be clear on just hand. Not a shelter in it. It would be provided as a shelter in the case of, you know, an extreme weather event. Okay, so if it weren't. So it's an emergency shelter basically. I mean, but at least that's part of it. Jesse has more to say on that. So I'll. No, I just think it's, maybe this may be super obvious, but I think everything we're talking about is like, we're talking about the difference between NetZero and like climate responsive ideas. And all of these things fit under being climate responsive, whether it's resiliency or NetZero or pedagogy or indoor air quality. And I think that might be a helpful umbrella. Maybe that's not the right phrase, but understanding that these are all parts of the same thing and they're all working together and not necessarily fighting each other. Yeah, one thing I wanted to say about the resilience hub and why I sort of brought it up while we're talking about NetZero buildings and a bylaw is because part of a resilience hub is that it has battery storage and it has capabilities of supporting itself, you know, outside of the typical use of fossil fuels to support and, you know, provide generators as part of the supporting the building. The idea is that you want it to be sort of a climate friendly quote unquote response to a shelter opportunity as well. And it's more, you know, like I said, it's a little more detailed, you know, there's sort of a whole kind of philosophy around resilience hubs. And I would be really happy to try to get the woman from the USDN Urban Sustainability Directors Network who has done a lot of work on resiliency hubs to see if she's available or at the very least I could tap information that they have about resiliency hubs maybe even as part of the retreat. I mean, I know that agenda is getting really full, but, you know, maybe there's just a small section on that that we could cover because I do think it's really, that work is really relevant to what you all are doing. Yeah, Andra and then Laurie. I think that we are starting to develop ideas that would be really good for public education. We know resilience is an important thing. We don't have to do a lot of talking about it to decide, you know, there ought to be a public forum. Let's either, you know, find a partner who will do it with us or for us or, you know, do it ourselves and get, you know, the messages out there. And that could be tied perhaps with talking about net zero or it could be a separate, you know, Gus's idea about having a series. I think these are going to be timely bring for now, you know, soon. Yeah, I mean, back to sort of their original discussion about like, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Like, we don't have to figure this all out ourselves. Like, let's get the, but yes, definitely, maybe we bring that person in for a public meeting and, you know, other people may get interested in it and want to think about it as well. Yeah, Lori, did you have a comment to me? Yeah, I wanted to get back to where we started which was this can of worms which I now understand a little better. I think that while talking about resiliency hubs is a good thing and building resiliency into any building is a good thing. Putting too much emphasis on making a school do double duty. There's already so much angst in this town. I mean, my own family was horribly affected by some of the decisions made in the schools around here. It's been very hard to get over it. You know, the way you wouldn't believe if I told you how it affected my family. So it's really a sore point to try to stretch the school to do more than just be a good school for our kids. That's forward thinking and that's net zero and it's, I get a little worried if we're talking about trying to make the school do more than just be the best possible thing we can make it for our kids because I think you're gonna get a lot of pushback. That's just my guess. Any rate? Yeah, I was just gonna say that's where the education piece comes in because the idea is that it's supporting those things. I mean, it might be that maybe there's a need for greater technology access for the students in the school. You know, I mean, it's beyond just an emergency response. Like that's a thing it could be, but it could be other things. So it might be that there's like real definitive needs in the community that it could address. Like for instance, I'm just gonna throw things out there only because I'm talking off the top of my head here but, you know, like maybe there's just a significant number of students that require free lunches and maybe there's a program that's designed the kitchen is bigger to accommodate after hours, you know, support for the community beyond the shelters that already exist. So it's really, again, it's really responding to a community need. And that's why I was saying there's an opportunity here that could actually really enhance, you know the school and enhance the community but that's where the education is so important. I agree with you, but stay focused on best school building. Yeah, and so this is not gonna be our, but I think, so what can we do right now versus what are things that may be future considerations, right, like the square footage for the different pieces has already been decided. So we're not gonna come in now and say we want the kitchen to be bigger like that part's been figured out. But what we can come in and say is like, should we be designing it such that it could fit in batteries if we want to turn this into a resiliency hub into the future? Like that feels like something we should be bringing up now. And maybe there's other elements that we could bring up to remind folks that we may want this building to do other things once it gets built. Like let's focus on getting it built first. I agree with that piece, but like let's not to Duane's point like design it in such a way that we could, it would be really expensive to retrofit it to include battery storage or something like that, right? Resilient ready. And then we can start those conversations about resilient because maybe it's not the new school, maybe it's the high school that is better for this because they have more technology there or whatever, right? Like this is what Stephanie was saying about it has to be a community conversation about what the community actually needs. Yeah, Jesse. Just to give an example of something that probably may not be controversial, the envelope of the building, the envelope is not good then the building will be hotter in the summer and colder in the winter and it will cost more to run it sort of checks all the boxes and it's static and it's a more comfortable and it takes less mechanical systems to heat it and that kind of thing. So that's one where I think it's really, that's aligning with all the things and there's a pedagogical piece to understanding how you got there. Yeah, totally. Okay, great. Well, this has been a really great discussion and I think we will, I'll make a note to reach out to those folks and then I'll follow up with you all and see where we are. And yeah, I think this does really feed into the educational piece. So like, things we haven't done before as a committee like we haven't written any like committee letters or things like that that we could start thinking about is that something we wanna do or like certain people in the committee wanna do to start to get the message out that we have some expertise in this space and can share. So, okay, so with that, I'll turn it over to talk just quickly about the retreat. I wanna apologize again for not following up with folks. I think we were gonna do some of these presentations tonight, but actually we've had a full agenda. So, I have suggested, I suggested in my email, sorry, I had it open, find it again. Just a sort of taking in people's feedback from the last meeting about not wanting to meet in person but also not wanting to sit on Zoom for more than two hours. I'm proposing that we kind of split the retreat into two separate dates, but also with a pre-retreat level up meeting, leveling up meeting like a chance for us to just get up to speed on some of these different projects that we've been working on. We got a little bit of that today already, Steve, from you and the building project, but something like that on the CCA on the CPACE on renewable energy and on the educational outreach. So those are the sort of four areas that we've been focused, that we've been talking about most recently, and I also wanna throw in that list, the transportation comment that Stella made. So I thought at our next meeting, in addition to anything else we might need to do, it'd be helpful to just go through some of that I could give a quick overview of the charge just so folks know what that is. Stephanie gives a quick overview of the CARP and the outreach approach that we took because there was some interest in our new members learning about that. And then folks that are on this list that have been leading on these different projects or different areas could just come prepared with a few talking points. If you wanna present slides, that's fine, but if you just wanna speak to the project, that's great. And this will be an opportunity just to kind of level set before the retreat, before the retreat starts. And we can take note, one of us can, in addition to the minute taker, take notes and circulate it to everybody. So we have a recording of that. And then for the retreats, I am not gonna be in town for April vacation week. And so just for my own schedule, I'm thinking that we could maybe move our meeting to April 27th and then have the two retreat dates back to back weeks, but keeping it at the same time since it already works for folks. We're in session one, we sort of, and I've been going back and forth about the right order to do this. So I'd love your feedback, but I think one session should really be a work session on key initiatives. We may wanna invite some partners, like we may wanna invite John Hornick from the Affordable Housing Trust to talk about the building electrification project, for example. We may wanna do breakouts. I don't know, we can figure out how we wanna do that, but that's really gonna be a work plan for these key initiatives. What would success look like over the next year and what is ECAC's unique role in that success and what do we need to get done? And then I'd like to have a separate session on taking all that in. What do we need to work on? Or what are our new key initiatives? What needs to be happening, happening both from ECAC and from outside groups, whether that's the town staff, whether that's the town council in terms of passing new bylaws or other things, whether that's other community groups, like pulling that all together, how do we make ECAC as effective as we can be in terms of a resource to the town? And this will get to some of the questions around, like should we be have more official liaisons with the CRC, is that the name of the group that, yeah. Or like different council committees, or should we be advocating for ECAC to have an opportunity to review the budget at some point so that we can make sure that the climate lens has been applied? Like where can we make sure that to meet our goals, we have the right processes in place to fit us in. And so it's not as much of us, it's not as reactive, it's more proactive, I guess. So that's what I was thinking in terms of kind of the two days of the retreat, one work planning day on like our initiatives and then one sort of more higher level ECAC strategy day on, you know, idea, just brainstorming ideas of how we could work and, you know, thinking about how we get support for those from those who need to support it. Yes, that's me. Oh, you, sorry. I just wanted to save you, just in terms of your planning, I just wanted to save you because this is a virtual meeting. We can't do breakout sessions, so you can't do breakout rooms. So I just wanted to let you know that right up front so that you don't try to factor that in. Because I did get in a little, I wouldn't say I got in trouble, but I definitely was told, you know, if you recall way back when, when we did that, I was told that was not okay. Oh, okay. So I think maybe, so I think maybe what we should do at our next meeting is when we go through the key initiatives, maybe we need to just pick two or three that we wanna work through together because it might be hard to do all of them, but, you know, so like the CCA, there may not be anything for ECAC to necessarily do. We just wanna be updated on it and we can help with education when that piece comes around. So we may not need a work session on that, but we may wanna work session on some of the other ones. Can I just, yeah. Stephanie, I missed, sorry, what were you, what can't we do? Breakout rooms. So we can't have a meeting and then go into breakout rooms where people work in separate groups can't do that. Yeah, Dwayne. I just think one comment, I really appreciate just the very idea of having a retreat. I think it's really good timing and we'll be very helpful for us and appreciate all the thinking that's gone into it. I guess the one thing I would throw out there is that I don't think we should take our initiatives as we defined them probably a year and a half ago and that organization and separation between our, of what we're sort of, each of us are kind of responsible for or focused on as a given. It may be an opportunity also to with our new members and with a year and a half behind us or however long it's been and actually the carp I think was written since we came up with those groups to really rethink that as well. You use that perhaps as a starting point but not assume that we have to just keep these five tracks going but to use some time at the retreat to either justify that or rethink that. Yeah, that's a great point Dwayne and actually Steve has done some thinking on that as well and I think I'll ask him to present just his initial thoughts on that at our next meeting. And then yeah, we can bring that into either maybe that's part of session two, like how do we work ECAC effectively internally and externally but yeah, I think we did for the other, for the folks in the room who weren't part of ECAC at that time we've had various iterations of trying to figure out how to work more effectively different types of work groups. When the car was finalized we wrote a letter, Jesse penned a really nice letter from ECAC that sort of laid out five areas that we think ECAC has the most place to work and then we sort of tried to break into work groups related to those five areas but we were down a couple of members and we just didn't really, we weren't able to really take off with that. So, and I think five is too many for even our full committee. So yeah, I think we wanna think realistically about how we make sure, I think the biggest challenge that we've faced in these three years is that there's just so much to do and it can be easy to scratch the surface on lots of things and then not really get anything all the way to the finish line. And there's a lot of opportunistic opportunities that we can't miss, right? Like Stella, I like that saying that you had earlier. I don't remember what it was, but you know. Moment of the whirlwind? Moment of the whirlwind. Yeah, there's a lot of whirlwinds in Amherst and we get caught up in them for good or bad whirlwind. Some of them are good, some of them are a little bit more distracting. And so then we ended up spending time on those. So, and those are gonna happen regardless. We need to build that into our planning, but I would love us to feel like confident in what we're doing and doing great point. Like we split those up earlier to sort of match our interests at that time. And now we have a whole new group of people that have different interests and expertise. So I think that's a great point. Yeah, Jesse. So I don't know if it was up for debate, but you were sort of saying a big picture meeting and a nuts and bolts meeting. And I think, I just want to put it out there again, just moving from large ideas to small ones seems like the right thing to do from my point of view. I think it would be a shame to dig into something and then loop back and realize it didn't fit our big picture. The other question I have is about the dates. I happen to have a conflict on the 27th and before, and I'm not sure if, is this like an email to figure this out or does anyone else have conflicts and what's the best way, what's the most efficient way? Cause I, my sense is these two meetings are meetings that are shouldn't be missed. Well, I don't know, I just send out, let me just send out a poll for dates. I'll just send out a poll. I can do that this week. That's great. But we're going to stick with the Wednesday, the Wednesday evening slot for late afternoon. Yeah, we can stick with the Wednesday evening slot. I'll just put out a bunch of dates. If that works for people, I could, unless someone wants to suggest alternatively. I think the only challenge is that we may want to throw out a couple other options if we want to do them not either, cause I'm out, I'm out for a while. We're actually finally going to see Marcus's family for the first time in three years, which is exciting. But I will miss, so I have like two Wednesdays in a row that I'm not going to be in the country. So I think if we stick to Wednesdays, we might have to push it back, push it out a little bit further. So maybe all for Wednesdays and a couple other. How about if I stick to that, does the timeframe overall in general, does the 430 to 630 window work for people on other days besides Wednesday? Everyone's nodding yes. Usually, except Thursday cause Marcus is on tack. Well, I'll just put them out there and then I'll put Tuesdays in some places and people can, again, that's what the poll is for and we'll go from there. And how many, so we need three, so we need two retreat dates and the one level up meeting is going to happen before on a regular meeting date. Yeah, so we actually only need, if we want to stick with having, if we want to stick with having, I think you should put out a poll for all the dates. If we want to stick with having the second retreat date or the first, depending on the timing, on the May 4th meeting time, then I think we would just need to find another date, another time around that time, if that makes sense. Before or the week after. Yeah, I like the idea of it being a week apart. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so if May 4th works for most people, then we could do the following Wednesday or another day, the week of the 27th week, potentially. And yes, the leveling up meeting will be at our regular meeting next time. Just the next meeting. Yeah. Can we just see, is there anyone who can never do an evening, should we consider the possibility of, you know, a seven to nine time that week after school vacation as well, just to make sure, you know, for a one-time thing? I can never do seven to nine. Sorry. Everybody nodded their head, yes, that it worked. So no one nodded, no. Oh wait, four thirty to six thirty or seven to nine? Four thirty to six thirty. Oh yeah, four thirty to six thirty is great. Seven to nine is nice time. Yeah, I just wanted to. I'm just gonna throw this out here. This is my own personal nightmare that I'm trying to schedule something with nine people live in front of the whole world publicly. I'm the only one I think you can't do the 27th. Just quickly, could we do the fourth and the 11th? If that worked for everyone, we could just put it to bed right now. And if not, I'll step aside. Let me look here. That looks fine for me. Anybody else have a conflict? I think that's OK for me. Good thinking, Justin. Who's who, my Don Allison's good. OK, good. Don is coming to this meeting whenever we schedule it. Yeah, exactly. He has to cancel anything. Does that mean that we go three weeks without a meeting in April and then three weeks in a row in May? So, yes, that's what that would mean. So we might want to why don't we do a poll for are you just not free on the 27th, Jesse? I'm at a conference the 26th, 27th, 28th. OK, never mind. OK, that may be inevitable then. So let's just give ourselves homework. For those three weeks, let's let's make that part of the leveling up conversation. Well, April 6th, aren't we having a meeting? Or was that a meeting you couldn't make? Yeah, so we will. So we will still have our April 6th meeting, and that will be the meeting where we spend most of the time doing the leveling up. So of of going through, yeah, I wrote an email, but like going through the different initiatives we've been working on. And yeah, that's a good point, Jesse. Maybe we could figure out how to I think at least at a minimum, we'll take notes from that meeting and we'll we'll share it out. And then yeah, maybe we can collect some questions ahead of time or do something do some thinking ahead of the retreat. Yeah, Laurie. Another question earlier, somebody mentioned the five areas that you guys had already been working in. It's from some letter that Jesse wrote. If there's a copy of that that could be circulated to us. New members, I think that'd be great. I'd like to. It's in the cart, Laurie. Yeah, it's a project in the cart. Oh, it's those five areas. The five areas in the cart. Well, so in the front, if you look at the front of the cart, there's a letter from ECAC. OK. And it sort of lays out like these are the five plate thing. I think it was like buildings. Yeah. OK. I got it. Policy. Yeah. So the introductory letter from the EC. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Got it. So can I be I just want to be clear? So because I'm just in terms of scheduling wise, you're saying so April 6th is the leveling up. And the May and May 4th and May 11th are the two retreat dates. If that works for Don. If it works for Don. Yeah. We're not going to be able to get an answer from him to like next week or something. OK. Oh, yeah, because he's like. He's in Scotland. Scotland, yes. He's hiking the Scottish Highlands. So OK. So and so there's not another. I just got confused because we were talking about three meetings and it's like, are we looking at the meeting before May 4th as an additional retreat meeting or is the April 4th or 6th meeting the leveling up is like the first part. And then the two dates are the actual retreat dates. Got it. OK. So I can always reach out to Don and just like verify. And if he sees it, he does. If he doesn't, he'll let us know next time. OK, great. And our folks that are on the list for the agenda next week. Comfortable with that. It was from the email I sent earlier this week. OK, I'm getting some thumbs up. OK. If anybody has. Yeah, it's what I just thinking for for the purpose of the two retreat dates. And I'm not sure what the solution is, but if we could get a note taker. So one of us isn't taking notes during the time that would be helpful or valuable. I'm not sure where that person comes from. Yeah, right. But so we do. I mean, because we're doing it through Zoom, we are recording it. Oh, yeah. OK. We can record it. And you know, I mean, I or anybody could sort of go back and take notes from the recording. OK. Yeah, let's think about that. That seems like a burden for somebody, but maybe that's the best way to do it. OK. I'd be happy saying I'd be happy to do it again. As long as I didn't have to do it like the very next meeting, and I had a little time. Yeah. Well, that doesn't seem like a very good use of your time. Yeah, I'd rather step in. I'd rather have your voice than your stenography. All right, we'll think about that. Yeah, let's think about that. Or I could do it from the recording later. Whatever, you know, there is someone who is like an official note taker for the town council. And I maybe we could get that person to help with the two retreat dates. Possibly. I'd have to ask if we can get permission to use that person. Yeah, that'd be great if you could ask. And then if that doesn't work out, we'll figure figure something out. We can each take a half an hour of the recording or something, or 15 minutes. Duane, is something else? Oh, so I think just your point made a lot of sense to start big and go small. So I think we'll start the first session to be like the strategy session and then the second session to be more of the work session on the key initiatives. Anybody else have an alternative view on that? No, OK, cool. All right, well, great. Any other last comments on a retreat? I wish we could actually be together. Yeah, we should all commit to bringing chocolate for ourselves, I would think. Good idea. And Stephanie is singing, right? Yes. That's true. Thank you. That's hilarious. Yeah, I'll come. I'll come delivering chocolate to your door and sing a little tune for you and drop it in there. I think with five kilo dark chocolate bars from Belgium. If we ever meet in person. Well, I'm going to Lori's house. All right, I do see two members in the attending or public people of public attending. So just give us a second for either of them to raise their hand if they wanted to make a public comment. Right, I'm not seeing anybody raise their hand. So I think unless anyone has anything else, we can end for today. All right, thank you, everybody. Thanks, later. Thank you.